This Is the End: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (7 Book Collection)

by Craig DiLouie

  The assemblage took in its collective breath and released it in one long sigh.

  “California.” Mulligan’s voice still sounded flat, even over the din of the restive group. “As in, the Beach Boys’ California?”

  “That’s the only one I know of,” Jeremy said.

  Mulligan snorted and leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms over his barrel chest.

  “And this is why we’re here,” Benchley said, looking around the room. He made eye contact with everyone. “This installation has just gone through an extremely powerful event, one that rivals the lethality of the Sixty Minute War. Actually, it casts even that circumstance in deep shadow. As you’ve just heard from Mister Andrews, Harmony Base is now faced with the possibility that the earthquake might very well be a terminal event.” He paused to let that sink in for a moment. “We’ve already lost people. We may lose more in the coming hours. And if we don’t act quickly, we might lose everything inside of two weeks.”

  “You need us to go out and secure replacements,” Andrews said suddenly.

  Benchley turned to him and nodded. “Correct, Captain. As it stands, SCEVs Four and Five are the only rigs in the rig prep area. The lift to the SCEV bay is currently out of commission, and best estimates are that it will take more than a day to repair. So those two vehicles are going out into the field to secure replacement supports.” He pressed a button on a desktop controller, and the wall display changed to show a route from Harmony’s position in western Kansas to San Jose, California. “I realize that Four has just come back in from the field and was in the beginning stages of post-mission teardown. Obviously, the rig will be reassembled after the more pressing maintenance items are tended to. Once completed, both vehicles will depart as soon as possible for California. Andrews, you’ll serve as mission commander. Captain Laird will serve as mission deputy commander. Eklund and Jordello will remain rig XOs. You will be accompanied by Engineer Spencer, Mission Specialist Choi, and Missus Andrews here, who is familiar with the supports.” Benchley nodded toward Rachel, sitting at the far end of the table next to Jeremy.

  Andrews blinked. “Uh, sir, she isn’t qualified for field work, and we won’t have time to train her up—”

  Benchley held up one hand, cutting him off. “I understand your dilemma, Captain, but I want someone on hand who can not only identify the supports, but also identify which ones are good and which ones are bad. Bringing back defective parts isn’t an option. We won’t have another chance at a do-over.” The general paused. “I’m also adding Command Sergeant Major Mulligan to the mission roster.”

  Mulligan’s eyes widened. “General, I’m an instructor—”

  “—who is fully current in SCEV operations, and in light of your Special Forces background, I feel it’s prudent you go.” Benchley faced Mulligan directly. “Any questions on that, Sergeant Major?”

  Mulligan glared at Benchley for a long moment, then slowly shook his head. “Good to go here, General.”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Kelly Jordello, Laird’s executive officer, spoke up. She was short and curvy, with long blond hair she kept tied back from her face. A vivacious sort, she was full of energy and had been something of a tomboy in her youth, a quality that had attracted Andrews to her in their teen years. He’d tried to woo her, but it had all been for naught. Kelly’s preference was for other women, and while such a revelation was hardly enough to raise even an eyebrow in the base’s small society, Andrews had been heartbroken for a month when she finally rebuffed him. But as they grew older, they developed a casual, low-maintenance friendship that made up for their embarrassing past.

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  “You’ve named only eight crewmembers. You are assigning more faces for the spaces, right?”

  “Negative on that. Should one vehicle become disabled, then the second rig can take on the remaining crew without overloading its life support systems. I know half-crews will increase everyone’s workload, but it’s unavoidable. Colonel Walters will provide the required electronic navigation updates for both rigs, and he has already ordered every available vehicle engineer and crew chief to the prep area to assist with rig stand-up and certification. Andrews, you and Laird will be responsible for ensuring all tier one safety checks are completed, but I encourage you to skip the nonessentials in order to take to the field as quickly as possible. Understood?”

  Andrews looked at Laird, and the other commander nodded his assent. “Roger that, sir. We’ll try and streamline things as much as we can.”

