EOTW II (CC Max POV) Mature complete

[greywolf]

0145 LtCol Max Evans quarters, 1st Cavalry Division 2nd Brigade HQ (Deployed) Belle Fourche’ South Dakota

It wasn’t that he didn’t realize he needed to sleep. After all, in four hours they’d be starting a nine hundred mile troop deployment through a multi state area where marauding units of Skins were based for the very purpose of finding and destroying the remaining US forces. While they would have the advantage of a large and hopefully fast moving force, there was little doubt that if the Skins detected them and bogged them down very long, they could soon mobilize forces that would overwhelm the lightly armed infantry. Max knew how important being rested was…he’d been doing this for five years. But sleep just wouldn’t come.

He turned the flashlight on and shone it upon the picture in the frame on the small desk. The flashlight had its red lens in…to preserve the night vision of the user, and it cast a rosy glow on her picture.

‘God, she was beautiful…,’ he thought. Even that last day…the day she’d walked away..her right cheek red where he’d slapped her…almost as red as her picture was from the light of the flashlight…even then she’d been beautiful.

• He’d tried his best to hate her for what she’d done…but in the end, he’d wound up hating himself because he really couldn’t bring himself to hate her. What kind of a man was he…to let her do that to him…and still be so weak he knew he knew he’d take her back…if only she’d have him, he asked himself? But he tried his best…and if he couldn’t hate her…at least there was someone he could hate.
  
  It happened four and a half years ago…the attack by a Skins suicide group on their main stronghold. The target had been the President…and they’d come real close. Tess had been on duty and she survived the initial charge that had killed most of the Presidential protective detail…and she had fought them for almost ten minutes…powerblasts against anti-armor munitions. She was unhurt…but exhausted by the time help had arrived.
  
  Kyle had just made First Lieutenant, and as he was returning from a patrol with two humvees full of troops. Kyle had asked to be let off to see his wife and as the patrol approached the presidential residence they heard the firing..saw the carnage.
  
  The patrol came in fast on the flank of the Skins in a savage desperate attack and they stopped them…at the cost of three dead and four badly wounded.
  Max had gotten there only minutes later…the fighting was all over…but the dying was still going on. He healed the first three wounded…nearly exhausting himself…before he pulled himself to the fourth person…to Kyle Valenti.
  
  He had looked down at Kyle’s face…pale from the blood loss…but all he could see was Kyle Valenti as he had looked through the window of her room…lying in bed next to her. He froze…it wasn’t any conscious thought really…just stunned by that memory.
  
  • “Max…snap out of it…you’ve got to do this…you’ve got to save him..” said a tearful Tess.
    
    “I’m…I’m tired…weak…” Max said..stumbling a step backwards…the memory of that night crushing his very soul. “I can’t..”
    
    The powerblast hit him then…not a strong one…Tess had almost given her all just holding off the Skins..but enough to send him flying into the wall. She was on him in a fraction of a second…her fists pounding on him…too exhausted to use her powers so soon.
    
    “I don’t care how weak you are, Max…I don’t care if it kills you…that’s Kyle….that’s my husband….you need to heal him…and heal him NOW,” she’d screamed at him in desperation.
    
    Somehow he’d shaken the cobwebs out of his brain…connected….healed Kyle…and seen in the connection. She’d never even done it with him…it was all a ruse. He’d almost let an innocent man die…an innocent man who had only done what a “friend” asked…without any knowledge of the pain he had caused. Kyle had been manipulated by her just as much as he himself had been.
    
    That was the day….the very first day…almost three years after she had left…when he’d finally been able to hate her.
    
    “Kyle, I’m sorry…Tess…”
    
    “Nothing to be sorry about, Max,” said Kyle. “A person can only do so much…even you. These guys on my squad…they’re important to me too. If you needed to rest a minute…I understand…I’m sorry if Tess got a little carried away there..I know you were doing everything you could…and I AM very grateful.”
    
