The Eagle airship waited on the launch pad. Trevor exited the mansion and stepped across the grounds flanked by a Rottweiler escort. Rick Hauser loitered alongside the ship’s entry ramp. High overhead the sun began its descent behind the estate. In another hour it would disappear on the far side of the western mountain wall of the lake.
A lot of thoughts played in Trevor’s mind. He had laid it all out for his friends and yet he knew so little about the big picture. Perhaps that had been the trap since day one. As long as Trevor Stone played his part in the game then the greater powers had nothing to fear.
To hell with that.
“Sir! Do you have a comment on the course of the war?”
The shout came from one of three reporters who pushed themselves just inside the main gate. A pair of human guards held M16s to keep them back while several K9s-Dobermans and Trevor’s escort-formed a second wall of protection and flashed their canine teeth.
Up until six months ago the front gates of the estate were continually mobbed by a dozen or more reporters and cameramen. How times had changed.
One good side effect of Voggoth’s invasion.
Most of the reporters either served at the front as soldiers or served at the front as battlefield reporters. Either way, the 24-hour news cycle that had returned to The Empire in recent years had receded.
“Yes, I have a comment,” Trevor changed his trajectory and stood behind the row of protective K9s. “Those who are able to fight need to answer the call again, just as they did in the early days of the invasion. This is a desperate battle and no one can sit it out. I urge all persons of all ages and of all medical conditions to report to military centers in their regions and volunteer for duty.”
“Are you off to the front? Where are you going?” A reporter asked.
Trevor answered, “I’m going to visit an old friend.”
He turned away as the reporters scrambled to decode his answer. However, Trevor found himself more befuddled than the reporters when he saw that someone had moved to block his path to the Eagle.
She stood there on the green lawn of the estate in fatigues and a black top with her trusty M4 on her shoulder and a black beret on her head. Despite the new head gear, Trevor recognized Nina’s telltale golden ponytail dangling to her shoulder blades. He also recognized the black and gray Norwegian elkhound at her side because that dog had belonged to Richard Stone in the old world.
He walked away from the reporters not sure if his gait appeared as wobbly as it felt. He heard the guards push the trio of questioners away, out of earshot.
“Captain Forest?”
“Hello, um, sir.”
Odin, her dog, trotted to Trevor with his head lowered obediently. The beast appeared old and shaggy and his white undercoat shed in bushels. He knelt and patted his old elkhound between the ears. Nina, for her part, took notice of the body language of familiarity between the two.
She said, “I wanted to, well, I wanted to see you before I left. Or, I guess, well, before you left, too.”
“Oh,” he gave Odin another good pat then stood. “Well I’m-I’m glad you did.”
The two walked side by side along the grounds leaving the front yard in favor of the quieter north side.
He stumbled, “I don’t know if I ever really thanked you, um, for last year. You came and found me. And all. I mean, thank you.”
Trevor knew his voice trembled with nerves. He did not know that Nina heard that tremble not as nerves, but as discomfort. She nearly ran away at the sound in fear that he did not want to talk to her; that whatever she had done to make him disavow their love a decade ago was so horrible that he could not bear her presence.
Nonetheless, she stayed. An act of courage on par with anything she dared on the battlefield.
“It was my duty,” she said with a stiff resolve meant to sound soldierly. But that resolve faded. “And I wanted to,” she admitted.
They entered the shade of maples and oaks along the northern side of the mansion. Ahead lay the barn where the original pack of Grenadiers had lived and bred.
Trevor listened to her words and wished he could believe that he heard a tone of affection. But that was impossible. She did not remember what she had meant to him. She could not. That life had been stolen from her by The Order’s Bishop.
So he stepped carefully with his response, the way a nerdy teenage boy may worry that his every word to the class beauty might reveal his secret crush and cause embarrassment of a high-school apocalyptic scale.
“Through all of this you have been an excellent-an excellent warrior, Nina.”
She felt him choose his words carefully, like a master tactician moving the right pieces in order to not expose others.
He continued, “I have a great deal of respect for you. I always have.”
A breeze sent a whirlwind of decaying leaves spinning in the damp shadows beneath the trees.
She removed her beret and replied, “Sir, I–I’ve always tried my best. I’m just saying, it’s because of you. You always-I always wanted to do right by you.”