  Benchley nodded. “I appreciate that. I understand this is a sudden thing to drop on you. Normally we spend months planning each jump into the field, but I’m sure you understand we have no choice here. I wish I could provide you with more information, but we have nothing further. Get your affairs in order—you’ll be leaving as soon as possible. Colonel Walters will be your conduit to the command group for any last minute issues. I know everyone has a great deal of work to do, so if there’s nothing else, you’re all dismissed to tend to your tasks.”

  The assemblage stirred to life. Andrews stepped out of the conference room and waited in the corridor. Leona followed him, and he turned to her.

  “You mind heading up to the prep bay and checking in with Spencer? Make sure he knows what’s going on, and that he has everything he needs. Remember, we had a twitchy differential. Let’s get that replaced and tested. As soon as the rig is put back together, start a full component test. I want even the line replaceable units bench-tested. All right?”

  “Got it,” Leona said. “Anything else?”

  Andrews looked past her shoulder as Rachel emerged from the conference room. Her uniform was covered in grime; clearly, she’d been busy on some sort of repair before she’d been pulled into the conference. Leona followed his gaze, then looked back at him.

  “I’ll see you later,” she said, and headed down the corridor.

  Andrews looked at Rachel and, from her expression, he could see she knew he wasn’t happy that she’d been assigned to the mission.

  “So … now I get to see you at work, huh?” She smiled sheepishly.

  “Don’t be so damn sure,” he said. “There’s got to be someone else who can be assigned to this. You can’t be the only person who can tell us not to bring back a rusty support.”

  “There’s more to it than that, and Jeremy is the one who selected me. Listen, I’m not exactly thrilled to leave right now. There’s a lot that has to be done, and going on a road trip through post-apocalyptic America was always pretty low on my to-do list.”

  Jeremy stepped out of the conference room, staring at his data tablet with a frown. He looked up when Andrews grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the exit. His frown deepened.

  “Save it, Mike. I know what you’re going to say. Rachel’s the best asset to validate—”

  “Dad, she doesn’t know jack about SCEV ops, and she’s terrified of them. You know that. Asking her to saddle up with the rest of us is majorly away from goodness.”

  Jeremy sighed, and he glared at Andrews angrily. “Stop bitching about it. This is how it’s going to be played, Mike. I’m sorry if you find this personally inconvenient, but we don’t exactly have a lot of choices here. Benchley asked for the best person available to ensure that good replacements are brought back, and that person just happens to be Rachel.” He looked at her. “You’re good with this?”

  “Mostly,” she said. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy looked back at Andrews. “Any further questions, Captain?”

  Andrews sighed. “No, sir.”

  Jeremy relaxed a little bit, and he squeezed his son’s shoulder. “I know it’s asking a lot of you, and I know that adding Rachel to the mix is going to make it tough for both of you personally. But there’s no choice in the matter, so you might want to try and make it as easy as possible by making sure she gets spooled up on the broad strokes of SCEV operations. All right?”

  “Yes, si
r,” Andrews said. There was no use fighting it. His father was right, and the stakes were high. Better to just soldier on and get it done.

  “Good,” Jeremy said. His tablet pinged, and he had another crisis to tend to.

  ***

  In the conference room, Benchley took a moment to compose himself before the next session started. He still had a slew of damage reports to go through, and the road ahead looked bleak and desultory. He noticed Mulligan beside him at the table, staring at him with his dark gaze. “Is there something I can do for you, Sergeant Major?” Benchley asked.

  “Field duty, sir? Me?”

  “You’ll be needed, Mulligan.”

  “How so? I haven’t been in the field for over ten years, sir. I’m an old geezer. And Rachel Andrews happens to hate my guts for—”

  “And whose fault is that?” Benchley asked, irritation plain in his voice. He took a moment to dial it back a bit before continuing. “Scott, I’m sorry. I understand the deployment will be rough, but I want your experience on tap. We don’t know what these people might run into out there. Your background and your skill set might be a very welcome addition, should things go even further into the shitter.”

