Beyond Armageddon: Book 02 - Empire (53 page)

           
To Nina, it felt like summer vacation. She had spent ten days in
Wilmington
, a symptom, certainly, of the delay in General Shepherd’s advance. Nonetheless, other than her apartment in Annapolis, she had not spent this much time in one place for years, nor this much time with anyone other than her Dark Wolves comrades.

“I think it’s great that you spent the day with Denise,” Jim told her. “She really likes you. I’ve never seen her open up with anyone like that.”

“I know what that’s like.”

“I can tell that. Honestly, even with all the years I spent with her I didn’t get to know her that well. There were just so many kids, and I’m a guy. I suppose I spent more time with the boys because I understood them better. Women are different. Harder of figure out. Especially, well, you’re a bit of a mystery, too.”

Nina said, “Me? I’m not really that interesting.”

“You have to be. You are…I mean…you are one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. You’ve got a nice smile, too, you should show it more often.”

The words sounded nice, but Nina heard a familiar tone running beneath.

Jim said, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a girl as tough as you. Probably not many guys, for that matter.”

Yes, there it was. It could have been one of the kids from her elementary school.

“Teacher…why is Nina so quiet?”

Or maybe a girlfriend from junior high.

“Hey, here comes
Nina
Forest
; you trying out for the football team, Nina?”

Perhaps a high school date.

“Ouch! Let go! Geez, I was just being friendly you freak!”

Maybe even Scott from the Philly SWAT team.

“Hey honey, stop acting like you’ve got a dick.”

She knew he did not intend to be mean, he just did not know any better.

“You’ve never met a girl as tough as me,” she repeated.

“I like you, Nina. A lot. I haven’t known you that long, but I can tell that something is bothering you. It’s like you’re looking for something. Maybe you feel out of place. I’m hoping you might find what you need here. You could help us rebuild, and maybe we could help you, too.”

He started to say more but his words were drown out by the roar of a Blackhawk helicopter swinging over the rooftops and descending toward the beach. Nina and Jim retreated to avoid the sand storm that raged to life under the rotors.

Her Dark Wolves unit disembarked from the chopper, moving out from the sandstorm with their heads low.

Jim Brock stood still, nearly frozen in terror by the big machine and the burly men coming toward them, one of whom walked directly to Nina.

“
Captain
Forest
,” Vince Caesar removed goggles and spoke in a voice mixing no-nonsense and respect. “May I have a word with you?”

Nina nodded and walked off with him. The other two commandos hovered next to Jim Brock and waited. They probably did not intend to intimidate the man but, no doubt, took some perverse pleasure in it nonetheless.

Carl Bly said, “Out for a walk on the beach?”

“Um…yeah…” Jim glanced toward Nina who walked out of earshot.

“Say, mate,” Maddock asked, “exactly what are your intentions toward our Captain?”

“Um…”

Meanwhile, Vince leaned close to Nina and said, “We’ve got an assignment, a real rush job just came in.”

Nina grew uncharacteristically frustrated and snapped, “Who’s the asshole who thinks they can just call us out on a whim?”

Vince’s eyes widened and his normally stoic expression morphed to mild surprise.

           
“Cap, we always get called out on a whim. As for who’s asking, that’d be Trevor Stone.”

           
This time Nina’s eyes widened and, at the same time, her cheeks reddened. She raised a hand to her temple, closed her eyes, and mumbled, “I think all this R & R is going to my head. I’m not used to…not used to staying in one place this long.”

           
Caesar said, “If Stone called us out personally, it must be important. We have a rendezvous to make.”

           
“Yeah. Yes, of course. Let me grab some stuff.”

Vince followed his commander as she retrieved her gear from the back of the Humvee parked in the lot, including one box that was not standard issue.

Denise Cannon ran out of the condominium and right to Nina.

“You’re going?”

Nina saw panic—outright fear—in the little girl’s eyes.

“I have to go, but I’ll be back.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Denise glanced nervously at the other soldier standing nearby.

Nina nearly pleaded, “Listen, this is who I am. Do you understand?”

Denise nodded.

“Please, tell me the truth.
Do you understand?”

“I understand,” the girl said but Nina kept staring at her. “I do.
Really.
”

Nina knelt and hugged Denise Cannon.

“I’ll be coming back for you, Denise. If you want me to.”

The girl answered with no hesitation, “I do.”

Nina thought for a moment then handed Denise the dress box.

“Could you hold this for me? I’ll get it from you when I get back.”

Denise slowly nodded her head.

Nina—the
soldier
—stood tall with her gear slung over her shoulder. She looked at the eleven-year-old girl, smiled briefly, and then walked away with Vince Caesar on her flank, passing Jim Brock and the other two commandos on the way.

Carl Bly finished telling a tale—a tall one—to Brock, “…so Nina, she cuts the thing’s head right off and starts drinking its blood.”

“Hell of a bloody mess,” Maddock agreed.

Jim stepped out from between the two men.

“Nina? Nina, what’s going on?”

Vince directed Carl and Oliver to the Blackhawk.

“I need to go, right now,” she told him.

“Is there a problem?”

“No, you’re safe,” she said with as much confidence as possible in a world of Shadows and Jaw-Wolves and Goat-Walkers.

He stumbled, “About before…what I meant to say.”

She interrupted, “You’re a nice guy. I think you’ve got a good heart.”