    “Sorry Max..” said Tess…clinging to her husband…unwilling to let go of his hand…unwilling to even let her eyes leave Kyle’s face. “I shouldn’t have panicked…but that was so close…”
    
    “I’m still sorry Kyle…sorry I froze,” ‘…and sorry I’ve hated you for all these years when I should have hated her…’

[greywolf]

0240 LtCol Max Evans quarters, 1st Cavalry Division 2nd Brigade HQ (Deployed) Belle Fourche’ South Dakota

He remembered that week...the week he had hated her so. Even though his heart told him it was horribly wrong...his mind didn't care. Perhaps his mind needed that....to wrap Max Evans in the mantle of martyrdom...to think of himself the victim of a cruel and evil woman. It would let him excuse himself...excuse himself from slapping her...from calling her that...from watching her walk off...and just letting her go. His mind needed the hatred desperately to justify those actions...and his mind had felt so smug and secure in his own righteousness and her cruelty and evil. But it hadn't lasted long...barely a week.

He had been sulking by himself at the dining hall...almost reveling in his own moral superiority to that evil girl...when they came in to the dining hall.

Maria DeLuca and Michael Guerin had made a quick trip back to Roswell to check on the families....but Maria Deluca had never returned.

"Ahem.....," said Maria, almost putting his eye out with her left hand stuck into his face. He was so sunken into the depths of his own thoughts he'd looked right by the hand to see Maria beaming above him...Michael standing smiling behind her.

• "Ahem!.." Maria repeated...the wedding band held mere millimeters from his nose. He forced his eyes to concentrate on the plain golden band...the realization suddenly dawning on him....
  
  "Well congratulations....he finally got off his alien butt and actually married you...you're a lucky man, Michael. Maria....my sincerest condolences..."
  
  "Hey',..don't give my spaceboy a hard time., Max He's mine now...officially."
  
  "Max...I wish you could have been there...for my best man I mean," said Michael. "It's just that...there was this really beautiful old mission chapel we drove by going to Roswell...and I couldn't get it out of my mind all the time we were home. When we came back and I saw it...I just told myself...'she's the only girl for you...you know that...why don't you..'"
  
  "That's understandable, Michael...and I forgive you. If you'd had any sense at all, you'd have done it years ago. Maria...if you'd have had any sense...you'd have turned him down," said Max, feeling the best he'd felt in a week.
  
  "I have to admit," said Maria, "..it would have been nice to have a real big wedding...you as best man...Liz as Maid of honor..."
  
  and that's when his head had over-ruled his heart... 'Liz,' he knew.., 'was no maiden...and she had damn little honor.'
  
  "I doubt we'll ever see that treacherous little bitch again," he'd said...the words escaping from his lips before he'd given them conscious thought. That's when the ground had come up and hit him.
  
  
  He decided later that it must have been his week to have girls beat him up as he picked himself up, the sting of the slap having knocked him off the folding chair and onto the floor. The slap had been a doozey...at least equal to Tess's powerblast.
  
  • "You son of a bitch...you have no idea how much loyalty Liz had...you don't deserve her...you never did."
    
    But it wasn't the shock of the slap that had him reeling...it was that he was realizing Maria was right. He'd felt her anger....overpowering...as she had connected with the slap...and as he'd connected with her to recieve the flash of the memory....
    
    "Liz...it's got to be some kind of a hoax...a shapeshifter...or maybe a Skin.."
    
    "I kissed him, Maria....it was Max. Older...but there's no doubt. It wasn't like when I kissed Nasedo thinking he was Max...I felt Max inside him Liz...felt the fourteen years we had shared as man and wife..."

He'd laid there on the floor as Michael had tried to calm Maria down, although Michael was almost as angry himself.

'How could he have been so wrong?'
Even his mind couldn't deny the reality of what was in the flash....as incredible as it was...it was the only thing that had made sense.

And Maria had spoken the truth..., 'He didn't deserve Liz...he never had.'....

[greywolf]

• • He hadn't taken a day of leave since Bryan had recruited him and even in wartime his commander had felt obligated to give him the weekend off to go home...home to Roswell. But he hadn't much more than said hello to his parents when he found himself walking downtown.
    
