by Weston Ochse
As if on cue, Dewhurst, whose heart rate was lowering slower than the rest, said, “After this evening’s exercise, I’ll be able to brief everyone. The final pieces are being put in place. I just want to make sure everything is safe and secure.”
“You heard the man,” I said. “Park your EXOs and get them ready. You have four hours.”
Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
Thomas Jones
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
DEWHURST HAD QUARTERS near ours. He took a shower, then came into our hooch and sat down on one of the chairs. He looked his age, which was the problem. He sucked down one bottle of water, then another. I clocked him at about forty. He shouldn’t be in as bad a shape as he was.
“You were a reservist,” I said, rather than asked.
He nodded. “I was. My day job was as a GS14 civilian at the Department of Energy Research Lab. I was assigned to National Falls, Idaho.”
“Long way away from here,” Olivares said.
“Long way away from anywhere, now.” Dewhurst leaned back and took a deep breath. Then he looked at me with his penetrating eyes. “I audited your feed and saw you watching me.”
I wasn’t aware that a feed could be audited. I knew now. “What’d you come up with?”
“That I’m in questionable shape.”
“I concur,” I said. “What are we going to do about it?”
“Nothing. I’m going on the mission.”
I raised an eyebrow.
He glanced at me and shook his head. “Seriously. I’m in charge of the mission.”
I glanced at Olivares, who nodded imperceptibly.
“You’ll be in charge of nothing if you don’t take this seriously.”
“I am.”
Sighing, I said, “You’re not. You’re too invested. I’ve seen too many grunts die and I’ll be damned if I lead some of them just so you can get your rocks off on a suicide mission.”
Dewhurst stared at me, then looked to Olivares for support. He gave him a cold blank stare; there would be no help there. Dewhurst returned his gaze to me. I saw a sadness there, but then this was the end of the world, and sadness was on all of our faces.
He started to speak, hesitated, then lowered his head so I couldn’t see his eyes. “I have a stent.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“My heart is at about seventy percent.”
“Then what the hell are you doing out here with my grunts?”
He closed his eyes, fighting against himself. “I was TDY to Washington D.C. for a conference when they attacked. They put a hive down on Idaho Falls and wiped everyone out within hours. My wife, my son, my two daughters. Everyone. You want to know why they put a hive on such a backwater place as Idaho Falls? Because almost our entire inventory of W84s are contained there. Seven hundred and fifty-two backpack-sized nuclear warheads, each capable of delivering a fifteen-kiloton nuclear explosion.”
I blinked twice. “Backpack nukes? Do we have nuclear hand grenades, too?”
Olivares laughed. “Problem with a nuclear hand grenade is you can’t throw it far enough.”
But Dewhurst wasn’t laughing.
“We seriously had backpack nukes?”
He nodded but kept staring at his hands. “What’s worse is that the Cray were evidently worried about them. Why else spare a hive on them?”
“You said almost,” I said.
He looked up. “That’s right. Forty-eight were secreted around the U.S. at different military bases. Had the public known, they would have been in an uproar. But it’s been that way ever since the creation of the W54 during the Cold War, and it’s remained so during the transition through the newer models.”
“How many are here?” Olivares asked.
“Seven.”
“And we’re going to deliver them to the hives,” I added.
“Not all of them.” He held up two fingers. “Only two.”
“Will that be enough?” Olivares asked.
“It should be. They’re almost as strong as the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
Olivares’s eyes shot wide. “Shit. Those things leveled cities. We’ll kill everyone and everything, us included.”
“So it is a suicide mission.” I snapped my fingers. “Damn, I was getting used to the chow hall food.”
“It’s not a suicide mission,” Dewhurst said.
“Then how are we going to get out of the blast range?” I asked.
Olivares rolled his eyes. “It’s what I said earlier: nuclear hand grenade. Throw it as far as you can, you’re still in the kill range.”
Dewhurst shook his head. “An urban surface detonation would create a seventy-five foot deep crater and carry debris and radiation twenty-two thousand feet in the air. The fall out plume would reach twenty kilometers in the first thirty minutes. Prior to that, wind from the explosion and over-pressure would turn people and objects into missiles, if they didn’t disintegrate first, hurling them outwards at hundreds of miles per hour. Radiation levels within five kilometers would be instantly lethal for anyone surviving the explosion over-pressure. Lethality would decrease up to fifty kilometers. Everything in the first mile radius would be turned to dust. Within five miles damage would be complete, radiating outward at lesser and lesser rates.”
Both Olivares and I were silent for a long minute.
Finally, I asked, “And how is this not a suicide mission?”
“The hive is made of an impenetrable substance. As you noted at Kilimanjaro, all attempts to penetrate it failed.”
I remembered and saw again in my mind’s eye the airplanes that kamikazied over and over into the sides of the hive. Passenger jets had taken down our World Trade Center, but had zero effect on the hive.
“The Chinese launched eleven DongHai-10 missiles against the hives in Beijing and Shanghai, believed to be carrying payloads of ten to twenty kilotons. Reports are that they leveled both cities, killing hundreds of thousands, turning once-impressive urban settings into deserts.”
