God of chaos built for w.., p.12
God of Chaos: Built for War: Book Two, page 12
“I don’t want to go offline,” I muttered. “I want to dictate circumstances.”
“He’s back,” the soldier with the gold bar said. “How much longer for the upload?”
The Mothers could modify Infiltrators in multiple ways, but all of these designs operated on the same hardware and software scaffolds. In the liminality, I had seen command codes. If these NUN peacekeepers knew this, I doubted they would be attempting to map my neural lace. Instead, they would be making certain I was dead. They wanted my neural lace so badly that they had failed to notice that I had taken control of one or two of the systems on this ship. We had just crossed the Mississippi Redline. I would need to move quickly. I glanced left and right. The NUN peacekeepers were now strapped in their jump seats—every single one of them.
“Brace to eject,” I said.
“What’d he say?” the grizzled commander asked.
The red lights turned green. The bomb bay doors opened. Clamps released jump seats and sent the NUN peacekeepers plummeting. One of the pilots glanced back and punched a distress beacon. The other pilot sent the Infiltrator into a dive before punching them both out.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
Thanks to that distress beacon, most of the Infiltrator’s computer systems went cold. My link to the avionics went cold too. I was barreling toward planet Earth and only had moments to recover from this nosedive. Regaining control of the Infiltrator would become a manual affair, but right now, my body could not move. The nerve block was still paralyzing me.
HOUR NINETEEN
The drugs administered to paralyze me inhibited the acetylcholine that bridged the gap between my nerves and muscles. If I had eaten Grizzly this morning, rich in choline, my neural lace might have had an easier time reversing the paralytic. My slack jaw and weak diaphragm could not generate enough voice to command the Infiltrator, but thirty seconds into the dive, I closed my fist and pushed myself to the side. On my side, I found the strength to kick out of the bottom of the Med-Tube. Gravity helped me tumble into the cockpit.
Without the ejected cockpit seat, I would have difficulty handling the rudders, throttle, and yoke. Since I did not have the altitude to roll up from the dive, extreme thrust vectoring would have to save me. In other words, I would have to slam the brakes without a seatbelt and hope my body handled the sudden deceleration. I kicked off the distress beacon, threw my body at the throttle, yoke, and rudders, and tried to hold on as the Infiltrator decelerated.
“Not good,” I managed as the ground raced at me.
Either the deceleration forces or impact with the cockpit window slammed me unconscious. When I woke, I was sprawled in the cargo bay with a bleeding head, a shattered wrist, and several broken ribs. The pain flaring through my body cleared my rattled brain.
“The Infiltrator’s in one piece?” I said as I staggered to my feet.
The Infiltrator might have been in one piece, but the Med-Tube had ripped loose from its clamps and struts. I crawled around it to the cockpit, where I found the Infiltrator buried in a muddy bank. I opened the rear cargo door and found the wings and jets on the Infiltrator intact.
“Damn thing survived,” I said.
My instinct to link with Gareth was still strong. I felt an ache where she remained in my mind. I wanted to ask her where we had landed. I wanted to ask her if she was injured. But she died on the other side of the Wastelands. I felt for my lenses, remembering that the Mothers had embedded a redundant CPU in their temple tips, but the NUN peacekeepers had taken those lenses. One of those soldiers must have jettisoned with my lenses. Left wearing nothing but my Dragon Skin, I could only guess my location. I saw trees above me. I saw mudflats behind me. I was not near any coastal region.
“Mud,” I said. “This isn’t the Wastelands then. I’m on some dried lake.”
Having never traveled so far east, I knew nothing of mud. If I stepped out too far on these flats, I had no clue if the mud would swallow me.
“Computer?” I said, forgetting that I did not have my weapons system or tactical lenses.
Nothing moved in the trees, but they were budding, meaning that if rain fell here, they would soon turn green.
“Somewhere east of the Mississippi Redline,” I said.
