surprise.”
The older man nodded knowingly. He placed a comforting hand on Losenko’s shoulder. Sad eyes gazed on the captain with compassion.
“I understand, Dmitri. It happens to me sometimes, too.”
In the meantime, Ashdown’s painful admission did little to silence the voices of his attackers.
“You expect us to feel sorry for you because you lost your son!” the Chinese general rebuked him. “Billions of sons and daughters have died. My country is a wasteland because of you. Now you expect us to help you clean up your mess? Your arrogance is beyond comprehension!”
“Let him speak!” A British naval officer came to Ashdown’s defense. “What’s done is done. The real atrocity now would be to fight amongst ourselves while the machines sink their claws into the world.”
“If there really are machines.” The Indian delegate stuck to his conspiracy theory. “They are using scare tactics to bring us all in line.”
“Didn’t you hear me before?” the Israeli snapped. “Skynet is
The Sikh smirked.
“Don’t be so naive. The Americans could have been laying the groundwork for this deception for years. To cover their tracks in the event of a failed global takeover.”
“If that’s what you think,” a Pakistani general growled, “then why are you here?”
The Sikh gathered up his things.
“I’m asking myself that same question.”
The Indian contingent headed for the exit. The Chinese, Cubans, and Libyans moved to follow them. Losenko saw the entire summit unraveling, along with any hope for a united front against the machines. This was just what John Connor had warned them not to do.
“Wait!” He rose and blocked the door, despite the glares that confronted him. “My friends, let us not make any rash decisions. We all need to maintain an even keel—or this storm will sink us.” He looked at Ashdown. “Perhaps a recess is in order?”
“Good idea,” Ashdown agreed. Tempers needed a chance to cool. “It’s time for a break.” He stepped away from the podium. “Lunch will be served in the library next door.”
Scowling, the departing delegates halted their exodus. Losenko backed away from the exit. Old tensions, it seemed, had not been burned away in the fires of Armageddon. He could only hope that the Resistance was more movement than mirage.
If it was an illusion, then John Connor really would be just an empty voice on the airwaves.
Lunch consisted of turtle soup served in an upside-down tortoise shell the size of a large banquet punch bowl, and steamed sea cucumbers. The Israeli woman turned up her nose at the former, but the rest of the delegates looked eager to sample the exotic fare. The tantalizing aroma of the soup was tempting after many months spent subsisting on canned fare from the
The heated emotions and troubling revelations of the summit left his stomach tied in knots. He spotted Ashdown across the small, one-room library and his spirits sank. He was not looking forward to meeting the man in person.
Leaving Fokin and Utyosov to share a meal, Losenko crossed the floor toward the American. The other delegates huddled in small cliques, mostly defined by their old global alliances. There was little mingling going on; the various factions kept to themselves.
Oversized color blow-ups of the islands’ unique flora and fauna were mounted on the walls. Two-dimensional petrels and iguanas posed against lush, verdant foliage. The rainbow-hued photographs ill fit the tense atmosphere. Nobody examined the various scientific journals shelved upon the stacks. Survival—not science—was all that mattered now.
Ashdown was conferring with his French, British, and Canadian counterparts over by the coffee urn. Losenko noticed that the general did not appear to be eating, either. One more thing they had in common. Ashdown looked up at his approach. He stepped forward, away from his Western colleagues.
Losenko steeled himself for what was to come.
He could barely look at the man without flinching.
“Good day,” Ashdown greeted him gruffly. “Losenko, isn’t it? That was good work bringing down that destroyer.” The general had obviously been briefed on all of his guests. “It couldn’t have been easy, firing on one of your own ships. Not exactly what any of us signed up for. Goes against the grain.”
Losenko took little pride in sinking the
“I did what I had to do.”
“That’s what command is all about, making the tough decisions when things get hot.” Ashdown looked Losenko over, taking his measure. “I’ll tell you something, Captain. It’s men like you and me—real soldiers and seamen, with gunpowder in our veins—who are going to win this war.”
Losenko wondered what Ashdown’s son had looked like, whether he resembled his father. Had they been close?
“I understand you’re a submariner,” Ashdown continued. “I was under the waves myself when everything went to hell. Conducting an inspection of one of our Los Angeles class SSNs, the USS
Now that the moment had come, Losenko debated whether he should truly confess to Ashdown his role in his son’s death. Was it possible that such an admission might do more harm than good, placing yet more stress on an already fragile detente? He almost changed his mind, then he remembered how Ashdown had acknowledged his own complicity in Skynet’s creation. The American general could have pretended that he had opposed Skynet, that he had been overruled by his superiors, but instead he had accepted his fair share of the blame.
Losenko decided that Ashdown deserved the same honesty regarding the fate of his child.
“There is something I must tell you, General, which I fear may be painful to you.” Losenko swallowed hard. His mouth suddenly felt as dry as the Gobi Desert. “But it is best that there be no secrets between us.”
Ashdown gave him a quizzical look. He put down his coffee and offered his full attention.
“All right. Fire away.”
His choice of words was viciously ironic.
“Your son,” Losenko began. The general stiffened at the words. “My submarine, K-115, was patrolling beneath the Barents Sea when we received word of the attack on our homeland. Our orders were to retaliate, and I followed those orders. I launched several ballistic missiles, armed with multiple nuclear warheads, at strategic targets in the state of Alaska. Your son’s base was surely among those targets.”
Now it was Ashdown who was rendered speechless. His entire body froze. His face flushed with anger, and a vein throbbed against his temple. Losenko was reminded of a nuclear core approaching meltdown. He braced himself for the inevitable explosion.
But when Ashdown finally spoke, his voice was as cold as the frozen north.
“You were just doing your duty,” he admitted through clenched teeth. “Like I would have done.” He clamped down on his obvious pain and anger. “What’s important now is that we unplug Skynet for good.” He took a deep breath. “If you’ll excuse me now, I have a war to fight.”
He left Losenko standing there, wondering if he had just delivered a death-blow to the Resistance. How could any man, no matter how committed to the greater good, work beside the man who had sentenced his own son to a fiery holocaust?
That was the question, Losenko realized, that many of the other delegates had to be asking about each other. Skynet was just an abstraction; old animosities and vendettas ran deep.
As deep, perhaps, as the ocean.
By the time the meeting reconvened, inflamed emotions had indeed died down a little.
