by Ricky Sides
“Yes, mine thought of that too. Unfortunately, we are too busy here to make the attempt.”
“I take it that the plague has worsened.”
“Unfortunately, yes it has. We may lose New Orleans. We’ve already lost many smaller cities, and it has now been detected as far north as Kentucky.”
“The vaccine? Is it going to work?”
“We don’t know yet. We had initiated a testing phase before the outbreak accelerated. There’s a fourteen day delay before the vaccine becomes effective. We had to issue it untested to New Orleans in an effort to try to save some of the population of that city.”
“I commiserate with you on the difficulty of such a decision. I pray that such choices do not soon confront my people.”
“As do we, Admiral. That’s why we’re sharing the information.”
“My people tell me they have it now, and that they are checking for file integrity.”
“Hopefully, everything arrived intact.”
“They just informed me that it did, Admiral Wilison. The royal family wished me to extend our warmest thanks to you for your assistance.”
“You’re welcome,” Jim responded simply.
“However, they also wanted me to discuss another issue with you.”
“Here it comes,” Jim said quietly to himself.
“While we are deeply grateful for everything that you have done to assist us in the past, my government wishes you to understand that we must request that no American aircraft enter our airspace in the foreseeable future. We simply cannot risk contamination by the plague. Further, we request that you stop all outgoing, privately owned, flying autos, from entering our airspace. Those that do, and fail to land as instructed, will be shot down to protect our nation.”
“Admiral Banes, we can’t possibly prevent privately owned vehicles from making such an attempt. We can’t put enough air assets up to stop that, even if we weren’t dealing with a national emergency that has our fleet spread out all over the continent.”
“I know, Admiral Wilison, yet, I have my orders and must follow them.”
“Understood,” Jim said angrily. “Have a great day, Admiral. That should be easy with the information you are taking home, courtesy of your allies,” he added bitterly.
“I’m sorry, Admiral. Good day to you and may God bless you and keep all of you safe in the trying times ahead. Banes out,” the British admiral said in closing. On the deck of his ship, Admiral Banes shook his head sadly.
“Rather rude, wasn’t he, sir?” asked his second in command.
“Those people may have just given us the key to saving our nation, and I had to kick them in the teeth. Rude you say? No. Bitter, and rightly so.”
“It’s not his fault, Jim,” Tim said beside him.
“I know,” Jim said with a sigh. “You think I should call him back and apologize?” asked Jim who wasn’t accustomed to dealing with foreign governments.
“Hell no! I was just saying that it’s not his fault.”
***
The Valiant was heavily loaded with passengers and cargo. They were transporting the first ark settlement to their remote location. In this case, the council had selected an isolated location in Colorado. Evan stood up from the captain’s chair and walked forward to look out the windshield to gaze down at the selected settlement area. He saw three Quonset hut buildings already set up for the settlers. Two of those buildings would be living quarters. The third would be a combination storage facility for their supplies and a kitchen and mess hall. Colorado winters were said to be brutal, and winter was just a few months away. With no form of shelter available, he doubted many of the settlers could have made it through the winter.
Evan was an avid reader, and he enjoyed reading anything remotely associated with survival. For that reason, he voraciously read books related to the early settlement of America. Therefore, he was familiar with the hardships involved in settling in Colorado.
“Captain, the escort fighter wants to know if you want him to remain airborne until our strike team gives the all clear,” Lisa said.
“Yes, and tell him I said to keep a sharp eye on those woods to the north of the settlement. I think I see trails leading into the woods. The work party that set up the Quonset huts may have made them, but they could also be animal trails. This is prime bear country. It wouldn’t do for one of the settlers to encounter a bear up close their first day here.”
“Yes, Captain,” Lisa responded and then she passed along his message.
“Helm, let the APC escorts land first. After the strike teams give us the all clear, then I want you to land as near the buildings as possible.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Communications, please give JT2 and JT3 the go ahead to land and secure the area. Tell them I said to keep a good eye on the forest line.”
Moments later, Lisa reported that they were complying with the order.
Evan, who was still staring out the window, was already aware that the teams were descending to the settlement. “Gunner, be ready to provide air support if necessary, but bear in mind we’ll have people on the ground. If it becomes necessary to fire, I want you to practice an abundance of caution.”
“Yes, Captain,” the gunner acknowledged his orders. His name was James Baker, and he was the best gunner in the junior class. However, James’s communication skills were so far below those of the three who’d been selected for the junior missions that they had won the positions.
Evan saw the side doors open on the APCs as they descended. He knew that two men would be kneeling in the open doorways with their rifles at the ready. He was tempted to remind the commanders of the APCs to drop off their strike teams and lift off to offer air support, but he didn’t want to micromanage their actions. They had all been thoroughly briefed by the admiral before the Damroyal had departed for New Orleans, and they all understood the critical importance of their mission.
