Captain Everley, Glade’s aide, bustled me through the crowd. We walked down the ramp toward the garage passing fire trucks and smaller emergency vehicles. The thump of air compressors and the buzz of a dozen electrical generators created a smothering blanket of sound. Between the arc lights, the workmen, and the hot air that always accompanies officers, the temperature had gone up in the garage.
“Captain Baxter, this is Lieutenant Wayson Harris.” Everley introduced me to a big man in Army fatigues.
I saluted. The captain returned the salute.
“Harris is leading the team,” Everley said.
“So I hear,” the captain answered, his lack of interest obvious in his voice. He turned to me. “How many men do you want to take down with us?” The captain reminded me of some of the guys I used to fight at Sad Sam’s Palace—slender around the gut but with huge shoulders. He had scars on his face and a surly attitude. I had already forgotten his name.
“You’re coming?” I asked. “I prefer to work with Marines.”
“You got a problem with regular Army, Harris?” the captain asked. “This is your op, but I’m coming.”
“I see,” I said. I thought about what we would need to liberate a couple of nukes. If push came to shove, having a big, strong moron to absorb the radiation might come in handy. “We might be able to get away with only five men if the lower levels aren’t too broken up. If the damage is too bad and we can find a route—”
“I can help you with that.” A sheep in colonel’s clothing trotted in to join our conversation. “You’re Lieutenant Harris, is that right? You’re the one leading the search team?” He reached to shake my hand. “John Young, Army Corps of Engineers.”
Young had an Army uniform and a military haircut, but those were the only military things about him. He introduced himself like a civilian, smiling and expecting me to shake hands. I shook hands, but when Young—probably not a military man but a civilian engineer pressed into service during a time of emergency—reached to shake hands with Baxter, he came up dry.
“I hope you found us a way in,” Baxter said. His tone of voice reflected his lack of respect for Young. “I’m looking forward to the workout.” He flexed his shoulder as if limbering up for a fight.
“We’ve taken soundings and X-rays,” Young said as he led me to a card table in a brightly lit corner of the garage. He sounded cheerful, like a man who is just happy to be of service. He also sounded like a man in the know. I suspected that Newcastle had confided in him, and he knew the truth about the Avatari.
Strings of lights hung along the ceiling in this corner of the garage. The blades of a seven-foot-tall fan lazily spun, circulating the warm air away from the table.
Generals Newcastle, Haight, and Glade huddled around the table. Young pushed his way among them, saying in a dismissive voice guaranteed to offend any commanding officer, “Make way, make way. Some of us have work to do.
“General Glade tells me you were the one who suggested we use that robot. That was a great suggestion.”
Newcastle glared at Glade, who answered him with a smirk.
Young spread a set of blueprints across the table. The drawing showed a side view of the garage. He then spread a second blueprint over the first. It showed separate top-down schematics of all seven levels of the garage. Young pointed to an uneven circle drawn around the top level.
“We’re here.” He drew an X. “This circle represents the collapsed area. As you can see, it takes up most of this level of the garage.”
Young moved his finger down to the next level. The collapsed area on the second level was less than a third the size of the area on the upper level. “Whatever kind of weapon the Mudders are using, it only impacts structures on the surface of the ground. Using that S.C.O.O.T.E.R. robot, we were able to get a look at a few of the lower levels. From what I can tell, the structural integrity remains good.”
Even though he called the aliens “Mudders,” something about the way Young spoke made me think that he knew they were avatars. I could hear it in his voice. He must have known that the Army guys did not know and that it was privileged information.
“What about this damage zone?” I asked, pointing to the circled area on the second level.
“It’s caved in there,” Young said.
“But the structure is sound around the cave-in?” I asked.
“Sound? As in unharmed?”
Young smiled. “Harris, a fifty-six-story hotel collapsed on top of this garage. Frankly, I am amazed how well it held up.”
Young said that the damaged area on the third level was only a fraction of the size on the second. The fourth level, where they stored the nukes, was clear.
“Yeah, I got that it’s solid. How do we get down there?” Baxter, my Army-appointed second-in-command, demanded.
“Okay, so this is the top level of the garage,” said Young. He pointed to a square. “We cut a hole through the floor here. That’s how we got the robot in. I suppose we could make the hole bigger if you want to drop down through it, Captain.”
Baxter bent over the schematic. He nodded and grunted his approval.
“That’s our best way in?” I asked.
Young laughed. “Personally, I’d take the stairs.” He pointed to two wavy lines that snaked along the circled area on the map. “We cleared a path to the stairwell.”
As I looked at the blueprint, I saw that the collapse line only approached the stairs on the top floor. “Can we take the stairs all the way down?”
“Yup,” Young said.
“Depending on the size of a fifty-megaton nuke, it’s going to be rough going carrying the bomb up the stairs,” I said.
“You’d be surprised,” Young said. “Your bomb is not that big, two men should be able to carry it without any problem. If you prefer, though, you could take the elevator.” He pointed to a spot on the blueprint. Under his finger were the words, “Shaft is structurally sound.”
“The elevator works?” I asked.
“We had to put new braces on the motor and some of the gears, but the shaft is fine.”
“So what was all that bullshit about dropping through a hole in the floor?” Baxter asked.
“You said you were looking forward to the workout,” Young said. “I thought you wanted the exercise.”
“Asshole,” Baxter said.
Young smiled.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I had a couple of hours to rest before we left on our mission to the mines. While I slept, Sweetwater and the techs at the Science Lab prepared the bomb we had retrieved, the ground crew readied the transport we would fly to the Avatari dig, and the remaining troops dug in to defend Valhalla. Fifty-eight hours had passed since the last time the Avatari came knocking. Sometime in the next fourteen hours, they would come back for their return engagement.
Thanks to John Young and the Corps of Engineers, we were well armed. We had rockets loaded into the launchers along Campus Drive. Our grenadiers had more grenades and shoulder-fired rockets than they could use in a month. We had so many mobile rocket launchers that our riflemen and automatic riflemen abandoned their weapons of record and took up rockets. For the first time in known history, Marine fire teams were made up of four grenadiers.
The Avatari had forced us into an advantageous battle-ground. Mostly flat and studded with heaps of rubble instead of buildings, the field would allow men with rockets and grenades clear shots at an advancing enemy. The last defenders of Valhalla would have good ground with lots of cover from which they could engage the Avatari from a distance, yield ground, and engage again. If they were lucky, they might wear the Avatari down.
In a few hours I would take a crew into the Avatari mine. Our objective would be to reach the gas deposits and detonate a fifty-megaton nuclear bomb. We hoped to set the nuke and beat a hasty retreat, but hopes are not as important as objectives to Marines. If everything went as expected, the bomb would blow, the gas would charge and attract tachyons, and it would punch a hole in the ion curtain. If Sweetwater was right, the bomb would change the gas in the caverns to shit gas. Basically, we were going the speck the aliens’ plans.