He would have left Jane and Marianne in the relative safety of Colin’s dome, but neither woman would have agreed willingly. Jane was needed to translate, and Marianne to work at Lab Dome with the science teams. Besides, he didn’t want to leave Jane at the Settlement with… No, there was no “besides.” This was the best plan. And he’d gotten them both back safely.
The new signal station lay farther up the slope of the southern Diablo Range. Jason flew low over maples, oaks, gray pines, all taller and older than the sapling forests invading the valleys since the Collapse. In a field thick with wildflowers stood a herd of elk. The quadcopter startled them and they bolted. Farther on, a mountain lion sunned itself on a rock.
Robot-dug, the station was burrowed into a rocky hillside. Jason frowned. More difficult to reach by FiVee but easier to approach without detection. Still, the signal equipment was better camouflaged up here. On the rocky and uneven ground, the track of Li’s FiVee was faint.
He landed the quadcopter at the coordinates Li had given him, and waited. Ten minutes later IT Specialist David DeFord appeared. He wore armor but not an esuit; like all members of J Squad, DeFord was an RSA survivor. He saluted smartly and led him to the station. Kowalski remained with the copter.
Inside, Jason braced himself. He’d never seen Li look this tense.
“Sir, three items of intel came in. First and worst, the enemy has taken Sierra Depot.”
Fuck. Sierra Depot, northwest in high desert near the border of what had been Nevada, was essentially a 36,000-acre shopping mall for Army equipment. For decades it had been staffed lightly by Army officers overseeing civilian contractors. It stored uniforms, goggles, generators, radios, scopes, vehicles. Just before the Collapse, the depot had received an influx of Army, including a company of Marines, and a new, maximum-security building. Jason and Li both knew why. Their eyes met.
Jason said, “They don’t have the launch codes. And the ordnance isn’t housed there.”
“Yes, sir. But now they have—”
“I know what they have. It will self-destruct if they try to access it.”
“Yes, sir.”
There hadn’t been enough Marines left after the Collapse to adequately defend the depot. In the first few months, Jason had sent all the troops he could spare. New America did not take prisoners, unless it was to torture them for information. But at Sierra, none of them except the CO had any intel to give up. Everyone else who knew what lay underground had died of RSA.
Jason didn’t need to ask about current casualties; he already knew. He asked anyway, listening to the names as Li read them off his wrister. Some of them he had served with, before the Collapse. Two had been drinking friends. Major John Burchfell had been best man at Jason and Lindy’s wedding.
He said, throat tightening, “The other intel?”
“General Lassiter died this morning. Heart.”
Not unexpected. The general, whom Jason had never met in person, was eighty-three and had been failing for at least six months. That left General Colleen Hahn as CO. Jason knew her slightly and respected her; he could work with Hahn.
It also made Jason the fourth highest ranking officer left in the United States Army.
“And finally,” Li said, “a piece of good news. New America’s comsat has failed.”
Jason nodded. That was good news. Of the two functioning comsats in orbit, New America had used theirs to track signals between the remaining Army bases and, although no one had expected this, the Return. They could not piggyback on the US comsat, which used advanced-state, heavily encrypted software. New America still had short-range surveillance drones, ground movements, and radio interceptions, but no communication through space. Very good news.
He said, “Contact the Return in orbit. We’re going to bring the ship down. Corporal Kandiss tells me it’s vulnerable to ground attack, but it’s no good to us upstairs and anyway, the scientists say they need research items from aboard. Make contact while I figure out where to land it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell them they’ve done well.”
But his mind was on Sierra Depot. The quantum computer was set to self-destruct if anyone without authorized entry tried to use it. Only the q-computer had the computing power to calculate and try the launch codes without taking a hundred thousand years to accomplish the task. The only other way to launch what were, as far as Jason knew, the only remaining viable nuclear weapons in North America, was from either Jason’s command post or General Hahn’s. But if New America was able to use the q-computer…
No. Unthinkable. He would do anything, anything at all, to keep that from happening.
CHAPTER 6
Zack hovered over Caitlin’s bed, Susan on the other side. “Does she have a fever?”
“No,” Susan said. “She just complains that her head hurts. Where on your head, Caity? Show Daddy.”
Caitlin lay in a tangle of twisted sheets and a green Army blanket. She touched the center of her forehead and tried to smile. She clutched her stuffed toy, a foot-high rabbit named Bollers, so ancient and much laundered that its pink had faded to gray and one amputated paw had been replaced with a substitute sewn from a military-issue black sock. Her trundle bed, stored during the day under Zack and Susan’s, now took up most of the cramped bedroom in their two-room quarters in Enclave Dome.
The other room held a table and chairs, battered sofa, and a wall screen hung on the rough wooden walls that partitioned this “apartment” off from others just like it. Storage closets were made from the same rough wood. Neither room had any windows. Zack had been meaning to borrow tools from the Army and spruce things up a bit, maybe sand the closet doors, even paint something, but there was always too much to do in the lab. Susan was equally busy, often bringing Caitlin to work with her. The only decorations in the tiny apartment were a few pictures drawn by Caity, plus a startlingly ugly collection of plastic zinnias in a willow basket, which had come from God-knew-where. “Leave it,” Susan always said. “At least it provides a spot of color. And Caity likes it.”
Zack put his hand on Caitlin’s forehead. It didn’t feel hot. “Should we send for Lindy?”
“No, I don’t think so. Not unless she develops a fever. But can you sit with her for a while? I have a staff meeting.” Susan, a former CPA, was now the civilian quartermaster for both domes. Her military counterpart had not lived through the Collapse. Susan had the thankless job of stretching dwindling supplies of nearly everything to meet too many requests from too many people.
Zack said, “I’m supposed to be at Lab Dome to brief Marianne Jenner and the other scientists off the Return.”
“Okay,” Susan said. “Star-farers outrank incoming vegetables, which is what this staff meeting is supposed to be about. I’ll postpone it.”
“Thank you, love.” God, he was lucky. Susan was inevitably cheerful, always fair, and far more fearless than he was. When his first family died from RSA, Zack had cursed the immune system that hadn’t let him die with Tara and their sons. He’d thought his life was over. Susan showed him that it was not. She, too, had lost much—there was no one who survived the Collapse who would not bear emotional scars forever—but her natural sturdiness let her carry on, and she carried him with her.
Caitlin said, “It hurts, Daddy.”
“I know. But if you go to sleep, it will be better when you wake up.” Let that be true.