He nodded his head a minute later as both APCs disgorged their strike teams and then lifted off the ground to hover protectively near as the teams searched the grounds. They thoroughly checked the area outside the buildings, and then they unlocked the doors and checked the interior. Several minutes passed as the teams checked the buildings, but then they signaled the all clear and the heavily laden Valiant landed.
The strike team of the ship hit the ground first. They moved out to form a heavily armed barrier between the passengers and the wilds of Colorado. The former peacekeepers who were participating in the ark program came next. They formed their own line with their widely varied assortment of weapons. Like the peacekeepers who opted to resign, those participating in the ark program had to turn in their automatic rifles. The families of the former peacekeepers came last.
Two hours later, a massive amount of supplies and personal possessions had been unloaded from the Valiant and the two APCs. Evan toured the buildings with his check sheet, checking the lighting and the heating and air units. The interior of the buildings had been partitioned off so that family groups would have their own little sections. He checked the doors, ensuring that they could be locked from the inside to protect the privacy of the individual families, and he checked the doors that led into the buildings. Each door was equipped with the electronic packages that would permit the settlers to seal the doors seamlessly. Ventilation ports in the center of the roof would ensure adequate ventilation of the interiors. The junior engineer of the Valiant checked the energy reading on the small control panels for each building. The massive battery systems buried beneath the flooring all had full charges and the Huxley alloy seemed to be functioning at normal efficiency. All these facts were duly recorded for his report to the council, who wanted to ensure that the camp was left in good order.
Next, Evan was required to check the food and medical stockpiles that had been delivered the day before by other transports. He was checking for damage and or spoilage. As best he could determine, those critical supplies seemed to be in order. The seventy-tw
o settlers had sufficient supplies available to last them through the winter. Come spring, they would need to start gardens and begin to hunt to supplement their food resources.
Evan was also to note the general demeanor of the settlers and determine if they appeared to be experiencing anxiety about the project. He noted that while a few did appear to be understandably nervous about the enterprise, but many of the settlers were already talking about building their own cabins come spring.
For the next week, Evan and the junior team APC commanders, accompanied by a fighter escort ferried the settlers who were participating in the ark program to their established settlements. As was the case in Colorado, the settlers found habitats in the form of the Reager Industries Quonset huts waiting for them upon their arrival. Those buildings had food and water stocked in them. In one case, when they could find no readily available source of fresh water, the peacekeepers had drilled a well and tied the pump into one of the Quonset huts. Evan had special orders to check and ensure that the water pump was working properly. His medic had received a special kit to test a sample of that water, which had already been tested in the past. The council was practicing an abundance of caution because they understood that the day was rapidly approaching when the settlements would be totally isolated.
The ark communities had been set up in a wide-ranging area across America to maximize the likelihood of some of them surviving, even if the plague decimated the rest of the population of the continent. The locations of those settlements were a closely guarded secret. Not even the base commander at the citadel knew where they were located. Captains Bill Young of the Constitution and Jack Wilcox of the Arizona handled the construction and supply tasks. They accomplished this by loading the prefabricated Quonset huts onto the top of the giant Constitution and then sealing them to the hull. Once they reached the settlement areas, the seals were deactivated and the Arizona would lift them off the ship and deposit them into their proper positions.
Captains Young and Wilcox were selected because they had ships capable of handling the missions and because of the council’s utmost faith in the captains and their crews to maintain the secrecy of the locations.
The Valiant and her escorts were selected to ferry all of the settlers because the fewer who knew the locations the better. They were ordered to say nothing to anyone, not even their families regarding the locations of the settlements, and each crewmember took a formal oath to maintain that secrecy.
That they took the oath seriously was proven when Commander Finch tested several crewmembers by calling them into his office and telling them that there had been a change in orders and they were to tell him where the settlement they had just established was located. Finch thus tested nine members of the crews at random. When they refused to answer, he even threatened to have them thrown in the brig for insubordination and failure to obey a direct order. Each chose the brig. Most informed the commander that if the orders had changed, then he needed only to ask the council. Commander Finch ended each interview by having the crewmembers escorted out and taken to a holding room so that they couldn’t interact with the rest of the crew. He didn’t inform them that they had passed the test because he wanted them to appear nervous as they were escorted out of his office and marched down the hall past their fellow crewmembers.
It was very effective. After the first man was escorted out, all knew that this was a serious situation. However, to their credit, not one member of the combined crews revealed the location to the commander, despite the threat of the brig.
When the testing was completed, the commander joined the young men and women in the holding room. He congratulated them on their devotion to duty.
“You’re not going to apologize for putting us through that?” asked one of the men.
“Absolutely not,” the commander responded. “The very future of the human race could well depend upon your ability to keep your mouth shut when someone puts pressure on you to reveal the locations. I won’t apologize for testing that ability.”
