Lost Dawns: A Short Prequel Novel to the Lost Millinnium Trilogy Page 11

  Maria drew Launa into a hug. "Go with God," she whispered then turned back toward the kitchen.

  Launa watched her go. As a soldier, Launa was sworn to protect women like Maria. It did not look like many people in power were giving the likes of this woman much thought. What could a lone lieutenant do for all the Maria's of the world?

  Launa did not know, but, setting her jaw, she swore she would find out.

  The Station Chief got his convoy under way right on time. Launa had not expected it, but sympathy welled up in her as she watched Samantha standing alone on the veranda as they drove out. She was being left behind by developments.

  The dominator had become another victim, another nothing.

  The C-5 was on its latest revised schedule. It landed as they drove up to Jackson Hole municipal airport.

  Twenty minutes later, the horse trailer was tied down and airmen were hard at work loading the second trailer full of mission gear. The load master moved with speed and purpose.

  Jack and she stayed with the horses and dogs for the take-off. Once things settled down, the horse wrangler offered to take over. They climbed the stairs to the upper deck where Brent and Judith had taken the two most forward seats.

  Launa rummaged in the luggage, found her duffle and extracted Maria's leather bag. She followed Jack down the aisle to one of the rear seats. Seated next to him, she opened the book and began to study it. Maria had said there was a herb as good as aspirin for pain. Launa searched for it.

  She found Jack looking over her shoulder. "I remember that weed, it grew in the hills behind our house, before they built condos up there. Dad had the gardeners destroy any that took on our lawn."

  "This says it's good for stomach cramps and ulcers," she said.

  For the next several minutes she and Jack read, starting from page 1, then Jack reached over, used a finger to mark their place, and closed the book.

  "Last night, you and I started to talk," his words hardly carried above the cabin noise. Launa looked down at where his hands had covered hers and swallowed.

  Her feelings were so mixed up today, toward Jack the man, Jack the soldier and the crazy world that summoned them to God only knew what. Did she want to talk about love?

  "I made a fool of myself," Jack continued. "Sending you into the back country was one of the stupidest moves ever made in military history."

  Launa remembered to breathe. Jack was not proposing to talk about love. She sluffed off her anxiety like an overweight pack – and remembered she was supposed to be mad at him.

  "Three weeks ago I promised you and Judith I'd take a leaf out of the Old Neolith's book on leadership and be your partner. I screwed that pretty bad. I'm not going to have a chance to get it better with more practice, so I made up my mind while you were out there to quit."

  "Quit!" Launa gasped. Who was there to go with? What was he doing on this plane?

  "Quit being the senior partner in this exercise." Jack rushed on. "From now on, you're in charge. You take the lead and I follow. If we get there and women are in charge, you've got it. You tell me and I do it – no questions asked, no back talk. Until then, I practice." He looked into her eyes unblinking.

  Launa frowned back at him. He did not do things in half way measures, three days from running her around the boonies like some plebe to making her the general. Shit. That was not what she wanted.

  What she really wanted was his hide nailed to the barn door.

  She blinked and broke away from his gaze. She and he were on an airplane flying them to duty. What they might personally want was not part of the mission profile. She turned to Jack, her eyes as icy as her heart.

  "Captain, I was counting on you to teach me what I needed to learn. I was counting on you cover where I was weak. Instead, you sent me off to learn what I didn't need to know and now you're turning the lead over to me before I'm properly prepared because you screwed it."

  Jack nodded without any hint of a flinch.

  Damn he’s good when he’s good.

  "I will be senior partner wherever they chose to send us, but you better sure as hell give me your opinion when I need it and your obedience when I ask for it."

  "You have it, Launa."

  "Then let's get back to studying."

  She was amazed at how fast the flight passed with the two of them reading.

  * * *

  A Blackhawk waited, rotors turning, as the C-5 taxied to a stop at Moffett. The four moved quickly to it. Others would take care of their luggage and equipment.

  The flight to Livermore was short. As the chopper circled to land, Launa stared out the window. The west gate now was a blackened hole, twenty meters across. A visitors’ center and trees were flattened.

