Conquistadors!, page 3
The town had once been as brightly lit as any other, a shining beacon of civilisation in the darkness. Now, he could easily make out patches where the lights had failed; broken streetlights, shuttered buildings, darkness that hid a grim reality of people doing everything in their power to scrape out a living, knowing it was hopeless. The resentment was almost a palpable force, seeping into everything ... even children who might have hopes and dreams of a better life elsewhere. They learnt better, soon enough. You needed to go to the cities for hopes and dreams and moving to the cities cost money. They didn’t have it. The only way out was the military, and even that was drying up. Too many young men had gone to war and come back crippled, only to be abandoned by their country. Callam knew he’d been lucky – he’d been in the Marine Corps, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan – and that there were others who hadn’t been anywhere near so fortunate. Being crippled by terrorists and insurgents was bad enough, but being tormented by the VA was far worse.
He gritted his teeth. He knew, all too well, why so many people fantasized about violence and rebellion. There was only so much someone could take before they started looking for a way out – or revenge. He knew better, but he was one of the lucky ones. If he’d come home crippled, or found himself unable to feed his family, or watched helplessly as his wife left him, taking both the kids and two-thirds of his salary ... he’d had to arrest a man, only a week ago, for beating his wife to within an inch of her life after she’d cheated on him. The asshole had called him a traitor, and there had been part of Callam that had agreed. But adultery didn’t excuse nearly killing one’s wife ...
His mood darkened as he spotted a handful of lights up ahead, just off the beaten track. The feds were there, as they’d been for the last few days. They’d brought a handful of unmarked trucks with Federal licence plates, some clearly designed to serve as mobile homes; they’d set up enough spotlights to ensure no one, not even a lone coyote, could sneak up on them without being spotted. There was something glaringly amateurish about their set-up, Callam noted; they’d positioned their vehicles in a manner that would have earned him a sharp reprimand from any halfway-decent commanding officer back in the Sandbox. He could have led his former fire team right into the heart of their formation easily, even if they saw him coming. But then, there was no real risk of being attacked. The talk of civil war was nothing more than talk, people shooting their mouths off because they were bitter and frustrated and helpless in the face of global storms they could neither understand nor fight. The response to such talk was more dangerous than the talk itself.
And their spotlights will probably keep the cartels away, he thought, as he parked just outside the perimeter. There was nothing stopping him from driving further, but involving yourself with the feds was always risky. He’d met too many FBI, ATF and DHS agents who looked down on the locals – local yokels, they implied – and pushed them around whenever they thought they could get away with it. They’re probably not in any real danger.
He climbed out of the car and looked around, not bothering to disguise his interest. The trucks were surrounded by devices that reminded him of his service in the gulf, from counter-battery radars and sensors to gadgets that looked as if they’d come out of a science-fiction movie. It was hard not to feel a twinge of resentment as the devices glimmered under the spotlights, a grim reminder there was money for advanced fighter jets and half-baked weapons concepts that rarely worked in the field, yet almost none for securing the border or reforming the police. They could have solved so many problems, Callam was sure, if they took the money for the latest jet program and invested it in police departments across the nation, but he knew better than to expect sense from the Federal government. Or anyone, really. The governor in Austin wasn’t much better than the lame-duck President in Washington, DC. They had no contact with the folks on the ground, so the folks in Washington most likely believed the lies and bullshit they were being fed by polls and reporters who had no contact either.
And what, he asked himself, are the feds doing here?
He tried not to roll his eyes as a hatch opened, allowing a middle-aged man to clamber to the ground and hurry towards him. If he’d had bad intentions, he could have done a hell of a lot of damage before they tried to stop him ... he pushed that thought out of his head and studied the man, allowing himself a moment of relief as he noted the newcomer was neither wearing a Secret Service suit or tactical chic. The latter would have been a real problem. Someone turning up dressed as a stormtrooper could always be relied upon to make a bad problem worse, and then take no responsibility for it afterwards. Callam had solved problems by talking that the Feds had tried to solve by shooting ...
“Hey,” the newcomer said. His accent suggested he was from Washington DC, or at least he’d spent most of his time there. The shorts and shirt he wore were better suited for the heat than a suit and tie ... it was hard to be sure, but he didn’t give the impression of ever having been in the military. Callam had met drone pilots and keyboard warriors who’d had more military bearing. “What’s up?”
“It’s too late for anything being up,” Callam said, dryly. “I just wanted to check in and make sure you’re alright. Washington nags if we don’t.”
“And there I was thinking this was an independent command,” the newcomer said, equally dryly. He stuck out a hand. “Colin Cozort, Pentagon.”
Callam eyed him thoughtfully, then shook the man’s hand. The Pentagon? He was sure the man had never seen real service, not even basic training. A REMF? There was no shortage of men climbing the ranks by kissing every ass above them, and mouthing nonsense that had no place in a combat zone, but Colin Cozort didn’t seem quite that type. Callam suspected he was more of a nerd who’d been recruited into the government or intelligence services, rather than a dedicated military officer. He’d never been quite sure what to make of such types. Some had been very helpful. Others hadn’t been worth the money they’d been paid.
