conscience he had. He glanced at Jerry Shepherd and remembered convincing him and his small band of police officers to join the estate.
Trevor turned to Jon Brewer. Twice Jon had held the reins of power and twice he had dropped the ball. Yet on the battlefield he knew Jon to be a valiant soldier and a brilliant strategist. He trusted Jon to fight to the death on the Mississippi.
Trevor took a moment to put his hand on Jon’s shoulder and look at his friend. Jon returned the stare and saw confidence in Trevor’s expression. Trust. The time had come for The Emperor to show faith in his general again.
Trevor then found Gordon’s eyes at the far end of the table. As he expected, those eyes glared back big and strong. Of course, Gordon’s strength would falter when he moved away from the table on wheels instead of legs, but something or someone had given Gordon the courage to return to the conference table. Trevor hoped that courage would last.
Eva Rheimmer and Brett Stanton sat side by side. Of all the people at the table Trevor thought those two to be the least appreciated. Eva pre-dated all the others; Trevor had made contact with her and her husband before the end of that first summer. He had convinced them to share food from their farm in exchange for K9 protection. That deal planted the initial seed of success.
As for Brett, the years had proven him to be a logistical and manufacturing genius. The dreadnoughts would never have grown from blue prints to flying battleships without his work. Indeed, their armies would have run dry of materials long before ousting the Hivvans if not for Stanton.
Trevor turned his gaze to Omar who sat quiet with a sagging, half-ash cigarette dangling from his lips. From the first matter-maker recovered in the hills of northeastern Pennsylvania to the anti-gravity catapults on the dreadnought flight decks, Omar turned alien technology into human weapons. His contributions were now only matched by his sacrifice, for Anita Nehru would never be the same.
At last he found the blue eyes of Nina Forest. Once, a long time ago, he thought those eyes cold. Were they still icy? He could not say. She did not remember what they shared but he remembered; remembered all too well. The pain of losing her made him more the monster. How many times over the years could he have used her compassion? After the slaughter at New Winnabow, the revelations of another Earth, the discovery of the Presidential redoubt in the heart of Cheyenne Mountain-times of regret, of shock, of horror-but he had had nowhere to turn.
He moved his eyes away. A feeling of guilt or maybe bashfulness overcame him. As if he felt a crush on a school girl who could never know.
Trevor pushed those thoughts from his mind in favor of something he had meant to say a long time ago.
“We’ve been together for a long time, haven’t we? We’ve come a long way, too. Everyone at this table has reason to be proud of what we’ve accomplished this far. We’re all that’s left. Along the way-along the way we lost some good friends,” Trevor considered and said with a chuckle in his voice, “and some not-so-good ones, too.”
Flashes of uncomfortable smiles.
“I have been honored by your trust in me. The truth is that you people have often been my strength. I hate that we will be apart for the end of this, but you all have jobs to do and I know you will do them with excellence. I have faith in you. As for me, I was told from the beginning that I have a path to walk. I suppose that my end was meant to come the same way it began; alone.”
8. Fond Farewells
The Eagle airship waited on the launch pad. Trevor exited the mansion and stepped across the grounds flanked by a Rottweiler escort. Rick Hauser loitered alongside the ship’s entry ramp. High overhead the sun began its descent behind the estate. In another hour it would disappear on the far side of the western mountain wall of the lake.
A lot of thoughts played in Trevor’s mind. He had laid it all out for his friends and yet he knew so little about the big picture. Perhaps that had been the trap since day one. As long as Trevor Stone played his part in the game then the greater powers had nothing to fear.
To hell with that.
“Sir! Do you have a comment on the course of the war?”
The shout came from one of three reporters who pushed themselves just inside the main gate. A pair of human guards held M16s to keep them back while several K9s-Dobermans and Trevor’s escort-formed a second wall of protection and flashed their canine teeth.
Up until six months ago the front gates of the estate were continually mobbed by a dozen or more reporters and cameramen. How times had changed.
One good side effect of Voggoth’s invasion.
Most of the reporters either served at the front as soldiers or served at the front as battlefield reporters. Either way, the 24-hour news cycle that had returned to The Empire in recent years had receded.
“Yes, I have a comment,” Trevor changed his trajectory and stood behind the row of protective K9s. “Those who are able to fight need to answer the call again, just as they did in the early days of the invasion. This is a desperate battle and no one can sit it out. I urge all persons of all ages and of all medical conditions to report to military centers in their regions and volunteer for duty.”
“Are you off to the front? Where are you going?” A reporter asked.
Trevor answered, “I’m going to visit an old friend.”
He turned away as the reporters scrambled to decode his answer. However, Trevor found himself more befuddled than the reporters when he saw that someone had moved to block his path to the Eagle.
She stood there on the green lawn of the estate in fatigues and a black top with her trusty M4 on her shoulder and a black beret on her head. Despite the new head gear, Trevor recognized Nina’s telltale golden ponytail dangling to her shoulder blades. He also recognized the black and gray Norwegian elkhound at her side because that dog had belonged to Richard Stone in the old world.
He walked away from the reporters not sure if his gait appeared as wobbly as it felt. He heard the guards push the trio of questioners away, out of earshot.
“Captain Forest?”
“Hello, um, sir.”
Odin, her dog, trotted to Trevor with his head lowered obediently. The beast appeared old and shaggy and his white undercoat shed in bushels. He knelt and patted his old elkhound between the ears. Nina, for her part, took notice of the body language of familiarity between the two.
She said, “I wanted to, well, I wanted to see you before I left. Or, I guess, well, before you left, too.”
“Oh,” he gave Odin another good pat then stood. “Well I’m-I’m glad you did.”
The two walked side by side along the grounds leaving the front yard in favor of the quieter north side.
He stumbled, “I don’t know if I ever really thanked you, um, for last year. You came and found me. And all. I mean, thank you.”
Trevor knew his voice trembled with nerves. He did not know that Nina heard that tremble not as nerves, but as discomfort. She nearly ran away at the sound in fear that he did not want to talk to her; that whatever she had done to make him disavow their love a decade ago was so horrible that he could not bear her presence.
Nonetheless, she stayed. An act of courage on par with anything she dared on the battlefield.
“It was my duty,” she said with a stiff resolve meant to sound soldierly. But that resolve faded. “And I wanted to,” she admitted.
They entered the shade of maples and oaks along the northern side of the mansion. Ahead lay the barn where the original pack of Grenadiers had lived and bred.
Trevor listened to her words and wished he could believe that he heard a tone of affection. But that was impossible. She did not remember what she had meant to him. She could not. That life had been stolen from her by The Order’s Bishop.
So he stepped carefully with his response, the way a nerdy teenage boy may worry that his every word to the class beauty might reveal his secret crush and cause embarrassment of a high-school apocalyptic scale.
