EOTW II (CC Max POV) Mature complete

[greywolf]

Title: The End of the World II
Author: Greywolf
Banner by TANYA7496
Disclaimer: The characters of "Roswell" belong to Jason Katims, Melinda Metz, WB, and UPN
Category: Max and Liz, CC
Rating: Mature
Summary: Liz breaks up with Max...but the Skins attack anyway...and even with Tess...it isn't enough...not NEARLY enough.

05:30 1st Cavalry Division 2nd Brigade HQ (Deployed) Belle Fourche’ South Dakota

It was the eighth year of the Skins war….at least the eighth year that the humans were fighting them. It had been longer than that that the Skins had been preparing…infiltrating. The United States had come late to the war. The few people in the government that actually knew about the invasion…. that actually believed in the necessity to do something, had done their best…but the isolationist roots had always been present in the United States and their words had fallen on deaf ears within the government. So the consequences of Isolationism had repeated themselves one hundred years after the War to end all wars. So Europe had fallen….and most of Asia…and Australia…before the United States even joined the fight.

It was in the fifth year that the US government had been fighting against the Skins and only the most wildly optimistic expected the United States government to be able to continue the fight even another four months. The war was lost…that was clear. And the dwindling forces that were still the military of the United States of America were fighting on…not for victory…but simply to punish the inevitable victors as much as possible before they were exterminated from the planet.

It might have seemed easy to mobilize the people of the Earth against the invaders…it had seemed that way once to Col. Arthur Jeffries…but that had been long ago. The mistake, he knew, was in underestimating the extent to which the Skins had infiltrated the US government…including the military…before hostilities had even started. Some deep plants had been there since the 1950s…others were substitutes…important people….including the President and Vice President simply captured…husks cloned to duplicate their bodies…and mindraped for the information necessary for their imposters to replace them.

No, the ironic thing was that the vast majority of the people in the United States didn’t even know the world leadership was now largely Skins…as were the vast majority of those in the news media.

No, to most people….the only war being fought now was between the forces of the United States and a group of US military that had gone rogue….rebels who the real government was trying hard to bring under control.

Col Jeffries had fought that battle for five years…and he knew he was losing it. They’d fought hard…but had been betrayed at every turn. The real President of the United States had started the war as the Secretary of Transportation….the eleven people ahead of her in the Presidential succession replaced by Skin facsimiles. She and her family were in the Lincoln National Forest protected …for the moment at least…by over half of the ten thousand troops still under human control. The three thousand here…in the badlands of South Dakota…had a different mission. And they were all that was left.

No, Arthur Jeffries had no misconceptions…nor any real expectations of winning this. But he’d seen too many good men and women die to give up….to slip away into that vast throng of people who were ignorant that they were even under attack. If Jeffries was going to die…..and they were ALL going to die….he at least wanted to make the bastards pay.

As he entered the room everyone came to attention. He looked at the two battalion commanders….good men both. Lt. Col. Ramsey was an African-American….a Reserve Officer when the war started…working for a Special Unit of the FBI….not the usual pathway to fast promotion in the US Army, but war was war, and the man had certainly proved himself. The man sitting at his right was even more unusual…he’d started out the war as a civilian and of course he wasn’t entirely human. ‘ It was just too damn bad,’ Colonel Jeffries….senior commander for the remaining military forces of the United States of America thought, ‘…if we’d had a dozen like those two…LtCol Ramsey and LtCol Evans…well we might really have pulled this off.’ Instead, the men were going to get briefed on what would be their final mission.

[greywolf]

Colonel Jeffries nodded to the young Captain that now served as his aide de camp and the ceremony began.

"Citation to accompany the award of the Bronze Star to Specialist Raymond Wilson..." Jeffries waited until the young Captain finished reading the citation, "the singularly distinctive actions of Specialist Wilson reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Army," before pinning the medal on the young infantryman and shaking his left...and only remaining... hand. He went through the same ceremony with a half dozen other young soldiers...noting that neither of the young commanders had put themselves in for anything even though Jeffries knew with certainty that but for the actions of the two commanders...there would have been no survivors of this totally botched mission.

The mission had been difficult enough to begin with...move 2500 troops from New Mexico to Ft. Carson Colorado...No...that wouldn't have seemed difficult ten years ago...but the world had changed a lot in the last eight years.

It had all started with young Ramsey, almost eight years ago...and a simple motor vehicle accident involving two senior government officials on the George Washington Parkway near Washington DC. It was a stupid accident...a drunk weaving in and out of traffic...sideswiping their car...sending it into the overpass abutment. The two men...if you could call them that...had survived because their airbags deployed...but both had been rendered unconscious. They had been taken to a hospital in Fairfax Virginia...and that was likely the only reason that they were exposed...the larger hospitals in DC had already been infiltrated. But when the ER doctor took the x-rays of the unconscious men...the unconscious senior government officials...and saw that they weren't human...he'd called his neighbor...a low level FBI agent. That man had called Ramsey...remembering he had been in the Special Unit for almost a month...before it was decommissioned....and Ramsey had done the rest.

