Lindy lay a short distance along the tunnel, which rained dirt and stone from gaps between the sagging ceiling plates. Zack grabbed Lindy, who was conscious but looked dazed—had she hit her head? She screamed when he grabbed her under her armpits and dragged her, but Zack had no choice. If that had been an earthquake, there could be aftershocks and the entire tunnel could collapse. He shoved Lindy into the airlock, closed the door—thank the gods that it still closed—and pushed START DECON. Come on, come on…
Decon hadn’t finished when everything shook again. But the airlock was part of the original alien structure and didn’t crack. Lindy moaned. Zack said, his voice too loud and too shaky, “Earthquake!”
“No,” Colin gasped.
No? Then what?
“Bombs.”
Whose? Did New America have those kinds of weapons? The dome had held… but what if it didn’t go on holding?
Lindy moaned again. Then silence.
Jason said into his mic, “Major Duncan?”
“Operation Flamingo successfully executed, sir.”
“On our way up.”
J Squad, too disciplined to cheer, nonetheless looked as if they were hallooing and slapping each other on the back and high-fiving. But there was only Goldman saying, “Well done, sir.”
They climbed to dome level and dispersed to stations per the OPORD. Jason, ignoring the frightened civilians—J Squad would explain and reassure—climbed to the command post and looked out through night-vision goggles.
The Return, its mission finished, had already lifted back to orbit. The bombs it had dropped, the most powerful nonnuclear weapons ever developed, had incinerated everything around both domes in a quarter-mile radius. In the eerie night-vision green, the scene was something from a nightmare. Forest burned, although the thickening rain would take care of that. It was already bringing down the dust and smoke of the carnage. The twisted metal of Strykers gleamed wetly. Debris lay everywhere, along with what was left of bodies. It would take days to clean up everything and refortify the tunnels.
Jason had gambled that the domes themselves could withstand the ordnance. The bombs had been experimental ten years ago; no one knew how powerful they still were. Now Jason knew. The Return would be back at first light. This job was only half finished.
He wasn’t going to report to HQ until it was. Strople wasn’t going to stop him.
Colin said shakily, “Can you get Lindy up the stairs? You can leave me here and put her in the chair!”
“No,” Zack said. “I don’t dare move her any more without a doctor—I have no idea where she’s hurt. I’m going for help.”
Lindy quavered, “I’m a doctor, I—” but Zack was already sprinting up the stairs. At the top, he found himself unable to unlock the door at the top. Christ!
Colin called, “What is it?”
“The door isn’t recognizing me—I don’t know why not!” It must have something to do with the earthquake, or bombs, or whatever the fuck had happened. He pounded on the door with his fist; nothing happened.
Colin called, “Come back down. She has an implanted mic and earplant.”
Of course she did. Cursing himself for an idiot—Colin, who eschewed technology, had remembered the mic and implant and Zack had not—he sprinted back down the stairwell. He bent over Lindy. She was speaking in short gasps, her voice full of pain. “Jason… help me… Lab tunnel… please…”
“Lindy, no—Jenner will be over in Enclave Dome, he can’t hear you! Call someone else…”
But someone heard. Maybe the mic, or the frequency, was tuned to more than just Jenner. A few long minutes later multiple footsteps pounded down the stairwell. Claire Patel said, “What happened?” at the same moment that an Army sergeant thundered, “What the fuck are you people doing down here?”
Zack wished he had a good answer. He no longer knew.
Anything.
CHAPTER 16
When Dr. Holbrook came out of the operating room, Jason was there. Three o’clock in the morning, and Dr. Holbrook’s eyes drooped with exhaustion; he was not a young man. He pulled down his mask and said, “Sir, she’ll be fine. A broken rib punctured a lung, but she’ll be fine.”
“Will there be any permanent damage?”
“No.”
“Can I see her?”
“She’s sedated. They’ll take her to… wherever they can find an empty bed, I guess.”
A nurse found, or made, an empty bed in a tiny room whose empty shelves on three sides said that until recently it had been a storeroom. Lying on a gurney, Lindy looked small and vulnerable. Jason smoothed her hair, matted with dirt, away from her forehead. She didn’t stir. Her left hand lay on top of the blanket. Bare—what had she done with her wedding rings? Probably put them in a drawer somewhere, as he had with his.
She breathed regularly, her small breasts rising and falling under the hospital gown. Was the 3-D printer still making gowns? He thought he remembered hearing that the raw material had all been used up, but maybe not. There was so much going on in these two domes that he did not, could not, keep track of it all.
When had he and Lindy lost track of each other? At the Collapse? No, they had still been working together then, overwrought and terrified and furious in those first few days when Jason had been snatching scientists and equipment, trying to outrun the spread of RSA in order to create an outpost of military research. He and Lindy had worked together at the start of the war, too. He had held her as she cried when they’d gotten the news of the nuclear strikes that had wrecked what was left of civilization.
So when? He had done only what was necessary to defend the base. To defend her. And, somehow, that had made him lose her.
Just as he had lost Jane to Colin. Although Jane, unlike Lindy, had never been his to begin with.
“Lindy,” he said softly, “what the fuck were you trying to do in that tunnel?”
Actually, he already knew. The patrol, outside in the nightmare wreckage, had received the message from Captain Cooper, acting CO at Lab Dome. Jason had gone over there, picking his way through twisted wreckage and body parts in the streaming rain, and had learned the whole stupid story from Zack McKay.
Lindy had been trying to save the base. Jason had actually done so, by taking a terrible risk, and armed with bombs and military knowledge and a fucking spaceship. She had had nothing but courage and heart and a willingness to die if necessary.
He took her limp hand. So much emotion shook him that the floor seemed to waver. Lindy.
A noise behind him, and Jason turned. Colin, in his powerchair, sat in the doorway.
“Jason—Colonel Jenner—I need to talk to you. Alone.”
Zack crept onto the bed beside Susan, who didn’t stir. Sometimes v-coma patients twitched when touched, but not now. The curtained cubicle held two beds; Caity lay on the other. Zack put his arms around his comatose wife. Susan had lost weight. Always slim, now her bones felt as fragile as a sparrow’s, as fragile as Zack’s heart.
Everything in him ached: muscle, bone, brain. Colonel Jenner himself had questioned Zack about Lindy’s plan, about the tunnel, about the entire disastrous enterprise, and the more Jenner questioned, the stupider Zack felt. Why had he ever agreed to help Lindy?