The batteries in the cockpit worked. I had enough fuel to reach Washington, D.C., but unless I found more fuel, I would never extricate myself from Eastern airspace in this machine. Considering that the West had turned me over to the NUN, I supposed that returning to the Rockies was no longer an option. The thought of spending my last few years reading books and eating freeze-dried meat in the Elkhorn Mountains came and went. Anywhere I traveled would place the people with me at great risk. This would have to be the last day of Lancelot’s life.
“D.C. will be a one-way trip,” I said. “I just need to get within the walls of that city.”
If I interfaced with the Infiltrator’s computers using my neural lace, the other Knights would quickly detect me coming. I would need to fly as cold as possible to avoid detection. Flying cold meant I would need a seat to operate the controls. The pilots had jettisoned their cockpit seats when they had bailed. I needed something on which to place my ass.
“Improvise, right?”
I searched the stand of trees surrounding the mudflats. The ground was damp from dew. Cowboy Dave and his boys had carved furniture from the pine trees in those Montana mountains. I had ample wood here, but I had neither the time nor tools for woodworking.
“Maybe a shack in these woods,” I said, “or an old truck. Those have seats.”
The war had scorched this region decades ago. Many of the old-growth trees had fallen. Smaller saplings had risen to fill the gaps. Any settlement here would have burned to the ground during the war. I came upon a log that had fallen and sat to think about constructing a seat. The bark of this log was gone. Insects of the burrowing variety had pocked the hardwood with a network of tunnels. I stood and gave the log a push with my foot.
“Sturdy and light,” I said.
I rolled the log from its belly to its back. The soil was rich beneath, thanks to fungi and insects returning the tree to the forest bed. The log spanned a meter and a half and stood just over half a meter high. Some of the rot fell away as I lifted it onto my shoulder, but the log was sized right and weighed enough to make a sturdy cockpit bench seat. Across the mudflats, I saw figures emerge. The gunfire came moments later. I dragged the log into the cargo hold, using it as cover, and closed the doors. The log barely fit through the cockpit door. As I dragged it through, I bumped the distress beacon and hit the manual switch to open the bomb bay doors.
“Too many damn buttons,” I said.
Bugs scurried across the deck as I forced the log into place. I scooted onto the log and fired the jets. The Infiltrator bumped up from the mud and hovered. Over a year had passed since I had flown one of these things manually, and that was only in a simulator. I opened the panel beneath the flight controls and began pulling fuses to disable redundancies easily hacked. The Infiltrator’s jets burped as I pulled one too many fuses. I shoved the fuse back into the slot and waited for the jets to purr.
“Almost there,” I said as I slowly opened the throttle. “Nice and easy.”
The pilots should have initiated kill-fail protocols when they bailed ship. Instead, they had sent the Infiltrator into a nosedive. Their behavior confused me until I realized that those figures crossing the mudflats to engage me were those same twelve NUN peacekeepers that I had ejected from the Infiltrator when I was trapped inside its Med-Tube.
“They think they can take back the ship,” I said. “Twelve of you aren’t enough.”
Gareth would have thought the best strategy for dealing with unfriendly fire was to return fire, but with each passing second, hundreds in D.C. were dying.
“Two seconds is all it would take,” I said.
The targeting system of the Infiltrator painted each of those NUN peacekeepers running toward me and awaited my command.
“You killed Gareth,” I said. “She handed me to you...and you killed her for it.”
The NUN peacekeepers split into two teams to attempt a flanking maneuver. The suppressive fire pecked the Infiltrator but did minimal damage. I disengaged targeting.
“Not today,” I told them. “Enough people are going to die.”
I punched the throttle and nearly flipped backward off my log seat. Tracer rounds followed me but quickly fell out of range as I banked a heading for Washington, D.C.
