by Hayley Stone
The stress begins to leak through my nose in the form of blood. I curse under my breath, trying to casually hide it with a hand. I thought I’d finished with this. But I do find it oddly symbolic, given the blood that might be shed today. Symbolic and extremely inconvenient.
Camus appears with a tissue a few minutes later, unasked. His eyes are kind, kinder than usual, and worried. He’s asking me if I’m all right without putting it into words that would raise doubts about me. “I’m fine,” I answer quietly, and mumble a thanks for the tissue. Camus nods and returns to what he was doing.
My nose stops hemorrhaging, although my hands are shaking now.
I can’t worry about it. My allotment of worry is all being used up by the Fairbanks ground teams. They haven’t vacated the area yet.
“Rankin, what’s going on?” I ask, unable to interpret the scene via visuals.
“Uh, well,” he says, clearly distracted by the task at hand. “The strike missed one of the pig supply houses. Just a small one, on the border. Nothing to worry about. We’re setting explosives now.”
“The machines are less than a klick away,” Clarence tells me.
“You can’t stay there,” I tell Rankin firmly. “The machines are almost on top of you. You need to leave right now.”
“We have another problem,” Camus announces, pulling some images into view, layered atop Rankin’s unit. It makes me even more uneasy, not being able to see my friend or his team. But unlike the Fairbanks footage, these have no sound accompanying them. “We just lost complete audio with Prudhoe. Some kind of interference or jamming, maybe.”
“Great. Can they still hear us?”
“No. I don’t think so. They haven’t responded visually to any of our dispatches.”
I’m getting a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Can you fix it?”
“If it was a technical problem on our end, yes. But it’s not.” He sighs, attempts to rub the stress out of his face. “Until we figure out the source of the disruption, they’re on their own out there. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Well. This just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?” Camus fixes me with a testy look that says my sarcasm is unwelcome right now. “All right. Let’s focus on what we can control.”
I mimic Camus’s earlier gesture, throwing the silent pictures out of the way and onto another part of the wall to be analyzed by some of our technicians. Beneath them, back in Fairbanks, it looks like Rankin’s team is finally on the move.
“Lieutenant, report.”
“The machines…they cut off our exit route,” Rankin says, breathing heavily between the words. The jerky movement of the camera puts his breathlessness into context. They’re running. “We’re rerouting toward—”
A burst of static cuts him off.
“What was that, Lieutenant? You’re breaking up. Repeat,” Camus orders.
The Fairbanks ground team is now climbing into vehicles, most piling into tanks, while two others including Rankin jump on a pair of high-speed snowmobiles.
“We’re rerouting toward the city,” Rankin repeats.
Much of the room has quieted down to listen to the situation, and this news is met with looks of apprehension. The tension is palpable. To his credit, Camus shows no outward reaction. “Roger that, Lieutenant,” he says. “Keep your heads down until we get to you. I want no cowboy antics, is that understood?”
“Yes, sir. No antics.”
“Can you bring up a map?” I ask Clarence quietly while Camus and Rankin continue to converse.
The head engineer acquires a satellite image of the once-fair city of Fairbanks on the table’s holographic display. I don’t claim to be an expert on cartography, but I notice the river bisecting the map right off the bat. The black snake is kind of hard to miss amidst the meringue of whitish-gray pixels, some representing a former house or business, the people all gone now, although the structures remain, skeletal testaments to their lives. I stare and stare, trying to make sense of what is there and devise some sort of plan for the extraction team, but all I see is a death trap. “They’re driving them toward the river,” I blurt out the moment the realization comes. “Camus, the machines are boxing them in.”
Clarence leans over to look at the map and agrees with my conclusion. “The bridges are still there, but it wouldn’t take much to blow them. They’re likely weak from disrepair already, never mind the weather damage.”
“Lieutenant, did you get all that?” Camus asks, surprisingly calm.
