The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1) (30 page)

As they neared the ground, he pushed the door open, prepared
to hit the ground running. The soldier on the other side of the aircraft opened
the door on his side, similarly prepared. When the aircraft was about five feet
off the ground, five of the six other passengers jumped out with Jack. The
transport hummed loudly and shot up to a higher elevation. He half expected to
see another rocket come screaming out of the forest, but it was eerily quiet.

One of the soldiers held a device in his hand and was slowly
swinging it back and forth. He stopped with the device pointed straight into
the forest and said, “There is a faint source in that direction, but it’s
barely reading, so it’s quite a ways in.”

Jack took the lead and plunged into the trees, not even
checking to see if anyone followed him.

The darkness lifted and Wendy became aware of the pain. On
top of that, she was moving, and it was a bumpy ride. The motion combined with
a headache quickly made her nauseas, and she vomited. When she finished, she
was able to focus, and realized she was being carried over someone’s shoulders.
What do they call this? The fireman’s carry?
When she puked, the person
carrying her stopped and with the help of someone else, gently put her down on
the ground.

She took in the surroundings, unsure of what was happening. They
were in a forest, surrounded by tall pine trees. Two people were with her, both
trying to catch their breath. Memory slowly returned, and she tried to piece it
together. She was on a salvage mission, and they were getting close to leaving.
The last thing she remembered was calling in to tell New Hope they were almost
ready to head home. These two people were members of the crew she brought out.

Before she could speak, another person came jogging up to
them. It was Anton. He stopped for a moment, putting his hands on his knees to
catch his breath. “Why did we stop? Is she awake?”

“Yeah, she just puked on me.”

Anton kneeled down to examine her. “Wendy, can you hear me?”

She tried her voice. “Yeah” she croaked. Her throat was
still burning from the bile, and she tried to swallow a few times to flush it. A
water bottle appeared in front of her face and she took a few sips. “Better,
thanks.” This time it came out sounding a little more human. “What happened,
where are we?”

“We’re in the forest in the northeast corner of Idaho,
somewhere to the east and north of the factory building. Mutes attacked, about
fifty of them, maybe more. They fired a rocket over the hill and took out our
ride. You dove out of the way of the rocket but took a pretty big hit from the
blast. You are concussed, and your knee is in bad shape. What’s the last thing
you remember?”

She closed her eyes, trying to jar something loose, and
finally it came back to her. The rocket, the explosion – “Stanley?”

The man who had been carrying her, Wayne was his name, shook
his head. “He didn’t have his helmet on and took a round in the head when they
ambushed us. We barely made it out of there alive.” He sat down heavily next to
Wendy and leaned up against a large rock. “I think we can rest for a few
minutes. I haven’t heard anyone behind us for the last half hour.” He looked at
Anton, who had been hanging back to scout when they stopped.

“How long since they attacked us?” The sky above was visible
through the trees, but Wendy couldn’t see the sun.

Anton said, “About two hours. We ran into the forest and
they of course followed. We took turns carrying you, occasionally changing
direction. I planted a few surprises along the way to discourage them from
following. I’m surprised some of those blasts didn’t wake you up. I think it
worked, but the Mutes are good at tracking. They will find us if we don’t keep
moving.”

“Any word from a rescue party?” Her mind was still foggy but
her estimation put a rescue crew there about a half hour ago.

“Nothing yet. We’re a good five miles from where we landed. We
had to loop around a small hot zone, and I think the radiation between us and
them is lowering the range of the radio’s in our PDP’s by quite a bit. Perhaps
if we get a little further away we can reach any aircraft that might be in the
area.”

Wendy nodded. With their own aircraft gone, they didn’t have
a way home. If they couldn’t reach the rescue team on the radio soon they might
be left out here alone. If they tried to head back toward the landing site,
they could run into the Mutes again. It was not a good situation. She examined
her hand. At some point someone had put some coagulant on her wound and patched
it. The fingers were black and blue and swollen, and she couldn’t move them
more than a fraction of an inch.
Probably broken.
She tentatively
prodded her knee, and pain whisked up her leg. The knee was swollen, but as
long as she didn’t try to touch it, it didn’t hurt too much. “Give me a hand, I
am going to see if I can put any weight on the leg.”

