The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1) (41 page)

Marcus didn’t even have to hesitate. He sprang from his
chair and exclaimed, “I no longer recognize the council as the valid form of
government here, so it is irrelevant what you want to do, Theodore! Our people
will decide who will lead them, not us. Our time here is finished, and this
argument only proves my point.”

Theodore’s face had turned red with anger. He laughed almost
hysterically, showing more emotion than Jack had seen from any of the council
members. “The people will never put their vote behind him, and your self-admitted
lack of leadership in recent years will only serve to prove I am the better
choice for leadership. I will gladly call for the community to vote for its
next leader.”

 Marcus shook his head. “On what platform are you going to
base your arguments to the people of New Hope? We all know your agenda here. You
may find a couple dozen people interested in joining Cali with you, but I can
assure you I have not lost touch with the people like you think I have. Cali
represents everything that is bad in the history of the human race. I will not
only give up my leadership, but I will sooner die than see you force us into an
alliance with them. I have put up with your lust for power long enough, Theodore,
and I think the time has come to put you in your place.” He turned to Teague. “Send
out an announcement right away. There will be a community vote in two weeks, at
which time the new leader of New Hope will be determined. If the people wish,
we can arrange a debate for the population to field questions and get answers
from all candidates.”

Teague was making notes on his datapad. Without looking up,
he said, “Who will the candidates be?”

Marcus looked at Theodore. “I imagine Theodore Bishop will
be one.” Theodore met his glare and didn’t say a word. Marcus turned to Jack
and said, “And the other will be Jack Taggart.”

* * *

Theodore, Caleb, and William had left without further incident,
and immediately after, Teague left to carry out his orders.

Marcus shook his head and sat heavily in his chair. He
leaned back, closed his eyes, and took a long breath. Jack waited patiently for
him to talk.

“I bet when you walked in here you didn’t expect this to
happen.”

Jack laughed. “No, sir, I didn’t. I expected Theodore to go
after your job, but my only intention was to make sure I wasn’t the tool he
used to try to do that.” Jack leaned forward on his chair and rested his elbows
on the table in front of him. “Did you ever think to ask me if I was interested
in being the leader of New Hope?”

Now it was Marcus’ turn to laugh. “Jack, I
suspected
you would take my job back when I gave the order to have you brought back, and
I
knew
you would the moment I met you. I had been looking for someone
exactly like you for four years. Things have certainly moved faster than I
expected, I figured I would have at least a few years longer to get things
ready, but Theodore has forced my hand. You have already proven to me without a
doubt that you are perfectly suited to lead this community, and you already
have the support of at least thirty percent of the population. I don’t want
this to be won by a slight majority, however. I fully expect you to win over at
least ninety percent of the people. Much less than that and you will have a divided
community on your hands, and this is hardly the time to deal with that.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“You need to finish what you started.”

Jack slumped in his chair. “There might be a little problem
there. In case you forgot, we are missing a key component in this operation. Last
night’s failure was quite a blow.”

“You will come up with something. That’s why I picked you. Besides,
don’t count out Thomas quite yet. He was my first choice, but he turned out to
be a little too passive to be my successor. He is still a very resourceful
person.”

“Sir, in all likelihood, Thomas is dead.”

“I don’t think so. I think he is trapped in the control
center, but not dead. I gave them the code to disarm the system, but I was too
preoccupied with this political situation to think it through. The code can be
used to disarm and re-arm the system, but then the code changes. It was
designed so that nobody could steal the code from me or any other council
members and gain complete control of the system. If Thomas is still alive, he
will figure out a way to contact me, and if he does, I will give him the code
and he can complete the mission.”

“That’s a big ‘if’, Marcus. I like Thomas, and I hope to God
you are correct about him, but quite frankly I don’t think we can risk the
future of New Hope on him being alive and accomplishing those tasks. We need
another plan.”

Marcus smiled. “That’s what I like to hear. Don’t forget, we
have to have this done before the election.” He frowned a little but didn’t say
anything.

Jack prompted him by asking, “What?”

“I am worried that if Theodore thinks he is sure to lose, he
will do something stupid like strike a deal with Cali. He is pretty rattled by
my response this morning, and he might not be thinking clearly.”

Jack decided he could trust Marcus. It was possible that the
man was still involved in some elaborate scheme, but if that is the case, whatever
he was planning was so many steps ahead of Jack that he was already a dead man.
At some point you just had to take a leap of faith.
Might as well give him
the benefit of the doubt
. “Marcus, I need to tell you something that is of
particular importance. Is it safe to talk in here? I mean is there any chance
someone can hack the system and be listening in?”

