"Liz — I mean, Lieutenant Colonel — he is still refusing."
"You can just refer to me as Colonel, Dr. Stacy. No need to keep repeating the lieutenant part."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm still getting used to all this, you know, army stuff."
"I can see that."
"But Colonel, um, Liz, I have all my clearances, I've been here a month, and he still won't do it."
Liz held a hand up to silence her complaint. She had, after all, heard it plenty of times already. She then locked her eyes on the back of Major Gant's head from two offices away.
He sat there with his eyes intently focused on some slip of paperwork; eyes so intently focused that she knew he was not interested in that paperwork but rather more interested in avoiding eye contact.
She glared.
Thom made the mistake of glancing in her direction, no doubt to spy on how much his disagreement with the doctor had escalated. He then saw Liz watching him and the game was up. Despite him being a couple of years older, she outranked him, and on occasions such as this — occasions when his obstinacy came from something other than sensible logic or sound strategy — he could come across as somewhat childish. Like a kid refusing to eat his vegetables.
Liz summoned him with a wave. He sighed, stood, exited his office, and traveled in Dr. Stacy's footsteps until joining her in front of Thunder's desk.
"Yes, Lieutenant Colonel?"
Stacy jumped, "Oh, you can just call her Colonel," she said, but then realized how stilly it sounded for a civilian to correct a man who had spent nearly two decades in the military. She sort of blushed and quieted … but only for a moment.
Liz considered how to approach this particular conundrum and settled on sarcasm.
She pointed first to him and then to Annabelle while saying, "Major Gant, this is Dr. Stacy. She is the new science officer for the military detachment of Task Force Archangel. Have you two met?"
Something akin to a smile appeared on Thom's face, but she knew it to be more like a dam holding back a rumbling pool of annoyance.
"Yes, Colonel, I am acquainted with Dr. Stacy."
"Tell me, Major, how long have you known Dr. Stacy?"
Gant answered, "I believe she has been on base for nearly one month," but the greater his annoyance or aggravation the more stilted his speech, and thus it sounded as if he spoke individual words as opposed to one congruent sentence.
"Major Gant, Dr. Stacy has received all necessary clearances and is a fully functioning and contributing member of Task Force Archangel and an employee here at the Darwin Research Facility. She is quite familiar with the surface structures; she has already utilized the Cray over on B-1, received certification on biohazard disposal from the chief down on A-3, and partaken in a conference with the microbiology research team at their facilities on Pylon A sublevel four. I personally showed her the chemical warfare test range on B4, and we toured the aeronautics department, the theoretical physics labs, and the Earth Studies offices spread out across both pylons of sublevel five."
Gant stood straight — not exactly at attention but as close as he tended to get these days — but as she spoke he swayed, as if, perhaps, the restroom called.
She went on, "Now, as the commander of this base, I felt it my duty to give her a proper orientation to the more traditional facilities. However, as I have explained to you twice already, I am still a relative newcomer and, given your experience, the nature of your detachment, and your connection to the containment facilities, I requested that you provide Dr. Stacy with a thorough tour of sublevel six and below. Or was I not clear in that request?"
Gant shifted, maintained that pseudo-smile, and answered, "Colonel Thunder, my understanding is that you did, in fact, request that I show Dr. Stacy to those lower levels and that that request was not, in fact, a direct order."
"That is correct, Major. Would you please explain to me why you have not seen fit to honor that request?"
Stacy watched the exchange through young but sharp brown eyes.
"Colonel, I do not believe Dr. Stacy is ready to visit those lower levels."
Stacy broke in with a voice that sounded very much offended: "I have been briefed on just about everything that is down there. I have read two dozen medical and psychological articles on the specimens; I have seen the after-action reports. I trained with the Navy Seals for six weeks to get ready for this position, for which I was personally recruited by your boss."
Thunder held a hand aloft to calm Stacy. While she did go silent, she did not appear to calm at all.
"What do you mean she's not ready?"
Gant shifted some more, but did not answer.
Stacy said to Liz, "I know I don't understand all this army stuff, but I thought you were his superior officer?"
Thunder nodded.
Stacy went on, "Then can't you just make that request an order?"
Thunder eyed Major Gant and then answered, "I won't do that."
"Why?"
She replied to Stacy but kept her eyes on Gant.
"I may outrank him, but Thom here has been doing this a lot longer than anyone on this base. If he doesn't feel you're ready, then I'm not going to push it." She ignored Stacy's gasps, stood, and told him, "I respect your seniority here, Thom, but she deserves to see; otherwise she won't be ready for the things you'll run into out there."
Liz saw the answer in Thom's eyes, hiding there behind his forced smile and his stiff — but swaying — stance. She did not see chauvinism or disdain for a civilian; she saw something else.
She added, "You can't protect her forever, you know."
He blinked but that was the only concession he offered.
The phone on her desk buzzed. Liz held her eyes on Thom's for two seconds longer and then answered.
"Yes? Yes, General, hello. Yes, he is right here in my office, along with Dr. Stacy. Okay, hold on."
She pulled the phone away from her ear, tapped a button, and set the receiver down.
"General, you're on speaker phone."
"Major Gant? Annabelle?"
"Yes, General Friez," Thom replied, while the younger woman surprised them both with a bubbly, "Hello, Albert."
"Glad you're all here because there isn't much time. Major, your unit needs to scramble and deploy. Less than an hour ago PACOM flashed Edelweiss, sourced to a Secret Service detail escorting a United States senator. Contact was lost almost immediately but point of origin was a small, privately owned resort named Tioga Island situated in the South Pacific."
"Sir," Gant leaned forward and placed both hands on Thunder's desk. "Any understanding of the nature of the threat?"
"Negative, Major. You now know everything that we know. It seems we got lucky in that one of the Secret Service agents interfaced with Archangel a few years back and remembered the alert code, otherwise we wouldn't even know about it. As I said, this is a private island and I really mean private. There is no national claim here, which is unusual even for so-called private islands. We're tracking ownership, but from what I can tell, it's sort of a playground for the high rollers. The senator ended up there due to engine trouble on his flight to Australia. At least that's the cover story," Friez said, adding a cough.
"It sounds as if we have a very long way to travel," Gant mumbled.
"We have been unable to raise anyone on Tioga, not the detail, not the airstrip there, not anyone. More intel is expected within six hours; the NRO has a bird set to photograph the area. I'll be at their Chantilly facility when the data comes through. In the meantime you need to get moving; it's going to take all day just to get there and that's assuming we can find the necessary assets."