Scott and his friends found it very hard to concentrate on their work. Melinda had given them an update on the situation in their hometown, and they were shocked things had gotten so bad in the past couple months. Adriana had mentioned her parents had stopped returning emails a few weeks ago, and she was ashamed to admit she was so absorbed in her work she hadn’t really worried about it.
“I can’t believe I didn’t know about how bad it was! They mentioned that dad was looking for a new job, but mostly they seemed pleased that I was doing well. I just wish they would have told me things were so bad, and I could have brought them here sooner.” Adriana complained.
“I’m so glad Carl’s group found them, but it sounds unreal that they were living in a refugee camp.” Scott said. He had repeated something similar about four times now.
“Adriana, I know you’re feeling bad right now, but is the Hab going to be ready when they arrive? Should we be looking for some more houses to rent?” Barry asked. He thought they had talked in circles long enough, and they should focus on things they could actually do to help.
“Uh right. We have the first four units getting finished tomorrow. Thanks for getting that flooring material.” Adriana said.
“No problem. Dr. Springer and Dave did most of the work on that,” Barry admitted, mentioning the odd guy they had hired to help in the material science lab. “Dave loves working with seaweed for some reason. I’m not sure if he works for my company or yours.”
“Trinidad is going to produce the flooring for us. He seemed excited to get another new product to sell. Melinda is working out a deal with him, so he won’t gouge us too much - you can probably hear her cursing in the other room.” Adriana explained. Barry’s distraction had at least temporarily worked.
“My dad was excited the Dark Siren got called in to help with a rescue mission.” Scott added. “He’s done five runs as captain, so I guess money isn’t a big concern anymore. Well, at least until hyperinflation makes it all worthless.”
“No kidding,” Barry said. “I thought once we got those dividends, I was set for life. When I heard what people were paying for food and gasoline back in the U.S. I’m not so sure. Do you guys think we should keep our money in pesos or something else?”
“I read on a site that countries are dumping their dollar reserves, which is making the problem even worse, “Matt added. “China is hurting a bit since the U.S. has cut imports, but they are doing better. Europe and some Asian countries are worried because the U.S. is pulling out a lot of their military support to focus on domestic issues.”
“Should we put our money in Chinese currency or something? I don’t even know what they use.” Scott said.
“Renminbi I think?” Matt said. “Probably safer than the dollar or Euro right now, but I’m not sure that I trust any of the currencies right now. I’m starting to think canned goods and firearms are the way to go if you aren’t living in our small corner of Mexico.”
“I’ll send Melinda a memo to create a food company and a weapon manufacturer.” Scott said with a sigh.
“I can’t even keep up with all our companies.” Barry complained. “Speaking of, isn’t that new CEO for the flying car company supposed to show up tomorrow?”
“It’s a transportation company. We don’t even have plans for a flying car!” Matt said, exasperated. “Mr. Kitano will be here tomorrow afternoon. Zaliha is working hard to finish up the prototype of our air shipping vehicle. Hopefully it won’t crash or explode.”
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Carl had worked all night.
They had picked up a couple former Marines in the camp and a guy who was an auto-mechanic. Their new friends rode with Carl in the van after replacing a tire. They were towing it slowly behind the Impala into town. The mechanic said his old shop had closed down once most people stopped driving, and they couldn’t afford to keep the power on. Getting power again had taken a couple of hours after Melinda paid all the overdue bills and pre-paid several months. The power company was running on a skeleton crew and mostly just shut people off. They sounded happy to re-connect a paying customer.
Terrance and Sotera had found some of the remaining stores that were still selling food. The prices were about 20 times what you would see on the same item in Houston. The store owners were probably selling food confiscated by the local Brewer gang, but it wasn’t their concern at the moment. They put together enough to feed their guests from the camp, who were all very hungry from limited rations.
Carl and the mechanic got to work. The mechanic worked on salvaging parts from abandoned vehicles to repair the engine damage. Carl was tasked with adding armor to the van. They heavily upgraded the suspension and added thick, spiked bumpers. Transparent aluminum glass was not available here, so they replaced the windows with metal plates and added some cameras for visibility. They also melted down some cheap plastic lawn furniture and used the polyethylene plastic to replace the air in the tires. Carl was able to message people back in Mexico, so he got a lot of advice on what to do.
