Eden's Children (Earth Exiles Book 2) (4 page)

To the left, a tunnel led back to the sleep area.  The lights in the tunnel were kept dim.  This was done because of the thirty-three hour day.  None of them had gotten used to the long day, and frequently, they had to make their way back to take a nap to cope with the time difference.

Tom peeled off, and headed towards the weapons bench, “ya’ll enjoy your meeting.”

Everett watched him go, “I think he should have gone with us.”

“You’re just saying that because misery loves company.”

Everett nodded, his expression wistful, “True.”

Mike and Everett walked through the opening at the back of the room.  It was a smaller hallway.  It led back to an area that had offices and rooms branching off.  At the end of the hallway, there was a large room for meetings, twenty by thirty feet.

They were the last ones to arrive.  Everett saw Joan, smiled, and walked over to sit down in a chair next to her.  He leaned over and gave her a kiss.  Mike looked around.  He saw Jennifer, but she had Ken Jondreau seated on one side, and Hank Bethel seated on the other.  His mind flashed back to Everett and Tom’s warning.  He smiled at her and turned to find a chair.  He ended up sitting next to Bob Leitz.

It was a diverse group.  The three amigos, Bob Leitz, Ed Nachmann, and Mike Crandall were there for engineering.  Joan, along with Joel Humphreys represented medical.  John Smith was there for electrical engineering.  He and Luis took turns for the meetings.  Hank was here to represent the techs and fabrication. 

Ken Jondreau was head of the security team again.  Jennifer was there as back up to Ken.  She was the one to suggest that Ken should be put back in charge of security.  She had no problem stepping aside and letting him take over.  She preferred to work in engineering anyway.  She was a badass, but she was a damn smart badass.  She was also there because everybody valued her judgement, even though she was the youngest one in this group.

Michelle Tomiko was there for the chemists.  Mike didn’t envy the chemists at all.  Not only did they have to work on creating the monomolecular graphene and spider silk fabrics to keep everybody clothed and the Mechs armored, but they had been busy doing spectrometer readings on everything that was eaten.  Thankfully for them, that had eased up with the development of palm sized spectrometers that used q-bits to test the food.  Tough job, busy job, but they kept at it.  They didn’t seem to have problems keeping up.

Dr. Nachmann had become the unspoken leader of the compound.  Nobody would listen to Ditch ’em Mitchem, and Mike had deferred to him as he concentrated on his research.  Ed started the meeting, “Thank you all for coming.  I think medical is going to start.”  He motioned towards Joan and Joel.

Joan nodded, a slight, melancholy smile on her face, “Well, we have bad news, and then we have more bad news, I’m afraid.”

“That’s what I like about you, Joan.  You’re always cheerful, always looking on the bright side,” Hank quipped.

Chuckles filled the room as the mood lightened.

Joan’s smile broadened, though it was still wistful as she continued, “Joel and I,” she motioned towards Humphreys,” have concluded our mapping of Matki Awrani’s DNA.”  She paused for a second, “and it seems that Matki and we share about sixty-seven percent of our DNA.”

She let that sink in.  John spoke, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.  What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that we fifty-one are the last breeding population of homo-sapiens.  We are a dying species.”

The news was unexpected.  Mike had no experience with genetics, but Matki seemed incredibly human to him.  This had further implications, though.  They’d survived the nuclear war on old Earth, but their children, if they had children in this new reality, were doomed to die alone.  The mood shifted again.  The group started talking among themselves.

Joel motioned for everyone to quiet, and started speaking, “Honestly, I’m amazed that we’re that closely related.  Remember, we’re talking about a billion years of evolution separating us.  That’s almost four times longer than mammals had been on earth in the twenty-first century.”

Ed asked, pinching his lower lip, “Isn’t there a term for that?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, when animals develop similar traits.”

“Oh, yeah, I know what you’re talking about.  It’s called convergent evolution.  Different animals, occupying the same general ecological niche, develop similar traits.”

“So, you think . . .”

Joel answered, shaking his head, “Well, it’s certainly possible, but not in this instance.” He held up his hand to forestall further conjecture, “Or, I should say, we don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Well, there are genes that we’ve only found in humans.  A lot of our DNA is similar to other primates, but there are markers, haploid groups that indict that Matki’s people are our descendants.  DNA sequencing indicated many different genes that are unique to our species.  Some of those genes are very specific to us.  So, most likely, Matki is a descendant of ours.  Especially since some of those genes are in the mitochondrial DNA.  Plus, we’ve imaged his body, and, while there are differences, we’re structurally pretty much the same, which indicates that he’s a primate.  That, and his brain looks remarkably similar to ours.  We,” Joel motioned toward Joan, “feel that he’s probably a descendant of our species.  At least, as far as we can tell,” he caveated.