    Wartime had changed Roswell. The old Air Force base was now an Army camp, and a fair number of troops used the downtown area to get some relief from the mnotonies of military life. The Crashdown had changed as well....the name and the decor. Apparently alien-themed restaurants didn't do well when you were fighting a war against aliens. The decor was mlore....patriotic...and the posters urged everyone to fight on for victory. The place was doing a lively business though...selling home made meals to troops far from home who had long grown tired of field rations and dining hall food.
    
    He'd been a Captain then....promotions came fast when the mortality of the fighting was high...at least to those who survived. He'd been directly commissioned ....he and Michael and Kyle and Alex, due to their 'special skills..,' but not everyone had Bryan's attitude toward the Four. Some people still figured that aliens were aliens...and aliens were the enemy. The murmurs went around the restaurant as he entered...from locals who knew him to people from distant parts of the country who had only heard the story of the four aliens that were on their side. It didn't take long to happen.
    
    "The only good alien is a dead alien..." said the large man in the front booth loudly. But Max didn't even hear him. He'd just seen the picture sitting behind the glass on the checkout counter where 'men in blackberry pies' had once been housed...the picture of Liz Parker ....bordered in black. Suddenly the world had just seemed to spin for Max Evans.
    
    The big man was drunk...and trying to impress his friends. "You hear me freak? You aren't welcome here..."
    
    And as the man stepped forward...planning on showing off even more for his friends ...pushing the tame alien to show how tough he was...he didn't realize he was about two seconds away from being torn apart...but somehow Nancy had.
    
    "You're the one that isn't welcome here...get out....get out now...and don't come back."
    
    "But he's a lousy..."
    
    "You heard my wife," said Jeff Parker. "We don't want your business here....get out...and take your friends with you."
    
    In five minutes, Max had been upstairs in the kitchen of their apartment...having coffee with the two of them.
    
    "I...I didn't know......"
    
    Jeff Parker had nodded his head. Nancy's eyes teared up..."I think I need to go powder my nose...," she said, before walking back into the apartment...choking back small sobs.
    
    "It was .... Boston...," Jeff said finally. "she finished her senior year of high school with her aunt in Florida...got the scholarship she'd always wanted...went off to Harvard. But as the ...situation... developed in Europe and China....well she was a cofounder of SADOL..."
    
    Max nodded as the realization dawned. It had been at the very start of the war in the US. The campuses had been alive with activity...especially after the Skins in power had taken down the internet to stop information adout them from being transmitted.
    
    The SADOL had been the updated version of the Revolutionary War Sons of Liberty that had agitated for war against the British...the Sons and Daughters of Liberty. It sounded like Liz, somehow.
    
    A huge demonstration had been organized at the Boston Commons....site of the Boston Massacre that led to the Revolutionary War. The Skins had underestimated the people of Boston...and the thousands of students that had shown up for the demonstration. They'd sent in police to break up the crowds...there had been a riot.
    
    The Skins control of the TV networks had been total but a local station had shown up to cover the event. Somehow during the riot, a dozen students had broken through the lines...trying to get to the mayor who had come to urge them to disperse. A scared police cadet had fired his TASER trying to protect the mayor and hit the mayor instead...or at least the mayor's husk.
    
    When a well known politician explodes into dust and scraps of skin on TV it DOES get your attention. It never went out over the networks....the Skins kept all news programs on time-delay...with their people at the kill-switch,...but it was seen by the local population of Boston. The Skins response had been immediate and brutal...the only nuclear weapon used in the war...one of the old suitcase bombs that had torn the center out of Boston...taking out a million people who might have seen the broadcast. They'd blamed the blast, of course, on the rebels,...and it had served its purpose. Few who had witnessed the broadcast survived...and it had inflamed the entire country...precipitating the war throughout the country that had decimated it.
    
    "We never heard from her again...after the blast," said Jeff.
    
    Max had been devastated. "I am so sorry, so very sorry, sir.' he'd said.

[greywolf]

• • "I know, Max. I saw you looking at her picture out in the restaurant...it broke my heart all over again. I know that probably a million people died that day...either immediately, or of the burns and radiation they sustained that day...but there was nothing left there at ground zero...the whole campus was part of the fireball. We had a memorial service but....well all we really had was her picture. It was a year and a half ago."
    
    "Doesn't Maria know? I just saw her a week ago..."
    
