Dark New World (Book 4): EMP Backdraft

by Henry G. Foster

  Michael added, “More will come, though. Ethan has a plan to deal with that.”

  Ethan cleared his throat, nodding. “Yes, we’ve got handwritten orders from this unit’s C.O. to whoever follows, with directions to follow and rally around a town up that way. The idea is, they’ll leave us alone for a while and go fight the enemy up where they’re stronger anyway.”

  Cassy said, “Alright, so that’s dealt with for the moment. What of the Empire’s spies, I mean envoys?”

  Frank raised his hand pleadingly while he finished chewing a mouthful of greens. Then he said, “Sorry about that. So, the envoys are still hanging out with our work crews, but from what I understand they’re getting stonewalled. People talk about the weather, about the enemy, but never about the Confederation or our operations. Still, someone has likely slipped up here or there. We should assume the envoys know more than they let on.”

  Joe Ellings said into his salad, “Wish we could just take them out. They ain’t gonna be missed, I reckon.” He hated meetings, but attended the regular ones as the White Stag survivor’s representative.

  Michael said, “Maybe not, but they’d send more eventually—and those ones would be on edge, looking for trouble. That makes it hard to be buddy-buddy with them, which is what we want to do, for as long as we can do it. Open and honest farmers, that’s us. PsyOps do matter.”

  “So, we’ll divert them as long as we can,” Cassy said, “and in the meantime the Confederation grows stronger. We have to deal with the Empire and the Mountain, but we want to do it separately, not together. I figure we can delay things, but eventually we’ll have to deal with both and doing it separately will help.”

  Ethan half-raised his hand, then looked embarrassed. Cassy grinned, but didn’t say anything—this wasn’t a classroom. He said, “One more thing. Taggart, who we’ve been in touch with for months, turns out to be waging a very successful guerrilla war in New Jersey, thinning General Ree’s forces dramatically while we’ve been doing the same job here in southeast Pennsylvania. Almost like a new America.”

  Michael, sitting upright and even leaning forward to hear this military news update, commented, “That’s good news for the future, but does it help us directly?”

  “Well, for one thing, we have a strong trust relationship with Taggart. He has no use for the Mountain since they tried to rope him into an ambush by Ree’s troops. I warned him and he turned it around on the North Koreans. I didn’t think it meant much for us at the time or I would’ve told you all about it sooner. Turns out, he just got orders to join the Mountain’s troops here and decided to keep fighting the ’vaders instead. He says he’s responsible to engage the enemy for the American people, not to let some power-hungry desk jockey, hiding in a hole, send him back behind the lines. Taggart and I talk a lot now, back-channel. He’s got a thousand trained troops with him and thousands more in militia units he formed. How’s that for an ally?”

  Ethan paused to chomp on another forkful of salad and added, “He’s going to send a few troops this way in order to look cooperative. Not many, but they’ll winter over with us if they can get away with it and establish direct comms between the Confederation and his own operations. We may be able to call upon him if we plan ahead and spot the critical moment. Every war has critical moments, when everything can turn on a dime. Think Gettysburg—we’ve all been on the tours, right? That battle decided the course of the last chapters of the Civil War. When it comes time for our own Gettysburg, we’re going to want him and his troops on our side.”

  “War of Northern Aggressin’, that’s the real name,” Joe Ellings corrected, smirking.

  Cassy laughed. “The War Between the States isn’t going to help us now, but I get what you’re saying. Turning points matter, and we have a very good shot at being ready for it when one comes along, providing we work with this Army general and prepare as best we can.”

  “He’s a colonel for now,” Ethan said, “but he’s been skyrocketing rank since all this began. Probably be a general before long, if he can keep Houle away.”

  Michael smiled at that and added, “With Adamstown burnt to the ground by the ’vaders when they ran, we’re having a much easier time of things around Brickerville and Ephrata. The plague in Hershey ran its course mostly, but the survivors aren’t so eager to tangle with Liz Town anymore. Less pressure on them, east and west.”

  “What of the north end?” Cassy asked and shoved another giant forkful of salad into her mouth.

