Activate The Ravagers Ep1v2 (4 page)

He finally looked up at her, trying to express surprise with his facial expression that she remained in her seat. “Yes, it has. We’re past the point of no return, Deirdre. Final activation happens in mere hours.”

“If activation hasn’t started, then it can’t be too late to stop it. It’s not too late to stop everything.”

He pounded his right fist into the desk this time, generating a far louder cracking sound than before. “Dammit, Deirdre! There are pieces of this you know nothing about, and those have been activated. Failure to commence your portion will only make things worse for the masses.”

Her eyes moved to the ground as her breath caught in her throat. “Worse?”

He drummed his fingers on the desk, studying her. “You’ve been having conscience pangs for quite some time, haven’t you? You’re planning something, something you think will stop the entire plan, aren’t you?”

She wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“Don’t deviate from the plan, little girl. I don’t know who or what you think you’ll save, but—”

“Go to hell, Dad,” she snapped, eyes blazing. She rose from the chair and overturned it as she stormed toward the door with heavy footsteps and opened it.

“Don’t you dare slam the—”

She slammed the door with as much force as she could muster.

Deirdre Silver-Light leaned against the abused door, breathing heavily. Why had she been so stupid to think he’d listen to her concerns? She knew there must be a way to stop everything, or at least enough to accomplish her goal. He’d guessed she had some new motivation to drive her pangs of conscience at this late date, though that had been rather transparent. Despite his claims, she suspected she could still save him.

Audrey glanced up at her from behind the reception desk. Audrey was a pretty and generally vapid young girl who had in Deirdre’s mind the easiest job in the world. She alerted Oswald Silver that appointed guests were available. Given Oswald allowed perhaps one soul per week into his presence, she had little to do. Deirdre glanced at Audrey’s tight, revealing clothing and shuddered. Perhaps she had more to do than Deirdre cared to consider.

Deirdre scowled at the woman. “I’m leaving.”

Audrey nodded, her dimples crushing any effort at a professional appearance as Deirdre continued stomping past the reception desk toward the elevator. “Very well, Mrs. Light. Do you need to book another appointment with Mr. Silver?”

Deirdre pressed the elevator call button. “No, Audrey. At the moment, I’d prefer being shot over spending more time with the man.”

Audrey’s perfect features paled briefly. “Oh, okay. Have a pleasant day, Mrs. Light.”

The elevator signal chimed. Deirdre entered as the doors parted, and tapped repeatedly on the button for the seventh floor. Her office. Her sanctuary.

Yet it was still Oswald’s kingdom.

Her mother would know what to do. She’d listen to Deirdre, understand her growing concerns about the propriety of the plans set in motion years earlier, and would offer sound advice for halting the upcoming calamity. But her mother was long dead, unable to offer Deirdre the advice so desperately needed, or to perhaps dissuade her husband from a dalliance with a woman half his age. The doors closed, and Deirdre watched the excitement grow on Audrey’s face as her face vanished. She felt revulsion, not at Audrey, but at her father. He’d take advantage of the naive young woman despite knowing exactly what Audrey would experience in the near future, and he’d do it without a pang of remorse.

He’d shown no remorse about the plan. Not once. And while Deirdre felt pangs of conscience now, she noted with glum sobriety that she’d been a true believer, once fully committed to the purported noble goals, honored to play her part in activating those events designed to bring about fulfillment of the plan. Oswald was, in his own way, right to chide her. If she’d suffered conscience pangs back then, then… She shook her head as the elevator car slowed to a halt.

If she’d displayed signs of a conscience back then, she’d be as oblivious to the coming chaos as Audrey.

She slid out of the elevator car onto the seventh floor, where she managed the Diasteel research and development team, and moved toward her office at the far end. Her office was spacious, full of memories, memories that could exist only inside her mind after the events of the coming days unfolded. She walked around the seventh floor, looked at all of the people congregating, gesturing, pointing at diagrams and data printed on reams of paper. She could feel the energy of this place, the creativity that had brought to life so many key innovations in the world of the thirty-sixth century. Perhaps they’d invented things the mythical beings of the Golden Ages of the past hadn’t managed to derive before they’d vanished into the dusty annals of legend.

She felt a tear form in her eyes, and ran a hand across her face, careful not to smudge the carefully applied makeup. It was difficult to accept that all of this would be gone in such short order. Years earlier, she’d been accepting of that fact, that reality, that cost. Why?

She turned around, walked into her office, shut the door, and sat at her desk.

Then she burst into tears, dry heaving into the wastebasket near her desk.

…formation of the two great military Alliances re-instituted military structures described in the Time Capsule… Citing concerns that personal desires for advancement might limit the honesty of feedback and analysis given senior military officers, the Western Alliance created the role of Civilian Adviser…

M
icah Jamison had remained behind
at the site of the incident long after the departures of Sheila Clarke and the rest of the team. He’d ensured they’d gotten the large box loaded onto the truck, had made the calls necessary to set them up with delivery service vehicles and credentials, and had made certain Sheila knew that her sole job that day was ensuring no Jamison & Associates employees attempted to open the box.

It was literally a matter of life and death.

Once they’d left, he’d conducted his own investigation of the site, without fear that he’d be seen by his team and reveal his own deep knowledge of the threat through his more assured actions.

With the sun up and the fog burned away, the site no longer looked like something out of a basic horror movie. He could see things with greater clarity now than through the beams of the spotlights.

None of what he saw eased his concerns.

He ran his hand along the near-frictionless sides of the crater, marveling at the precision of the substance responsible for the smooth walls. It was as it had been before, pure destruction unleashed upon a defined space. They’d erected the building not as a base for foot soldiers for an eventual invasion, but to test their ability to destroy the structure.