There’s a period of silence, and then, “Yes, sir.” More silence follows, with only the noise from a snowmobile galloping over crunching snow. After a few more seconds, Rankin comes back with, “Don’t suppose you have any other ideas? With all due respect, Commanders, I think we’re gonna need more than a few Hail Marys out here. The machines are closing in on our six.”
“We have to send in the extraction team now,” I tell Camus. He says nothing, which I take to mean he didn’t hear me. “Camus. The extraction team. Why not?”
He’s shaking his head. “We can’t,” he says to me privately.
To Rankin, he says, “As soon as you reach the city, find a defensible location and hunker down. We’ll get word to you when we can.”
“Understood,” Rankin says, sounding none too happy.
“Why not send the extraction team in?” I ask again.
I’m getting upset despite my efforts to remain cool and levelheaded. Camus must pick up on this because he draws me aside to an empty corner of the room, using a hand to cover the mouthpiece of my headset. “They’re too hot right now. The extraction team isn’t meant for combat, Rhona. We send them in prematurely, everyone dies.”
“Yeah, and if we don’t send them in now, Rankin and his team are going to be slaughtered.”
His jaw sets in that way of his. “I’m sorry. They knew the risks going in.”
“No,” I say, gritting my teeth and digging my heels in for a fight. “No. I don’t accept that.” This feels too similar to the moments before Ulrich’s death. I feel as helpless now as I did then. Difference is, I can still do something this time around. “What are our options? Come on, Camus. I know you. I know you don’t give up this easily. So, what are our options? We have to have some sort of contingency plan for this, right? What did we do near Anchorage?”
“I shouldn’t have to remind you, people died near Anchorage. I wouldn’t say that spells a successful operation.”
“We’re already up a creek, Camus. Might as well draw on experience.”
I don’t know what changes his mind, but he gives me one last look before becoming the man I need. “Air support,” he says to Clarence, still maintaining eye contact with me. “Get ahold of our team in the air. Tell them we need a diversion…”
I smile, watching him come alive with purpose. He returns to his previous post in front of one of the many walls decorated with moving pictures, just as Clarence brings the flight captain on screen. Behind the black opacity of his flight mask’s visor, it’s impossible to read the man’s expression, but when he speaks, he sounds uncertain.
“This is Mountain Eagle One reporting. What can I do you for, McKinley?”
“I’m going to need you and your men to alter your heading,” Camus begins, and goes on to relay the precise instructions for the rescue mission. When he’s finished, not having to fight the pilot too hard on the change of plans, it’s decided the air team will take the machines from the rear.
“Give them something else to worry about,” he adds with a little relish. “Clarence, contact the extraction team. Give them the order.”
Our new plan’s not unlike what Samuel and I did back in the wilderness, challenging the machines’ programming, forcing it to actually think and prioritize. Never fails to break down some of their efficiency. “I like it,” I say. “So long as it works.”
Camus gets Rankin back on the horn. “Status report, Lieutenant.”
“We’re holed up in some old manufacturing pl
ant on the east side of the city,” Rankin says. “Fine, for now. But we’re expecting company in the next few minutes.” We can see the men scrambling to throw up makeshift fortifications, anything to either stop or at least slow down their enemies.
“I’ve got reinforcements in the air, and an extraction team en route now.” A reluctant and nervous extraction team, captain aside. But still.
“Well, hell.” Rankin breathes out in relief. “Best news I’ve gotten today.”
“Tell your men to prepare. It’s not likely to be a clean break.”
“It hasn’t been so far. I’ll tell them.”
While we’re waiting for all the players to get into position, Meir interrupts as a talking head on the wall. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demands, for once making no effort to hide her irritation. I don’t know whether she’s speaking to Camus or me, but I answer before he has a chance to.
“What we’re doing, Commander Meir, is saving your men’s lives. If you have a problem with that, maybe we can discuss it at the next meeting.”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I do have a problem with it. My air team has accomplished their mission. They’ve done what was required of them. You can’t throw them back into the fire for some…suicide mission!”
