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CLEA
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He was shocked and angry; not angry at me being a geneer, but for not trusting him enough to tell him earlier. He was calm; one good thing about Chance is that he does not get frantic, but he was angry and hurt. I could tell. Even so, he just nodded and asked me to be careful and come back to him. With that, he had returned to his work on the giant tunneling machines.
Packing our supplies took a day, and Katrina was now more informed of the amount of Old World technology we had access to. She was even entrusted with one of the massive Anti-Material Rifles for this mission to go with her bolt action. While I had a lever rifle and an Old World pistol with its amazing sound suppressor.
Loading three horses in the back of a Gut along with Katrina, myself, and our equipment had been a task, but we had accomplished it. And we were on the way, another day later. We first drove all the way to Middletown, Lord Malcolm’s old city. We had robust trade with them for food in return for items routed through Rice and the rest of the Empire.
“Milady…” Katrina began as we finished unloading and saddled our horses and readied the pack animal.
“Just Clea out here. I’m the daughter of a lumberjack, after all.”
She looked embarrassed, “I had heard that Lord Bonchance and you subdued the gate guards here,” she nodded toward Middletown, “defeated a soc by yourselves and using just pistols?”
“That’s not entirely true,” I replied. “There were two socs.”
“What!?” she asked as she mounted her horse.
“And four regular thugs…they did all have self-loaders, though…and that incident at the gate was after he started a barroom brawl after all,” I replied as we started riding southwest.
“Lord Bonchance started a brawl?”
Her tone made me laugh, “Let me guess, he’s always been quiet and polite when you’ve spoken to him?”
She nodded, “When he was showing me how to clean and maintain the BZ-20, he was very calm and methodical…”
“He is an annoyingly patient man on occasion. He is also extremely brave, intelligent, and very dangerous. Even though he will deny all of those.”
“You like him a lot. I’ve seen you talking to him, and he seems to light up.”
“That may have ended. I made an error, and even though he handled the response with his usual demeanor…”
She looked curious, so I sighed, “I may not have been fully transparent about certain aspects of my family to him. Hopefully, we can patch things up when we get back.”
“I hope you can too, mi…Clea. Can I ask you about the Duchess?”
“Mara? There are some things that I can tell you.”
“Is it true that you and her traveled together from the Rock Republic?”
“Well, I was certainly born there. On the side of a mountain just outside a lumber camp.”
“Really?”
“Like you had the forests, we had the mountains, and like Mara, I started out as a soldier. You know, we have a lot in common, raised in rough country and having to show others how it should be done.”
“You don’t act like you’re from a place like that.”
“I had to learn to blend in, adjust my speech, movements, and posture so I became who people assumed I was something I was not. Most men assume a pretty woman like you is no threat and will make serious mistakes in judgment when they are approached by one. You should know that.”
“What? Me, pretty?”
“Absolutely. In fact, you’re prettier than I was at your age.”
“No! You’re beautiful.”
“That’s so kind of you to say…but I believe you can surpass me; beauty and appeal are not solely appearance; it’s also attitude, presentation, and, most importantly, confidence.”
“Can you teach me that?”
“Why not? I can and will teach you that and more. The Duchess is going to need another spy. After all, I can’t be everywhere, and I suppose I still owe my fealty to the Rock Republic.” I paused, “And this will be a diverting way to pass the time as we head toward possible death.”
_____________________________________________________
BONCHANCE
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I was not sure how I felt as I watched the Gut pull away with Clea inside. She had learned everything about me over the last few months., good and bad, and had told me an obviously highly modified description of her past. The Gut turned and started on its course southwest.
Mara walked over to me and said, “Are you alright?”
“I don’t know…When people say the word ‘geneer’, it generally means ‘socs’. My thoughts immediately shifted in that direction when she told me.”
“I take it Adaptations aren’t well-liked in the Empire?”
“No geneer is. They’re the stories that are told to small children when they’re misbehaving, ‘be good, or the geneers will find you’.”
“The boogieman, huh?”
“A version, yes.”
“The more things change…” she sighed. “But you don’t have an issue with me, and I’m far less human than Clea is?”
“No, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why I’m holding you two to different standards.”
“Probably because you’re madly in love with her, and it scares you to death?”
“Everything scares me, you know that.”
She shook her head, “That’s a damn lie, and you know it. In my previous life, I knew many soldiers, and very few were as smart about their bravery as you are. The concept of you and Clea is the very first thing I’ve seen that absolutely terrifies you.”
