Machinations (25 page)

“Clarence,” I say slowly, afraid of the answer. “Where's Camus?”

He fiddles with the display, bringing up Churchill base. “His team is still onsite, or was as of ten minutes ago.”

I close my eyes, fighting the urge to curse like a sailor.

“I think I know what the problem is,” Samuel says, hijacking one of the wall screens. “I'm no expert, but according to the diagnostic report, the issue doesn't have anything to do with a glitch or the weather. Taking that into account, the most likely scenario is that the machines are running some sort of jamming device to disrupt our signals and confuse communication. Typical of their programming. But…”

He switches the pictures on the screen to a computer-generated view of Earth from space.

“There's an alternative possibility. This is the area of low Earth orbit, where most of the remaining—
functional
—satellites are, including our own. What if the machines have somehow managed to, I don't know, bring the one we've stationed over Alaska down? Or gained control of it, at least?”

“It'd account for the communications failure,” Clarence agrees mildly. “But it's still a leap.”

“Not to mention it means we can't do anything about it,” I point out.

“I didn't say it was a best-case scenario,” says Samuel.

“What do you want to do, Commander?” Clarence asks.

As the mantle of responsibility crashes down onto my shoulders, I'm once again reminded of how heavy a weight it is. No wonder it drove Camus into the ground.

I pick at my nails for a moment, torn between wanting to send in the cavalry and knowing it's the wrong play. My heart screams for action, but my head asks, what would Camus do in my position? It doesn't matter. Camus isn't here. And Clarence and Samuel are expecting an answer from me.

“We wait,” I tell them. It's not an easy decision, but I hope it's the right one. “At least for a day, two at the most. Send word to the council. Let them know what's going on. We can't rush in blind. We have to give them a chance to contact us first.”

“And if they don't?” Clarence inquires.

My smile is grim, my mind set. “Then I'm strapping on a pair of snow boots and going after them myself. No arguments.” It's the best solution, situated between my head and my heart. No one ever said middle ground had to be safer ground. “I can't hide in a tower forever,” I add. “I won't. Not when the people in danger are the ones I sent out to fight the dragon for me.”

“I believe you,” says McKinley's head engineer. I think I spy a mixture of sadness and pride on his face. “But let's hope it doesn't come to that.”

“I'm going with you.”

I look up from my laces—an intricate mess of loops and snaps that weave back and forth up the neck of my boot, cinching it tighter and tighter. There's enough that can go majorly wrong out there; the last thing I want to be worrying about in the field is one of my laces coming untied. If it means taking a little extra time to triple lace my snow boots, so be it. It gives my hands something to do, anyway, apart from fidgeting restlessly with the rest of my combat attire.

“Oh yeah?” I reply with a raised eyebrow. It's not a challenge. I'm just curious, because I can't imagine the council approving Samuel as a tagalong. They didn't even approve of me leaving, but I'm going regardless. “Says who?”

“Actually, I decided to take a page from your book. How's it go? It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission?” He smiles.

“Samuel. Be serious. You're not coming.”

“I am.” The smile disappears, taking the boy of my youth with it. The man in his place steps forward, moving some of my gear off of the metal bench in order to sit next to me. His head is bowed, eyes on the floor for a few seconds as he gathers his thoughts. Then he looks at me with such directness I find myself unable or unwilling to look away.

“As hard as it is for me to admit, I know I can't protect you forever. I know keeping you safe is an impossible task on a good day, and these haven't been good days. I know there are things beyond my control, that events happen even science can't predict ahead of time. I think we've both learned that one the hard way. But still, you have to let me try, Rhona.”

“No. Absolutely not.
No
, Samuel.” The worst part is that I do want him with me out there. There's no one I'd rather have watching my back. But I want him safe and alive more. It's no victory exchanging his life for Camus's, and I fear that's what will happen if he joins my war party. Casualties are almost guaranteed.

“I told you, I'm not asking for permission.”

I try to be crueler, drive him back. “You're not trained. You'll just get in the way.”

“What do you think I've been doing these past few months? I've been with you at almost every training session. I can handle a weapon. I've memorized procedure. I won't be any more of a liability than anyone else.” I'm shaking my head, desperately trying to come up with more reasons. More excuses. “What? What else is there?”

“You could die!”

He looks down at his hands. “Yeah,” he says. “And so could you.”

I laugh, but it's a cold, harsh sound, like ice breaking. “God, what is it about me that makes people want to throw away their lives? Do I just attract martyrs or something?”

