King's County
King's County
Chapter 1 – AK/WY
Midpoint
KING'S COUNTY
James Carrick
Published by James Carrick at Smashwords
Copyright 2014 James Carrick
King's County
Chapter 1 – AK/WY
::::Well, you know it's a great thing and we’re all so thrilled and excited for him and for everyone, really, and we love these sort of celebrations of what it really means to be truly American - and, of course, we here are no longer Americans in a technical sense but in the spirit and the attitude, that hard working attitude, putting God and family before everything, and doing what needs to be done - in that sense I think that, yes, we are still American up here, very much so, and we take these traditional American values very much to heart.
ANCHORAGE PRESS QTLY: They’ve been gone so long. Now that there is no space program, what is next for them? Will they be placed in the Territorial Army? Or do you have other plans for them?
GOVERNOR: Gee, I can't say as to that. We have experts who will analyze and reorient the men, catch them up you might say, and I'm sure they'll figure out what is, what is the best and most appropriate course for these brave heroes. We here are just so, pleased to have them, it's a real honor, and a joy, to have this opportunity to incorporate them into our fold, if however briefly, during this exciting and challenging time.
*
Space was mostly a lot of nothing but the time passed quickly. Ed and I took pills that slowed us down. They let us watch the universe at high speed. Twenty-six years we were out there. We had a big window to look out of, or what effectively was a window, and we had each other for company and some games and a library. It wasn’t too bad. We slept a lot, a whole month at a time.
There was another pill to take before landing to speed us back up to normal. But by the time we decided to dig out the little diamond shaped things, our spacecraft had already decelerated to reenter the atmosphere and was arcing over the tundra of Northern Canada. Reentry was over in seconds, for us. We just let it happen.
*
Before we left the Earth for the Moon - we used the Moon as a second stage base to launch from. It has .26 of the gravity of Earth which I think had something to with it. Being the flight engineer didn't mean I knew everything – anyway, before we left they chipped us, put a chip under the skin of our lower back. There's a layer of fat there that protects the kidneys and it protected that chip, too.
When I say chip that's just what we called it. It was more like a computer with a chemical processor. It could take in dead cells or little bits of what was floating around in your blood and from them it could generate hormones or glucose or amino acids or whatever other stuff that it figured you needed.
What this meant was that we didn't need to worry about nutrition or our diet or our health at all. This meant we ate what we wanted up there, didn't need to exercise, didn't need to do anything. The chip kept us in top shape, mentally and physically.
Of course, they took the chip out in the post flight medical. I got to see it while lying on my stomach on the OR table. For being in my body 26 years, it looked brand new.
"Captain, let me help you up."
He was a beefy guy, the orderly, with a greasy crew cut and hairy arms. I waved him off. I didn't care what he wanted. It felt wrong.
Another nurse, a chick, took my hand and led me back to my suite. I had a rest before doing interviews for the rest of the day.
"Waller? Well, welcome back. Long day, huh? This one will be brief. We want to help you get reoriented, sort of fill in some of the blanks.
"I've got a few things prepared for you. Uh, here, you're originally from Seattle I see." - smile – "Here we have a list, arranged by date. We've got Seahawks on one side and Mariners on the other. Their win-loss records during your voyage, stats...and here's a separate summary of highlights."
Her smile faded. She didn't like my reaction. I blame the long trip and the drugs, 26 years worth, followed by the unexplained injections on our arrival, then the surgery anesthetic, then the never ending interviews all done dead sober and exhausted. They wouldn't even let me have a cup of coffee yet. It all got to me, I guess, and I pulled my cock out of the hospital gown without really realizing what I was doing.
&
"Looking good so far, Captain." He was young, younger than me, not including my long vacation. He shined a flashlight looking thing in my eyes and glanced at the readout.
"You're young for a doctor. The Air Force still makes you guys go through med school, right?"
"Oh. Well, I'm holding at 19 for awhile. Anything unusual: unexplained smells, any strange voices? Auditory hallucinations?"
"Nothing like that. What did you mean by holding at 19?"
I already had a good idea what he meant, though, and he told me what I suspected. Ed and I took the same stuff in space. It preserves your genes or chromosomes or something. Your cells renew better, last longer and function better. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but if you take it, you don't get older.
*
AK
Anderson Base
October 18, 2092
Col. Henry E.L. Jackson-Little, AK Territorial Army.
Men! We face before us an amazing challenge. From the fields of Marathon to Austerlitz to the Argonne Forest, we stand on the shoulders of history and look forward.
Duty. Sacrifice. Loyalty. These are not just words. To our breed, the fighting man, they describe a way of life, a calling. A greater calling that we are to know in our hearts and to shoulder the burden of which without complaint but with great pride.
