Resistance: The Gathering Storm

spent so much of his time. His door was open, and Hale could see him sitting within, but knew better than to enter without an invitation. His knuckles made a rapping sound as he knocked three times.

“Come.”

As Hale took the prescribed three steps forward, he could feel the tension in the air. His boots thumped as he came to attention, his eyes were fixed on the wall over Blake’s head, his back was ramrod straight, and his thumbs were aligned with the seams on his carefully pressed trousers. “Lieutenant Hale, reporting as ordered, sir!”

There was a series of rapid clicking sounds as Blake completed an email message and hit send. Then he swiveled his chair around to face Hale and made eye contact. It was like looking down a couple of gun barrels. No “At ease,” or invitation to have a seat.

“Well,” Blake said flatly, “how was your three-day pass? Did you have fun?”

Hale’s mouth felt dry, so he did what he could to muster some saliva, and then swallowed. All he could do was let the situation play itself out.

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“That’s good,” Blake growled. “That’s real good… Because your little vacation cost a great deal of money. First there’s a full load of Avgas for the VTOL you rode in, then there’s the Fareye you took with you, but failed to return, plus three grenades and various other pieces of government property. All of which are going to be deducted from your pay. Do you read me, Lieutenant?”

Hale’s eyes remained focused on the spot directly above Blake’s head.

“Sir! Yes, sir.”

“I guess you think we’re stupid,” Blake continued. “And maybe your plan would have worked, except I sent people to find you, and guess what? You weren’t in your quarters, and you hadn’t checked out through the main gate, which meant you had left some other way. Aboard the Party Girl as it happens.”

Blake paused, and made a point of taking a document from a stack of papers and studying it silently. “By the way, Hale,” he added ominously, “you might find it interesting to know that Lieutenant Purvis will be flying every shit detail his CO can come up with for the next thirty days. So you might want to avoid him. I don’t imagine he’ll be pleased.” He returned the document to its stack.

“Now,” Blake continued, as he leaned back in his chair, “enough about Purvis… Let’s talk about you. I could have your bars, but court-martials involve a lot of paperwork, and I hate paperwork. And why bother? Because I have a rather challenging mission lined up for you—and the odds are you won’t make it back. That will save me a lot of aggravation. So be in the briefing room at 1100 hours, and see if you can avoid getting lost along the way.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Hale responded, his face wooden.

Blake nodded. “Dismissed.”

Hale did a neat about-face, took two steps, and was almost out the door.

“And Hale…”

Hale paused to look back. “Sir?”

There was something like sympathy in the major’s eyes. “I’m sorry about your family.”

Hale nodded. “Thank you, sir. They were good people.”

And with that he left.

The briefing room was packed when Hale arrived at 1050 hours. A sure sign that something big was in the offing. Senior officers and SRPA officials were seated toward the front of the rectangular room leaving captains, lieutenants, and half a dozen NCOs to find chairs farther back. Which was fine with Hale.

All the doughnuts were gone, but there was plenty of coffee, so Hale filled a mug and took it back to a seat located between a portly supply officer and a square-jawed sergeant major. Both could see his nametag—not to mention the color of his eyes.

Hale was worried that he might have to make conversation with one or both of the men, but he was granted a reprieve when Blake called the meeting to order.

“Good morning… And welcome to Operation Iron Fist. We’ve been taking a lot of shit from the Chimera lately, and this will be an opportunity to hit back.

“Iron Fist will be a combined forces operation involving the 5th Ranger Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel Jack Hawkins”—he nodded in the direction of a man in the front row—“and a Sentinel SAR team, under the command of Lieutenant Nathan Hale.” He acknowledged Hale with a similar gesture. “Besides killing as many freaks as we can, the objective of this little outing will be to locate and retrieve what could be some very important tech.”

Hale felt a combination of pride, embarrassment, and fear. The sergeant major grinned knowingly. “The good news is you’ll be in command of a team,” he whispered. “And the bad news is that you’ll be in command of a team!”

Hale smiled. That was the strange thing about being an officer. The simultaneous desire to be in command and the fear of what might happen as a result of a lack of preparation, poor judgment, or bad luck.

“Before we review the details of the mission, Dr. Linda Barrie will provide you with some important background information,” Blake continued. “For those of you who haven’t met her, Dr. Barrie is a graduate of MIT and a member of SRPA’s technology assessment team. They’re the folks who study the items the SAR teams bring back, assess their potential, and tell us how to exploit them. Dr. Barrie?”

Barrie was one of only three women in the room, which by itself was enough to make her stand out, but the fact that she was stunningly beautiful guaranteed that every eye was on her as she took the podium. Her black hair was short and straight, her brown eyes were partially hidden by bangs, and her lips displayed only a trace of red lipstick. She wore a plain leather jacket and khaki pants that couldn’t be considered glamorous. She cleared her throat and began to speak.

“Thank you, Major. As a result of missions like the one Captain Anton Nash led a few days ago, SRPA has been able to reverse-engineer technology developed by the Chimera, and make incredible advances in a relatively short period of time. And now, because of an artifact recovered by Captain Nash and his men, we have what may be an opportunity to take another leap forward.”

At that point Barrie removed a remote from the podium and aimed it at the wall screen. Video swirled and locked up into an image that Hale recognized right away. Thousands of lights glittered deep within the gelatinous cube, and as the camera zoomed in, Hale could see tiny sparks jumping the gaps between them. It wasn’t doing that before, he mused silently. They must have figured out how to turn it on…

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Barrie inquired of no one in particular. “But this is beauty with a purpose. What you’re looking at is an optical computer… Meaning that it uses photons rather than electrons to store and manipulate information. We’re still in the process of figuring out how to replicate it, but we’ve been able to retrieve a great deal of data from it, and screen that information for importance.

“The best way to think of the cube is as a filing cabinet,” Barrie added, as she turned back toward the audience. “And, like most filing cabinets, it’s stuffed with all manner of things, some of which are useful and some of which are not. One of the items that is of value could be described as a fuel inventory. And by fuel I don’t mean gasoline.” She leaned forward for emphasis.

“I mean nuclear fuel, like the plutonium that was recovered from Great Britain and taken to our research facility in New Mexico. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to get the necessary yields out of the plutonium, and at the rate things are going, it could be years before we have nuclear weapons that can be used against the Chimera.”

That comment elicited a rumble of conversation because if there was one thing the men and women in the briefing room knew, it was that the United States was running out of time.

Barrie nodded, and continued. “According to the fuel inventory we’ve deciphered, the stinks are storing nuclear fuel in a recently completed base near the town of Hot Springs, South Dakota. So we’re going to attack in force, draw most of the defenders into a pitched battle, and send a SAR team in to snatch what we need. Once the people in New Mexico have a chance to analyze it, there’s a very good chance that they’ll be able to achieve the necessary breakthrough, and produce the nuclear weaponry we need.