    "We saw her with Michael...they seemed so happy...talking about getting married. We figured there'd be a better time to tell her. Liz wouldn't have wanted to interfere with Maria's happiness..," Jeff had said...choking up as he did so.
    
    "No...no she wouldn't have..." agreed Max.
    
    "You know...sometimes we still forget...just for a moment...I'll wonder what she is doing at Harvard...then it hits me.....all over again."
    
    Max had nodded his head...unwilling to trust his voice to reply.
    
    "I'd give anything if we could have the time back...if we could go back to that morning that your mther and father were sitting down there with us...waiting for you to bring her home after you spent the night together...you wouldn't have gotten away with two weeks grounding this time...I'd have gotten my shotgun and marched you off to the chapel..."
    
    "Mr. Parker...we never...ever..."
    
    "I know that, Max...but would it really have mattered? The biggest fear we had then was that the two of you were going to run off or something...that she'd have lost the opportunity to go to college....to go to...Harvard. Maybe if you HAD done something...... or if I HAD forced the two of you to the altar...but you can't change the past, Max...we did what we did...and Lizzy got her dream...except the dream became a nightmare."
    
    'Except I DID try to change reality...or at least I think I did,' Max thought. '...and I cost them ...what...11 and a half years of having Liz alive?' He knew he had to know the truth....he couldn't live without knowing...
    
    "Mr. Parker...would it be possible for me to go up to Liz's room...just to sit there for awhile?"
    
    "I do that too, Max. It makes me feel...closer to her...somehow."
    
    So he'd gone up to the room...the first time he'd seen it since looking through the window and seeing them there...but it wasn't the bed that he was looking at...it was the brick wall.
    
    It took him a little fumbling to find the right brick...it had been a long time. But he found the journal and quickly thumbed through to the journal entry. His hands shook as he read it...blinking away the tears..."No.....please no...," he said...but there was no denying what was written there.
    
    But it was when he put it back in the wall that he finally lost it completely as he saw nestled in the small chamber a single pressed flower...a white rose...that he knew had once been red.

[greywolf]

0405 LtCol Max Evans quarters, 1st Cavalry Division 2nd Brigade HQ (Deployed) Belle Fourche’ South Dakota

The ring of the alarm beside the small bed awakened him from his sleep....awakened him from the nightmare of those long remembered thoughts. Although they were with him constantly..he had to put them out of his mind again for awhile...at least as best he could. He'd done enough damage already...to Liz...to her folks...he couldn't undo any of it.

But today was today and now was now...and his responsibilities were to his men right now...and to the mission, insane as the mission may be. He needed to be awake...alert...and not dwelling on a past he couldn't change...as ironic as that might seem.

He quickly pulled his field gear from his possessions...the single framed picture the only thng he took that wasn't government issued. He'd have time for a shower if he hurried...then to the briefing with the company commanders, Platoon Leaders, and senior NCOs. Bryan would be giving most of the briefing...while both were Lieutenanat Colonels, Bryan had an earlier date of rank. And then he would be leaving the deployment base and the relative luxury of real tents, showers, and a dining hall, for the reality of army field operations. And he didn't really mind. Living was too easy in garrison...there wwas too much time for your thoughts...and your regrets....

0445 Dining hall tent, 1st Cavalry Division 2nd Brigade HQ (Deployed) Belle Fourche’ South Dakota

Listen up, people..." said Bryan, "....I know we' ve all done this before, but it's going to be a little different this time, because the force structure is a little different." The senior people nodded. Their armor had been hammered in the last engagement with the Skins. The few tanks left would not be making the trip with them. Armor was great for short distances. If the target was 15 miles away, the big M-1A2s had the ability to dash forward with great speed and lethality, but anything on treads took a lot of logistics support....treads they didn't have...spare parts that could now only be obtained by cannibalizing the hulks of the armor destroyed in the last battle...but worst of all, the turbine engines of the big beasts were built for jet fuel which they no longer had. They'd been converted to burn a derivative of biodiesel...but they burned it poorly and at a prodigious rate while producing only about 80% of their rated power. For all these reasons, the Second Brigade would be proceeding without their dwindling number of armor assets. This mission called for speed...and that meant wheeeled vehicles only.