Preparedness. Readiness. Courage. Born of our legacy; these words preserve our creed.
Decisiveness. Poise. Organization. This is our mantra, bred into our bones. Victory - long sought. Hard sought. Inevitable. You men make up the greatest army in history. The doggedness of our fighting spirit - never exceeded in the modern era - will see us to the end of the day. The day, men, when we retire to the old hall where the heroes rest, weary, but whole in spirit and pure of heart.
*
After I graduated from college in 2062, I quickly found out that the world was not waiting for me. For two whole years I looked for a job, one that wasn't a sales scam or a pyramid scheme or a Ponzi scheme. I needed something that actually paid a decent salary or that at least gave the opportunity to get one later, and not 10 years later, either. It was frustrating. I had a degree in something called Business Statistics but it might as well have been in whaling or fencing as far as the jobs it got me.
So I did what a lot of guys without wealth or connections or talent did and joined the military, the Air Force, and they had me playing video games.
*
AK 2092
Back to Earth, back to life in the military, it was the Army this time around. A liaison, the last and highest ranking of my interviewers, had recommended the Alaskan Territorial. She had a friendly, persuasive sort of way about her so I went along. I didn't even think to ask if there were any other choices.
They had me starting over as a Lieutenant and let me skip basic training. I easily passed the physical, scoring in the top 5%, thanks to the lingering effects of the chip no doubt, and I checked out on the weapons exam. Only a half day at the range was enough for me to get back to an expert rating. I knew weapons. My squadron trained on them all the time in the Air Force though we were really nothing but joystick jockeys.
So only three days after getting released by the remnants of the Air Force Space Command, downgraded back to Lieutenant, I found myself in the Alaskan wilderness, camped out on a glacier.
"None of you guys will have a drink with me?"
The tent we were in w
as pretty amazing. Folded up, it fit in the back of our rover with plenty of room left for our packs and rifles. It easily accommodated my five man squad.
“No one?”
They just looked around at each other like they were trying to figure something out. The Staff Sgt answered for the group,
"No, sir! Consumption of alcohol is strictly disallowed in theater." The Sgt got a twinkle in his eyes and added grinning, "and I will have to report any soldier, regardless of rank, who violates this rule."
The other soldiers erupted in laughter. I got the idea. They thought I was testing them, trying to trick them into breaking the rules. Of course, I played along.
I was miserable out on maneuvers and it wasn't because of the low temperatures. I barely noticed the cold. Our battle uniforms self regulated temp and humidity and they were self cleaning. The tent was more comfortable than anyone could expect. It was these meat-heads that I couldn't stand being around.
Note:
In 2055 the proxy war broke out between the Eastern Alliance and United States and it was still going on. Out on the western edge of Alaska, we were operating near the battlefield but there was no way in hell we would ever actually go into it. It would be certain, probably nearly immediate death.
The boundaries of the war were firmly set in '57 as a perfect square, 250 km per side, covering part of Siberia and Alaska. Rumors were that deep underneath the surface was a trove of valuable minerals, though which ones they were was unclear. If it was actually minerals being contested in the war nobody ever really knew. Nobody I knew ever knew anything political like that for certain. Everybody seemed to have their own take, their own opinion, and they always seemed to be changing it.
As I remember, the initial cause of the war was a dispute over Iran and some of those countries in Central Asia. They didn't want in the Eastern Alliance and they didn't want anything to do with us either. The details are lost to me but in the end, before anything got too far out of hand, we got the Proxy War, fully mechanized and remotely operated, with no unpopular human casualties. For whatever reason, the war was hashed out in that square of land night and day, everyday, with never any lasting victories for either side.
*
WY 2064
Only a week after I had signed my name at the recruiter's office, the Air Force put me on a plane to Oregon for training. 4 months later I was an officer and assigned to a squadron out in Wyoming. My idle post-college life already felt like a distant memory.
The operating base was on some of the worst land you could possibly find anywhere. Blazing hot in the summer, unbelievably cold in the winter, flat all around with dull brown mountains in the distance, no trees just these scrubby little bushes full of snakes and scorpions – in all of this natural splendor, the base itself was nothing but a few old cinder block buildings with a transmitter tower and dish.
There was a town of maybe 30 people a half hour away by truck. Under wartime conditions, we weren't allowed to interact with the residents - our base was supposed to be a secret - but, with typical military efficiency, we could still shop at their little general store.
