"I hope you're right."
"Now we must ask you to leave and not to ever enter one of our ships again, uninvited."
Jamie felt her cheeks burning, as if she were back in Mrs. Abraham's geometry class receiving a lecture about not studying for a test.
"Thank you," she made herself say.
She curled herself up in Dennis's arms, taking some comfort there before they were back inside the Cheyenne, where everyone waited for them to speak with held breaths.
"They told us the Luminate are gone," said Jamie. "Returned to their home planets."
Jamie believed she could almost hear the whispery rush of tension releasing in the room. There wasn't a lot to be happy about, but a few relieved smiles still broke out. We could all stand a little good news, Jamie thought.
"Well," Captain Cameron breathed out, "that's something."
"Thank you for doing that," said Keira. "That took courage."
"Hear, hear," said Mallory. "Now we better hope they're right."
From his command chair, Cameron pinged the JFK, the Peacemaker, and the link to what remained of Space Command and the U.S. Government. With the connections established, Captain Cameron told them of the possible glad tidings.
"I'll take that," said President Tomlinson. "And thank you once again, Jamie, for saving what's left of our collective butts. I'm not hearing a lot of other good news, unfortunately. Our planet isn't currently inhabitable in many places, and won't be getting better anytime soon. Nellis Air Force Base, your ships' home, is mostly gone, along with all our major military bases, thanks to Russian bunker nukes. Neutron bombs left many of our cities largely intact, but filled with corpses. I'm sorry to say you don't have a secure place to come home to at the moment, starship commanders."
"What are you suggesting we do?" Captain Lindley's voice was thick with grief and suppressed anger.
"I'm not suggesting anything, Captain Lindley. As your Commander-in-Chief, I am ordering you and the other starship commanders to fly immediately to Mars. There's a battle going on there between our bases – us against the Russians and Chinese. Our Space Marines are holding their own, but they're badly outnumbered. Your orders are to clear the enemy bases to make room for your own people."
Clear the enemy bases. Jamie felt those words clawing down her spine.
"You mean kill the people occupying the other bases?" Cameron's face had turned to stone. "Kill all the Chinese and Russians?"
"That's correct. Every last one of them." President Tomlinson did not flinch from Cameron's hard stare. "I'm afraid this is a zero-sum contest, Captain. Either we survive or they do. There's no room for mercy in this equation."
"I don't recall them showing us a lot of mercy when they turned on us like rabid dogs," Mallory growled.
"The Lieutenant makes an excellent point." A cold smile creased Tomlinson's thin lips. "A fatal miscalculation on their part. Now, when the radioactive dust clears, the world will belong to us. You go to Mars, gentlemen and women, expand and upgrade the bases, make a good life for yourselves there. I understand you have the necessary tools to accomplish that. In time, perhaps sooner than you think, Earth will be waiting for you. Many of our most brilliant scientists are safe and are working on novel solutions to our current environmental crisis. I'm confident they will succeed. It will take more than a little alien chicanery and a nuclear holocaust to keep us down."
Jamie glanced at Dennis, who wore an expression as though someone had just slapped him repeatedly across the face. Most of the people on the bridge shared that expression.
"Man," said Lieutenant Mallory, "that is either the most inspiring or the most fucked-up speech I've ever heard."
President Tomlinson's laughter tinkled like wind-driven icicles. At least that was the image that came into Jamie's mind.
"Lucky for you, the First Amendment is still in effect, Lieutenant. And that's the difference between us and the others, and why our cause will triumph."
"What if we don't want to go to fucking Mars?"
Jamie recognized the voice immediately, though she couldn't see the speaker. The image shifted for a few seconds, however, until it located the scowling visage of Jake Culler, with Greg "Hulk" Horner predictably at his side.
"Excuse me, but who are you?" Tomlinson asked.
"Jake Culler, Ma'am. Formerly known as Marine Sergeant Jake Culler."
"Ah." The President leaned out of her image frame and exchanged words with someone before returning front and center. "All right, Marine Sergeant Jake Culler. You and anyone else who isn't under my command and doesn't want to become a Martian may return to Earth. Perhaps we may have something for you to do here. I will have your ships shuttle you down to one place of your choosing. The best I can do – time is of the essence."