The two men....well...creatures...never really were questioned. They had awakened in confinement in a basement of the FBI Training Facility at Quantico. Both had promptly suicided in a cloud of dust and human skin fragments...but there had been witnesses...and a videocamera rolling. Jeffries had been there when the frightened young man had briefed the President...back when he really was the President...not just a Skin with mindraped knowledge and a cloned husk. It had been the eternal question familiar to all members of the military...it dated back to the time of Socrates... Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ... who shall guard the guardians?

It was three years before any of them figured it out...the Secret Service was heavily infiltrated...all the way up to the Secretary of the Treasury. By that time the President was gone...the Vice President...most of the cabinet replaced by Skin-imposters...

A golden opportunity was missed during those three years...when with the right policies the US might have helped Asia and Europe resist the rising tide of Skin control...because the infiltrators and the media had controlled the knowledge that the world was even at war.


So one hundred-fifty years after the first one, the United States had its second Civil War...only there was nothing civil about it. The military had itself engaged in internecine conflict...with units that were still fully human fighting with those that had been infiltrated at the top by Skin Quislings. The chaos had been deadly to both sides and the US now lay a wasteland.

They had now fought to a bloody draw militarily, the human forces holding their small area in the Southern Rockies while the Skins ruled the bulk of the country...with 280 million people not really even knowing what was going on. But that would change within a few years, Jeffries knew. In fact, it was probably already too late. All they had was this crazy plan...and Jeffries himself was skeptical. He had debated it for almost two days with the President and his advisors. The plan had many risks...many unknowns...and success was at best highly improbable. But it had one great virtue that had ultimately decided the issue in it's favor. It was the only chance they had.

After the ceremony the Colonel approached the two commanders. "Gentlemen," he said. "...I think it is time for you to see the briefing."

"Yes Sir.." said Max Evans and Bryan Ramsey in unison.

They led the general and his aide to the small conference room that served as the headquarters of what remained of the Second Brigade of the First Cavalry Division.

[greywolf]

"Operation golden alder..." mused Jeffries once the door was closed. "What a royal fuck-up"

"No excuse, sir," said Max instantly. "I'd completely understand it if you wanted my resignation. I never really wanted to be in command....I'd be glad to serve in whatever capactity the Colonel thinks I would be most useful."

Instantly Bryan was on his feet, "That's just not fair, sir. Max's Regiment ran into four times the Skins troops we had been told to expect...plus airpower that they weren't supposed to have. If he hadn't been able to personally knock down those two Warthogs with his powerblasts, there likely wouldn't have been any survivors."

"And if Bryan hadn't rolled in with his troops on their flanks, we would have all been wiped out anyway. But no matter how you slice it, Sir, the mission was to combine our forces with the remaining troops or the 4th Infantry Division so we could bring them South...to rescue 2000 troops and add them to our forces....instead...we wind up with 750 survivors...while losing 500 of our own. It was my mission, Sir...and anything but a success."

Jeffries shook his head in irritation. "Shut up...both of you...and sit down. Max...my comments were not to imply criticism of your actions...and Bryan...you needn't worry about Max...or the other three...being accepted. You won that battle years ago. In fact, I have considerable respect for both of you....both of you are on my short list to the President to replace me if I get killed or captured by the Skins.... No, You deserve to know how this happened...so I guess we'd better tell you that first...before you get the rest of the bad news. The reason you got ambushed, Max, was we had an infiltrator on our staff...a Captain in our Intel section was actually a Skin."

"But the x-rays...how could someone...?"

"There's a new wrinkle to the Skins procedures, apparently. We didn't have a clue that the Captain had been replaced...apparently he went home to see an ailing parent three months ago...they must have gotten him then. Cloned a husk..mindraped him...sent someone else back wearing his skin so to speak. But there was a new wrinkle this time,...they embedded some sort of a device in him.."

"Something that would block x-rays? That still should have been obvious.." said Bryan.

"Nothing that crude, I'm afraid. We don't really use x-ray film anymore...just digital imaging. Apparently the device feeds some sort of a virus in to the imaging computer that makes the computer image of a skeleton appear within the outline of the Skin being x-rayed. He'd passed his checks on returning...and his monthly ones after that. All the time the Skins were getting inside info about the deployment of your troops...readying the ambush for you."

"How was this Skin discovered?" asked Max.

"Well...actually we have your sister to thank for that, Max. The President paid us a visit without much notice...and your sister pinged everyone around, just as a precaution..."

Max nodded his head slowly, realizing what must have happened. After losing almost a dozen Presidents to replacement by Skins, all of the Secret Service Personnel had been replaced. And the President herself was guarded by either Isabel or Tess at all times. Between the two of them, they had worked out the procedure they called "pinging." Max could do it...but neither well nor often. It seemed to be an offshoot of Tess's mindwarping and Isabel's dreamwalking. They could tap...just for a fraction of a second, into the mind of people...not enough to read their thoughts or anything...but to get a feel for the FLAVOR of their thoughts...and the flavor of Skins was quite distinctive.

