The Unearthing (33 page)

As commander of the Thirteenth Battalion, Jude oversaw dozens of platoons involved in missions around the world; the covert operation in Argentina, like the failed operation in New Mexico, was one of many that occasionally required his personal attention, his direct involvement. He had in fact come to Argentina after New Mexico, so that he could nurse his wounded pride. Tonight’s operation, personally taking out Diaz, would go a long way to making him feel better.

“King in check,” Jude said quietly, calmly into his headset, “Stand by for endgame. All pieces’ status.”

“Rooks One and Two standing by. Package secure.” They had a sample of the Kreutz virus.

“Rook Three standing by,” came the next, “The castle is in check.” The bioweapons production lab that had grown the Kreutz virus was wired, ready for complete incineration.

“Rooks Four, Five and Six in position. Egress golden.”

“Rooks Seven and Nine in position. Pawns at West covered.”

“Rooks Eight and Ten in position. Pawns at East covered.”

“Rooks Eleven and Twelve reporting. Rendezvous and LZ are clear.” Jude tightened his finger ever so slightly on the trigger of his rifle. One squeeze and Diaz would be dead. Argentine rebels were already waiting to storm the grounds of the retreat and presidential headquarters. Dissenters in the military ranks would be mutinying as soon as word spread. With the head gone, the body of the monster that was Diaz’s barbaric organization would collapse. The United States would be able to lead the Allied World Armies through the South American Blockade and mop up the rest of this mess. Jude’s finger tightened a little more. A twitch of his finger and this operation would be complete.

“Checkmate,” He announced.

“Stand by, Knight,” Control’s voice came through his earpiece, startling him. Jude relaxed all tension on the trigger. He took a moment to breathe and re-focus his aim to keep Diaz in his sights.

“The King is in check! Endgame ready to run!”

“
Stand by
, Knight,” Control reiterated, “We are receiving new orders.”

“In the middle of an operation?”

“Stand by…” Control called back, “Authentication’s coming through. Continue with endgame and fall back to the rendezvous. When Match One is complete, another team will take the board for Match Two.” The second phase of the operation was the most crucial. Jude and his troops were supposed to ensure the rebels scored victories against Diaz’s army that the rebels had no real chance in hell of winning. Another team moving in at this juncture would be dangerous; the rebels were already wary of Jude, who had more often than not been elsewhere than in their theatre of war. A new team would be completely mistrusted.

“Profile’s not nearly complete!” Jude protested, “Why the fuck are we being redeployed?”

“I relay the orders, Knight,” Control replied, “I don’t analyze them.” Jude was silent, waiting a few more moments as he calmed down. He put his eye to the scope of his rifle and found Diaz. It wasn’t long before the Argentinean gave Jude the money shot he wanted. He took aim at the back of Diaz’s head.

“King in check,” He hissed. Jude squeezed the trigger.

“Checkmate.” Diaz’s head blew apart and a few seconds later the roar of a powerful explosion was heard. Jude had already dismantled his rifle and was rushing through the darkness to the rendezvous when the first sirens wailed.

♦♦♦

Bloom sat in her office cradling her head in her hand. The voice message from Allison had said it all. Bloom listened to it over and over again before fully absorbing it. Their Grid spars were shut, overworked by the calls flooding in from hundreds of other people like her, trying to find out about wounded loved ones. She’d requested emergency leave. General Harrod had denied it due to the ongoing crisis. All Bloom could do was wait for word about her daughter, wait for the strike team to come for Ashe, and pretend her world wasn’t falling apart around her.

♦♦♦

Major Benedict watched the armoured transports roll up. Immediately, he knew something was wrong. The vehicles driving up were Rangers; none of the agencies assigned to this mission, the DHS, FBI or ATF, employed Rangers. The compact transport trucks were, in fact, almost exclusively used by the military. Benedict stood at the head of the barricade with Police Chief Sharon Raven, who had been coordinating on behalf of the Protectorate’s Peacekeepers.

