by M. Lorrox
The officer gives her a dirty look, but Qilin doesn’t slow. On the other side, she finds a place to sit where she can watch the exit, then she opens the phone, copies her own phone number into it, and saves it as “Aunt J.” Then she adds the new phone’s number to her own phone.
She looks up and breathes to slow her pounding heart. Not here yet. Thank you, gods of slow plane exiting, I’ll never be grumpy at you again. She smiles to herself and loads the minutes onto the prepaid phone, then sets it aside. With her own phone, she sends it a text.
Disappear for a few minutes, bathroom or whatever, and say you bought the phone. DELETE THIS MESSAGE.
She sends it, then she waits for the other phone to receive it.
-Blippybloop!- She checks, and it has one unread message.
She sighs and sinks into the bench, then she notices a tall Asian boy walking alongside a shorter, rounder boy with bandages on his head. That’s Steve… Just in time.
She holds her own phone up to her ear and begins a one-sided conversation in Italian. As Steve approaches, she turns away and laughs. She catches his reflection in a glass panel, and she pauses. She waits until he’s close, then she spins and steps right into him, her hand placing the prepaid phone into his. “Guardalo!” She immediately turns in front of Li Chen and continues her conversation with her phone, gesturing wildly with her other hand.
Steve slips the phone into his pocket.
“Bumpin’ into hotties already, eh?” Li Chen smiles as he checks out Qilin’s ass.
Steve laughs. “Hopefully next time they give me the time of day.”
Li Chen pulls Steve close. “Oh, check your shit, dude, Italy’s famous for pickpockets.”
Steve tries to look concerned while he pats his pockets. “All good.”
“’Kay.”
Qilin tails the three to the baggage claim where they collect the trunk, but there’s still no Lorenzo. Steve leaves them and rushes to the bathroom. A moment later, Qilin receives a text from a number she doesn’t recognize:
This is Steve. My phone’s unlocked, and it works here, apparently. I tossed the other phone, just use this one.
Idiot. You could have used that phone for other things, STEVE... She replies:
Fine. I’ll need to know where you’re going and I’ll follow. Delete our communications every single time you read or send one.
Meaning now!
She shakes her head and sighs. Amateurs.
With the warning from Væir looming, countries around the world scramble to find any evidence of an attack, but they cannot. They alert their militaries and wait while their citizens go about their lives...at least until the deadline approaches. Still, lines at gas stations wrap down streets, the shelves of supermarkets are emptied, and in many countries, people flee major metropolitan areas, just in case.
Some laugh it off as a hoax, while some ready themselves for a Hollywood-style vampire battle. Those wackos have garlic cloves, wooden stakes, holy water, and crosses at the ready…and they usually back up their arsenal with a rifle or shotgun.
Planes patrol the skies, ships patrol the waters, ground-based radar facilities watch for incoming attacks, and feeds from reconnaissance satellites are monitored. The entire world watches as tensions rise, and they wait with baited breath as the clock ticks closer to the time of the threatened first attacks: midnight UTC—less than twenty-four hours from now.
The midday sun beats down on the Ghost attack boat. Because Owen is busy, only three people are able to take guard shifts, so they rotate stations every thirty minutes. At shift change, the person on rest moves to the front to guard the blown-open windshield, and the person there moves to the back to guard the gap between hatch and boat, giving that person a break. Right now, Ghost is on break. Hecate is at the front—alone and enjoying the peace—while Charlie is at the back, talking to Owen.
“Stupid drones—close enough to make me nervous, far enough to be impossible to shoot down.” Charlie sighs and glances at the blond-haired human at his side, who is futzing around with Balena’s breaching torch. “Ever used anything like that?”
Owen shakes his head. “I’m not sure what experience that I have would be closer: using a soldering iron, or melting heat-shrink around wires with a lighter.”
Charlie smiles, recalling when he bought a torch to play around with welding at the turn of the twentieth century. “Can I give you some tips?”
Owen tilts his head up, and the dark goggles Balena gave him fall over his eyes. He frowns and lifts them. “You can take over if you like.”
“No, it’s easy enough. The trigger initiates the cutting jet, but before you make the cut, you have to heat up the area. You’ve got to bring it to bright-cherry-red.”
He nods. “Then what?”
Charlie laughs as he scans the sky for drones. “Do that first, then ask me... And wear those goggles, molten iron flying around is an easy way to lose an eye.”
Owen tightens the goggles into place and looks at the torch. “Umm, how do you start it?”
Charlie scowls. “She didn’t even tell you that?”
“She said, ‘You’ll figure it out.’”
“Turn the knobs on the torch and tank, then spark it with that flint, but don’t touch the trigger.”
“Okay... Thanks.”
Ghost overhears them, and she can’t help but chuckle. She’s stretched out on the ground inside, and she decides to focus and practice some yoga that Naga taught her. Oh Naga. You’ll always be with me, I know that. Part of me will always feel your presence.
Past her head, Balena lays on her stomach on a row of equipment cases. Her head and arms extend off the front, where she works.
Eddy watches and shakes his head.
Balena glances at him. “What?”
