Earthfall (4 page)

Instead, he headed for the small partition on the far side of the apartment, the bedroom, which occupied a space less than six feet wide by eight feet deep. Andrews stopped at the bedroom’s narrow entrance and listened. The AI had left the lights switched off here, and in the pitch-black darkness that dominated the tiny bedroom, he heard Rachel breathing. Slow, even, and deep. He stood still and waited for his eyes to adjust. After a time he could make out her slumbering figure, barely a silhouette beneath the linens. He continued to watch her sleep, her face turned away from him, her dark hair spilling across the pillow like a waterfall of shadow. Her work uniform lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed, and he bent over and picked it up. Smoothing out a few wrinkles, he opened the microscopic closet set into the wall and hung the single-piece uniform on a hanger. He did the same with his own duty uniform, then carefully crawled into bed and stretched out beside his wife. Despite his best efforts, she stirred; after all, who wouldn’t if they felt someone slinking into their bed when their husband was away?

“Mike?” she asked, voice blurry from what Andrews guessed was too much work and too little sleep. Before he could say anything, Rachel bolted upright in the bed with a gasp, reaching for him with one hand. She felt his face in the darkness, and he kissed her fingertips.

“Miss me?”

“Mike! Oh, God—” Her embrace almost crushed the breath from him, and Andrews laughed at the ferocity of it. Thirty-three days was a long time for a man to be away from his wife, and it was good to see she felt the same way.

“Easy there. Don’t break the merchandise, hon.”

“I’m so sorry!” There was genuine regret in her voice, which puzzled Andrews.

“It’s no big deal.”

She laughed and pulled away from him long enough to take his face in her hands. “No, no … not about that. I’m sorry I didn’t meet you at Receiving. I must have slept through the pages. I worked the overnight shift as well as the morning shift, and I just stretched out for a quick nap, but—”

Andrews put a finger to her lips. “Rachel, it’s no big deal. So I had to walk another couple of hundred feet to see you. Not a problem. Really.” He kissed her gently. “Anyway.
Did
you miss me, or is there something else we need to talk about?”

“I don’t want to talk,” Rachel said, pulling him close. She wrapped her legs around him and gripped his shoulders with an intent that Andrews was well familiar with.

T
he command center
of Harmony Base was a high-tech affair, a dimly lit room populated by workstations and displays of all sizes and brightness. From here, the personnel on duty monitored the condition of the subterranean installation, home to almost a thousand people. All internal metrics were captured and stored and, if necessary, reviewed. It was mostly mind-numbingly boring work, a repetitive process of staring at screens, monitoring the internal affairs of Harmony Base, and keeping the occasional eye turned toward the happenings on the surface over a hundred feet above their heads. But studying the surface was even more boring. Ever since the Sixty Minute War had essentially eradicated the ozone layer, solar radiation continued to bombard the planet, causing the Earth’s surface to waste away even further. Beyond dusty rock and parched earth, there was almost nothing left outside to see. Not even a
cockroach
remained alive out there, so it was a rare circumstance for something outside to merit any discussion beyond
Hey, look at how big that dust storm is
, or
Well, it might not look like Kansas … but it still is.

“Sorry, Colonel, but do you have a second?”

Corrine Baxter looked up. Barney Rosen, the lone technician manning the External Observation Station located in one corner of the Command Center was facing her direction, leaning back in his chair. Baxter simply stared at him for a moment before responding.

EOS wants to talk?

Baxter pushed away from her desk at the back of the Command Center and stood. She straightened her uniform and walked over to the EOS station.

“What is it, Rosen?”

“We’ve just detected another tremor, ma’am. One point four on the Richter, same general epicenter as yesterday.”

Baxter had to think back to the morning briefing to recall what the sallow-faced technician was talking about, but she did remember that several small tremors had been detected in the direction of the Colorado plains. That area was relatively stable—tectonically speaking—so the sudden uptick in activity was interesting, but not considered threatening in any way.

“You sure we’re not talking about equipment failure here? It’s been a long time … Can tectonic sensors go bad?”

“They can, but they’ve passed all the diagnostics,” the technician said. “For my money, they’re working fine, ma’am.”

Baxter didn’t know what to make of that. “Okay. Do you think the quakes pose a threat to the base?”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t say that. I just want to make sure someone in the command group is aware of them, that’s all. I would usually just log it and let it go, but since it’s a pretty repetitive event,” the technician pointed at one of the graphics on his workstation display, which showed a bar chart of tectonic occurrences over the past few days, “it seems like this is info you might want to look at for yourself, ma’am.”

“Ah. All right, then. Forward the data to my station. I’ll look it over.”

Rosen pressed a button. “Done, ma’am.”

“Thanks.”

Baxter walked back to her station and slid into the high-backed chair. Her shift was over in ten minutes, and she would hand over the task of overseeing base operations to a junior officer while she knocked off for a straight eight. Just the same, she called up the tremor readings on her workstation and reviewed the graphs and the baseline assessment Rosen had conducted. Seismology was certainly not her forte, but the fact was Harmony had been positioned in western Kansas because the area was thought to be tectonically stable. Even if it wasn’t, the base had been designed to survive a near-miss ground strike from a nuclear warhead in the forty megaton range, so she wasn’t very concerned about earthquakes.

She bundled up the data and forwarded it to General Benchley. This was something he should know about.

***

Andrews sat at the small dining table in his quarters, drinking a cup of coffee. Rachel was in the shower, and he heard the water splashing across her body as she prepared for another day of work. Usually, a spouse would get a free day or two after an SCEV team had come back from the field, but the cost of the beer was high: Rachel had to cover for a sick coworker as part of the deal. They’d each had one of the beers last night. While they were good—fantastic, actually—Andrews was no longer convinced they were worth the price Rachel was paying for them.

