by Ken Lozito
Connor smiled and pretended to get the chills. “You’re one cool customer, Winters. I bet not much shakes that resolve of yours.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Winters said.
“Yes, what? You’re one cool customer? Or nothing shakes your resolve?”
“Both, sir,” Winters said.
Connor grinned and gave Diaz an approving nod. “Very frosty. In fact, that’s your new name. In fact, Frost, I want you to drop and give me fifty pushups.”
Frost dropped down and immediately started counting off her pushups. Connor couldn’t help but be impressed. He’d just thrown them out of a perfectly good cargo ship and they were out in the middle of nowhere, yet Winters, now Frost, followed instructions to the letter. She was a keeper for sure.
Connor glanced at Diaz. “I guess engineers are predisposed to work well under pressure.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Winters said while doing her pushups.
“Where are my hunters?” Connor said.
He glanced down the line.
“Over here, sir,” a woman said.
Connor walked over to her and glanced at the man next to her. “Donna Marten?”
“Yes, sir,” Marten said.
Donna Marten was lean and in great shape. Connor was sure he could give her two hundred pushups and she’d hardly break a sweat.
Connor glanced at the man. “And you’re Nate Poe?”
The man had long straight black hair tied back from his face and brown skin. “Yes, sir.”
Both hunters were tall—easily six feet.
“First, it’s convenient that you guys chose to stand together. Otherwise, I’d have to do this whole song and dance again. Don’t you agree?” Connor asked.
Poe frowned. “I guess so, sir.”
Connor looked at Marten. “What about you?”
“No, sir,” Marten said.
Connor stepped back. “Did the rest of you hear that? Recruit Donna Marten doesn’t agree that it was a good idea for her and her fellow hunter to stand together in the line.”
“She’s got some nerve, sir,” Diaz said.
“Nerve indeed. Got ourselves a regular Boone right here. In fact, Marten, that’s going to be your new name. Boone,” Connor said. “It just so happens that Recruit Boone is absolutely right. It’s a terrible idea for my specialists to be so close to one another. Does anyone besides Boone know why?”
“Sir,” said a huge man from further down the line.
“Randle, Wayne, go ahead and tell us why,” Connor said.
“Because if we’re attacked, we run the risk of two people with the same skill sets being lost,” Randle said.
Connor nodded. “That’s exactly right, Randle. Outstanding. From now on, when we’re outside of the camp, you are to stagger yourselves from anyone who has the same specialty as you. We have comlinks, and you can always speak that way. Is that understood?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” the recruits replied in unison.
Connor looked back at Randle. “I recognize you from Field Operations.”
Randle nodded. “Sir, I was on patrol the day of the berwolf attack, sir.”
“That’s right. You’re one of my weapons specialists. Where is my other weapons specialist?” Connor asked.
“Over here, sir,” a man said from further down the line.
“Compton, Neal. Good job, the both of you,” Connor said.
“Thank you, sir,” they both said.
“It could have been luck, but I’m sure the fact that you both were infantrymen back home had something to do with it,” Connor said and walked to the middle of the line. “We’ll have to continue the introductions a little bit later. As you can see, we’re not at a research base. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, roughly fifty kilometers from the compound,” he said and looked down the line for his next victim.
“Blake, Allison,” Connor said. “What’s our situation?”
Blake’s brows drew upward and her hazel eyes widened. “I’m not sure, sir,” she said softly.
Diaz shook his head. “Recruit! Your commanding officer asked you a question. You will speak loudly and clearly. Now!”
“I’m not sure, sir,” Allison said much louder this time.
“Why not?” Connor asked.
Blake started to look at the recruits on either side of her but caught herself. “I’m not sure what you’re asking me, sir.”
“It’s a simple question. What’s our situation?” Connor asked.
Blake’s chin crumpled and she took shallow breaths.
“Calm down,” Connor said. “You’re one of my medics, right? Take the same skills you’d use to assess a patient and apply them to us right now.”
Blake swallowed hard and she glanced around. “We’re exposed out here and it will be dark soon.”
Connor smiled. “Excellent. So what do you think we should do?”
“Set up camp, sir?”
“Outstanding,” Connor said. “You heard Babyface. We need to set up camp. In that first storage crate, you’ll find fencing to set up a perimeter. Split up into two teams and get it set up first.”
“Sir, where are we going to sleep tonight?” Compton asked.
Connor’s gaze narrowed. “Who said anything about sleeping?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Compton said.
“Bones and Frost, there’s a power generator in one of these crates. Find it and check with Diaz about where to set it up. Then help with the fence,” Connor said.
“Dismissed,” Diaz shouted. “Time to get to work, people.”
Randle walked over to Connor. “Sir, shouldn’t some of us be armed in case there are predators around? Some of them start coming out during this time, sir.”
“Listen up,” Connor said, and the recruits stopped what they were doing. “Sergeant Diaz and I are the only ones cleared for weapons, so the more time we have to spend answering your pitiful questions, the less time we have to keep watch for any predators in the area, which means one of you might become dinner. Now get that fence up.”
