Iron Mike (14 page)

Mike

Mike opened his eyes, blinking against the brightness of fluorescent lighting. His mouth was dry, and his head felt heavy and full. A machine made a rhythmic beeping noise somewhere close by. He breathed in and immediately knew he was in a hospital. He turned his head slightly, and Kari stood up from the chair next to his bed, coming over to him and taking his hand.

“He’s up?” he heard Jenn ask, and the relief in her voice told him how worried she was. She came into his vision on the other side of Kari, looking down at him.

“Hey, dork,” Mike said, his voice a barely audible croak.

“Hey, yourself, slug-abed,” Jenn replied tartly. “Leave it to you to be lazy and leave all the hard work up to the girls.”

Mike smiled wanly. Kari grinned. Jenn scowled. Everything was normal. Normal-ish, anyway.

“Guess we made it to Fort Knox?” he asked Kari, gratefully sipping some of the water she offered him with one of those plastic bendable straws hospitals used. He was surprised Jenn hadn’t already claimed it.

“We did,” Kari smiled, relief evident in her eyes. “You’re in the ICU at the hospital on base – well, what’s left of it, anyway. Your wound is really infected, Mike. You've developed sepsis.”

Mike frowned, not knowing the word. His brain was sluggish, and fatigue pulled at him. “Okay,” he said tiredly. “When can I leave?”

“Told ya!” Jenn exclaimed victoriously and held her hand out. Kari sighed and dug a five dollar bill out of her pocket, handing it to Mike’s sister.

“It wasn’t his first question,” Kari grumbled accusingly.

“I said in the first five minutes,” Jenn replied smugly, pocketing the bill.

Mike started to smile, but it faded before it made it to his lips. He felt like shit.

“How long have I been out?”

“About a day. They have you on fluids and antibiotics now, and you’re going to be here for a week or more. It was really good we got here when we did, Mike.”

“You almost died,” Jennifer added grimly, her voice small.

“Nah,” Mike mumbled, glancing at his sister. “I’m too mean to die.”

“God’s truth,” Jenn agreed, sounding just like Gran.

He saw Kari smile, and thought he liked her smile. He would have told her so, but his eyes suddenly grew heavy, and he drifted back into semi-consciousness. He heard them gathering their stuff and putting their coats on to leave, but he couldn’t even rouse himself to say goodbye. He hoped Kari came back soon – it was nice seeing her face when he woke up.

He was almost asleep … or maybe he already was asleep, and it was just a dream. He watched uncertainly as a black metallic orb floated in the air, moving toward him with decided purpose. Mike felt a surge of fear as the orb moved closer to him, bobbing soundlessly. He reached for the call button, but his fingers were thick and heavy. Before he could press the button, the orb floated right next to him. He felt a sharp stab on his right shoulder, and he was unconscious in seconds.

Scientist-Farmer

Scientist-Farmer felt intense relief when the Spotter finally reported it was able to deliver the injection. The human female and the sibling did not leave Human-Male’s bedside, and he was unable to risk the intervention while they remained in the hospital room, even though they slept during part of that time. Their concern made it difficult for him to help Human-Male, but Scientist-Farmer waited patiently, allowing six of his brains to rest while he attended to the healing with the seventh.

He felt a slight twinge of guilt at his interference; it was prohibited to use Consortium resources irresponsibly, and medicating an animal on a harvest planet was certainly that. However, Scientist-Farmer no longer considered Human-Male – or, by association, any of the humans – to be animals. He had already determined to his own satisfaction the species was sapient; however, he was pleased his discussion with Researcher-Xenohistorian confirmed his judgment.

Scientist-Farmer allowed his seventh brain to rest, automatically removing the corporeal form the use of the machines required him to wear. Without the tri-pedal body, Scientist-Farmer floated free, his minds once again joining with the ether of the universes while his insubstantial essence, glowing softly in colors of blue, green, yellow and those beyond the human frame of reference, floated peacefully in the laboratory aboard the third ship. Human-Male might have lived even if he didn't interfere, but that was not a certainty. Scientist-Farmer disliked uncertainties.

January 6.

Mike

Kari and Jenn were back the next morning. Mike’s fever was completely gone, and his eyes were clear and alert. He felt significantly better, except for a bone-deep weariness and a slight annoyance at the parade of incredulous doctors and nurses that kept coming into his room to prod, poke, and take more blood.

“You should eat,” Kari said softly, a coaxing smile on her face.

Mike shook his head, the motion barely perceptible. “Not ready yet.”

“Can I have your cookies then?” Jenn asked quickly. Mike nodded, his mouth twitching, and Jenn immediately grabbed the cookies from the hospital tray and went back to where she’d been sitting on the floor. Mike’s eyes followed her. She’d apparently moved in; her Barbies and all of their accoutrements were spread all over the corner of the hospital room, a miniature fashion display to rival the best of
haute couture
in gay Paree.

