by Rod Carstens
“Yes, sir,” Rand stammered, trying to wrap his head around what the last five minutes meant for him and millions of others. He stood over a hundred stories above the City in one of the most modern buildings in the world. He was surrounded by the most sophisticated technology on Earth. And yet it was all standing on tenuous assumptions that were shifting under him. It was hard to believe all of this could disappear or be taken from him. His family had been part of the top one percent for generations, and yet it had come to this. Even that protection would not save him, or them, if things continued to deteriorate. Geoff’s secretary’s image popped up on his desk.
“Mr. Geoff, Captain Steiger is here.”
“Send him in.”
Rand could not get over the physical change in Steiger in the few short months he had not seen him. He was gaunt—his skin drawn tightly over his skull, his cheekbones prominent—and his eyes had a hollow look. His uniform looked loose on him. Steiger must have lost twenty-five pounds at least. Since his demotion he was on a rotation for rations, one day on and one day off. It was catching up with him at his age. If Rand had to guess, part of the culling plan would be to decrease the calories of the workers they would need until technologies could be developed to take their places. There would be little need for uniformed officers, since there would be no need to enforce the laws.
“Captain Steiger reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Captain, how is the search for Rule going?”
“With the resources I have and still being assigned to regular missions, I don’t have much to report, sir.”
“Priorities have changed. You have one job and one job alone, starting immediately, and that is to find and capture Rule. You will have at your disposal any and all regular and Spec Act Teams. This is now the number-one priority for the Resource Control Command. I have so informed the general, and he is expecting your requests. Do you have any questions?”
“Will I have access to the new Incident Analysis Program?”
“Will you need it?”
“Yes, sir. It is a generation better than the one I was using previously when Rule was the objective. It will speed up the process considerably.”
“Very well. I will inform General Wright that you need access. I didn’t include it in your access permits. You’ve been given this assignment because of your history with Rule. We feel you are best qualified to lead this project. None of those who replaced you got as close as you did, so I’ve decided to give you another chance. Don’t fuck it up this time. There will be no others.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“If you are successful you will be promoted to the rank of full colonel with all additional privileges and rations.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Geoff reached into his desk and took out ID, ration, and priority cards. “Here are the IDs you will need. You may go.”
Steiner turned and left the office.
“Can he find Rule?” Rand asked.
“He’d better with the resources I just gave him, or he won’t be around much longer, and this time it won’t be a demotion. This involves Madelyn, and she won’t tolerate delays.”
Chapter Seven
Tanner was sitting on a table in the security room. They had turned one of the stores in the old mall into the headquarters for security for the settlement. The walls were covered with duty rosters, Mall schematics, notes on sightings, and other intelligence. Around him sat Cat Vasquez and Adriel Matos, his old Resource Control teammates, as well as Mike Unger, part of the security team. Tanner was about to start the meeting when Blondie walked in. She had been pulling guard duty regularly since she had gotten there and the reports on her were good. Blondie was always on time and seemed to know what she was doing. She was carrying her shotgun and wore her ammo belt as if she had been doing it for years.
“I heard you were planning a mission and I wanted to volunteer,” Blondie said.
Cat glanced at Tanner, then at Blondie before she said, “What makes you think you’re qualified to run a mission? You just got here, and you were someone’s…uh…prisoner.”
“That’s exactly what I was. I was a member of a First Free Company before I was captured. The Deviants, Bear’s old gang, ambushed my patrol and took me prisoner. I was a prisoner for three years until Vin rescued me. Before that, I was a trained soldier in the First Free Company. It was organized by former Resource Control members and even some National Guard. They put me through three months training before they allowed me to go on any patrols.”
“I’ve never heard of this First Free Company,” Cat said.
“Their area of operation is over a hundred miles from here. They are trying to bring some peace to the area. They don’t venture out of their AO.”
“How did the Deviants capture you?”
“They roam constantly, scavenging and looting anything they find. The gang also takes prisoners like me, girls and women, and makes us their slaves. We did all the cooking, cleaning, and anything else they wanted us to do. Most girls don’t last long. They either die or go crazy. The gang always had a steady stream of girls from raids, so they didn’t care what happened to them. I lasted because of my training.”
“How long?” Mike asked.
“It’s hard to keep track, but between three and four years, I think.”
Cat stood and walked over to Blondie. She thrust out her rifle. “Prove it. This is a standard issue. You must have seen one before. Field-strip it.”
Blondie carefully put her shotgun down and grabbed Cat’s rifle. She sat on the floor and, closing her eyes, she field-stripped the rifle then put it back together. She stood and handed it to Cat.
“Shit,” Mike said.
“Not bad,” Tanner said. “I’m convinced.”
Cat only stared at her before she said, “We’ll see.”
“Did the doc clear you for a mission?” Vin asked.
