Pennsylvania Omnibus (24 page)

Dawn cleared the white screen and brought the farm back
up, then maximized it until they were actually in the scene again, sitting on
the Troyers’ front porch.

Jed stood up and walked to the porch railing, looking out
over the green yard toward a walnut tree he knew by heart. “And why did they
leave me asleep so long? If it only takes nine years to get here?”

Dawn stood and placed a hand on Jed’s back, and when he
turned to her she looked up at him and smiled. “Jed. ‘Here’ is the issue. It’s
the one question you haven’t known to ask, and it was the one we weren’t
authorized to answer.”

“I’m still on Earth,” Jed said. He looked into her eyes.
“You don’t want to tell me anything because I’m still on Earth, aren’t I?”

Dawn didn’t answer him. She didn’t say anything at all.
And when the tension had risen to the point that Jed was going to speak, Dawn
grabbed his face and kissed him, and this time he let her.

Pook wrote down the numbers on the
pad with the stub of a pencil he found lying on the old gray boards that
Martinez was now calling his “desk.” His unit had been in camp now for over a
week, but in the confusion and disruption following the detonation of the
okcillium bomb that had leveled the City, command was just now catching up and
organizing after-action reports.

Ten days after that shocking event, TRACE Intelligence was
reporting that most, if not all, of Transport’s forces had abandoned the east
and had retreated beyond the Great Shelf. Now, Pook was responsible for
reporting on the state of his unit. With a pencil and a piece of paper. The
numbers he’d written on the notepad were cold and sterile—digits without
meaning, corpses without faces—but the figures stood in for the real men and
women he’d lost in the failed operation to get the Amish boy to the AZ. 
Numbers rarely tell all of the truth, not even after an attack like the one on
the City, with a body count that rose above the ability for humans to rightly
comprehend it. But the TRACE fighters he’d lost were far more than numbers to
Pook Rayburn. They were his friends. His comrades-in-arms. They were members of
his family. And despite all the years he’d been a part of the resistance, he
never got used to losing friends.

He told himself again that he was just a soldier, and that
it wasn’t his job to question the reason for losses, for the risks taken. He
reminded himself that his duty was to follow orders, and that he had no cause
at all—after all these years—to question the SOMA and his decisions. The old
man had selflessly served, and brilliantly too, since before Pook was born.
Still, the numbers glared back at him from the page. Their accusations goaded
him, and he had to cover his face with his hand to hide from the things they
prodded him to say and think.

Pook slipped the paper to Martinez without a word and
walked out of the barn that served as their temporary base camp.  He walked to
where his crew stood outside, waiting to find out what would happen next. When
he got to the men, he slapped Jeff Wainwright on the back, gripped the man’s
shoulder and turned to face him.

“You take Jerry Rios and see that he gets fully outfitted.
Then walk him through all of our procedures and unit opsec, got it?”

Jeff nodded. “Yes, sir. What about weapons? He only has
the pistol you printed back in the City.”

There. That was it. A millisecond of shared recognition.
Any mention of the City was a vivid reminder that they’d each barely escaped
the flash death inflicted on the multitudes who’d remained there. That
realization, unspoken, with its associated feelings of gratitude, grief, and
unworthiness, settled on the squad.

Pook exhaled deeply. “Get with Martinez. Make sure
everyone is back up to par, and that we’re all ready to roll in five if we get
the call.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jeff and Jerry headed for the barn, and Pook turned to the
remainder of his unit. “We’re on hold. Waiting again.”

“Hurry up and wait, eh Pook?” Billy said.

“That’s it,” Pook said. “You all know the drill.”

“Any word on Dawn?”

Pook shook his head. “The kid made it to the AZ—apparently
after they chipped him and tried to reprogram his brain. Dawn got in there too,
although we don’t know where she is physically. She’s out there somewhere, and
Transport is holding her, but she’s successfully hacked the system. So there’s
that.” He pulled out a cigarette and put it between his lips. Then he smacked
his pocket, looking for his okcillium lighter before realizing he didn’t have
it anymore.

