by J. M. Preiss
"Two months," Jacob said. "I get a week off in two months after the first phase is complete. Then I move on to phase two, and I will not be able to contact anybody for six months."
"Six whole months," Lisa trailed off.
"Time's up, Cadet. Finish it up," said the drill sergeant.
"Yes, sir." Jacob turned back to Lisa. "I love you, Lisa. I'll try to remember to call whenever I get the chance."
"You better," she said. "I love you, too."
The com unit winked off as she terminated the connection.
"PT time," said the drill sergeant.
"Yes, sir," Jacob said as he stood up and trotted out of the barracks.
Chapter XXVII
Jacob woke up from his dream to a dimly lit barracks. For a moment, he thought he was back in his training days, but then he looked over and saw Hector sprawled out on the bunk next to him, snoring.
So much for that, he thought.
Sitting up, he turned and put his feet on the floor. He quickly got dressed and walked over to the door. When he opened it, he saw that there was a militiaman standing outside.
"Can I help you?" the man asked.
"Uh yeah," said Jacob. "Is there a fitness center on site?"
"Follow me," the man said.
They walked down the corridor and followed a fairly simple path to a set of double doors at the end of a large corridor.
"Right inside," the man said. He turned and took up position against the wall.
"Thanks," said Jacob as he went inside.
It wasn't much of a fitness center, but it would have to do, thought Jacob.
Along one of the walls, there was a set of treadmills. The other wall had free weights while the center of the room had various benches to aid in weight training. The far wall had a set of stationary cycles while the wall the door was on was kept clear of any equipment. The room was a drab gray except for the floor, which was a subdued blue. The floor seemed to be made of a material that gave a little when you put pressure on it.
Jacob walked over to one of the treadmills and shucked off the borrowed clothes from the shop. Stretching in just his suit, he looked over the treadmill to see how it worked.
It was a standard treadmill that seemed simple enough. The controls allowed for an automatic pace that detected heart rate and adjusted to keep a person in the optimal zone, an interval mode that could be set to allow for different speeds at different durations, and a manual mode that indefinitely kept the pace that you set. Jacob chose the manual mode and stepped onto the treadmill.
Starting out at a simple walk, he slowly ramped up into a light jog. As time passed, he eventually brought it on up to a running pace.
Mason wandered into the fitness center and laughed. "Of course you'd be on the treadmill," he said.
Jacob slowed it down to a jog and looked over at Mason. "Where else would I be?" he asked easily. He was only barely sweating.
Mason shrugged and headed over to the weights and picked out a set of relatively light weights for him. He ran through a set of exercises to warm up then set about working his way up to heavier weights.
Jacob had resumed his running pace.
"You know," Mason said between grunts as he lifted heavy weights. "We don't even need to be doing this right now."
Jacob laughed and slowed down to a jog again. He wiped a bit of sweat off of his face. "We don't, but I always liked working out in the morning to get ready for the day."
Mason harrumphed as he set down his weights. "With any luck, this is the hardest we're going to have to work all day."
"You know that isn't the case," Jacob said as he sped back up to a run again. The counter on the treadmill read four miles.
"I can always dream, can't I? Besides, just how bad can a facility that hasn't been kept up for the past fifty years actually be?" Mason asked as he walked over to stand beside Jacob's treadmill.
"Dangerous," Jacob said. "Automated defenses were built to last with a minimal of maintenance, and there's no telling what kind of defenses there are."
"Well, with any luck, there won't be any power to the facility."
"You think we have that kind of luck?" Jacob asked.
"Point taken. So what's the plan going to be?" Mason stretched.
Jacob slowed back down to a jog after a few minutes of silence. The counter read five miles. Wiping sweat off of his face, he slowed all the way down to a walk.
"They didn't say much about the facility. They only said that nobody came back from the place."
"Ominous," said Mason.
"Walk in the park," said Jacob. "I'm used to stuff like that."