"...anyway," the Colonel continued, "..Isabel detects the Captain right in our headquarters...15 feet away from the President.....and powerblasts him. He was out long enough for us to get a good x-ray of him...using an old fluoroscope with a phosphor screen rather than digital imaging. You could see he didn't have a human skeleton...and you could see the device as well. He suicided as soon as he woke up and we recovered the device from his fragments. Ultimately we found two others as well...both of them suicided when they realized we were on to them. So Max...you can stop blaming yourself...you two were set up...and if there's any responsibility for this debacle, it's mine. I don't want any talk about your resignation...not now...not ever. We don't have people of your abilities to waste...and that goes for both of you. In fact...we are pretty much running out of people to fight this war altogether."

"How bad is it, sir?"

"Well...counting your forces out here...we are probably down to about ten thousand people under firm command and control...perhaps five thousand others that we believe to be still under human control, fighting as guerillas within Skin controlled space. Some of those we get straggling in...like the V-22s and the personnel that flew them. They came to us about a month ago...they were test pilots at Patuxent..they witnessed an accident...one of their senior officers accidentally walked into the tail rotor of a helicopter and instead of guts and gore all over the place...there was a poof of dust and skin. At that point they realized their chain of command was lying to them...that there really were aliens here. They got in to the nearest fueled aircraft that were still flyable and defected to the 'rebels' as the civilian media calls us."

"I wondered where you'd gotten the aircraft, sir," said Bryan. "Those are the first fixed wing assets we've seen in years....excepting those two damn A-10s"

Max nodded. The Air Force had largely punched itself out in the early years of the conflict with human units and Skins-infiltated units nearly cancelling themselves out in a massive bloodbath.

"Well.., " said the Colonel. "There are dibs and dabs of the old forces left...some quite unexpected. But we'll get to that later. First you need a background brief before I tell you your next mission. Before you tell me I'm insane to order you to do this...I need for you to know that there is really no other choice."

[greywolf]

The lights were dimmed in the small conference room and Jeffries nodded to his aide to flash up the first slide. “For orientation…gentlemen…this is an area of Western China near the Huai River….as seen from one of our reconnaissance satellites three weeks ago.”

Max and Bryan looked at each other in surprise. Finally Max blurted it out…”We have a reconnaissance satellite?”

Jeffries chuckled. “No…we have eight reconnaissance satellites. The Skins took them over when they took over the Pentagon…and most of the government in Washington DC. Your brother-in-law, Max,...took them back about three weeks ago…don’t ask me how. Something to do with an old satellite TV dish and some major league hacking…anyway, for right now we have the Department of Defense reconnaissance satellites…and with Canaveral largely destroyed, the Skins won’t be able to replace their lost assets for some time. Of course, they’ve got the European and Chinese satellites, but they never had the resolution that ours did. But that’s the good news. What we see in this slide….well that’s the bad news.”

The satellite photo showed an ugly brown cloud…and as the Colonel put up additional slides the magnification increased…to show a line of factories on the upwind side pumping out bilious brownish-yellow fumes.

But as the magnification jumped to higher and higher levels something like a greenhouse was visible next to one of the factories…and as the magnification increased even more….bipedal figures were visible in the brown air of the greenhouse…bipedal but definitely not human.

“What is that?” asked Bryan…revolted by the sight of the creature.

“That, LtCol. Ramsey..,” said Jefferies, “…is a living breathing oxymoron….a Skin without his skin.”

“You mean..?”

“Yes, a Skin without his husk…right now confined to that sort of greenhouse there where the concentration of that brownish green gas is able to protect him from the effects of the oxygen in the atmosphere…and there’s more…and it’s worse…this is just one group of a series of factories in China….they will soon number in the hundreds…with more ready to go online in Europe. And here’s what they leave in their path….”

The next slide was of the area that had been downwind of the factory…although clearly the wind had shifted. People…human people…people lay dead everywhere downwind of the factory…dead in the tens of thousands…maybe the hundreds of thousands…

“This gentlemen,” said Jefferies… “..is the Skin plan for the Earth..they intend to make it their own…they intend to be able to walk upon it without husks…just as they do their home world…but in order to do that…they will make it lethal to us.”

“How can they do that, sir?” asked Max. “How can we find out what that green gas is?”