“What the hell is this?” she asked.

“No idea,” Benedict replied. The lead Ranger halted and a passenger immediately debarked, heading over to Benedict. A Colonel’s rank was pinned to the man’s uniform. Benedict saluted sharply.

“Major James Benedict?” the Colonel asked, returning the salute.

“Yes Colonel.”

“Isaac Jude,” Colonel Jude said, “Major, you and your men are relieved.” Jude turned to the police chief, “You and yours as well, Ma’am. This is now a strictly military operation and it has been put under my exclusive command.”

♦♦♦

“Do I or do I not have command of this operation, General?” Bloom demanded angrily of the image on her screen, “Would you mind clarifying that for me?”

“Don’t think the new promotion gives you more clout with me,
Colonel
Bloom,” Harrod growled, “You watch how you address me.”

“I think you can explain to me why my Chief of Security’s been removed from the conflict,” She replied, “General,
Sir
.”

“The conflict is no longer within the bounds of his jurisdiction,
Colonel
. Nor is it within the bounds of yours.”

“What?”

“You are in command of Fort Arapaho and the project for which Fort Arapaho was commissioned: The Ship Survey Expedition. In conjunction with the South-western Protectorate and the Laguna District, the Department of the Army is in charge of security on the World Ship Preserve. The Village and Gabriel Ashe are outside your jurisdiction.”

“How can you log us out after what we were hit with here?”

“You and your personnel are not part of this operation, Colonel. Accept it and move on.” He terminated the linx then, leaving her staring at a blank screen. She turned to look at Benedict.

“Who the fuck is this son of a bitch, anyway?”

“Colonel Jude,” Benedict replied, sitting on the other side of Bloom’s desk, “He’s a Special Forces type, strictly black ops. I’ve actually dealt with him in the past, Colonel; before I was assigned to Concord Three.”

“You don’t say,” Bloom growled, “Please, Major. Tell me all about it.”

“I’m afraid that information is still classified, Colonel.”

“Really?” Bloom said, giving him scrutinous look, “One day we’re going to have to sit down and talk about all the things we’re not supposed to sit down and talk about.”

“One day, Colonel.” They sat for a long moment, in silence. Finally, Bloom spoke:

“They’re going to delete Ashe, aren’t they? And we’re not cleared to know about it. They don’t want me involved because of my position in the Ship Survey Expedition.”

“That would be my assessment,” Benedict replied. Bloom considered this a long moment. Considered Ashe and what one of his followers had done to Mark; what they had done to Laura. Considered the nightmare being faced by tens of thousands of people around the world as Ashe’s followers ran rampant wherever they could. Bloom took a long, hard moment and considered the black op that was going down and the reasons behind it.

“Good,” She said at last, “I hope they turn the bastard into stew. How are rescue operations coming?”

“They’re on schedule,” Benedict replied, as they made their way from the nearly silent command center, “But the people we’re pulling from the wreckage are in bad shape. We’ve pulled about two hundred and fifty people from the what’s left of the main barracks, and we’re still digging the rest out. There’s at least another five hundred trapped in the rubble. It looks like we have to expect a forty to fifty percent fatality rate among the casualties.”

“God dammit,” Bloom hissed, “We could have stopped this right after Mark died, if they’d have thrown this bastard out! What the fuck’s the death toll going to climb to, now?”

“Colonel, it was out of our hands.”

“And it’s been taken out of our hands, again.” Bloom retorted bitterly, as they left the Administration and Command bunker. They could see the barracks building from here: a ten-floor tower, though it was barely recognizable as such any more. The front half of the building was gone, the first five floors destroyed by the suicide bomb blast, the top half having caved in upon itself.

“What the hell did that bastard have strapped to his back?” Bloom asked.