Mason let out a laugh. "I've already been on one of those and didn't even know it, kid. I even bought two pieces of the farm as souvenirs. I'm not planning on doing that again."
"Saying you don't want to go?" Jacob asked as he stepped off the treadmill and started stretching.
"That's not what I said. I'm just making it clear that I'm not looking for any real estate deals this time," Mason explained.
"Can't argue with that," Jacob said as he stood up all the way and rolled his shoulders. "Breakfast?"
"Sounds good to me," said Mason.
They both grabbed their clothes and walked out of the fitness center.
Chapter XXVIII
Breakfast was simple, but it was also a specialty too. Eggs and bacon were cooked up. Real eggs and bacon. Jacob had to remind himself where he was. Mason ate another biscuit, and then pointed at Jacob with it.
"You know," he said. "I could get used to this. They say there isn't a difference between the mass produced stuff and the real stuff, but I tell you, I can taste the difference."
Jacob shook his head and ate another piece of bacon. "You're fooling yourself."
"What difference?" asked Hector as he leaned back from finishing his breakfast.
Mason took another bite of his biscuit. "The food isn't real in our time," he said while still chewing.
"You're kidding."
"He's not, but he also isn't telling the whole truth," Jacob said. "The majority of our food is mass produced now in a factory. There's no longer a requirement to grow anything. There's virtually no difference between the manufactured product and the real thing."
"Lies," Mason said under his breath.
"Real food, as Mason calls it, still exists of course, but it's a luxury item now," Jacob explained.
Hector scratched his head. "That's weird."
Jacob chuckled. "You know what's weird to us? You not living in Cago. That's weird."
Hector was puzzled. "Why is that weird?"
"In our time, practically everyone lives in the cities. There is no reason to live anywhere else because the cities provide everything we need." Jacob put down his fork and started talking with his hands. "Look at it like this; all of the food, power, and housing is now in a city. Why would you want to live elsewhere?"
Hector screwed up his mouth as he pondered the question. "Well," he began, "to live and have land around you? To be in the wilderness?"
Jacob nodded. "People do that, but it's a minority because it's relatively expensive. All of our technology is linked to the fusion reactors that are the hearts of the cities. Without them, we would be unable to live in such high population density settlements."
"So these things you call reactors are the lifeblood of your society," Hector slowly said.
"That's right. They give us power. Repose relied on power cell shipments from Cago. Cago is bound to have a reactor that is up and running at least partially. Why they don't have a working food production facility, I don't know." Jacob looked at Mason gorge himself on the breakfast spread.
Mason leaned back shortly after finishing his meal. "It is a very interesting question. There should be no fathomable reason for you to be living out here away from Cago."
"Hopefully there will be answers at this facility that we are going to visit," Jacob said. "If there isn't," he let the sentence trail off.
> "I know what you mean," Mason said. "Either way, I guess we better get used to living here in Hedington. I have a feeling that this is going to be home for quite some time to come."
"Why do you say that?" Hector asked.
"We don't have a way home, Hector," Jacob answered. "Getting here was a one-way trip. Originally the plan was for us to go back in time and build a new facility to allow us to get home, but the plans have changed quite a bit."
Mason stood up. "That's enough chit chat for me. I'm ready to go take a look at that facility."
"Agreed," Jacob said as he stood. "Hector, you can either come with us or stay here. I know what will be safer. Last chance to choose."
Hector stood up. "I want to know what the Elders have been hiding. I'm coming with you."
Mason and Jacob nodded.
"Glad to hear it," Mason said. "Three men is always better than two."
Jacob walked over to the escort. "Can you take us to the armory? We need to get our stuff as well as get outfitted for going to the facility."
The escort looked at Jacob and squinted. "You're crazier than you look," he said. "That facility is a death trap, but it's your funeral. Sure, follow me."
The escort led the way out of the mess hall and to the armory.