Marcus consulted the screen set in the table in front of
him. He looked up after a moment and said, “No, this room is safe. We have a
special system in here that can determine if anything is bugged, and there are
no cameras or microphones in the room. What is it?”

Just like pulling off a band aid, it was best to just do it
quickly. “The other day, when I encountered that group of Mutes, I learned more
than I told you.” Jack hesitated for a moment and Marcus motioned for him to
continue. “Someone from Cali contacted the Mute leader about the location of
the scavenging team. It turns out they were told about forty five minutes
before the team landed. The Mutes knew exactly where and when to ambush them.”

Marcus didn’t look particularly surprised, just
disappointed. “Are you positive of the timing?”

“Yes. When the scavenging crew was rescued, they confirmed
it. The Mute they met and befriended was an outcast from that clan, and it
turns out he’s a pretty smart guy. He’s been listening in on communications
with the clan, hoping to keep them from raiding some more families that are
living in Idaho. He overheard the whole exchange between Cali and Farnak, the
clan’s leader.”

Now Marcus was surprised, but not about the security leak. “Are
you telling me that this Mute has knowledge of more surviving humans in Idaho?”

Jack nodded. Marcus sat back and seemed to lose himself in
thought for a minute. Finally he spoke again. “Thank you for trusting me with
this, Jack. I imagine given the circumstances that you just now decided it
wasn’t me who fed that information to Cali.”

 “I had my doubts, but they mostly hinged on me being a
threat to your position here. You kind of eliminated that as an issue today,
however.”

The councilman smiled, but it was a grim smile, given the
revelation of a traitor in New Hope. “How many people know about this?”

“Enough.” Jack trusted him, but not with his friend’s lives,
not yet anyway.

Marcus nodded. “Understood. Do you suspect anyone in
particular?”

“Of course, but I have no proof.” They both knew who he was
referring to.

“You are definitely the man for this position, Jack. Let me
do some digging. I happen to have some resources here that I trust implicitly,
and I
will
find the traitor. In the meantime, I suggest you get your
people together and come up with a way to get this mission accomplished.”

Jack made a few calls, and soon Chuck and Wendy were in the
council chambers with him. Marcus had left to work on some things, but gave the
clearance codes to Jack to access the room, as well as show him how to make sure
it was free of eavesdroppers. He made it clear before leaving that while it was
a safe room, the computer here logged every person coming and going from the
room.

Jack informed his two trusted friends of the events of the
morning. When the initial shock wore off, Chuck asked, “Did you tell him about
the traitor then?”

Jack nodded. “I figured I could trust him, at least for the
most part. We have a bigger issue to work on though. I need to make this
mission happen, despite the problems we had last night. We need to rally our
people and brainstorm this. Let’s get all the group leaders in the strategy
room right away. We need to figure out how to get hold of a bulldozer.”

* * *

“Thank you all for coming to meet me here. I’m sure everyone
is aware of last night’s mission and its tragic results. Despite this setback,
we need to press on. Before we get started, are there any questions or issues,
besides that of the missing bulldozer?”

In the room were the leaders of each group they had
assembled at the start of this operation. Tiny, Chin, and Chuck were seated
together at the front of the room. Scott, the engineer, Nick, the head of
maintenance, George, the old scavenger, and Wendy were in the next row. Jack
had requested that Red attend as well, being as he had the most insight into
the failed mission last night, but he was not there yet.

“What’s the story behind the announcement for a community
vote?” The question came from George, which didn’t surprise Jack, the man had
lived here all his life,
all three of his lives
, and he was not young.

“In two weeks we will hold an election. At this point the
candidates are me and Theodore, but who knows what the next two weeks might
bring. I promise you that after we settle on a course of action here, I will
answer any questions you have, George. Right now we need to focus on this
operation. Can I get a status update?”

George spoke first. “Everything on the list has been found,
and in the process, we came across some great resources for later. If these
guys need more aluminum or copper, I can come up with another couple tons of
scrap, but it will need to be melted down and recast.” This was the first piece
of good news Jack had heard today. He turned to the engineer, Scott.

“The cold rooms are ready to go. We just need the liquid
nitrogen. The bins for transport are being fabricated right now, and the tech
part of it is done. As long as they are in the big plane and moving, we can
maintain the temperature without difficulty. The cooling system doesn’t work so
well on the ground unless we have some way of moving a lot of air around the
cooling fins. They will be good for about four hours before we start running
into complications.”

“Is that four hours before and after the flight back, or
four hours total?”

