Ben raised his head. Fear, shame, horror, and sympathy were etched in varying amounts on the faces of the technicians in the room, but he ignored them. Dr. Ying, though, was calm, almost expressionless. She approached Ben, but stopped a few feet away, offering neither comfort nor despair, only acknowledgment.
“The three of you, for now, must carry on. You are the only hope the world has, for now. We will construct a new facility. In the meantime, you and your comrades should train with your new abilities. It is important. Nothing else matters.”
He nodded.
“This could happen again.”
“Yes, it’s possible,” she said. “We’ll analyze what went wrong and fix it. But there are no guarantees.” Her gaze finally faltered. “Your actions in Shanghai spared me and my family great pain. I owe you everything that matters to me. I am here to repay that debt. So far I have only added to your anguish.”
“No, it’s okay, I understand. I . . .”
She put her hand on his shoulder.
“You deserve better from us, Lieutenant. From me. Our enemies bring enough sorrow for us all. Go. Do what you need to do, and we will, too.”
The exit door opened and Nick and Eddie walked in. Their faces were grim, but steady. They were ready, too. Ben wiped his eyes and straightened up. He let go of the now-sealed door to the former injection room, heat fading from his fingertips. He faced his men, his friends.
“It’s time to go to work,” he said.
17
Nick looked out at the Moroccan desert, shielding his eyes from the swirling grit, squinting at the mountains in the distance, shimmering in the heat, and turned to Ben and Eddie.
“We’re a long way from Coronado.”
Eddie grunted. “Yeah, but we’re still gonna get sand in our damn undies.”
Ben even smiled a little.
“You wanna quit, maggot?” he sneered, echoing the instructor they’d had many years ago at the Naval training center on the California coast. “You can ring the bell anytime you want.”
The highlight of the first training stage for prospective SEALs was “Hell Week,” a five-and-half-day nonstop marathon of running, swimming, paddling, pushups, sit-ups, log-carries, and verbal abuse. You were lucky to get four hours of sleep over that time. It was the ultimate test of sheer desire, to determine which recruits would rather die than give up. It was an early stage in the long process of the construction of a SEAL. Many of the recruits who survived the grueling slog would still wash out in future training segments, but Hell Week survivors were forever bonded by the experience. And none ever again set foot in so much as their kids’ sandbox without remembering the sadistic grins of their instructors as they shoveled piles of cold, wet sand down the backs of recruits struggling through one more set of pushups in the frigid midnight surf. For those who couldn’t bear the onslaught, quitting required only walking over to a bell and ringing it three times. Do that, and you could take a shower, hit your bunk, and return to your life. Many did. Those who gutted it out, like Ben, Nick, and Eddie, pitied the quitters, but also envied them.
The shared memory went unspoken among the three men, but they really didn’t need to speak at all anymore, at least when communicating with each other. They were connected telepathically now, radios inside their bodies connected to each other in a way the scientists still didn’t understand.
“Y’all ever been to Disneyland?” Nick said out loud, startling the other two men.
“I thought this was it,” Eddie said, surveying the endless sand dunes around them. “Looks like I need to kick my travel agent’s ass.”
Ben chuckled, but Nick just continued staring out into the distance.
“We went when I was a boy. Drove, because my dad was a construction worker and couldn’t afford airfare. But still, we saved and saved, and off we went. We finally got to our hotel in Anaheim at like midnight, and everyone just crashed in their beds. But I remember looking out the window. I could see the Magic Kingdom, all lit up. We were so close.”
He picked up a handful of sand and watched it slip through his fingers. Ben checked his rifle and Eddie flopped down on his back, pulling the tan kerchief around his neck up over his eyes.
“It felt like the next day would never get there. Just waited all night. Think I slept about two hours. Next morning, we’re all up, bouncing like fleas, ready to go, and my dad gets a call from his boss, tells him he needs him back ASAP for a rush job because three other guys called in sick. Vacation canceled. Couldn’t say no. They fire you or leave you off the next job. So, we all packed in the car—me, my two sisters, Mom, Dad—and drove back to Bakersfield. You can probably imagine. I watched out the rear window until I couldn’t see Disneyland anymore. Kinda feels like that now.”
Nick caught the puzzled looks of the other two men.
“What I mean is, we’re close to something. I just hope we make it all the way.”
They were quiet for a few minutes. Eddie pulled his kerchief down and gazed thoughtfully out into the blank landscape.
“I took a trip to Vegas once,” he said softly. “Got crabs.”
They all laughed.
“All right, enough woolgathering, you dirt bags,” Ben said. “Back to work.”
He hoisted his sleek black rifle to his shoulder and walked off into the swirling sea of hot sand.
Nick wasn’t sure where his sudden bout of introspection had come from. He was usually reserved and quiet. He loved his job and the guys he worked with. Just wasn’t much of a talker, especially about his past. This new job, this new body, though . . . I’m literally a different person than I was three days ago.
Did the alien technology in their bodies also change their psychology? It had to, even if just by accident, right? No way could you completely transform someone’s biology without changing how they felt about themselves and their place in the world.
