Echo of Tomorrow: Book One (Drake chronicles)

by Rob Buckman

  "You have a point there, and good reason to be pissed, so what can I say."

  "Not a God damn thing."

  "What aren’t you telling me Kat?” He asked softly.

  "My name is Katharina Moore to you ‘General’,” she hesitated a moment, but her emotions got the better of her and she spat it out. My fiancée was killed because of you, you asshole! She yelled. "We were to be married on his next rotation from the mid East, but he never came home, did he General?" She sneered.

  "I don't know the young man, so I can't say."

  "That's what I thought."

  "I will tell you this, no matter what you think of me, at this moment I am your best bet to survive in this world."

  "Like hell! I'd rather take my chances out there, anything would be better than staying around here. You’ll probably get all these people killed as well." It was a low blow, but not far from the truth to Scott’s way of thinking.

  "If you think slavery is better, go ahead, no one will stop you." He sighed, suddenly feeling his real age.

  "Slavery! What the hell are you talking about?" She looked at the other for conformation.

  "Women are virtually slaves in this society.” He could see the look of disbelief on her face before he even finished speaking.

  “They are owned. Property and subject to beating and other forms of discipline for disobedience on a whim of their husbands or parents, ask the mad Doctor, or the twelve year old girl down stairs if you think I'm lying.” He said it all in a soft sad voice. The last thing he expected was a ghost from the past to come through the door and haunt him. "And yes, you are right. I will probably get you and everyone else here killed before I’m through."

  "What’s that supposed to mean?” She snapped, not sure, if she should believe him about the slavery.

  "We have finally had an encounter of the third kind, but unlike the Steven Spielberg version, we held our hands out in friendship and got burned. Aliens are now taking young people and children off the planet at the rate of thirty thousand per trip."

  "So how is that our… or your problem?" He could see the impact of his words hadn’t registered yet.

  "It would seem, that the war you are so angry about was the last war, and I'm more sorry about that than all the people who died because of me."

  "Come again?"

  "After the Mid East War they got rid of all weapons, and I mean all. These people don't even know the word, let alone the concept. They have no means or ability to fight the aliens, let alone weapons."

  "You're putting us on, General?” Captain Price chipped in. Scott shook his head.

  "Doctor, would you take them down to the education center and turn them over to Corporal Reilly please."

  "Yes, General."

  "Thank you. When you people had spoken to Corporal Reilly you can pitch in and help with the move, or leave, as you see fit.” Scott said as a way of dismissal.

  Another thought came into his mind so he just turned away and walked over to the window and looked out. Ghosts of the past glided through his mind, and even three hundred odd years in cold sleep hadn't dimmed the memory of their death.

  CHAPTER THREE: New Home

  The move, when it came was unexpected. Scott had anticipated they would go to some sort of airport, instead their transport landed on the roof and they all climbed aboard. Scott, Brock, Pete and Jeff were the last to leave, having checked the building from top to bottom, not only for stragglers, but any last minute items worth taking. His Marines had stripped everything else of use and loaded it onto the shuttles. The ship if you could call it that turned out to be nothing more than a flying box with windows and seats. With antigravity, wings were a thing of the past, as well as aerodynamics. The gravity field surrounded the ship in such a way that air pressure had little or no effect. They climbed to an altitude of about thirty-five thousand feet and took off across the Pacific Ocean on a direct route to New Zealand and their new home. Scott took a seat by a forward window and looked out, but he didn't see anything, his mind elsewhere. Something Katrina Moore had said made him stop and think about it, and it was something he'd not considered before. Even Brock and Pete noticed the preoccupation and left him alone, knowing that thoughtful look from old. The Skipper had something on his mind he needed to work out, when he did, he'd tell them. The other person who was deep in thought was Kat Moore. After her run in with Scott, she was still mad, but went down to see Pam Reilly, finding the little girl he'd mentioned right there. It was startling to see Pam and the girl together, and it was obvious they were mother and daughter, but how? Pam explained, telling her in detail exactly what to expect outside the building, and there was no doubting her and her daughter’s story.

  As much as she hated Scott Drake, there was no way she was going to walk out of this building and try to make a life for herself outside, but then again, did she really hate Scott Drake? That was what was really bothering her. The moment their eyes met it felt as if an electric shock had run up her spine. She couldn't even remember exactly what she'd said to him and felt powerless to pull her eyes away from his. She knew that feeling of old, and the one man in this world she thought she' loved. Now she wasn't so sure. Now she felt attracted to a monster like General Scott Drake. At dawn, the ship landed in an open field outside a small town in New Zealand and came to a rest. The ramp lowered and they all exited to stand in the open air for the first time since they had awakened. This was their new home and everyone looked around expectantly. The morning air was cool, wine sweet, and dew covered the ground in a sparkling carpet as the first rays of the sun refracted off each drop. It was a moment of pure magic and even Scott was impressed as he looked round at the verdant landscape of early spring.