"I think we should take that ride, too, Jamie," said Dennis. "Our home's down there, not on Mars."
"I'm with you," said Tildie. "I doubt a little radioactive fallout or a few fires could hurt a super-person."
Jamie looked over the "Grand Forks Gang," receiving nods from them all.
"I want to go home," said Kylee. "I'll bet we could help a lot of people."
"You're right, baby." Jamie pulled her daughter to her side. "I'm done running away from home."
HIGH ABOVE the Earth, Amelrina and Mikenruah watched the cities burn and the landscape smoke from their Elemental scout ship. Amelrina felt a strange relief: this beautiful, ugly civilization would no longer require their lethal intervention. The humans were on a different path now.
"Ironic," said Mikenruah. "They had to burn their world in order to save it."
Amelrina gave him a sad smile. She wished such ironies were the rule rather than the extreme exception.
"I don't think our next assignment is going to be so lucky," he said with a shake of his head.
"Probably not." What they called the "Amalgam," a species whose evolution involved physically joining with other beings and incorporating their DNA, was taking a frightening turn for the aggressive. "Unless..."
"Unless what, Amelrina?"
"Nothing."
But Amelrina was having an idea. An idea she knew she'd had before.
Chapter 27
THE GREY MIST DRIFTED over the suburban homes and buildings of Lafayette, Colorado. Except it wasn't a mist: it was smoke filled with radioactive ashes and debris. The community hadn't been directly hit, but the Denver Airport had just over thirty miles away. Hit by a "bunker nuke," Jake assumed, given the massive crater and the monstrous clouds of dirt floating over the area he and Horner had seen driving past. Funny thing: every building and tree for miles had been leveled, and yet the steel mustang sculpture out front remained – warped, twisted, and half-melted into a ghoulish steed that Satan himself might've ridden, cackling, into the underworld.
"Jeez, check out that horse," Jake snorted in disbelief. "Looks like something spawned in the depths of hell."
"Yeah," said Greg, sounding unimpressed. "It really hasn't changed that much."
Because the nuclear bunker-buster had directed much of its energy underground, the blast itself hadn't done much damage to the Lafayette area, but a few buildings and homes had toppled or collapsed, and grey-black soot mixed with steel shreds blanketed the neighborhoods.
"You sure we're in the right place?"
"Yep. I satellite and street-imaged it before..." Jake slowed the GTO, thankfully waiting for him undamaged at Jamie's place, where the USSC shuttle had dropped them off. "That's gotta be it right there. That's their RV."
He pointed to a partly collapsed two-story house on the end of the cul-de-sac. Splintered wood slats and an ash-covered recreation vehicle with flattened rear tires adorned the driveway.
"Doesn't look good, brother," said Greg.
"No shit, Sherlock. But let's not bury her before we take a look."
The roar of an engine caused them to turn around. A big red pickup came thundering up to them bristling with muscular guys in camo-gear clutching shotguns and
ARs.
"Saw you drive up," one bald, grinning goateed guy hailed them. "Real nice ride you got there."
"Thanks," said Jake.
"Mind if we take it from ya?"
"Mind if I rip your head off and stick it up your ass?"
A lot of cocking and magazine-racking followed, ending with a half-dozen guns leveled on them. Jake stood shaking his head in disbelief.
"Are you fucking kidding me? It's the end of the world and you want to steal my car?"
"It's a classic muscle car, man."
Jake sighed. He glanced at Greg, who shrugged. With a single step, Horner launched himself through the air, smacking into the pickup cab with the force of a human tank. The would-be car thieves flew off the truck onto the asphalt. Dropping to his feet, Greg promptly lifted the truck and rolled it on top of them. Jake shuddered. Brutal but effective. He tried to ignore the groans of one of the guys half-pinned under the truck. He doubted they'd last long.
"One thing I really hate about those damn apocalypse movies," Greg grunted upon his return. "There's always some assholes with guns in a pickup or on motorcycles trying to steal shit or rape somebody."