When she got to her feet, she quickly discovered how bad of
an idea that had been. The men put her down, sensing she had been about to
scream. Before she could struggle out of her pack, Anton handed her the med kit
from his own pack. She took off her leg armor and rolled up the under suit to
expose the injured knee. It was very swollen, but otherwise looked okay. She
located a local anesthetic in the kit and shot it into her leg just above the
knee. The pain went away quickly, leaving her whole leg numb. She looked for
her datapad, and couldn’t find it. “Anyone seen my pad?”

“I think it fell out in the blast. You lost your helmet
too.” He pulled out his own datapad and handed it to her. She pulled a tube of
heavy plastic from the med kit and unrolled it. The plastic sheet had an
isotope in it that the full size datapads could sense. If you put the plastic
sheet under something and the datapad on the other side of it, you could get
what was, for all intents and purposes, an x-ray. She scanned her knee and
looked at the image on the screen.

Wendy was no doctor, and had to wait for the powerful
computer to analyze the x-ray. After a few moments the results came back as
nothing broken or detached. It could still be a slightly torn ligament, or it
might just be really badly bruised or sprained. She pulled out a syringe from
the med pack and shot the contents into her knee. The syringe held the same sort
of concoction that Teague gave Jack the day before. It would accelerate the
healing process and within a couple hours she should be able to walk again. If
a bone had been broken or a tendon or ligament detached, the healing medicine
would have only made it worse unless the bone was set or the ligament
positioned properly. Both would have required a skilled doctor, so she was
fortunate. She wrapped the knee in a rubbery bandage to keep the swelling down
then asked one of the men to find her two straight branches. Once the leg was
splinted, she got up again and with the help of one of the men, was able to
hobble along without having to be carried. She wouldn’t be able to run if they
were attacked again, but at least they didn’t have to carry her.

“We’d better get moving. I set some more explosives back
there, so if they make it this far they will get some more surprises. I think
we should head northeast for a while, away from the radiation to the south of us.
It will also put that radiation between us and the Mutes.” Anton had taken
charge, and nobody was going to argue. The path would take them into the
mountains, but anything was better than being captured. They did their best to
cover the evidence of them being there, but it would only slow down the Mutes.

* * *

Teague’s datapad beeped and he checked to see who was
calling. He had been hard at work with Thomas and his men planning the assault
on Saber Cusp, and his mind was pretty well spent.

The pad showed Chin, and he figured he better take it. There
was a little history between he and Chin, but it never stopped them from
working together. It just made things a little more difficult sometimes.

“What’s up, Chin? The scavenging crews back yet?” If the day
had been lucky, they might have the materials they need to start on the cold
rooms.

“Teague, one of the scavenging crews went off line. We sent
a rescue group to find out what happened, and they just called in to say that
they found the wreckage of a medium transport near the factory they were
checking out. The aircraft is a complete loss, and there are Mute bodies all
over the place.”

This was not good news. It was bad enough to potentially
lose a member of the community, but to lose a medium transport made it even
worse. People, at least the infertile ones, could be replaced. But advanced
equipment like that transport was in very short supply, and they lacked the
resources to make more. “That’s awful news, but why are you calling me about
it? What did Jack tell you to do?”

Chin suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Well, he sort of went
with the rescue team.”

Teague’s stomach sank. “What! What the hell is he doing? We need
him here! Why would he go?” Then it hit him. Wendy was on one of the scavenging
groups this morning. If it was her team that went down, nothing would stop Jack
from going to try to rescue her.

Chin looked like he didn’t want to answer any of those
questions. He said, “He’s the leader of this mission, who am I to say he couldn’t
go?”

“Call him and tell him to get back here.” Teague was
conflicted. He knew that ending the rescue party now would greatly reduce the
chance of helping survivors, but he had to keep the bigger picture in mind. Right
now, Jack is more valuable to them than any member of that salvage crew.

Chin shook his head and said, “Can’t do that Teague, he is
already on foot tracking potential survivors.”

This just gets better and better. “Fine, send another team
out to find him and take over the search.”

“Sorry, Teague, can’t do that either... We had three of the
medium transports out salvaging, and the fourth went with the rescue team. As
you know, only the smaller flyers have any offensive capability, but they aren’t
as heavily armored as the transports. We don’t know what they are up against
yet. Someone shot a missile at the rescue team, but it was thankfully not very
advanced and the pilot was able to evade it. Our smaller craft are susceptible
to small arms fire, and I don’t think we should risk the few remaining pilots
we have right now. If they ran into trouble they would be sitting ducks.”