The moment he’d walked into the injection chamber, Nick had known he was stepping into uncharted territory. Even Ben hadn’t known how the mental links between them would work, since he’d been flying solo up until then. Part of the change was simply a physical transformation. Nick never thought much about his looks. Pretty average black dude was how his online dating profile read. Not a line that tended to get a lot of attention from women, but it was just how he saw himself. He’d tried a goatee for a while, but shaved it off after a couple weeks. Physically, as a SEAL, he was in top condition. Had to be. He was fast, fit, and a crack shot. But he didn’t have the bulging muscles a lot of the other guys on the team had. At 5-foot-10, he was usually in the middle row for family photos. He loved his job and could keep up with anyone. When he was out with his teammates, hitting the bars or playing golf, he was happy blending into the background.
Those days were over. Whatever happened, he was now one of the most noticeable people in the world. His gray skin was a darker shade than Ben’s and Eddie’s, a link to who he’d been before, or at least a reminder. He was something more than human now, though. Strangely, it made him feel connected to the rest of humanity in a way he never had before. The world, all of mankind, was counting on them. He wasn’t fighting just for his country or his commanders or his president, he was fighting for everyone. In a way, he was carrying everyone inside of him, inside this superpowered alien body. He’d been through a fire and come out a different man. Eddie had, too. Nick could also feel it.
Ben’s transformation was harder to map. Somehow, he kept his mental and emotional walls up. Nick could still sense his presence and could communicate with him telepathically whenever he needed to. But Ben was holding something back, keeping something closed off, or at least draped in shadows. Nick sensed he could force his way in if he really wanted; blast a floodlight on the darkened corner. He trusted Ben completely, though. Whatever he needed to work through, he deserved to do it on his own terms. Intruding on that would be a complete obliteration of the unspoken trust they’d developed as SEALs and were strengthening as . . . whatever they were no
w.
Besides, there was work to do.
Nick and Eddie spread out at tangents to Ben, each tracking the other two on a mental radar. Out in the Saharan desert, the most remote place the US military could find away from the frantic, rabid eyes of the press and public, a virtual armada of drone tanks and aircrafts waited. Behind the three men, a handful of temporary observation towers had been erected for the brass to track their performance. Behind the towers were dozens of semi-hardened tents and other hastily constructed structures interspersed with portable air conditioning units, supply trucks, satellite dishes, armed patrols, armored personnel carriers, Apache attack helicopters, antiaircraft missile batteries, you name it. Even further out, a runway had been laid in the shifting sand, the tarmac requiring nonstop maintenance and clearing to keep it from being swallowed by the elements. A pair of V-22 tiltrotors were being dragged into a metal hangar, while a C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft was landing, its four ferocious turboprops adding to the chaos. The Pentagon never left a light footprint.
Out ahead in the virtual battlefield, the desert was unblemished and smooth, ever-shifting but always the same. Treacherous, but also simple and peaceful. An easy place to die and a good place to train.
Ben and his squad could easily see through the heat haze and the dust devils, their upgraded eyes filtering out the noise, tracking heat signatures and other bits of electromagnetic radiation. The three men could have found a TV remote buried under two feet of sand within a few seconds. But the equipment they were tracking had been disguised specifically to foil their superhuman senses. And they weren’t here to just blow stuff up, although they intended to do plenty of that. They were primarily here to test and develop their mental connection, to learn how to work not just together, but as one. Rickert and Dr. Ying, after poring through the data on their initial testing, had discussed with the three men on the flight over their theory that the communication link between them was more than just a silent radio. It was possible, the two scientists thought, that the link could enable something closer to a psychic bond; a sharing of physical senses, thoughts, and emotions. That each man could inhabit, and perhaps even control, the others’ bodies. A “hive mind,” to use the sci-fi term, although “remote control” might perhaps have been a closer term to what they had in mind.
Eddie and Nick were skeptical, but Ben suspected this was accurate, or at least mostly so. He remembered his initial belief that the technology in his body had been incomplete, like a jigsaw puzzle with a handful of pieces missing. It felt like they’d found at least one of the pieces, and Ben suspected the nanomachines had always been designed to operate as a link in a chain, the fuel for an army that could move, think, and fight as one. Not really a remote control, not commandeering another’s body against their will or control. A shared link, heightened perception and coordination. As time went by, each man found it harder to distinguish his own thoughts from the other two. They all seemed to see, hear, touch, and react in tandem.
What one saw, they all saw. What one felt, they all felt.
The wind was picking up. Ben tugged a tan kerchief over his mouth and pulled a pair of bulky goggles over his eyes. Eddie and Nick did likewise. Superpowers or no, a grain of sand in the eye still hurt like a mother. The three men hadn’t spoken to each other much since that last day under the mountain, instead experimenting with their mental connection, learning to not just finish each other’s thoughts but anticipate them. Ben could almost see thoughts and impulses forming in his friends’ minds, as they could his.
They had not yet spent any time testing that connection in combat situations, however. Between the tests and the travel and the briefings with government and military officials over the last week, they felt more lab rats than warriors. Warrior rats, Ben thought at one point, and the other two had laughed from across the room, startling technicians.
