Lost Dawns: A Short Prequel Novel to the Lost Millinnium Trilogy Page 2

  Launa permitted herself a puzzled frown at the strange phrasing. The General shook his head. "Damned if I know what they're talking about." He paused for a moment, obviously uncomfortable in his ignorance. "Launa, why don't you take the afternoon to think this over? Go ask the tombstones over in the post cemetery what they think."

  Launa nodded, a part of her thinking this was a good time for a walk under the trees, a good time to reread the words on some tombstones and think. Unfortunately, another part of Launa had dreamed of a moment like this. Before she knew it, her mouth was open.

  "I'm ready now, Sir. When do we leave?"

  For a second the General sat frozen. Then a satisfied grin swept across his face. Launa tried to memorize it. She would never see her father's face as she took command of the Brigade. This would be the look of approval she would carry for a lifetime.

  The Captain reminded her that it might be a short memory. He exploded from his chair for the doorway. "Mrs. Hammon, call the heliport. Have the chopper start rotating. Also have our bird at Newburgh get cleared for immediate take off."

  He turned back to Launa. "Let's go, Lieutenant."

  Stunned by her decision, the rank and the Captain's speed, Launa slowly got to her feet. The General reached across the desk, extending his hand. She shook it. Then he stood and saluted her. She had started to turn, obedient to the Captain's summons.

  She found herself fumbling to return the salute.

  The General chuckled and tossed her orders to her. "Catch! You'll need these."

  Launa caught them and broke into a run. The Captain was already half way down the hall. The pace he set was a flat out dash, but this was her territory. She knew how fast the high gloss polish on the floor would let her run.

  Launa caught up with him on the stairwell and broke into daylight at his elbow. A Blackhawk sat on the Plain's helipad, blades picking up speed. They went through the doorway together. The crew chief slammed it shut behind them a second later. Launa was buckling in as the chopper lifted off.

  She craned her neck, and, with a sigh, watched The Point disappear. For three years it had been her home, the longest she had ever lived in one place.

  Remembering the orders in her lap, she pulled out one copy and skimmed it. The Captain was right. She was now a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve.

  The orders went vague beyond that.

  She looked up at the Captain, seated across from her. Leaning toward him, she shouted above the engine roar.

  "Now can you tell me what this is all about?"

  2

  Captain John Samuel Walking Bear studied the young woman across from him. He had set a fast pace on the way out. The last report said the weather was closing in and he did not want to waste a night grounded on the East coast. She had proven she had the smarts in the Commandant's office, now she had shown she had the muscles.

  When she leaned toward him, he bent forward to hear her over the chopper's noise. "Let's wait until we can talk before we tackle that. Okay, Lieutenant?"

  She frowned at his delay, but the reference to her rank drew a grin. "When do I get a pair of gold bars and a uniform to put them on?"

  "We'll have a full kit waiting for you."

  She nodded and sat back, watching the terrain pass below.

  Walking Bear watched her and liked what he saw. He had read her medical reports and background. She had been his second choice until Captain Mendoza showed up Monday sporting a diamond ring. Project specifications called for no local attachments.

  Mendoza was dropped before she even knew the Pentagon computer had spit out her name.

  So chance would choose his partner. Chance had dealt him some bad hands in the past. God knows, he was due for a good break. From what he had seen so far of the Lieutenant, she was not a bad second choice. She rode the air turbulence with a relaxed ease. He admitted with a wry grin that she was also a pleasant eyeful.

  Life could deal a man worse.

  They transferred from helicopter to C-12 Gulfstream jet at a run, just as the rain began to pour. The plane rolled before the door was secured and banked steeply to avoid thunderheads on the climb out.

  They had the cabin to themselves. As they buckled into seats across from each other, Launa placed her orders on the table between them. Her eyes looked about to explode with questions, but her words were few. "Now can you tell me what this is all about?"

  "Will you answer me one more question?" Jack pointed at the envelope in front of her. "Why'd you accept those orders?"