She hoped he heard an apology for whatever she had done a decade before; whatever she had done to keep him from seeking her again after The Order had stolen her memories.
They stopped near the old shooting range. Frayed clothesline still ran on pulleys and held paper targets that fluttered in the breeze. A pair of Grenadiers marched out from the K9 barn and headed off on patrol.
He wished he could take her by the shoulders, look into those blue eyes, and confess. But what good would that do? The Nina he had known and loved no longer existed.
A small helicopter swooped overhead unseen above the budding branches.
Nina struggled to keep from bursting. She stood close to him now and she realized that for years all she really wanted was to be close to him. Why had it taken her this long to understand that she loved him? He was a man with a single purpose, just as she seemed to have only one purpose. It consumed him just as her instincts drove her to battle. Yet Nina felt certain she could find more with him. It pained her-a horrid, aching pain-that apparently she had once known that greater purpose and had done something to lose it.
Trevor said, “I’ve always been able to count on you, Nina. You’ve done some of the most difficult, and nastiest, jobs in this war. I often times think of you as my sword,” he paused and grimaced as the words sounded sour to him. “I don’t mean as a thing-an object-I mean, I mean as one of the few-one of the few people I could count on no matter what. You’ve always been sturdy and true.”
She heard praise for his best soldier. She also heard an undercurrent of emotion. She feared he might say something like why did you betray me? We had something together and you screwed it up! Why?
Regardless, she refused to walk away. She had to make him know that she regretted any past misdeed. She turned and faced him with the same bravery in which she faced the nearly indestructible Shadow in Wilmington or the flying spawn from a hideous Hostile 157. Indeed, to Nina Forest affairs of the heart proved more frightening than any beast conjured in that new world.
She found her eyes locked onto his; held captive by the intensity of his stare. In those eyes she saw something-a sadness of loss-a longing. Yes, there had once been something more with this man and the memories of it scarred him.
He spoke softly, “What you did for me last summer was more than a person should be asked to do. I don’t know how it has affected you, but you know there’s more to all this than meets the eye.”
Trevor could not help but be fixated by her gaze. He wondered if he had pursued her after the removal of that implant if he could have duplicated the events that led to their union. Doing so would have been against the will of the Old Man and his ilk, but as the armies of Voggoth marched across the Great Plains he wondered if that would have been preferable; if perhaps winning this war would eventually hinge on breaking those rules.
On disobeying Gods.
Trevor’s hand rose, with no conscious thought; he felt detached from it. Perhaps the ghost of a former self seized control. That hand reached to her cheek.
“You risked a lot,” he whispered.
Nina felt his touch. She sensed warmth there and it unlocked a sensation from years ago; another memory that might have been his or might have been hers but it felt real all the same: a comfortableness in another’s soul. A feeling of sameness, of trust, of devotion.
She saw that sadness in his eyes again and felt ashamed. He had loved her once; this came through with an unmistakable energy. But she had betrayed him or hurt him or both. Intentional or not, the removal of her memories had only made it easier on her. She wished she had never seen that tape. She wished she had no recollection of all she had lost.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered an apology for what she could not remember.
Trevor withdrew his hand, embarrassed he had done something unprofessional. He unfairly placed her in an awkward position. He had no business doing that. Whatever the past, this woman was not the Nina Forest he had loved.
Still loved.
He had no right to treat her as such. He could only imagine the confusion she felt. The Emperor-the man whom she followed without question-touching her like a husband to a wife; a man to his lover. He felt guilty again. It seemed no matter what he said or did it could only compound his agony and confuse her.
“No,” he volleyed, “I’m sorry. I should not have done that.”
“It’s okay,” she grabbed his retreating hand with both of hers. “It was-it was nice. This is strange for me to say. Look, I mean, I don’t know how to put this but I’ve always, well, felt close to you. I always did my job because I didn’t want to let you down.”
His fingers trembled in her grasp. For the first time since the early days he felt a surge of confidence; confidence in his humanity. A strength that could lift him above the doubt and guilt and regret. A strong shoulder to support the weight of the world.
He stuttered, “T-tell me, Nina. Last summer-when you helped me-what did you-what did you…”
She understood.
“I felt your pain. Your fear. Whoever he was, he allowed me to take some of that from you. He said it was the only way to save you.”
