Shadowmark (The Shadowmark Trilogy Book 1) (15 page)

“Yeah, but listen—all those units were moving into affected cities before the attack. All those cities are destroyed. If any armed forces survived, you’d think they’d scramble to make contact and regroup.”

Lincoln rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s got to be a reasonable explanation. They’re certain to be using protected networks we don’t know about, not open airwaves.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Nelson lowered his voice to a whisper as the operator signed off. People began to disperse. A tall woman with captain’s double bars on her collar walked past, frowning at the two civilians. Nelson waited until she passed. “Nash would know about them, wouldn’t he? And you’d think he’d have brought more sophisticated, protected battle equipment. But he seems to have nothing.”

“I’ve thought about that,” answered Lincoln as they began to walk past the drab olive mess tent that looked even more dingy in the pale morning sunshine. “A lot of this doesn’t add up. They hurry us out here, pretending it’s vitally important, but when we arrive, we’re crippled by both a lack of information and technology. We have a few running vehicles for power, but no generators. Tents and food, but only one working radio for contacting the outside. No one thought to send computers or any special equipment to help us with this.” Nash and a couple of the others had computers with them, of course, but they were fried, like everything else. “And we’re missing what could be the most important resource of all—someone to tell us what in creation we are supposed to be doing here in the first place. They have our models—why didn’t they employ them using their own people?”

“I think we know why. We were sent out here in a hurry with the intention of resupply, but everything was attacked. I wonder if anyone even knows we’re here.”

“Is that why Cummings or his people didn’t meet us, like he said they would?”

“Either that or somebody didn’t want him helping us,” muttered Nelson conspiratorially. “Someone who didn’t want us doing our job.”

“Like who?” Lincoln smiled. “Conspiracy theories make more sense today than they did a few months ago, but why would someone sabotage ARCHIE? Assuming it was worth sabotaging, that is.”

“Without Cummings, we may never know.”

Alvarez hurried over to them as they reached their tents. Lincoln was camping in his own tent again, though he still felt weak and was silently grateful to ease onto the log he used as a chair.

“Hey guys!” said Alvarez brightly. “I just heard about the broadcast. What’d we find out?”

Nelson sat near the low fire and stuck his feet as close to its warmth as he could tolerate. “In addition to Atlanta, New York, and DC, they've confirmed Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, LA, Seattle, Kansas City, and Houston.”

Alvarez sank down into a dusty camp chair. “Didn’t all those metro areas have alien towers?”

“I think so. In addition to about thirty other cities in the US. Not to mention the hundreds worldwide. And get this—they weren’t towers. They were ships.”

“Ships? As in flying-around-in-the-sky ships?”

“Yeah. Think about all the video footage, the speculation. And the aliens had already landed.” Nelson glanced down at his dirty
Space Invaders
t-shirt.
 

Alvarez pushed her glasses up her nose. “Do you think all of those other places are gone, too?” Her cheerful demeanor had sobered, her voice was quiet.

Neither Nelson nor Lincoln answered. Voicing it would make it true. Instead Lincoln asked, “Where’s Carter?”

Alvarez cleared her throat. “He went fishing.”

“Oh.” Lincoln should have guessed. Carter had found a secret fishing hole and disappeared there on fine days. Lincoln pulled the damaged sketchbook out of his pocket and flipped through the stained, torn pages. Before the attacks, Carter would have taken the book fishing with him, in case he had an idea he couldn’t wait to write down.

Nelson shrugged off his backpack and tossed it aside. Then he got up and retrieved his blanket from his tent. He wrapped it around his shoulders before returning to the fire. “Do you think the ships triggered multiple EMPs? It makes sense, doesn’t it? Although I don’t know why they’d want so many when one big pulse could have wiped out everything.”