Dr. Ying was building another injection chamber, but the brass had clamped down on any further human trials until she could guarantee there wouldn’t be a repeat of Diego’s death—not that it was Diego’s death that really worried them. If the nanobots had leaked out of the room, everything could have been destroyed. Which, of course, she could not guarantee. She and Rickert had railed against the restriction, imploring the president personally to intervene. Ben had lent his support as well. He knew the clock was ticking. While his horror at Diego’s death remained fresh, and probably always would, he knew there was no turning back. The leadership had frozen. Rickert raged at their timidity, but Ben suspected they were just as afraid of him as they were of the mrill. A recruit dying during training was not unheard of, particularly among the Special Forces community. This was something else, though.
Diego’s agony had highlighted the truly alien nature of the technology that coursed through the three men. It was destructive and mysterious. Ben could essentially put his body on autopilot, surrender control of his warrior abilities to the inhuman technology embedded in his very DNA, as he had with the first mrill soldier he had encountered in the New Mexican desert. Some of the generals were whispering that perhaps the mrill or some other race might be able to tap into that system as well. To turn these fighters against their own kind. Ben could only do so much to counter that argument. Perhaps they were right. Still, the mrill were coming. Ben knew that, too.
The generals and the admirals and the politicians thought they could hold the line with conventional weapons. They were wrong. He’d struggled to take down just one of their machines in Shanghai. Tanks and helicopters didn’t stand a chance. Not alone, anyway. Ben and his men had to be able to take the fight to the enemy.
So here they were in the desert, an eager and nervous army watching their progress from afar.
LT, three o’clock. Nick’s thought pierced the rolling heat like an ice-tipped arrow. And even as he thought it, all three men were already spinning and rolling right, rifles coming up to their shoulders. Ben felt his technology tugging for control. Battle senses fully engaged. He did not fight it. The sensors in the rifle were now feeding data directly to the nerves in his right arm, identifying the target and firing before Ben’s brain could even verify what he was shooting at. A machine-gun turret was lifting from the sand and before he could even consciously recognize it, it was pelted with laser fire from all three rifles. As the shrapnel was still whistling through the air, Ben was spinning, as were Nick and Eddie. The initial attack had been a diversion, of course, but the follow-up assault was also destroyed before it could even begin. All three men were now operating like a three-headed beast, firing in all directions as new threats emerged, still moving in a coordinated swarm toward their objective a kilometer or so away. This “capture the flag” mission was fairly straightforward, but the odds were heavily stacked in favor of the defenders. In theory, anyway.
The three men flowed through the storm, covering each other, moving, ducking, crouching, swiveling in a spontaneous ballet that no strictly human squad ever could perform. They didn’t speak at all, fighting in silence, but in constant communication. While Ben’s brain was disconnected from his own actions, it could still serve a purpose. He tapped directly into the vision stream of his companions, his augmented brain cataloging the data, sharing it with the rest of his body. As Nick turned to fire at a flying drone coming over a hill, he spied at the corner of his vision an armored vehicle trundling around a bend. While Nick’s body continued turning to attack the drone, Ben calculated range to the small tank and fed the information to his body. Already turning to cover Eddie, Ben blew the tank apart in the blink of an eye. The three men cut a path through the armor like a tornado through a trailer park, leaving only a long smear of smoking debris.
The “battle” was over in minutes. The three reached the flag—literally a plastic pole with a red triangular flag planted in the hub of a tire from an old Humvee—ripped it down and knelt in defensive positions.
Ben surveyed the landscape one last time, toggling his mic. “Base, objective achieved. Please advis
e.”
Silence, then a soft chuckle crackled over the radio. It was Rickert.
“Roger, Cerberus. We read that. We were going to send a second wave, but it looks like you boys killed that, too. Stand by for extraction.”
Nick glanced over at his buddies. Cerberus? The three-headed dog? I was kind of hoping for the Three Musketeers.
Ben laughed. Shit, could be worse. I suggested the Three Stooges.
The team drilled day and night. The mission planners threw everything they had at them, from amphibious assaults and defense skirmishes along Morocco’s Atlantic coast to fast-rope missions out the rear door of a helicopter to antiaircraft assaults against waves of incoming drones and cruise missiles. The three men deflected and defeated everything that came their way. Most of the time, the technicians remote-controlling the opposition force couldn’t even see them coming, in some cases literally.
Ben, Nick, and Eddie now wore combat suits that could mimic the invisibility effect their bodies could perform. Dr. Ying had cracked that particular code based on research that had actually been well underway before the aliens had landed. The trick had been getting the suits to respond as quickly as the three men’s skin, but she and her team had done it. They had not, as of yet, been able to duplicate their other properties, such as instant armor hardening. But at least the three soldiers didn’t have to worry about going into battle nude anymore.
On the fifth day of the training missions, surrounded by the burned-out husks of several attack helicopters, Ben, Nick, and Eddie sat down, awaiting pickup from an armored personnel carrier. The men normally would have used this time to clean their weapons and check their ammo, but the nano-powered weapons were self-cleaning and self-loading.
The First Protectors: A Novel Page 18