  She frowned and paused a moment before she spoke. "A soldier can be a pretty sad creature. We don't make anything. We don't get rich. Most people don't like us. But we count when it matters. An old Roman said it for me: `The soldier stands between the torches of the enemy and the hearthstones of the people.'"

  Jack admired the fire that gleamed in her eyes, but he could not help wondering what price they might pay for her idealism.

  She gave an embarrassed shrug. "I know that sounds poetic, but it's the way I feel. Oh, I've met generals who weren't worth the price their gold braid would bring in a pawn shop. But we follow the sword because there are some things more important than a person's pleasure or profit. There are some ideas worth putting your life on the line for."

  The words came slowly, now. She seemed to pick and polish each individually.

  "You say the President wants me to put my life on the line. A soldier can go twenty years and never do anything the President gives a damn about. If I'd said no, I wouldn't be the person I want to be."

  He weighed her answer for only a moment before saying, “What can I tell you?"

  "Who, what, when, where, how." She waved both arms, the words poured as from a dam's open sluice gate. "Or anything else for starters."

  "I'll give you a quick overview. There'll be fuller briefings tomorrow. I'll try to give you a general appreciation of what you've dealt yourself into. First, what do you know of `The Movement?'"

  "Another question," she half growled, half laughed.

  "Sorry. I thought the guy who did my initial briefing did a lousy job too. Now I'm feeling a lot more sympathy for him. Bear with me, okay."

  "Last week I got Africa as an assignment." She eyed Jack. He looked innocent; he was. Someone else had done her prep work.

  "My research didn't tell me much. The Movement surfaced in Africa three years back, apparently an outgrowth of the tens of millions of deaths from AIDS that shattered the social fabric of that poor continent. The Swahili word the media translates simply as `movement' really means `the lion stalks'."

  Jack noted the way she carefully nuanced her words. Her file said she was good at languages; they would need that. Her folks had been posted oversees several times and she had dealt with many different cultures at an early age. They shared that in common -- good.

  "Unlike many earlier terrorist groups," she went on, "the Movement doesn't want to broadcast its manifesto on Western TV. They're as likely to stake a news team out on a termite hill as they are to send them back alive. Either way, they don't give interviews."

  She frowned at the ceiling of the plane.

  He nodded encouragement for her to go on.

  "I don't know what the Movement is. I wouldn't give any of the stuff I read in the papers an intelligence confidence level above C-3."

  "Lieutenant, I'll let you in on a little secret. I have read the DIA and CIA's files. There's nothing in them above C-1."

  Her mouth dropped open.

  Jack had had a hard time believing that one himself. There was a lot about the world situation he had trouble believing. For starters, where were the smart people who were supposed to be running it.

  "The Movement is so tight the agency doesn't have a single first or even a good second hand source. Five years ago, no one had even heard of the Movement. Today, they dominate half the governments in Africa. As for the other half . . . "

  He tossed the unasked question off with a fatalistic shrug. He knew
he was imitating his grandfather and hated it. A reservation Indian had to shrug off a lot. An infantry Captain shouldn't.

  "Officially, Egypt, Libya, the Union of South Africa are independent. The last reporter to ask who really ran Libya died in a fiery car crash." He shook his head grimly. "The CIA has no good answers either."

  "Why control a country under the table?" Launa stroked her chin.

  "Egypt and Libya are still buying Western arms, the latest fighters, tanks, electronics. We've black listed most of the countries the Movement rules openly. Ever get the feeling there's a hole in the West's arms embargo?"

  Launa sat back in her seat, disgust dripping from her smile. "There are times when I wonder why soldiers even try?" After a moment's reflection she sat forward. "If the Europeans had to defend themselves against the arms somebody is shipping south, what would they have?"