”We think we already know that, actually. These factories intend to terraform the planet…or whatever the equivalent is of terraforming in terms of the Skins’ planet. They have already released huge quantities of this substance and our chemical engineers were able to isolate it from liquid oxygen produced by a plant in New Mexico. It appears to be a particularly structured halon, related to chemicals we used to use in fire extinguishers. It interferes with the ability of the oxygen in the atmosphere to react…good for them because it keeps their bodies from deteriorating to dust if they aren’t covered by husks…bad for us…because as you can see from the bodies downwind of the plant…in quantities like that…it’s an asphyxiant. It’s as simple as that, gentleman…in order for this planet to truly be theirs…we must become extinct…except perhaps for a few specimens kept in zoos or research laboratories. That apparently has been their master plan all along. Already the air we breathe..which is about 20% oxygen…well it has the oxygen value of about 19%...not enough to notice except in the upper elevations…and even then only by those with lung conditions…but in a few months…when they bring their other factories on line in China…and then the ones in Europe. The Earth will become uninhabitable for humans not in protective gear in less than a year.”

“Can it be stopped?” asked Max.

“If we could stop the factories…yes. The halon reacts with ozone in the upper atmosphere…it would reverse itself…probably in less than a decade. But those factories are in Europe and China…where effective resistance to the Skins doesn’t exist…and even here…here in the US….well gentlemen…you’ve both been at the tip of the spear for most of this war…I certainly don’t have to tell you that we are losing. Unless there is a miracle…resistance by our forces will crumble within four months…six months at the outside. That’s why I’m here ….that’s why I’m going to give you orders to do something that may be just a lunatic’s fantasy….that is probably impossible…might even be just a Skin trap…but is our last chance…our one opportunity that anyone can come up with for that miracle. And if either of you wants to turn this down…go back to your families and spend the time with them instead…well, I’d certainly understand. You’ve both done more than your share. But I’ll also tell you that I honestly don’t think I have anyone else that could possibly pull off this mission.”

[greywolf]

Bryan Ramsey looked up at Jeffries. His wife was back in New Mexico…back in the relative safety of the enclave in the southern Rockies…protected by their remaining troops…home of what was left of the true United States government. But they had a son…15 months old…barely walking. As much as he loved them both … his sons only chance was a victory over the Skins…and he couldn’t deny their child or his wife the chance to keep living…however much he might want to spend those last few months with them…however much he might be tired of the killing and the death around him. “I’m in, Sir.”

“Me too, Sir,” said Max Evans. It was easier for him. Easier to not go back to Roswell….easier to not see the other six…the six who reminded him so much of when they were eight. Easier not to see their happiness…Michael and Maria…Izzie and Alex…even Tess and Kyle… Yes….the War was a horror…but they at least had each other. No….actually it was much easier to just keep fighting …easier than being constantly reminded of what he had lost.

“Well…don’t answer too quickly, gentlemen,” said Jeffries, “…this is the plan…our last chance. Three weeks ago we were contacted by a young man …a volunteer from St. George Utah with a rather unusual story.
The Skins have apparently great difficulty infiltrating into the Mormon religion…. We believe that because these people live their lives immersed in it…there may just be too much information for them to mindrape…but that’s only speculation. Hell, the Skins may just require caffeine as a trace element or something…we really don’t know..but for whatever reason the Mormon church has continued pretty much unaffected by this…what few Skins have tried to penetrate it have apparently been detected fairly readily…they just don’t blend in that well.

In any event, there continues to be a fairly regular traffic between the Mormon temples in places like St. George and the main temple in Salt Lake City, and while in Salt Lake City this young man…now PFC Arthur Young…well he heard a fascinating story. Since we had the V-22s and this was well within their range we flew a team out to Utah….to the old Dugway Proving Grounds…to check out his story….and the story is a fascinating one…if it’s true.


The story begins with this man Colonel Jonathan Taylor. That’s the only picture we could actually find of him in our records…back in the early 1950s. He was a young infantry officer then…and shortly thereafter transferred to the Chemical Corps and was assigned to the Proving Grounds at Dugway Utah.

Bryan immediately looked troubled. “Sir…that would make this man at least 75…if he is still alive at all. That’s sort of past mandatory retirement age…even for a Colonel,” he added…perhaps none too tactfully. But Jefferies only smiled.

“It would make him eighty-two according to his military records…or what we can find of them. He retired over two decades ago…but Taylor had been in the Chemical Corps in its heyday…back before President Nixon cancelled their offensive capabilities. He spent most of his career in it and even after his retirement was hired back as a civilian consultant at Ft. DetrickMaryland in their biowarfare defense program. But Taylor was a Regular Army Officer…subject to recall in the event of national emergency and apparently before the Skins got to him…when the East Coast was embroiled in fighting between Skins infiltrated units and our units….well the Secretary of the Interior called up all Regular Officers available and Col Taylor got his dusty old uniform out of some trunk and went back on active duty. Two months later, all the major urban areas fell to the Skins, but during the fighting Taylor apparently took a group of his troops and somehow moved them through the chaos to the old laboratory at Dugway where for four and a half years ..…up until about four months ago, they have been doing research on how to stop the Skins.

Two weeks ago we put a team in one of the V-22s, and headed up to Dugway. The laboratory itself was deserted, but the team went to the Tooele Chemical Depot airbase scrounging for fuel and struck paydirt. They contacted a number of reservists who were able to tell them what Taylor was up to. He apparently had a number of contacts in the region from his previous assignment there…most of them up in Ogden Utah.