“Nothing, just this.” He gestures to the pile of parts in front of them.
“Never seen a disassembled, precision-guided munition?” She smiles.
Eddy laughs. “I was going to call it a missile, and no, I haven’t.” He motions toward a small device that was in the nose of the weapon. “Is that to trigger the explosion?”
Balena picks up the device. “This?”
“Yeah.”
“No. That’s the Height of Burst, or HOB sensor. The real versions of these missiles can be set to detonate at specific altitudes—to take out ground forces below.”
“Oh. What’s that next to it?”
Balena laughs. “Listen, how about I describe what I’m doing to you? Because then I’ll at least be able to get my work done.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“No worries. So, we’ve got the outer casing off, separated out the rocket motors and navigation—back there—and now in the nose, we’re removing the HOB sensor and the impact sensors. Next, we remove the dummy warhead. I assume the detonator would be behind the warhead, but I doubt there’s one installed.” She shrugs a shoulder. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
Owen tilts the torch away. “Alright, I think I’m ready for the next step.”
Charlie glances down long enough to see the color of the steel. “Yup. Okay, so the trigger might be pressure sensitive. The harder you squeeze, the more oxygen it’ll let out through that third tube that, until now, has done squat. Just pull the trigger, hear the jet kick in, then cut from one side to the other. Go as slow as you need and play with the oxygen pressure. Too little, and the going will be slow. Too much, and you’ll blast a big, ugly hole. Cutting quick and clean means you’re juuust right.”
Owen nods, aims the flame alongside one edge, and pulls the trigger. The flame out the end rips forward, and Owen jolts with surprise. “Wow, this is awesome. Alright, here I go.” He moves the flame onto the metal and starts the cut.
Charlie laughs. “Today, arc welding is pretty standard, but a hundred years ago, it was rare because you had to ha
ve electricity to do it. Torches like this were the way to go. Early in the industrial movement, cars were a hit, sure, but better tractors were the things that made a huge difference. They were garbage compared to what they make today of course, and they’d break down a lot. I had this one tractor that was especially crappy, and I got real handy at gas cutting and welding.”
Owen has found the just-right oxygen flow and is making good progress. “This is so cool!”
Charlie shakes his head. I wonder if he heard a word.
Hecate pops her head out. “Switching time.”
Charlie nods and scans the sky one more time. “Okay. Hey Owen, look here for a sec.”
Owen releases the trigger on the torch and looks up.
Charlie points. “Looks like you’re doing a good job. Holler if you need anything, and when you’re done, remember to kill ALL the valves. Start at the tank, then work down the line.”
Owen nods. “Will do, thanks!”
Hecate extends her hand to take Charlie’s rifle. “You were a farmer?”
“I dabbled.” He winks and hands her the rifle, then heads into the cabin for a half-hour’s rest before his next two half-hour watch sessions.
It’s night in Northern Virginia, where Sadie and Minnie curl up in their hotel room’s simple, queen-sized bed. Minnie dreams she’s at the farmers’ market back at the only home she’s ever known: Waynesville, North Carolina. While activity swarms around her, she stands on her tippy toes and smells the flowers at her favorite stand—Mr. Locke’s.
He smiles at her with a sunbeam safely in the distance behind him, then tells her he has a special flower for her and to wait a second. He turns and bends down, and Minnie waits like a good little girl. When he turns back around to her, he looks like one of the scary zombies that was trying to get her in DC. He reaches out for her, growling and snarling.
She spins on her heels and runs away, screaming for her mom, but she can’t find her. She keeps running.
In bed beside her sleeping daughter, Sadie stares at the ceiling. A million thoughts, worries, and strategies fight in her mind for supremacy. One rises above the rest.
There’s no turning back.
Outside, Rusty explores the grounds of the hotel—on foot. He trots the perimeter, catches the scent of a racoon, and decides to investigate.
In Bligh Sound, while the guard rotation continues under the early evening sun, Eddy watches Owen and Balena continue their preparations. I hate being useless. If I could take guard shifts, that would help, but I can’t fire a gun like this… He tilts his head, remembering something his dad said. He clears his throat. “Hey… Do we have any wire?”
Balena looks up from a mess of explosives, torn apart missiles, and an MRE she’s working on. “We’ve got claymore wire. What’re you thinking?”
He remembers the spool of claymore wire he had in his pocket when he threw the battle pack filled with explosives earlier—when he was supposed to keep slack on the wire so there was a way to trigger the bomb. “That wire’s too thin. I was thinking about making a sort of apparatus so I can aim and fire a gun.”
She frowns. Poor kid. “I was on a mission once where a SEAL, a human SEAL, lost an arm, and we rigged him up with paracord...” Her eyes flash excitement. “Oh, I’ve got an idea for you. If we get that chain-gun the robot whatever was using on us, we could mount that on a bipod, strap it up someplace on the roof, then make a rig from cording and webbing straps.”
Eddy nods. “Now we’re talking.”
Charlie guards the boat’s front, and he drops his head into the cockpit. “If you can wait until my next break, in forty-five minutes or so, I can go get the gun for ya.”