“Callam, Callam Boone,” he said. “Can I ask what you’re doing up here? Hunting UFOs?”
Cozort flinched, slightly. Very slightly. Callam wouldn’t have seen it if he hadn’t spent most of his career handling suspects. UFOs? God knew, there were all sorts of stories of weird sightings in the desert – flying lights, ghosts, supernatural creatures, mementos of a landscape soaked in blood – but most were little more than stories, or misidentifications. Or blatant lies told by drunkards and tourist agents. Or druggies. And yet, the Feds wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to hunt ghosts. The Federal government was incompetent, but it wasn’t that incompetent ... was it?
“Just testing some equipment out in the countryside,” Cozort said, a little too late to be convincing. “There’s too much interference close to the city.”
Callam swallowed the urge to ask more questions. Washington DC was a big city, true, but if the Pentagon wanted wide open spaces to test its latest brainwaves they didn’t need to come all the way to Texas. Hell, if they wanted to avoid interference, why park themselves so close to Flint? The town wasn’t as wired as Silicon Valley, and even the latest satellite links were barely capable of meeting the town’s needs, but it wasn’t silent. There were cellphones, CB radios and plenty of other gadgets that produced electronic signals, all of which were presumably easy to detect. It made him wonder if some of the more extreme theories were correct, and the Feds really were trying to track down dissidents ... although they hardly needed to bother. There were thousands of people in the region who hated the Feds more than anything else. Finding them wouldn’t be hard.
“I see,” he said, instead. “Are you planning to visit the town?”
“We have to complete our mission first,” Cozort said. Callam hid his amusement ... a mission, was it? “I don’t know about afterwards.”
“I’d be remiss in my duty if I didn’t invite you,” Callam said. It was true. The bars, diners and brothel – the brothel he wasn’t supposed to know existed – needed more custom. They were barely hanging on as it was, their owners all too aware that even a slight drop in income would be the end of them. “You’d be more than welcome.”
“If we have time, we will,” Cozort said. “But right now, we have work to do.”
Callam took the hint and nodded. “Take care of yourselves, out here,” he said. The spotlights were so bright there was nothing beyond the perimeter, but darkness. Flint’s lights were lost in the glare. “And give us a call if you need anything.”
Cozort nodded. “Don’t worry, we will.”
***
Colin Cozort hadn’t been sure what to expect, when the sensor network had picked up the patrol car heading towards the camp. He’d been cautioned that the locals were hostile to the federal government, for all sorts of reasons, and could be relied upon to make life difficult for anyone who waved a federal warrant card in front of them. Some of their reasons were good, others terrible, but ... the end result was the same. He allowed himself a sigh of relief as he watched the sheriff head back to his car. He’d half-expected a beer-swilling redneck wearing a MAGA hat and a shirt a few sizes too small, carrying enough guns and ammo to fight a small war. Boone had been middle-aged, fit and healthy, and clearly smart enough to talk like a civilised man ...
Just because someone lives in flyover country doesn’t make them stupid, he told himself sharply, as he turned and made his way back to the first truck. And he got alarmingly close to the truth with a single jokey guess.
He scowled inwardly, then scrambled up and into the truck. It was large enough to pass for an interstate hauler, although the interior would have surprised and horrified any trucker who saw it. The other trucks carried the sensor gear and sleeping quarters for the team; this one was the nerve centre of the entire operation. The interior was lined with consoles, linked through cables to the passive sensor network they’d deployed outside; the team could monitor the results in real time, as well as forwarding them to their superiors in Washington. Colin wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done to deserve the posting, but ... his lips twitched. He wasn’t that naive. There were many unwritten rules in Washington and one of them, he was all too aware, was that the person who made a fuss about a problem was the one assigned to fix it. Colin supposed he was lucky. He’d been given more resources than most staffers.
The operator – Alice Greenleaf – looked up at him. “Did he give you any trouble?”
“Just curious, I think,” Colin said. “And wanting to make sure we were OK out here.”
Alice sniffed. “And probably sticking his nose into our business,” she said, a hint of a sneer in her voice. “A lot of people out here think your business is everyone’s business.”
Colin shrugged – Alice had grown up in Utah, according to her file – and turned his attention to the display. The airwaves were quiet, save for a tiny scattering of electronic noise from the town. They’d noted and logged much more chatter during the daytime, but compared to Washington Flint practically had no electronic signature at all. It would have been depressing, if they’d been charged with spying on the locals. But they had bigger fish to fry.
The United States was the most heavily-protected nation on the planet, surrounded by an electronic fence designed to pick up, track and identify anything that might pose a threat, from incoming ballistic missiles and foreign spy balloons to unregistered radio transmissions and radiation surges that might – might – be a warning of terrorists smuggling dirty bombs or even outright nukes into the country. There were sensors everywhere – the border, airports, immigrant housing – keyed to collect every last scrap of data, from encrypted messages to shifts in air temperature that might indicate the presence of stealth aircraft. The sheer volume of data was staggering, and analysing it was a nightmare, but Washington dared not miss anything. If something happened, and the after-action report suggested they’d missed a glaring warning sign, heads would roll. No politician could afford to allow himself to understand the limitations of any intelligence operation, when the public wanted someone to blame. He might get blamed instead ...