Ogden Utah is the home of Thiokol, the company that made many of our solid fuel missiles…back before the Skins worked through their replacements in our Congress to get them decommissioned them in preparation for their takeover. It sounded good…..peace in our time…but what they were really doing was getting rid of the only weapons we had that might have been able to hit those factories in Europe and China, had their efforts to use their duplicates to take over our own government not been successful. But although the programs went away…the corporate memory did not. Colonel Taylor believed that his people were close to a breakthrough…some sort of a chemical that could destroy the Skins….but they did not have a delivery device. Colonel Taylor’s concern was that even if they could use the weapon locally…it wouldn’t matter. The Skins would pull back….marshal their forces…and hit them with stand-off weapons as soon as they could bring those forces to bear. The fact is that we are currently at a disadvantage in pretty much every heavy weapon to the Skins, so in that respect, I believe Colonel Taylor was right….even without knowing about the factories in China and Europe that will be belching out halon regardless of what would happen solely within the United States.”

”Are you saying that Colonel Taylor found some intercontinental range delivery vehicle?” asked LtCol Ramsey.

“That’s EXACTLY what I’m saying.”

[greywolf]

“This…gentlemen, is where Colonel Taylor is going…a small installation in Missouri that was closed some time ago. Judging by the satellite imaging we have of his convoy, he should be arriving there in two days.”

“What’s there?” asked Bryan. “It really doesn’t look like much of anything, really.”

“Here’s a closeup….it might give you a better idea of what he is up to,” said Jeffries.

“A minuteman silo?” questioned Max. “I thought all of them were decommissioned and destroyed ages ago.”

“The ones with warheads were. This one…and another several miles from it, haven’t had warheads since 1967. This is one of two Minuteman ERCS sites.”

“ERCS, Sir?” asked Max.

“ERCS stood for the Emergency Rocket Communication System, Max. It was originally part of the Strategic Air Command…probably the most paranoid military outfit ever to exist. Did you ever see the movie Dr. Strangelove? Probably before your time. The pilot in that movie…Major Kong…well he kind of typified SAC. Those guys had back up systems…back up to their backups…and backups to them. Hell, until they had a few planes crash actually carrying nuclear weapons, they flew what were called chrome dome missions where they had about twenty percent of their bombers armed and in the air at all time. The ERCS program was later than that…but about as much overkill. SAC had two secure hard communication lines to each of their missile silos…two UHF and two VHF radios in each silo, one secure teletype in each silo, and additional airborne communication from the Looking Glass command post aircraft….but even that wasn’t enough for them. When the Minuteman II missiles were replaced by Minuteman IIIs, they took the warheads off two of the old missiles and replaced them with radio transmitters, so even if all other communication was destroyed, they could fire these two missiles off and blanket the globe with radio messages ordering the missiles to be fired.

What Colonel Taylor found out from the Thiokol personnel was that these two missiles were not considered a threat when all the ones with warheads were decommissioned. They were just capped and left in place. His intent is to use them…use them to spread this agent he has almost gotten done developing….spread it throughout the world. The only problem is…our satellite imaging shows that the Skins are going to get to those silos before he is going to be ready. Your mission, gentlemen, will be to intercept those forces and hold them long enough for the research to be completed…the agent weaponized…and for those missiles to be launched.”

“That would mean moving our troops almost nine hundred miles, Sir.”

“Yes Max….yes it would.”

“With all due respect, Sir…this doesn’t make any sense,” said Max.

[greywolf]

"Go ahead, son," said Jefferies to Max. "Tell us your concerns..."


Well.." said Max, "I don't know as much about chemistry and biology as the experts, but I had quite a bit of science in Junior High and High School and knew someone who was very good at both.."

The pain came again...was it a pain in his heart...or just a lump in his gut...he was never really sure. But the image had passed through his memory again...her long brown hair...her eyes sparkling...even under the safety goggles they's worn then...back when they were lab partners...the three years in junior high school and high school when she'd been only a dream...but most of all the year and a half when he'd really thought they had a chance...back before she'd left. He hadn't seen her...hadn't heard from her in over eight years...not since that horrible day....

"You were saying, son?" Jefferies asked, pulling Max back to the here and now of reality.

"Uh...yes sir, sorry. What I was saying was that this doesn't make any sense. First of all...how could you test an agent like this? We've never taken a Skin alive...I've been fighting them for longer than anyone else in this room, and never even saw one without their husk until that slide you just showed. There are no animal models to test....I mean, all the animals on Earth are pretty much like us...we all pretty much die if the oxygen goes too low. Nothing I can think of would be a good test animal...even if you had some sort of a chemical agent. It can't really be a biological agent...because we have no access to the biology of their world.So how does someone test this agent? How on earth could you know if it was going to work or not? Then there's the other problem...volume. You can see that even with huge factories...it's taking quite awhile for the Skins to do what they are doing to affect us. I don't know what the payload is of these missiles...it can't be more than a few thousand pounds at most though...What's the volume of air in the atmosphere..?"