"Right. Must be an unwritten law or something."
The dying man's groans ended on a gurgling note as Jake and Greg picked their way through the wood slats and ash past the recreation vehicle. The front of the house had folded in like an old accordion. They walked around to the backyard, but found no improvement. Greg bent down and reached under one edge of the house with both hands. He strained upward. The house creaked and moaned and crackled as it rose. Then the section he was holding detached in a scream of splintering wood, leaving a large gash in the wall. They stepped through.
"Show off," Jake murmured.
"You could've helped. It's your cooze, after all."
"Stop calling her that unless you want me to assume your shape and pound you into the fucking ground." Jake knew he'd only have his own strength regardless of his form, but Horner didn't know that.
The inside was more like a collapsed mine than the interior of a house. They jostled their way through narrow openings between crumbling walls and over bowed floors, Jake fighting a growing claustrophobia. He wondered if he'd survive the house falling on him. Greg would just shrug it off, but he could see himself getting flattened. He had enough mechanical insight, unlike his friend, to envision the tons of unstable timber and dry wall hanging by a thread above them. They were walking through a pile of pickup sticks.
They encountered a gaping hole in the floor, revealing a basement below.
"Hey?" Greg called in a thunderous voice. "Anyone home?"
The house rumbled. Jake tapped him on the arm.
"Hey," he said in a low rasp, "tone it down. Your foghorn voice could bring this whole fucking place down on our heads."
Horner scowled at him, but didn't reply. Jake stooped cautiously to one knee and peered down into the basement. A beam had split and was spearing a cement floor covered with crap, including an upside-down washer in a pool of water that might've been rain or the contents of a water heater.
"Let's take a look."
He dropped down between the washer and the remains of a work table, raising a cloud of dust or ashes. His eyes instantly riveted on the still figure lying with her legs buried by a pile of sheetrock and part of a support beam.
"Oh, shit."
Jake picked his way toward her. Greg dropped down behind him, sending another plume of no-doubt radioactive ash into the cloistered air.
Jake lowered himself beside Jenna. Her face was ashen – or maybe it was just the ashes? – and her left arm was bent at a wrong angle, but she didn't seem to have suffered any obvious crushing blow. Of course, she was dead. What else could she be?
He leaned in toward her face, and felt the tickling of her breath.
"Jesus," he whispered, "you're still alive!"
Jenna stirred a little, her eyes flickering open, slowly focusing on him.
"Mmmm...?"
"It's me," he said. "Jake. Jake Culler. You know, professional mechanic and shapeshifter extraordinaire."
Her lips parted in the semblance of a smile. "My savior."
"Not sure about that. But we're gonna get you outta here."
"No point...radioactive wasteland out there..." She coughed, and blood sprayed her lips. "Glad I won't die alone anyway."
"What happened to your..." He chopped off the insult on his lips. "Friend?"
"Left. Broke up..."
Oh, crap. She was free. She could've been his. Jake leaned closer and kissed her cool, dust-streaked forehead, fighting tears. To come so close, to find her alive...single...and then to lose her? He cleared his throat to fight the sob that started in his chest. No way was he gonna let Horner see him bawl like a baby.
But a pair of tears did squeeze out and land in her eyes. Jenna blinked, startled. And in that moment Jake saw a whole different vision of their future. He glanced up at Horner, but his old friend was intently studying a fissure in the wall.
"No, baby," he said, looking into her moistened eyes. "We've only just begun, as the song goes."
Her wan smile was puzzled. "But Jake...why? Hardly even know me. Why did you come?"
"For the picket fence, babe," he said. "The white fucking picket fence."
THEY ATE under clear, blue skies, thanks to Jamie taking huge dollops of poisoned nearby atmosphere into space. The trees and bushes around them, which had startled to wilt for lack of sun and probably because of radiation, stood tall and green again – though the big oak tree out front was starting to change colors in the last gasp of fall. The only smoke in the air was rising in thin tendrils from their three grills.