“And you did.”
“I owed you,” she smiled, a little. “You did the same for me once.”
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes.
She answered the question expressed in his gaze, “Ohio. When my team was ambushed. You came all the way out there to bring me back. I’m just saying, I owed you for that.”
He admitted freely, “I couldn’t abandon you. After all you’ve meant to us-to me.”
Nina felt her heart race. There, in a simple sentence, all her suspicions confirmed.
After all you’ve meant-to me.
He slipped his hands free of her grasp. He had said too much.
“Nina, things are coming to a head now. You’ve got a soldier’s instincts, what do you feel?”
“From what you said in the meeting this morning it sounds like things don’t look good. I’m just saying, if The Order doesn’t break through at the Mississippi this next time, then they’ll just keep coming until they do.”
He put his hands on her shoulders.
“Then go after them, Nina. This is your last mission. Hit them where it hurts. They need to farm; hit their farms. They set up forward operating bases; take out their command and control. Hurt them, Nina.”
“I will,” she promised.
Trevor then leaned in close; so very, very close. She felt his breath against her cheek. She swore she could hear his heartbeat.
He spoke in a not-so-subtle code. On the surface they could each pretend he spoke of all humanity, but in reality they both knew the truth to be much more personal: “Nina, they’re the ones who stole from us. Make them pay for that. Hunt them down and hurt them. For me-and for you. For what we lost. For what they took.”
Then she felt his lips against her forehead. A gentle, light kiss.
That warm feeling returned stronger than ever. It wrapped around her in a blanket. She felt needed and loved. Without any consideration she found her arms wrapping around his waist, her face burying into his chest, and his strong hug embracing her. And with it came a power she had never known.
I love you.
When he released and stepped back, awkwardly, she found a different emotion: acute anger. For she realized now what she had once had with Trevor Stone, a feeling more powerful than any weapon she ever wielded; more intense than any firefight.
And they had taken it from her, those architects of Armageddon.
…they’re the ones who stole from us. Make them pay for that. Hunt them down and hurt them.
And she would.
They will pay.
Trevor glanced around the estate grounds. He saw no spying eyes.
She replaced the beret on her head. A soldier again.
“Good luck to you,” he offered from two full paces away.
She replied, “You, too.”
“I have to go,” he said, reluctantly. “I have to-I have to go visit an old friend. Something I have to do. That’s sort of been the story in all this,” he tried to send another message. “There have been things I’ve had to do. And things I have been forced to give up.”
She figured that whatever wrong she had done to him had been beyond the point of forgiveness. She had been one of those things he had been forced to give up because she had done something to deserve abandonment. She could not blame him; not if she had betrayed him.
“I–I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” he corrected but lightheartedly. “Maybe someday you will. Maybe someday-when all this is over-it will be clear. I don’t know if that will make things better or worse. I guess we’ll see. In any case, let me say it again: thank you, for saving me.”
Nina closed her eyes and conjured that feeling of warmth and being wanted. No matter what The Order had taken from her, at some point in the past she had been a complete person.
No, Trevor, thank you for saving me.
“Mother,” Jorgie Benjamin Stone stood at the doorway to his room with his grandfather at his side and looked in at Ashley, “I won’t need all of that. Father said we’ll be traveling light.”
Ashley had already stacked a small suitcase full of underwear, socks, and t-shirts. The second suitcase-for pants, sweatshirts, and jeans-would come next.
Her frustration boiled over.
“Well maybe your father is wrong, did you ever think of that? Did that ever cross your mind? Father isn’t always right, you know. He-he makes mistakes. He’s been known to be wrong. Maybe just once mother knows what’s best.”
Benjamin Trump-elderly and thinning-tried to intercede, “Oh, now Ashley the boy didn’t mean anything by that.”
JB’s reply came not in words but in a bear hug against his mother’s legs. She silenced her tirade and returned his hug. A lump grew in her throat. A big hole opened in her chest.
Grandpa, who had already said his goodbyes to JB over a game of catch, bowed his head and walked away.
“I’m-I’m sorry,” she apologized.
She realized her son cried. Honest-to-god tears. Deep sobs. His shoulders raised and lowered. His arms clutched tight around her legs.