Mike thought about it.  It was good to think that his species lived on in Matki, and in Matki’s tribe.  Mike felt like he had family, even though they were so far removed from the one he had on old Earth.  The homo-sapiens in this room may be the last ones, but they would live on in Matki’s people.

Hank spoke, “but, we have, what, nineteen women that could have children.  Can’t they have children that would survive?”

Joan nodded, “yes, they would survive, that’s not the problem.  The problem is, with such a small population, you would get inbreeding very quickly.  Inbreeding results in homozygosity, which can increase the chances of offspring being affected by recessive or deleterious traits. This leads to the decreased biological fitness and ability of a population to survive and reproduce.  Genetic diseases would start popping up.  Eventually our species would die out.”

“We can’t breed with Matki’s tribe?” Ken asked.

Joan shook her head, “No, not at all.  Let me put this in perspective.  Our closest genetic cousin on earth was the chimpanzee, which shared about 99 percent of our DNA.  There’s no way we could have interbred with them.  So, sex possibly, but there will be no children from the union.”

“How can they be so similar to us, yet be so different genetically?” Michelle asked.

“That, would be the subject of a very interesting paper if we still published for academia,” Joan replied, “with research that would probably last a lifetime.”

Bob spoke, his hands waving around, putting emphasis on his words, “I know we’ve had problems like this before.  I read something about the human race almost dying out around seventy thousand years ago,” Bob caught himself on the time reference, “I mean, seventy thousand years before the twenty-first century.”

Joel answered, “Yes, I know what you’re talking about.  You’re talking about the Toba eruption, and the Toba catastrophe theory.  Analysis of mitochondrial DNA suggests that our species almost died out then.  The eruption led to global cooling that lasted for approximately one thousand years.  That evidence led to the genetic bottleneck theory.  But you have to realize, the estimate is that there were approximately one thousand to ten thousand breeding
pairs.
  Even if every male had a child with every female here, that still wouldn’t offset the genetic inbreeding that would occur.”

Joan smiled, “Plus, I don’t think we women would want to have twenty plus children.  Personally, I’d be exhausted.”  This declaration brought smiles and a few chuckles.

She continued, “But, that won’t happen.  The other bad news is this.  We’re all dying.”

That last declaration stunned everybody.

Mike managed to blurt out, “What’s happening?  Poison?”

Joan shook her head, “No, nothing as bad as that.  Much more subtle, I’m afraid.  Joel and I thought that we were coming to this point.  We’ve run the blood tests, and done the analysis.  We’re starving to death.  We just aren’t getting the nutrients we need.  Malnutrition is killing us.”

The group grew silent as they contemplated this information.

“We can bring in more food.  We can hunt more if we need to,” Everett offered.

Joan patted him on the hand, “No, that won’t do us any good.  We have enough protein.  What we’re missing are essential vitamins that we need to live.  We aren’t eating enough vegetables and fruits.”

Joel spoke, “I’m afraid the dragons are killing us after all.  We’re trapped behind the wall.  We need to forage for more food.  That’s a problem with the dragons out there.”

Mike spoke up, “Speaking of the dragons, we may have more problems.”

Joel looked at him, “What do you mean?”

“Sorry Joel, I didn’t mean to steal your thunder.”

Joel smiled, “no problem, Mike.”

Mike looked at Everett.  Everett nodded.  Mike looked at Ed.

Ed spread his hands, “You sound like you have something you want to tell us.  Go ahead.”

“Thanks Ed,” Mike continued, “Well, Matki just came back from a scout outside.  He thinks this dragon, the Ancient, is different.  He doesn’t know what’s going on, but he doesn’t like it.”  Questions were blurted out across the room.  He held up his hands to slow down the verbal onslaught, “No, I have no idea what’s going to happen.  But based on what Matki told us, I just have a bad feeling.  No, I don’t know if the dragons are intelligent.  I know they can be very cunning.”

“But, they can’t get past the wall, can they?” Ken asked.