  Frank said, “Falconry is fine, too, and doing well as the region’s neutral trading port. They’ve even had a few private caravans from the Empire, trading lots of manufactured goods for food and a couple gasifiers.”

  Cassy nodded. “Frank, see if we can’t get them to trade those to us first. Our redneck engineer can build them now but lacks parts. He’s better equipped to improve theirs than to make new ones. So, if Falconry is trading some, we can use them. Speaking of which, we need to set up a big depot of wood cut to size for those gasifier things.”

  “Sure, I’ll ask them to trade with us first. And I’ll see about Brickerville setting up that wood depot, being close to the forest and all. It’d strengthen our ties to give them a more solid economic base.”

  Cassy tapped her chin with her finger for a moment. “You know, we should send a consultant up there to help when they get started, and as many cloned fruit tree starts as we can spare from our fruit and nut trees. We can help them set up an agroforestry program—their own food forest—while they’re clearing trees for the wood. Teach them how to cut their own clones once our donations grow a bit and get established.”

  Frank looked thoughtful. “I think I know just the person. You remember Dennis Blake? He was a supervisor under Peter when we were occupied by White Stag and Dennis was one Joe’s people working to undermine Peter. He’s been fascinated by your permaculture ways and spends most of his free time just… watching things. How they grow, where you planted what, and so on.”

  “You’re right,” Cassy said. “He’s always asking me questions about why we do this one way, or do that another way. Perfect for this mission. Good call, Frank.”

  “That’s why you keep my gimp ass around, right?” Frank asked, grinning. “I’ll talk to him about it and get back to you.”

  “One more thing.” She shifted her gaze to Ethan. “What have we heard from Lebanon?”

  Frank interrupted and said, “I got that one. I’ve been the one mostly ‘diplomatting’ with them. Since the plague, Hershey isn’t putting as much pressure on them to the west. The Confederation has cleared up the area to their south, more or less, and they say the armed hordes of hungry people from Reading and so on aren’t coming on as thick anymore. They think Reading must have gotten hit by the ’vaders or something, but we don’t know for sure. Lebanon’s northern borders are unchanged, but they expect more pressure from the ’vaders up there—it seems they’ve been acting more coordinated lately—yet with the pressure off them from other directions, Lebanon hasn’t had much problem fighting off the ’vader border probes.”

  Cassy chuckled. “So, they’re doing fine. Good! We should consider sending a scout east, though. Or maybe Ethan can ask his Army friend to have his people scout it on their way here.” Ethan nodded. “Only one thing left, then—Choony, what’s the status of our outreach program?”

  Choony made a slight bow with his head—a mannerism he’d taken to lately—and replied, “Of the dozen or so other survivor groups who didn’t make it to the Confederation meeting, Jaz and I have contacted six. Three of those are interested, and we’re negotiating. We will have to visit them again a few times until we know which way they go with that. Two others were dead, one by plague some time ago, the second by cannibals more recently.”

  Michael added, “Ethan has sent out alerts about the new cannibals. Now that everyone is aware of them, they shouldn’t last long.”

  Choony nodded, then continued, “And the last group declined, saying they hadn’
t made it this far needing some ‘fancy-pants confederation.’ Their words, not mine. I think if we hadn’t just left right away they might have grown aggressive. I noted their location for Ethan to put on the map as an unfriendly red zone. Jaz had the impression that they were hiding something, and my gut says they’re the cannibals.”

  Cassy listened patiently as Choony rattled off the details of his recent trips and frowned as he got to the last part. When he was done, she said, “Michael, send a pair of scouts to keep an eye on them for a few days. If they get the chance to safely scout their camp, do so, but otherwise stay undetected. We need to know. If they’re cannibals, we’ll have to deal with that.”

  Michael nodded, and Cassy wrapped up the meeting.

  * * *

  A couple hours later, as Cassy wrote in the Clan’s ledger updating production and consumption figures—never her favorite task, but important—there was a knock at her door. “Come in,” she called.