The entire Grand Forks Gang was in attendance, along with two surprise and much-welcome guests: Nathan Andrews and his new best friend, Zachary Walters – for which Zachary's father, University of North Dakota President Perry Walters, was exceedingly grateful. All three had been "turned": Jamie had infected Nate and Nate and extended the favor to Zachary, who'd infected his father. The pattern of things to come, Jamie thought.
It wasn't sunny everywhere, she knew. Nathan had told them that a flotilla of hundreds of Chinese and Russian battleships, spaced miles apart, had been rolling across the Pacific toward a largely depopulated and energy-free California, shadowed by the two countries' remaining space and air force ships. The ships were greeted by the last of the nukes from the U.S. submarines, and a far-ranging firestorm broke out in the skies and on the ocean as the USSC main space fleet and a few Air Force squadrons engaged the opposing air fleet and rained nuclear and conventional hellfire down on the battleships.
In space, the USSC Earth Defense Division Fleet had quickly routed the Russian and Chinese airborne forces and turned its full power on the enemy ships, with help from a few U.S. and British warships that had been at sea when the Luminate had incapacitated the continental U.S. After losing more than half of their battleships, the Russian and Chinese had agreed to an unconditional surrender.
Not exactly a happy ending, Jamie thought, yet somehow it felt that way.
"Am I the only one here feeling guilty?" Tildie asked Jamie in a lowered voice. They stood a few yards from the barbecues, soaking up the rapturous aroma of grilled steaks. "We're eating T-bone steak with all the fixings while millions...shit, billions...of people are starving or dying slow, horrible deaths watching their rotting flesh peel away?"
Nearby, Cal, flipping some of those steaks, made a harsh gagging sound.
"Thanks for just killing my appetite, Matilda," he groused.
Tildie made a guilty face. "Sorry about that. Just thinking out loud."
"I can guarantee you're not the only one thinking it."
"I don't even need to eat, and I'm going to pig out on barbecue," said Jamie. "Imagine my guilt."
Tildie responded with a dour smile.
"Don't feel bad, Mom, Aunt Tildie," said Kylee, strolling up. "We're going to save people, one created super-person at
a time!"
"And meanwhile," Dennis chuckled, working beside Cal, "your grandfather can feed everyone around here by duplicating all the local food."
"I'm hoping news of that particular glad tiding stays with us," said Cal. "I don't have the energy or time to keep feeding the multitudes. I'm not Jesus."
It was a serious point, Jamie thought. News had barely spread beyond their rural community, and already a dozen people had shown up in the last day wanting food or some tool duplicated. How many would show up tomorrow? Her this-world father could literally become a slave to the needy masses, doing nothing but duplicate things for people 24/7. The same principle could apply to all of them: donating their tears, delivering food and water, cleaning the atmosphere. Jamie planned to keep transporting radioactive air or ash on the ground into space, but that would probably require decades to complete. There had to be a balance between helping humanity and living their lives, and she knew they would all have to find it.
She and Dennis took a walk after dinner. Even for the countryside, things were eerily quiet. No sound of a distant car or tractor, no planes passing overhead. No UPS trucks making deliveries or semi-trucks rumbling by filled with grain. This was the time of the year where the local elevator generated seeming ceaseless convoys of semis, their dynamic braking causing a local ordinance to be passed just a few years ago, Dennis had told her. Now it would've been wonderful, she thought, to hear a truck Jake-braking or a crop-duster whining overhead. She hadn't seen any geese flying south or really much of any birds since the nuclear exchange. Even the ubiquitous drones would've been better than this.
"We could leave here, you know," said Jamie.
"To where?" asked Dennis.
"My original world."
"You and I and Kylee."
"Yes. And maybe my dad and Tildie or anyone else who wanted. But you and Kylee would fit in without doubles."
Dennis walked beside her, frowning in thought.
"America is prosperous there, Dennis. They have a good government, with good, moral leaders. People are free."
"We're free here, too, honey." Dennis held out his arms to the quiet fields that were not going to be harvested. "President Tomlinson is living in a bunker two miles underground somewhere. By the time she comes out there will be thousands if not millions of super-people. And I have a feeling they aren't going to accept her brave new world order any longer."
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