G-force looked at the weapons locker on the far wall of the dropship.

  “Any.”

  Halo and Priest walked up and stuck out a hand. “I like a man who isn’t choosy,” Priest said.

  “Oh… no, sir. I am choosy, I am just equally proficient,” Sergeant Dae said, shaking hands. The man’s voice was not boastful, simply stating something as a verified fact.

  Two hours later, her men were doing last-minute gear checks. Bayou called for the final briefing. “Command, and by Command, I mean the guys up there…” Bayou said testily, pointing above her head. They all knew that the Space Force had named one of their own as interim War Commander, as no Command elements on the ground had been heard from. They also did not know who they were fighting yet. None had ever met or seen Admiral Reese, but his bio suggested he’d spent most of his service time at Gateway and Luna. Kerns had not seemed receptive to his command earlier. Bayou wondered what had changed.

  “Command has multiple targets for us to recon.” She pointed the locations out on the large display as the others looked on. “The coordinates and specific deployments will be added to your tac units.” All were on the East Coast. “Several of these are major population centers. We already know casualties are massive. We are not to render aid or engage with the civilian population. Our job is to assess threats, damage, and provide actionable intel. Are we clear?”

  The TriCraft dropship was being piloted by the same man from days earlier. “Lieutenant, heading back to the shit?” the man named Packer asked with a grin as he went through pre-flight.

  “You know how us ground-pounders are,” Bayou answered. “Just can’t get enough.”

  Packer eyed the Spaceborne Infantry RDT patch on her sleeve and nodded. “Right, ground-pounders.”

  She gave him the exact coordinates for the first insertion, an area just outside the blast zone for New York City. Turning back, she gave her crew and the load one final check, ordering Halo to double check the Wulf was secure in the cargo hold.

  “Staff Sergeant, a word,” she said softly, turning to her team’s recent addition.

  “Yes, of course,” the man said, placing a hand in his jacket pocket.

  “Gi, we don’t have time for niceties. I quickly read over your file. You are more than capable. I just have one question for you. Do you have any agenda I am unaware of?”

  He gave a thoughtful smile. “Me being here is unusual, troubling for you and your men. I totally understand that. I am not Spaceborne Infantry, never left Earth until now. I don’t belong up here. You feel I am of no real use.”

  He removed his hand from his pocket and opened his palm. It contained a small paper photograph of an older woman.

  Debra studied the image. She had the same eyes as he did, kind but determined. “Mother?”

  He nodded. “She was in London.”

  Bayou smiled sadly and gently placed a hand on his rock-hard shoulder. “I understand. Don’t go down there for payback, though. Go to do the job they trained you for, and we will be fine.”

  He forced a smile and a tiny nod.

  “Launch when ready, Captain,” she yelled before taking her seat.

  Inside a TriCraft dropship there is no actual sense of movement. No acceleration or sudden drops. The ships use a proprietary inertial dampening system that no one seemed to fully understand. What is universal, though, to everyone who travels in one is a low pain in every joint in your body. Riggs could tell they were accelerating simply by the degree of pain. No one ever bothered to explain any of this. It was simply how it was. She gritted her teeth and wished like hell for it to hurry up and be over. Glancing around the jump seats, she saw the rest of her team suffering just as much, except the new man, G-force. He had the same stoic expression he’d worn since they met hours earlier. The guy was a fucking machine.

  The ship came down at incredible speed. While it lacked much in the way of armaments, it could drop in silently with little to no radar signature. Bayou always knew if they’d had more of the little ships, the RDT troopers like her and her team would be unnecessary. Why they didn’t make more was also a mystery that no one upstream every bothered to discuss.

  “Ground floor in thirty,” the pilot said. Bayou pointed at Jenkins, who was already poised to unstrap the tiedowns for the Wulf. Bishop moved to the cargo gate release. “Gi, get inside on the controls.” Being on the ground was the most dangerous time for the dropships, so they wanted to be in perfect synchronization. When the pilot counted down from eight, the former ROK soldier had the Wulf ready to roll. Bayou and Halo were in the back. The gate touched down as the craft went from several hundred miles an hour to a full stop in just a few hundred feet. The change in inertia alone should have killed them, but inside the black triangle airship, they felt nothing.

  Sergeant Dae moved the vehicle out with practiced ease. Priest grabbed hold as it went by and triggered the hatch to close after them. They were moving away in just over ten seconds, and the ship was soon a near invisible dot high above them once again. The pilot was not returning to the carrier. He was on assignment to them as cover and extraction. They had numerous targets, so they needed to stay mobile. Most likely, he would wait for their signal up in low orbit, but the lieutenant was not allowed to question TriCraft operational tactics.

  They were 150 miles outside New York City. Debra knew the city well. Her sister had lived there while going to college. She’d visited her often, always amazed at the diversity and sheer density of humanity. As the Wulf sped over the grounds to the city, she braced herself for what came next. Her orders were to proceed to a set of coordinates, evaluate the scene, and report back. “Buckets on,” she ordered. The rad meter was already climbing toward the red. The city had been hit by multiple dirty bombs. Each of her team placed the suit helmets on and switched over to the internal systems.