“You say suicide mission. I say rescue mission. Besides, they’re your men down there. Don’t you care what happens to them?”
Her lips pull into a tight line, as if she’s tasted something rank. I seem to have that effect on people sometimes. “Of course I do. Don’t mistake me for being inhuman, Commander. But as you should know, as leaders we must at times make the tough decisions no one else can or will. Success is made on the backbone of sacrifice.”
“So, they’re what, then?” I ask her. “Just collateral damage?”
“Sunk cost,” she corrects. “Maybe your man on the ground doesn’t realize that, but I know for a fact that every last one of mine are ready to lay down their lives to protect Churchill and its people. And I’ll thank you to leave the governing of my men to me from now on.”
I clench my jaw. It’s like trying to get blood from a stone.
Camus, who has been silent to this point, finally speaks up. His tone is cool and professional. “Perhaps it’s time you reassess your leadership qualifications then, if that’s how you feel.” And before Meir can say another word, Camus gestures across his throat and Clarence cuts the feed.
“You know there’s going to be hell to pay for that,” I tell him, holding back a smile.
“I know.”
“She’ll probably just communicate her orders directly to the air team.”
“I’ve spoken with the pilot already. Contrary to the Commander’s belief, he didn’t seem keen on letting his friends die. That ‘no man left behind’ policy of your American soldiers seems to be alive and well.”
Without Meir to distract us, we’re able to turn our attention back to the situation, leaving politics out of it. The air team has their targets in sight, and the extraction team is ready to move in at the first available opportunity. Things seem to finally be going our way again.
“Hey, Rhona?” Rankin says right after I tell him the ETA of rescue. “I don’t mean to jinx this, but if things go belly up, you tell my girl I love her, all right?”
“God, Rankin,” I say, closing my eyes. “Jinx is right. Haven’t you watched enough movies to know better than to say something like that?”
“I know it.” I think I hear a smile in his voice. “But life isn’t always like the movies. Sometimes the bad guys win. I just want Hanna to know I was thinking of her to the last, if it happens.”
I don’t want to be having this conversation with him. With anyone, for that matter.
“We’ll tell her,” Camus answers for me, and I can feel his hand on my lower back, light and reassuring. He gives me a look I can’t decipher, then removes his hand.
Minutes later, sound blasts from the speakers like the last trumpet. Camus grimaces, yanking out his earpiece, which screams with feedback. I cover my ears like everyone else, trying to prevent my eardrums from bursting. The sound comes across only as white noise at first, amplified in volume. It’s only as I strain to listen that I begin to pick out words.
“What is that?” I yell, although it’s unlikely anyone hears me against all the racket.
Camus is waving wildly at the technicians. “Turn it off!” I think he’s saying. But the audio continues to rage, and I can’t tell where it originates from. I worry that Rankin and his team are under attack. My eyes search for the live feed of the Churchill ground team.
It’s unchanged. They’re fine.
Instead, the video of the Prudhoe teams is down, but their audio has miraculously returned. I stare at the black screens while the technicians wrestle with the volume controls. They manage to get it down to tolerable levels in time to hear the chilling combination of panicked voices shouting orders and grinding machinery silencing them one by one.
No, I think. No, not grinding. Whirring.
I grab the table to steady myself, dizzy from the rush of blood to my head, my body’s natural reaction to the sounds of death. We have to do something, I think frantically, but don’t know what, and worse, when I try to speak, nothing comes out. Those are our people out there. We have to do something…
“We need those visuals,” Camus barks. “Now!” One of the technicians starts to babble out an excuse, but Camus’s having none of it. “I don’t care. Do whatever you have to. Get it back up.”
“Base?”
“Rankin?” I say, readjusting my headset. His voice brings me back to reality, mentally separating me from the commotion.
“We just got a whole lot of something from your end. Everything all right?”