Early in the morning, Terrance arrived with a care package delivered using the mini submarine from the Dark Siren. They had received armor piercing flechette rifles, some extra suits of body armor, and one of Matt’s tactical robots. They also had a couple recon drones.
Carl had trouble staying awake in the back of the battle van as they drove out of town. He was an old dude and couldn’t just pull an all-nighter without consequences. Terrance told him to take a nap, and they would wake him up once they located the Apache Revenge. Carl didn’t argue and was soon asleep.
He awoke later when one of the marines grabbed his shoulder. The guy was bald and a bit overweight, but he was now wearing body armor and a helmet. He was heavily armed with the weapons they had bought from the local arms dealer, keeping the high-tech rifles for Carl, Sotera and Terrance.
Carl groaned and looked around. They watched a drone feed on a tablet. The gang had established their home base at a large farmhouse. They had generators and solar panels for power. Some dirty, sad looking people worked in the fields. Based on the two guards keeping an eye on them, Carl thought they might be slaves. Checking his clock, he realized he had slept for 6 hours, and it was now early afternoon.
There were a couple vehicles patrolling around the area. Carl spotted a gas tanker truck on the property. It looked like they had hijacked it and were probably well supplied with fuel. Even with everything else going on, Carl found it hard to believe this gang was allowed to operate like this without some kind of authority stepping in to eliminate them.
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“Not a criticism, but now that you found these guys, couldn’t we just call the police or something?” Carl asked.
“We’re pretty far away from any cities. Any local police are probably controlled by these guys. I bet some of those slaves are hostages. We tried calling the governor’s office, but just got a message that their mailbox was full.” Terrance answered.
“So, even if they wanted to help, getting them the information is not possible?” Carl asked.
“I think we could eventually get through to someone, and maybe they could find people who could help. The problem is, we don’t know how long it would take for them to get a team that could even handle this mess. I don’t want the people they captured to suffer any more than necessary. Unless anyone has objections, I think we need to handle this ourselves.” Terrance said. “Also, we’re getting low on gas, so try not to blow up the tanker truck.”
“What’s the plan?” Carl asked.
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Carl job was driving the van. One of the gang’s patrols had seen him coming and were already firing at him. All but one of them were just standing in the road, firing. Sotera popped up out of the hatch in the roof and mowed them down with high velocity rounds from his flechette. Even though a couple had body armor, they went down quickly. Only one guy who had taken cover behind his vehicle survived. He even managed to take out one of their cameras, but they didn’t have anything that could hurt the van. Then the van crashed into the SUV with a loud shriek of twisting metal. The spikes on the bumper kept the SUV trapped in front of them as the tires blew out and sparks flew from the crushed vehicle. The last gang member had tried to dive out of the way, but Carl clipped him with one of the spikes. He was not getting up again. Carl hit the brakes, hoping the vehicle would go flying off. Instead, it stayed stuck on the front bumper. Crap, those spikes looked cool, but now I have a stupid SUV stuck on my van and I can’t see out the front.
Sotera got out of the van.
“Don’t say it!” Carl warned.
Sotera smirked, “You seem to have a Ford stuck on your windshield.”
“Great.” The two men tried in vain to detach the crumpled SUV.
“Can you detach the bumper?” Sotera asked.
“No, it’s welded on. Maybe if you could shoot the door hinges off, we could remove most of this mess?” Carl suggested.
They managed to remove the side door hinges using a few bursts from the flechette gun. Some stray rounds set the leaking gas tank on fire.
“Oh crap!” Sotera started running away, and Carl put the van in full reverse. The doors popped off, leaving most of the wreckage behind. By this point, what remained was burning. Sotera walked over and entered the van.
“Can’t you pull off that door that is blocking my view?” Carl asked.
“Nah, I got shot in the hand.” Sotera sat down, looking relaxed.
“I’ve been shot four times this mission and I can’t even walk!” Carl complained. But he hobbled out and managed to pull the door that was blocking his view off the bumper spikes. Being freakishly strong had advantages.
“I hope it’s going better for the others.” Sotera said.