HOUR TWENTY
A small fuel leak meant I would lose the element of surprise when I reached D.C. I would limp into D.C. at subsonic speeds, but at least I could enjoy the view as I crossed Eastern territory. I spotted the ruins of small cities to my north. These might have been Springfield, Decatur, and Champaign, meaning I was somewhere over Illinois territory. If I moved any farther north, I would breach the Chicago Exclusion Zone and enter Canadian waters.
I could no longer dwell upon my failure to save Gareth. I had to move forward. With Kay, Ector, Gareth, and Perceval dead, Gawain was leading the attack on D.C. Gawain was as stubborn as his sister. If I had any chance of convincing any of the Knights to turn away from this destruction, I would need to reach Sagramore and Galahad, old souls in young bodies.
Knights excelled at turning a city’s defenses on itself. This meant mass casualties. While chaos ensued, a task force of two pairs would eliminate all command structures. The rapidity of the strike was meant to be humane. Prolonged campaigns meant prolonged suffering. D.C. was a walled city surrounded by water. If Knights could use the forces of nature to their advantage, they would. The first thing the Knights would try to do was punch a hole in that seawall.
If I could neutralize any one of the Knights that were causing chaos in D.C., the other Knights would fill gaps to tighten the noose around enemy command. As that noose tightened, I would be able to triangulate the location of the Knights tasked with hunting down leadership.
I located one of the fuses I had removed and fired up that Infiltrator’s communications system, searching shortwave bands in search of another THREE or Cowboy Dave.
“I know there’s someone down there,” I said. “Too much water and green to be uninhabited.”
When the dense forests of the Allegheny Plateau fell into view, those radio bands began to whistle and pop with chatter about a “yonder ball-hoot peckerwood fetching vittles” and “blinked cornpone and dope in some jar fly” and “dat haint’ll go over every holler.” The language sounded like an archaic English dialect. Vittles was food. A jar fly was a type of flying insect. Yonder was a distance. Hollers were valleys. The transmissions were short, rising and fading quickly. Short transmissions meant I could not triangulate locations.
“Must be some sort of code,” I said.
When a spattering of coordinates, bearings, and speeds peppered that strange dialect, I began to suspect that the people hidden in those hills were tracking me and discussing my intent. I banked and stalled as if I were seeking a landing zone.
“Landin on Tipton Knob?” a voice crackled.
Though I knew it would burn fuel, I banked again and rose toward a cloud bank. Once those hills were out of sight, I only heard one more faint transmission.
“Lost the peckerwood.”
“I’m the peckerwood,” I said, “and they lost me.”
Not one settlement had appeared in the forests below, not one light. Infrared might have identified structures hidden in those trees, but I presumed that those who had survived the war had learned basic strategies to avoid detection.
As I crossed over the Shenandoah Valley, I expected to pick up signals from the eastern seaboard. An attack on D.C. should have lit up every radio frequency. Instead, I only heard one voice—the most beautiful I had ever heard—offering some sort of propaganda messaging.
“Patriots of the Eastern cause, you know my voice,” the woman said. “Peace is imminent. Help arrives soon. We ask that you remain sheltered in place.”
“That’s going to be a mistake,” I said.
“Ration for the spring,” the woman said. “Collect rain. The muddy roads will dry. Help will come within weeks.”
I detected no falsehood in the woman’s voice, so she must have been repeating what she believed true. Her voice was so calm that I wanted to hear more.
“We ask for radio silence as supplies begin to move,” she said. “We will reach you wherever you are. The president of the Eastern States of America thanks you for your trust.”
If the expected help was coming from D.C., those listening to this woman would have to wait a long time, meaning those sheltering in place would starve.
“Patriots of the Eastern Cause, you know my voice,” the woman said again, but her voice was fading. “Peace is imminent. Help arrives soon. We ask you to remain sheltered in place.”
“She’s transmitting from somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains,” I said. “She doesn’t know what’s happening in D.C.”
Against my better judgment, I hacked her broadcast channel. “D.C. is falling,” I said.
