Schism

'Oh Christ.'

'What the Hell is he up to?' Stanton grumbled. 'Now, I remember thinking that he wasn't even going to wake up, let alone go off for a ride. He come to his senses or something?'

Jorgie told them in a voice wavering on the brink of tears, 'He wants to get away. He wants to run from the bad dreams.'

'But he can't,' Lori Brewer, the former counselor, broke in. 'He's trying to run away but he can't run away from himself. He needs help, Jon. But in some ways this is a good sign.'

Jon burst, 'A good sign? What kind of shrink-shit is that?'

'Jon, listen. On some level he knew how to find his way to the hangar bay and stow away onboard an Eagle and if that's him at the controls now then he's remembered how to fly it. On some level Trevor Stone is still in there, covered up by layer after layer of all the bad images in his head. The stuff those things put inside of him. If someone can get through to him…I mean, maybe he can still be saved. That is, if he doesn't become suicidal.'

Ashley gasped, 'Suicidal?'

'Sooner or later he's going to find that he can't run away from who he is and all the things he's done. At that point…' she left the blank unfilled.

Woody Ross interrupted, 'Scout Four has crossed the tambourine line and is headed for Connecticut. She'll be out of our range soon.'

'All ahead full,' Brewer commanded. 'We have to catch her.'

Stanton warned, 'General, no matter how many false reports your Captain friend sends, sooner or later the Philipan is going to see us for herself. Then she's going to intercept us and that's probably all she wrote.'

Ashley had the answer, 'Jon, a battleship can't bring Trevor back.'

Jon Brewer looked at Ashley. Her eyes showed a deep sadness that stretched to her very soul. In the old days he had seen this woman as shallow and self-serving. Like his wife, Jon figured Ashley to be a materialistic daddy's girl.

No more. As Armageddon had changed him, and Trevor, and people like Reverend Johnny and Garrett McAllister, so too had it changed Ashley Trump. She knew she did not hold Trevor's heart but yet she understood that heart. She understood his importance.

And now she stood on the bridge and spoke a simple truth: her husband could not be saved by the military strength, advanced technology, or even the arcane powers at his disposal. If anything could clear his crazed mind it would be something far more personal.

Ashley explained, 'I'll need Rick Hauser and his transport. A doctor for the pilot if he's injured and for Trevor. Myself and my son, too. We'll go after him.'

Jon tried to object even though he knew it the right thing to do. Stanton saw the General's mouth begin to express that objection and cut him off, 'General, the closer we get to shore the more likely Hoth is going to float out here and kick the crap out of us. He'll do it, too. But he might not pay a transport any attention. They could follow Scout Four.'

Jon, frustrated, asked, 'But where is he going?'

Lori answered, 'Anywhere. He's just running, Jon.'

Stanton told them, 'He can't go too much further. The way he's bookin' and how far he's gone, well now, he's going to have to stop to fill up the tanks soon, assuming he’s in a right enough mind to do that.'

General Brewer nodded to Ashley and told her, 'Okay, go. Take Eagle One.'

Ashley led JB by the hand toward the exit. Before she left, she turned and spoke to the General. He could have sworn he saw a glimmer of a tear in her eye as she added the one last thing she would need.

'Oh and one more thing, Jon. We'll need someone…we'll need a good soldier. I think…I think that Captain Forest would be…it would be good of her to come along.'

– The high speed booster rockets onboard Eagle One closed the distance with Scout Four fast. Hauser dropped low, nearly skimming the ocean top as he punched across the tambourine line. After penetrating the airspace around Connecticut, he rose to cruising altitude but could not locate Scout Four on radar.

Panic gripped all those onboard until a radio transmission from the ship's original pilot went out in search of assistance, reporting he had been attacked by a crazed man and rendered unconscious, awakening to find his ship in the middle of a mountainous wilderness.

Hauser's voice announced to the passenger compartment, 'We have a location on Scout Four. She's landed in the Catskills. We'll be there in fifteen minutes. Sit tight.'

Ashley let out a heavy exhale, the only sound in the passenger compartment other than the distant hum of the engines. Her son sat quiet by her side on one of the bench seats. In the row behind her waited two medics with first aid equipment. Nina sat in the row ahead running a cloth over the metal of an assault rifle. At her feet rested a black and gray Norwegian Elkhound named Odin, or so Nina had informed.

Ashley studied Nina's profile, watching those sapphire eyes staring intently at the cloth and the rifle. Ashley knew exactly who Odin was. She had been with Richard when he had picked the dog up from the breeder to join Tyr at the Stone family home. And now that dog lived with, worked with, and traveled with Nina Forest. The same way Trevor's heart lived with the woman.

What made her so special? How had she stolen Richard's heart from Ashley?

No, that isn't quite right.

Nina Forest would never have stolen Richard's heart from Ashley. But Trevor? Ashley had never actually held Trevor's heart, so it was not hers to lose.

Certainly Nina Forest offered all the beauty a man might desire, although with a rough edge and in the package of a shy person. She looked to be a woman ten years younger, one might even think her more a 'girl' than a 'lady'. Yet she seemed unapproachable. More so, she appeared unconcerned with anything other than battle: the curls of her hair wasted in a ponytail, her body slender but seemingly made of rock like a marble statue. There seemed very little warmth.

Ashley knew Forest to be a devoted soldier. Perhaps there lay the answer. The Lords of Armageddon had given Trevor a mission, with no room for compromise and no opportunity for respite. Indeed, it may be that no other person in the world could ever understand Trevor as Nina could, and no one could ever know Nina as did Trevor. They were reflections of one another.

So why had the powers behind Armageddon separated them? Surely Nina's memory loss could be overcome. But no, Trevor had not been allowed to be with Nina for another reason: he was pre-ordained to be with Ashley.

She turned away from the soldier and gazed at her son. A son with a brain that worked far beyond the capabilities of the normal; a boy with unnatural insights into the world around him. A child who had apparently slaughtered legions of monsters inside The Order's base with his mind.

What Trevor had needed from Ashley…what the Gods had fated…her genes. Her womb. She was a vessel, contributing half of a powerful equation. But to what end? Ashley did not know. She only knew that her life might serve no meaning beyond being a mother, and that saddened her. She stared at her hands and listened to the engines hum. Nina went on cleaning her rifle. — Despite their name, the Catskill Mountains are a dissected plateau. This discrepancy, however, made no practical difference to the rescue party onboard Eagle One. The mountainous ranges rolled away from the crash site one after another covered in dense forest with streams, rivers, dramatic waterfalls, and dense foliage presenting a variety of obstacles to any search.

According to the Scout Four pilot-who had suffered a concussion-Trevor Stone had raced off into the forest when the ship fell from the sky in a kind of controlled crash, what a helicopter pilot such as Nina might call a 'hard landing.'

'We can't search from the sky,' Hauser explained while the medics looked over the wounded pilot in Eagle One's passenger module.

'Why not? We have to get father!'

Hauser answered, 'Regional air defense has a couple of fighter jets out looking for us. I can get us out of here when the time comes but a slow search over all this terrain is a different story. We'd be an easy target.'

Ashley-the de facto commander of the mission-resolved the issue. 'Then we go after him on foot. He's got a two-hour head start on us. I can't imagine he'd get far in his condition.' Nina threw a back pack with emergency gear over her shoulders, picked up her M-4, and moved toward the exit with Odin at her heel. 'Okay then, I say we get going.' 'Yes, mommy, she's right. We should get going right away.'