Syndicate Wars: Fault Line (Seppukarian Book 3)

by Kyle Noe

  “How’d you know?”

  “Because that’s how I felt once upon a time.”

  Samantha broke her gaze and stared at the muddy ground. “I feel like I was meant to do this, Mom. I know it sounds super spooky and all, but it’s like, I experienced déjà vu on steroids. It’s almost like I had been there before, y’know? Everything was in 3-D when we were fighting. Colors were different and I could smell and see better and it was like I sensed what was happening before it occurred. But now, just sitting around down in a hole in the ground sucks big time. I mean … what we’re doing here? This is nothing.”

  “Just be thankful you’re alive,” Quinn said.

  Samantha looked up. “But that’s the point. I don’t feel like I am.” Quinn didn’t respond and so Samantha continued, “You know that whole ‘we sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who’d do us harm’ thing?”

  “I’ve heard that a time or two,” Quinn answered, nodding slowly.

  “Why should the guys have all the fun?”

  “You’re not even a teenager, Samantha.”

  Samantha scowled and tapped her right foot on the ground at a slow and steady pace like she was waiting for the other person to give in, just as she’d done as a toddler when she didn’t get her way. “I don’t want to be the person who’s asleep, mom. I don’t ever want to be that person. Just saying.”

  Quinn didn’t reply, so the two silently trudged back through the rain which had stopped by the time they’d reached the entrance to the silo, what had once been formally called the launch control data center.

  They’d barely had any time to inspect it after the reunion and so Samantha took Quinn on a tour of the areas she’d yet to visit. She told her mother everything that Comerford had originally related to her. She described how the entire complex was sixty feet underground, buried under several feet of steel-reinforced ballistic cement.

  Before the invasion, there’d been roughly six-hundred soldiers responsible for the nuclear weapons, a group largely under the 20th Air Force, Air Global Strike Command, that had been known as “Missileers.” Significant changes had been made to the base in those years, the entire complex upgraded and restructured, new missile alert facilities constructed underground.

  Unfortunately, nearly all of the soldiers at the base had left their posts after the invasion, save a brave handful who’d stayed behind and joined the resistance. These men and women had been trained in protocol and knew how to use the nukes if it ever came to that.

  They padded by the mess hall, stopping for a bite to eat, past the tankage areas where waste was stored, and the alcoves filled with ammunition and supplies, and finally, beyond the heavy doors where the nuclear-tipped missiles were housed.

  As they surveyed everything, Quinn passed Mackie, the resistance fighter who’d helped Samantha out in Ohio when the first invasion began. They had been reunited earlier, and Mackie hugged Samantha again as they eased by. Cruising down another hallway, they caught nasty looks from several resistance fighters who recognized her as a Marine. She surmised that word had gotten out about the operations they’d undertaken on behalf of the Syndicate in New Mexico and New York City. She thought back on the wanted posters she’d seen of herself in New York City and shivered.

  Eventually, they found their way down to their sleeping quarters, which were located just beyond a bank of industrial generators. These were tethered to a vast field of buried propane tanks and a garden of above-ground solar panels and wind turbines that spit out just enough energy to keep the lights on and the missiles ready to fire.

  Their room was only about twenty feet by fifteen feet in size, partitioned by a bed sheet hung from a suspended wire. The space was anchored by a pair of cots and heavy cabinets and an old TV that showed kids cartoons. Near Samantha’s cot were the trappings of her time on the road with the resistance: her rucksack, some mismatched clothes, an extra pair of boots, and a bandolier of ammunition. Zeus, the toy robot, was perched atop the TV, peering down at everything.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” Quinn said.

  Samantha nodded and eased herself down onto her bunk after grabbing Zeus. She began fiddling with the toy robot, then looked up. “You see those guys giving you the evil eye back there?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “They’re super pissed at you, mom. Pretty much everybody in this place that isn’t me or a Marine hates your guts,” Samantha said, trying to twist off Zeus’s head.