  Mulligan snorted derisively, and Benchley found he couldn’t contain his irritation any longer. He fixed Mulligan with an icy stare.

  “As you still wear the uniform of the United States Army, you should be able to recognize an order when you hear one, Sergeant Major. Am I clear on that?”

  “Hooah,” Mulligan said. “With your permission, sir, I guess I ought to get to it.”

  “An excellent idea.”

  6

  The vehicle prep area was a beehive of activity as a veritable army of maintainers, engineers, and SCEV crews crawled all over the two rigs. Andrews was in the thick of it himself, overseeing the reseating of SCEV Four’s Mission Equipment Pod on the rig’s broad back. Over the past nine hours, all the systems in the pod had been tested and certified as good to go; those that had failed were serviced until they were in the green. Even the MEP’s complement of six Hellfire missiles had been replaced, and the millimeter wave seeker heads on each had been retuned to ensure perfect accuracy. That was a first; Andrews couldn’t recall a time when he had seen every missile replaced before a mission. Sure, he’d seen one or two swapped out after failing a test, but the entire complement? Never.

  “Why is patience a virtue?” Spencer shouted over the din of activity as he slid out from beneath the rig with another technician. Their coveralls were stained with oil and grime. “Why can’t ‘hurry the fuck up’ be a virtue?”

  “You can’t push this stuff,” the other maintainer said. “It’s got to go slow—you know that.”

  “Slow is a comparative term.”

  “Hey, Spence!” Andrews barked as the MEP was locked down on SCEV Four’s back. “What’s the problem?”

  Spencer looked tired but alert. He only had eyes for the rig, and he turned and scoured his high-tech baby for any defects related to the positioning of the MEP.

  A dedicated man, Andrews thought.

  “No problem, Captain. We swapped out the number one engine and the particle separator, along with the forward differential, which we’d already talked about. I was just busting McCready’s balls. He moves like an old lady when it comes time to turning a wrench.”

  McCready frowned. “Dude, that’s so not true.”

  Andrews saw that McCready was just about run out from working God knew how many hours straight, and Spencer’s riding him wasn’t helping. He slapped Spencer’s arm with the back of his hand. “Hey, why don’t you knock off for some chow. I don’t want you guys getting so damned tired that you’re seeing double and making phantom adjustments.”

  “Yeah, yeah, just let me check the pod. Once that gets squared away, we’ve got the green light as far as I’m concerned. Everything else after that just involves bold type safety checks.” As he spoke, he walked away from Andrews. He pulled an LED flashlight from inside his grimy uniform and shined it up at where the MEP joined the SCEV. He ran the beam all along the join, and Andrews knew he was looking for irregular gapping, something a junior technician could do.

  “Spence, let someone else do that,” Andrews said. “We’ve got five other SCEV crew chiefs here. They can take care of the MEP.”

  “My rig, my duty.”

  “Spencer, this isn’t a gentle suggestion,” Andrews said. “Knock off for a meal. If you drive yourself into the ground now, you’ll be no good to me out in the field.”

  “Just a second, sir.” Spencer hadn’t paused in his inspection of the SCEV for one second, and he gave no indication he was going to stop for something as pedestrian as a meal. McCready looked from Spencer to Andrews and back again.

  Andrews took four quick steps and seized hold of Spencer’s arm, forcing him to stop and look at him. Spencer’s brow furrowed in annoyance.

  “Hey, Captain, if you want this tub ready to leave on schedule then—”

  “Let. Someone. Else. Do. This. You’ve been going at this for hours straight. I want you to take a break. Don’t fucking argue with me, Spencer, just do it.”

  Spencer blinked. Andrews had never spoken to him like that before. He’d never had to. It shocked him as much as it did Spencer, but that was what it took to get through. Spencer nodded slowly.

  “Okay. Okay, if you feel that strongly about it. No problem,” the burly crew chief finally said.

  “Glad you see it my way. Don’t come back for at least twenty minutes.”

  “Sheesh. Okay, Dad.” With that, Spencer walked off.