  While the helmets always smelled and were claustrophobic at first, Debra wanted the privacy. She tapped her comms to change the frequency.

  “Banshee actual to Prowler.”

  Kovach’s voice sounded tired and distant. Still, she was damn glad to hear it.

  “Glad to have you back dirt side, Bayou,” he said after she caught him up on the basics.

  “Joe,” she said, abandoning the sometimes-ridiculous combat radio security protocols. “What in the fuck is going on down here?” This was her first time seeing the near destruction of her own country. The sensation was somewhat overwhelming even for a battle-hardened soldier.

  “Bayou, watch yourself. There is shit out there that surprises even me. I’m not sure what we’re even fighting or fighting for. These guys unleased a biological storm on our country.”

  Those words didn’t sound like the man who’d led them into more battles than she could count. “What’s wrong, Kovach?”

  He didn’t want to tell her about the gunshot, nor the fact that he was still scared to go to sleep. The fucking nightmares kept coming back. “Hammer Industries.” he said. “Does that ring a bell?”

  “Hell, yeah! Nearly every part of our gear leads back to Hammer in some form. You think they caused this?”

  “Caused it, were the target, I don’t know yet, but they were involved. Also, I think all those labs, all that shit we were recovering since… well, you know.”

  She knew full well he meant since Rollo had been killed and a sizeable chunk of Kovach got blown away in that shitty terrorist cave of abominations.

  “The stuff Hammer was working on looks like a continuation of what all those bioterrorists had started. Mostly, what I have is just more questions at this point. Just watch your backs.”

  She involuntarily glanced at the Korean man helping navigate the troop carrier. He was still a question mark. Could he be a spy, someone working against them?

  “Trouble ahead,” Gi’s crisp voice said over the internal comms. The Wulf slowed.

  “Got work to do, Prowler. Send me an update on your twenty. I’m feeling no great loyalty to this peek and seek recon plan the major has us on.”

  “That’s a hard copy, Bayou. Take care of our team. If you see some wild-looking vines, stay clear. They are deadly and fast as a snake to attack.”

  “Solid copy, Prowler. Be safe!”

  Gun shots began pinging off the outer hull of the Wulf. It looked like not all the natives were under cover or dead.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-FIVE

  KOVACH

  I rubbed a hand over the week’s worth of stubble. After the conversation with Debra, all those feelings of obligation and duty hit me once more. Despite everything Ada had told me, I knew I owed it to Debra to go into Louisville if there was any chance that she still had family alive.

  “Ada, how much would it add to our trip if we went on to Louisville?”

  “Louisville is a nonstarter,” my AI said in her monotone voice. “It was hit by a full CBRN attack.”

  I knew that stood for chemical, biological, radiation, and nuclear, and indeed it seemed like they had gotten hit by all of those.

  “I know. But we have armor, and I can leave the ladies somewhere safe. They don’t need to go to this place with me. They’ll be okay for a couple of days—right?”

  “That may be so, Joe, but what I’m telling you is the two to three days it would take is in the best conditions, if you ran into no trouble and if the roads are even passable. I can tell you from what I’ve seen, Louisville took a direct nuclear blast. Possibly more than one.”

  I sighed and looked out at the pristine rolling hills and farmland. If America was destroyed, you couldn’t tell it by this area.

  Ada continued, “Have you not wondered where all the people are?”

  I didn’t actually want to admit that I hadn’t. Most of Kentucky seemed rather sparsely populated, so it didn’t seem like there would be many people.

  “Not really.”

  “No matter the scale of the attacks, you would expect people fleeing from the destroyed cities. By car, horse, or on foot. These roads should be littered with the debris of a mass exodus.”

  “Where would they have gone?”

  “Anywhere, Joe. Anywhere would have seemed safer than where they were. I am telling you there is no way her sister made it out okay.”

  “You can’t… you can’t just say that. It could be the same thing as Carol’s son.”

  “No, Joe. He was in Atlanta but somehow got out. Atlanta also took a hit. No, Kovach, this one is a little more definite. In fact, I couldn’t be more definite.”

  I did not like the tone my AI was using.

  “Spill it, Ada. What do you know?”

  She took one of her artificially long pauses before responding.

  “I know because I monitor all your teams. I think you know that.”

  “You invade our privacy? You mean you listen in on calls and emails and shit?”

  “No, I don’t do that. I, or more accurately Central Command, do store them in case they’re ever needed, as I have recently discovered cataloging all those communications, with their loved ones, their family, their extended family. It was part of my central programming, part of my core mandate. And beyond that, the government stores the conversations of nearly everybody, but especially those connected even tangentially to the government or military.”

  As a key leader on a special operations team, I began to understand where my trusty AI was headed.

  “You know more about what happened to her, don’t you?”

  Ada’s response was slow and muted. And even though I thought many times that Ada and Debra didn’t get along very well, there was mutual respect. No matter what Ada was about to say, I still owed it to Deb to see for myself.

  “Ada, they’re the ones who pulled me out of that hell-hole with my guts hanging out, my arm gone. You understand I owe her my life?”