For a moment he shed the trappings of the mysterious child with the evolved brain chemistry and the supernatural insights. For a moment there stood nothing more than a nine-year-old boy about to leave his mother, possibly forever.
“Mommy,” he pleaded, “I love you, Mommy. I love you!”
“I know, I know,” she stroked his hair. “Listen, JB, I won’t let Trevor take you. You don’t have to go.”
The child answered through sobs, “Yes, I do have to go. Father is right. It is the only way. But I love you, Mommy. I hope you know that. I love you so much!”
He buried his head into her again and cried. She felt damp streaks from his eyes run along her pant leg.
“I love you too, honey. I always have. You’re my son.”
“Yes,” he agreed as if it might be a revelation. “I’m your son. I came from you, too.”
Ashley grabbed his hands and knelt in front of her boy. She searched his red eyes and spoke strongly to her son. Her words held a mother’s power; a power gentle enough to sculpt the heart of a child and strong enough to change the universe.
“That’s right, Jorgie, you remember that. You are a very special boy, but you’re also my son.” She held his hands up in her own, pressing her flesh to his. “A human boy. No matter what happens-no matter what else you may be-remember that. Remember our time together. Remember what it is like to be happy and sad; to love your parents, to play catch with grandpa. Don’t you ever forget, do you hear me?”
“I won’t, Mommy.”
“Promise me.”
Jorgie-tears still flowing-stepped to the bed, grabbed his stuffed bunny wrapped in its tiny blanked, and answered his mother.
“I promise.”
Clouds rolled in over the horizon and spoiled another brilliant May sunset. The cover overhead draped the hillside graveyard in early shadows. A gust signaling an approaching thunderstorm-still far off-blew between the rows of stone markers carrying dried leaves and tiny buds in a mix of old and new.
Hauser managed to land Eagle One with his usual skill across one of the cemetery roads with the landing gear touching down between headstones. The pilot waited behind as Trevor strolled among the tombs searching each name one after another until he found his old friend.
Dante Thomas Jones.
Trevor removed the baseball cap from his head and knelt first to one knee, then to both. He stared at the letters etched in stone.
He could not forget that Dante Jones had played a pivotal role in the plot against him. Nor could he forget, however, that Dante Jones had been his friend for many years going back to the days before the old world ended.
Forgiveness? No. Not possible. Dante had known as much when he purposely aimed his pistol to miss Trevor during their confrontation atop the White House. He had known as much when he had turned that pistol to his own temple, an act of responsibility as much as escape.
“I miss you, my old friend,” and his hand touched the cold marker. “I thought I’d come and see you before I go. I may not be back. Ah, hell, I probably won’t be back. I guess I should be honest with you. I guess…” Trevor’s thoughts trailed off to memories of the last decade.
“I guess I wasn’t always honest with you. Not completely. Maybe that’s part of the reason you listened to Evan. I made you my Internal Security Director because I wanted you close, because I trusted your instincts. That’s what I told you, wasn’t it? Part of that is true, I think. But if I’m going to confess, part of the reason is just because you were my friend and I wanted to give you something to do and I could keep an eye on you if I kept you close. Maybe I didn’t think you capable of succeeding in this new world without me around to keep watch over you. But I didn’t, did I? The bigger we grew the more I expected from you and I wasn’t around to help out when it got tough.”
An early evening bat whizzed overhead in search of prey. Trevor watched it fly off until its shadowy body blended with the darkening sky.
“I’ll bet that was tough for you. Well, not in the beginning. Early on it was all easy. All black and white. You had a bunch of guys and started doing your patrols and watching out for any criminals that might have been among the ranks of the survivors. Easy stuff early on. Then as we grew-well, that’s when things got hard. I wasn’t much of a help either, was I?”
Trevor recalled chewing out Dante on more than one occasion. He remembered the creation of the Senate and how that body held influence over I.S. Legal influence that Trevor had sanctioned.
“You were caught in the middle sometimes. Okay, a lot of times. Maybe all the time, right? But I didn’t have the time to worry about it, Dante. Too much to do. Too many big things to pay attention to. That’s why I always told you how much I hated all the politicians, the procedures, the bullshit. It clouds things. Evan knew that. He played it well. He played you well.”
Trevor removed his hand from the gravestone and stood.