"We'll be trying something that the people we are going to reinforce apparently used. In it's own way it was rather ingenious. Of course they had 155mm tubes, and we only have 105s. The two regiments will play leapfrog...one will hold its position with their M119s in firing position to support the regiment that is passing through. That regiment will leapfrog six miles forward...prepare their tubes for firing...and then the rear regiment will stow their tubes....convoy forward through the position held by the forward regiment...and repeat."

Everyone pretty much understood. Crew-served weapons...like the howitzers...had far more lethality than the weapons an infantryman had...but the howitzers and their crews had less capability than their fellows to handle themselves in a direct fire engagement. If the Skins got within two miles, the artillery personnel would suffer severe casualties...as exposed as they were doing their jobs. But if the big tubes could be protected...they could reach out six or seven miles to tear up the opposing forces...at least as long as their ammo lasted. Colonel Taylor had not had any infantry to speak of...but the big 155s range was almost 15 miles with it's rocket assisted ammunition and out ranged the smaller M-119s by almost four miles, even with standard ammunition.

"The key thing, gentlemen, will be speed. Our reconnaissance shows a number of Skins hunter-killer forces along the path of the route march. We are stronger but these light cavalry outfits are more agile...and much faster. We can easily defeat one...probably even two...but if we get tied down in a fixed fire fight...these units will converge on us like piranhas and they will quickly nibble us to death. So if we engage any of the units...the trailing artillery will lash them with beehive rounds if they are unarmored and general purpose HE if they are armored or dug in. But they are going to fire for a maximum of fifteen minutes, then we are going to push forward regardless. This, gentlemen, is a bull-charge type of offense. Our mission is to get nine hundred miles...and to get there promptly, with enough surviving forces to do the job when we get there. I don't like it any better than anyone else, but that means if anybody gets trapped...gets tied up where they can't disengage and press on...well those people are going to be left behind. Is there any questins about that?"

A year ago there might have been. But everyone in the tent had seen a lot of action since then. Everyone in the room was now a professional...the amateurs had either learned...or died...months ago.

"OK people," said Bryan. "We move out in fifteen minutes."

As the room cleared, Bryan approached Max. "The recon from the satellite shows we have no forces very close. We'll move out thirty miles before we start the leapfrogging. You hold there...I'll take my guys 10 kilometers further...then repeat. And Max...this isn't about killing Skins...don't go chasing them. From the look of the recon photos, we'll have all the Skins we need when we get to the missile silos...If we get to the missile silos..."

"Oh, we'll get there alright," said Max. He still couldn't see that it would do any good...but at least there would be lots of Skins to kill there....

[greywolf]

05:30 Twenty miles East of Belle Fourche South Dakota

In peacetime on good roads a civilian would expect to do 60 mph, and expect a 900 mile trip to take about fifteen hours. It wasn't like that in a military convoy, and damn sure not like that in combat. The scout vehicles had taken off first...not just down the road itself, but flanking it as well. The real way you got beat in warfare was not in a head to head matchup, but in an ambush...a pre=prepared trap where you accidently enter a 'kill zone' that the bad guys already have prepared, usually with overlapping fields of fire, and their own flanks protected by mine fields. But even if they hadn't been held up to deploy the scouts, the convoy was only as fast as its slowest vehicle... and in an Army that had been fighting for so long...so cut off from normal lines of supply, there were going to be breakdowns. Max and Bryan personally HOPED they could manage 20 miles per hour...sixteen hours a day. The eight hour break wasn't chosen to go easy on the troops...simply because the other hours were too dark to run without lights. Yeah, they had a few sets of NVDs that still had good batteries...even a few hard wired to the batteries of vehicles...but too few to move 2000 troops at night.

But sitting in the right seat of a humvee doing 25 miles an hour unfortunately left him with more time to fill...one of the great risks of being in the military is the long hours of boredom between short episodes of being scared shitless. And as he sat there in the sunshine of a South Dakota morning, max found his mind wandering back to that trip.

• He'd come down the stairs from her room....he wasn't sure just how. His whole body seemed to have gone numb. And he'd stumbled right in to the path of Nancy Parker.
  