Prevailing theory conjectured that a large nuclear bomb detonated high in the ionosphere would create an EMP powerful enough to cause physical damage to power delivery systems and other sensitive modern electronics within hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles from the blast sight. Modern equipment was especially susceptible to the initial wave because the current generated from the pulse would overload and melt the tiny, delicate circuit boards. The team suspected this first wave, called an E1, had taken out their electronics. Large bombs could also cause another response, an E3, seconds after the first, which would travel over the long lines connecting power plants and substations, causing further damage and blackouts. This was known as cascading power grid failure.
 

Small instances of these waves had been tested. But on a wider scale, like a whole nation such as the United States, testing was obviously out of the question. Dissenting voices claimed even a powerful EMP was incapable of causing the destruction of everything at once, but almost all experts agreed recovery from a massive attack could take years. Even undamaged substations that automatically shutdown during a power surge would require power from an external source to restart. Simply flipping a switch wouldn’t turn them back on, and replacing damaged custom-built parts took months under normal circumstances. No one knew precisely how long America would be without power. And the country’s interdependence on automated computer systems meant more catastrophes were inevitable.

“But they didn’t detonate a nuclear bomb, did they?” asked Alvarez. “Do we know?”

“They could have,” Lincoln answered. “We don’t have any evidence of one here, but what about our nukes? Nuclear facilities and subs are protected from EMPs. Why didn’t they launch?”

“We don’t know they didn’t,” said Alvarez.

Nelson shook his head. “We would have heard about it on the radio.”

“I don’t know,” answered Lincoln. “Survivors with radios are scattered all over, hiding. Would they have seen the fallout?”
 

“For a moment let’s say the aliens didn’t use nukes, and obviously we wouldn’t have detonated them in our own ionosphere, so how would the relatively small ships be able to create such a widespread E3 response?”

“I think,” said Lincoln, “if they were able to place the ships overnight without anyone seeing them, then it follows they have the technology to generate an EMP that doesn’t risk destroying the Earth but still cripples our infrastructure. They wanted to be thorough.”

“So they need our planet for something, then?” Alvarez asked the question rhetorically, her eyes fixed on the trees overhead.

“Seems like it.”

Nelson took out his wallet from his jeans pocket and opened it. A wad of hundred dollar bills, folded in various shapes or crinkled, had been shoved inside. Citing bank failures and privacy concerns, Nelson always carried large sums of cash with him, using it as much as possible. He took out the bills one by one and smoothed them against his leg, straightening them carefully into a stack. Lincoln glanced around to see if anyone else was looking. Nelson finished lining up the bills and rolled them lengthwise into a straw. Then he stuck one end in the fire.

Alvarez cried out, “What are you doing?” and rushed to grab the bills from Nelson. But they had already caught fire, looking like a ludicrous green birthday candle in his hand.

Nelson held it up and watched it burn, a look of displaced satisfaction on his face. “They’re worthless now, anyway.”

“Nelson, you’re crazy. You don’t know that for sure!”

“Come on, Alvarez.” His voice remained calm. “Major civilian and government infrastructures have been destroyed. Telecommunications, financial systems, not to mention the disruption of transportation and food distribution. It’s over.” The bills burned toward Nelson’s fingertips. He threw the remainder into the fire. “We’re on our own.”

A stray thunderstorm obscured Calla’s view of the mountains below. The Nomad dipped below it, into the cloud cover, but the lashing rain toyed with her readings. Where was he? As she flew over a large encampment, tiny heat signatures glowed in front of her. The topographical display showed most of the clumps in the valley with tendrils of red creeping up the surrounding mountain slopes. No one had reported this camp yet, so either she had discovered it first or rogues were hiding there. She pulled up a different overlay of the same area. Yes, two resided here. Calla refrained from contacting them, however, unwilling to alert them of her presence if they were rogue. She would return.

The ship turned south and flew out of the thunderstorm to land. Calla disembarked under cover of darkness and sent the ship away. Her mission required secrecy, and the Nomad would draw attention to her. Following orders, the ship disappeared on its own into the clouds. Calla smiled slightly. The Nomad would never go rogue.
 