“Danielle said I was good to go for anything. My wounds have healed,” Blondie said. She touched the scars on her neck from the iron collar. “These bother me a little sometimes, but she said it wouldn’t hurt me if I just wear a scarf or something when I go out.”
“Okay, but this is not a regular mission. We are going to ambush a Resource team and take their computer. Doctor Rule needs it for a project. So this is going to be a dangerous mission.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I don’t know. We don’t know her,” Cat said.
Blondie looked at her and said, “I know where you can find a Resource team.”
“What? How?” Cat said.
“The Deviants had been getting careless and not moving as often. In fact, I had spotted a couple of Resource team observation points before Bear took me scavenging with him. I was hoping they would move in and rescue me, but we left before they made their move.”
Putting the timeline together in his mind, that meant that it had been close to two weeks since he found Blondie.
“That means it was at least two weeks since I found you. Would the gang still be there?”
“Yeah, they found a real nice place to hold up, and they captured several new girls. They always stop for a while to break in the new girls. So they should still be there unless the Resource moved in already.”
“And you can take us to this place?”
“If they’ve been under surveillance for this long, it won’t be long before Resource makes its move,” Matos said.
He exchanged glances with Tanner and Cat.
“Matos is right, but this might just be our chance. It’s a two-day walk from here so after we ambush them we’ll be long gone," Tanner said.
“You sure about their location?” Cat asked.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Vin exchanged looks with his two old teammates and said, “Okay, we leave in one hour. It will be dark by then, and we can move quicker.”
As Cat walked by Blondie, she said, “You better be right.”
Blondie frowned and said, “
Don’t you worry about it. You just take care of your part, and I’ll take care of mine.”
Vin and Matos exchanged a glance.
“Cat can be a hard-ass sometimes,” Matos said.
“Yeah, she holds back judgment until she sees somebody perform. I was out there with Blondie for two days. She’s gonna be all right.”
Chapter Eight
Steiger walked into the new office he had been assigned on the fifty-first floor. He had never been this high in the building except when he reported to Rand. He was stunned by the office. It was equipped with every form of technology he would need to find Rule. Displays lined the wall and floated above the desk. One wall was a large window that looked out over the City with half a dozen screens on it. It was one giant touch screen and he walked slowly to the window and touched it. He couldn’t quite believe it was all real. He walked to the desk and put his hand on it. Its polished perfection made his dirty fingernails seemed uglier. They didn’t belong with things so beautiful.
Then he noticed that there was a couch across from the desk. Upholstered in blue leather with a highly polished wooden frame and arms, it was a symbol of all that he had strived for all his life. He walked over to the couch and was about to sit down when he realized he hadn’t changed clothes in three days. Tomorrow was his day to shower and get a new uniform. Well, screw it. Steiger sat down on the luxurious couch, and the smart foam gently conformed to his body. It was better than any bed he had ever slept in, much less anything he’d had as office furniture.
He was sitting there trying to absorb his surroundings when he realized that he had not checked his new status IDs. His Resource ID identified him as a temporary colonel with an ultra secret clearance. The mission priority card also gave him an ultra priority that would make anyone jump anything he requested to the top of the list no matter what his need. Then, not expecting much, he glanced at his ration card. It was a full one. He could hardly believe it; he would eat three meals a day every day. No more odd or even days with some of those days skipped. No, he would eat three meals a day for the first time in at least a decade. He just stared at it for a long time. Of all the cards, this meant the most to him.
Steiger stood and walked over to the window. He could see far out into the zones he had been running missions in for the last months. As strange as it seemed, he felt as if he belonged out there instead of standing here among all of this luxury. He wondered how and why Rule had left all of this for that hell out there in the zones. What did he know that had made him leave all of this?
It was Rule who had gotten him demoted and placed back on the teams. Rule seemed to be the bane of his life, ever since Vin Tanner had helped him escape Steiger’s carefully planned Free Fire Zone declaration. Now his career and possibly his life depended on finding Rule and bringing him in, and he was starting from scratch this time. Steiger did not have the luxury he had last time of slowly building a solid picture of where Rule was most likely living. He doubted Geoff and Rand would be patient no matter how difficult it was going to be finding Rule, even if Resource Control had not found him in the last months. They must think he could bring an experienced but fresh perspective to the hunt.
Steiger touched the window, and half a dozen computer screens were activated. Information Technologies had downloaded the new zone-tracking software Resource Control was using. He stared at the current situation. The screens showed different zones full of symbols, depending on what had been found, overlaid on a 3-D map of the zones. Round white symbols designated known settlements of more than twenty people. Red triangles noted known gang camps, with red dots showing their recent activities and a small date underneath each raid or other activity. Red lines around the gangs showed their known territory. Yellow circles denoted incidents that could not be definitively assigned to a gang or settlement. They might turn out to be from a new settlement, a new gang, or any of a dozen other causes, but the field teams had not investigated them yet. Either they didn’t meet the level of a team’s assignment or were on the assignment list but had not had a team tasked to them yet. Green dots showed the locations of the field teams, and a green line showed each team's designated area. Black dots designated the Special Action Teams and their locations.