“Once you get those cooling fins up where the air is cold,
and move the air over them, the system will stabilize. So you have about four
hours from the time we turn them on until we get the big plane in the air, then
four hours to get them unloaded once we are back here.” Jack was relieved, that
should give them plenty of time.

At that moment, the door opened, and Teague walked in with a
man Jack had never met. “Good morning Jack, I would like you to meet Bruce. He
is our latest reborn. I figured he might be able to help out here.” Teague took
a seat next to Chuck.

Jack shook Bruce’s hand and gestured for him to have a seat.
“Welcome, Bruce, I imagine you have had an interesting past few days?”

“You could say that. I’m still trying to figure out if this
is some sort of elaborate joke. Three days ago I was in Afghanistan, heading to
a new site to build a school. Teague here tells me that my vehicle ran over an
improvised explosive device, and I ended up in a coma for six weeks.” George
and Teague were the only two people in the room who hadn’t had a similar
experience with waking up in a foreign world. Each of the other’s introduced
themselves, and offered words of sympathy.

“So Teague gave me a little background on your current
mission, and I figured I might be able to offer up some help.”

“I heard you were in the engineering corps? What kind of
experience did you have?” Jack worked with the engineering corps in the army
for over ten years, and after spending some time in the private sector, he had
come to the conclusion that if the army had done one thing right, it was the
engineers.

“Yes, sir. I was with engineering for about eleven years
before...” It was always awkward to talk about your own death. “Anyway, I was
involved in everything from bridges to school houses. I saw a little action in
Iraq and Afghanistan, but I didn’t do any fighting, just building or taking
down structures mostly.”

“Well, right now we’re trying to figure out how to acquire a
bulldozer, so unless you can help with that, there’s probably not much for you
right now, but please feel free to interject if you have an idea.”

“Have you thought about building one?”

It was an option he was planning on presenting to his team,
but didn’t think they had the time to accomplish it. “I was just about to get
into that. Have you ever built a bulldozer from the ground up?”

Bruce smiled. “No, but I have used them a lot in the past,
and I have built a lot of robots that use similar concepts. Given the time and
materials I bet I could come up with something.”

“Robots?” In Jack’s time, a robot was something from a
science lab or in a science fiction story, although he had read that robots
were starting to replace factory workers.

“Sure, have you ever heard of “robot wars”?” A few of the
reborn chuckled at this, but Jack was lost. Apparently Bruce noted his
confusion and said, “Must have been after your time. My hobby was building
little remote controlled machines that were built to “fight” other machines. It
was loads of fun, and I even placed in a national tournament.” Seeing he had
still lost Jack, he continued on. “My point is, I built robots with skid steer
drive systems, so tracked vehicles are something I am very familiar with.”

Jack nodded, finally understanding what he was getting at. He
looked to Scott and asked, “Do you think it’s possible to do?”

Scott mulled it over for a moment, then said, “It’s
possible, but there are a couple things holding us up. First is the lack of
that much iron. We need a lot of iron and steel to make a bulldozer. Second is
the casting and refining capabilities we have. Our refining system is fairly
small scale. We have traded ore with Cali for a long time, and refined it
ourselves, but it would take us weeks to refine a few tons of iron. Usually
when we cast something in iron, steel, copper, or aluminum, we use a machine
called a rapid prototyper, which takes a three dimensional design from the
computer and creates it in a plastic material in a matter of hours. Then we
usually do a sand casting from that prototype, and mill the final product where
necessary. The whole process takes time. We had to cast the body for our
pumping system for the cold rooms, and it took two days to cast and machine all
the parts. That was just for one pump. The other challenge with casting is the
larger pieces on the bulldozer, like the arms, the blade, or the frame itself. We
can’t rapid prototype those pieces, they are too large, so we would have to
make a casting by hand. I just don’t see it happening short of a month, three
weeks at best.”

This was what Jack figured. Time was the enemy here. He didn’t
really care about the election, but the longer they waited, the more likely the
chance that Cali would find their buried treasure in Montana.

“I don’t know much about the technology here, but Teague did
take me out to see your aircraft, and it occurs to me that the conventional
ideas of a bulldozer are not necessarily what you need here. You don’t
necessarily need a big heavy iron frame, because you don’t have to support a
huge diesel engine. The small power units you have here combined with a bunch
of high torque electric motors would work. You don’t have to make the blade so
heavy because from what I understand of your goal, you are just going to do one
job with this, so blade wear is a minor concern. Hydraulics shouldn’t be an issue;
I saw a pile of spare parts in by the planes with plenty of hydraulic pumps,
tubing, and pistons.”