  “I don’t blame them,” Quinn replied, “but there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “Have you thought about apologizing?”

  “Marines don’t apologize.”

  “No, they just bust down doors and blow things up, right?”

  “Yeah, but that’s only Monday through Friday.”

  Quinn offered up a smile to Samantha that wasn’t returned. “The resistance dude in charge down here, Comerford, he’s a good guy,” Samantha added.

  “Seemed like it.”

  “I’d really like it if you’d tell him you’re sorry.”

  “I don’t think it’ll do any good.”

  “You never know unless you try,” Samantha replied.

  And with that, she popped the head off of Zeus.

  “You broke it,” Quinn said.

  From the neck, Samantha pulled a thin, retractable blade that had been affixed to the ‘bot’s head and hidden inside his metal body. She smiled. “I modified it.”

  Quinn forced a smile while staring at the blade.

  A group of Marines were busy in the silo’s command center trying to communicate with their families and figure out what was left of civilization after the invasion. They’d related to the resistance fighters that they’d escaped from the Syndicate after being given direct orders to assault and liquidate Shiloh.

  This greatly concerned the resistance fighters who’d long believed that they were protected from attack because of the nuclear missiles housed in the silo. After discussing the possibilities of an imminent alien attack, Comerford and the others transitioned to other issues, specifically background information on how society had quickly broken down after the invasion. How the military had valiantly fought back, but been crippled by the alien’s overwhelming forces and technology.

  They’d also come to learn that even though they’d known about the invasion, the top brass hadn’t been prepared for the alien’s tactics. Comerford, who’d once served in Army intelligence, was showing classified and open-source footage on a series of screens that had been downloaded in the hours before and directly after first contact with the Syndicate. While all indications were that the Syndicate had indeed knocked out a good number of satellites, some still remained along with intermittent internet access. Giovanni, Milo, Renner, Hayden, Cody, Xan, Hawkins, Mackie, and several other resistance fighters studied the footage.

  Comerford tapped on the screens, pointing at images of Syndicate assaults on cities. “Turns out the aliens were here long before we first spotted them.”

  “What? You mean, like E.T.?” Renner asked, and Comerford silenced him with a look.

  “They engaged in what the brass used to call ‘Special War’ or ‘Convergence,’” Comerford added.

  “Hybrid war,” Hayden muttered.

  Milo pursed his lips. “Same thing Mao used during the Chinese civil war, Ho Chi Minh used in Vietnam—”

  “And we used in that scrap back in the day in the South China Sea,” Renner added, with a knowing smile.

  “Well, it isn’t any secret that the bastards lit us up physically and psychologically,” Comerford muttered. “They mixed conventional and unconventional tactics, flooding our cities with spiked drugs ahead of time, planting fake stories, screwing with cyberspace and satellites and our LOCs—lines of communication—turning countries against each other. And even though we were prepared for them to a certain extent, folks started getting awful paranoid. They wondered whether the ali
en threat was real and then boom, they hit us hard with the most precise military assault the world’s ever seen and we’ve yet to recover.”

  “What happened to the President?” Milo asked.

  Comerford’s jaw locked. “After they declared martial law, that weasel and the rest of the D.C. Continuity of Operations desk jockeys holed up in the bottom of Site-R in Pennsylvania. Raven Rock. Surprisingly, the invaders didn’t bring the hammer down on the White House, Congress, or Wall Street.”

  “How come?” Giovanni asked.

  “Probably figured it’d just be a waste of good ammunition,” Comerford replied, with a shrug.

  “We should try to raise them,” Milo said. “Congress, the Pentagon. Maybe they’re still online. Maybe there’s a way to reach Centcom.”

  “Aside from some of the satellites, almost everything’s still down,” Renner replied, shaking his head. “All of the databases, the ‘net, even all of my social media dating sites.”

  “Screw your sites and screw the Brass,” Xan hissed. “We don’t need a bunch of politicians and water-walkers telling us how to fight.”