“What happened to the hives?” I asked, then held up a hand. “Let me guess. Nothing.”
“Exactly. At least one DongHai-10 was a direct hit and it barely left a scorch mark.”
“What about the Cray?” Olivares asked.
“The Cray outside the hive were decimated. Two days later Cray were seen exiting the hive.”
Remembering the giant, wormlike entity that created the creatures, those Cray were probably newly minted, which meant that the radiation had probably affected the soldiers inside the hive, but not the mother. I shared my thoughts and Dewhurst agreed.
“Our thoughts exactly.”
Olivares sat down on the cot beside me. “How did you get all this information? How was it transmitted?”
“Our government is in cooperation with the former Chinese government, along with dozens of other governments, I might add. Like us, they’ve been using UAVs to obtain information. Not only are they tiny and almost invisible thanks to their size, but they’re highly maneuverable. And they have the added benefit of being cheap and easy to produce.”
“But that still doesn’t explain how you got the information.” Olivares leaned forward. “It’s not as if you can pick up a phone and call. All we have are old radios.”
Dewhurst looked as if he was about to say something, then changed his mind. After a second, he said, “We’ve been bouncing AM radio signals off the ionosphere for decades. Ham radios are the new telephone system. We have a single ham operator in Alaska who is our re-transmitter, call sign KL3DBS, so yes, it is almost like a telephone.”
Olivares waggled a finger. “Nice try, but I think you have a satellite.”
Dewhurst didn’t respond other than to glance at me, then back to Olivares.
Olivares leaped to his feet. “I knew it! We do have satellites. What else do we have?”
Dewhurst gave a stone-faced stare. “We don’t have satellites.”
“Whatever, m
an.”
I waved for Olivares to shut up. “The reason you want us is because we’ve done this before, right?”
Dewhurst nodded.
“We’re going to smuggle the nukes into the hives.”
He nodded again.
“How the fuck are we going to get out?”
“I’m still working on that.”
“You’re still working on that,” I repeated slowly and without hope. “Sounds like a suicide mission to me.”
Dewhurst leveled his gaze on us. “I once had a sergeant major who told me that every military mission is a suicide mission until everyone gets back alive.”
“Well, we better figure it out before we do it,” I said, realizing that I really didn’t give a shit if I died, but I did care about the lives of soldiers in my care, including, it appeared, Dewhurst himself. “Listen. You want to get out there and get back at the aliens for killing your family. I get that. And I’ll let you be part of the team. You just ask yourself one question. Do you think that by coming you’re putting someone’s life in danger? Because these people—these young men and women you’ve selected to be part of these teams—they’re your family now.”
Dewhurst regarded me with wounded eyes. “I’m not going to put...” He had to stop. He choked up and fought to swallow.
Olivares, with uncharacteristic compassion, tried to put his hand on Dewhurst’s shoulder, but the major shrugged him off.
“Do you—do you know how when a dog knows it’s going to die it tries to find a place to hide?” He searched our eyes for some connection. “I know I’ll make the mission. I know I’ll be there for our grunts.” He sniffed. “But if I get to the point where I can’t make it—if I find my body unable to do what I need to—I’ll put no one in jeopardy. I’ll find some place to go. You won’t even know what happened. I won’t be that guy you have to come back for.”
I shook my head slowly.
“Come on,” he said in a shaky voice. “Don’t make me beg.”
“You don’t have to beg, Major,” I said, “You had me at the dog.”
He stared at me for a time, then nodded, got up, and walked out.
Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.
General Norman Schwarzkopf
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I LEFT OLIVARES and headed back to the hangar. I wanted to make sure our teams’ EXOs checked out. I would have hoped Mr. Pink had arranged for us to have the very best, but I had to be sure for myself. About halfway across the compound a young corporal ran up to me: Hoby Ethridge. We’d shared something no one else did. We’d survived the spore.
“How you doing, Ethridge?” I asked, continuing on my way.
He fell in beside me. “Going crazy, sir.”
I slowed and gave him a sideways glance. “Crazy is a state of mind, corporal. One could say that we’re all crazy.”
“It’s the voice in my head. He won’t stop talking to me.”
This stopped me. I hadn’t had a voice in my head since Michelle died in my arms. The memory slammed into me like a freight train. I’d done a terrific job compartmentalizing... until now.
“Whose voice is it?” It couldn’t be Thompson’s. We were too far out.
“He calls himself Peter. He knew Michelle.” Ethridge glanced around. “I think he’s a little crazy. He keeps singing this song that doesn’t make any sense.”
“When’s the last time he spoke with you?”
“He’s in here now,” he said, poking at his head.
“And you can’t understand him?”
“Not at all. It’s like he’s singing in a foreign language.”
I saw a jeep passing by and waved for it to stop. Two privates on their way to offload some trash. Both saluted sitting down. I ordered both of them out of the vehicle, then had Ethridge climb into the passenger seat. This was something we needed to get to the bottom of.