Scott spoke before Jack could even process what Bruce was
saying. “The heavy iron serves for more than just support of the engine or wear
and tear, you need weight to push a lot of dirt around.”

Wendy jumped in with, “If it’s ballast you want, we can come
up with tons of that, literally. I could have ten tons of scrap metal and
concrete here in three hours.” The room seemed to come alive as everyone was
into this idea now.

Jack may not be an engineer, but he had a lot of experience
overseeing projects where huge amounts of dirt had been moved, and he knew a
thing or two about it. “Tiny, the area we picked out for the runway, it’s
pretty flat, right?”

Tiny had been listening intently to the conversation and was
caught off guard when Jack called on him. “Uh...” His deep voice silenced the
people conversing back and forth. “Yeah, which is why we picked it. There are a
couple high and low spots, and there is a lot of brush and grass we want to
clear away. There are a few rocks, but none bigger than a couple feet in
diameter. I don’t know much more detail, just because the engineers were going
to do that part. I can get the boys in that worked on that part if you want.”

“Not just yet. It sounds like this won’t require much
preparation. I know from experience that the ground up there is mostly clay,
but if we don’t have to dig too deep, the top soil will be fairly loose,
especially this soon after the spring thaw.”

Scott had his datapad out and was punching in some
information. Bruce and Tiny moved to the second row to sit with him. Wendy was
talking to Nick and George about where they could pull some hydraulics from
various equipment, if necessary. Jack sat next to Teague while the others
worked, and motioned for Chuck and Chin to gather around.

“How bad do you think it will be if I try to get another
group together to make another run at S.C.? Theodore is going to be using my
failure there as a tool to promote himself.”

Teague mulled it over for a moment. “He already is. It’s
risky. If you sent more men out there and they failed, he would make it look
like you are, to use an unpleasant term, a Freezer Burnt Idiot. If there is an
alternative, I suggest you use it.”

Jack nodded and switched gears. “How well do you know Red?”

“Not too well. He runs in different circles than I do.” Teague
looked at Chuck and Tiny. “Have either of you two worked with him?”

Chuck shook his head. “I offered to run patrols with him,
but he sticks with his own men. All of them are native born. He has never
outright said anything, but I get the idea that he doesn’t like the reborn.”

Jack looked at Tiny and said, “You worked with him for a few
days, learn anything?”

“Only that the guy is an asshole. He showed a little more
respect after our little run in, but overall he didn’t contribute a lot to our
part of the mission. I never worked with him before this.”

Things were starting to add up, and Jack didn’t like the
direction it was going. “Look, I don’t want to make any accusations here, but I
still don’t see how this operation failed like it did. Red reported that he was
overwhelmed by the mutes and had to pull out, but there was no record of
communication with Thomas’ group after that. I have a hard time buying that
after nearly thirty minutes of holding off the Mutes with zero casualties, he
was suddenly overwhelmed just after Thomas had deactivated the central computer’s
ground defenses, and just before they succeeded in turning off the air
defenses.”

Chuck was nodding along. “I noticed the same thing, but I
have seen things go wrong at awkward times, so I didn’t read too much into it.”

“Yeah, you’re right Chuck, maybe I’m just getting paranoid. Maybe
I am just opening my eyes too. Either way, Marcus seems to think Thomas and his
crew could be trapped inside the control center. He figured that when the Mutes
suddenly appeared they reactivated the defenses and couldn’t turn them back
on.”

“If we went back in, it should be pretty easy. From what the
recon pictures told us, there are only a handful of Mutes left there. We might
be able to fly right over the Mute camp and drop in at the outside of the
sensor range. With a few troops guarding our back from stray Mutes, it should
be a walk in the park. Assuming of course we can turn the defenses off again.”

Teague shook his head and said, “It’s a risk. If you are
going to do it, it has to be volunteers, and you have to make sure everyone
knows they are volunteering. Make it as public as you can. If it fails again
and you ordered them to go, you can bet that Theodore will be our next leader,
and after Marcus’ speech this morning, the council will be a thing of the past.
Just be cautious and keep yourself from accountability on this one, Jack.”

Chuck snorted. “Doc, if I didn’t know better, I would say
you’re a pussy.”

Teague said, “Fuck you, Chuck,” but he was smiling. One day,
Jack would have to find out the story behind these two.

Chuck put his hand on Jack’s shoulder and said, “I’ll go. I
like Thomas, and if there’s a chance he is still alive, I would like to bring
him back here, preferably with a bulldozer in the hold as well.”

“You sure? I figured you would want to stick to the easier
missions for a few days, like heading to Idaho to look into those farmers.”