It took them only a few minutes of walking through the maze of corridors to reach the armory. It was a very simple room with lockers and racks full of equipment. When they entered the room, the blonde that had questioned Jacob was standing there waiting for them. She had on a gray set of fatigues and battle armor.
"I'm going with you," she said.
Jacob looked her up and down. "Looks that way, but we don't even know your name."
She blushed. "Lisa."
Jacob was caught off guard and blinked a few times as he felt a pang of emotion.
Mason filled the silence. "You had any training? I know that Hector hasn't, but he is determined to see this through. I don't need another person that is wet behind the ears still on this mission."
Lisa narrowed her eyes. "I've had all of the basic training as well as advanced tactics and marksmanship."
"Oh yeah?" Mason crossed his arms. "What weapons?"
"Well, uh," she stuttered. "The MarCar38." She grabbed one of the kinetic rifles behind her, cycled the bolt, locked it open, and held it up for inspection.
"So you know how to use a pop gun," Mason mused. "How about a real rifle?"
Lisa's face was getting red. "This is a real rifle."
Mason grabbed his pack and pulled out his rifle. Lisa stared at it, unsure of what it was. He hit the deploy button, and it sprang to life. Lisa stepped back a step as it unfurled itself into Mason's waiting hands.
"No," he said. "This is a real rifle." He held it up for her to inspect.
"The M-135 Automatic Laser Rifle. We just call it the auto-rifle or laser rifle." Hitting another button, the hidden optics package rose into position. "Capable of extreme magnification, you can hit any target at up to two hundred meters. Able to fire in two modes, single fire or pulse mode, the auto-rifle has enough of a charge for one hundred shots. The two drawbacks are that it is only effective up to two hundred meters due to atmospheric disturbance, and pulse mode sucks the battery dry in a matter of seconds."
Lisa blinked a few times as she stared at the rifle. "So that's what those things look like."
Jacob finally found his voice. "You have auto-rifles?"
Lisa nodded. "Yes, we do, but we were told to never use them. We couldn't afford the power expenditure for one. Another was that we have been doing our best not to rely on the technology of the Elders."
She walked over to a locked cabinet, pulled out a key, and unlocked it. Inside was a stack of auto-rifles.
Jacob whistled. "That's a lot of firepower right there. Got anything heavier?"
Lisa thought for a moment and pulled on her lower lip. "You know; I recall something about a device that we had no idea what it did. We thought it could have been a weapon, but we didn't want to touch it for fear of it causing massive damage." She walked to another locked cabinet and unlocked it. When she swung open the doors, Mason and Jacob were speechless.
Hector stared at the strange object. "I don't get it. Why is that kept in one of those cabinets?"
Lisa shrugged. "We don't know for sure, but it was kept with those - auto-rifles, right? - so we just assumed it was a weapon of some sort."
Jacob looked at Mason who nodded, and Jacob stepped forward. "May I?"
Lisa nodded. "Be my guest."
Jacob bent over and grabbed the object. It was a fat, long cylinder with a strap, and it was connected to a heavy looking backpack. Putting on the backpack first, Jacob then put the strap over his right arm. He looked over the cylinder for a bit, found the handgrip that was barely visible, and depressed a button.
The backpack lit up, and the cylinder sprang into motion. The handgrip popped up into a vertical position and a trigger unlatched itself from the front of it. A second handgrip, this one horizontal, slid out from the side of the cylinder. Further down, vents were sliding open and the front section was spinning as it moved forward. With a final motion, a heat exchanger appeared, and there was a clicking sound as the aperture snapped open.
Lisa was dumbfounded. "So it is a weapon!" she exclaimed.
Jacob nodded as he tested the heft of it. "It is. It's an extremely dangerous weapon at that. How's the pack look, Mason?"
Mason walked over to Jacob as he turned around and started inspecting the backpack.
"This is the PC-35 Pulse Cannon. If you've ever wondered what heavy weaponry looks like, you're looking at it." Jacob shifted the weight of the backpack while Mason kept looking at it and flipping switches, running self-diagnostics.