We walked up the road to the SURFACE in silence and headed inside.
It wasn’t until we were in the elevator that I spoke again.
“Why me?”
“What?”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Why is she with me? Look at her. She could have her pick of anybody. All I can think now is that she’s just been using me, toying with me. She’s an expert liar, a manipulator, a mistress of deceit.”
“Mm-hmm. Have you ever seen her scared?”
“Clea? I don’t think she can be scared by anything.”
“Now I happen to know that absolutely isn’t true. I’ve seen her scared,” Mara replied as the door slid open on the Main Level, and we walked toward the warehouse. “It takes a lot, as much as it does you, but she can get scared…I saw it two days ago, actually.”
“Two days ago? What happened?”
“It was right after she told me she was a geneer, and I okayed the scouting expedition…She realized that she was going to have to tell you, and that frightened the hell out of her.”
“What? Why?”
“Because she loves you too, idiot. Jesus, when I was an NCO, a lovesick enlisted who had fallen for a stripper was not uncommon and sometimes had to be dealt with. I know the signs.”
“She…loves me?” I was stunned. I thought she just…I realized I didn’t know what Clea had thought.
“Well, yes…idiot,” Mara shook her head. “And she’ll tell you that herself when she gets back about the same time you’re telling her, I’m sure. Now, how about a tunnel?”
_____________________________________________________
Three days later, I was able to show Mara the first machine that I had finished refurbishing. That refurbishing had mainly involved cleaning and running endless diagnostics from some amazing computing programs. The bunker’s database had had the full manuals and descriptions of the routine maintenance needed, and I had painstakingly followed those to the letter.
Now, I was holding a tablet with the command program on it, and after using the amazing laser transit to make certain everything was aligned properly, I put a helmet on and made sure the visor and neck seal were engaged before activating it. There was a wave of heat as the burning field turned the air into a plasma in an area slightly taller and wider than the actual machine, and the tunneler began slowly moving forward toward the ravine that ran to the east of the ridge.
“How long?” Mara’s voice entered my head. She was standing next to me, but the noise of rock being transformed almost instantly to incandescent gas was incredible, so she was using her built-in commset. She wasn’t wearing a helmet because the heat, poisonous fumes, or noise wouldn’t bother her. Right now, we were ducting the waste gases into the area where the roof collapse had happened, and as the gas cooled, it turned into a powder-like sand.
Checking the display on the tablet, I replied, “It was set to one meter to minute. I could probably increase the speed to two.”
“Do it…How far to breakthrough?”
I checked another section, this one displaying the consistency of what the tunneler was burning through, “About 120 meters.”
“Incredible. The Builders’ Guild lost a huge asset when they let you walk away, fortunately for me.”
Smiling slightly, I sped up the machine, and the noise increased in volume. I could actually feel it in my bones.
“Any word?” I asked.
“Routine check-in. Nothing new; they’re using the remains of I-90 and making great time. If they keep up this pace, they’ll be in the target area in two weeks. And yes, she’s fine.”
Somehow, I managed to hide the sigh of relief.
“…and she did ask about you.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really…I have a training session; let me know when you’re ready to start the main bore.”
“That won’t be until I have the ducting in place; John said he’d help me set up the piping.”
“Excellent.”
She left, and I spent the next hour finishing up this tunnel, then sucking all the sandy debris out and dumping it in the ravine. After that, it was time to install the large sheets of composite salvaged from empty crates of the supplies we had used, with the assistance of the Ape, which I could now bring into the warehouse from the outside.
John came in, and together, we could get both tunnelers going: one due west and one south. The southern tunnel would finish in the woods near where we stored one of the Guts in a camouflaged building. The one west would pass under the village. We had to be careful with the southern tunnel so that it didn’t go below the water table from the river. We had decided to run them in four-hour sessions so that they wouldn’t be overtaxed, allowing the systems to cool down and so that I could perform maintenance. This project would take several weeks to complete.
_____________________________________________________
O’NEILL
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The Op-Center was still dark except for the glow of the live monitors.
“Status?” a new arrival asked.
“General! Sir! I didn’t realize you were next in the rotation. Good to see you.”
“You too, Major. It feels good to stretch. What have we got?”
“Have you been briefed on Threat India?”