  Brent and Judith hustled off as soon as the chopper settled on the helipad. Two people in white lab coats came to greet Jack and Launa.

  "Someone new doing your landscaping?" Jack quipped to a short man who shook his head.

  "We've got the transporter forty feet underground. They couldn't damage it."

  "Transporter, as in `Beam me up, Scotty?" Launa's estimation of the science team went up a notch. At least someone had a sense of humor.

  Jack introduced Dr. Milo, the pudgy head of the team who smiled as he took Launa's hand. "We couldn't think of anything else to call it.

  Beside him stood Dr. Harrison, a tall woman who wore her brown hair in a tight bun. It was she who first noticed the temporal displacement. She shook Launa's hand firmly. "Hungry?"

  "We missed supper," Launa said as she shook her hand. "I could eat a horse."

  The cafeteria was a short walk away. The two doctors took only coffee. Even while Jack joined Launa in loading a tray, he got down to business with a question.

  "I brought three horses. What's the weight limit?"

  This was the first Launa had heard of a weight limit. She swore under her breath, wondering what else she was missing from her briefings.

  Harrison elbowed her beaming supervisor. "The boss here doesn't believe in sleep. We've extended the machine's capacity significantly this last week."

  "We'll have the test results early tomorrow. You'll be quite happy." Dr. Milo clearly was.

  At this hour, the dining room was nearly empty. Launa chose a table by the window. As she got down to serious eating she asked a double barrel question of the two doctors.

  "What went wrong with the first test? Will this thing work now?"

  The two exchanged worried looks, which did not help Launa's digestion.

  Dr. Milo put down his coffee before saying, "I believe it worked the first time. It's my fault we do not know for sure." He slumped in his chair.

  "Merv is too hard on himself." Dr. Harrison put a hand on his arm. "The isotopes we sent were a good way to calibrate our equipment. We dated our package to within minutes of its arrival."

  Launa gulped to empty her mouth and stopped a spoonful of carrots in mid-flight. "Is that important?"

  "Very." Dr. Harrison's head bobbed for emphasis. "I'll explain in a minute, but let me finish with Muffin."

  "Muffin?" Launa got the word out as she stuffed carrots in.

  Both Doctors smiled. "Muffin,” Dr. Milo repeated, "was a cute mutt we picked up at the pound. We wanted to test our system with live tissue. The question was how to verify the successful transportation of a living creature. We had all sorts of wild ideas. One was to plant a bomb on Muffin that would explode when she was fifty feet away from the landing point."

  "That was terrible." Dr. Harrison broke in.

  Dr. Milo shook his head. "If we'd done it, we'd know what happened. I'm a physicist,” he scowled out the window, "a soft-hearted, maybe soft in the head physicist. Biologists sacrifice animals all the time. I never had. I thought we could send Muffin and the isotopes back. If we found the isotopes we would know Muffin had arrived and when. If we found Muffin's collar and bones with the isotopes, we'd know the trip was lethal. If Muffin survived, she would take off and live a happy life among the
Indians and we would find nothing."

  "That's what happened, isn't it?" Launa interrupted buttering a piece of sourdough bread to study the two doctors.

  "Probably." Harrison agreed. Carefully she sloshed coffee in her cup. After a long pause she continued. "But the shock wave confuses the issue. We may have scattered Muffin's bones over the last thousand years. We've searched the hill and offered a reward for the collar. So far nothing."

  Launa put her bread down, hungry no more. "I was afraid of something like that."

  Dr. Harrison shook her head. "No, no. It is very likely the heavy isotopes' radiation caused the shock wave. I would bet my life that the transporter will work."

  Dr. Milo crumpled his empty paper coffee cup. "My dear Betty, these people are doing just that." He let that thought hang in the air for several moments before he glanced at his watch. "We'd better get to the bunker."

  Launa set a slow pace as they left the cafeteria. For the first time, she fully understood the risks involved.