'Liz could do stuff like that in her head,' he remembered...the pain eating at him again...

"Well....hundreds of thousands of cubic miles anyway. Dilute a couple of thousand pounds of agent in all that air....I just don't see how it could possibly work, sir."

Max saw the look in Jefferies face as what he had said sunk in. The man suddenly looked very old...almost ancient. He couldn't help feeling sorry for the man. It wasn't his fault...or the current President's fault. Both had been far down the ladder of responsibility when the situation with the Skins had blindsided everyone. The man could be a five star general now...if he asked for it...not that anyone had seen a paycheck in the last four years anyway. It didn't matter...he was the senior commander...and doing the best that he could in a situation that was probably lost to begin with. And it was probably just that he didn't wish to add to the man's feeling of failure....a feeling that Max already knew too well, that made him say the next words.

"But then....Hell, Sir....What do I know? How about you have me take the mission...send Bryan here home to his wife and kid."

"No way, Max. I got you in to this mess...recruiting the four of you...actually getting you to agree to help, after the Special Unit put you through Hell. If you are in on this...so am I."

[greywolf]

“Well gentleman,” said Jefferies, “…if that’s settled then…let us go on with the briefing….”

Colonel Taylor started his trip at Dugway…then moved by convoy to Ogden. Many of the Reserve officers in the National Guard there worked at Thiokol, and they apparently believe they have the skills and any necessary materials to put this agent that Colonel Taylor has developed in the two remaining missiles. As you know, the Skins are strongest on both coasts. Here in the Rocky Mountain States they are at their weakest…and there are still a number of small national guard units like the one in Ogden that have neither been infiltrated nor destroyed.

Colonel Taylor took with him essentially Battery ‘A’ of the 1st Batallion of the 145th Field Artillery Artillery. Strangely enough, fate smiled on us here. The Guard units have long complained that they got the oldest and least sophisticated equipment. Battery A has the old M-198 Towed 155mm Howitzers pulled by the old 5-ton M-925 Diesel trucks. I honestly don’t think that the newer self-propelled tubes could do 900 miles over the roads…at least not without a whole lot of logistics support that rubber-tired vehicles don’t require.”

”No infantry support?” asked Bryan.

“Yes…that would have been a major problem if he’d have run up against any substantial Skin forces. His own personnel were essentially researchers and technicians it appears. They apparently came up with some LMTVs on the East coast mounting 50 caliber machine guns…but they certainly had no infantry. While the artillery brigade could fight dismounted as infantry, that would have severely impacted their ability to perform their primary mission. From the look of the satellite imagery, what Taylor did was to divide his artillery forces in two and leapfrog the units 10 or 12 miles at a time. With the unit in the rear having the ability to provide supporting fire to the unit that was moving forward…at least until the forward unit was dug in…then the trailing unit would catch up and proceed out another 10 or 12 miles.”

“That strategy would depend upon not getting hit from the sides or back by anything faster than a towed artillery unit,” said Max. “That’s a hell of a risk.”

“Could be…but he appears to have pulled it off. The scout units of Taylor’s convoy were arriving at the Minuteman sites just as I took off to fly up here,” said Jefferies.

“Well what’s the problem then?” asked Bryan.

“The problem, gentlemen, is this…,” said Jeffries as he advanced to the next slide. “This is a Skins force…moving toward those same Minuteman silos.”

“Taylor has been detected?” asked Bryan.

“No…we don’t believe so. This is similar to the forces used in China and in Europe…the forces that constructed those factories for manufacturing halon.
Unlike most of the forces we fight….our own countrymen deluded by Skin infiltrators into believing we are their enemy…these forces are all Skins. There are still almost 240 million people left in the United States from a pre-War population of almost 300 million. We estimate there are slightly more than a million skins in the US…probably no more than 10 million worldwide. They can’t afford to let the average citizen start to doubt the propaganda that we are rebels. That’s why they can’t have any humans see what they are doing…why they have at least five thousand of their own infantry to clear humans from the area…one way or another…before the factories are built.
We have had the incredible bad luck for them to choose the area of the missile silos as the new construction area for their halon factories. These forces will arrive in the neighborhood of Colonel Taylor and his forces in…perhaps four days. We estimate their scouts will find Colonel Taylor within 24 hours after that. The country is pretty flat…no way for a few units to hold with no infantry support from an encircling force. The Skins will quickly encircle…come at him from all sides. Taylor’s artillery may get a few of them…especially if they have good spotters…but 5000 small mobile targets..? It’s unlikely that there will be anyone alive on the surface within 24 hours after contact.”

“But they could survive underground…?” asked Bryan.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” said Max. “The purpose of getting there is to fire those missiles. The Skins could park a truck on the silo hatch…or just have someone ready to shoot the damn missiles as they are launched…before they get going fast. Any survivors might as well be in their own tombs if they can’t get those missiles to fire.”

