“China is far away from here. Even if we stop the production, they’ll only move it or find another solution,” Cole suggested.
Zhao grinned. “I may be able to help with the ‘getting there’ part.” He didn’t expand on the subject.
“There are options for the misters, which include destroying the plant, poisoning the supply, or adding a virus into it,” Soares suggested.
“Okay, so let’s say we do any of those things. What about the gateways? They can just up and leave,” Becca said.
“Don’t we want them to leave?” Alec asked, wondering what would be so bad about that.
“No. We want them to die,” Cole mumbled.
Soares ignored it. “Which takes us to the next issue. The gateways. If there are multiple, we cannot simply waltz into Detroit and destroy it.”
“We tried that already. Didn’t go so well,” Renata said, her voice rough and gravelly.
“I was thinking something a little more… covert is necessary,” Soares said. “If there are a bunch of these portals, they have to lead somewhere. A hub or nexus on the other side.”
Alec didn’t like it. “And then what? You destroy them?”
“Something like that,” Soares said.
“That’s all good, but we have no way of reaching the Gate, and we still don’t have confirmation about the other countries. We need to hold out for more information,” Zhao said, and Soares nodded his agreement.
“One thing we can agree on is the China factory where the misters are created. This is priority one. We need to decide which route we take, and how we get there,” Soares said. “Everyone in agreement?”
There was a chorus of agreement throughout the room, including from Alec, and he raised a hand. “If we find a way to modify the misters, and they start dying out, and we actually close the portals, do you think we can reclaim our world?”
The question seemed fairly innocuous, but there were layers of deep oppression rooted in it, and everyone in the room appeared affected by the thought of a real future.
Soares didn’t hesitate. “Damn right I think we can do this. We have strong, capable leaders out there we never knew existed until a few days ago. We’re not alone anymore. We’re not a group hiding along the west coast,” Soares glanced at Zhao, “and we’re not cowering under a mountain in the Rockies. We’re fighting. We will make Tom proud, and his legacy will live on forever.”
Alec swelled at the words, and even Cole seemed to perk up.
“But we have a long way to go, so let’s focus on the maps.” The captain turned to the maps, where dozens of pins sat in the UK and across France, and they began to plan their next steps.
Alec took the tablet and accessed the backdoor program Tom had used from the Tracker system, checking to see if the Hunter had seen any of their messages yet. Didn’t look like it.
“Damn it. We need to find out what’s going on over there,” he said, sliding the tablet to Izzy across the table. Their war room had emptied out after hours of planning and discussions. Alec was pleased with the way everything had gone, but Dex’s lack of responses were beginning to bother him.
Izzy ran a hand through her jet-black hair and leaned back, fiddling with the device. “Maybe he’s dead.”
Alec had thought the same thing, but Dex seemed to be one of the most capable men he’d ever seen. The way he’d talked to those guys outside the university on their trip to retrieve the datastick had been next level. Alec also recalled how easily he dispatched them. Dex wasn’t a man he’d want to cross, but he suspected the Hunter had acclimated into his new role with Hansen just fine.
“Doubt it. If you’d met him, you’d understand.” Alec was hungry, and he picked up a carrot stick, walking toward the window. The sun was setting and the air cooling. He slid it shut and leaned against the wall, watching Izzy Zhao stare at the tablet. Her eyes went wide. “What is it?”
“Dex. I mean… someone replied to your messages.” He rushed to her side and grabbed the device from her outstretched hand.
Finally have a way to talk. Mines in northern MI. Iron ore. Birdbrains only open gates for shipments.
Alec read it a few times over. “They’re mining iron.”
Izzy sighed. “It’s hard to believe they went to this much effort and spent so long only to take our iron.”
Alec shrugged, as it was impossible to understand their entire motivation.
What are they saying about us? He hit send, his fingers shaking as they waited for a reply.
Nothing really. As careless as usual.