Steiger stared at the displays for some time trying to bring himself up to date on the situation as a whole. He had not had this kind of access since he had been assigned to the teams. How was he going to find Rule in this mess without any intelligence to go on?
All he knew was that Tanner had last been seen with Rule’s group. He touched the search screen and brought up Tanner’s report from his last patrol. Maybe going over the patrol again would give him some clues. According to his reports, he had been observing a very well-organized group that the sim gave a ninety percent chance of being Rule’s. When Steiger had told Tanner he was going to declare a Free Fire Zone, Tanner had objected and threatened to file an Internal Security Report. Steiger, with Rand on his ass, couldn’t afford any questioning of his decision. He’d had a Spec Act Team assigned to him to capture Rule, so he had just added the elimination of Tanner’s team to the assignment. After a running fight with the Spec Act Team, Tanner and his team had entered the group’s settlement, and they had all disappeared through the sewers.
So the first assumption was that Tanner had gone with the group, and since he’d walked away he would need a group to survive, so Tanner and his team would likely still be with the group. What did that tell him about what clues he should look for to find them?
The group had been well organized before Tanner joined them. He and his team with their training would only enhance their organization. Okay, so he was looking for a well-organized large settlement. Steiger began to study the map. When he touched a settlement symbol, all the intel for that settlement came up next to it: population, resources, any arms they might possess, and anything else the teams felt was important. He started near the last known location for Rule’s settlement. If they had gone south, they’d have gotten closer to the City and therefore closer to being observed. East was a cluster of gangs, so that would cause them constant headaches. West there were few gangs but a lot of already established settlements, so scrounging would be harder and they would have a tougher time hiding with that many people around. That left the north.
Steiger switched screens and pulled up a schematic of the water and sewer systems. The after-action report by the teams said Tanner and Rule's group had escaped through the underground tunnels. There was one large tunnel that led north. It went north for more than a mile, then branched off to the northwest and the northeast. Now he had enough to start with a direction. He typed his assumptions into the Intel section of Rule’s combat sim, and it came up with a prediction of ninety percent correct. So he had a direction that even the sim liked. He would need that with Rand.
Steiger placed his hand on the map in the area north of Tanner's last known location and spread his fingers; the view zoomed into the area. It was still a big space. He would have to have more to go on. He began to systematically touch each of the known settlements looking for some bit of information that would give him a clue to where Rule might be. None were in any way different than the thousand other settlements on the map. Was he wrong in his assumptions? No, of course not.
And then he almost hit himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand in frustration. If Rule’s settlement had been observed, the powers that be would have put a Spec Act Team or teams on it immediately. So he wasn’t looking for a known settlement. He was looking for one that had not been discovered. That was an entirely different problem and set of assumptions.
Steiger walked over to his desk and touched the comm button. “Give me drone operations. I want the shift chief.”
A second later the face of the shift chief for drone ops popped up on his desk.
“Yes, I need some drone flights over an area.”
“Priority?”
Steiger looked down at his card and said, “ZS324DF.”
“I want twenty-four-hour coverage until further notice.”
“Yes, sir.”
Steiger gave him the zones he wanted covered and snapped off, then touched Operations.
“Yes, sir.”
He went through the same identification and received the same “whatever you need.”
“I want all mission reports and special incident reports from those zones for the past six months.”
“Yes, sir.”
That was a good start. He had an area to search and reports that might give him more clues. He also had some time before all the information began to come in. Steiger realized that there was a bathroom door behind the couch. When he opened the door, he saw there was a small shower in it. His shower! Steiger almost stepped into it with clothes on, his usual way to use his water ration. Instead, he realized with his new priorities he could order a new uniform from supply. He did so and took his first shower in years without his clothes on, then put on his new clean uniform. He lay down on the couch and was asleep in five minutes.
Chapter Nine
Vin watched as Blondie moved silently down the street. They had been walking for two days and were nearing the location where Blondie said the Deviants had set up their camp. She moved slowly, being careful where she placed her foot with each step. Blondie clicked her tongue twice and held up her hand. She slowly lowered it toward the ground, and Vin and the rest of the team squatted down. Vin, Cat, Matos, and Mike were used to having radio earplugs that provided instant silent communication. Soldiers who didn’t have the technology and used tongue clicks and hand signals had taught Blondie to communicate using them. She knew her stuff. She had not been lying or exaggerating. She pointed to her ear then to the left. That meant she heard something to their left.