Trevor corrected, "While General Shepherd prepares those lines." He explained, "You are my Generals. Stonewall, Shep, Prescott and, of course, Jon," he rested a hand on the latter. Dante stood aside, a step apart from the 'Generals'. "We have fought together for almost a year. The sad part is, if we win this time it will not be the last battle. But if we lose…"
Prescott said, "Pardon my French but, shoot, I thought I was going to die a long time ago. Everyday from now on in is just icing."
Trevor pointed to the south of the map.
"Okay, one more time. Stonewall, you guys ride out before dawn and get those Viking-things looking over their shoulder. That gives us three good mountains to use as defensive points. Shepherd, you start laying em’ out."
Shep said, "Seems to me the bear is going to go over them mountains and he’s going to keep seein’ the same thing. Me."
"Jon," Trevor went on. "You’ve got a big nut to crack: the cyber-bot-roach-things… the…shit, just call them the ‘Roachbots."
Jon spoke for all of them when he said, "Now that name just plain sucks."
"Best we can do for now. Roachbots it is. Make sure Anita gets a sketch of these things into the hostiles database."
"What does it matter?" Prescott asked. "We lose, we won’t be needin’ that thing."
Trevor told him, "No, but maybe the next batch of survivors could use it."
"Anyway…" Jon steered the conversation forward.
"Anyway," Trevor echoed. "Jon, you’ll be in a tough spot with these things. You can have two of the Redcoat artillery pieces. I think the Abrams will be yours, too. That means Prescott here will ride shotgun with you."
Prescott slapped Jon on the back and said, "It’s gunna be fun."
"Stonewall’s mortar teams will be in the south with you, Shep. As long as Nina is okay, she’ll be in an Apache and so will Bragg."
Jon asked, "What about you? What weapons you using?"
Instead of explaining, Trevor walked onto the balcony. They followed and listened as he said, "I’ll have the Apaches first. What I really need is ground transportation for my army."
Below on the front lawn under the fading sun of an early June evening assembled Trevor’s army of Grenadiers: Rotties and Huskies, German Shepherds and Dobermans and even several gigantic Irish Wolfhounds. Nearly three hundred K9s.
"I’m going to lead this army against the Red Hands to the north. We will be outnumbered, but we will fight like the devil. If we get it done the Apaches, me, and the K9s will transfer to other fronts. If Stonewall does his job, then the Vikings will be the last to be engaged. But make no mistake, the Roachbots may be fewer in number but they might be the hardest. Jon, I leave their destruction in your hands. Is your plan ready?"
"Omar has been using that matter-maker thing to crank out Redcoat blasting powder all day. We’ll be ready."
Dante spoke out of the blue: "The Battle of Five Armies."
"How’s that?" Shepherd, like the others, did not recognize the reference.
"Oh, c’mon guys," Dante rolled his eyes. "Tolkien, man. The Hobbit. The big battle was between five different armies. Well that’s what we got here, right? Humans, K9s and three big groups of hostiles. Five armies, right?"
Trevor nodded. It sounded as good a name as any.
"Good luck to you all, gentlemen. If we win, I will see you again soon. If not, let the universe know that humanity went down with a fight."
– Trevor and Shepherd walked into the observation area of a CAT scan lab on the first floor of General Hospital. In the interest of conserving energy, the room was lit only by the fluttering screens of computer terminals. Reverend Johnny and a middle-aged spectacled man in a white coat named Dr. Maple waited for them.
"Where is she?"
"She’s resting in a room with Lori right now," Reverend Johnny answered Trevor. "We've thrown every test I could think of at her. Some of the results are still pending, but I think we've got a handle on the problem."
Shep said, "Spell it out, Rev."
"It’s been there all along. I’ve never seen anything like it. But tears of Jesus it wouldn’t have mattered because I didn’t have this kind of equipment."
Johnny tapped the image of Nina’s brain displayed on one of the computer screens.
Trevor’s library of knowledge did not bestow him the ability to read x-rays or CAT scans or whatever. Nonetheless, he immediately spied a foreign object attached to Nina’s brain.
Dr. Maple adjusted his eyeglasses and joined the conversation: "Ah, it’s like a film just inside the skull. It appears to have some sort of roots reaching into specific, um, areas of the cerebral cortex."
Johnny explained, "When I ran a chemical analysis I found that the devil had not been entirely burned at the stake."
Trevor growled impatiently, "How’s that?"
Shepherd offered an answer: "It’s from The Order. Left over from what they did to her."
Johnny nodded and said, "I’ve now found how they implanted fake memories. This patch worked in conjunction with the more traditional-looking implant. My sincerest apologies, Mr. Stone. I simply had no way of-"
Trevor ignored his apology and jumped, "Can you save her? Can you stop it from hurting her? I…can’t lose her… I can’t…"
Shepherd squeezed Trevor’s shoulder.
Johnny told him, "It is merely an implant. If I can get the correct enzyme I simply inject her and it will shrivel and die."
Trevor breathed a sigh of relief and stared at the floor.
Shepherd cocked a suspicious eye and wagged a finger at the image.
"Tell me something, doc. What exactly is this thing doin’ inside my girl’s head?"
Dr. Maple answered enthusiastically, "You know how a, ah, computer works?"
"A little."
"Right," Maple pushed his glasses higher on his nose. "When you…say…save a, um, program or load software your computer writes that information to a hard drive. Think of the hard drive, in this case, as the part of Ms. Forest’s brain that stores memories. Well, what The Order has apparently done is-for sake of an example-they’ve rigged an external floppy drive. They were able to, well, have her brain access that external drive-this patch of film-where it found false memories."
Reverend Johnny joined, "I see this metaphor despite my disdain for those monsters of megabytes. To put a fine point on it, this ‘floppy drive’ became her primary memory storage area, although she still could call up older memories from her hard drive."
Jerry Shepherd scratched his chin and remarked, "Well, ain’t that clever."
"The problem is, um, that-to continue to use the, ah, metaphor-her floppy drive is getting, well, it’s getting full. It just doesn’t have the same capacity as the main brain. That’s why she’s been passing out. Over load. We can give her stimulants to keep her going for a while. But, well, eventually this could lead to, ah, severe brain damage and, well, um…"
"What? Whoa. Hold on a moment," Trevor alternated his eyes from Johnny to Maple to Johnny again. "But she’s going to be okay, right? I mean, you can get this out?"
The Rev calmed, "Yes, Mr. Stone. We will need to return to The Order’s abandoned base in Allentown. There I’ll find the correct enzymes. I inject her, and a minute later it disintegrates."
"Thank God."
Trevor wiped a hand of relief across his brow but paused when he spied Reverend Johnny and Dr. Maple share glance.
"What? What is it?"
Johnny licked his lips.
Shepherd said, "Seems to me there’s a cat you haven’t let out of the bag."
"Mr. Stone…Trevor," Johnny proceeded delicately. "I don’t believe you’ve followed the metaphor to its fullest extent. When I say Ms. Forest will be as right as rain, I mean physically."
"But?"
"This…this ‘floppy drive’ as we’ve been calling it…this is where she’s been storing all of her memories since its implant. When we destroy it…when we inject the counter-agent and remove it, then she will…"