Daybreak Zero (10 page)

IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD. CASTLE CASTRO (IN THE FORMER SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA). 12:45 PM PST. TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2025.

Pat O’Grainne had always loved crossword puzzles, and always been able to hold his liquor; many nights when Heather was growing up he’d gotten a sixer-buzz on and done a crossword puzzle, flawlessly, in ink, just to show her he could. He sometimes thought that the intellectual stimulation of figuring out “ten-letter word, breathing toward Cleopatra’s death,” might have had something to do with how well Heather had done in school.

This wasn’t very different; first he wrote the letter to her, then he scrawled out his handmade crossword puzzle. 15 across (the day of the month) was “orogeny.” He used the definition and the text after it as a key to code the letter he had just written. Sometimes he surprised himself at how fast he could do this drunk; Heather said it was good because he never shortened or simplified messages to make the coding easier.

It pissed him off, though, seriously, that she said he should use the crappy grammar and spelling that he’d have used texting his biker buddies; she said it made the code harder to break, but he thought if some enemy ever did break the code, they’d think he was an idiot.

He returned to his coding:

. . . rilly has talk himself n2 this idea tht him n his buddies r tha natch leaders n shud run USA. he wants 2 chg tha constitution n b the fuckin Duke of California. I cud of herd mor but wz gettin 2 mad so faked a snore 2get 2go . . .

When he had finished, he recopied the code, wrote a mawkish note about how they didn’t pay enough attention to him and how Heather was ignoring him, copied the handmade crossword puzzle and the “secret code for you to work out, just like when you were a little girl” below that, and put the finished letter between books on his shelf; he’d give it to Carlucci or Bambi whenever they passed through. Then he put the original into the split log in his fireplace; it was a good thing this summer was so cold and he had an excuse for a fire almost every night.

THAT EVENING. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 10:15 PM MST. TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2025.

When Heather couldn’t sleep, she’d go upstairs, roll out her chart, and study it. Tonight she felt huge, lonely, and miserable, and bitter experience had taught her that once it reached the point where she couldn’t find a comfortable position, she was going to be up for at least another hour. So she padded upstairs, feeling like a grouchy she-bear, lit a lamp, pulled out the chart, and let her eyes just roam.

If there was any consistent pattern in tribal attacks, she thought, it had to be that they were always bigger and sooner than anyone might reasonably have expected. She scrawled a note to Leslie, her librarian for intelligence reports, asking for the action reports on tribal attacks in the last ninety days.
I suppose I’ ll be able to put Arnie on that one. Poor bastard, Mota Elliptica was such a good project for him, and now . . . well, poop. We had a solid five companies protecting it and we probably needed ten or fifteen. But it’s gone now, and God knows how many things we really needed with it.

She had pinned in more red cards, yarn, and construction paper blocking the DEFEAT MOON GUN path, and she had emphatically moved TRIBAL ACTIVITY way up on the priorities. Looking things over, she thought,
Well, I had been thinking we needed to assert ourselves somewhere; Arnie tells me public opinion won’t stay with us if we don’t obviously do something to stand up to some bad guys. I was thinking it was time to move against the Castles, but we’ d better make it against the tribes.
Her eyes fell on a deep red slash running across the chart.
Now if Larry will just uncharacteristically call in and coordinate, and we get some cooperation from Olympia, I see my next move, plain as day.

With the choice made, she felt as if some hand had uncorked her head and poured a bucket of sleep into it. She barely made it back to bed before she was out for the night.

FOUR:

KING GEORGE’S BIRDS CAME ON

THE NEXT DAY. NEAR PINEHURST, IDAHO, ON US ROUTE 95. 2 PM PST. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2025.

“ ’Bout eight o’clock behind us,” Ryan muttered to Larry. He fiddled with the harness on Mortimer, the most placid mule. “At least two.”

They’d been shadowed most of the day. Bambi must still be alive and negotiable-for; if she were already dead and war under way, they’d have shot Larry, Ryan, and Micah from cover and then taken their mules and gear.

The ground was dry, the afternoon was warm, and the little creek running through the meadow ahead of them was inviting. “Let’s let’em graze and drink a little,” Larry said. “We’ve got plenty of daylight left.”
Give the other side time to decide to show themselves.

They unburdened the mules, tied them where they could reach the creek, and sat down to a late lunch on a big, comfortable, sun-warmed rock. They had just finished when the woman stepped out of the trees, her hands up.

“I make it three of them covering her,” Micah said, softly, looking down at the ground.

“Four,” Ryan said, behind his hand. “Bet you missed the one in the tall grass behind that stump. Mister Mensche, what do you want to do?”

Mensche shrugged. “I’m going to walk forward and talk to her. If they start shooting, shoot back and run. Count me dead unless I catch up with you. If any of the hidden ones move suddenly, give me a long whistle. Anyone acts like they’re about to use a weapon, shoot, but I think it’s going to be all talk for a while.” He stood slowly, raising his hands over his head, and walked toward the woman.