  “Joe, I found something in the files. T

  * * *

  hese are the final moments of her sister’s life.”

  I heard a voice, obviously a recording, road noise and music playing in the background. It was a female; she was talking to someone.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s a comms conversation with the driver’s brother out on the West Coast,” Ada explained.

  “Debra doesn’t have any other siblings.”

  “That isn’t her sister on the comms. Just listen… and watch.”

  An image resolved itself in my head. A shaky video image came in from the phone’s camera. It was pointed ahead toward traffic heading into a city. The resolution was grainy, but I guessed from the skyline it was Louisville.

  A shadow passed over the interstate and the scene ahead erupted into a brilliant blast of white-hot fire. The autocar slid to a stop, and I watched as a new Toyota just ahead was consumed by the roiling pressure wave. Then the picture went to snow, then black.

  “This woman was in a car headed back to work when the blast wave hit the entire area. It was hit by the full impact of a megaton nuclear blast,” Ada said.

  “The car just ahead of her, the grey Toyota, was driven by Debra’s sister, Jacey. She would have died instantly, even if she’d been shielded. The radiation there inside that blast zone would have vaporized her instantly. Your cells regenerate at record pace, and even with that and your technological marvel of body armor, you could have made it maybe five minutes if you survived the initial blast.

  Jacey did not make it,” Ada said somberly.

  The video left me feeling gutted. I knew for a fact Deb hadn’t seen it.

  “There must be something we can do. Can we get some drones over the place? Any assets that we can pull in?”

  “Joe, the roads within 100 miles of Louisville are a junkyard of wrecked and stalled cars. Roads are buckled, bridges are out. There is no traffic. There is no communication. There is no power. No food, no drinkable water.

  Deb will do a flyover. I can pass this information along to her if you want. But I’m telling you, this will cost you your life. If you go after her, you will probably die and will miss your only chance to get the medicines you need.”

  Joe had made up his mind. He already knew he had to try. It was just baked into his DNA. Something he was going to have to do today. How would he break it to the women? That was the tough part. Not that Carol or Damiana had any great love to go visit this or Rainier factory. But that didn’t mean that they wanted to sit around waiting for him to make a fool’s run.

  What if he didn't come back? And they’re stuck here in the middle of Kentucky, trying to figure out what the hell to do? He felt the unfamiliar fear of uncertainty gripping him again. He could not shake this nagging doubt… things that he’d never had to deal with his entire career.

  Should he betray his friend who risked her life countless times to save him or abandon the two women that had become his travel partners? Carol and Dami had held up their end of the agreement to get him to where he needed to go.

  He just didn’t have the answers. He did have an overwhelming sense of duty. He would have to calm down and talk to Deb. That’s the only thing that made any sense to him. He couldn’t just leave that question hanging. Fighting for our loved ones is what drives us and all soldiers. None of us did it for the honor, the pride, or the spirit of patriotism or any of the other bullshit they throw at us. We did it for the person standing next to us pulling a trigger. And we did it for our families back home. That’s what a warrior does. That’s what really drives us to be on the front line to hold that line. We want to make sure this shit never follows us home.

  And yet, it had. That was the miserable ball of guilt I was feeling in the depths of my soul. It hadn’t been on my watch, but it could have been. I definitely should have known something. Pops certainly had. How was Hammer Industries involved? How deeper up or down the chain did this go? Was it really an enemy? Or was it a false flag operation that just went horribly wrong? Could someone purposely want to make the human race go extinct? I had to admit these were damn good questions. Ones I simply didn’t have the answers for. In my storm-tossed mind, I thought if I could just get some sleep, my decisions would be easier. Maybe it would all make some sense.

  There was one thing I had to do first. I had to share what I knew with Carol. I’d been holding back this information, and this woman, maybe above all others, really needed to know everything I knew about her son.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-SIX

  Morning came on me like a slap to the face. The ‘slide,’ as I had come to know it, was my body’s screaming need for the pharmaceutical intervention every month. It had been the case every month since Doctor Reichert’s team had saved my life. Immediately after getting the drug cocktail, I was fine, nearly as good as new, but that peak soon started slipping away. By the fifth week, I was much less sharp, barely capable, in fact. Even though today was only about my two-week mark, I could feel it coming on. That was part of what I assumed Ada’s diagnosis would have concluded. My sleep irregularities were caused by something off in my body chemistry. But that was not what she came up with at all.

  “Joseph, your neural patterns are showing a very specific and highly troubling wave pattern.”

  “My what?”

  “I have been running a soma diagnosis on you for several nights and something is off. Your delta waves are nearly non-existent, your gamma and theta waves are spiking when they shouldn’t be, and I am detecting an altogether different signal that almost looks more like a radio carrier wave than anything natural.”

  Okay, some of my upgrades helped increase my cognitive ability, but I was lost on most of what she said.

  “So, I’m not sleeping well,” I guessed. The news about Deb’s sister had weighed on me until the early hours of the morning.

  “Your sleep is not the issue; you are not getting a restorative sleep. No matter how long you are out, your mind is not shutting down. It is firing as if it is on high alert.”