He looked at Ken, and answered, “I don’t know if or how they can get past the wall.”  He hesitated for a moment, “But I’m telling you, something’s up.  We need to make sure that the mechs are prepped, and everybody needs to carry their weapons.  I don’t want anybody caught flat footed if there’s an attack.”

After the announcements about their species dying out, and the possible attack of dragons, the meeting was much more subdued.  The meeting continued with situation reports from the different teams.  The news was just as bad from everybody else.  Hank told the group that supplies of materials for fabrication were running low.  Michelle confirmed the problem with supplies when she told them that they were running out of precursor chemicals to make spider silk materials.  The only good news was that they could always make the graphene monomolecular fibers.  Carbon was everywhere.  As long as they had electricity, which wasn’t a problem since they had the quantum battery, they would be able to make the carbon fibers.

The three amigos were finding other engineering projects that could be useful, but they were doing triage to decide which would be more beneficial and could use the materials at hand.  Some things just couldn’t be made because they didn’t have the necessary materials or manufacturing capabilities.

Mike reflected on what he was hearing.  They could get there, but it would take time.  They needed to explore the larger world to find the elements needed.  They needed a place for a larger fabrication facility.  And they needed to be able to search for food, or, if possible, find a better location for agriculture.  Primitive life really sucked.  Back on old Earth, the more primitive life sounded good.  Now reality proved that romantic view wasn’t as appealing when you had to give up air conditioning, refrigeration, medicine, and electronics.

The meeting finished and everybody broke up to go back to their individual projects.  Mike stood up, stretched, and thought about the ancient dragon.  He didn’t know what he’d seen in the dragon’s eye.  He hoped he was wrong, but he had a bad feeling that he wasn’t.

----------------------------------------------------

He woke when the light in the room switched on.  Mike groaned.  He’d only been asleep for a few hours.  He put his arm over his face to block out the light.  A shadow fell on him.  The break this afforded him was momentary, though.  His cot rattled as someone kicked it.

“Suck it up, buttercup.  You gotta get up.”

Mike groaned.  He knew that voice.  He looked down at the bottom of his cot.  A behemoth stood there, partially blocking the light.  Mickey, the self-styled ‘Beast of Brooklyn’ was considerably leaner than he had been.  Still he was bigger and stronger than anybody else, even Murph.  God alone knew what he had in his genetic landscape, but whatever it was, it was big.  Mike’s money was on bear or gorilla.  Mickey was bald, his hair line low on the side of his head, cropped short since he couldn’t shave it anymore.  He had gone to the other extreme with his beard.  It was a full, thick, golden red beard that curled down to his chest, probably inherited through the Irish side of his family.  Mickey had his rifle slung across his chest.

Mike levered himself up onto his elbows, the sleeping bag sliding down, “Why?”

Mickey hooked a thumb over his shoulder, “There’s hostiles inbound on the big screen.”

Mike swung his feet out of the sleeping bag as he sat up.  He felt the dirt on the floor through the soles of his feet.  In the back of his mind, he thought that they needed to sweep the room.

“What’s going on?” Mike asked.

“Multiple hostiles moving on our position.”

“How far out?”

“About ten miles, maybe twenty to forty minutes, depending.”

Mike nodded.

Mike looked around the room.  There were a few others in there, Yee, Drapier, Daughtry, Joseph, and Stein.  Stein had started out in administration, but he had proved his worth with a rifle, and he was part of the security team now.  They were all in various states of waking up.

Mike looked back at Mickey, “Okay, I’ll make sure they’re all out there.”

Mickey grinned, and turned to go back out the door.

Mike looked around for his pants.  The cobwebs cleared a bit, “Mickey, who’s in the Mechs?”

Mickey stopped and looked back, “Jen, Michelle, Keisha, Diane, and Rita.”

Mike stopped, “All five mechs?  That serious?”

“Lots of smaller targets as well.”

“Spawn?”

Mickey nodded, “Maybe.”

Mike was completely awake now.  He looked around the room, “Alright, everybody get your butts moving.  Full body armor.  We don’t have time to waste.”

Mickey slipped out the door.

Mike pulled on his clothes, jumped up, slung his belt on with his pistol, picked up his rifle, and walked quickly out of the room into the tunnel.  He turned right towards the armory.  Since they were security, they were in the first room closest to the armory.  Non-combat personnel were beginning to walk past, moving to safety.