  The door opened and Michael entered, smiling. When Nestor followed him inside, her jaw dropped. “You’re alive! Where have you been?” she cried, bolting from her seat to rush over to him, where she shook Nestor’s hand vigorously.

  Nestor’s face showed surprise, then a grin, and he shook hands enthusiastically. “I’m alive, yes. I got separated during the raid on the ’vader camps, but I gathered up quite a crew of Adamstown slaves. Rescued them, took a bunch of guns from the ’vaders and a big old supply wagon, and fled.”

  “Why didn’t you come back sooner?” Cassy asked, still grinning. Her excitement at seeing a survivor they had thought lost was bubbling over, and infectious apparently because Nestor grinned back at her, a big sloppy grin.

  Nestor took a step back, still smiling, and said, “We were having too much fun out there slaughtering ’vaders. You may have noticed they decided to take a vacation from invading our piece of Pennsylvania? That was after we took out probably a third of them. The way they were scattered made them easy targets for guerrilla raids, and Brickerville was striking out at them, too. The ’vaders thought we were vengeful ghosts, somebody told me.”

  The Night Ghosts they’d been hearing about lately, Cassy realized. How about that—those Adamstown survivors who had come storming into the quarry, inadvertently saving her life, had been Nestor’s people.

  “Nestor, I have to say you’ve helped more than you can possibly imagine,” Cassy said, adoration in her gaze. “If it wasn’t for you and your people, I’d probably be dead. Thank you.”

  Nestor nodded. “Don’t mention it.”

  “So what are your plans now, friend?” Cassy asked. “You have a place here, though you know we can’t take in Adamstown survivors, even though they burned away a lot of bad blood by coming to help at the quarry battle. But we’ve already set some Adamstown survivors up with a nice gig at Liz Town, where they get to earn their keep. Your Night Ghosts would be welcomed.”

  Nestor replied, “We heard about that. About half of those ones left and joined with us out there in the field. They didn’t care for Liz Town, but I can’t say I blame them. Those people are weird. So I doubt my people will want to go. And I can’t just leave them out there—they look to me to lead them and to keep them fed on something other than people. It turns out they never did embrace that. Just did it out of necessity.”

  “So you’re staying out there in the winter cold, doing… what, exactly?” Something struck Cassy as odd with that setup. Not her danger sense going off, exactly, but it didn’t make her comfortable, either. Something just felt off plumb.

  “Right now we’re hunting some cannibals that have been raiding the few homesteads still out there. We’re hot on their trail, too, and when we catch up, we’ll put a stop to them. Other than that, when the ’vaders send scout units around these parts we’re usually the ones to find them. Then we chew them up and spit ’em out, take their gear and their supplies. Rinse and repeat. That loot is kind of why I’m here, actually.”

  “I imagine you have more gear than you can use and want to trade,” Cassy said. “You do know that the Falconry have set themselves up as a trading hub, right?”

  Nestor shrugged. “We go there when we have to, but I’d rather trade with you first and take what’s left to Falconry. I owe you people my life.”

  Cassy nodded slowly, thinking. He’d never quite fit in at Clanholme. But he’d proven her wrong, and her earlier suspicions about how things went down during the Adamstown raid on the Clan a while back were therefore probably wrong. So he hadn’t killed the Clanners after all.

  “Sure, Nestor. I’ll have Frank take a look at what you have to trade and see about setting you up with what you need. Although now I owe you my life as much as you owe me yours. Your support at the quarry battle was more timely than you know. You made a big difference out there, though I’m not sure you know how much of a difference. We may have caught up with all those retreating ’vaders and slaughtered them, but without you out there beforehand, killing them wholesale, they wouldn’t have run and we couldn’t have ended them quite so decisively. So now you’re Nestor the Friendly Night Ghost, huh?” She grinned.