Randle snapped a salute and ran over to the large container. Connor watched as the recruits started offloading the crate.
“Recruits, if that fence isn’t set up within three hours, I’ll make sure you’ll be sleeping in a tent on the other side,” Connor said.
The recruits quickened their pace. Connor knew there weren’t any predators in the area, but he wanted to deploy the new drones Noah had given them. He retrieved his tablet computer from his pack and brought up the manifest, found the crate that contained specialized equipment, and entered the security code. There was a snap-hiss sound as the crate opened. Squished inside, looking uncomfortable as hell, was Sean Quinn.
Chapter Sixteen
Connor’s mouth hung open. Of all the things he’d expected to encounter, a stowaway in a cargo crate wasn’t among them.
“Get out of there,” Connor said.
Sean climbed out of the crate and winced. His hand went to his side.
“How did you get inside the crate? When did you even have time? I just saw you a little while ago on base,” Connor said.
Sean tried to stand up straight and winced again. “After I left your office, I bumped into Noah. He told me he was just coming from the airfield and that you were leaving to begin training the new recruits. So . . . I went to the airfield and snuck aboard.”
Connor regarded him for a moment and pushed away his irritation at the utter lack of security at the airfield. “Hard landing in that crate, wasn’t it?” he said.
“I didn’t know they were going to be dropped out of the ship—” Sean began to say.
“You could have been killed. Those crates are designed to land without a chute. We put chutes on those with delicate equipment. It was dumb luck that you weren’t seriously hurt,” Connor said.
Sean pressed his side and winced. “I think I might be hurt a little bit.”
“And now this is my problem to deal with. I don’t want to explain to your
parents how their idiot son decided he’d stowed away in a crate because he’s having rebellion issues, but you’ve given me no choice,” Connor said.
“Please don’t!” Sean pleaded. “Don’t do it. I’ll do anything you tell me to. Just don’t send me back there.”
“What’s your problem? Why don’t you want to go back to the compound? You can do whatever the hell you want there and be someone else’s problem,” Connor said.
Sean looked away. “No, I can’t. I can’t do anything.”
Connor watched as Sean winced again, and this time his hand rubbed the side of his head.
“Sit down,” Connor ordered.
He stepped back and looked over to where the recruits were emptying a storage crate about forty meters from them. “Sergeant Diaz!” Connor shouted.
One of the recruits heard him and told Diaz. Diaz came around the storage crate.
“Send over Babyface. I need a medic,” Connor said.
He heard Diaz shout for the recruit to go to Connor, and Recruit Blake ran over. Her pretty face was a grim line of determination, but Connor could tell she was barely coping. She reached them and came to a halt, glanced at Sean sitting on the ground, and then remembered to stand at attention and salute Connor.
“Recruit Babyface, please put your skills as medic to good use and examine Recruit Bling here,” Connor said.
“Yes, sir,” Babyface replied.
She immediately squatted down and set about assessing Sean Quinn for injuries. Connor stepped around them and searched for the container of drones Noah had packed for them. There were three silver cases marked with the golden sunburst, and Connor pulled them out one at a time, setting them down a short distance from the others. He listened to Blake question Sean and check his injuries. Connor had his back to them, but he could hear everything that they were saying. Despite the shakeup of the circumstances and the fact that they were utterly exposed to New Earth’s vibrant ecosystem, the young medic went about her assessment with the practicality that only came from experience.
Connor heard footsteps approaching and turned around.
“Sir, Recruit Bling has some minor bruising of the ribs and a headache that was caused by the jolting he experienced while inside the storage crate, sir,” she said.
“Excellent. Return to the others and get the fence set up,” Connor ordered.
He looked at Sean, who was sitting on the ground but hastily got to his feet.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. We’ll have communications up in a little while. In the meantime, there’s no way I’m going to let an extra pair of hands go to waste, even ones as dainty as yours. From here on out, you’ll be called Bling. While you’re here, you will follow my orders without question. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Sean said and tried to keep the smile from his face.
“Now, go report to Sergeant Diaz. He’ll put you to work. Tell him I said to give you the dirtiest task he has. Now repeat my order,” Connor said.
“Report to Sergeant Diaz and tell him to give me the dirtiest task he has, sir.”
“Good. Now leave,” Connor said.
The kid ran off to join the others, and Connor put thoughts of him out of his mind. He had other things to worry about. Grabbing the first case, he used his implants to authenticate the lock, and it sprang open. The oval-shaped drones had the look of a decapitated head from a robot. Two optics in the front glowed when he activated the drone. There were also different sensors along the tubes on the side that gave it a more streamlined look, and the metallic compound the hull was made of was light and strong.
