by T. C. Edge
Chloe knew, as yet, that the actual location was still to be determined. That was the current purpose of Ragan’s conversation with Dax, who’d been commissioned to help narrow down the search. What would we do without you, Dax, she thought.
No one had an immediate answer for Tanner’s query, because there didn’t seem to be an obvious one. Well, aside from ‘wait for the top floor to extend, and then suddenly attack’ which would be a long shot at best. By the time they arrived, the surface level would surely had been retracted and submerged once again.
“Are there any other ways in?” Chloe found herself asking. She glanced around, having missed much of the initial analysis of the plans. “No?”
“Well,” Jason said, “there appear to be a couple of flight tunnels, but they’re several levels down, and can’t be accessed from the outside.”
“Er…flight tunnels?” Chloe asked.
Jason pointed to a certain point of the hologram, several levels down from the top, where the design seemed to suggest a hanger for aircraft storage. A short tunnel extended off it, apparently intended for getting the jets into and out of the hanger from underwater. Chloe didn’t realise jets could even operate underwater.
“Right,” she said, understanding. Sort of. “So…no way in from there?”
Jason shook his head.
“And the second problem you referenced?” asked Rashmore, looking to the intelligence officer. “I assume you’re talking about what we’d actually face on the inside?”
Jason nodded.
“Yes, sir. We’ve all seen by now what these synthetics are capable of. I’m not sure it would matter how many soldiers we attack with if we run into them.”
“Well, we don’t need to deal with them individually, do we?” said Tanner. “We just need to get inside and set some explosives to blow that damned place out of the water.” He looked at Rashmore. “Excuse my profanity, Mr President.”
“Cuss away,” Rashmore said. “I’m not a pious man, Clifton.”
Tanner raised a brow, shrugged, and continued.
“But, I guess it would be better if they, you know, weren’t at home.”
“Well, we can’t exactly guarantee that,” said Slattery. “The best we can do is wait for the synthetics to mount an attack elsewhere, which they’re sure to do. Wait for the Rottweiler to leave the kennel, so to speak.”
“Though…” said Nadia. “We still wouldn’t know who’s left, would we? We don’t know how many ‘trainee’ synthetics are down there.”
“And that’s something we can’t control,” Slattery said, voice brisk.
He appeared to have perked up over the course of the day, Chloe thought. When they’d met up that morning, he’d looked drawn out, weary, pallid. All of this excitement had brought some colour back to his cheeks, this final chance they’d been granted serving to reinvigorate him.
It seemed bizarre to Chloe that they’d only come together less than a day ago. So much had happened since then, the hours passing by in a storm. She only had to look around the room, at this strange gathering, to realise just how mad this all was.
But, it felt right too. It was almost rousing to see them all working together on this.
“We need to narrow our attention to what we can influence,” Slattery went on, slowly taking charge. “No other concerns warrant discussion.”
Nadia glanced at Tanner, a roll of the eyes imminent. Their shared look suggested that Slattery was like this often and that, yes, he was well and truly back.
“And when it comes to it, Colonel,” Nadia said coolly, “and we mount an attack…” She looked around the room. “Who are we relying on to do it, exactly?”
Slattery turned to Rashmore. The President lifted his chin, then nodded, turning his gaze to Captain Maddox.
“Captain Maddox will liaise with his men in Cincinnati,” Rashmore said. “We have several dozen Panthers there, all within close proximity to the target.”
“There are Spectres there as well,” came Tanner’s voice. “Probably a few dozen as well, in counter to the Panthers. We should enlist their help too.”
Captain Maddox frowned at that, his narrow gaze tightening up, heavy brow dropping. His lips reshaped, displaying a clear aversion to the idea.
“The Spectres are our enemy,” he said firmly, tone obstinate. Chloe almost yawned at the comment. So asinine. “My men can do this without their aid.”
“Oh don’t be ridiculous, Maddox,” said Tanner, voice shifting into a new, dismissive gear. “We face this threat together.”