  Milo’s gaze ratcheted over to Xan. “You gonna take out the Syndicate all by yourself?”

  A zippered grin splashed her face. “One scud at a time.”

  Xan slapped palms with another resistance fighter as Comerford powered down the screens. He looked to Giovanni and Hayden. “We’ve got some intel that the scuds are actually starting to branch out. They’re operating in the deserts, diverting rivers, and what not.”

  “For what purpose?” Giovanni asked.

  “To build bases. We’ve got some eyewitness reports that they dammed up the Snake River Canyon to build some kind of forward operating base.”

  Worried looks were shared and Comerford swapped glances with the Marines.

  “The bottom line is we know our terrain, we know what’s happening on terra firma. We were kinda hoping you boys would be able to give us some special insights on account of how long you were up in their command ship. Their tactics, maybe a weakness or two.”

  “Yeah, and also tell us what it was like being their bitches,” Xan said as the other resistance fighters snickered. She moved over and jabbed a finger at the circle of welted flesh on the back of Hayden’s neck—the alien tattoo he and the others had been given back on the alien command ship.

  Hayden swatted Xan’s hand away. “Lady, if you’ve got the ovaries to take on the aliens all by yourself, how come you haven’t overthrown ‘em yet?

  “I’m workin’ on it,” Xan barked back, her smile slipping away.

  “Well, what’s taking you so long?”

  “We don’t have enough firepower,” she snapped.

  “Exactly,” Hayden replied. “So how ‘bout you take a long cool sip of shut the fuck up and maybe we’ll tell you how to get that firepower.”

  “Aside from that pea-shooter between your legs, whaddya got?” Xan asked.

  Hayden looked over at Cody who smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, okay, so we’ve got some stuff you guys might find interesting.”

  Cody led everyone through the hangar to where the Syndicate glider was hidden. Buttons were depressed on the aft of the craft as the loading ramp dropped gently to the ground. Everyone was ushered inside, the resistance fighters marveling at the technology, the weaponry they’d stolen from the command ship, the solid surfaces that seemed to change with the touch of a finger.

  Comerford, in particular, stared wide-eyed at the internal gadgetry that lay near the flight controls and underneath his feet. His eyes traced the outline of what looked like a steel wheel, encased in glass, nearly spanning the entirety of the glider’s belly.

  “That’s the Occidio Wheel,” someone said.

  Comferford looked back to see Cody smiling, pointing at the ground. “A rotating system that creates artificial gravity. Aliens adjusted the radius and rotation rate, so we’re able to move about in the cabin,” Cody continued, a glimmer in his eye. “They’ve thought of everything.”

  Comerford nodded and pivoted and ran his hand over what appeared to be a glass console, flinching when several objects rose up from the console’s interior. There was a silver knob that resembled a mushroom, a thumb-sized green button housed inside a translucent bubbletop, and a ruggedized circle blinking blue that was affixed to a metal base.

  “That’s the elevon manipulator,” Cody said. “It controls the motion of pitch for the glider’s nose.”

  Nodding, Comerford gestured at the green button.

  “That’s the button that synchs the rear thrusters with the glider’s vertical stabilizer. Helps control its yaw while we’re in flight,” Cody said.

  Finally, Comerford gestured at the ruggedized circle blinking blue. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “That’s probably some kinda high-tech routing device so you can communicate with whatever artificial intelligence flies this thing, right?”

  “Nope, that’s just a cupholder,” Cody said, slotting a plastic water bottle in the circle.

  Cody smiled at Comerford and tapped on the glass as a golden cube filigreed with strange writing rose up from the console. He reached down and held up the cube, which thrummed and pulsed with life.

  Pocketing the cube, Cody whistled to the others who shuffled over next to him.

  “We were able to secure some weapons and gear from the Syndicate including these—”

  He tapped a button on a console and one side of the far wall lifted up to reveal an immense alcove. Inside were a dozen drones, from small to medium in size, hanging from hooks like ducks in a butcher’s shop.