“I can’t forgive you, Dante, even if I do miss you. I’m sorry. Maybe I am a bit of a monster. Sometimes I feel trapped, kind of like you must’ve felt. I have to do what I have to do. I mean,” Trevor gripped his hands into fists and looked at them, “I have nothing other than this war. Over the years, I’ve come to learn something. It’s not nice. It’s not heroic. It’s actually something to be ashamed of, I think. What I’ve come to learn, Dante, is that maybe when the existence of your entire race is at stake, then maybe the ends do justify the means. Because I’ll tell you something, Dante, I will do anything to finish this. Anything.”
That thought stung.
“Even sacrifice my son. Do you know how scary that is? To know that I’m capable of anything if I think it serves the cause? Does that make me a fanatic? A dictator? That’s what the Old Man warned me about when he said my soul was damned. I can do these things but they haunt me all the same. If JB dies, it will rip my heart apart. But if I think it could save our people, then I’ll do it. I hope that doesn’t happen. I pray it doesn’t. But damn if I won’t do it.”
The tombstone did not answer.
“Hell, I don’t even know exactly what I’m doing. I just have a feeling, you know? A feeling that I have to shake things up and that he can do it.”
Another breeze blew through. Far away a soft rumble of thunder carried over the hillside cemetery.
“I have to get going. I think if you were here you’d wish me luck. I believe that. On some level you thought you were doing something that was right. You thought I had gone too far or become too powerful.”
Trevor thought about his rage-filled purges of Internal Security and the Senate upon his return. He thought about arrests and executions and instant justice dispensed in the name of exposing the guilty, punishing traitors, and streamlining The Empire to face the invasion in the West.
“Maybe you had a point after all, right? Well it won’t matter if I fail. If somehow we survive all this, then I’ll ask for forgiveness. Until then, I have to do this. I don’t think I have any choice.”
A new dawn came. The sun reached skyward from behind a horizon of ocean water. Seagulls cawed and cackled around the docks, the buildings, and the artificial reefs of overturned ships.
Most of the Naval Yard at Norfolk served as little more than a museum in the years since Armageddon. With ground wars in the south against the Hivvans and then west against California, Trevor and The Empire held little need for naval vessels. A cruel irony considering the U.S. Navy weathered the Armageddon storm better than the other military branches.
Parts of the Norfolk docks did come back on line to support and supply coastal patrols as well as long range reconnaissance and intelligence ships. The former group included The Empire’s new Barracuda-class attack subs: small, fast, and deadly. The latter group comprised a handful of nuclear powered submarines and a few surface ships used to deliver spies and arms to points around the globe.
Activity at Norfolk peaked prior to the California invasion. Gordon Knox’s intelligence apparatus kept ships coming and going constantly, particularly to Europe to support organized survivors there as well as the Caribbean where Hivvan remnants held sway over several islands.
The Order’s invasion changed Norfolk once more. As Trevor and his son Jorgie exited Eagle One on the open pavement between warehouses near a line of impressive docks, they thought the place deserted.
To the north Trevor saw dead sea warriors listing in their berths, victims in the first year of Armageddon left to rust and wither.
The bow of the cruiser USS Leyte Golf sat crumbled against its moorings as if some great force had knocked it sideways. The Destroyer USS Porter suffered a similar fate Most of its stern had been torn away land its lower decks flooded.
A brilliant white Snowy Egret perched on the tilted deck like an arrogant Admiral stubbornly refusing the loss of his ship. As Trevor stepped across the pavement the bird found The Emperor and watched him with a gaze Trevor imagined to be judgmental.
Further away the scene appeared even grimmer. Rusted hulls spoke of capsized behemoths, at least one an aircraft carrier. Trevor wondered how many brave souls lay entombed inside.
But the docks in front of Trevor and JB differed from the rest of the base. One of the southern berths hosted the frigate USS Nicholas with a crew onboard.
Two Barracuda subs stood ready at the docks, their black and gray hulls gave them an eerie, predatory appearance complimented by the hammerhead bow where two portals-like eyes-sat half in and half out of the water. A lethal-looking spine ran the length of the ship much like Jules Verne’s Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
However, Trevor and his son were not there to ride aboard either the Nicholas or the Barracudas. Their journey required something with greater range than the attack subs and a lower profile than a frigate.
