What made it different from any command center I’d ever been a part of was that it was eerily quiet; the people manning the view screens communicated with each other through their bioware and the only sounds were the muted voices coming from the screens themselves.
As soon as I realized what it was displaying I walked over to the central table. It was obvious that the Noridian ship had been trying to pull up when it crashed. There was a long gouge of destruction cut into the Earth prior to it coming to rest; the front end buried in a 50 foot high berm of its own making.
Fortunately she’d come down in the countryside and I realized that this was the first good look I’d had of the ship we’d left Earth in. She was roughly circular and about 200 yards across—but she was much too thick and irregular to be called a saucer.
Except for a large indentation where my team’s portion of the ship had detached itself for our original excursion it looked amazingly intact—at least from what I could tell. One of the Coridian males walked over and started dispassionately pointing out details. Apparently there was a fair amount of external damage; I was shown where sensor, communication, weapon, and shielding appendages should have been attached to the huge hull.
Almost as an afterthought he pointed out where the Coridian rescue shuttle was docked. I asked what they’d found only to have this ongoing nightmare confirmed—we’d lost them all.
What was left of my team was spread out across the room, watching the various Earthnet news feeds. Eventually Silva walked over to me and again suggested that we get some rest. He assured me that his team would keep gathering information and have a full report for us the next morning. He also promised that he would wait for us to make the first contact with Earth authorities. We could rest and approach the situation tomorrow, together.
I made sure the bodies of the fallen were being treated with respect and then acquiesced.
I felt dead as I walked into the cabin that had been my home for the last several months. I was exhausted and numb. I removed my clothes and took a waterless shower before I went and sat on the edge of my bed. I had just lost another 18 of the people I was responsible for, eighteen friends. I’m not sure how long I sat there, replaying the events in my mind over and over.
Eventually I realized that my door had been buzzing and the last thing I wanted to do was open it. I also realized that I’d removed my earpiece and it might be important so I really had no choice but to let them in. I gave the verbal command and was surprised when it turned out to be Julie walking into my room.
I also had a fleeting moment of embarrassment as I realized I hadn’t bothered to dress after my shower but I was just too numb to care.
Without saying a word she laid me down on the bed and pulled the covers over me. She then walked to the other side and climbed under the covers herself, holding me from behind, one arm under my pillow and the other across my chest.
“They were my responsibility and I let them die,” I said after a long interval of silence.
“You couldn’t have done anything about it,” she whispered back.
“I should have known,” I insisted. “Jaki had planned to suffocate us the first time our group left the ship. I should have remembered that; I should have planned for it.”
“You couldn’t have known Matt. You can’t anticipate every move of an evil mind.”
“It’s my job to anticipate those exact things Julie, to think through every contingency, to prepare for everything. I don’t know how… “
“Matt, do you believe that Iron Jaw was a good soldier?”
“Yes, I was proud to know him.”
“And do you think Hiromi and Captain Garvais and the others were good soldiers to?”
“I trusted all of them.”
“Then you have to realize that none of them anticipated it either. You did the very best you could in an almost impossible situation and they did the same.”
We were silent for a while and I think I might have dozed a little but now I was shaking uncontrollably. I felt Julie’s arm tighten across my chest and I could feel her pressing against me and holding me tight.
I fell into a fitful sleep and awoke well before morning. Sometime during the night Julie must have removed her clothing because I could now feel her warm skin pressed up against my back.
I slowly turned over to face her.
“Dr. Decker, your video of the Noridian treachery has set a new world record for going viral,” Silva was saying.
Four of the six remaining members of my team, well… six if you counted Toni and Silva, were gathered for a breakfast meeting and a briefing on the situation planetside.
“This has contributed at least in part to the upheaval of authority in a lot of countries,” he continued.
“While General Memphis still commands a large number of international forces there are a number of wannabe civilian leaders popping up claiming to speak for large swaths of the world population.”
“What about Dr. Derrick Helmer?” Julie asked.
“He is one of the larger wannabes,” Silva responded. “And he seems to be loosely aligned with General Memphis but with all the new protests and unrest the French government has gone AWOL and that’s kind of pulled the rug out from under him.”
“Who’s in charge of US military forces?” I asked.
“It’s pretty patchwork, major. The Pentagon and MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL were both taken out by kinetic strikes so the Joint Chiefs and U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) are both gone. U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) is gone. U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) and U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) are both gone along with a bunch of others. The only Command Authorities we know for sure that are still in place are General David Patrón’s U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM) and General Jerry Gordon’s U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM). There may be others but we can’t confirm them.”
“How did this happen?” Dr. Decker asked and put voice to the same question I had on my mind.
“From what we can tell,” Silva said. “While Dr. Helmer was working with Jaki to unify world-wide civil authority under the auspices of the French Prime Minister, Colonel Memphis must have guided or directly aided her forces in taking out command and control structures in the United States. Some entire bases were obliterated by orbital strikes but other HQs were taken out by insertion teams suddenly appearing in the HQ and assassinating everybody in the command structure from the 4 Star’s on down. If they didn’t find the officers there they went to their homes. Many of those officers lost their entire family. I hate to say it major but with Jaki’s level of technology and the intelligence Memphis must have provided it wouldn’t have been that hard to do.”
“So Memphis isn’t just misguided,” Julie said. “He really is a full blown traitor.”
“He and Dr. Helmer have both betrayed us,” I said.
“I guess Mark was right about him all along,” Julie responded.
That reminded me to ask, “Silva, now that we have communications again have your people heard anything from Dr. Spencer or Dr. Spelini?”
“No,” he responded. “But that doesn’t mean anything. They had a long way to travel and could very well still be in route.”
“Major,” Toni interjected. “We all hope that Mark and Anzio are safe but I really don’t think they’re going to be able to do anything to help us.”
“Us?” Julie asked.
Toni sighed. “I wish it could be us,” she said. “We have to assume that Jaki got a message out to other Noridians and that means that a whole lot of them are going to be showing up here sooner rather than later.”