“Pfft. If you think I’m fighting alongside any Spectres, you’ve got another thing coming,” Maddox grunted.
Tanner laughed, turning his eyes to the others, though bypassing Rashmore.
“Is this guy serious?” he huffed, completely bemused.
“Tanner,” said Slattery slowly, warningly. “Let’s maintain a civil air here.”
“Sure, Colonel, no problem. It’s this joker who’s causing the issue.”
“Easy for a man with no allegiance to say,” Maddox bit back. “You’re traitors to your countries, the lot of you.” He snorted like a bull, a frame of danger surrounding his eyes, and turned to President Rashmore. “We shouldn’t be here, sir. I should get you somewhere safe…”
Rashmore raised a hand to silence him, shut his eyes, and shook his head calmly.
“I’m perfectly safe here, Captain,” he said, voice smooth. “And yes, I agree with Clifton here - enlisting the aid of the Spectres may be important. Not easy, really, but we need to try.”
Maddox puffed out a breath, but didn’t speak. He didn’t dare counter his commander-in-chief.
“What we need are secure lines, so we can communicate with the WSA,” Rashmore went on, seeming more presidential by the moment.
“That’ll be hard, sir,” guessed Jason. “The WSA might be on lockdown after what happened tonight. They’ll close up like a fortress.”
“We should try to contact their commander in Cincinnati,” suggested Colonel Slattery. “It seems the city is a perfect staging point from which to strike out from. Any infiltration will involve a small strike force anyway. The numbers of Panthers and Spectres there will be plenty.”
Jason was tapping away as he spoke, gathering intel. Chloe had never seen anyone’s fingers move at such speed, eyes flicking left and right. The boy was born for this.
“General Linklater,” he said, scanning, reading as he did. “He’s commander of the WSA forces in Cincinnati. According to his bio, he’s a…”
“A bit of a bastard,” said Slattery.
Jason looked up.
“Sir?”
“I know General Linklater. Tough, uncompromising, ruthless. Typical of WSA commanders.”
Chloe glanced at Nadia, stifling a smirk.
Did Slattery see the irony of his words? He was basically describing himself.
Well, you must get on like a house on fire, Chloe wanted to say. By the glint in Tanner’s eye, he wanted to make a similar remark.
“I’ll speak with him,” Slattery continued, sounding reluctant, almost daunted by the prospect. It was quite amusing to imagine Colonel Slattery being intimidated by anyone. I guess, she thought, back in the WSA, he wasn’t so high up the tree. “At least, once we have something concrete to report,” Slattery added.
Yes, and there was the problem. As of yet, they hadn’t discovered the exact location of the facility, and until they did, nothing else really mattered.
“Where is Ragan anyway,” Slattery went on, looking towards the door. “Cliff, go check on him, will you?”
Tanner nodded, moving quickly towards the exit. Ragan’s voice could be heard earlier during the discussion, drifting in from outside. It had gone silent.
Chloe stiffened at the thought, turning to the exit as Tanner dropped out into the quiet night. She uprooted, her relaxed posture springing her towards the door, eyes gazing out.
She stopped, relieved, and let out a breath.
/> Ragan was right there, standing in the moonlight, staring off into the distance. Tanner moved up towards him, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“Er…Ragan?”
Ragan jumped, as if he hadn’t heard Tanner approach.
“Damnit, Cliff…”
“What? What the hell are you staring at?”
Chloe gazed out but could see nothing but darkness out there. The wide plains, rolling hills, all eventually fading into the blackness of the horizon.
Ragan didn’t answer for a moment. Then he shook his head.
“I guess it’s nothing,” he said.
Tanner turned and looked back to Chloe, silhouetted by the light spilling from inside the falcon. The jet wasn’t cloaked now, nor was the sparrow. Here, well within the NDSA border, they were perfectly safe; having the President with them was like having a suit of armour.
That was an odd thought in itself. Chloe hadn’t really been safe anywhere for three years.