"And what does a heavy weapon do, exactly?" Lisa asked.
Hector nodded his agreement with the question.
"Well," Jacob started. "I've never actually been asked that question. You see," he tried beginning again, "a heavy weapon is meant to take down hardened targets. Armored vehicles, weapon emplacements, sealed armored doors; this thing will crack through them. There is only one infantry weapon that is more powerful, and you never want to see that in action."
"Trust me," said Mason. "I've seen one in the hands of the enemy. It isn't pretty any way you look at it."
"So how does this PC-35 work?" Lisa asked.
"It's similar to the auto-rifle. It isn't as accurate because it's a weapon not meant to be aimed so much as pointed in the general direction of the target," Jacob explained. "Once again, it has two firing modes, single fire and pulse. Unlike the auto-rifle though, single fire uses the same amount of energy as pulse fire. To counter this drawback, it has a power supply that you must take with you. If it didn't, you would have to switch out power cells every time you fired. While it can be functioned in such a way, it's not recommended."
Mason clapped Jacob on the shoulder, and Jacob deactivated the pulse cannon. It folded back up into its deactivated state, and he set it back on the ground.
"All the diagnostics show green," Mason said to Jacob. "Only issue is that it doesn't have any fuel."
"What's it need fuel for?" Hector asked. "And what is fuel?"
"Fuel is something that you extract power from by consuming it. Power cells are charged by this process. A simple way to look at it is a fire. The wood is the fuel, and the power that is created is bled away as light and heat," Jacob said.
"Ah," was all that Hector said.
"Why does that need fuel then?" asked Lisa.
"The power pack is a micro-reactor," Mason said. "It uses a power cell to prime the reactor, and then it fires it up. This avoids having to switch out power cells after each shot. As long as you have fuel, you can keep on shooting."
"You can understand then why this is such a fearsome weapon." Jacob looked back at the pulse cannon. "There is another drawback though. It lets off a lot of heat when it's being used. If the user isn't careful, he can start to slag the barrel, o
r worse yet, he can fry the optics."
"Optics?" Lisa looked puzzled.
"Don't really have time to go into depth," Jacob said, "but the thing is a laser device. Lasers are, well very simply, very intensely focused beams of light. I know that Doctor Jenkins would flog me for that, but the semantics and accuracy don't matter right now," Jacob said as he waved his hand.
"The optics are what focus and attenuate the laser beam. Look at it like the rifling in one of your guns."
Lisa nodded as realization hit her. "I think I understand now." She went and picked up an auto-rifle. "So what's the plan?"
"Well, first off we try and get some fuel for the pulse cannon. I don't bet you have any hydrogen laying around, do you?" Jacob asked.
"Hydro-what?" Lisa looked puzzle.
"Yeah, didn't think so." Jacob turned to Mason. "Think it is in good enough shape to run through the whole process."
Mason shook his head. "The lights showed green, but this thing is old. It could just lock up and cease to function completely."
"Hector," Jacob said. "Go with the escort and get some water."
Hector shrugged and left with the escort.
"What's water going to do?" Lisa looked even more puzzled.
"Too much to explain, but the water will get us fuel." Jacob took Lisa's auto-rifle and did an inspection on it. "At least, it will give us fuel if it still works correctly," he added.
"And if it doesn't work?"
"Mason doesn't get a toy to play with."
Mason looked sad at the thought of the pulse cannon breaking.
When Hector returned, they poured the water into a reservoir in the power pack. Jacob crossed his fingers, powered up the pack, and entered a command to start the refining process.
"This will probably drain the cell, so we're going to need our extra cells," Jacob said as he pointed to their backpacks.
Hector grabbed the pack with the cells and fished one out.
"What now?" Lisa was staring intently at the power pack as it worked.
"We wait for it to finish this process and prepare ourselves for the worst case scenario," Mason explain. He absentmindedly rubbed his left arm.