Mike hurried into the armory.  Everybody that was going to fight was getting suited up.  It looked like a bad sequel to a popular movie.  They looked like storm troopers in the body armor, though dirty grey instead of white.  The over layer was the same type that was used on the mechs.  It had the same inflating foam as an under layer.  It looked like medieval armor, though with a modern twist, carbon fiber and spider silk.

After the death of Airman Babcock, his chest crushed by a giant bear, they realized that the security team needed body armor.  The body armor that they’d developed was pretty amazing, the engineers and techs working with Mike’s team to design it.  It was a moving target that the techs were working to upgrade and improve.

It wasn’t one size fit all, but rather, molded to fit the person using it, each piece of armor stenciled with the name of the person it fit.  The spider silk and carbon fiber cloth were the underlying strata to keep the armor pieces together.  The vests that carried their battle rattle was constructed off of the pattern of the old multicam vests that the team used to wear.

The last part of the armor was the helmet.  It was the same helmet that the Mechs used, with blue tooth and a heads up display to identify friend and foe.  It fit like a motorcycle helmet, though it didn’t have a visor.  Instead of a visor, a series of lenses were arrayed around the helmet surface.  They fed an image back to the heads up display inside the helmet.  Because of this, there were no weak points to be exploited.  The soldiers and airmen looked like robots, their humanity hidden by the body armor and smooth mask of the helmets.

Catcalls greeted him.

“Hey, look who decided to get out of bed and join us.”

“Sleeping beauty, who kissed you to wake you up?”

He waved them off, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

As he walked over to his body armor, four more bodies came into the armory behind him, Joseph notably absent.  Mike walked over, and sat down his rifle so that he could pull on his armor.  The body armor was unique.  The plates were made of stiffened monomolecular graphene stiffened with a polymer solution.  The fabric was the same monomolecular graphene interspersed with spider silk. It looked like bulky shirt and pants.

He had to put the pants on first, the lower armor held up with straps that routed over his shoulders.  He had to take his boots off to put the pants on.  He pulled them on, stood up, and looped the straps over his shoulders.  The armor was lined with the same type of ballistic padding that the mech armor used, which inflated when a small trickle charge was run through it.  He sat down to pull his boots on and laced them up.  The last thing he did was tighten the straps to secure the armor around his shin and over the boots.

Next he pulled on the upper torso body armor.   It pulled on like a shirt.  Mike picked up the top and pulled it over his head.  The body armor settled, and Mike locked the upper to the bottom with heavy clips to keep them from separating.

“You need some help with that?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, battery, radio, straps.  You know the deal.”

There was an open receptacle on the back left shoulder.  He grabbed a battery off of the table and slapped it into the receptacle.  Tom picked up one of the quantum entangled radios and slapped it in next to the battery, and shut the cover.  The foam inside the armor began to inflate.  The armor was strictly defensive and not power assisted.  The techs were working on an upgrade that would change that.

“You good Mike?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, It’s inflated, go ahead and tighten the straps.”

Mike’s body was jerked from side to side as Tom worked on the straps.  When Tom stopped, Mike grunted to indicate that it everything was okay.  Tom handed him the combat vest, which Mike settled over his body armor and strapped it to fit.

Last was the helmet.  Mike picked it up and put it on.  Mike felt the tug and his head tilted as Tom plugged in a wire from the body armor to the helmet.  Mike flipped the switch.  At first, he couldn’t see a thing, then the faint glow of the screen appeared.  Quickly, it flared into a heads up display.  The room was displayed with an overlay of combat information. 

There was no checklist to work though on this helmet since there were no mech armor systems to spool up.  The A.I. in the helmet was still pretty sophisticated, though a lot of the functionality wasn’t needed.  He still had location of friendlies, which was being populated on his display as he waited.  Names of the friendlies populated as well.  It was damn hot in the body armor, so Mike turned on his refrigeration unit.  With the heat and humidity on this world, they had to have air-conditioning in the body armor.  Everything immediately cooled down about ten degrees.

He turned his head to the side to look around him.  Tom buckled the bib that protected Mike’s neck, and Mike was battle ready.  The collar on the shoulders of the body armor diminished his capability to look around.  Not by much, but just enough that it was noticeable.  He knew it was there to protect his neck from strikes, so he had learned to live with it.

“Radio check, over,” he broadcast.