In my FBI days, I was assigned four different hostage negotiations and two ransom turnovers. Carlucci said he gave them to me because I moved slow and looked trustworthy. Hope I haven’t lost my touch.

When he and the woman were a few yards apart, Larry said, “My side won’t fire if you lower your hands.”

“Neither will mine if you do.”

They relaxed. Larry said, “I’m a Federal investigating agent; you can call me Agent Mensche, Mister Mensche, or Larry—any of those is fine. I’m here to inquire into the disappearance of a mailplane and its pilot, Bambi Castro.”

“I’m Helen Chelseasdaughter, it’s polite among our people always to use both names, and the Blue Morning People sent me to guide you to the place where we will negotiate. We are a people who think long before acting; there will be no quick response.”

“Then I won’t expect one, Helen Chelseasdaughter. Is it far? Our mules are tired.”

“About an hour’s walk,” Helen Chelseasdaughter said. “May I signal the people with me to come out of cover and join your party, Agent Mensche?”

“That will be fine, Helen Chelseasdaughter.”

She raised her arms and waved twice; six tribals broke cover quietly, with hands over their heads. At Larry’s signal, Ryan and Micah set their weapons down.

As the Daybreakers and Larry’s party continued up the road, no one seemed to have anything to say.

ABOUT 3 HOURS LATER. NEAR PINEHURST, IDAHO, ON US ROUTE 95. 6 PM PST. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2025.

Wow, their weed sucks,
Larry thought, taking the required fourth hit off the peace pipe. The council fire had been built in the trail ride center’s fire pit; Larry, Helen Chelseasdaughter, and Michael Amandasson were sitting in a row on what must have been the performer’s bench, and three hundred or so members of the Blue Morning People were facing them from the bleachers.
I feel the strangest desire to start talking like a crusty old character to the little buckaroos.

The deal was done; now the tribe was having fun holding ceremonies. Larry was getting good at emphasizing the quality and wonders of the four hundred blankets, two hundred steel hatchets, three hundred pairs of new moccasins, and five hundred sweaters, every time his turn came up—the tribals always applauded. The peace pipes out there must’ve been being passed along pretty regularly.

When there was only about an hour of daylight left, Larry said he needed to
see
the plane and Bambi. Michael Amandasson led Mensche to the guarded guest cabin.

Bambi said hi and jumped up and hugged him, giving him cover to compose himself from the shock: the other prisoner in the cabin was his own daughter, Debbie.

When they let go of each other, he had his game face on again. He asked Bambi the basics (was she unhurt? could she fly the plane home if they fueled it? was she sure she had room for a takeoff from US 95?) while he rested his hand on her arm, squeezing in Morse:

2moro eve b ready sunset
Bambi squeezed back
QSL
(message received).
QRV 2 run?
(Are you ready to run?)
C.
(Yes).
QSO deb.
(Relay this to Debbie).
C.

Larry had learned squeeze code back in the ’90s when he’d just been starting with the Bureau, and later taught it to Debbie back when she thought that her dad being in the FBI was cool and she’d been preparing to be rescued by her dashing dad from terrorists or a serial killer. Whenever he or Debbie hugged, they’d squeeze and tap didit, didahdidit dididah didididah, dididah—
i luv u
.

After Daybreak, as the most experienced intelligence/law enforcement agent Heather had recruited, Larry had taught it to everyone.

Thirty years and this was the first time he’d ever used it.
Just goes to show there’s no such thing as unnecessary training.

It was lousy tradecraft, but he decided he’d have to be human. “And what are they holding
you
for?” He reached forward, as if brushing the hair from Debbie’s eyes.

From the door, Michael Amandasson said, “She’s no concern of yours. She’s a slave.”

Mensche turned, letting his hand fall onto Debbie’s. “She is not a slave. She’s on American soil and we have the Thirteenth Amendment.”

“That doesn’t apply to the Blue Morning People. Come with me now, Agent Mensche.”

Mensche fixed his gaze on the tribal’s face as if contemplating arresting him, and kept holding Debbie’s hand, squeezing
i luv u
.

u 2 dad.
CF w bambi
C. go now. QMO. luv u.
luv u 2. CL.
QMO
meant
problem with interference
;
CL
meant
talk later
.

As he walked to the barn to inspect the Stearman (he barely knew enough to identify it as an airplane, but Bambi would have plenty of time tomorrow) and then to the visitor center to use Bambi’s radio to call for the ransom, he managed to sound politely interested as Michael Amandasson explained to him, in elaborate detail, that by interfering in a tribal custom like slavery, Mensche and the whole Federal government were being racist, sexist, culturist, and extremely judgmental. He even smiled now and then.

ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:13 PM MST. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2025.

“The EMP hit right at noon today,” Arnie said. “So, yes, it could have been just a coincidence—maybe forty-five different tribes, everywhere from the Ouachitas to Big Bend and the Sangre de Cristos to Texarkana,
all
started moving at once, because they
all happened
to have working radios and we pissed them off, and then the moon gun
happened
to wait a long time to fire, so the moon gun
just happened
to be a perfect distraction
by pure chance
at the
exact moment
when all the tribes
just happened to wander into
Mota Elliptica simultaneously.”

“Why are you throwing all the sarcasm at me, Arnie?” Heather said. “I just asked if it could be a coincidence.” She poured him a shot of whiskey and pushed it over to him.

They sat in her office above her living quarters, in the old Pueblo Courthouse. He’d only come in with the rest of the survivors from Mota Elliptica that afternoon. She said, “Streen gave me his action report; no matter how much he blames himself,
no one
could have kept the tribals from wrecking it.”

“It was bad,” Arnie said, taking the whiskey in one quick gulp.

“Chris tells me the
Post-Times
will call it the Battle of Mota Elliptica. He says that way maybe people will get that we’re at war. I don’t want a panic—”

“But it might be time for one,” Arnie said. “Uh, look. I’m not at my best explaining stuff right now. But I’ve gotta make you see it, Heather, really, we’re sunk if you don’t. How many times have I been wrong about anything this big?”

“Arnie, I understand it was rough; Colonel Streen is shaken up and I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.”

Arnie winced.
Rough. Bad.
And she thinks Streen is just
shaken up? She can’t have any idea what it was like. . . . Christ, why am I trying?

As dawn came up on the morning after the attack, Streen’s forces had relieved the three other isolated buildings still holding out, but at the other four working stations, a few bodies lay near the doorways, plumed with arrows and lances, and the rest were burned and smothered inside, curled against walls with hands over their faces. The four radio techs inside the control bunker had apparently been forced back into the flames at spearpoint.

Besides Trish, twenty-two other engineers and technicians were confirmed dead, though a couple might yet find their way in, out of seven missing. Streen’s final count on his military forces was sixty-four dead—thirty-eight of his own TNG infantry, eleven of the President’s Own Rangers, and thirteen of the Texans (eleven of those, along with one of the Rangers, in a single, too-clever ambush). They were missing three infantrymen, a Ranger, and a TexIC; an actual majority of the survivors were wounded.

“Try to tell me one more time,” Heather said. “Slowly, don’t yell, don’t treat me like an idiot.”

“Sorry,” Arnie said.

“Quentin told me he thought the scientist that was killed next to you was, uh, important to you.” She poured him another shot, his fourth since they’d begun the informal debriefing. “Here,” she said, patting her immense belly. “Drink for those who can’t.”

Arnie took it in one gulp, again, and said, “Yeah. I’m crying. I didn’t even notice I was. But I’m crying.”

“Well, it’s about time.”

Arnie looked down, wiping his face and keening. She let him cry, until finally, wiping his face, he said, “Trish Eliot was great . . . my number two on the job, my best friend there, maybe she’d’ve been more if there’d been time.”
And the only person brave enough for me to tell her the whole truth, and to believe me.
“Yeah, she was killed right beside me, and that was pretty awful.”
Pretty awful is all the more description I can think of?

Heather waited for him find his voice again. Usually you could count on Heather to listen.

After a while, she said, “Arnie, there’s more evidence than you know about. Captain Highbotham’s observatory at Christiansted was attacked this morning—tribals came ashore in small boats from a big sailing yacht, and Highbotham and a party rowed out to the yacht and captured it while the local militia beat the raiders on the beach. Practically a pirate battle, but she won. And yes, it does look like the moon gun and the tribes are either talking to each other, or talking to some common superior. For one thing, we think they might have launched another EMP bomb while Christiansted was tied up in the battle, and Big Island, Cooke Castle, and Oaxaca were all under cloud cover. USS
Bush
, in the Indian Ocean, thinks they detected a flash, but it was daylight and low on the horizon. I guess we’ll know in three days. So . . . all right, Arnie, the moon gun isn’t just a leftover robot, because there’s way too much strategy happening and it understands way too much. And it’s not being run by some human overlord somewhere, because like you say, the communications pattern doesn’t fit. All right.”

Trish believed me because she was my friend. Heather’s my friend too. I just have to find a way to make it real clear.
“So look, here’s the thing, put it all together, boss, use that cop brain. How old is Daybreak and how completely integrated? The moon gun and the tribes work together. Encrypted radio all over the Lost Quarter. They’re plugged in to each other and they always intended to be that way, and that took preparation way in advance. Well,
how far
in advance? Daybreak themes were there in coustajam music back when that was niche-stuff on YouTube. And if we’re right about how the moon gun got there, it must’ve been designed all the way back in the days of Google-One, Facebook, and Twitter. I can’t
prove
more than ten years, but I’m gut-certain Daybreak started before the turn of the century.”