  It was frightening enough that the world was at risk and her attempt to change that might mean leaving behind everything she had ever known. Yet the possibility that she could be killed for even attempting that mission clogged her throat with frustration.

  She breathed deep of the warm California air, swallowing the emotions that threatened her. She let her eyes wander the blue sky, brown hills. A line of windmills marched across the eastern ridge. Only half were working.

  "What are those?" Buried deep in her feelings another question nagged at Launa, but she could not find it. Better the inane.

  "Oh, something left over from the seventies,” Dr. Harrison said with a shrug. "There was a tax break then, so a lot were built. The break ran out, oil was cheap. As long as they run, it's fine. When one stops, that's it. Time ran out on them."

  Launa remembered her question. "Why did you need to know the exact arrival time of the test run?"

  "Time travel involves temporal displacement and movement through space." Doctor Milo gestured as he talked. "The earth is not where it was yesterday. Even if you were to go back a year, the sun has moved. We've computed exactly when and where to put you."

  "So you'll send us to the Danube river basin from here."

  "Right." Harrison added. "One ticket gets you both places. Think of the money we're saving."

  "And if you send us into the middle of a mountain?" Launa raised the traditional science fiction problem.

  "There will be a big boom," the short physicist said, then shrugged.

  They went inside. A bank of elevators offered to take them up or down. Dr. Harrison pushed for the lowest floor. Two armed guards greeted them, ran their ID cards through a computer check, then scratched their names off a short list.

  The conference room they entered was large, yet the heavy wooden table in the middle made it look small. One wall held large flat monitors and all the chairs faced it. Three screens showed similar conference rooms under the headings of The Hague, Moscow and Washington. The screens were blank.

  Brent hailed Launa. The four of them went to meet Brent, who, with Judith, was surrounded by a half dozen people in business dress. Judith inundated Launa with a round of introductions that left her none the wiser, except now she had officially met the Rand part of the project.

  "While you were with Dr. Milo, the Secretary of State briefed the people on net."

  "You got a presidential briefing!" Launa snapped. "What did we miss?"

  "Not a thing." Brent said through tight lips.

  "Our mikes weren't live." Judith explained. "I don't think the Europeans or Russians knew we were on net. The President will want to talk to us in a few minutes."

  "What's happening?" Launa insisted, angry at being left out.

  "Nothing you didn't already know. President Lark wants to deliver a counter ultimatum an hour before theirs is due to expire. We'll offer more aid and demand they dismantle their rockets."

  Whatever else Judith might have said was cut off as the cameras and mikes came on. They were live to the White House.

  Jack and Launa stood at rigid attention.

  "You people out there hear us?" The Commander-in-Chief asked.

  "Yes, Sir." Launa and Jack answered in unison before the civilians could react. Admiral Benson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, grinned as if his own kids had done him proud.

  "There's not much they can do besides get a good night’s sleep, is there Admiral?” the president said amicably. “The ultimatum will expire at seven o'clock tomorrow morning and we won't need to involve them until then."

  "Yes, Mr. President. 1200 Zulu is 0400 hours in California." The Admiral corrected the President without actually doing so.

  "Well, I wanted you to know what we're up against and what we're doing. Get some sleep. I'm going to."

  The President grinned confidently as the screen went blank.

  Launa frowned at Jack, wondering what had just happened.

  "Launa, you and I should get some sack time and leave a wakeup call for 0300."

  "I thought the President wanted our advice," Brent said, then snorted.

  "When men of power want your opinion, they'll give it to you," Judith said with a smile, but the bitterness behind it was lost on no one.

  When Judith and Brent turned to join some associates, Launa and Jack left.

  11

  The shower helped Launa shake the vague memory of nightmares she felt but did not recall. Putting on her dress greens for the first time, she ignored her shaggy hair in the mirror and admired the gold bars glittering on her shoulders.

  As they downed a quick breakfast of pancakes and scrambled eggs in the cafeteria, Jack looked a bit strange in his dress greens and beard.

  They were in the bunker conference room at 0345. It was empty.