Three days ago, two days ago, one day ago, I was fully prepared to walk into the fire alone. Even when we didn't receive word from Camus or Churchill or any of the other teams, the council still refused to supply me with any soldiers for a rescue. Said they couldn't force anyone to take such a monumental risk, but I know it's because they need them here, in the event McKinley is attacked. It's a possibility that's growing more and more likely with every moment. In an empty gesture to appease me, they told me I was free to take volunteers with me on my “suicide mission.”

They underestimated the obscene effect I seem to have on people. My team came together in less than twenty-four hours. I wouldn't be complaining, except for Samuel. He's not the first victim, but I don't want him to become a literal one either. I don't want anyone else to die for me.

“Everyone has these great expectations for my life,” I continue. “All this time, I thought I was trying to live up to a person, when really I've been competing with the
idea
of a person. Haven't I?” I grab the laces of my boot and give them a violent yank, tightening them just shy of their breaking point. “To be honest, I think the whole thing's starting to give me a complex. Or maybe an ulcer.”

“You don't have an ulcer,” Samuel says. “It would have shown up in the lab work from your last physical.” At first I think he's being wonderfully dense, but he's not. He's just being wonderful.

I touch his hand, laugh. “Thanks. I needed that.”

He looks down at the contact, then quickly back up at me. Some kind of decision is made in that split second, passing in front of his eyes like the glare of the sun breaching a cloud. He needlessly shifts on the bench. “Actually, there's something else I needed to talk to you about?”

“Is that a statement or a question?” I tease him thoughtlessly, finishing tying the last laces on my boots.

He takes my hands away from my shoes, holding them gently. I feel him shaking.

“You know I love you, right?”

I swallow, looking at him. Trying to really focus on him. “Yeah, of course.”

“Be honest with me, then. Will there ever be a chance for…us?” He's staring at our hands when he says this, unable to look at me until the last second. I understand what he's asking, because his actions have been saying the same thing for months—and years before that, in another life.

Maybe I just didn't see it then, blinded by something brighter—the stars aligning for me and Camus. The light of that love still reaches out of the past, burning like celestial travelers in the night, the memory of their fire beautiful. It's especially haunting in the darkness, in the stillness of the night, when I hear Camus softly breathing across the room, and I wonder whether or not he dreams, and if he does, what does he dream about? Who? What anchors him in the torrents of his dreams?

Yet those stars are gone, all the same. They were snuffed out in the snows of Anchorage. Something new has replaced them, something with the potential to be beautiful. Though I can't say I ever bought into any kind of astrology, and I don't believe in fate anymore, either, I still believe in choice. Camus made one before he left. Samuel is making one now. It's my turn to do the same. But some choices are more easily made than others, and this isn't one of them.

I don't know what he reads in my expression, but it startles him into apologizing. “I'm sorry. After the kiss, I thought, maybe…maybe you'd change your mind. But I shouldn't be springing this on you right now, right before the mission. It's selfish.”

“No,” I say, clutching his hands, preventing him from retreating. “It's brave.”

“Interesting word choice,” he murmurs, smiling, half-embarrassed.

“Samuel, I know this may come as a shock to you, but you're one of the bravest people I know. You sacrifice for the people you care about, and you're not afraid to love. Honesty of feeling like that takes courage. Not everyone has that capacity.” I'm thinking specifically of Camus and the fear of loss that prevents him from loving too deeply. I'm under no illusion that I can fix that brokenness in him, but it doesn't mean I'm unwilling to try. We all need someone to believe in us.

“You saved me, you know.”

“What?” His confusion is genuine, endearing. So modest.

“I mean, there's the clone thing, of course. But everything that came after. You were there for me, every step of the way. That means more to me than I can ever say. When I'm old and gray and, let's be honest, probably grouchy”—he chuckles slightly, and I smile briefly before getting serious again—“when I remember nothing else, I'm going to remember what you did for me. How you gave me a second chance at life.

“And I wish—I
wish
I could give you even an ounce of that happiness back.” I have to stop, because I'm crying now, because I realize the enormity of our friendship in my life. How much I love him, too. How much I need him in my life. How much I don't want to lose the boy of my childhood, the man who will sit in a cold bathtub with me when I'm sad and afraid.

“It's okay. You still love Camus,” Samuel says, without disappointment, as though he was without expectations for anything else. He hugs me close.

I nod numbly.
I have feelings for you, too,
I want to say to him, but I know it will just make things harder than they need to be. Besides, I recognize now those feelings were born from something else. A need, confusion. Their nature is something else. “I'm sorry,” I say instead, knowing it's pointless consolation.

“Hey,” Samuel says, managing a smile despite the fact his own eyes are raw. “How many times have you told me not to apologize?”

I swipe at my eyes. “Beyond count.”