“Why do we
care
how old it is? Isn’t this just Professor Yang getting caught up in a research project?”

“No,” Arnie said. “The whole world keeps pushing me to find the magic bullet, but until we understand how it got here, and how big and complex and sophisticated it is, we don’t even know if there
can
be
any
kind of bullet, magic or otherwise. I’m trying to figure out if it’s a tornado, a giant shark, a serial killer, or a forest fire, and you’re all insisting I tell you what caliber bullet to use.”

“You’re becoming angry again,” she said, softly. “And before Daybreak, you were always ‘don’t ask me what to do, let me just study.’ ”

“And if I’d been able to study then, we might know what to do today.” His own voice sounded pathetic to him, now. “People want an answer, and they want me to guarantee it’s true. They don’t want the answer that’s true.”

“Yeah. All right. You had me with your point that I wish we’d let you research it back then. Tell me the rest of your idea.” She leaned forward, hands resting on her knees, listening intently or resting her back or both.

Arnie nodded. “Look how fast the tribes happened. They weren’t even in our maybe-trouble file back in March; first we heard of them was right after the war scare and Open Signals Day, at the end of April, when Larry Mensche came in with that report, and then all of a sudden Springfield, Steubenville, Augusta, and Kettle Valley were all trashed between May 10th and May 12th. Maybe a tenth, maybe more, of the surviving population is in tribes, you see? Daybreak had the moon gun ready to go, physically, and it had the tribes ready to go, as a cultural idea with organizers and bards and everything.”

“Bards?”

“Something I got out of interrogations. When Daybreak had Jason, for at least three years before 10-28-24, he was fantasizing intensely about being a wandering poet for tribal people and wandering between Castles—and none of that existed then, but in less than half a year, it all did. You see? Daybreak prepared him for a world that Daybreak had designed.”

Heather tented her hands and leaned back. “Do we have to decide anything tonight?”

“No, but soon. Look, if I’m right, Daybreak is so far ahead of us—”

“All right, Arn, you’ve given me the reality.” She was nodding, but she looked tired and sick. “Let me give you the politics, and then let’s see if we can drag the reality and the politics anywhere near each other, and find a way to accommodate them both. I realize it’s true, but you’re telling me the worst possible news, because if Daybreak is really everywhere, if we’re falling right into its plan, and we don’t even know what that plan is, if we have to doubt every move we make . . . oh, man, Arn. Not an easy sell either to Graham or to Cam.”

“But if I’m right, and this is true, then we’ve got to study this thing, understand what it’s capable of—”

Heather sighed. “Politically, Arnie, I need a program, some definite number of steps that will definitely defeat Daybreak, so I can get the resources for the study you need to do.”

“But you need the study to know what to do, to make sure we’re not falling right into Daybreak’s plan!”

“I know, I know, I know.” She waved her hand at him in the invisible yo-yo gesture that meant
Calm down and shut up
. “Arn, we’ve got to find a way for you to investigate this, I agree. But right now as far as they’re concerned, I’m the dumb bitch that wrecked one of our last big surviving generating stations to prove that the other side didn’t like us, and you’re my pet head-in-the-clouds Doctor Doofus. Olympia and Athens are looking for an excuse to cut us off and start back down the warpath with each other.”

“Do
you
believe me?”

“I believe I can’t dismiss you. So find me something somewhere. A few good pieces of evidence that we haven’t seen before. A real clear analogy. One good completely counterintuitive thing to try that works. Whatever. Just remember, Arn, the people in Athens and Olympia are much dumber and less patient than I am. It has to be so simple that even an old cop like me can explain it to frightened, imagination-free bureaucrats like them. I know it’s probably impossible but you’ll have to do it anyway. And soon—because if you’re right, we might already be too late. Want another shot before I throw you out and get my motherly sleep?”

“I want ten of them, but I better not.” He rose, wiped his face, and said, “Trish was the best, Heather. You don’t know what you lost.”

“None of us ever do.”

He followed her gaze to Lenny’s picture; she looked back at him soon enough to see the moment when he realized she was looking at the father of her child, the husband she’d lost in the first month of the Daybreak crisis, and he said, softly, “Sorry. I guess we’re all pretty clueless.”

“It makes us human, and if you’re right, that’s what this is all about—staying human. The world will never be able to add up how much we all lost, will it?” She looked at him steadily. “But I am sorry you never had any time together, and that in this new world, we never even have the simple time to grieve.”

He nodded his thanks for her sympathy, not trusting himself to speak, because he could hear the rest of the message as clearly as if she’d said it aloud:
But we all know there’s nothing anyone can do.