Over the last few weeks, sensors had noted and logged a handful of high-energy bursts with no discernible origin, somewhere within the region. The Pentagon had been puzzled, at first, and then alarmed. The energy bursts had come and gone so rapidly half the sensors hadn’t spotted them, and quiet inquiries to determine if they were picking up something classified – it wouldn’t be the first time an enterprising ATC officer had spotted a top-secret stealth aircraft – had gone unanswered. There was nothing in the town, as far as anyone could tell, that could have produced the energy bursts, nor did they seem to have any purpose. Colin and his team had been sent south to collect more data, up close and personal. So far, they’d detected nothing beyond faint energy pulses that couldn’t be localised.
Maybe it is UFOs, Colin thought, with a flicker of dark humour. The Exotic Tech Division didn’t have any alien spacecraft in Hangar 18, no matter what barking mad conspiracy theorists insisted, but they’d noted a handful of Russian and Chinese stealth aircraft that were as good as anything the US had ever flown ... not, he supposed, that either power would announce their presence so openly. We certainly can’t track the bloody pulses before they’re gone again.
His lips twisted. No one had been able to come up with any real explanation. Some researchers speculated the energy bursts were entirely natural, just another form of electrostatic discharge; others suspected someone, for whatever reason, was deliberately generating them. Colin wasn’t sure what to believe. It wouldn’t be the first time one government arm had actually stumbled over another arm’s work – cutting-edge research was highly compartmentalised as well as classified – but Flint was an odd place to carry out any sort of research. The local region had been decaying for decades, ever since the factories were shuttered. Anyone with any sense would have moved away long ago. The idea it was a high-tech militia was just absurd ...
Although it could be the Chinese testing our borders, he reminded himself. Again.
Alice yawned. “What time do we get off shift again?”
“Five,” Colin said. They had a strict rota, at least on paper, but five days in the field had worn it down. “You can get some coffee, if you like ...”
The console bleeped. Colin tensed, feeling ice crawl down his spine as he stared at the readings. Another energy pulse, flickering randomly ... so randomly it was impossible to determine its source. The sensor feed grew rapidly, tracking the energy pulse as it grew stronger and stronger, darting around at impossible speeds. Colin had the feeling it was moving faster than the speed of light, although he had no way to prove it. It was ... remarkable. And terrifying.
“It’s getting stronger,” Alice snapped. “A lot stronger.”
“Or closer,” Colin said. The energy pulse was ... growing bigger. The more sensitive passive sensor arrays were already in trouble, on the verge of being blinded. They were designed to track tiny flickers, not energy bursts so powerful they were on the verge of becoming mini-EMPs. “Wake the others ...”
“Too late.” Alice’s voice wavered. “Something’s happening!”
An instant later, the ground shook.
Chapter Three: Castle Treathwick, Spanish Wildlands, Timeline A
“Don’t forget to be ready to deploy,” Captain (Infantry) Gareth Ruddigore ordered, his voice echoing through the regimental datanet. “Check your armour now and report any faults to your superior.”
Footman Martín Cortés tried not to show his irritation as he ran through the last set of checks, making sure his light armour was good to go. He’d checked and rechecked over the last few hours from the moment they’d been marched into the castle and shown to their deployment bays. The armour was tough, and rendered the wearer virtually invulnerable to anything the primals might shoot at him, but a technical fault could make it worse than useless. Martín had tried to manoeuvre the armour without power before – it was part of basic training – and even enhanced strength hadn’t been enough to make the suit do more than crawl. Better to discover a fault now, before they were launched into the unknown, than to have the suit fail in a combat zone. It could easily get him killed.
He paid no attention to the laughing and joking amongst the remainder of the platoon – and the regiment – as they braced themselves for deployment. He’d always been a stranger amongst them, a recruit from a client state that – no matter what the Protectorate claimed – had never been fully accepted. It had been bad enough when he’d been a raw recruit and his instructors had thought he couldn’t be trusted to wash himself, let alone handle a gun or anything more complex than a horse and cart, but worse – in a way – since he’d transferred to the PEF. It was supposed to be the quickest path to making something of himself – PEFs were always given precedence, for anything from housing to education – yet he was all too aware there were limits to how far he could go. In theory, a client who moved to the incorporated states and became more of a native than the natives could go far; in practice, it was rarely that easy. The incorporated looked down on the clients, considering them little better than primals. Martín’s children might – might – be equals. He knew he would never be.
“You know,” Footman Joyce said, “we could be facing your counterparts.”
Martín scowled. Joyce was a good man in combat, but a complete asshole everywhere else. He never let Martín forget his origins, or anything else ... personally, Martín suspected Joyce had a major inferiority complex, despite having worked his way through brutal training to earn his rank, and handled it by trying to make everyone else feel small. Martín didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if he was in any danger of being sent home if he messed up. Martín was all too aware that he could be expelled ... perhaps. It was hard to see where he’d be sent if he was trapped in another timeline ...