  “What about me, sir?” McCready asked.

  Andrews looked at him. “What do you do, again? Propulsion systems, right?”

  “Roger that,” McCready said. “Transmissions, differentials, all that stuff.”

  Andrews shrugged. “You don’t work for me, so if you’re done, you’re done. Check with your boss.”

  McCready put his hands in his pockets and walked away. Andrews turned and looked up at the MEP that straddled his vehicle. He certainly had the chops to check for defective seals himself, so he grabbed a step ladder and went to work.

  ***

  The hours passed slowly and, before he knew it, Andrews had spent twenty of them in the prep area, going over SCEV Four and, when time permitted, SCEV Five. Laird’s rig was in tip-top shape; it had undergone the full evaluations before SCEV Four had returned and was within days of jumping out. Little needed to be done except stock it with consumables, then it would be ready for the field.

  “You look like hell,” Laird said at one point. “You should knock off for a while, man.”

  “Can’t,” Andrews said. He felt exactly how Laird said he looked. His eyes were scratchy, and they burned as if they were orbs of flame. He felt at once jittery and bone-weary, and he was having trouble focusing. It wasn’t that he wasn’t capable of working long hours—in the field, everyone did. But the tasks he had to conduct required concentration and severe attention to detail, and performing such tasks back-to-back for hours only accelerated his exhaustion. He’d already cut his crew loose and instructed them to get some rest. Even Spencer had sacked out for a bit, albeit in one of the narrow bunks in the back of SCEV Four.

  “Bullshit,” Laird said. “I watched you dismiss your entire crew, man. You need to get some shut-eye yourself, otherwise you’re going to be one messed-up cat when it comes time to jump out.”

  Andrews rubbed his eyes. He knew Laird was right. Besides, he had about a gigabyte of regulations corroborating exactly that in his tablet. But he just couldn’t bring himself to knock off. SCEV Four was just in from the field, where it had been ridden hard, and now it was being sent back out before it had even entered the proper maintenance phase inspection. Andrews wasn’t sure he could sleep even if he did step out of the prep area.

  He started to respond when movement in the cockpit of SCEV Four caught his attention. He rubbed his eyes again, then looked up at the thick viewports. S
omeone was sitting in the rig’s pilot seat.

  “That would be Mulligan,” Laird said, following Andrews’s gaze. “Your newest, bestest pal.”

  Andrews grunted. He hadn’t wanted Mulligan on the mission any more than he wanted Rachel. He was saddled with both of them, despite the fact that they would be at each other’s throats the entire time. To help alleviate this, Andrews and Laird had agreed that Rachel would crew on SCEV Five, while Mulligan crewed on Four. They would also work off-shift from each other; Mulligan would get the first shift, while Rachel would get the third. That would help prevent them from even hearing each other over the radios. Andrews thought it was all very childish, but he knew why Rachel felt the way she did, and there was no reasoning with her. Her wounds were years old, but the scar tissue was still extremely sensitive. Andrews didn’t need her picking at it any more than she already did.

  “What’s he doing up there?” Andrews asked.

  “Going over startup and shutdown procedures. It’s been a while for him, you know.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Suddenly remembering something, Andrews turned to Laird. “Hey, Engineering was supposed to bring up two motorized dollies, one for each rig. We need them to—”

  “Move the core supports, I know. And yes, both arrived, and one is in the aft storage compartment of each rig.” Laird nudged him in the ribs. “Dude, go take a nap, would you? I’ve got the duty on making sure your rig is prepped and ready to go for the next few hours, all right?”

  Andrews looked around the prep area. Despite the hour, it was still humming, and SCEV Four was receiving most of the attention. Panels had been pulled open, and the equipment that lay behind them was undergoing thorough examination. Maintenance crews walked all over the top of the rig, checking antennae, infrared systems, lights, and high-frequency comms—anything they could get at.

  He focused his attention on the figure sitting in the cockpit of his rig, and put his hands on his hips. He sighed, and Laird sighed as well.