  "Gunny! Get everyone in that hanger over there, I need a word with them before we do anything else.”

  "Aye-aye, sir.” He replied, keying the general command frequency on his wristband.

  Scott eyed the increasing number of supply shuttles landing on the field, wondering where he was going to put everything, but that would have to wait until later. Slowly the people moved towards the hanger, laughing and joking as they walked as if this were a holiday. Scott walked ahead, entering the hanger, seeing an assortment of antigravity vehicles scattered across the floor. A bench in one corner offered a podium and he climbed up on it.

  "Over here people.” He called, and waited for them to gather around.

  "All present and accounted for General.” Brock announced. "Settle down people, the General has a few words to say." Scott waited for the foot shuffling and murmuring to die down.

  "You are probably wondering why I need to speak to you before we do anything else, and it has to do with something someone said to me recently." He began, his eyes flicking across the crowd to find Kat Moore, not sure of his word for once.

  "I find that I have been taking something for granted until now and I think that before we go any further I should bring it to your attention.” That got him a few puzzled looks and some whispered comments.

  "Keep it down people!” Brock called.

  "No gunny, that's just the point. Neither you or I have the right to order these people to do anything."

  "Pardon?” Brock asked, totally confused.

  "The one thing I forgot is that your service ended almost three hundred years ago." That brought a stunned silence to the group.

  "The country you swore to protect and defend is gone and with it the leader who we swore the oath to. I no longer have the right, prerogative to call myself General, nor the authority to give you any orders at all." A babble of talk broke out, questions shot back and forth demanding answers. Scott held up his hand, and slowly they quieted down. "As of this moment you are all free to leave and make whatever life you want right outside that door.”

  “What the hell do we do then?” Someone yelled.

  “The Government of this planet has given this Island, New Zealand to us to do what we want with, and as long as we stay here they will leave you al
one."

  "What about you General?"

  "As I said, as of this moment, I have no right to that title, but to answer your question, I have a personal obligation to the President of the World Council which I will try to keep."

  "So what do we do?" Someone else asked.

  "Anything you want. You all know that the children will be arriving shortly and your primary responsibility will be to them. God only knows how they have been treated, and it will be your job to try and make amends for what was done to them. There is housing here for you to live in, farms to be worked, or manufacturing, it’s up to you."

  "What about the aliens?"

  "That is something I am going to work on."

  "You can't do it all by yourself General.” Brock commented.

  "No, but the government will help."

  "It seems to me that you need to put it clearer than that General."

  "How’s that Gunny?"

  "Listen up people.” He called. Climbing up beside Scott. "The General is right, no one here in this time has any hold on your body or soul, let alone the Marine Corps.” A wave of muttered complains and laughter swept over them like a soft tide, then receded to leave silence in its wake.

  “Anyone who wishes to leave and make a life for himself out there can do so with our best wishes. I don't think any of us would hold it against a person who said he or she had had enough, God knows you have all been through it.” Many nodded and looked sad. “So I’ll make this simple. Everybody who wants to leave can, everybody who wants to stay, stay and let’s go unload those fucking aircraft, or whatever the hell they are." Saying that he jumped off the bench and walked out of the hanger towards the transports. In less than a minute, the hanger was empty except for Scott and Katharina Moore.

  "I suppose if I walked out of here you'd let me go, wouldn't you?” She said, looking him in the eye.

  "I have no right to stop you. You were never under my command." Scott felt his chest get tight, and he was having problems breathing.

  "I didn't ask you that."

  "I don't understand?" He did, all too well. Her scent filled his senses and he wanted nothing more than to grab her and…. He chased the thought away.

  "Oh yes you do General."

  "I'm sorry, I don't.” He lied. He jerked himself back, away from the possibility she was offering, despite blaming him for her fiancé’s death.

  "Then let me put it this way. You are going to have to ask me to stay, you personally."

  "Why?” He knew what she wanted.

  "Because I have no reason to stay, no obligation, no government I swore to defend, no flag, no friend, no family, no nothing. So give me a reason to stay, just one."

  "Because I need you and your expertise?"

  "No good enough." She said glaring at him, daring him to say it.

  "Because I want you to."

  "Is that all?"

  "Yes!” He snapped back, unwilling to say more, unwilling to go down the road all the signs pointed to. She nodded.

  "You’re a hard man Scott Drake.” She said with a nod. "A very hard man.” With that, she turned and walked towards the aircraft.

