She said, as though to herself, “A bit of a mistake considering what’s transpired over the last fifty years. People might have made better choices if they’d known how close they’d come last time.”
“I agreed with them then because I didn’t expect a movement would claim the war had been faked. I never could have seen that coming.”
As they talked, the rain let up somewhat, but remained steady.
Samantha yawned deeply.
“Come on then,” Jeffrey said, “lay back.”
“What?”
“It’s late. You can’t make it back to your tent without getting soaked.”
“I’m not going to take your bed. Where will you sleep?”
“I can sleep on the ground.”
“I can’t—”
“You can and you will. I can sleep anywhere. We all need you well rested tomorrow.” He motioned for her to stand. When she did he pulled open the blanket. “Now get comfortable.”
With an acquiescent sigh, she lay back on the bed. He flourished the blanket in the air, draping it over her. As he straightened the blanket over her legs he said, “I never in my life thought I’d be tucking the president of the United States into bed.”
“You’re not.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m tired right now Jeffrey… really tired. Tonight I’m just Samantha, okay?”
Only then did he understand how much she’d taken. People in power are so readily seen as super human, but if they’re good leaders, they’re just people like everyone else, with hopes and fears and limitations. Bending over, he gently kissed her forehead. “Goodnight Samantha.”
Her fingertips brushed his face. “Good night Jeffrey.”
He lay on the ground, and the patter of the rain quickly lulled him to sleep.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Early the next morning a millipede tickling across his wrist woke him. Sitting up, he looked to Samantha, who lay on his mattress with his blanket pulled up over her shoulder, her face peaceful. Jeffrey found her presence calming and felt grateful for her visit. Even on the dirt, and despite the rain or perhaps thanks to it, he’d slept quite well.
Moving quietly, he emerged from under the makeshift tarp. To the west, heavy clouds hung along the horizon promising more rain. From the east, sunlight angled in through the heavy canopy of leaves, causing them to glow in many shades of green.
Realizing he could smell himself, he resolved he’d find a body of water to wash in. He felt sure, considering the location, that a good water source might not be too far away. They’d need it for drinking soon enough anyway, having a limited supply of stored water but unlimited fusion power generators and UV purification systems. He picked up a makeshift machete, a section of ship paneling ground sharp with a handle of wrapped duct tape. Heading down a freshly cut trail, he absently hacked at branches here and there. Soon he came to the main area, supplies tucked into the coves formed by broad leafed plants and among tall tree roots. Donovan stood in the middle of the clearing watching sailors move supplies.
“He’s not a bad guy when he has something to focus on,” a voice said behind him.
He turned to find Leif looking well-rested.
“You slept all right?”
“Yeah,” Leif said. “The first night in a long time.”
Jeffrey felt glad to see the healing process beginning. Leif had grown into a much stronger man than Jeffrey had hoped. When he looked at Leif, he didn’t see a shorter, skinnier version of himself, he saw a better version—not all fight. Leif had a poetry to his manner as if connected to something deeper. Jeffrey not only envied that, but hoped it would bring his son peace more readily than he’d found it.
“You think he’s going to cause trouble?” Leif asked.
Jeffrey shook his head. “I’m not sure. He was dedicated to Sam Cantwell and Cantwell told him to follow me. I’m hoping all we’re seeing is exactly what I need—someone willing to play the devil’s advocate. Every good command needs one. He’ll keep me on my toes.”
Donovan yelled at a sailor carrying a heavy crate, “What the hell are you doing? Canteen supplies go to the north!” The sailor walked off with the crate, the back of his neck flushed red.
Jeffrey sighed. “Our greatest asset is often presented as an obstacle.”
Leif pointed through the trees to the glinting spine of the Lacedaemon. “They really don’t care about us do they?”
“It would appear not.”
His eyes still on the monolith of the ship, Leif asked, “What do you suppose they’re doing?”
“I have no idea.” He put his hand on Leif’s shoulder. “But I’m guessing they didn’t finish the job on the Lacedaemon because they’ve settled into victory.”
“That’s good for us.”
“Maybe. An opponent so accustomed to winning is one to be wary of. I can only wonder what tactics they have waiting for us.”
“What if we’ve already seen their best?”
Jeffrey gave a resigned laugh. “That’s already pretty damn good.”
“But what if that’s all they can do? Macro-warfare? The Hammerheads took them out fifty years ago because they couldn’t stand one-on-one against the pilots. What if they have no skill in guerilla warfare either?”
“If they’re colonists, I can’t believe they haven’t had to deal with insurrectionists before.”
“If they aren’t colonists?” Leif asked. “What if they’re here to simply take, like the ice? A quick grab and go?”
Jeffrey put his hands in his pockets, his eyes travelling down the broken back of the Lacedaemon. “If that’s true, they’d land where their target material was richest.”
“They’ve landed in the main population centers.”
“That would suggest they came here for us.” After a moment’s pause, he said, “I feel as though we’re standing on Africa’s west coast five hundred years ago.”
“Slavers?”