  Nestor laughed. “I guess if the North Vietnamese could be afraid of a ‘white feather’ then these North Koreans can be afraid of a ‘night ghost.’ ”

  Cassy spent the next half hour chatting with Nestor over tea and a snack, then sent him on his way with Frank to take a look at his wares. The Clan could spare some wheat and barley to keep Nestor’s band of guerrillas fed and in supply, and everyone benefitted from what he was doing. A pretty good bargain, all in all. And even if she didn’t like to admit it, something about the guy, or something he’d said, still kind of made her uneasy, even if she was genuinely happy to see he had survived. She couldn’t put her finger on the problem, though.

  * * *

  1045 HOURS - ZERO DAY +184

  Taggart grinned as the recon-in-force came down the road toward his encampment. “Eagan, our boys and girls are back, it seems. They have a wagon with them that they didn’t have when they left a couple weeks ago—I wonder what’s in it. Don’t just stand there, go welcome them back.”

  Eagan left in a hurry to meet the returning unit. Twelve had left, and twelve now returned. Whether or not they had succeeded in making contact with the Clan—and apparently Dark Ryder was one of them—Taggart could at least be grateful for that.

  He watched as they came up the road toward him and then made his way down a slight embankment to meet them at the road. “Lieutenant! You’ve made it back. Congratulations. How was the mission?”

  The young officer almost saluted, but remembered Taggart’s field orders at the last moment. “Sir, thank you. We’re glad to be back. We only spent a night and a day with those people, but it was educational.”

  Taggart turned to walk toward his HQ station, and the lieutenant followed while Eagan was focused on whatever was in the wagon. As they walked, he said, “Educational how?”

  “Sir, these Clanners, as they call themselves, use a unique method of farming. I wouldn’t even call it organic, but more like… natural, maybe. They go out of their way to copy how things grow in nature. The list of benefits is a mile long. Harvesting is more labor than the normal way of farming, but everything else is mostly hands-off. Nature takes care of itself.”

  “I wonder if it would still be more labor-intensive now that there aren’t any tractors,” Taggart said. Something about what the lieutenant had said tickled at the back of his mind for a moment, and then it hit him suddenly. “Do they use fertilizer? Farms need fertilizer or the soil gets barren.”

  “I spent a lot of time with their manager, a man named Frank, asking questions. I don’t know much about farming but this seemed like it might be vitally important somehow, so I even wrote it down. Frank said they don’t need fertilizer. It’s a long explanation, but the short version is that with the way they farm, it fertilizes itself. Everything kind of folds in with everything else. I’ll write up everything I can about their ways in
a separate report.”

  “Very well, Lieutenant. Well done. I suspect it’s going to be more important than we know, come spring planting. Maybe we could get them to send us an advisor on their methods.”

  “Sir, that leads me to the next part of my report. You’ll find this amusing, I think.”

  Reaching the HQ area—a pavilion tent set up beside several wooden picnic tables, where all the accessories to commanding a regiment were in use—Taggart sat on one bench and motioned the officer to sit with him. “Very well. Go ahead.”

  “They gave us a different HAM radio, something with more oomph and an antenna, which is part of what is on that wagon. The rest are supplies they gave us for the journey, more than we needed obviously. They also gave us one of those little netbook computers and a satellite uplink device. They only had a couple, but they wanted you to have one.”

  “And why is that?” Taggart asked, mind racing over the possibilities provided by a working computer. Logistics, spreadsheets, reports…

  “They’re calling your area New America. As opposed to some military operation out west, which they call the Mountain. The Clan doesn’t trust those people. Believes they’re working to reunite everything they can, both directly in the area from Colorado to Louisiana, and through a group they call the Empire, operating out of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The Empire actually had a couple envoys at the Clan’s base while we were there, and we had to pretend to be residents. I didn’t want to give away that you were in communication with the Clan.”

  A small alarm rang in Taggart’s mind. If Dark Ryder was his usual contact, and if the 20s and Houle knew where the Clan was through this Empire, then could they already know that he and the Clan were in touch. He’d have to be very careful never to tip them off or suggest that it was more than a matter of simply receiving orders from the Mountain. “Of course, Lieutenant. Well done. But why would this Empire send envoys to the Clan? My understanding is that they’re actually a small group in that region. Why would they not send envoys to the bigger groups?”