“About twenty times in the past year,” Mac said. “Why don’t you come up with something original?”
“I never liked Burns,” Roland said. He was throwing a hatchet at the three-foot-high stump of a tree. How the stump of a tree had found its way out here to the desert and down into the Den was a mystery, but it had quickly become the magnet of all matters of throwing devices: hatchets, knives, spears. Bored men needed some release. Bored killers liked to throw killing devices.
Mac snorted. “Moms named him after Major Burns from M*A*S*H for some reason. Moms never likes naming anyone and she was surprised when Ms. Jones chose it. I don’t know what they picked up in him. He didn’t like the name either.”
Eagle went over and grabbed the handle of the hatchet. He grunted with effort, trying to pull it out after Roland’s throw. It came on the second jerk. He walked to the other end of the team table and prepared to throw.
“Duck!” Mac yelled as Eagle let loose.
Kirk took it seriously and dove under the table — just in time, as the top of the weapon hit the stump and it recoiled back, skidding across the table and then clanking to the floor.
“Dude, we have a rule!” Mac said as he picked up the hatchet. “You don’t get to throw.”
Eagle frowned. “I’ll get it eventually.”
“You’ll get one of us eventually,” Mac said, holding the hatchet out to Kirk. “Let’s see how our new man does.”
Kirk remembered the woodpile, the one Pads had forced him to make that summer after finding him hiding in the hollow of the old tree down by the creek. Pads had ordered him to cut the old tree down and stood there pulling from the bottle as Kirk, then known as Winthrop Carter, did it. Then Pads had given him a quota of wood to be cut every day from the dead tree, until there was nothing left of that tree but kindling. No more hide spot, and every log tossed on the fire that winter was a reminder that you couldn’t hide from Pads.
Kirk threw, and the hatchet flashed across the room, hitting the trunk with a solid thud, the blade burying deep into the wood.
“Damn,” Mac said. “You can throw.”
From the corner of the room, Doc said a single word. “Rifts.”
All activity ceased as Doc continued. “While you gentlemen have been concerned all day with Burns and his betrayal, I believe we need to further educate Kirk on Rifts, since we might well be facing one sooner than anticipated.”
Mac and Roland sat down at the team table. Kirk grabbed the seat closest to Doc, who was in the armchair that had been in the CP for the in-briefing with Nada and Moms.
“Let’s start with what we don’t know,” Doc said. “We don’t know what Rifts are, nor do we know what the Fireflies are. Not exactly. But skipping all the scientific jargon and theories, let’s construct a framework from which you can conduct operational tactics.”
Kirk said nothing, beginning to understand Nada’s warnings about the scientists.
“My best guess is that Rifts are tears to the multiverse. To either a world parallel to ours or another world entirely. And the Fireflies are probes. Some think the Fireflies are living entities who have crossed over, but the way they inhabit objects and creatures indicates a level of programming and not innate intelligence to me. Some of the choices the Fireflies make aren’t exactly the best — the cactus in the Fun Outside Tucson, for example.”
“Tell that to Burns,” Roland said. “And that rabbit didn’t seem a smart choice, but if Nada had been a shade slower, it would have torn your neck open and you wouldn’t be here. And the rattler did get you.”
Doc flushed; whether in embarrassment or anger, it was impossible to tell. “Yes, yes.”
“Doc,” Roland said, “as even you said: he don’t need theories.” Roland put his heavy hands flat on the table. “We’re the Nightstalkers. We, the Shooters, kill Fireflies, and Doc there, the Scientist, he shuts the Rift. That’s it. Moms and Nada told you how we kill the Fireflies. If it’s living, I usually ending up flaming it until there’s nothing but ash. Other stuff, Mac and I and the rest of the team blast and flame until there’s nothing left. Then this little gold thing floats up out of whatever it was in and — poof — no more Firefly.”
“But how did this start?” Kirk asked.
“When the first Rift was opened,” Doc said.
“Who did that?” Kirk asked.
“A German scientist here at Area 51,” Doc said. “Near the end and after World War II we brought a bunch of their scientists over here to work on—”
“Fucking Nazis,” Mac said.
“—various projects under the auspices of Operation Paperclip. We fought the Russians for the brain trust left from the Third Reich. It made Guantanamo look like a joke. Most people know about the ones we used in the space program, but we took whoever we could grab, and there were several theoretical physicists who had really produced nothing of practical use for the Germans, but were let loose in the labs in Area 51 to experiment—”
“Fuck around,” Mac said.
“—and one of them developed a way to open a Rift in 1948,” Doc said. “You can read about it in the binders that Nada gave you. It turned out to be a mess, since no one had encountered the Fireflies before and it took them a while—”
“And a lot of good men,” Mac interjected.
“—before they were able to figure it out, shut the Rift, and destroy the Fireflies. The first version of the Nightstalkers was formed under the supervision of a committee called Majestic 12 and originally headquartered at Area 51. Their primary mission was to find and destroy Fireflies and close the Rift they came out of. Since 1948 there have been twenty-seven recorded openings of Rifts.”
“All in the US?” Kirk asked.
“Most,” Doc said. “The theory behind them is the key, and ever since 1948, it’s been like the Holy Grail of physicists to create a controlled Rift and figure out what’s on the other side. No one has even been able to control one and no one has ever figured out what’s on the other side.”
“They’ve all dropped the Grail,” Eagle said. “They can open them and Doc here can shut them, but they can’t be controlled. Pretty much everyone who has opened one gets sucked through. To where, we have no idea, but such is the price of stupidity.”
“What about Rifts outside the US?” Kirk asked.
“The Russians have a team like us,” Doc said, “and between us we cover the world. We’ve done five missions overseas.”
“Not fun,” Roland noted.
“The problem,” Doc said, “is that science has the potential—”
“To screw things up,” Moms said from the door of the CP. Kirk reacted without thinking, hopping to his feet and popping to attention like he was back in the Ranger Bat.
Moms smiled. “I like this. It’s like the real army.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Nada said from behind her.
“Chill, dude,” Mac said.
Kirk sheepishly sat back down, the habits of the Rangers hard to let go of.
“In my opinion, the real birth of the Nightstalkers,” Moms said, “was not 1948, but on the sixteenth of June, 1945, not too far from here in the desert outside Alamogordo Air Force Base.”
“A Rift?” Kirk asked.
“No. Worse.” Moms came over to the team table and took a seat. Nada also grabbed a chair. “On that day, at five thirty in the morning, the first atomic weapon was detonated. You have to understand the context. They were trying something unknown. There were no computer projections. Those guys were using slide rulers. Some of the smartest people out there in that desert, people who had helped build the bomb, were convinced they were going to start an atomic chain reaction that would consume the entire world. And they detonated it anyway.