“The kids?” Mike asked, his attention returning to Kari.

“They’re all good,” Kari said softly. “They were cold and hungry, but that’s it. No injuries, no frostbite.”

“Two deaths,” Mike said quietly.

Kari nodded, not commenting. There was nothing she could say. “There’s a temporary daycare center here, and the kids are there for now, with the Knox kids who survived. There are still a lot of people unaccounted for.”

“Your father?” Mike asked carefully.

Kari grinned, and Mike smiled at her relief. “Alive, overworked, and grumpy as usual,” she announced.

“Who you callin’ grumpy?” asked a decidedly grumpy voice from the hallway. Kari jumped slightly, a mischievously guilty smirk spreading over her face. Mike looked to the door and saw a tall, lean soldier with white hair and Kari’s eyes step into his room.

“Hi, Daddy,” Kari said with a pleased smile, standing as the soldier approached Mike’s bed. She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. He smiled at her for a moment, and then looked at Mike, extending his hand.

“How are you feeling, son?” he asked.

Mike shook hands with Kari’s father. “I’m fine, sir,” he said. “Ready to get out of this bed.”

The soldier laughed and that’s when Mike noticed the small square patch with the silver eagle, almost hidden in the camouflage pattern of the man's ACUs. Mike’s eyes widened. He didn’t know most Army rank designations, but even he recognized a colonel's eagle! He shot a quick glance at Kari. She’d never mentioned her father was a high-ranking officer. On the other hand, he’d never asked, either.

“I think it’s going to be a couple days on that,” Kari’s father replied. “The medics here still don’t believe that infection’s cleared up, and they’re insisting you stay for observation. I think you have them puzzled, Iron Mike.”

Mike flushed, and shot Kari a quick glare. “It’s just Mike, sir,” he said quickly. “Ryan Michael Sanderlin.”

“Some nicknames take on a life of their own, Mike. I’m Dick Kasoniak to my face, the Old Bear behind my back, and god-only-knows-what out of my range of hearing. I just stopped by to thank you for bringing my daughter and those children here safely.”

Mike looked away, staring at Jenn who was pretending not to listen. “Not all of them, sir,” he said softly.

Kasoniak nodded grimly. “Kari told me.” He waited a moment before lowering his voice an octave, apparently not realizing Jennifer had bat ears when she wasn’t supposed to hear something. “Yesterday afternoon, a nineteen-year-old private was on patrol at the training range. He saw one of those slugs you guys have named Feeders, and he went to investigate. You know what happened next. Within ten minutes of his squad leader calling it in, the whole goddamned post was out there on the range trying to get that soldier free. We used everything from chain saws to a crane to try to get him out. They worked for forty minutes, and he was buried up to his neck, screaming and … well. Anyway, I was getting ready to shoot him myself when the damned thing finally pulled him under.”

Mike nodded, still unable to look at the colonel.

“We killed it, Mike.”

Mike looked up sharply, his eyes haunted. “How, sir?” he asked hoarsely.

“Napalm,” Kasoniak replied bitterly. “It took napalm, son. There was nothing you could have done to help those boys.”

March 14.

New Fort Knox (NFK), Kentucky

Mike

Mike took a cautious sip of the bilge water Ricochet considered coffee and set the cup down. He would wait until after the meeting to grab a bottle of water. Kershaw grinned at him as if in silent agreement, holding her own bottle of water out to him in offering.

“Nah, but thanks, Sarge,” he said easily.

Mike had changed in the past three months. He was leaner and meaner, harder in mind and body. Both the ponytail and his childhood were gone, as though they’d never been. He knew how to deploy the necessary weaponry, and he knew how to defend himself in hand-to-hand combat. He had saved lives, and he had taken lives. Of all the things in his life he’d never expected to be, “soldier” probably topped the list. There wasn't much choice, though. The U.S. Resistance Force needed every able-bodied person it could get and they were accepting soldiers of both genders as young as sixteen. The Resistance and the National Guard were the only American armies standing.

He and Kari had a good thing going, even if she did occasionally rip his balls. He’d just received his promotion to corporal – before she did! – and Jennifer was doing great. Not only did she excel in her classes, but every day after school, she helped tear down buildings and haul salvageable materials over to the work crews in New Fort Knox. Mom and Gran would have been so proud of her. It was the middle of a war, and Mike, Kari, and Jennifer had found their places.

“Atten –”

“At ease,” Colonel Kasoniak preempted. Mike adjusted his chair with the others who started to rise and looked at the Old Bear. The colonel’s aide immediately set up the whiteboard behind him, and a couple of grunts brought in several boxes on a hand truck and left one box at each soldier’s chair before withdrawing from the conference room and closing the doors behind them.