The next day, the Valiant and her escorts delivered the last of the ark settlements to their locations. This time they were going to a remote section of Tennessee. That trip was hard for John Harrelson, who had to say goodbye to Karen. Evan gave John permission to spend their time on the ground with Karen if he wished, promising that he would deal with the crew if they made a fuss about his slacking during the work. However, Evan wasn’t surprised when no one voiced a word of complaint. Nor did anyone mention his tearful goodbye or the sweet last kiss he received in parting. Instead, they closed ranks around their suffering crewmate and screened him from the sight of the other crews as they boarded their ship.
Lisa slipped her hand into Evan’s and said, “That was nice of the guys.”
“They’re a good crew,” Evan agreed. “I wish we could keep it together when all this is over, but I think dad means to break us up. We’ll be absorbed into other, more experienced crews.”
“You could ask him to keep us all together,” Lisa said, but then she saw the expression on his face, and said, “No, no, you couldn’t do that. You’d regard that as requesting a special favor, wouldn’t you?”
“It would be, dear. It doesn’t make sense to turn over a ship to a totally green crew as young as we are.”
“Well, we are young, but I don’t think we’re totally green,” was all Lisa said. She dropped the matter because she understood her husband. He wanted to earn his way through the ranks and not have anything handed to him because of his relationship with a council member.
It wasn’t as difficult for her because she didn’t have the ambition to become the captain of a ship, which was second only to the council in the hierarchy of the peacekeepers. A slot they shared with base commanders. But a base commander’s authority was limited to the base and its area of responsibility. A ship captain’s authority is extended to encompass the ship and its immediate surroundings. Evan was listed as an acting captain. As such, he was subject to taking orders from the base commander, but a full-fledged captain wasn’t under the command of a base commander. They were under the command of the council. Base commanders could make requests of the captains, but couldn’t order them to do anything. Just which of the ranks was the most powerful was a matter that many people had debated. Most considered them equal. Only the council had the authority to issue orders to every element of the peacekeepers.
“I think dad will let the two of us stay together though,” Evan said, snapping Lisa out of her ruminations about the peacekeeper chain of command in an instant.
“He wouldn’t dare separate us!” she said in alarm.
“No, I don’t think he’d do that either,” Evan confirmed. Then, looking sharply at his wife, Evan said, “Are you okay? You’re white as a sheet.”
“God I feel sick,” Lisa stated and then she collapsed.
Evan caught her in his arms before she could hit the ground. “Harvey!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs.
By the time the medic came running toward them, Lisa was coming around. Evan got her on her feet and asked, “Do you feel better now?”
“I do. I still feel queasy, but the really bad nausea has left.” Looking at Evan with fear evident on her face, she said, “I think Harvey needs to test me for the disease.”
***
It only took a few minutes for word of Lisa’s collapse to spread. The settlers went inside their shelters at Evan’s insistence. He had the crews of the APCs board their ships and hover at maximum altitude, as did the fighter escort. Harvey prepped the test and took the blood sample in proper protective gear. Meanwhile, Evan ordered the rest of the crew to keep their distance. An hour later, they had the results of the test. Lisa did not have the disease.
Evan had Harvey to reassure the settlement that they hadn’t been delivered to their new home by a contaminated crew, and then they boarded the Valiant. But Lisa still felt sick. She said, “I think I need to see the doctor when I get back to the base.”
Evan
noted the panicked look in her eyes. He knew that for Lisa, the thought the male doctors of the citadel examining her was enough to cause mental anguish. He said, “This was our last mission of the ark program. Send a message to the Damroyal. Tell dad I am requesting permission to fly there so that you can see Maggie.”
“You don’t have to do that for me. I know how you feel about asking for favors,” Lisa said, but Evan had seen that flash of hope on her face before she had tried to mask it.
“Yes I do, and I’m doing it for me as much as I’m doing it for you. I don’t want a male doctor examining you,” he said gruffly.
“Are you jealous?” she asked teasingly.
“Yes, I am,” he responded. “Now make the call, Communications Specialist.”
“Aye, Captain,” she responded and turned to her communications console to put in the request.
“You handled that rather well,” Harvey said quietly. He’d come into the control room to watch over his patient for a few more minutes, and was standing near Evan.
Evan nodded soberly, then said, “Thank you. I’m learning.”
***
“What’s the mystery, Sweetheart?” Maggie asked Lisa. “I was told that Evan asked for permission to fly to the Damroyal so you could see me.”
During the trip to the Damroyal, Lisa had given some thought to what she wanted to say to Maggie. She knew that there was something wrong with her. She could feel that quite clearly. However, she didn’t know what ailment she was suffering from, and that terrified her. Her first fear had been that she had somehow contracted the disease, but when that was ruled out, she began to wonder if her sexual activity with Evan had reopened some of the old damage that Reggie had inflicted upon her as a girl. The internal damage that Maggie had soberly informed her would prevent her from ever having a baby.