“Same goes for you, right now.” He rests his chin on my head. “Please, don't cry, Rhon.”

“Tabula rasa,” I blurt out a second later.

“Come again?”

I sit up suddenly and look at him. “Don't keep waiting for me, Samuel.” I grab both sides of his face, my expression explicit and intense. “You've given me enough years. All right? Nod if you hear me.” He nods.
Good,
I think, even though it breaks my heart to break his. “Maybe this is your chance to start over, too. Tabula rasa. You gave me that chance. Now I'm giving it back to you.”

“You always were a terrible regifter,” he jokes, and in that moment I know we're going to be all right.

I pull him into another hug, whispering in his ear, “Thank you for understanding.”

He tucks his face into my shoulder, and I know he's muzzling his disappointment for my sake. I don't think he knows how to put himself first. I
do
think he's going to make some woman very happy some day, though. And my opinion is only reinforced when he finally adds in a quiet whisper, “You know you were wrong before. You have made me happy, Rhona. You've always been a good friend to me, a better friend than I ever hoped to have, really.”

“Stop it,” I order. “You're going to make me start crying again.”

He stares at the ground, bashful with feeling. Requited and unrequited.

“I don't suppose any of this means you've reconsidered coming with me now?” I ask.

Samuel starts to check his own combat gear. “Are you kidding? This will look great as the first thing on my new rasa résumé.” I laugh, and feel it deep in my soul. It feels a lot like peace. “I'm with you, Rhon. That won't ever change.”

I'm momentarily unable to speak again because of useless, wonderful emotion. “Well, then,” I finally say, lunging into the silence at the same time I dry my cheeks.
Time to resume the trappings of a leader.
Time to rescue my people.
“You should probably meet the others joining us on our little suicide mission. I think you'll be surprised at who all volunteered…”

It kills me, just how large the world feels after being cooped up for so long.

From the air, carried weightlessly in a metal cage, it's easier to appreciate the terrain below. I'd expected my experiences groundside to sour me on Alaskan nature, but my opinion hasn't curdled completely. Much as I might want to hate the land, it's just too damn beautiful more often than not.

Shortly after takeoff, the sun rose and warm fingers broke through the cloud cover, a Midas touch turning the world from gray to gold. I've seen the landscape take on all sorts of colors—blue and green in the night, royal purple in the evening, the white acting as a blank canvas to comfortably hold the colors for a time. But I'd never stopped and appreciated the glory of the morning. When we pass over an icy reservoir, whose frozen surface is melting, its waters ripple like captured fire.

I wouldn't mind a little fire right about now. I rub my hands together.

The side doors are closed to protect against the downwash and ward off wind shear, but it's still freezing inside the chopper cabin. But no one else is complaining, so I have to wonder if it's just me. It's no secret I haven't been able to adjust to the cold climate, even though it's the only one this body's ever known. Maybe it's because somewhere in my head, I still have the memories of hot summers in New Mexico. Something to miss.

Memories, however, do very little to combat the chill, and my teeth start chattering before long. “Don't suppose this thing's got a heater?” I inquire to anyone who might know.

“The heater is on,” Lefevre says, his breath fogging up the inside of his flight mask. We're all wearing helmets, but apart from the pilot, he's the only one wearing his visor down, as if he expects to be ejected from the helicopter at any moment. Maybe he has a point. Just because radar isn't picking up any hostiles right now doesn't mean they won't show up suddenly, with their sights set on us.

“Well then, does it have a higher setting?” I don't see controls anywhere. “Like, a few degrees above winter wonderland?”

“It's set to the maximum temperature. We'll be there soon.”

Poor compensation for my current discomfort, but he's not wrong, either. We've been in the air for a few hours now, making excellent time. With the weather moderate and holding, plus no enemy encounters, there's been nothing to slow us down. On the one hand, it's been great; every minute counts. On the other, it's doing nothing for my nerves. I hate waiting. And the absence of machines, where there should be swarms of them, seems more suspicious than fortuitous.

I try massaging some feeling back into my arms as I glance around at my brave companions, wondering how brave they really feel at the moment. Samuel and Ortega have been alternating between card games, playing such classics as blackjack and speed. At one point, they wrangled Rankin in for a round of poker, which he managed to win even from the copilot's seat.

They also asked Kennedy if he wanted to join in, and while the eighteen-year-old ginger refused, he later looked on with some envy at all the fun. To say I was hesitant to let someone so young come would be putting it mildly. It's a decision I foresee regretting in the near future, but he pleaded his case with more heart than any of my other volunteers. How could I say no?