The vessel that fit the bill waited in the harbor waters at the end of the main pier. In comparison to the much smaller barracudas, the USS Newport News Los Angeles-class submarine played the part of the seasoned warrior, a capable and deadly monster sporting an intimidating conning tower above a cylinder-like hull.
Not only had the Newport News won accolades in the old world, but it had already achieved legendary status as the vessel that conveyed Jon Brewer and his strike team to the arctic north to secure the ruins and turn the war to humanity’s favor. It was an elder statesman of the sea that had found fresh purpose in a new world.
Trevor and his son stopped at the edge of the pier and gazed at their waiting ride. He held a leather duffle bag in one hand. Jorgie dressed in khaki shorts and a navy blue shirt and hauled a pre-end-of-the-world The Transformers backpack complete with cartoon robots morphing into cars and planes. He also held bunny-wrapped in his protective blanket-tight to his chest.
Behind them came Rick Hauser-Trevor’s personal pilot-a blond haired man with glasses who still looked young despite being in his mid-thirties. He carried two more bags and another backpack, all heavily loaded.
“You don’t need to do this, Rick. You’ve earned a rest.”
“A rest? No, sir,” Hauser answered as he set down the heavy bags. “With you gone I’d be pretty bored. That’s what happened last year. So with all due respect, I’d just assume come with you. If you’ll have me.”
Trevor placed hand on Hauser’s shoulder in a sign of appreciation.
A navy officer wearing a captain’s uniform approached the group. He removed his cap revealing gray hair with a growing bald spot on top.
Trevor extended his free hand and asked, “Captain Farway?”
“Yes, sir,” the man offered a sincere and strong grip. “It is an honor to finally serve alongside you, Emperor.”
“Trevor. That’s about the only name I’ve been comfortable with in all this.” he replied with a shade of a grin.
Trevor held members of the old world’s military in high esteem, particularly those who had lived through action. Captain Farway’s perils at sea during the first year had reached Trevor via Jon Brewer, who had rode with Farway to Greenland six years ago. In addition, Farway had leant his services to help destroy The Order’s hidden base in the Atlantic last year, a move that might have saved The Empire. At least temporarily.
Trevor continued, “If I remember correctly, we met a few years ago during a symposium on naval organization and deployment.”
“Yes, sir, I remember. First meeting I ever had with the brass that was clear and to the point,” Farway smirked then looked to the bags. “Are all your things here?”
“Yes, Captain. What’s our time table?”
Farway replaced his cap and answered, “We’ve stripped down pretty good for speed and should make good time. I hope to get you there sometime late on Wednesday.”
Trevor calculated-five days to cross the Atlantic.
“Father, will we be under water the whole way?”
Farway answered, “That’s right, little guy. But don’t you worry; it’ll be a smooth ride.”
Hauser muttered, “Underwater-the whole-way?”
Captain Farway glanced at the pilot and answered with a grin, “That’s right. Say, you’re not claustrophobic, are you?”
Trevor answered fast, “No, no of course not. No.”
“Father, why are you sweating?”
“Say, can I help you with those things?” Farway volunteered but did not wait for an answer. He grabbed Trevor’s duffle bag as well as one of the bags from Hauser. The pilot and the navy man walked forward on the dock.
A seagull swooped low in search of food but found nothing and swooped into the sky even faster.
Trevor and Jorgie waited behind.
“Are you ready, buddy?”
JB nodded with forced enthusiasm.
Trevor held his hand down and open. The child reached up and grasped it. Trevor closed his fingers and JB’s hand nearly disappeared inside. Together father and son walked across the dock toward the Newport News.
The Snowy Egret watched from its perch aboard the destroyed USS Porter as the new arrivals worked their way inside the submarine. Soon thereafter the remaining topside sailors disappeared below and the hatches closed. The smaller attack subs-the Barracudas-powered to life and took positions alongside the larger vessel as it sailed away from its moorings. All three boats cut gentle wakes disturbing an otherwise peaceful harbor.
As the trio neared the horizon, the smaller Barracudas broke off their escort and the USS Newport News slipped beneath the waters as if to hide from the world.
The Snowy Egret could not appreciate the beauty in the sight of the war machines heading off into a rising sun, but it captured the entire scene with its mechanical eyes; recording the view on an internal storage device that was one part circuitry and one part biological mass.