“That is the problem….precisely,” said Jefferies. “But with a few thousand infantry to engage farther out…slow the Skins infantry up…especially if Taylor’s artillery can provide fire support…”

“We could hold them for a week at least…probably several. How long will it take Taylor to get his missiles loaded and ready to fire?” asked Max.

“Therein lies the problem, gentlemen. We don’t know. And more than likely, neither does Taylor. It depends entirely on how much the systems in those silos have deteriorated in a dozen years…and how good the Ogden people are at getting them back on line. “

So all we have to do…,” asked Bryan, “…is to take our people 900 miles in three or four days…intercept the Skins…and hold until relieved?”

“Well, yes…,” said Jefferies, “…except you aren’t going to be relieved. The Skins are apparently making a major push in the panhandle of Texas…probably coming for the enclave. We will have no chance of getting troops through to relieve you from New Mexico. Your job, gentlemen, is to hold until Taylor fires those missiles…or until you can hold no longer….and I doubt that the Skins will take any prisoners…”

“Sir…if we are leaving tomorrow…we should contact our personnel…get them moving on this,” said Max.

“All in good time, gentlemen. When was the last time that either of you had a break? When you just had an evening off?”

“Sir…this wouldn’t be a good time…,” Max started.

“Gentlemen…I can’t give you much in the way of support..but I can give you this. Both of you have perfectly competent second in commands…quite capable of planning a route march. Send them and your senior NCOs here and the Captain and I will brief them of the tactical mission…without mentioning the missiles or Colonel Taylor….just in case they should be captured.

But tonight, I want the two of you to take the night off….relax. If anything comes up, your subordinates will handle it…if they can’t, I will, and if…and only if…I can’t, I assure you we will contact you. But right now I want you two to just stand down. You have the most important mission of your lives coming up…I want you rested.”

“Yessir…” echoed the two officers.

[greywolf]

1900 (that’s 7PM, civilian time), the Officer’s recreation tent, AKA, the O-club.

Bryan couldn’t help but marvel how the brigade junior officers managed to find the makings of an officer’s club, even in remote and rural areas. But it shouldn’t really have been such a surprise. Although transportation of foodstuffs to market was severely limited by damage done to the country’s infrastructure by five years of warfare, the central and mountain west rural areas still did reasonably well. They had long since converted their diesel tractors to run on biodiesel, and they produced grain crops in abundance. And it didn’t take long for farmboys to discover that heavy and hard to transport grain required a lot less transportation if you first fermented it…then converted it to distilled spirits. Just as in the days of the Whiskey Rebellion, the rural areas were just being practical.

Although there was sometimes reluctance from some of the people to accept military scrip….the Skins had changed the legal currency twice to try to deny resources to the remaining forces of the true US government, the De Beers company had labored for a hundred and thirty years to convince the public that shiny pieces of crystallized carbon that were really not all that rare, were somehow extremely valuable. Even with the chaos of the war, people seemed to be quite happy to exchange whatever they had with the shiny baubles a young Lieutenant Colonel could make out of charcoal with his molecular manipulation. Strangely enough, he never imbibed himself, however.

“I’ll just have a beer..” said Bryan to the bartender. The bartender looked at Max and didn’t even ask…giving him a tonic water.

Bryan thought it curious that none of the aliens…that is…the four aliens he had recruited, ever drank alcohol. Kyle Valenti had told him once that aliens were wusses…couldn’t handle their alcohol. His wife Tess had said that had to be right….she must have been drunk to marry him. But it was clear that drunk or sober…those two were a pair. The same for Isabel and Alex, and Maria and Michael. But he often worried about Max. Max had nobody.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have the opportunity. One strange thing about wars is that people tend to live for the moment. When you may die tomorrow....you tend to take what life offers you today. There were quite a few female officers in the US human forces…and over the years many of them had hit on Max. But he never even considered it…and that was too bad. He needed something…or more likely…someone. He carried around with him a picture of some high school age girl…of course the picture was pretty old….she was probably about Max’s age. But he never seemed to want to talk about her and when Bryan had asked, just put the picture out of sight.

Max had gotten about halfway through the tonic water when the bartender came up to him.

“The lady wants to buy you a drink…,” he said, nodding his head toward one of the young Navy Lieutenants dressed in flight suits who had been the crew of Colonel Jefferies’ V-22. The young lady saw Max look at her, and walked over toward him carrying her own drink.

“Care to drink with me, Colonel..?” she asked, smiling broadly.

“I’m sorry…I’m afraid I’m not very good company right now…it’s been a long day…I think I’ll just go to bed early.”

The Lieutenant sucked some red fruit-flavored drink through a straw as she pushed up closer to him, her voice becoming husky as she said, “
going to bed early…and company…well they don’t have to be mutually exclusive…?”

Max smiled. “I really am flattered…..but I’m afraid I do have to go. Thanks for the offer though.”