“Who is this?” the woman said.
“You don’t know me,” I said. “I don’t know you, but I know that you believe what you’re saying. Are you transmitting live? What you’re telling them is not the truth.”
“You are not authorized to communicate on this channel,” she said.
“D.C. is falling,” I said.
“How are you transmitting this?” she said. “Where are you?”
“I’m on a rotting log,” I said, “in a very fast aircraft somewhere above you. If you have the capability, please don’t shoot me down. Tell your people that I’m heading to D.C.”
“You need to get off this channel,” she said. “The dissemination of disinformation is a violation of New United Nations Statute 27.36.5—”
“Just talk to me,” I said. “I’ll prove it.”
The signal went silent, but I knew I had not fallen out of range. “Find me on a secure channel,” she said.
“Which channel?”
“Encrypted,” she said. “If you’re who you say you are, you’ll find me.”
Searching encrypted channels so close to the eastern seaboard made me nervous, but I wanted to keep talking to the woman. If I escaped D.C., I wanted to keep talking to her, even if all I could do was deliver bad news. The radio squawked.
“Are you there?” she said.
“The peace treaty failed,” I said. “I’m not sure it was ever meant to succeed.”
“How do you know that?” she said. “Our intelligence reports indicate a deal was struck. The transmissions have been authenticated.”
“False,” I said.
“I’m recording this conversation,” she said. “Be careful with your words.”
“Do you have a handle?” I said. “Something I can call you?”
“Althea.”
“Althea,” I said. “I’m minutes to D.C. I’m going to try to help.”
“You’ll be shot down,” she said. “D.C. has the best air defenses in the world.”
“Not anymore,” I said.
“Who are you?” she said.
“They call me Lancelot,” I said.
“Those rumors aren’t true,” she said.
“You can call me Owen if you want, Owen Delancey,” I said.
“Owen Lancey?” she said. “Did you just pass over the Alleghany Mountains?”
“Correct,” I said. “Correct, Teah.”
“How old are you, Owen?”
“Maybe eighteen?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Owen, I just received another report,” she said. “D.C. stands.”
“When this is over,” I said, “D.C. won’t be able to help the people out here, maybe ever again. You are going to need physical proof that this has happened. I’d wait for a few days.”
“If you’re not in D.C.,” she said, “how do you know that D.C. is under attack.”
“I gave the order,” I said.
“People who know me call me Teah,” she said. “You called me Teah. Who are you?”
“I’m sorry, Teah,” I said. “I gave the order, and I was relieved of command.”
The morning sun should have broken through the clouds, but the clouds had become thick and dark thanks to the smoke rising off the eastern seaboard.
“Teah,” I said. “You’ll probably keep hearing false intelligence reports for days. Don’t go try to confirm yourself. The smoke from D.C.’s destruction will drift west your way.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she said. “If you ordered the attack—”
“You’ve told people to shelter,” I said. “If they don’t have food, they’ll starve.”
“I’m not changing the communication unless I can authenticate,” she said. “We have people in D.C. who will report, people that I trust. I don’t know you.”
“I don’t know me either,” I said. “Teah, do you know what a halting error is?”
“Like in computing?” she said. “Most computers have failsafe protocols to protect against most halting errors.”
“I hope that I remember you when this is all over,” I said. “I think I want to farm instead. I had a grandfather who wanted to teach me the value of hunting. He feels real. He’s not.”
“What’s left to hunt?” she said.
“I have a visual on D.C. I’m so sorry. If I fail...if I fail to stop this...and if the Knights sweep west to destroy communications networks, you’ll need to make your escape.”
Smoke rose from the Capitol building far below me. A crater had been carved out deep in the center of the city. The Anacostia Seawall had fallen in massive smoldering heaves. I had never seen so much concrete reach its flashpoint and burn. The heat thrown from that concrete would have incinerated any civilian within the shadow of that wall.