Connor checked the drone’s status and video-feed output using his implants. A sub window appeared on his internal heads-up display that showed anything he pointed the drone at while the drone’s target-awareness computer identified and classified anything that came into view. He set the dark gray drone on the ground and put it in patrol mode. The drone rose up into the air and sped off, hardly making any noise. He uploaded the transponder identification for Diaz’s PDA. Connor activated the rest of the drones from all the cases and broke them up into groups. Their patrols would send them into different vicinities outward from the camp. Connor connected to drone seven and set it to locate Diaz. He watched the video feed as the drone made a quick sweep of the camp and quickly identified Sergeant Juan Diaz. Connor acknowledged the recorded success and put the drone in patrol mode. Noah had assured him that the drones could identify the known predators and would alert Connor if anything should happen to be heading toward their camp. Once they set up their small operations center, the recruits would rotate through monitoring duty. He and Diaz would need to review the unknown detections to help the drones’ artificial intelligence learn what the misidentified creatures were. It was a pain but definitely worth the effort.
Connor set the empty cases to the side. The drones still had to prove themselves, so he set about doing a patrol of his own just to be sure no berwolfs or anything else were coming to investigate the camp while it was being built. A short while later Diaz caught up to him.
“Excuse me, sir,” Diaz said.
They’d agreed that they would maintain formal communications while the recruits were around them.
“Are you aware that we have an extra recruit in our midst, sir?” Diaz asked.
“I am,” Connor replied.
“You do realize he’s the governor’s son, sir?”
“I do,” Connor said and waved Diaz closer. “He stored himself in one of the crates. I had to do something with him.”
Diaz grinned. “I’ve got him digging a latrine—that is, of course, until we get the rest of the camp set up.”
Connor glanced over at the recruits who were working on building the perimeter fences. He and Diaz had given them the orders and were evaluating how well they could work together. Connor had trained soldiers before, and every task, large and small, was a test. The sooner these recruits learned that, the better.
“How do you think it’s going so far?” Connor asked.
“No one has died, sir,” Diaz said.
Connor made a face at the sergeant. Diaz grinned and went back over to the recruits, shouting that they’d better get a move on. Connor walked over to his two engineers, who were making excellent progress setting up the power generators.
“Bones, I need you to help out the others with the fence,” Connor said.
“Yes, sir,” Bones said. He returned his tools to the kit and ran off to help the others.
Elyse Winters, now known as Frost, continued working on the main generator. Frost hardly paid Connor any notice at all and just focused on what she was doing.
There was a loud slam as one of the fence sections hit the ground, and Diaz’s shouts could be heard echoing around them. Connor glanced over and saw that several recruits were now doing pushups.
“Sir, may I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead, Frost,” Connor said.
“Why did you pick such a remote location to train us, sir?” Frost asked.
“You were in the military before?” Connor asked.
“Yes, sir, same kind of job. Different location, sir.”
“Then you already know the answer to that question,” Connor said.
“Joe and I . . . uh, Bones and I have served before. We understand the discipline you’re trying to instill, but some of the others have no idea, sir,” Frost said.
“They’ll learn or they’ll go back to the compound,” Connor said.
“This is done, sir,” Frost said and gestured toward the power generator.
Connor thought it would have taken another half hour to put it together, but he looked it over and everything seemed to be in order. Frost engaged the generator’s startup sequence and it went through several self-diagnostics before returning the ready status.
“Good work,” Connor said.
“Thank you, sir. You wanted the best, sir,” Frost said.
She wasn’t lacking in co
nfidence. “That remains to be seen. Lay out the wiring for the fence and then rejoin the others,” Connor said.
Connor left his engineer and headed toward the others. The fully constructed fence sections were over twelve feet tall, but inside the crate they were folded over and only half that height. Most of the recruits carried the sections together except for Randle and Compton, who each took a section of their own. The progress they were making was painstakingly slow. At the rate they were going, the fence wouldn’t be complete until well after nightfall, which was unacceptable.
“I think we have ourselves a competition going on here,” Connor said. “Randle, you’re strong as a bull. In fact, that’s your name now. And Compton is like a bear.”
“A grizzly bear, sir,” Diaz said.
“Grizzly, I like that. Do you like it, Compton?” Connor asked.
“Yes, sir,” he answered.
“Well, see how many sections Bull and Grizzly can handle on their own. Let’s see how many they can lift up together. Any bets?” Connor asked.
“I say six sections, sir,” said Henry “Hot Rod” Deacon.
“Whatever it is, I know I can equal it, sir,” Bones said.
Connor laughed with the rest of them. “The gauntlet has been thrown. Show us what you can do.”
Bull went inside the large crate and came out with two sections of fencing. Each section was ten feet in length. He laid the sections on the ground, one atop the other. Grizzly continued stacking until they had eight sections in a neat pile. Each section weighed about fifty pounds. Neal “Grizzly” Compton and Wayne “Bull” Randle squatted down and easily lifted them up. They carried the fencing a hundred meters from the storage container toward the end of the fence that was already up. By the time they reached the end, both men were gasping and drenched in sweat. They set the sections down and hunched over with their hands on their knees, trying to catch their breath.
“Alright, Bones, you’re up. Eight sections,” Connor said.
“No problem, sir,” Bones said.
“This should be interesting,” Connor said and glanced over to see Boone and Nate beginning to offload a section of fencing. “Hold off on that a second. I want everyone to watch how Bones is going to pull this off.”