“Our best guess is that the bomber had a backpack full of C-17 or a similar compound,” Benedict replied. “We’ll know more, I suppose, once the investigation is underway.” Benedict paused, the headset in his ear chiming.

“Colonel, we’ve just gotten word.” He said, “They’re storming the Church of the United Trinity Observants.”

TWELVE

HUNTER, KILLER

The Ship had been instructed to establish communication with whatever intelligence found it, by teaching them its common language. The Ship, however, had had millennia to consider the possibility that the beings who found it might not be able to grasp the complexities and subtleties of the language. Designed to be able to evolve beyond its initial programming, the Ship decided it might become necessary to learn the common language of whatever beings found it. After all, time and again history had proven the difficulty of communication between alien beings. The Ship spent centuries revising its tutorials and devising the means to learn whatever language was used by its potential future discoverers.

And so when the Ship unearthed itself it began monitoring as much of this world’s communications as it could. It catalogued hundreds of different languages and dialects; spoken, written and gesticulated. The beings of this world used the radio spectrum to send audio, visual and data streams and the Ship was able to exploit this as it tried to learn the language used most often on this world. The Ship had not anticipated the insight it would glean into this world’s cultures. Like many primitive species, this world’s many divergent (and often opposing) cultures were seeped in violence. The Ship catalogued great lists of both simulated and actual violence in the recorded visual media. The Ship was able to discern what was real and what wasn’t only through careful study. In fictitious violence it was usually the same beings who suffered or inflicted suffering on others, throughout various recordings. The Ship witnessed one being die no less than seventy times in seventy different recordings. And in many cases that proved their evident fictional nature, creatures and technology that couldn’t possibly have existed were the ones inflicting and ultimately having violence inflicted upon them. The level of xenophobia that lay behind these creatures’ violent tendencies was troubling.

But the level of real violence, from their recreations to their public events to their interpersonal encounters was even more troubling. How had such a primitive, violent species attained such a level of technological advancement without self-destructing? There had recently been a sudden period of violent chaos: a series of murderous attacks by affiliated groups of beings against their parent civilizations as a whole. The representations the Ship gleaned from current events broadcasts seemed to indicate that this had been linked to the discovery of the Ship. This was not unusual among primitive cultures encountering an alien race for the first time. The level of violence that had occurred during the attacks wasn’t unheard of, either. But neither were such things signs of promise.
The Ship would continue to watch and to wait. It had much to decide about the beings who had discovered it and none of it easy.

♦♦♦

TRANSCRIPT

INTERACTIVE NEWS NETWORK NEWSCAST

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PATH:
INN <>BROADCAST >>HEADLINES >>NIGHT OF BLOOD >>UPDATE ><

ANCHOR

Good morning and welcome to the Interactive News Network. Around the world at this hour police and military forces are still fighting pitched battles against the heavily armed followers of the Church of the United Trinity Observants, after what is being called the Night of Blood. The call to arms for this cult seems to have been issued by their leader, Gabriel Ashe. Although the Observants have issued no statement concerning this violence, intelligence about the cult would suggest that it is part of a plan to stop what they see as the idolatrous worship of the Ship around the world. The source of the violence indeed came from the World Ship Preserve, where a series of late-night bombings by followers of Gabriel Ashe set the stage for the violence that has hit so many world capitals this morning.

INN<>HEADLINES >>
REPORT FROM THE WORLD SHIP

PRESERVE >>UPDATE ><

WALTER QUINCY ROBERTSON

I am standing here this morning, broadcasting on the border between the Laguna District of the South-western Protectorate, New Mexico and the World Ship Preserve. Since one-fifteen AM local time this and every other highway, road and trail into the Preserve has been under blockade by both US Army and Protectorate Peacekeepers. we know that a small war is being waged within the Preserve. There have been numerous explosions, gunfire…We have been told nothing, but given similar incidents of mayhem around the world over the last nine hours we know that the cause of this madness is Gabriel Ashe and the United Trinity Observants.