Kasoniak started the meeting immediately. He was in a good mood, and optimistic. It was nice to have some good mojo for a change. “Ladies and gentlemen, in the boxes behind your seats you will each find ten hand-held radio units. These are the new long-range audio-visual units that are going to put the U.S. military back into the communications game. You’ll notice when you pick one up that it’s heavy and awkward, like a goddamned cell phone from the 80’s. That’s because it is a goddamned cell phone from the 80’s, only it’s been completely gutted and reworked to hold a communication network more reliable than the internet and more complex than a gnat’s ass.

"They use tritium isotope batteries, folks. That alternative energy source has a twelve year half-life, and these radios will be the eyes and ears of the USRF for at least that long. Do not ask me how the hell they work, because I have no idea. As I heard it, some of the survivors from Google came up with these toys, and they were nice enough to share them with Homeland Security. It’s their product, and they brought the technology to us. Homeland sat on it for over a month, but the important thing is we have them now, and we need to distribute them in the field ASAP. In front of you are your mission objectives and briefings. Review them, and see me before 1800 with questions.”

The room “hooah’d,” and Kasoniak then took several copies of a grainy photograph out of his folder and passed them around the table. Mike studied the alien invader carefully. Unlike the Feeders, this creature was squat and tri-pedal with three legs, three arm-like appendages and three antennae-like stalks protruding from a bulge that only slightly resembled a head. It had no eyes, that Mike could see, nor ears, nor a mouth. It was hairless, its skin a puckered, reddish gray.

“These are the Trois,” Kasoniak said, and added drily, “and I’m sure you all know what they’re really called because these kinds of nicknames tend to stick. Don’t they, Ricochet?”

“Hooah,” Ricochet answered, and Mike automatically echoed him with the rest of the room.

Kasoniak passed around another photograph. This one showed a close-up of the three antennae. The skin beneath the antennae was flush, and Mike could see a network of thick gray veins threading through the surface of the thing’s “head.”

“Like our friendly neighborhood Feeders, these creatures are almost – key word, there, gentlemen – almost invulnerable. Just as napalm is finally enough to kill a Feeder, any round of ammo, even a .22, can kill a Trois – as long as that round lands exactly here.” He used a red sharpie on his copy of the photo, marking out a three inch diameter in the center of the beast’s three antennae. “No one has tested the theory yet, but that area may also be vulnerable in hand-to-hand combat – it seems to be a soft spot in their skulls, if these sons-a-bitches have skulls.”

He passed out the next handout. It was a map of the eastern half of what used to be the United States of America. Several military bases were circled with dotted lines of communication drawn from some of them to others. Surprisingly, New Fort Knox was in the center of the largest number of communications lines, making it appear to be the hub of Resistance activity.

“Our greatest weakness, other than being outmanned and outgunned, is that we haven’t been able to organize any kind of cohesive attack. Everything we’ve managed up to this point has been reactive or defensive, and we've been limited to guerilla style combat. They kicked us in the balls when they took out our satellites, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s taken us this long, minus the month of bureaucratic ass-kissing, to come up with a viable communications workaround. Initial testing shows the enemy has not been able to intercept these signals and seems unaware we’re communicating again.”

“Hooah for the nerds,” Mike commented, and was joined by several others.

“The principle behind them is simple, according to the ‘nerd’ who passed them on. Each handheld unit acts as a mirror for the signals of other handheld units, reflecting and thereby enlarging signal range for all of them. For example, if ten handhelds stretched in a line from New York to San Francisco, people on either end could communicate. Destroy the handheld in Kansas City, and you suddenly have a break midway in the line of communications because that handheld can no longer reflect signal.”

“So, it’s kind of like they rebuilt the internet,” Ricochet offered, nodding in understanding. “Cool. Very cool.”

“Except there will be no net surfing or browsing for porn yet,” Kasoniak noted drily. “Apparently, that’s going to take the boys and girls at Google awhile longer to figure out.”

Kasoniak waited for the hoots to die down before continuing. “It is now our primary objective to get these handheld units into the hands of Resistance leaders,” he said grimly. “And that means we’re going to need couriers to hand-deliver them. Gentlemen, the Razers and Trois are still out there, but worse than that, the whole damned planet is crawling with Feeders. You all know the dangers involved.” He used the sharpie as he spoke. “The furthest point to the west we’re responsible for is Fort Bliss. Pineda and Smith are taking the handhelds to Bliss and transferring to that unit. God speed, gentlemen.”

There was a round of quiet “hooahs,” and then Kasoniak continued. “Kershaw has family near Fort Bragg, so she’ll be carrying handhelds there and reporting to Lieutenant Davidson. She’s also transferring. God speed, Sergeant.”

Mike murmured “Hooah” with the others, a bit regretfully. He liked Kershaw. She was a good soldier and he'd miss her.