The radios were quantum entangled, so they didn’t broadcast so much as immediately understand what was sent.  They could transmit over long distance and through any medium, including rock.  The radio was set up with multiple channels.  There was a command channel that only Mike, Ken, and Jennifer could talk on.  Luis was on that channel as well, so that he could monitor the situation with the drone and cameras, and talk to the leaders as needed.  There was a general channel that everyone could talk on.  There were three team channels, one for the Mechs, one for the security team, and one for the Spec Ops team, or Mech, Sec, and Spec.  Mickey had taken the naming convention further, naming Luis and John the Tec team during training maneuvers.  The name stuck.  Mike, Jennifer, Ken, and Everett were also able to open up a private channel to each other as needed. 

He heard a familiar, melodic voice in his ear, “Roger Mike, I hear you five by five.”

“Hey Jen, your team ready to go out there?” he asked.

“Yeah, Teams up, ready to go,” she replied.

“Ken, what about your team?”

“Waiting on one.  I’ll give you the heads up when he’s ready.”

Mike knew immediately that Ken was talking about Joseph.  Mike was going to have to talk to Murph about that problem.  If anybody could kick Joseph in the ass, it was Murph.

“Team, I need a SITREP.”

The team started with Everett, and worked through the ranks until Tom replied, “Tom reporting, Green across the board.”

Mike leaned over to pick up his rifle.  He slung it over his chest.

Ken reported, “Mike, Sec team’s up.”

“Alright, Spec team on me.  Sec team, start deploying outside.  Mech team, you ready to take up positions?”

Ken started rattling off commands to his team on a sub channel.  Mike headed towards the door with his team behind him.

Jennifer answered him, “Roger Mike, Mech team is taking up position on the wall.”

Mike walked out of the tunnel, stopping short as the Mech team moved forward.  Beyond the ledge, sheets of rain decreased visibility.  Water sloughed off of the cliff face, creating a curtain that Mike could barely see through.  It was a miserable day, though soon it would be a miserable night.  It was twilight, the daylight waning.  The landing shimmered in the light cast from the tunnel and lights used for Mech maintenance on the ledge.

Randall, Weitz and McFarland walked by with the rest of the techs, heading into the tunnel.  Randall and Weitz ignored the soldiers as they walked past.  Randall had that superior look on her face and Weitz just looked annoyed.  Bobby McFarland had a completely different attitude, wishing everybody luck.

If there was one thing that all factions agreed on, it was that the mech armor had to have constant maintenance, upgraded with any reasonable weapons or tech they found on the static ‘net that they could fabricate.  In this world, the only thing that kept the monsters from killing them was the Mech armor.  Techs were constantly busy making sure that the mechs were in perfect working order.

With the unlimited energy offered by the quantum batteries, it made sense to concentrate on energy weapons.  Two new weapons had been added to the mechs.  Both were non-lethal, but they would incapacitate anything that they were aimed at.  One was a short wave microwave weapon that made an assailant feel like their skin was on fire.  The other was a subsonic sound weapon that immediately made an assailant feel sick to their stomach, and at high energy, could make them vomit and void their bowels.  It wasn't pretty, but it was effective.

Mike waited until the last tech cleared out of the way, and then stepped into the rain.  Twilight had turned to dark.  His display went from regular light to starlight as he moved forward.  Unlike conventional starlight, his view was three dimensional due to the multiple lenses on the face of the helmet.

It was sweltering hot in the humidity from the rain.  He looked at an icon on his helmet, and the neural interface dropped the temp down another ten degrees.  Immediately, he felt the difference as the suit shunted his body heat and worked to cool him down.

The rain poured down, working its way through the cracks and soon Mike was soaked.  He wished he was inside one of the mechs.  It would be nice and dry in there.  It was going to be a very wet night.

“Ken, there are eight of you, and five of us.  Spread your men across the wall, and we’ll intersperse between you.”

Mike’s team waited, letting the security team move into position in front of them.  The Mechs heavy tread marked their progression to the front of the landing.  The sec team moved to a secondary location, about twenty feet behind the Mechs.

“Alright, Spec, move in between Sec.”

Mike’s special operations team had a hell of a lot more experience at combat than the security team did.  It was experience won by fighting terrorists around the world in the twenty-first century.  Mike, Jennifer, Everett, and Ken had talked about it, and they all agreed that this was the best configuration for combat operations.

Mike and Everett realized that, while Mike and the team were good fits for the body armor, they could increase their combat capabilities by letting the women ride the mechs, and put Mike and his team back out on foot.  That way, they could step in to bolster the courage of the other grunts.  With the wall in place, the spec ops team had switched with Jennifer and her team.