“Damn.”

Billy tossed him a book of matches—an old pack with the
name and logo of a bar from the City on it.  Pook looked at it and then back at
Billy. He struck a match and lit the cigarette, then closed the matchbook and
tossed it back. “That’s a collector’s item now.”

Billy stuck the matchbook back in his pocket, then rolled
his finger at Pook—a sign to get his leader talking again.

“I wish I could tell you more, but that’s all there is to
tell. No one on our side knows where she is,” Pook said.

Billy looked down and kicked the stones with his boot. “I
promised Ben I’d keep an eye on her.”

Pook breathed deeply. “Your brother was a good man. He’d
know you’ve done your best. We’ve
all
done our best. He’d also know that
no one can really keep an eye on Dawn when she has her mind set on something.
She’s pigheaded; always has been. But he and Dawn fought side by side. They
were more than husband and wife. They were teammates. He knew what we were
facing, and he’d understand that she’s working on a program totally outside of
our area of operations. It’s above our pay grade, too.”

“It’s hard to know what Ben would think,” Billy said.

Ducky, the short, muscular man who was Pook’s second in
command, had stood silent throughout this exchange, like a tempest in the
distance, barely stirring over the horizon. But now, as the topic turned to
what was going on in the resistance, the storm blew in. “I can tell you one
thing,” Ducky said. He was visibly angry, and had to interrupt himself
frequently to take a deep breath to calm himself. “Ben would probably have a
lot
to say about this crap going on with the Amish dude—Jed.” Pause.
Deep breath. “Good men and women getting killed to save the SOMA’s kid
brother!” Pause. Breath. “He’d definitely have something to say, I can tell ya
that!”

“Careful, Duck,” was all that Pook said. The two friends
stared at one another before Duck broke the silence.

“I’m not being insubordinate, Pook. I’m here and I’m
following orders no matter what. I’m just telling it how it is. We’re out here
dying, and for what?”

“We’ve always been out here dying, Duck,” Pook said. “And
always for the same reason. What’s changed? We take orders, and we do what
we’re told. That’s what we’ve always done. That’s what we did when Ben Beachy
was here, and that’s what we’re doing now.”

“Except that then, we knew what we were doing was
one-hundred-percent resistance business. We
knew
it, Pook. Not personal
business.”

Pook took a step toward Ducky. It wasn’t in any way
menacing, but the motion did carry with it the weight of authority. He spoke
softly, evenly. “Every one of us would be dead, imprisoned, or worse if it
weren’t for the SOMA. I’m not the kind of guy who starts second-guessing a
leader who has never—not once,
ever
, in my whole life—failed me or the
resistance. If he’d made a bunch of mistakes, or if he’d brought us to the
brink of defeat… you know, I’d still follow orders, but I’d feel more
comfortable questioning his leadership. But what has the SOMA done for us? Has
he ever failed us? Are we not on the very doorstep of wiping out Transport and
winning the war? Do we not have the upper hand?” Pook pointed toward the sky
and then swung his hand around, indicating the surrounding area. “Look at us.
Standing under this blue sky and not hiding out in buildings or underground.
When have we
ever
been comfortable doing this in the past five years?
And why do we feel pretty safe right now? Because Transport has fled beyond the
Shelf, Duck!”

Pook reached out his hand and put it on Ducky’s shoulder.
It was a sign of understanding, and of peace, but it also was a symbol of
steadfast obedience and loyalty to a superior. “So here’s the deal, friend. All
of you. I love you all. We’ve fought together and we’ve been through some tough
things. We’ve bled, and some of our people have died for this…” Ducky nodded,
as did everyone else in the unit.

After a short pause, Pook continued. “So for now… Ducky…
all of you… just shut the hell up. Just—respectfully—
shut up
. If you
have a problem, bottle it up and keep your mouth zipped about it. I don’t want
to hear one more word of negativity unless you have some grounds for it that’ll
stand up to scrutiny, and even then, it’d better be something that helps us
all. Am I understood?”