“The rest of you will be making round trips which means, yes, you are coming back here,” Kasoniak deadpanned to the murmured jeers. “Sanderlin, you’re familiar with the Virginia Beach area, so you’re delivering handhelds to the Resistance unit led by Major Hardin in Norfolk. Fields, Fort Benning was your old stomping ground, so you get to play delivery boy to Colonel Acevedo. And Ricochet, you’re going to make nice with the flyboys at Scott Air Force Base. They’re a bit more scattered so we don’t have a contact for you yet.

“People, your orders contain as much detailed information as we’ve been able to obtain, but we’re expecting you to add significantly to the data pool. Once you leave, you’re to maintain radio silence until your radio units are delivered, and once deliveries have been made, you're to check in on a routine basis. I don’t have to stress it is absolutely vital each of you completes his or her delivery of these radio units. Shortwave is unreliable in the best of times, and we are not in the best of times. If we’re going to start taking this war on the offensive, we must be able to effectively communicate with each other. You are the Alpha team, gentlemen. I pray to God we don’t need to send out a Beta team.” He turned to his whiteboard. “Now, if you'll notice here ...”

The meeting continued for another hour. Mike paid attention and responded when he needed to, but his heart was already out in the field.

He breathed a sigh of relief when Kasoniak finally wrapped up. Like the others, he stayed in the coolness of The Tomb to review his orders, his eyes scanning the words and quickly pulling out the relevant details. Fifteen minutes later, he was finally able to step outside of the depository and into the daylight. It was an unusually hot day for the middle of March, but snowmelt made the ground wet and the air smell crisp. Mike shaded his eyes against the sun and scanned the different supply tents until he saw Regina. He walked over to her, his gait casual, even nonchalant. She looked up from the crate she was loading, her eyes immediately wary.

“Hey!” Mike raised his hands in preemptive protest. “I haven’t even asked for anything yet.”

“‘Yet’, Iron Mike. I know you too well to be fooled by the pretty-boy charm, so you best just spit it out now, or be on your way. I got work to do.” The older woman’s words were harsh, but her tone was resigned. Reggie tucked a sweaty white curl up into her damp red bandana and turned back to the picnic table, which was now a converted assembly line and crate-packing center. She used a battery-operated drill to screw a crate closed, then moved it to one side and began loading a second. Mike peeked over the crate to check its contents.

“Nice,” he said, grinning at the hand grenades, blocks of C4 and neatly-packaged detonators and blasting caps. “Looks like you have the WMD covered. Is this the batch going to Norfolk?”

Regina stopped working and looked up at him with a sober nod. “If anything’s left of Norfolk,” she said quietly, her lips a tight, white line. “Last report, they were holding their position, but Razers took out Oceana and apparently half of Newport News.”

Mike bit his upper lip, letting air whistle through his teeth. “If the Trois have them flanked on both sides long enough for the Feeders to move in, they’re done,” he said grimly. “We need to get those people moved over to the Eastern Shore and blow the bridge after them. Have to keep the Feeders from consolidating long enough to get it done.”

Regina scowled at him. “Who’s to say the Eastern Shore’s doing any better than the rest of Virginia, boy?”

Mike studied Regina for a long moment before answering. “It’s a good question,” he finally admitted. “Been a few days since we got shortwave, but last we heard that group was well-entrenched. They’re organized. They have food, decent sanitation, and room to spare. Mostly though, they haven’t seen Razer activity for two months, and they’re desperate for people to help carry the load.”

Regina snorted as she resumed filling a well-padded crate with explosives. “I’m just the hired help around here,” she said sardonically. “You know more about the situation than I do. But for what it’s worth, you’ll have a hell of a time getting that many people to walk across that long-assed bridge and through two tunnels to the shore, Mike, especially if they have a bunch of young kids like you and old farts like me. You need to talk to Colonel Kasoniak about it.”

Mike set one muddy combat boot up on the bench of the picnic table, pulling a piece of crumpled paper out of the pocket of his camouflage fatigue pants. “Matter of fact, Reggie, I did just that,” he said, setting the paper down on the picnic table for Regina to read. “He doesn’t think it’s a good option, but it’s the only option the Norfolk resistance group has.” His lips turned up, barely, as he watched Regina read the requisition, a cranky scowl on her face.

The older woman liked to play “hired help” but she knew as much about the situation in the rest of the United States as anyone else in the compound, and more than most.

“Problem is, we haven’t been able to make shortwave contact with Major Hardin for close to a week, so he doesn’t know the new orders.” Mike shot her an extra charming smile. “Since I’m the old man’s best rider and otherwise expendable, I get to play delivery boy, Reggie. I’m taking the new handheld radios to the major and blowing up a bridge. Good times, huh?” Mike grinned. “So those goodies you’re baking need to fit right into my saddlebags and sidecar, if you please, ma’am.”