  Jack approved of where her thinking was headed. "Since the Soviets collapsed and everybody cashed in their peace dividend, the classified Order-of-Battle is the same as the public OB. What with Desert Storm, the budget cutters figured nobody'd be dumb enough to mess with us." They exchanged sardonic smiles at logic that eluded them. "Today, Europe and the US couldn't muster a dozen divisions."

  "What does Africa have?"

  "God only knows."

  "And She ain't talking." Launa ventured a half smile at the old joke.

  Jack broke into a broad grin.

  "The joke wasn't that funny?"

  "God's a woman where and when we're going."

  Launa gave him a puzzled frown.

  "People thought God was a woman 6,000 years ago." He expanded upon his comment.

  "So?"

  He had her undivided attention. "Six thousand years ago a gentle civilization lost a war. We're going to change that." He had had three weeks to get used to the idea. He did not have long to wait for her reaction.

  "Six thousand years ago! Get real, Captain." She snorted. "Don't you think it's a little late to enlist for that campaign. I mean, last time I checked, time machines were not standard issue at the post motor pool."

  Jack grinned. "I like it. You dress the craziest idea in good old Army lingo. Keep your sense of humor. You'll need it. Actually, they are issuing us a time machine."

  Jack watched Launa's eyes get wide as dismay swamped her face. "I'm just a combat engineer, no scientist, so I don't know a lot about the technical side. As I understand it, the machine started out as a mistake."

  "A mistake?" She echoed.

  "Yeah." Jack rushed to fill the silence while Launa's disbelief deepened into shock. "The Livermore Lab was doing some high energy physics stuff for Star Wars. One particular test required gigawatts, more energy than they had any right to expect to use operationally and they were on the verge of closing it down.

  “But, after the last experiment, Harrison noticed the instruments were tracking emissions before the test run. They'd seen it before and dismissed it as storage leakage. For the last three runs, she tweaked the equipment to maximize that effect. She got her boss's curiosity up and they managed to run more tests. When they finished, they were sending several watts back as far as ten minutes before they started."

  "But most of SDI closed down in the mid-90s." Launa frowned, grasping for a handle – any handle – on this discussion.

  "Right, but the world being in the energy mess it's in, energy research got extra funding. With the declassification of high energy research worldwide, we got to peek over everyone else's shoulders. Of course, our Livermore group was too busy to publish,” he finished with a sly grin.

  Launa shook her head slowly. "Okay, maybe you've got the equipment, but time travel is crazy."

  Jack approved the speed with which she went from shock to analysis and back to the attack. He tried a new slant “You read much science fiction?"

  "Some." She sat back in her chair, furrowed eyebrows concealing what thoughts lay behind her eyes.

  "A friend of mine had quite a collection when I was a kid." Jack went at this one slowly. "I'd sneak off and read it when I could. Writers from H.G. Wells on, used to toy with the problems of changing history. You know, shooting your grandpa, that sort of thing."

  Launa nodded.

  "Sometime in the 70s the more informed ones discovered quantum mechanics. From then on, most said you couldn't change history – you just created a new time line."

  "Yeah, that's most of what I've read. Has your Livermore friend figured out which one is right?"

  "She doesn't have the foggiest idea." Jack threw his hands up.

  Launa shifted in her seat and began methodically putting all the pieces together. They didn’t fit. "If we assuming for discussion purposes only that this mistake can be tricked together into an operational time machine, why go back to 4,000 B.C.? Assuming the Movement’s worth the risk, send an assassin back a few ago and solve the problem before it starts?"

  Her distaste for this solution dripped from each word, but her idealism did not stop her from voicing the logic of expedience.

  Good.

  Jack had expected this line of attack, but not the sick knot in his gut. He had had almost a month to adapt to the situation.

  "We can't because something went wrong. Much like it was with superconductor research in the 80s, the application folks were way ahead of the theory people from the start. They'd encapsulated small weights and sent them back a few minutes. Somebody wanted to run a full proof of concept test. So they sent a dog and a small vial of radioactive isotopes back 500 years. We found the vial, but no dog collar or bones. We guess the trip was successful and the mutt survived to take off for points unknown. Unfortunately, that test set up a shock wave."