When Calla entered the bunker, the undiluted smells of damp mildew and stale air told her she was first to arrive. Lights turned on automatically as she went from room to room off the main corridor, double-checking that she was alone. Then she concentrated and reached out into the woods. Williams was very late. Had he already turned from her? She re-sent her summons.

Calla entered the dormitory and hopped onto a top bunk, muddy boots soiling the bare mattress. She waited, allowing herself only an hour’s sleep. When she woke, she scanned the surrounding forest again. Nothing. He wasn’t going to show. She left the dormitory and grabbed her bag on the way out of the bunker.

The same line of thunderstorms the Nomad had flown through was threatening to form here as well. To the northeast, trees cracked in the wind, and lightning struck three times in quick succession. Tracking would be difficult, but Calla could not afford to wait for the storm to pass. She began to climb up the steep mountain slope, heading straight for it. The rain was pouring down before she reached the ridge. The gale soaked her even beneath the cover of the trees.

There. She felt something. Closer than she thought, and he was already making mistakes. Calla changed direction and ran along under the ridge, jumping over fallen trees and climbing rocks while the storm tried to beat her back. Instead of slowing, she used the adrenaline rush to run harder, faster. At the peak of the mountain, she turned and headed down, dropping twenty feet into a tall, dead tree. She would take him by surprise from above.
 

Calla jumped from tree to tree. A branch slashed her face like a whip, but she ignored the blood on her cheek and used the pain to fuel her purpose. Finally, the trees thinned and she jumped thirty feet to the ground, sliding down the wet, leaf-covered slope. The rain had stopped, though the trees were still dripping. Calla brushed back the hair sticking to her face and looked around. Shades of blue and black revealed rocks, trees, water, and fifty feet below, someone crossing a stream at the bottom of the mountain.

Calla crouched, a panther ready to spring. And paused. Someone else walked with him, fifty yards ahead, disappearing into the trees. Strange. The Nomad had only reported one here. Calla changed tactics. Surprising one was easy. Two would be more challenging. She hid downwind for now, but the storm was whipping wild tunnels through the valley—they might scent her at any moment. Calla climbed below them and followed at a safer distance. As far as she could tell, neither had realized she was hunting him.

When the two reached the north end of the valley, they parted without a word. So they weren’t traveling together, only meeting. Why? Calla wanted to keep an eye on her original prey, but she burned to know the identity of the other. As she paused to decide which to pursue, she became aware of someone else—a shadow or a thought behind her. She turned.

A flash of lightning illuminated the valley for a brief moment. He stood high above, on the same mountain, watching her hunt. She did not have to see his face to know who he was. Calla felt him as he reached out to her—Dar Ceylin. Not wanting to give away her position, she slid deeper into the trees, stealthily returning to her original quarry. This path would keep her downwind of both. But when Calla sensed Dar Ceylin turn and follow her, she knew she’d been spotted again and signaled him to stop.

she asked, her mind focused on Dar Ceylin somewhere in the trees.

Calla glanced up angrily, but he was still hidden by the trees. <
Go find out who the other was. I’ll catch up with Williams.>

Dar Ceylin disappeared deeper into the trees. He was not going to make this assignment easy on her.
 

The day arrived slowly, a cloudy sky shrouding the sun. Calla doubled her pace through the woods. Williams knew she was coming—he was hiding himself from her. But she spotted him running through the trees ahead. She would catch him.

Calla looked around for a shortcut and ran below for a while. Williams had been too preoccupied with evading her and failed to watch the forest ahead, forcing him to climb a short treed precipice.
Idiot
, she thought. Williams almost took the fun out of the chase. Almost.
 

She ran straight up around the precipice and was standing at the top when he arrived. She reached for him. Williams was a short, stocky redhead, and considerably outweighed Calla. He tried to use his advantage to throw her off balance. Calla kicked him in the face before hauling him up by the hair. She had her knife at his throat and her knee to his back before he could stand.