  Her tears had been wiped away..but her eyes glistened with fresh ones threatening to fall.
  
  "Max... I don't know how you and Liz had the falling out...I guess it doesn't matter anymore...and probably was never any of my business to begin with. And I have to admit...when I heard about you being...you know...what you are...at first I didn't know what to think. But you gave us back our baby when you saved her...and even after the breakup...I know she never stopped caring for you....and I can see still how much she meant to you. I guesss what I'm trying to say, Max.......I guess I'm trying to say I'm sorry it didn't work out...not for you...not for Liz..not for any of us. I...I would have been proud to have you for a son-in-law."
  
  He'd sobbed as Nancy had pulled him to her chest...kissing his head...the way he'd seen her kiss Liz a dozen times....
  
  He'd said the words he knew she wanted to hear..," Thank you Mrs. Parker. That means a lot to me...," and it probably would have...if he hadn't known...known that it was for him that she'd left.

'And what have you done with the opportunity she gave up everything to give you...gave up everything because your future self told her she had to..?"

He'd asked himself that thousands of times, and in the early days...when he had felt they might really have a chance...before the Skins got their wormholes going in Europe and China that now delivered troops by the thousands and tens of thousands...back then he had hoped he might actually have been capable of at least giving meaning to her sacrifice. What had gone wrong? 'With her at my side...we lasted fourteen years, even without Tess.' Without her....it had been eight years...and they were almost beaten. He was pretty sure of the answer...it was him. 'You were always better with her at your side. Smarter...sharper... just a better person. Without her...?'


Oh, it wasn't that he hadn't tried. He'd thrown himself into the war effort...was well respected as a commander...made rank in record time...but he couldn't do it alone....there were too many. He wasn't enough...the Four weren't enough.

Whatever inadequacies had let the Skins beat them in fourteen years with Liz but not Tess, adding Tess to the mix and subtracting Liz hadn't strengthened their forces...somehow it had weakend them.

Or perhaps it wasn't like that at all...perhaps all that future Max had bought was another roll of the dice. Perhaps this was all just chaos theory at work. One little change changed the whole mix...but not in a predictable way. Perhaps the randomness was just so great that it,,,not anything anyone did, controlled the outcome. Max sometimes liked to believe that at least...it would make the present situation just bad luck...not his personal failing.

But he couldn't really get himself to believe that....because Future Liz had agreed to Future Max coming back. Somehow he didn't thing Liz would have done that if there hadn't been some way to make things better. He decided for the thousandth time that he was just too stupid to figure it out. 'No...you've failed her....failed to even give meaning to her death.'

[greywolf]

1900 1st Regiment, 2nd Brigade (deployed) near Valentine Nebraska

They'd made almost 25 miles per hour...more distance than one might have expected. 2nd Regiment scouts had detected the Skins Hunter-k iller force near Kennebec, and the march had retreated and moved sharply southward. Even so, they'd covered almost three hundred miles.

They'd deployed out lookouts...and constructed hasty fighting positions...but they'd moving out at first light...it really didn't make much sense to dig in deeply...they needed to keep moving. @nd regiment ...and Bryan...were less than four miles away...and the overlapping fields of fire of the four 105mm guns that each regiment had would provide some margin of safety...and the Skins wouldn't likely move heavy units at night either.

It was another four hours before Max was satisfied that his men were properly protected for the night...and it was only about six hours before daybreak that he returned to his own shelter and crawled in to his own sleeping bag. But sleep wouldn't come...as his mind churned with memories....new and old. After thirty minutes he reached in to his pack and got out her picture to talk to...often it helped.

"Well the day went about as well as could be expected...at least..I hope it did," he said softly. "I'd give anything if you were here to talk to...just for a minute...just to tell me if this mission is even worth doing..."

The picture just smiled up at him...but tonight it wasn't working ...tonight even the picture was scant comfort.

Sometimes he wondered how many people he'd killed. Not the Skins...not even the poor bastards who were humans that had been duped into fighting for Skins without realizing it....but people in the broadest sense.