Whenever we went into town we’d buy up all of the beer. The brand didn't matter, whatever they had, we'd buy. The next time around they'd have ordered more and we’d buy all of it, too. The old couple running the place never asked how much we wanted. There would just be a little bit more for sale than the last time. After a few months it got ridiculous. We had cases stored all over the barracks, under the bunks, along the walls of the break room. But we couldn't back down.
*
AK 2092
It was slow going through the snow. There were no roads out here. We had a plow, a self-directed tracked thing that traveled 5 to 10 meters ahead of us clearing the way.
The idea was that we would trek through the frozen wilds, our platoon of noble warriors, and converge with a hundred or so other platoons and their trucks for a big meet up on perimeter of the battlefield.
This was what the big speech earlier was about, the big deployment. It was just something to do. Colonel Jackson gave another speech like the first one after we'd all arrived.
They dropped him in the middle of our circled tents. It was night with no moon. The transport descended out of the darkness at combat speed, banging the landing gear on the packed snow. The Colonel and his staff came running out carrying rifles, ducking just the tiniest little bit like they might potentially be under fire.
He got a good reception. I'm sure the speech was a smashing success by his reckoning. And with that, the maneuvers were over. Tents were packed back up and the plows cleared out a nice, even space for the bigger air transports. We loaded everything onto them, trucks and all, and were back at the division headquarters after only about an hour.
Waiting to lift off from the camp, we got a glimpse of the actual fighting. A squadron of three interceptors, I'm not sure whose, screeched around the edge of the battlefield at top speed, probably going about Mach 4. The sonic boom reached us at the same time that they hit a plasma mine. The three interceptors exploded together in a burst of brilliant green and blue light. The sound of the explosion reached us several seconds later, rumbling across the tundra as the falling, burning debris winked out of existence. None of the men talked for awhile after seeing that.
*
WY 2064
Other than hanging around drinking beer, passing out in our bunks and our diligent undisciplined and unsanctioned practicing with the machine guns and grenade launchers, we did actually fly missions.
Including me there were 7 flight operators in our detachment. We were all Lieutenants. There were also a couple of Tech Sgts that kept to themselves. We thought they were gay and joked about it, but they actually were pretty weird. They were both Mexican, I think, and just in it for the citizenship. The CO was a Major who did absolutely nothing at all except walk around the flight room a couple times a day and pretend to understand what we were doing. He kept to himself, too.
We flew most days. Ground attack fighters were our specialty which we typically used against fixed installations. The most fun was when attacking an enemy airbase. Our ugly, blunt nosed GAF’s would fly 5 meters above the ground toward the base while the dagger-like interceptors dove in from 30,000 meters (the maximum ceiling allowed by treaty).
Truly thrilling, nothing in my life so far had ever been so satisfying. Despite knowing we were fighting a most likely pointless, bullshit war, and we were in no danger of suffering anything worse than a hangover, the missions felt real and serious, to me at least. Maybe that's what made me the squadron's top performer.
With no warning, one day we had visitors at the base. The Major cleaned himself up to introduce them to us. They weren't Air Force or even Americans. They were Greeks. The Major described them as specialists and didn't elaborate further. I got the impression he didn't like them.
The Greeks, 3 total, brought along a travel trailer for them to sleep in. They spent most of their time off in there. They seemed to smoke constantly. As soon as you walked outside our building, at any time of day, the smell coming off of that trailer of pungent Greek tobacco would remind you they were here.
The Major gave them a pathetically small room to do their work in. With their racks of computers and cables and stuff, they could barely move around. A hundred times a day you'd see one of the Greeks remove himself from that mess, drenched in sweat, to go have a smoke outside.
They wouldn't speak much when we were in earshot. You'd typically just hear them muttering in Greek under their breath, usually swearing, pissed about something. I don't think any of them were mad at us. They were just sort of angry by default. And they did seem to be doing real work in there.
We weren't supposed to know what they were doing and nobody in the squadron cared. The secrecy was not unusual. We were too busy and too important in our own minds to be bothered, anyway. I did notice that the computers they worked on were painstakingly hand wired directly into a port on our combat
mainframe. They didn't trust, didn't want to risk a wireless connection.
&
"You guys, I like you guys. You don't take any shit, right?"
By mutual agreement, the war was put on pause for 36 hours. We were hanging out in the rec room trying to make an inroad into the wall of beer. The Greeks had paused their work, too.
"Yeah..." What do you say to that? I changed the subject,
"So what's up with you guys? What are you doing here?"
"Ah." He waggled a brown stained finger at me. "Don't worry about it, ah?"
"Alright, you know what? Fuck it. Just go ahead and smoke, guys,"
Lt Ramsey told the Greeks. They didn't have to go outside anymore. Ramsey lit a cigarette of his own.
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