“But…?”

“But the world changed, Jim. I’m not the one out of place. You could say, I guess, you could say I’ve never felt more
in place.
For better or worse.”

The chopper’s engine spooled louder, encouraging Nina to get on board.

“I have to go. I’ll stop back as soon as I can, but my vacation is over.”

She left him standing there, watching. She raised a hand to ward off the raging sand storm and then jumped onboard the helicopter. The Blackhawk lifted away from the beach and flew off to the southwest.

Toward New Winnabow.

The journey concluded.

There, on the frozen flats of the ice cap, at the exact coordinates provided by Trevor Stone, stood the finish line and Jon Brewer had never seen a finish line quite like it.

It was massive, the size of a small city.

It was black, black like granite and appearing just as solid.

It had a flat roof on top of curved walls, hundreds of feet in the air.

           
One giant structure, like the end of a cylinder poking through the ice, or maybe the universe’s largest hockey puck.

           
And it moved.

           
He saw no lines or breaks in its colorless surface, yet layers—rings of varying thickness—periodically rotated, turning one on top of another like floors of a building spinning at various speeds and intervals.

An enigma.

           
Jon Brewer and his expedition waited outside that gargantuan puzzle.

           
A half-mile away another group waited: Wraiths. They had discarded their travelling windstorm and huddled outside the building, or city, or whatever it was.

           
The Vikings, too, reached the finish line. They gathered to another side of the obelisk.

Three armies encamped on three different sides of the gigantic structure, each exhausted after forty-eight hours of running, trading small arms fire, launching artillery strikes, and employing various maneuvers in an attempt to win the race.

Each suffered casualties along the way. Neither gained an advantage.

Regardless of how fierce the Wraith’s storm appeared, well-placed explosive charges drew them from their veil of wind and slowed their advantage in mobility.

The Vikings exhibited incredible endurance, rarely stopping or even slowing for rest, moving at a fast jog hour after hour, even when exchanging pot shots with their opponents.

As for humanity, Jon’s force needed periodic rest stops, but their convoy of dog sleds, the tracked SUSV command vehicle, and snowmobiles allowed their vanguard bursts of superior speed.

The Wraiths arrived thirty minutes before Jon, that an hour before the Vikings, each making camp as close to the obelisk as possible, but also as far away from their enemies as possible.

Nonetheless, the order of arrival made no difference. Scouting parties sent by each force found no entrance to the enigma. So they stayed in place and waited, watching both the city-sized obelisk as well as the foes to either side.

While Brewer and Fink established battle lines and considered strategies to move against their enemies, Reverend Johnny sat in the cab of the command vehicle. Behind him, several wounded soldiers moaned and squirmed. He worried he would soon need to shut off the engine in order to conserve fuel. At that point, they might move the wounded to one of the tents popping up on the snowy ground outside.

Regardless, he sat in the front seat and stared out the frosty windshield, watching the obelisk as it worked. A level near the top spun and then halted; two more levels rotated near the middle but in different directions. They slowed, increased speed, slowed again, and then stopped just as the top level moved once more.

He kept trying to count the number of moving rings but that proved frustrating; the size of each changed with each movement. Initially he thought seven or eight layers composed the structure, perhaps floors of some kind, each equal in height. Then more movement convinced him that twice that number existed on the structure’s surface, only to see three giant rings move moments later. It was as if the building melded and separated ‘floors’ at whim and with no lines clearly visible, counting the total number of those ‘floors’ remained an impossible, even maddening, task.

           
Over time, the erratic movement mesmerized Johnny. He watched for what seemed like thirty minutes, only to find he had, in fact, sat for four hours. Yet he thought he saw a pattern developing; the manner in which certain levels turned, stopped, expanded, and then spun again in the opposite direction. Certainly some arcane mathematical problem was at work as if, yes, as if the obelisk attempted to solve itself.

           
As he watched, his mind discerned that pattern. He could not put that pattern into words, he could not explain what he saw or why, but he grew convinced he understood the puzzle, and that soon an entryway would be revealed.

But where would it open? Closer to one of the enemy armies?

Reverend Johnny exited the command vehicle to find Jon Brewer. One last sprint remained.

–

           
Each of the three combatants dispatched scouts to circle the obelisk, doing so from a distance armed with sniper rifles and binoculars. The groups traded fire here and there, but no one risked a full scale engagement, at least not before a way through the final obstacle could be found.

Brewer stood at the front of their camp watching the obelisk rotate, stop, turn, rotate again. Reverend Johnny paced behind him, back and forth and mumbling.

“Soon, I can feel it coming, soon,” the Revered assured yet again; he had been making such assurances for nearly an hour.

Jon’s mind wandered. “It feels like it’s getting colder” and he waved his arms side to side to generate body heat. “Maybe because we’ve been stuck here for hours now. All that moving must have helped keep us warm. Exercise and all. It would be nice to get moving again.”

“I am not responsible for the machinations of this infernal contraption; I am merely sensing a purpose to the otherwise—”

“Sir!” Fink ran toward Brewer shouting, “Scouts report entrances have appeared in two spots around the object!”

As the words left Fink’s mouth, Jon saw a force of Wraiths break away from their main group and hurry toward the obelisk. He turned the other direction and saw the Vikings sending a similar party forward.

He shouted, “Damn it! We’re going to have to fight our way inside!”