The two men began walking back towards the jet, speaking as they came.
“So, anything from Dax?” Tanner asked.
Ragan nodded absently.
“He’s gonna send us, er, footage, imagery of the lake. He’s spotted something he thinks is important.”
“He’s…found it?” asked Tanner, excited.
“Um…yeah, he thinks so.”
“That’s great!”
“Yeah…” Ragan murmured.
What was up with him, Chloe thought, watching as they came. He seems so…subdued.
They approached the entrance, and Chloe hopped down into the dirt.
“Are you all right?” she asked, a flutter of worry bubbling in her gut. “Did you see something out there?”
He shook his head.
“It was nothing. Just a light. It hovered for a while and then went off.”
“A light? Moving?”
He nodded.
“Like a car?” Chloe asked.
She looked up again, over his shoulder, out into the blackness.
And then her own chest tightened.
A single figure was approaching from the distant gloom.
110
“Ragan. Ragan!”
Ragan looked down at Chloe, saw the widening of her eyes, then turned around to see what she was looking at. From the open plains ahead, the outline of a figure was moving towards them from the darkness, hands by his sides, motion smooth.
“Warn the others,” Ragan said harshly.
Tanner leaped into the falcon immediately, his voice hissing into the interior. A second later, Nadia and Captain Maddox hurried to the door, rifles already gripped to their hands.
They looked out, all five - minus Rashmore, Slattery, and Jason, none of whom were much good in a fight - now staring off into the night.
“One guy?” Maddox grunted. “I can only see one.”
The others agreed, nodding. More rifles were grabbed and handed out to those already outside the falcon. Nadia and Maddox dropped to the dirt. Ragan whispered for them all to hang back, and began moving forward.
“To hell with that,” said Maddox, going too. “You don’t give me orders.”
The Panther moved up alongside Ragan, the rest staying a little way behind. Ragan stared out into the darkness, lifting up his rifle, trying to gauge just who might be coming their way. His eyes shifted to the left and right, watching his flanks. The moon was strong enough that evening to provide plenty of glow. Aside from the figure coming their way, the plains were empty.
“Probably just a farmer who lives around here,” Maddox said.
“Wandering in the darkness without a flashlight?”
“Fine. Some random drunk who’s got lost on his way home.”
Possible, Ragan thought, but unlikely. What were the odds of him coming directly for them?
No, this was far too convenient to be innocent. Someone knew they were here…someone had found them. But who? There was no way to track them to this place.
A thought blossomed, his eyes glancing down to Maddox’s right arm.
“Have you disabled your wrist interface?” he whispered harshly. The man was getting nearer, though approaching without any urgency. He looked to be wearing rough, urban clothing, his hands free of weapons.
“No,” Maddox said, semi-defensive. “We were using it to transfer the data upload to the falcon. I guess…I forgot after that. You think…”
“I don’t know,” Ragan said. “But I don’t like the coincidence.”
The men stopped, roughly fifty metres from the falcon now, the other three half the way back. The stranger was close enough now for a dialogue to begin.
“Stop right there,” Ragan called out, holding his rifle up. “You’re trespassing on these lands.”
It was a lie, but a reasonable one. Something to see how the man might react.
He continued a pace or two, then stopped.
“I thought these lands were public,” he said, voice carrying easily on the silent night air. He sounded young, voice smooth and pleasant. Ragan could make out youthful features too, a young man barely out of his teens by the looks of things.
“Who are you?” Ragan asked.
“A friend,” the man replied.
“That doesn’t narrow it down, friend,” Ragan said. “We have five rifles on you right now. I advise that you turn around, and go back where you came from. Forget anything you’ve seen.”
“We should kill him,” Maddox whispered to the side. “We can’t have anyone spot us out here.”
Ragan looked at the grim-faced Panther with a glare.
“We’re not going to shoot an unarmed man, Maddox,” he returned. “That is not how the Panthers operate.”