The General thought a moment on the stack of messages he had been reading as he was recovering from the decanting process, then he nodded, “Duchy of Ceedo? That can’t be right; why would Alpha use such an obvious name?”
“That’s why they’ve been designated India, not as a satrap of Alpha. We don’t think they have anything to do with Alpha, Bravo, or Charlie at all. They’re primitives.”
“So by getting phonetic, does that mean they count as a major realm that’s found a bunker? How did they get that if they’re only a Duchy then?”
“They took out one of our Guides, sir; the asset, Lord Malcolm. They Cat Oranged him.”
“A Class 5? How?”
“We sent scouts in. The group that took him and his men down were using L70s and BZ-20s, with reports of Combat Helmets and tac vests, and they were mounted on GU Trucks with turrets…too many matching descriptions to be mistaken. A lot of the residents weren’t talking, but this Duchy of Ceedo was apparently responsible. They also managed to steal the safe, but the echo hasn’t popped up yet, and there was no way to open it without destroying the contents either.”
“So, who is controlling Upper Great Plains now?”
“Nobody, sir. General Wilcox thought we had better get a more accurate read on this Duchy to see if it was attached to one of the Big Three before we sent in a replacement.”
The General nodded, “So, by the designation, I presume something was determined?’
“Yes, sir. The report arrived just before General Wilcox went back into the crypt. The full one wasn’t in your wake-up briefing pack as we were waiting on getting a Marathon overhead for some imagery, and scheduling those while avoiding the Three is…tricky.”
“Relax, Major, I understand the issues; I have been dealing with this for a while, you know?”
“Ah, yes, sir. What we have now is that the Duchy was founded by a woman named Edgerton from the Rock Republic. She and an archivist from somewhere to the east, either the Empire or the Southlands, and some sort of administrator also from the Republic, found a cache of our tech in a cave somewhere to the west. They packed it up and headed east, where they started up this ‘Duchy’.
“Not even a bunker?”
“No sir, it sounds like the archivist had a map, and the soldier had been scouting in the area, and she put the pieces together, so they located a fallback cache. Not one of the CDO’s full bunkers, but a refuel/rearm site. A few vehicles, a portable charging point, weapons, some light armor, and ammunition. The CDO scattered stuff all over so it wouldn’t get hit by a big rock. It also explains why they would not set up nearby. A cache like that is just a hole in the ground that was supposed to be emptied and abandoned.”
“So what tech did these primitives steal?”
“A couple of Guts outfitted as gun trucks with the autocannon, L70s, AMRs, vests, helmets. The caches hold enough to resupply a company, so they had a decent amount of ammunition but no real tools or spare parts for any of it. What they have is it.”
“Comms in the helmets and advanced vision systems, and even the primitives know how to read, so they will figure out how all the toys work. Goddamn CDO! Why did you have to make everything so difficult? So, can we destroy them and their gear?”
The Major toggled a screen, and a high-angle shot of a busy little village next to a river appeared. “This is the best shot we could get as our recon was at the limits of its range from Outpost 3, and orbital transmission is down from debris chaff. The ‘Duchess’,” he made airquotes, “lives up here at the top of this ridge. One road up and see this barn? Those are Gut tire tracks in front of it. They have a well-armed militia carrying the self-loaders we made and gave to Malcolm and that they stole. Those are what they visibly carry.”
“They’re not carrying the L70s?”
“No, sir. They do not appear to have used any of the technology they have since that raid.”
“Have they broken down?”
“I don’t know sir.”
“What is the closest main force we have?”
“Main force? We have a six-man Strike Team in the crypt at Outpost 3.”
“Get another scout into that village and contact OP2; tell them to start decanting that team as soon as weather predicts a heavy snowfall and cloud cover. They’ll infil by blower for speed, hit and run. The goal is documents.”
“What?”
“We don’t know where the damn Ceedo hid all their bunkers. However, caches would have updated map data for the units they’re supposed to support. The primitives aren’t going to know what it means.”
The major nodded, “Of course, sir. Sending the order now.”
“Goddamn primitives…Goddamn Ceedo…” the General muttered as the Major prepared the message. It was just so annoying, and he hadn’t been sleeping for eleven months out of the year for the past two hundred years just to be annoyed.
He left the Op Center and rode the elevator to the top before walking out onto the landing pad. The air was warm as he walked to the edge of the pad and looked down at the jungle in what had been Costa Rica and was now the main command center for O’Neill on Earth.