Mission accomplished.

The memories were there with crystal clarity, and when he squinted his eyes shut due to the bright light of the rising sun, the images were there. Weapons of incredible ferocity able to operate in defined regions without risking a single soldier. Dreams of that single enhancement that would turn a weapon capable of ravaging a building with ease into something far more powerful. He’d doubted they’d succeed with their development goals.

The sight before him suggested such doubts were no longer pragmatic.

The more immediate concern: had the enemy taken the weapon away? Had they packed it inside the box he’d sent with Sheila and the others?

Or were remnants still around?

He glanced at the crater before him.

There was only one way to know with certainty.

He circled the perimeter, looking, until he found a sizable rock. It wouldn’t classify as a boulder, but he required both hands and considerable strain to lift it from the ground. He spun once, twice, three times, gathering momentum, and released the rock. His momentum caused him to get too near the edge, and he windmilled his arms to restore balance, watching as loose dirt skittered down the smooth sides into the crater below, listening as the soft collisions of pebbles on the embedded rock below echoed loudly in the quiet of the early morning.

He found the falling rock and watched as it landed, feeling the thud deep within, as if the reverberations shattered him.

Jamison tensed, waiting, feeling his pulse race in anticipation of… what, exactly? He realized that he had no idea what the activated weapon might look like. Would he notice it in time to attempt escape? Or would he simply die in an instant?

He waited. Thirty seconds. One minute. Three minutes. Five minutes.

He exhaled a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

Nothing remained outside that box.

The memory of those few moments of waiting for his imminent death rooted deeply in his mind the rest of the day. He canceled meetings and returned to his home, spending the time to activate contingency plans of his own. Micah Jamison hadn’t risen to the level of General by allowing events to happen to him. He anticipated, prepared, and ensured that he wasn’t surprised. Ever. Much as he’d hoped this day would never come, he’d planned for it. And now he activated his own efforts against those who’d use that weapon. He couldn’t stop it if they’d already set things in motion, especially since he knew who had set things in motion.

But he could have his own say in the final outcome.

That was something they could never anticipate.

As night fell, he drove his ground car to the now-empty office building. He’d gotten texts from Sheila, letting him know that they’d moved the box to his personal office on the top floor without “significant” interest. Her other text piqued his interest. She’d long shown a keen intuition, unraveling the complex from limited clues, and the fact that she’d ascertained that some part of whatever had caused the unusual evaporation of a large building might remain behind at the site was further evidence of that skill.

His footsteps clattered on the marble flooring. He’d exchanged the heavy boots worn to the site of the incident for a more casual shoe, and each step echoed like the sound of a far-off gunshot. He could smell the chemicals hanging in the air. The cleaning crews had already gone, but not before leaving their mark—or rather, removing them—from the office tower.

He rode up the elevator. He’d need to get the box to the holding tank, because—

He froze as he opened the door to his office.

Sheila Clarke was there, head resting upon the table in the corner of his space. The deep breathing told him she’d fallen asleep, waiting there for him. After a moment’s pause to get over the surprise, he adjusted his plans. Sheila woke slowly at his gentle prodding, then bolted to her feet as she realized where she was… and who had woken her.

“General!” She snapped a sharp salute. “Sorry, sir, I… I guess I was tired.”

He frowned at her. “Why aren’t you at home, Sheila?”

“Each time I tried to leave I noticed people looking at your office and… well, I guess it became obvious that people thought the warning to stay away was some form of reverse psychology, sir.” She offered a sheepish grin. “They love you, sir, and each of them wanted to be the one to stage the new piece of artwork in your office.”

He tilted his head. “Artwork?”

She nodded. “That was our cover. You’d bought a new piece of art, a sculpture, and would be opening, unpacking, and displaying it in a manner of your choosing. You’d insisted on being the one to open the box for the official unveiling.”

“So you decided to stay and guard the box? Even though I told you it was dangerous?”

“I…” She frowned. “I guess I thought it best I keep others away. At least I knew it was dangerous. The others? They’d unknowingly unleash some catastrophe if I walked away. So I stayed.”

He considered both the loyalty and courage demonstrated by her actions, and decided to trust her. “I need your help, then, Sheila. We need to move the box.”

“I’d gathered that, sir. I just don’t know where. I know we could move it… below. That doesn’t secure the box any more than it is here, though.”

He nodded. “There are secrets you’ve not yet learned about what lies below. There is a place where I know we can store the box and sleep soundly, knowing that we’re safe from what’s inside.”

“Well, that’s good to hear, sir, because—”

“And once it’s in that storage space, we’ll open the box to be certain we know what’s inside.”

She paused. “Wait. You want to open a box with contents that could… kill us all?”

He offered her a grim smile. “Precisely.”

…lack of commercially available materials made explosive devices of any size rare outside the few active theaters of fighting among the two great global Alliances…

H
e sat up in bed
, breathing deeply.

The dream faded from his mind. He’d relived the embarrassing moment from six months earlier when Sheila Clarke had loudly called for his immediate termination, leading to more than a few laughs at his expense the next week. His memory had shattered years earlier; his mind could not recall what he’d done—or
not
done—to draw her condemnation.

He only knew that he hated Sheila Clarke.

That hatred was tempered only by the fact that he found her wildly attractive. The few wisps of the dream remaining in his consciousness suggested that the two of them had acted on the latter in that dream world.

What the
hell
was wrong with him?

The buzzing sounded once more in his mind.

He scowled.

His short- and long-term memory were both in tatters. He had some intangible, indescribable sense that he’d once possessed far more mental vitality than he showed in the present. That mental vitality was as fleeting as his dream world fixation on the beautiful demon-spawn known as Sheila Clarke, something others never saw. They saw only a man who talked to himself.