I should have said no. I'm turning soft in my old age, but no wiser, it seems. I resolve to protect the kid if I can, even knowing I probably can't.

The others I'm less concerned about, on the grounds of their proven capability. Lefevre, for one. I still don't know his whole story. Maybe it's better this way. My head is full of enough tragedies.

Then there's his sister.

Samuel thought it was a joke when I told him Zelda was tagging along. So did I, initially, when I declined her offer. But if there's anyone who has a bone to pick with the machines, it's her, and much as I may not trust her still, I know her hatred for the machines is greater than her hatred for me. Not to mention that we were in sore need of a technical expert, so I didn't really have as much say in the matter as I might have. She'd wanted to bring one of her pets with her, the same make and model that tried to kill me in the training room, but I drew the line there. She just smiled, saying she could always reprogram one of the metal corpses they made along the way.

She's not smiling now. The whole trip, she's been mute, but not in a calm, contemplative way. More in a simmering, pot's-about-to-boil-over kind of way. There's violence rattling in her brain, if I had to guess, matching the desire for revenge in her heart. Instead of sitting, she's been standing for half of our journey, holding a rubber hand grip, her knuckles taut to the point where the bones seem close to escaping the skin. She can't be comfortable, but maybe that's the point. Some fresh pain to remind the old pains what they are, and what's coming.

“You're going to tucker yourself out, standing like that for so long,” Rankin comments over his shoulder. I'm glad someone finally said it.

Zelda gives him a pithy look. “Worry about yourself, Texas.”

“Just trying to be friendly,” he says easily. “You might try the same one of these days.”

Rankin might as well be giving advice to a wall. She doesn't reply.

However, a little while later, Zelda does consent to getting off her feet, buckling herself in next to her brother. Lefevre wordlessly places a gloved hand on hers, and I'm sure I'm not meant to see the private gesture between siblings, so I pretend I don't.

In the meantime, Ortega finally tires of the card games (or of losing to Samuel) and bows out. I take his place. Samuel asks if Zelda wants in and, to my surprise, she does. He shuffles the deck, explaining the rules of war to me.
As if I could forget them.
The irony is chafing, or maybe that's just the thermal layers of my combat suit.

“ETA five minutes,” our pilot, John Haley, announces a little while later. Out of this group, John's the only one I don't know personally, although he came highly recommended by Rankin. He's an older gentleman who's been utterly professional so far, and has actual military experience to boot. As weak links go, he's not one of them. “Looks like we've got some bogeys in the area. Might be we're in for a rough landing when the time comes. Buckle up.”

John takes us in low and fast, sneaking around the enemy forces by taking the mountain from a different side. I find myself holding my breath as we navigate the morning mists, narrowly missing the odd hillock or high-banked snowdrift that every now and again juts up out of nowhere to give my heart some exercise. Minutes later, just long enough for my palms to have become moist and clammy inside my gloves, the land flattens into a plateau. Dark, snaking lines in the snow, rivers or some other kind of glacial inlet, act like a landing strip, pointing us in the direction of the main range. But the mountain itself is not our destination.

A part of me is expecting great, swirling plumes as we come upon Churchill base, but the sky is clear, apart from cloud cover. By now, most of the smoke has been borne away on spring winds. Instead, there are only craters left to mark the bombardment, encircled by blackened rings of ash in the snow. I wonder how long it will take until Alaska covers up those scars as it has so many others in the past, burying old injuries beneath snow and ice, hidden but not forgotten. Land always remembers. It's people who forget.

The chopper banks hard to the right suddenly, throwing me against my seatbelt straps, as some type of antiaircraft missile nearly scratches our belly. It whistles past in a crescendo of sound, sharp and loud for a single instant before tapering off as it misses its target.

Rankin operates the weapons system, returning fire.

I struggle to see who our attacker is from my seat in the back cabin. The chopper's doors are windowless, and there's too much else in the way to see out the front. But I feel every shuddering movement of the chopper, hear the groaning of metal as our pilot demands speed and agility, pushing the bird to its limit.

After a few, tense minutes of combat, John says, “They're out of commission for now, but the area's still hot. More incoming, or else my radar's having itself a little party. I'm going to put down just south of base entrance four and then hightail it out of here until the situation's cooled down. If you need me, call me. I'll be here soon as I can. But don't expect immediate drive-through service. It might take me a few minutes. Make sure you give me a heads-up. Understood?”

“Got it,” I say, having to speak loudly over the roar of the chopper's wings.

He lands the chopper in a patch of dirty snow, where it's clear some machine bled. Lefevre throws back the cabin doors, letting in a white flurry of powder. “Good luck,” John says to us all, with as proper a salute as he can give sitting down. “Take care.”