Max knew that millions had died in Europe and China, but there were probably still at least what...6 billion humans left on Earth? 'And if you hadn't screwed around with time, Maxwell," he told himself, 'they would have lived at least fourteen years...and now what? Maybe nine years? That's 30 billion people-years you cost humanity...a half billion lifetimes. You must be the greatest mass murderer of all times....'

But even as he thought it, he knew he was just kidding himself. As bad as that was....that wasn't what really bothered him. Stalin had said it best....one death was a tragedy...a million a statistic. And it was the one death that really bothered him...and not for the sake of Jeff and Nancy Parker...however much he might feel for them. But for himself.

He pulled the picture frame against his chest tightly and turned off his flashlight, the tears falling unseen in the darkness. She'd made him human, he realized, which was a blessing and a curse. A blessing when she'd been there by his side...a curse when he had nothing left of her but a picture, his memories, and his guilt.

"Good night, honey.." he whispered. He knew he needed to sleep...knew his men depended upon him...and eventually sleep came.two hours before sunrise.

[greywolf]

1435 Grand Island Nebraska


They'd made surprisingly good time all morning and in to the early afternoon...and they probably should have known better. There's an old saying in the infantry, 'when the advance is going real well you are walking in to an ambush.' Now the military has a lot of sayings like that...but this one ... on this occasion....proved prophetic.

The scouts were concerned about possible Skin forces on I-80 which the brigade would be crossing shortly, and because of that they had been less than thorough in checking out Grand Island Nebraska, concentrating their effort on the large freeway to the south that they would have to cross. The Hunter-killer units generally kept moving, but sometimes they'd do this...set up an ambush, and this was a classic situation. Highway 2 East had a sweeping turn to the left as it entered the town, and that's where the ambush had been set up.

It was a classic kill zone, with troops dug in to the East of the road, their machine guns having overlapping rings of fire, while four tanks sat inside an abandoned Wal-Mart where they could pretty much shoot straight down the road. It was called a 'kill zone' where the ambushed troops are receiving fire from two sides, making it almost impossible for them to either find cover or fight effectively.

It was the scouts from Bryan's regiment that had made the error...the Skins letting the lightly armed but fast moving advance units pass through the trap unmolested. But Bryan's regiment had dug in about two miles short of town and as Max's regiment passed through their dug in position, it was the First Regiment who was sitting on the target when the trap was sprung.

As fire burst suddenly from the left flank all the vehicles wheeled to face the action, giving their fifty caliber gunners a clear field to return fire. The infantrymen quickly bailed out of the unarmored hummers, taking shelter wherever they could. The regiment had done this before...and although they were taking casualties against the heavily dug in Skins, they knew they could root them out, and teams of AT-4 gunners were deploying to do just that...when suddenly the front of the old Wal-Mart burst open.

Max was on the SINCGARS calling for fire support even before the tanks burst out...reading map coordinates for beehive rounds against the dug in machinegun emplacements. But the tanks hadn't even opened fire when he recognized the danger.

"Check fire, check fire," said Max. "New targets....coordinates 243.2N, 642.7 W., four tanks...recommend GP HE,"

The Second Regiment's artillery battery commander came back over the radio instantly, asking him to confirm coordinates. Max repeated them quickly...

"Sir...we are loading High Explosive General Purpose now...with your current coordinates..that would be danger-close."

Max knew the call was required by regs...but his plate was kind of full right now. His reply was less than diplomatic.

"Well no shit, Sherlock, and they are getting closer by the minute. Give me a ranging shot...NOW."

The first round hit squarely in the middle of the formation of tanks, which was now advancing with machine guns firing while startting to bring their main guns to bear on the vehicles turned broadside to them in the road.

"On target...fire for effect...and march the shells toward my position 10 meters per volley until I tell you otherwise or until you have fired twenty rounds."

The fight was over in 10 minutes. The tanks were taken out with the first volley of artillery fire, and by that time his men were already flanking the machine gun positions that were still firing after the AT-4 gunners had done their work. The loss of their tanks had turned a deadly ambush into a stand-up fight, and seemed to demoralize the Skins as well. His guys were good, Max knew....the best. It was just too damn bad he'd had to lose nine of them and get thirty wounded.