  "A what?" Launa growled.

  "I need some coffee." What Jack really needed was time to construct his answer. They headed for the galley. He poured a cup while Launa knelt to rummage in the refrigerator, checking boxes of flight rations for what kind of sandwiches they held. Jack talked to her back.

  "Nobody is quite sure what happened. One group swears the isotopes did it. Another thinks we need to refine the energy flow. Both agree that for now, the shock wave blocks any time between 1,000 A.D. and the present."

  Launa groaned.

  "Food selection that bad?"

  "No, damn it." She glared up at him, agitation sharpening her voice. "Scientists shouldn't mickey mouse around with what they don't understand."

  "Lieutenant, I've met them. They're good people. They've got a tough problem and some very important people think we need an answer real fast."

  "That's stupid." Launa straightened up holding two ham sandwiches. "They ought to take their time and do it right." She handed one to Jack, grabbed a can of Diet 7-Up and followed him back to their seats.

  As she belted in, Launa continued to storm.

  "This time machine has already screwed up once. It could easily louse things up worse the next time. Do you really believe this pipe dream of a peaceful kingdom?"

  She ripped into the cellophane wrapping her sandwich, stopped and looked across at him. "We could get back there and find a world totally different from what we've been told. On top of that, no one can tell us whether we'll be changing our time line or starting off on another tangent. If we go back 6,000 years, we would be changing everything. Mozart. George Washington."

  She waved half a sandwich at him. "Good God, what are we risking? Hasn't anybody stopped to think about all that? I've just got into this thing and I can rattle off a half dozen reasons to forget the whole idea."

  Jack slowly nodded agreement. "I've raised every doubt you've named and a few more."

  "Well?"

  "There's another card." Jack admitted, then paused to swallow hard.

  Launa sat back, waiting for him to go on.

  Jack rested his eyes on the land outside the plane's window. The patchwork quilt of farms seemed so orderly, so rational. Why was not the rest of the world? He turned back to her, his words heavy.

  "The intelligenc
e communities may not have penetrated the Movement, but that doesn't mean we don't hear some things. Outside Nairobi there's a big medical research lab. It was tied in with the global effort on the AIDS epidemic. Lately the thrust of its research seems to have taken a new twist. We suspect someone is trying to modify the virus into an airborne strain. Some third hand Chinese intermediate range missiles may have recently been retrofitted to carry dispersal flasks instead of explosives."

  All color drained from Launa's face. "Nobody's stupid enough to use biological agents. A fourth year cadet knows you can't control dispersal or endurance. It's a weapon no sensible commander would touch."

  "Unfortunately, the Movement is short on War College grads," Jack observed dryly. "They don't have professionals to do the staff work for a leader who doesn't want to hear that his idea is anything less than great."

  Launa yanked her seat belt loose and shot from her chair. For a long minute she paced the aisle like a great cat in a small cage. Suddenly she froze, then turned back to Jack. "I remember how big the Movement is on hating Europeans. One recurring theme in their propaganda is our underfunding AIDS research was intentional genocide against Africa and, God, we never sent them enough drugs, even aspirin. Sweet Jesus," she exploded, "the logic of using AIDS as a weapon is there. But can't they see it's a dead end?"

  The final question was not aimed at Jack, but to the world slipping away from them beneath the wing.

  "Lieutenant, desperate people don't see the desperation in their actions."

  "Yes,” Launa’s words were little more than a whisper as she slipped back into her seat. "An occupying army would have a docile population if the people were waiting for their next dose of medicine."

  Jack nodded. "But if the release got out of control, it could finish everything that has ever been started. There are other contingencies. I keep holding onto that thought. We are only the last reserves -- the Forlorn Hope. We don't go unless there's nothing left to lose."

  He offered her the lifering he had held onto this last month – the one thought that kept his own shock and fear, helplessness and anger at bay.