Ducky looked up at Pook, who was a full six inches taller.
“Yes, sir.” There was still anger in his voice, but it was subdued, and he’d
regained his composure.

“Yes, sir,” everyone else said.

Goa Eagles—swarthy, unkempt, and now overloaded with
partial bits of clothing and coats he’d somehow conned from the
quartermaster—chose this moment to walk up to the group. As always, he was
chewing vigorously on a greenish mass. He spat a huge globule and smiled.

“Good speeching, Pook.” Eagles arched his neck and thrust
out his arms in a cartoonish impersonation of Pook. He raised his voice an
octave higher and began to pace back and forth, glowering at everyone. He spit
out another big, nasty load of green slime and then wiped his mouth with his
arm.

“Being shut! Words, wording, words! Shutting up!” Eagles
looked over at Pook, who was trying hard not to laugh. “Looking at Eeguls!
Eeguls being the Pook! Everyone shutting! Got it?” By this point, everyone in
the unit was laughing, and Eagles took their laughter as further encouragement.
He turned to Ducky. “You… you being shut!” He winked at Ducky, then looked the
shorter fighter up and down. “Also being un-tall.” With that, Eagles threw out
his chest and walked away, to the raucous laughter of everyone who had heard
him.

The Great Shelf was, for now, the
new front in the war. This latest government attack—an air assault on TRACE
reconnaissance forces patrolling on this side of the cliffs—was half-hearted, a
token gesture. TRACE forces hadn’t yet attempted to penetrate past the Great
Shelf to pursue the Transport-controlled assets that had retreated from the
City. When the resistance launched their offensive, that’s when the real battle
would begin.

The SOMA watched as two of his fighters took out a
Transport attack craft, the defeated aircraft disintegrating and plummeting in
parts and fire and smoke toward the earth. Thus far, it seemed like Transport
was just doing their best to regroup and lick their wounds. For the most part
they’d pulled in their horns. With the exception of the perfunctory action the
SOMA was now observing, intelligence reported no evidence of a pending
counterattack.

The view that the SOMA had on the big screens in his
office constantly changed perspectives. Looking at the scenes on display, you’d
think that dozens of camera ships or drones must be zipping around out there
providing the coverage, but there were no actual cameras involved. Instead, the
graphics were constructed very accurately based on data gathered by sensors on
all of his ships—and by every other sensor within range of the battlefield. The
new TRACE Optimal Battle System (TOBS) relied not only on TRACE-specific
encrypted data, which provided real-time location and identification
information, but also on other airborne information, including data that was
never specifically intended for TRACE or battlefield use. In short, TOBS
utilized
all
available wireless broadband data, because even if the data
was from an email between two BICEs, or was part of a computer game, or the
sharing of a salsa recipe, that bit of data still had to travel through the air
from somewhere to somewhere else. And TOBS was able to use this data to more
perfectly render the battlefield in real time, like an early twenty-first
century Doppler radar could model a tornado based on wind direction, air
pressure, the reflections from bits of sand and debris carried by the storm,
temperature variations, and a variety of other sources.

Using TOBS in combination with the implanted TRACE
Corinth
chips, TRACE and enemy ships could be nearly perfectly rendered
in 3-D space. As could lasers and other ordnance. Data was cross-referenced and
processed, in real time, using information stored in multiple remote systems.
This aggregated information then became the foundation of the rendering
program.

And the beauty of TOBS was that the individual ships
didn’t need to carry and support the computing power required to produce the
finished visual product, although a rough version of the information was
available on each ship captain’s BICE and support screens. The ships needed
only to transmit the data for rendering off-vessel, and to have enough
computing power to receive and display the final visual.   And this off-vessel
rendering wasn’t dependent on the functioning of any one part. Flexibility and
redundancy were the hallmarks of TOBS. In fact, the system was intentionally
fluid, utilizing an AI management system that altered the system’s architecture
on the fly.