The shower was turned off, and Andrews got up from the table. He brewed another cup of coffee for Rachel and set it down for her, along with a piece of toasted cinnamon bread—plain was how she liked it, which Andrews thought was boring as hell—then slid back into the plastic chair. He didn’t have to wait for long before she emerged from the bathroom, stark naked, a towel wrapped around her hair.

“Morning, sweets!” she said, smiling at him brilliantly. “Sleep well?”

“Like the dead—you really tired me out last night.” Seeing her in such a state of undress caused a flush of heat to surge through his groin. Rachel Andrews, née Lopez, was one of the most beautiful women in Harmony Base, and somehow, Andrews had gotten lucky enough to score her as his wife.

Rachel looked at him and her smiled widened. “Uh-huh … doesn’t look like it to me, mister.” She pointed at his crotch. “If I’m not mistaken, it looks like you’re pitching a tent in your bathrobe.”

Andrews laughed and turned away from her, crossing his legs. Carefully. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you late for work.”

“We’ll see about that. But maybe I’ll get dressed now, just in case.”

“Your call, babe.”

She walked to the bedroom, intentionally shaking her ass a bit, making him laugh. He heard her open the closet in the bedroom and pull out a work uniform, then listened to the rustling noises as she dressed.

“So, what did you find?” she asked from behind the bedroom partition.

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

Andrews sipped some more coffee. “All we found were burned-out cities. Collected a ton of scientific data that doesn’t mean crap. Put a few thousand miles on the rig, and somehow, we didn’t kill each other after more than a month driving around looking for life.”

“You didn’t find
anything
?” The disappointment was obvious in her voice.

Andrews sighed. “Well, we did find some fortified communities that survived the initial war. But once their supplies were exhausted, they had to abandon them. We don’t know what happened to them, but the fortifications were empty.” He paused for another sip of coffee. “Cheyenne Mountain’s gone. Looks like it was hit with several ground strikes. The area was still way too hot for us to go EVA and check it out.”

Rachel walked to the table, fully dressed. She slid into the chair opposite him and looked at Andrews with sad, dark eyes. “So … we’re all that’s left?”

Andrews shrugged. “I don’t know. We still think the Northwest is the best place to look, but the command staff wants to take baby steps and start local.”

“Jim Laird’s rig is going to head northeast,” Rachel said, sipping her coffee. “Up the Ohio Valley, or something.”

Andrews grunted. “Wrong direction, but at least the powers that be are thinking we need to stretch our legs. When did you find that out?”

“His rig was moved into vehicle prep last week. Kelly told me that was the plan.”

“Jimmy’s a good commander. If there’s anything to be found out in that part of the country, he’ll find it.”

Rachel hesitated. “Kelly also mentioned something else,” she said, finally.

“Do tell.”

“Word has it that Benchley might create a new staff position. Director of Field Operations.”

Andrews snorted. “More management, huh? Hooah, just what this place needs.”

Rachel ignored his remark. “Babe, you’d be a natural. You’re a great leader, and you have an eye for detail. And it’s a base position—limited field time involved.”

“Me? A base position? Rachel, you know I’m no paper pusher. I’m still young, and the field work is—”

“Important, I know, I know. Look, Mike, it’s been ten years. I think we’re
it
. We’re all that’s left. You’re putting yourself at risk for nothing.”

Andrews looked at her over the rim of his coffee mug. “We’ve been through this,” he said calmly. “I have a great crew backing me up. As long as I keep my head and don’t do anything stupid, the field work’s as safe as working in the Core—”

“That’s bullshit.” The anger was clear in her voice, and her eyes flashed with barely restrained fury. Andrews sighed inwardly. There was no winning this argument, and as long as he remained in command of SCEV Four, he was always going to spend part of his time home bobbing and weaving.

“Rachel, it’s
not
bullshit.”

“Yeah, right. Would you sing that song if your parents had bought it out in the field? Don’t think so, Mike. Don’t think so at
all
.” She rose, turned to the sink, and fairly flung the remains of her coffee into it. She rinsed her mug as Andrews got to his feet and came up behind her, slipping his arms around her waist.

“That happened when the war was just going down. No one knows the full story—”

“Wake
up
, Michael!” Rachel put her hands on the counter and looked toward the ceiling. She sighed, and Andrews knew it was only a moment or so before she totally blew her top. “Mulligan and Benchley were serving together before we were born! The old timers cover for each other all the time, and you know that!”

Andrews squeezed her and spoke calmly into her ear. “And what does that prove, hon? What does that even mean, if it’s true? Nothing. The fact of the matter is, what I do for this installation is as safe as it can be. What happened to your parents is the exception … not the rule.”

“Just because the only fatal rig accident happened over ten years ago doesn’t mean it can’t happen again. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean it can’t happen to you.” Slowly, she turned inside his arms and looked at him, her brown eyes locking with his blue. She put her arms around his neck. She was cooling off, and Andrews allowed his gut to relax slightly. “Look. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to jump into this right away, I just got carried away.”

“Don’t apologize. I hear what you’re saying. I really do.” Andrews pulled her closer and kissed her forehead. “Listen … I want that northwest recon. If anyone’s still alive on this continent, that’s where they’ll be. After that, if this position you’re talking about comes around, I’ll speak to Benchley about it. Seriously.”

“That would be nice,” Rachel said softly.

Andrews kissed her. “I know this hasn’t been much of a marriage. All we’ve had are little honeymoons in between deployments. That’s my fault, and I’ll try my damnedest to change that.”