Teague’s shoulders dropped. The heavy transports are well
armored but don’t have air to ground capability, so they couldn’t use those
either. This is what it felt like to be between a rock and a hard place.
How
could Jack be so irresponsible?
He already knew the answer to that one, so
he didn’t have to voice the question. “Fine, but call him and tell him to get
back with all possible haste. Remind him that he has responsibilities here.”

Now Chin looked really uncomfortable, and he was scratching
at his scar. “Well, there’s another problem.”

He didn’t elaborate right away, so Teague prompted him,
“What is it?”

“Well, it turns out there is a small hot spot a few miles
from where they entered the forest. It’s affecting the radios, and the
transport has lost communications with them. With the possibility of another
rocket attack, the pilot is staying at a safe altitude. He can’t fly in low
enough to re-establish comms. We just have to wait and see what happens.”

Teague’s mind went blank. He was usually good at thinking
under pressure, but this was way out of his scope of capability. “What do you
think we should do, Chin?”

Chin didn’t answer right away, and Teague was just about to
repeat the question when he finally said, “There is a salvaging crew on the way
in right now. We can either send out another team to assist, or wait it out and
see what happens. Personally I think they can handle it alone. There is no
reason to put another transport at risk.”

Teague nodded. It made sense, and he certainly didn’t have
any better suggestions. “What about the flier we have out there now? How long
can he stick around?” Teague knew that the flier would be able to hover around
for a few weeks before needing a recharge of the batteries, but the question
was whether the pilot could hang in there that long, especially if he had to be
on constant vigil for ground to air rockets.

“A few more hours, then I think he needs to come back in to
be replaced. He’s good for now.”

Teague sighed heavily. “Fine, call me the second you have
any more information.” He clicked off and sat down heavily. There was nothing
else to do at this point but keep working on the projects at hand. Jack was a
seasoned soldier, and should be able to handle himself. At least that was what
he kept telling himself.

Something else was nagging at him though, and he couldn’t
quite put his finger on it.

* * *

Jack froze and held up a hand. The faint sound of the
soldiers behind him stopped and he listened carefully. He heard the sound
again, this time maybe fifty feet in front of him, although it was hard to tell
for sure with all the trees around. They had been closing in on the source of
the missile launch.

He switched his helmet to thermal view again and scanned
ahead of him. There were definitely warm bodies ahead. Signaling to the rest of
the team to be quiet, he carefully crept ahead, being careful only to step on
the soft pad of pine needles that blanketed the ground between the trees.

It didn’t take long before a break in the trees revealed a
clearing up ahead. Jack used the thermal camera to get an idea of what they
were up against. He tried to count the objects moving about, but it was
difficult to keep track as they moved back and forth, crossing paths. His best
guess was a dozen. He motioned for the soldier behind him. When the man got
close enough to hear his soft whisper, he said, “I want you to circle around to
the right with two men. I am going to get closer and see if any of our people
are here. If you hear me attack, join in, otherwise wait for ten minutes then
come back and join me here.” The man nodded and signaled two men to follow him,
quietly making his way around the clearing.

There was a massive pine tree about fifteen feet ahead that
would provide good cover yet still be close enough to the clearing to observe
the situation. Always aware of the Mutes’ ability to see and hear better than
regular humans, he forced himself to take his time, despite the adrenaline
coursing through his veins in anticipation of the upcoming engagement. Taking a
few careful breaths to steady his nerves, he thumbed the video switch on his
rifle and ever so slightly peeked it around the side of the tree. A quick count
revealed ten. They were much larger than he had expected, and a shiver went
down his spine. The clearing was about thirty feet across and right in the
middle was a stack of crates, a medium sized Mute standing next to them, his
attention directed toward the sky. The brute was holding an object about six
feet long and about a foot on each side. There was a screen like the one on his
rifle protruding from one side and a hole about the size of his fist in the
end.
That must be the rocket launcher.
There were three more hairless
behemoths sitting off to the side, quietly talking amongst themselves, a pile
of what must be weapons on the ground next to them. Four more were holding rifles
patrolling the perimeter of the clearing, paying more attention to the sky than
the trees around them. The last two were standing maybe ten feet from Jack,
arguing just loud enough for him to hear. One of them was huge, and the other
was just big.