Alec relaxed, smiling at Izzy. “That’s a good thing.”
Where are you?
The reply came quickly. Wisconsin. Might have more refugees coming your way.
Alec assumed he was on a mission for the other side, and instead of killing them, he was going to direct them to the west coast. He hated that he’d even second-guessed the man at any point.
Learn more about the mines and schedules. We have a plan. Alec send the note and didn’t get a reply.
“What do you think about our strategy?” Izzy asked him.
“I think it’s good until it isn’t and something goes wrong.”
“This won’t be easy.” Izzy stood, moving for the exit.
“When has it ever been?”
Chapter 5
Cole
He woke early, eyes open but body motionless as he tried to sort his memories. He lay on his back wearing a t-shirt soaked with sweat. Throwing the covers off his legs to combat the heat, he sat up on the edge of the cot and rubbed his face as he recalled that he was safely ensconced underground.
The source of his discomfort was the single UV heat lamp set up in the corner of his small room that bathed the inert form of the Tracker drone. The warm light recharged it through the splayed solar panels protruding from its flanks.
There was another knock on the door before it opened to reveal Soares entering and releasing the handle with his elbow to stand tall and reveal a cup held in each hand. Wordlessly, Cole reached out and took one, inhaling the aroma deeply before sipping the coffee and letting it diffuse into his cells to wake him fully.
“You good to go in five?” Soares asked him, earning a nod of agreement from Cole.
“Where are we off to?” he asked after he’d enjoyed another long pull of the dark liquid.
“Zhao has a little surprise to reveal. Not that I don’t know what it is, but hey, we all need a little amusement, am I right?”
Cole nodded again, not feeling like enjoying himself much. He hadn’t felt like that ever since the failed attack on the Gateway, when Tom, a man he’d only recently discovered to be his blood, threw his life away in a heroic attempt to rally the survivors of their race to fight the enemy.
Soares, evidently much closer to the man, was positive and smiling. Deep down, Soares was probably in as much turmoil as he was, but infinitely better at hiding it.
“You bringing that?” he asked, pointing at the sleeping drone. In response, Cole stood and stretched before setting down his cup and reaching to flick the power switch on the lamp. Seconds after the glow subsided, a whirring noise sounded from the Tracker as the panels folded and retracted before the start-up sequence woke it to fully alert. It stood, unfolding the legs it nestled on neatly, scanned the room with an economic turn of the head, and took two paces toward Cole to watch him.
“All right, I’m up,” he said to it, forgetting Soares was there for a second. The older man let out a tiny laugh of delight at Cole’s discussion with the machine before tossing the clothes laid over the chair at his young companion.
In contrast to the stuffy, overly warm interior of his room, the air out in the corridors was thinner and cooler, which gave way to a distinct chill when they reached the surface. Both Cole and Soares went armed, as if the prospect of a sudden and bloody encounter with the enemy was expected, but others walked around without a care.
He knew there were no ships or drones in the area thank
s to the tablet he possessed, but that didn’t stop him taking it out again to double check.
A bark, low and throaty, sounded from ahead and made him peer through the rare mist surrounding the facility to see two figures approaching—one large and hulking, the other shorter and slim—before another shape streaked ahead of them, heading in his direction. Buddy circled his legs twice, letting him run his fingers over the coarse hair on his back, before he froze to sniff at the Tracker that stared blankly without interacting. The coyote sniffed at it once before issuing another growl and jerking nervously when the head turned up to Cole.
“Leave it be,” Lina’s voice sounded as she approached, lightly reprimanding their living companion for picking a fight with the robotic one. Before Cole could think of anything to say, the whine of an electric motor rose in pitch and volume until a buggy appeared through the fog with Monet behind the wheel and the unsmiling Zhao sitting beside her.
“Where are we going?” Lina asked, worried that she would need her gear after she expected a meeting in place of a mission.