“Well if you should change your mind…you know where to find me,” she said, as she went back to drink with the other female pilot.

“What in hell is wrong with you, Max?” asked Bryan.

“What do you mean?”

“Max….she's not a subordinate...not even in the same service....and you are more desperately in need of getting laid than any alien I know.”

“Well you only know four…and three of them are married.”

“That’s just it…it’s obvious that they found someone. You…hell…you won’t even look…. And when they practically force themselves on you…Hell, I think you powerblasted that little 2nd Lieutenant Intel officer back in New Mexico.”

“I did nothing of the sort…it’s just that….”

”Just that what? I’ve been dying to hear this…..”

Max shook his head. “Just that…well…I guess I’m kind of a bigot, Bryan. I just never cared much for Earth girls… and it’s time for me to get to bed.”

As Max left…going toward his quarters, Bryan just shook his head.
“You ain’t any bigot, Max,” Bryan muttered to himself as he thought of the picture that he knew was next to Max’s bunk, “…and you’re a piss-poor liar too…”

[greywolf]

Rank has it's privileges...even in an army in the field...although most civilians wouldn't have recognized Max's 'room' as the luxury it was. It was only a corner of the Temper-tent, with an extra interior partition put in to give the commander privacy. The luxurious accomodations were about five feet by twelve feet and included a cot with a small table that held an alarm clock, a small desk with a chair and two large deployment bags that carried everything that the US Army had issued him and those few small possessions of his own that remained of the civilian life that had once been his.

But of all those things, there was only the one that was really important to him. As he entered the room he went to the compartment it was zipped in to and removed it... He put the picture on the small table next to the bunk and stared at it.

She'd only been sixteen when the picture had been taken...she had been so young....well...they both had. It was the first date they'd had after they'd found the orb...the first time their parents had let them get back together after grounding them both for two weeks. It was a time of such joy...such happiness....

"Hi...,' he said to the picture. "...it's been an interesting day. Things...well...the war isn't going any better...in fact...," his voiced choked up. It was silly, really. It was just a picture, but he couldn't bring himself to break the news to her. He always talked to her...to the picture...to the memory of what he had once had...back when the world had been...normal...back before he'd destroyed what they had.

Max didn't know where she was...what had become of her...even if she was still alive. This picture...and the memories...they were all he had of her. He talked to the picture...any time he had something difficult to do...tried to imagine what she'd have told him if she was really there...she was his only confidante...and strangely enough...he valued these talks with her far more than he did with real people. Maybe that was why he was so reluctant to tell her....tell her that it was all but over...just one last final hopeless mission to support some crazy old Cold Warrior who was almost certainly senile...someone who believed he had a weapon that would defeat an army that they'd never really understood. No, he didn't want to tell her that her sacrifice had been in vain...not even tell that to this picture, which was all he had left of her...just this picture...and the memories. And even the memories...some of those were pretty awful...as he remembered what he'd done to her...how he treated her....

• "Why, Liz? How could you do it? You and Kyle?"
  
  "Max, I told you...I don't want to die for you...I want a normal life...and I can never have that with you. You have your Four...your destiny..."
  
  "Don't give me that crap, Liz. We had something special....something beautiful...and you tossed it away to crawl into bed with that bastard.."
  
  "Well at least he's a HUMAN bastard, Max. I have my kind...you have yours..."
  
  "Please Liz...I'm begging you. You don't love Kyle...you haven't even gone out with him since that night. I don't believe you love him..."
  
  The tears slid down her cheeks as she looked up to him. "You're making this so hard, Max. You just don't get it... It's over.... It... it was never about Kyle...it was about showing you that it was over..."
  
  "You slept with Kyle to send me a message? I don't believe that, Liz. You wouldn't have done that...you aren't capable of that. You wouldn't have done that to me...you wouldn't have even done that to Kyle..."
  
  There were tears...and pain...in her eyes as she looked up to him. "The truth is...Kyle wasn't that good...I've had better....quite a few that were better...but he served his purpose....at least if he made YOU understand that it is over..."
  
  

He shuddered as the memory came back to him...his hand had flown of it's own accord to slap her cheek. The words still echoed in his mind...he still didn't understand how his mouth had said them....

• "You little slut..."

It had been over eight years ago...the last time he'd ever seen her. Eight years ago... before he'd understood...before he'd discovered what she had done...why she had done it....before he'd realized how badly he'd failed her.

Max laid back on the bunk...tears trickling back toward his ears as he looked up at the picture and started to talk.

"The Colonel came today...things aren't any better...it's really down to a few more months at most. The mission he gave us...well...it's insane. The only good thing about it is I'll get to kill a few more Skins..."

Max hated the Skins....hated them more than just about anything....hated them almost as much as he hated himself for what he'd said...and for how he'd failed her.

He talked to her for about a half hour....then went off to shower. What he really dreaded was the night...the dreams that came then...the dreams of what he'd once had...and how he'd lost it.