I drove to the HMID facility. Last I’d been here it had been night and Michelle had been in her death throes. This time, instead of sneaking inside, I parked the jeep, got out, and knocked on the door. It took a minute, but eventually a tech answered. Seeing me through the window, the young woman backed away and almost ran back into the main room. I could have told her that if I’d wanted to sneak inside, I probably wouldn’t have knocked.
A few moments later my favorite person in the world appeared. He glowered as he came to the door. He didn’t bother to open it, instead just stood inside staring at me through the glass.
“Open the door, Malrimple.”
“Or what? You going to shoot me?”
“I never took you for a drama queen.”
The aging scientist shook his head and started to turn.
“Peter won’t get out of this guy’s head, Malrimple. Something’s wrong with the HMID.”
This stopped him. He stared at Ethridge for a moment, then returned his gaze to me. “We can’t get him to stop,” he finally admitted.
“Do you know what he’s broadcasting?”
“It’s hexadecimal code, recited in a looping series of seventeen languages.”
“Do you know what he’s saying?”
“It’s the results of a data mine we had him do during an alien transmission download two days ago. Something in Los Angeles is communicating with an orbiting ship. We’ve been monitoring the activity and trying to decode it ever since we first created the HMIDs. Peter is our attempt to try something different.”
“What do you mean, different?” I asked warily.
“He’s a savant. His math is off the chart, but he’s on the spectrum.”
I stared at him. It must have been obvious that I had no idea what he was saying, so he added, “He’s autistic. Ever seen the movie Rain Man? That’s Peter. We were hoping he’d be better able to decode the transmissions, but it seems to be backfiring.” Malrimple opened the door. “Might as well come inside.”
“Why is Peter talking to Ethridge and not me?”
“That’s a good question.” He waved for us to follow, then glanced back. “Let’s see if we can figure this out. I expect you still know your way.”
I smiled. “Like the back of my hand.”
Malrimple led us through the halls and into the HMID chamber. Michelle’s machine stood open and empty against the wall. The machine on the left appeared dark. But the one on the right was the center of attention. Five techs worked around it, inputting data from several portable devices. Doctor Cole, who stood in the center of the room at the server tower, finally noticed that we’d entered. He immediately drew a 9mm pistol and double-handed it towards me.
“Not again, Lieutenant Mason.”
“It’s all right, Dr. Cole. I invited him in.”
“But Dr. Malrimple—”
The head scientist waved the other man silent. Cole snapped his mouth shut but gave me a look that promised violence if he’d only get the chance.
We approached the team of techs.
“Sutter, where are we?” Malrimple asked.
A sweaty, middle-aged black man turned and shook his head. “Not sure what’s happening. All the servers are maxed. HMID Salinas has tapped into a fire hose. There’s nowhere else to put the information.”
Malrimple nodded. “He’s accessing Corporal Ethridge’s brain as well. It’s as if he’s looking for more space.”
“Has he tried to access Lt. Mason?”
“No. And we need to know why.”
Sutter stared at me as he thought about what to do. Then he grabbed one of the techs. “Joub, take a look at the root code. I want to make sure nothing’s been rewritten.”
The young Arab woman nodded and began to type into her pad. It took about thirty seconds for her to find something. “I found it. Someone wrote code putting Mason off-limits for HMID communication.”
“Who’d do that?” I asked.
Malrimple turned back to the center of the room. “Dr. Cole, do you know a
nything about this?”
Cole shook his head.
“Joub?”
She shook her head as she punched at her pad. “This doesn’t make sense. I haven’t seen this before.”
“What do you have?” Malrimple looked over her shoulder.
“See here,” she said, pointing at a line of code. “I haven’t seen anything this pure. It’s almost as if a machine created it. But then look here.” She pointed at another line of code. “This isn’t the logical flow. This is intuitive.”
Malrimple nodded slowly. “This is HMID Aquinas’s work.”
“What? How could it write code?”
“It didn’t write it. It thought it and made it happen.”
I didn’t know what they were talking about, but talking about my dead girlfriend as an it wasn’t going to happen. “She. Call her a fucking she.”
Both Malrimple and Joub stared at me. Malrimple’s eyes softened as he nodded. “All right, Lt. Mason. We’ll do that. Won’t we, Joub?”
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“So what is it that she did?” I asked.
“She wrote code that made it so that you were invisible to HMID Salinas,” Joub said.
“Why would she do that?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever know.” Malrimple pointed to the data. “I want to save this and look at it later. Let’s bypass this line and open it up for contact between HMID Salinas and Lt. Mason.” He eyed me. “You ready?”
“If it’ll help.”
“I think it will,” Malrimple said. “All of this is new to us. We’re not sure what’s going on, but HMID Salinas was onto something, and I want to make sure we find out what it is before we lose it.”
I glanced at Ethridge, who looked as if his head were about to explode. I didn’t want to invite pain on myself, but part of the battlefield was in the mind. Michelle had fought there. If I could help out by letting them use me, then I would.