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Joe had been terrified when the Apache Revenge had attacked the camp. He had been on a walk, trying to take a break from the squalor of the tents, when he first heard the gunfire. He was old and out of shape, but he raced back as fast as he could to see if his family was safe. Arriving too late to do anything, the group had already left, and Joe learned that his daughter had been taken. His wife had been injured trying to protect her. She had a black eye and some other bruises, but they were both more worried about their daughter. When Carl’s group had arrived shortly afterwards, he had jumped at the chance to try and get his girl back. These unusually strong old men had dragged a shot up van back to town with a car they had captured from the gang. He wanted to go right away, but Joe realized they needed transportation, so he went along with their plan.
The group had surprised him by upgrading the rental van into some kind of war machine and getting a delivery of some very advanced gear. They even had some kind of multi-armed robot. Even more shocking, Joe was assigned the job of controlling the robot.
They had asked who enjoyed video games, and Joe had admitted to playing FPS games back before the collapse. The robot had limited range from the portable controller, so they said their robotics experts could not control it from their home base, which was somewhere in Mexico. Joe was nervous about the responsibility, but also a bit relieved. His military experience was limited, and he had not seen any real combat. Also, his physical conditioning was nowhere close to these guys. Even the two injured guys would probably be better in a fight.
It had taken an hour to get used to the controls. The robot handled a lot of things automatically, but he got the hang of changing its configuration, and he beat up a few trees testing its attacks. Now he watched the screen as the robot advanced on the large farmhouse controlled by this gang. It was hard sitting there waiting for the signal. His daughter was in there, and he didn’t want to think about what she was going through. Terrance had made him promise to follow the plan which was supposed to have the best chance of keeping the prisoners safe, but it was very hard to wait.
His robot’s sensors detected two men entering the house after silently taking out a guard in the back of the house. Scanning around, he saw the patrol on that side was also down; Joe had not heard anything, even though his robot was supposed to have good audio sensors. He forced himself to count slowly to 30, then charged towards the front of the house. Shortly after he started counting, he noticed several of the guards at the front were racing towards the vehicles parked in the front. Carl’s van was supposed to be causing a distraction, and it seemed to have worked very well. He passed by one truck and lashed out with one of the robot’s arms. The tire was pulled off and the whole wheel bent. Joe quickly marked targets as the robot moved to a position ten feet in front of the door. One gang member had spotted him and started firing. Without waiting to see if he would take any damage, Joe fired his main weapon. A swarm of small missiles shot out, heading towards all the vehicles and sentries he had targeted. His controls even recommended adding the guy shooting at him to the target list, and he quickly confirmed, even though the missiles were already in the air. One missile changed direction right before it hit a car, then looped back to slam into the shooter. A second missile continued on and hit the car. In less than four seconds, 12 vehicles and 4 unfortunate gang members were broken apart by the explosions.
There wasn’t anyone outside the front of the house who failed to see the source of all this destruction. There were now several people firing from different positions. Joe started the robot charging towards a group of three who had taken cover before firing. Leaping over a small tractor, Joe tore into them. He had no mercy for the men who had kidnapped his daughter.
After a couple of minutes, the fight was over. Joe’s robot was dragging two broken legs, and his sensors indicated 3 of 6 cameras were gone. A critical warning indicated the power supply was overheating and would soon melt down.
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The Apache Revenge gang was destroyed. Only one of their patrol cars had escaped. Terrance and the ex-marine Doug had cleared the house and were leading a dozen women outside. The people who had been forced to farm were standing around in a daze.
Carl’s battle van had arrived after the fight was over. They refueled and were trying to sort out what to do with the former captives. Many of the workers were from a local town and wanted to return to see if any family or friends had survived. The group decided to tow some abandoned cars back, refuel them, and let the locals work out how to get back where they needed to go. The former captives picked up guns for protection and split up a fair amount of cash, jewelry, medicine and food. The people would at least have a fair shot at getting home and a start at putting their lives back together.
As the sun was starting to set, the group loaded up in the battle van and drove away. Most of the group heading to Spring Vale would encourage their families to accept Terrance’s offer to re-settle in the Proteus Hab.
After a couple more days, everyone was collected and transported in tenders out to the Dark Siren. They would camp out in the cargo hold for a short cruise before starting their new life in Mexico. Carl, Sotera and Terrance flew back from Houston. The guy at the rental place had just stared blankly as they handed back the keys to the armored, blood splattered van.