  Then the monitors suddenly lit up.

  Jack drifted toward the screens for a better look. The Hague showed people running around, waving papers. Others milled in small groups.

  Jack pulled on his beard. "Looks like a Chinese fire drill to me."

  The Moscow screen lit up with a bit more sedate picture.

  "What's going on? How do we get sound?" Launa searched the room for controls, then gave up. She dared not touch anything.

  "I think something happened. Where the hell's Washington?"

  As if to answer him, the White House came on line. So did their sound. Launa recognized President Schmerling of the European Confederation.

  "President Lark," the European cried, "the Movement launched its attack before the ultimatum expired, immediately upon getting your counter proposal."

  Jack and Launa both inhaled sharply.

  The American President blanched and stammered. "Did they . . . Did the missiles . . . I mean, was anything hit?"

  "We're trying to find out. This place is a mad house. No one knows anything." The sharp edge to the European President's voice added to the tension. "Won't somebody tell me something!"

  The U.S. President turned to Admiral Benson. "What have we got?"

  The admiral was in the left hand corner of the screen, almost off camera. He raised a hand, waving the Commander-in-Chief to silence.

  President Lark's face began to redden.

  Half a minute, the Chairman turned and made his way quickly to his irritated Chief Executive.

  "Mr. President, if you'll step aside, I'll brief you."

  "These are our allies. For God's sake, what's happened!"

  The admiral frowned, adjusted his coat and began speaking to the cameras. "Space Command analyzed the satellite pickups and E-3 uplinks. All eighteen missiles initiated launch between 1116 and 1118 Zulu. Three missiles self-destructed in the first minute of flight."

  Admiral Benson glanced down at a fax. "It appears the payloads ruptured on those three. We must assume biological agents are spreading downwind from them."

  The admiral turned to the President. "Sir, all fifteen of the remaining missiles blew up on reentry over Europe, between 100,000
and 40,000 feet. We didn't fire a shot."

  "Huh." The President's mouth dropped open.

  "I would guess the flasks for the biological agents were not stressed properly. When the vehicle heated up on reentry, they exploded. My little granddaughter could explain what happened." said the admiral with a dry chuckle.

  Bedlam broke out. One would think the three command groups had won the World Soccer Cup. But then they had.

  The U.S. President pounded his National Security Advisor on the shoulders. One cabinet level official threw a cup of coffee in the air. Everywhere people laughed and slapped each other on the back.

  In the background, the admiral gazed at a world map, stroking his chin, a worried frown deepening the lines on his face.

  Shivers went down Launa's spine.

  Jack's eyes swiveled between her and the Admiral and back. He set his jaw. "We got problems," he whispered softly.

  "What do you think they are?" Launa asked, though she strongly suspected she knew.

  "You said it three weeks ago on the flight out, Lieutenant. Somebody's let the genie out of the bottle. It's not back in yet."

  Gradually, the admiral's worried demeanor sobered the groups.

  Finally, President Lark turned to him. "Chuck, you look like a man who threw a party and forgot to come."

  "Mr. President, I'm not sure." His arms dropped to his side, half at attention as he turned. "I'd like to assume the explosions destroyed the virus. With your permission, I'll have some U-2's and TR-1's make air sampling runs. They can get to 80,000 feet plus."

  He turned to the Soviet President. "Your country is downwind. May we overfly you?"

  President Drozdov frowned. "Is this necessary?"

  "Maybe it isn't. We won't know until we check."

  The Soviet consulted with his advisers. Finally, Drozdov turned back to the Admiral. "We have need of your aircraft. However, some republics will frown upon this extension of our 'Open Skies' agreement if they feel it is used to our disadvantage." He left the statement at that.

  Benson nodded to the Soviet. "Mr. President, I suspect some of my Air Force colleagues will hemorrhage, however, I invite you to send observers to our Metro Tango base in western Germany to observe that the TR-1's assigned to overfly your country have their cameras removed. God knows, maybe that'll help them get higher. With our European friends' permission, we will go ahead with this?"