“You, too,” I reply, giving him a quick squeeze on the shoulder before exiting the craft.

We move quickly. Uncovering the hatch will first take us down into some service tunnels and from there into the main base. Ideally. The layout we all memorized was a loose construction of Churchill base, courtesy of Clarence, remembered from the last time he'd visited. He helped build it before the Machinations, when it was a lab used primarily for geological study.

“Mount Churchill is a dormant volcano,” I remember him saying, as casually as if he'd remarked on the sky being gray. “I mentioned that, didn't I?”

The base has grown and expanded since then, adapting to a different purpose, but much of the original structure is still here.

My fingers ache from the cold and a lack of circulation. I flex them a couple of times before gripping the rungs of the ladder. I'm not the first one down, nor the second, nor even the third. The order goes: Lefevre, Rankin, Ortega, me, Samuel, Kennedy, and Zelda, who brings up the rear. It'll change and shift once we're inside, although I anticipate some overprotectiveness from my teammates.

Well. Not from Zelda, but the rest.

I'm not stupid. I know the council gave them additional orders to watch me closely and keep me alive. As long as that doesn't conflict with rescuing Camus or the others, I'm fine with it. The current degree of caution is almost reassuring, like being pressed between the bread of a sandwich. A sweaty, heavily armed sandwich.

With visors lowered, we communicate through comms when we need to. The descent is quiet and my world shrinks to the space of my combat suit, the only sound being my breathing and boots hitting metal rungs. The tunnel is narrow and pitch-black. I keep waiting for my night-vision sensors to kick in, but they don't. Just my luck. I continue to breathe, slow and steady, to avoid the feeling of being trapped, buried alive. Both are real possibilities, for once, and not just claustrophobic mania.

“Well, this is nice,” I murmur, concentrating on breathing.

In, hold it, out. In, hold it, out…

The comm must be automatically activated by my voice, because Samuel replies, “Yeah. You always take us to the nicest places, Commander.”

I smile.

I don't know how long it takes to reach the bottom, but soon I'm touching solid ground and hands grip my waist to help me safely off the last slippery rung. Ortega, I assume, since he was the one ahead of me. But I don't know for sure, because, to my disappointment, there's still no freaking light.

“Hey, guys, I'm blind as a bat.” I tap my helmet. “My night vision's not working. Is there a backup generator we can switch on?”

“As long as Prince Engineer isn't wrong, and provided it's not broken, we should pass it on our way to the command room,” Zelda says. “You can always hold someone's hand until then.”

I find my rifle and flick on its scope, shining the red beam on her. “Thanks for the offer,” I reply, “but I think I'll be fine.” It's not much to see by, but at least it'll let me keep my dignity for a little while longer.

Darkness drags at our heels as we travel deeper into the bowels of the earth. It presses in from all sides, like a living thing. The red dot dances on ahead of our sortie, the first to find dead ends. Since the corridors are so cramped here, our shoulders continually bump against one another's. It's less of an inconvenience than it seems, making it easier for me to keep pace alongside Samuel and the gang. Instead of sight, I operate on what I feel, going with the flow. Still, I'm forced to rely on their instincts more than my own, knowing my reaction time will be slowed without the benefit of night vision. If anything, all this black does is give the machines the advantage, since they're equipped with heat sensors. The sooner we shed some light on the situation—literally and figuratively—the better chance we'll have of making it out alive.

Which is why I'm relieved when Zelda says, “Here.”

Without electricity, the door's locking mechanism is deactivated. It still takes the combined strength of Lefevre and Rankin to push it open enough for us to squeeze through, and it protests with a screech on its track. Ortega and Kennedy keep watch at the threshold, while the rest of us follow Zelda to the generator. It's hard to judge by a little flash of red light, but the vaulted ceiling attests to the size of the beast. I hear the gentle hum of a heating or cooling system, possibly a fan to maintain the generator's temperature.

“Well?” I say. No one's talking and it's eating at my nerves. “Is there damage?”

“Some,” Zelda answers.

“Can you fix it?”

She's silent for a while longer, then says, “Yes. I've worked with less. But it'll take me a few minutes to get it up and running again.”

I try watching her work, but she complains about the light in her face. I switch it off, plunging myself back into the darkness. My other senses rush to fill in the void left by blindness. Every noise after that startles me, each a cause for suspicion. At one point, I mistake the
hum-hum-hum
of the rotary fan for the
whir-whir-whir
of a machine and raise my weapon, flicking the scope back on. The red beam shoots through the black in an instant, poking Kennedy on the forehead of his helmet.