“That’s as good a guess as any.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
After a few morning showers, the afternoon came on hot and humid. Big bugs buzzed through the stippled shade under the trees. Jeffrey walked into the makeshift ready room—a cove of trees out away from the rest of the encampment. The pilots, just over eighty in total, sat on crates. He’d called together those Cantwell had gathered for the Hammerheads, minus a few who had died in the crash, and several of the top drone pilots. Seeing some of them again, and some for the first time, Jeffrey felt a welling of hope and regret.
Whitetip, perched on a tall crate to the right, winked at Jeffrey as though she understood and was telling him it would be all right. But he knew too well it wouldn’t be.
In a loud voice, he said, “Ladies and Gentlemen.” Conversations faded as all eyes turned to him. “Many of you may not survive the next few months.” He scanned their reactions stopping on Lila. Her rich, pure-dark skin set off brilliant eyes, which held his in a casually predatorial way. “But your efforts could result in the salvation of the human race.”
He walked forward, in among them. “We and a small unit of Navy Special Warfare are all that is left of Earth’s defenses. However, you are the best pilots in the world, gleaned from all nations. We’re going to take you further by shining your nerves, increasing the quality of myelin in your brains, and lining your major arteries with reactive tissues.”
He had enough pilots to run the ground mission and the attack on the lone orbital destroyer, if he could call thirty Wraiths against thousands of fighters enough, but only one Wraith carrying a singularity had to make it through. Still, this time there would not be expendable AI or servos at the controls. Now, when a ship was destroyed, it would take one of these men and women with it.
“Before I begin, I’ll designate call signs.” Going over his list, he gave Lila, Springbok, to which she smiled broadly. He gave Brooks, Soy Bean. He didn’t seem to like that much, but he didn’t seem to like anything. He gave Grimstad, Kodi
ak, which he responded to by slapping the pilot beside him on the back.
“You watch out for me,” the Norwegian said, “I’ll steal your picnic.”
“Should have called him Yogi,” Jeffrey muttered to himself.
When he’d read off the rest, he said, “Our assault will be a two-stage process. For stage one, we’ll need Lakota.”
Smiles formed among the group.
“I see some of you’ve heard of them. If you haven’t, they’re the newest and best of the VTOL fighters in the U.S. arsenal. Apparently, they make Kiowas look like farm trucks. Our intel shows several possible locations for these aircraft, which we’re studying to determine state and feasibility. Most are no longer intact.”
“Pilots assigned to the Lakota run must be modified should we encounter Sthenos.”
Soy Bean asked, in a tone that suggested he wasn’t quite willing to submit to the procedures, “How are we to be modified?”
“First, we coat your nerves with graphene, increasing their conductivity from a few hundred meters a second to nearly three hundred thousand. This will make the world seem more intense; you’ll feel and sense more. Your reaction times will appear almost predictive. The next step is to extract myelin from your brain, genetically alter it to be more aggressive, and reintroduce it. Within 24 hours you’ll experience a dramatic increase in your ability to retain information and perceive fast-paced situations. I’ll warn you, however, that the nerve coating nanites induce severe pain, and in a few documented cases, cardiac arrest or extreme vasovagal reactions resulting in death. The modified myelin is usually well received, but in one case it induced a sensory overload state similar to autism.”
He watched them for a moment before saying, “I need you folks to understand, once you’ve been modified, there’s no going back. If something goes wrong, it’s done. If you survive the modifications, we’ll strap your ass in a Lakota or a Wraith and send you off with terrible survival odds. I want each and every one of you to commit to that hard truth right now. If you can’t, I’ll wash you out. I can bring other pilots up. I’ll judge no one who stands down. I understand better than anyone the extreme nature of what we want from you.”
Whitetip asked, “If we agree to this, how many will you let us kill?”
In a matter of fact tone, Jeffrey said, “As many as you can.”
“I’m in then.” Her smile broke broad and beautiful across her face.
Others nodded their agreement.
Jeffrey did his best to keep the welling of emotion out of his expression. For decades he’d believed no one would fill the void men and women like Mako had left in his heart. Yet here they were.
“When we return with the Lakota, I’ll test each of you. The testing will be fast, we have a war to fight. You’ll each dogfight me. I’ll determine if you’ve passed or failed. There’ll be only one shot at the test. We have no time for retakes. I have little room for failure among these small numbers, but I will fail you if I have to. A weak pilot will kill other pilots. I won’t allow that.”
“When we’re ready for our assault, forty-four paired Lakota will be sent to the twenty-two land bound Sthenos destroyers. One special warfare operator will travel with each pair. The operator will be dropped as close as we dare come to the destroyers. We cannot compromise secrecy in this situation. We think a distance of ten miles is theoretically safe. The specialist will go on foot from that point wearing an active-camo suit with a singularity warhead on his or her back. From disembarkation, the special warfare operators will have eight hours to place the singularity and attain a safe distance. There will be no means to disable the warheads. They’ll trigger without fail whether in place or still on the operator’s back. When the warheads activate, the Lakota pilots will go airborne. Their mission is first to focus attacks on any destroyers which were not successfully taken down. Only one of the pair of aircraft tasked to each destroyer will have a singularity warhead. If you have the warhead, your job is to get it on target and set it off. In that contingency, you’ll be making a suicide run. The stronger lead of the two pilots will be given the warhead. The other pilot will wingman.”