Hecate, who just started her break, stands with her weight on one leg and starts to take off her ACU top. “I’ll go grab it now, I wouldn’t mind a swim. Cover me?”
Charlie and Ghost both yell, “Yup!”
In front of Eddy stands one of the highest-ranking members in the Order of Knights, who is offering to help him. He looks Major General Hecate in the eye. “Thank you.”
She smiles. “Besides, I like the idea of going back to a four-man guard rotation.” She winks at him then limps toward the rear hatch.
I gotta get me one of these! Owen sits on top of the boat, cutting apart the weapons launching system. He feels like a professional oxy-acetylene torch user now, and his cuts grow more precise the more practice he gets.
Hecate climbs up on top of the boat, still babying the leg that lacks some of its muscle mass. “Hey!”
He releases the trigger, aims the warmer flames at the area he’s working on, and lowers his goggles. “What’s up?”
She motions to the shore. “I’m going to get that big machine gun that thing had, then we’re going to set it up like a turret for Leo to use. Might need some brackets or pieces welded up.”
He nods. “Cool, I’m almost finished up here, but I’ll stick around till you get back... How’s he going to pull the trigger?”
She shrugs. “Balena thinks cording and stuff. I think the better question is: how’s he going to aim?”
Owen nods. “I’ll think about that when I’m done here.” He smiles.
“Sounds good.” She looks to the shore, then dives off the boat.
After some brainstorming, Owen cuts a large V-shaped piece of steel from the boat’s armor—big enough for Eddy to fit his shoulders inside—and he leaves flanges at each end to easily attach cording. When Ghost takes her break, she straps a closed rifle bipod—in this case, a monopod—to the side of a post that holds now-useless navigation sensors. The monopod points up at a 45-degree angle. Ghost sets the long gun on it and checks the range of motion; the gun will aim everywhere except directly in line with the monopod. Well that’s not ideal, but maybe... Yeah, I’ll just point this mount toward the front of the boat, where the other guard will be. They’ll cover that side.
Owen takes a break from his next task and welds the large V-shaped metal to the top of the gun. The inside of the V’s point is at the back and top of the gun, and the arms of the V extend back.
On Charlie’s break, he works with Eddy to properly size cording and webbing from one side of the V’s tips to the other—making a backstrap Eddy can lean against to aim the gun.
Eddy smiles as he watches his dad string paracord across the gun’s trigger, then as he starts to tie the other ends together to make a big loop.
He pauses and lifts the ends up. “Think you want this sized so you can pull it back with your neck or with your teeth?”
Eddy rolls his eyes and lifts his left arm-stub. He bends the inch of forearm he still has past the elbow. “How about instead of being a spazz, I just pull it back with my arm? Size it so I can loop it above my elbow.”
Charlie nods and makes the measurement. “Good idea... When do you want a shift?”
Eddy tilts his head and cracks his neck. “The first chance I get. Sitting around sucks.”
On the top level of The Plant, Hector Reyes sits in his office, messaging directly with Command.
Have you finished reviewing the footage from this morning’s battle?
Hector watches as three circles spin and trace the shape of a triangle.
Yes, and the feeds from the mountaintop cameras. You should have seen the kid sneaking up from behind.
Hector clenches his jaw, and his buzzed gray hair shifts in the dim lighting. Fuck you, you only saw this AFTER it happened. We did the best damn job we could. He types a response.
We had our hands full. Nicholas’ systems were glitching, and we had to run some diagnostics on the fly.
A response comes within seconds.
Don’t make excuses. Failure is unacceptable. The time to launch our attacks on the humans is nearly at hand.
Hector reads the message and steams. As he’s about to type something back, the three do
ts spin again, so he waits.
Your standing orders are to prioritize our active lines of attack and to carry them out, personally if need be, with disregard to any other considerations. Do you understand?
Hector smiles and writes back.
Does that include disregarding you, Command?
I’ll be monitoring SeCComm’s feeds. Check in on packing—someone just went in there.
A few levels below Hector, Dr. Anne Kirchner approaches a stopped conveyer belt that is covered with upturned coffee cover lids. She picks one up and rubs her finger along its inside edge, checking that the tau-strain virion and Mithrilin solution that was ink-jet printed onto it is completely dry. Okay, good to go. She sets the lid back down, then hits a red button beside the machine, and the belt begins to move. She smiles. “Bye now, good luck infecting the population!”
As she approaches the door, the intercom beside it clicks on. “This is Hector. What’s the status there?”
Hey Big Brother, nice of you to say hello. She walks to the intercom and pushes a button. “This is Anne from Virology. Inform Command that the first batch of lids is dried and is being packed.”
“Great, you’re right on schedule.”
She pushes the button to transmit again. “Uh-huh.” Here it comes, he’s going to suggest we have a drink later—
“What’s your team’s progress on the rest of the virions? How many are we waiting on?”
Oh… She shrugs. “Twelve point five million virions have been mixed with twenty-five million biomolecules of Mithrilin, and they’ve been applied to the covers and are dried. Seventeen point five million more virions are ready. The last twenty million should be ready in the morning, right on schedule. What should we do with the rest?”