Maddox looked as though he wanted to retort, his eyes narrowing in the darkness, but found his tongue held by the stranger. The young man’s voice floated back over towards them on a light breeze, fluttering through the plains. He seemed to have waited for them to have stopped talking.
He couldn’t hear us, could he? Ragan thought.
“I mean no harm,” the young man said. “I say again, I am a friend. A Good Samaritan, if you will. I only mean to help.”
Ragan grew curious, squinting to get a better look at the man. He stood, posture perfect, upright and tall. He held a slight smile on his face, his entire frame relaxed, composed.
Who was this man?
“And what do you suppose you could help us with?” Ragan asked, intrigued, but wary.
The man’s eyes glinted suddenly in the darkness, catching the moonlight and glowing a deep blue.
“Well, destroying the facility at the centre of Lake Michigan, for one.”
Ragan froze, rifle suddenly fixing more firmly to his shoulder, muscles priming. Beside him, Maddox reacted in the same way. The Panther’s voice came calling out.
“Turn around, put your hands on your head!” he said, words snapping like rattling gunfire.
Ragan could feel the sudden tension in the air. Hear the familiar clicking of weapons behind him as the others got into position to fire.
“NOW,” roared Maddox. “Turn around, hands on head, or we will fire on you!”
The man turned, following the instruction, lifting his hands and placing them to his head.
“Now step backwards towards us,” growled Maddox. Ragan was happy for him to take charge on this one. He was rather good at arresting people, after all.
The stranger began moving back, feet pressing into the dirt, motion remaining smooth and calm. He didn’t flinch at all as the weapons aimed at him, or show any signs of alarm.
That worried Ragan. A man who gave himself up so easily, and appeared so composed when faced down by heavy weaponry, was often much more than he appeared.
Maddox withdrew a pair of metal cuffs from his jacket pocket, and they began stepping cautiously forward as the stranger stepped back. They met in the middle, Ragan aiming the barrel of his rifle right at the man’s head as Maddox stepped in, gripped his hands, drew th
em behind his back, and cuffed his wrists. They fixed together, locked in place.
Maddox stepped back, drew his rifle back from his shoulder, and ordered the stranger to turn around.
He did so, revealing his features and frame in greater detail, the pale moonlight bathing him and highlighting a handsome visage. He had full lips, a square, clean-shaven jaw, and sleek eyes that appeared both keen and welcoming at the same time.
His cloth, however, was poor, contrasting with his biological aesthetic; dirty, torn jeans, an old hooded sweater, and muddy, stained sneakers. He sounded, and looked, far too nice and well kept to be wearing such grubby garb.
“You came in a car?” Ragan asked him, looking out towards the plains. The light had gone out some way off. He must have walked the rest of the way, the borders of his footwear encrusted by a buildup of mud.
The man nodded.
Ragan turned to the others, waiting behind them.
“Nadia, go check his car. It’s a few hundred metres off, down past that thicket,” he said, tilting his head towards a dark grouping of trees ahead. The vehicle had seemed to stop there; or, at least, that’s where he’d last seen the light.
She nodded, hurrying forwards at pace.
“And be careful,” Ragan called after her.
He turned back to the stranger.
“She’s wasting her time,” he said, calmly. “There’s nothing to find. And it isn’t even my car.”
“You stole it?”
“I borrowed it. I needed to get out here quickly.”
“Tell us who you are,” Ragan said again, studying the man carefully. His pulse had begun to rise quite steadily, nanites flaring as the adrenaline swept through his blood. He could sense the same reaction in Captain Maddox, the Panther’s eyes intensifying, muscles priming.
And yet…this man seemed entirely calm. No nerves, no anxiety, no fear at being faced down by all these weapons.
The young stranger smiled, looking past Ragan and towards Chloe and Tanner behind. They were still a few dozen feet back, spread to each side, rifles pointed. The youth had been quickly enclosed in a net of nano-augmented men and women, soldiers of great experience and proficiency. And yet, he was as confident as a lion in the Savannah.