“Our secondary phase will be a group of pilots in Wraiths. A few moments before the singularities are activated the Wraiths will launch from here to intercept the Sthenos destroyer in orbit.” Jeffrey pointed at the blue sky. “We’ll time the singularity warheads set near the land based destroyers to activate when the orbiting Sthenos destroyer is overhead.” As he neared the back of the group, the pilots in front turned to track him. “In that moment, there will be thirty Hammerheads against hundreds if not thousands of Sthenos fighters. The method will be to get one of our Wraiths, all of which will have singularity warheads, near enough to the orbiting destroyer to gut it. Most, if not all, of the thirty will die, there is no question in my heart of that, but in their sacrifice, they have the chance to save billions and once again put the Sthenos in their rightful place. Only one of you needs to make it to the destroyer, but one, at least, must.”
He’d reached the back of the group and put his hand on the Norwegian’s broad shoulders. “It’s my hope,” he said, “that our assault will happen quickly enough that the majority of Sthenos fighters will not be able to launch. If the destroyers are brought down without warning, most fighters should be trapped in their hangars.”
“With us dead,” Lila asked, her eyes calm as if her death was something she’d expected for years rather than something she feared, “who will deal with the remaining Sthenos on Earth?”
“That’s a best case scenario problem, and we’ll have to face it when we get there. We’ll have to cobble together more aircraft and train more pilots. There’s no time to do it now, and despite the excellent stealth capabilities of the aircraft we’re aiming to gather, collecting too many at this point could raise unwanted attention. I do know this one thing—we won’t make the same mistake they did.”
“What mistake is that, sir?”
“They left some of us alive.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
After leaving the pilots, Jeffrey found Leif in the main clearing, a beam of evening sun slashed across his chest.
“What’s this?” Leif asked when Jeffrey handed him a tablet.
“That,” Jeffrey said, tapping its surface, “is everything we know about the processes used to modify the Hammerheads. The team Cantwell assigned to it is dead. I need a technically skilled person on this.”
“And you think I’m your man.”
“Yes.”
Leif looked over the tablet. “This is genetic modifications and nanotech. I don’t know anything about this. Doctor Monti might be a better—“
“She’ll be on your team—”
“On my team? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I need you to lead this.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It is.”
“I don’t have any expertise in these areas.” He tried to hand the tablet back to Jeffrey.
Jeffrey ignored it. “Leif, I don’t know how you can doubt yourself. You’re the one who solved the containment problem with the singularity warheads.”
“That was a fluke.”
“You really think that?”
Leif remained quiet.
Jeffrey asked, “In your graduate program, how did you earn such high grades?”
“I listened in the lectures and read the books.”
“How many times did you read the books?”
Suspicion crept into Leif’s eyes. “Once.”
“Did you have to review for the tests?”
“No.”
“You have to know it’s not like that for everyone.”
Leif shrugged.
“Do this for me,” Jeffrey said taking the tablet from Leif. He tapped the screen, pulling up a document. “This is an introductory summary of the implantation of graphene across human nerve tissue using nanotechnology. Read it.” He held the tablet out to Leif.
<
br /> Leif eyed him suspiciously before taking it. “Dad, look, if you need me to help—”
“I don’t need another helper, Leif. I need a leader. You may not see it in yourself, but I do. Solving problems like this,” he pointed to the tablet, “is as easy for you as flying was for me. If we don’t get the details right, the Hammerheads can’t work. If the Hammerheads can’t work, then we lose the war.”
“Some would say,” Leif pointed through the trees to the hulk of the Lacedaemon, “that we’ve already lost.” His tone suggested he wanted Jeffrey to prove the point wrong.
“We’ve lost when we’re dead. As long as I’m breathing I’m fighting. What about you?”
“I suppose I’ll try if you need me to.”
“Leif, I don’t need try. You’ve never found your limits because you’ve never had to.” He pointed at the tablet again. “Read it.”
Leif began sliding his finger along the tablet. After a moment, he looked up to Jeffrey, “This is actually pretty straightforward, but there are a lot of factors.”
“You just read five pages of text in less than a minute.”
Leif shrugged.
Jeffrey’s tone became incredulous. “You don’t really get it do you?”
“Get what?”
“Look, how long would it take me to read that?”
“I don’t know… longer?”
“Dammit Leif,” Jeffrey grabbed the sides of his son’s head and, with a frustrated laugh, said, “wake up to what you are.”
Leif pushed his hands away. “And what is it that you think am I?”
“You’re a damn genius. That’s why you’ve never had to try very hard at anything. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad life’s been easy for you, but the truth of the matter is an easy life means you haven’t come anywhere close to your potential. You have to know that’s true.”
Leif shrugged. “That means I’m lazy, and I don’t like that.”
“Not lazy Leif. You only lack purpose.”
“But everything’s been easy for you, right?”
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