“Not far,” Zhao said, giving a cold nod of greeting to Soares like the others were just children. Climbing aboard into the rear section and dealing with the awkward moment when Buddy snarled at the drone for stepping too close in the cramped space, they set off down a bumpy track that had once been a road.
They rose in altitude slightly, revealing a misty landscape stretching out toward a vast expanse of dark blue ahead of them and prompting more than one gasp as the sheer scale of the ocean was revealed to those not accustomed to the sight.
That view melted away into the fog again as they descended, bouncing over worse terrain until Cole worried that one of them would be thrown from the buggy When he was on the verge of mentioning that, she slowed and coasted the vehicle toward a rusted fence where two wide gates lay open, one hanging limp where it had been degraded either by the gradual passage of time or by some damage caused years before.
“You want to know how we get to China?” Zhao asked, climbing out to thump both boots onto the hard ground.
“I take it flying is off the table?” Lina asked.
“Depends on how much you like being shot down and drowning in the ocean,” Zhao answered in a tone Cole guessed the man thought was funny but actually wasn’t.
“Ever heard of a submarine?” Soares asked, glancing at Lina and Yas to include them in his explanation. They shook their heads. Zhao led them to the water’s edge and along a metal gantry where a dark shape hung in the water under the cover of a massive structure.
“Long ago, we had lots of these all over the world. This one was left here, and by some miracle, the reactor still operated after being stagnant for years. It was half submerged when my people found it, and it has no weapons, which is unfortunate, but here it is…”
The words swam in Cole’s head like the man had been speaking a different language.
“Surely there isn't enough fuel left to run a ship like this?”
“Boat,” Soares corrected. “The bubbleheads got real upset when you called them ships.”
“Bubble…”
“Anyway,” Zhao cut in. “It doesn’t use conventional fuel, but it has a reactor that charges batteries, and the batteries make it go.”
“I don’t understand,” Cole said, not sure which part he wasn’t sure about first, as most of it made no sense to him.
“You don’t need to know the specifics,” Zhao said, “just that it can get us to China underwater without being detected.”
“Under the water? Won't the people run out of air?” Lina asked, her mind running the same kind of calculations as Cole’s was and still not understanding.
“The air recycles, as does the water, so no. They don’t run out of air.”
“How long?” Soares asked.
“Almost seven thousand miles to China from here, assuming a straight line and a steady speed. This thing can supposedly pull twenty knots.”
“Twenty whats?” Cole asked.
“Knots. It’s like miles per hour only different,” Soares explained.
“Why don’t they say miles per hour, then?”
Soares shrugged as if he had never thought to ask and didn’t much care why. “Seven thousand miles, twenty miles an hour…”
“Three hundred,” Monet said, making everyone turn to her. She shrugged as if her display of mental arithmetic wasn’t impressive and added, “Give or take.”
“Two weeks?” Soares asked, unsure of his own internal calculations.
“Give or take,” Zhao agreed, echoing Monet’s words.
“You expect people to be underwater for two weeks in… in that?” Cole asked, pointing at the massive dark tube sitting half submerged in the water. “Does it even work?”
“Should do,” Zhao said, not filling Cole with confidence.
“I don’t know,” he said cautiously, worried that he would be asked to climb into a metal tube and go out on the ocean with only a guess and a shrug as assurance of his survival.
“If you have a better way,” Soares said, “let’s hear it.”
Dex
Dex woke with a start, his hand flying to the holster strapped to his chest, and he remembered he was safe. After spending weeks sleeping in the same facility as the Overseers, his nerves were shot, and he blinked away the fog, happy to be in the relatively comfortable bed of the rural Wisconsin farmhouse.
He was still dressed and realized he’d grown complacent himself. At Detroit, they’d had running water and showers. He was beginning to understand why the aliens didn’t seem to be bothered by much. They weren’t struggling. With the exception of whatever the hell the breathing devices did for them, all they had to do was bide their time and reap the spoils of the human world.