I could tell him about Prudhoe, and what we suspect is going on there. But I don’t. He doesn’t need bad news on top of everything else. “Yeah, everything…everything’s fine,” I lie with some difficulty. My throat hurts, aches with emotion. I still hear the whirring, even as it competes with the haggard voices of McKinley soldiers, fighting and dying up there at the edge of the map, where it sounds like the world’s ending a second time. “Just some bad feedback. How are you holding up?”
“Not bad. Found some nice scarves in a box. I was thinking of bringing one home for the missus. You want one?”
“You’re joking.”
“Really,” he insists, and I’m having trouble not laughing at the absurdity of it. “It’s a brand new shipment, looks like. Probably a Christmas present for the workers or something. Never been opened.”
“No, thanks.”
“Are you sure? They’ve got a nice red one here with your name on it.” Before I’m given a chance to decline a second time, someone murmurs something to him off camera. “Actually, hold that thought, ma’am. It looks like we’ve got some visitors. ’Scuse me…”
The sounds of battle replace his country drawl soon after that. This time I don’t shrink away from the violent noises, even though a part of me would like to. Another, more primal part wants to be there with Rankin and his team of Churchillians, fighting the good fight alongside them. In fact, anything is preferable to just standing here, useless as a brick. As I begin to wonder whether the air team had any effect on the machines’ offense at all, I realize there is something else I can still do.
I get the pilot Camus talked to back on the line.
“What?” he says peevishly. I don’t take it personally. I know I must be one more unwelcome distraction at this point.
“Cancel that last order,” I say.
“What?” the pilot repeats, incredulous.
“Change of plans. We need you to attack the pipeline directly. The only way we’re going to draw the machines off the attack is if we give them a higher defense priority. So…blow the pipeline.”
“What are you doing?” Camus barely has time to ask me this, too occupied with our other situation.
I ignore him. “Captain, do you copy? B
urn the line.”
After a long period of near silence, the pilot’s accelerated breathing gives way to, “Copy that, McKinley. Changing course now.”
While he relays the new orders to his companions in the air, Camus joins me in front of the trembling visuals. “I certainly hope you know what you’re doing,” he says doubtfully.
“Yeah,” I answer. I look down at my fingers, noticing the spots of blood around the nails where I’ve picked too hard at the skin. “You’re not the only one.”
—
Hours later, it’s all over.
The hangar is approximately a mile out from McKinley’s heart, and we travel through a coronary network of tunnels to reach it. Most of the time, the route is traversed by small vehicles suited to the confined passages, but today we go by foot. I’m glad, mostly because it’s something to get the blood flowing, and I’ve been still for too long. On the downside, it grows noticeably colder the farther we get from the main base, ultimately to the point of discomfort. My breath shows, hanging dense in the air, and my teeth chatter until finally Camus throws his trench coat over my shoulders.
Before long, we’re standing beneath a massive dome. From the ground, it resembles frosted glass, but somehow I know it’s anything but delicate. Ice has crusted over parts of it, but Clarence informs me his men check it daily for any structural weaknesses. I’m also told it’s made out of the toughest material we have available, some industrial strength something or other. I’m not really listening intently at this point. Too many other things on my mind.
I wait at the head of a mass of murmuring people for the mission’s survivors. The crowd was supposed to have been kept to a minimum, reserved for family, or in the absence of family, close personal friends of the soldiers, but it feels like half the base has crammed into the loading area to await the returning heroes.
I’d chalk the turnout up to the same morbid curiosity that once kept us tuned in to the TV to watch natural disasters unfolding half a world away, except it feels different. It’s like there’s this current of support running through the group. A friendly word here or a comforting gesture there keeps spirits up, creating a united front of optimism. I’m proud beyond words of these people, many of whom came to the base as strangers, but years later stand shoulder to shoulder as brothers and sisters, a surrogate family filling in for the ones they’ve lost.