  Scott stood there watching her walk away, feeling as if he’d missed his chance at something. What that something was he didn’t want to examine. Soon the men and woman would be paired off, finding partners for themselves and settling down to a different life. She’d opened a door and given his a chance to say something and he'd let it pass, so now it was on his head. He’d given her the only answer he could under the circumstances. She was probably right, in that given time, he’d probably get them all killed. That he was physically attracted to her went without saying, and obviously, she to him, despite the loss of her intended. The past was dead, but could he in all honesty, open his heart again, what with the prospect ahead? With a sigh, he jumped down from the bench and walked towards the base to look around.

  After the unloading was completed, it became frantic as they worked twenty hours a day, seven days a week to try to bring some order to the chaos. For Scott, Brock, Pete and Jeff, the first order of business was to decide how best to use the different abilities of each man and woman, wanting to waste nothing and maximize their efforts. In the end, he broke them down into groups of ten, each with a different responsibility and chain of command. Rank per say meant nothing now, but out of habit and for general discipline everybody decided to keep them, as it made life a lot simpler. The day to day service problem turned out not to be a problem, as the President found out to his horror, a lot of people desperate for work willing to act as cooks, run the laundry and keep the equipment running. Scott suspected the government had included a few spies or informants in the growing number of service personnel arriving each week, but it didn’t worry him. He doubted, from what he now knew of this world, little or nothing they did would make much sense to anyone without a military background, let alone make head or tail out of what they were doing. The arrangement left the core groups time to concentrate on the first problem of weapons design and manufacturing.

  As for copying it, if that was the objective, Scott wished them a lot of luck. Scott and his men had a thousand years of military history to draw on, this society, none. They had gelded themselves by erasing it all. Scott used Alexander’s chain of command at first, finding two people he could trust and let them find two people they could trust, and so on down the line. It worked, and in a short time, they had all five hundred working together and gradually integrated them with the other five hundred odd people who'd been frozen, as they found a niche for themselves. By now, few of the ‘newer’ five hundred had any problem with fitting themselves into Scott’s command, as the prospect of trying to fit in with this alien society outside made most of them shudder. They felt comfortable with what they knew and understood, even if a few of them were frozen almost a hundred-years after Scott. Their society was already going down the path that led to this one, but with its collective historical memory in place, they had no trouble fitting in, or with the concept of violence and war. They held daily and weekly meeting between the different groups to discuss a particular problem one was having, or exchanging information on progress with others. As more and more information on the present level of technology came in, Scott found himself spending more time in the education center keeping up to date, feeling that he needed to know what was going on. In the end, Brock told him to stop, for as Heisenberg pointed out, it’s impossible to know everything.

  The children arrived, and it was something of an emotional shock to all, as they realized that they had children. All the children were girls, ranging in age from three to ten. The level of anger went up when it came home to them that Skinner's Corporation has used their bodies and genetic material to breed females for sale as sex slaves. If it wasn't for Scott, Gunny Brock and Pete Mitchell they might have decided to go to War with the people responsible, namely this society that had permitted something like this to go on. From the Doctor's records and some DNA testing, they found out who was whose and they started pairing off to care for their children. In a few cases, there were some odd pairing, and that took some working out.

  Scott gave them a week off to sort out the domestic arrangements, such as housing, schools, and training. The least of their problems was housing, as the robot construction bots worked around the clock to provide additional houses, school, parks, plus the underground utilities that go with them. The records showed that seventy-three of the children were missing, and Scott confirmed with the President that the aliens had taken them. He could be lying, but he doubted it. Girl children didn’t have much value here, so holding onto a few wouldn’t have occurred to them. It might later, but it would be too late to keep them as hostages. The few, whose children were missing, himself included, felt an indescribable loss, coupled with a hatred for the people and aliens who had somehow stolen their dreams. Scott's answer was to work harder and try to forget. Chase ended up acting as councilor as well as Doctor, trying his hardest to remember
what he’d been taught and reading up on the current psychiatric thinking on the subject. The level of anger in the men and women who came to him, ranged from mild to blazing hatred for these people. What some of the children had been through, made even his blood boil, yet through it all, he kept his composure, at least in public.

  In private, he raged against the injustice of this new society where females were nothing but property, where brutal treatment for any infraction was the norm. The body he could heal, especially with Doctor Hienrick Kessler additional treatment. It was their minds that worried him, the scars he couldn’t see nor do anything about. He counseled love and understanding to blood soaked Marines who’d survived the most horrifying war of modern time. At least in their memories it was like yesterday, even if the calendar said three hundred years. Scott heard about this through the grapevine, but could do nothing to help. It was up to the individual couples to work it out for themselves. One or two did finally admit they couldn’t handle it, but there were more than enough people willing and able to take the children. There were a few cases where the Stockholm syndrome had taken effect, with children screaming at their new parents that they wanted to go ‘home’.