  “That’s right, baby,” Cody grinned. “We stole us some battle drones!”

  Mira looked quizzically at the machines, which were distinctly unimpressive. Several of them were eight feet tall and studded with cannons and rocket pods, but their exoskeletons were dented, scratched, their bubbletops cracked. A few appeared to be missing pieces.

  Mira squinted at them. A bemused smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Okay, so why do they look so … jacked up?”

  Hawkins nodded. “They look like the drones that got their asses kicked by other, much better drones.”

  “I’d like to have those drones please,” Mackie added, sharing a laugh with Hawkins. “The ones that beat up our drones.”

  Cody mimed a laugh before holding up his hands. “Okay, so they’re not much to look at, but they’re functional. They’re tough. They’re like you guys. Warriors!”

  Cody laid a hand on one of the drones and its arm fell off, clanging loudly as it landed near his foot. Cody forced a smile and swallowed hard, picking the arm up off the ground as Hayden and Milo groaned.

  On the other side of the glider, Xan was busy admiring a suit of red Syndicate armor and battle helmet that hung in a bay. They were next to other sets of armor, all of the equipment Quinn and the other Marines had worn having been secured here after they slipped into civilian clothes.

  Xan reached up and brought both down, shrugging on the armor. She felt the material compress and shift to hug her body. Next, she put on the alien battle helmet and nodded. “Now this is what I’m talking about.”

  “Don’t go getting used to it, babycakes,” Renner said, removing the helmet. “These are ours and there ain’t enough of ‘em to make a difference.”

  “So why the hell did you bring us here?” Xan asked.

  “Because they’re not going to help win the war,” Cody said, as Xan and Renner looked askance at him. “This is what’s going to help us take the fight to the Syndicate,” Cody added, holding up the golden cube.

  “What the hell is that?” Xan asked.

  Cody smiled. “The most important thing we have. A map.”

  3

  With Us or Against Us

  An all hands on deck meeting was called in the control room, the largest space available at the very bottom of the silo. It was as big as a movie theater and filled with aging Cold War equipment and a few pieces from a short modernization p
eriod a decade earlier.

  Thirty of Shiloh’s leaders, the representatives of the other residents, were invited down in an effort to reach a consensus with the Marines on a plan to move forward with possible joint operations. The Marines clustered around banks of analog equipment and radio gear, while the resistance formed a circle around Comerford and a raised metal dais upon which had been placed several high-tech tables and communications gear.

  Hayden, Milo, Renner, and Cody (Quinn being noticeably absent) gaped uneasily at Xan, Hawkins, Mackie, and another woman they hadn't met before. She was short, with cropped, auburn-colored hair and green eyes, and built like a warrior. Giovanni stood awkwardly, positioned directly between the Marines and the resistance fighters who were whispering to each other.

  “I don’t think they like us, Gunny,” Milo said.

  “Think it has something to do with us killing some of ‘em?” Hayden asked.

  Milo nodded. “More than likely.”

  “You think that’s funny, pretty boy?” the unknown woman asked, overhearing the exchange before taking a few steps toward Milo. “I heard what you said and we lost some good people because of you assholes. You’re nothing but a bunch of traitors.”

  “Who are you?” Milo asked.

  “Mira. Who the hell are you?” She sneered.

  “The name’s Milo, Mira, and, first of all, you’re wrong about us being traitors,” Milo said. “Second of all, one of your people, Xan over there, tried to blow us up in the alien command ship, and lastly, shut the fuck up.”

  Mira swung at Milo as he blocked her punch and Giovanni rushed to break up the fight. Just as he grabbed Mira and pulled her back, a voice boomed. “SHE’S RIGHT!”

  Everyone turned as Quinn emerged from a side door with Samantha at her side. She moved around the edges of the room, circling the resistance fighters and the Marines.