Dex imagined they’d up and leave once there was nothing useful for them, and if the building of the Gate had taken twenty-five years, he guessed their mining efforts might take at least that long. If the Reclaimers didn’t do something to stop the Occupation, the world would be destroyed, and the last of its people would be dead by then.
He went outside, using the water from an old rain barrel to wash up and rinse his face before throwing his shirt on and sliding into his leather jacket. The farm was a welcome sight after the constant thrumming of the Gate, the alien hovertanks, and ships.
Here it was peaceful, hundreds of miles from the nearest Occupation facility. The sun had risen above the distant rolling fields, which were bright yellow here; wild and untamed crops that hadn’t been tended in a long time. The once bright red barn was dull and sun worn, the domed roof half collapsed, and an old windmill still spun beside it as the breeze picked up.
He pushed thoughts about their recent predicaments away and treated this like a good old-fashioned hunt. Only he wasn’t killing anyone or returning them to the Occupation; he was going to set them free and direct them to safety. Hansen hadn’t asked for proof, so he’d been given a shot of luck.
Dex took a leak beside the house before grabbing his pack, rummaging for something to eat. How did Hansen and his cronies expect to survive this new world without food-processing plants? The damned aliens had seen to it that any human needs were no longer going to be met. Crops burned. Factories destroyed.
He opened the Occupation’s version of a granola bar and chewed it, finding it a little hard; slightly stale. Better than going hungry.
Thick white clouds hung in the sky, with the sun blocked behind them as he scoured the region with binoculars from his perch at the farmhouse. The land wasn’t as flat as the surrounding areas, and this particular farmer had chosen the highest point for his home, making Dex’s job simpler. From this vantage point, he saw the grid of side roads, all gravel and no lanes for miles in each direction. He doubted he’d even find a stop sign in the vicinity.
Down the overgrown path that led from the house to the caved-in barn were four silos, no longer shining in the daylight, but rusted from decades of rain and snow. Something moved in h
is peripheral sight, and he shifted the binoculars to spot the coyote. At first there was one, then he noticed more running through the tall grass, rustling the greenery as they hunted for something, likely rabbit.
“Time to go,” he told himself, and climbed into the borrowed car. It was light blue, with white stripes, the exact color he’d never choose for himself. The tones reminded him of the current cloudy skies.
But the engines rumbled to life with ease, and with the Overseers’ mods, the car didn’t need fuel. He rolled the windows open, using the old crank, and stuck his elbow out. The region’s agri-center was nearby, only a few miles, and Dex didn’t suspect the survivors would have gotten far.
The trip was quick, even though the drive was slow moving along the vegetation-covered gravel roads. Once he saw the old facility lot, Dex noticed the paved lanes leading away from it. The trucks hauling supplies in and out wouldn’t have fared well on these roads without new construction.
Everything was fenced here, tall chain link with barbed coils on the tops. The land was huge, and he couldn’t see the end of it from where he stopped along its outer edge. He kept driving, eventually turning onto pavement. It was in good shape still, and he increased his speed as he headed north toward the entrance.
Dex smelled the aftereffects of the fire as he guided the Camaro to the front gate, which hung wide open beside the empty guard tower. He wondered how many workers they would have had in a place this large, and estimated somewhere around a thousand. Even from here, he saw a line of farm equipment a quarter mile from where a structure stood, half burned.
Dex drove through the gate, imagining the attack. The first body came into view soon after, then another, and another, each of them shredded from the powerful ammunition the Tracker drones were loaded with. The closer he drove to the main residence, the more corpses littered the ground, and he rolled his window up as the smell grew overpowering.
This was it. This was what everything came down to. Aliens coming to Earth for their iron, using people for manual labor, then disposing of them like they were nothing. Everything about the bastards was so casual, so unemotional, and Dex gripped the steering wheel hard as he kept driving, forcing himself to look at the bodies as he went.
Rise | Book 3 | Reclamation Page 4