Max planned on talking to Bryan about his scout platoon's sloppy work, but he understood they were professionals too. They would no doubt feel worse than anyone. But they might just as well dig in here for the night. By the time the medics took care of the wounded, they buried the dead, and they assessed what they had lost or had damaged, there wouldn't be much light left.

[greywolf]

0430 Valentine Nebraska

It was a cold morning and the troops moved slowly to stow their sleeping bags and shelter halfs as they made themselves ready for another 16 hour day after a cold night on the ground. Their breakfast would be an MRE, unheated, and eaten on the move. It bore a curious resmblance to the two meals yesterday.

The battle yesterday had put them behind schedule. Barely time to brush teeth and pack up and they were on their way again. The scout companies had been watching the old freeway just south of them...but they would be at greater risk until they could put this area behind them, it was too easy for the Skins to bring in Hunter-Killer units on the broad asphalt ribbon.

It was 10 hours later that they were in McCook Nebraska...and that's when Max got the call. One of the scout units had problems...problems of a very different sort.

First Lieutenant Ray Anderson was only doing his job. The ambush by the Skins hadn't just killed and wounded personnel. It had also taken out one of the four diesel fuel tankers that the Regiment had. Lieutenant Anderson's job was to get more. One of the three remaining tankers had been used to top off all the regimental vehicles and could hold quite a lot right now. The problem was that the producer...a local farmer....didn't really want to give up the biodiesel.

"I'm not interested in selling the fuel...and certainly not for military scrip," said the farmer, his wife and two children watching the discussion.

"Sir, I'm afraid you really have no choice. We are the government and under US Code, we are condemning your fuel for military use. If you disagree with what we are paying you, well....you'll have to take that up in court."

"You guys aren't the government...you're a bunch of rebels...you're insane...believing in aliens."

"Whether you believe in them or not, sir, we really have no choice...we ARE taking this fuel."

And that was when both men did something stupid..Lieutenant Anderson trying to push by the man to get access to the fuel...and the man grabbing Anderson's pistol. The three other men on the detail instantly brought their M-16s to bear on the man who was now backed up against the wall, holding the Lieutenant's body in front of himself as a shield...the gun to the man's temple.

"You guys just go...leave us alone...I'll let him go when you are out of the area and he can catch up," said the farmer. His wife and children took refuge behind him.

The Corporal didn't want to kill the man or his family.....but he wasn't leaving the Lieutenant behind either.

"Put down the gun...now....or we are going to open fire, mister."

The situation was only seconds from becoming a tragedy...when suddenly the hummer drove into the courtyard of the farm.

"Hold fire...everybody hold fire," yelled Max, as his own driver got out and added his M-16 to the group pointing at the man and his family. "It would be stupid for anyone to get hurt here. Look, we do need the fuel...but we don't want to hurt you or your family. This situation is rapidly getting out of hand. You can't fight four guys with automatic rifles with a handgun...not and live to tell about it. You need to put the gun down."

Max knew they needed the fuel...not to get where they were going, but to have fuel to maneuver once they got there. A fighting unit must be mobile...able to respond to the maneuvers of the enemy. If they got to the fight with empty tanks, they were at a serious disadvantage. Even if they had full tanks they'd be outnumbered...they couldn't survive long without the ability to maneuver. The man just HAD to listen to reason. Except, of course, he didn't.

The farmer reached onto the Lieutenant's web gear and pulled off a fragmentation grenade with his left hand while holding the gun to his head with the right. It was awkward and he almost lost the grenade, before bringing it to his right hand and pulling the pin with his little finger.

"If you don't get back I'll.." started the man...only to have the grenade slip free...and arm itself as it fell to the ground in front of the man.

"Live grenade!" yelled one of the men and the Army personnel all threw themselves at the ground away from the grenade, doing their best to find cover.

As the Lieutenant ripped himself away from the farmer, the handgun went flying. All at once the farmer saw himself looking down at a grenade three feet in front of him...his family at his back. He stood there...unwilling to run and leave his family unprotected...but realizing he wasn't likely to stop the grenade from killing them.

But a green light enveloped the grenade as Max willed the force field into existence. It was almost the size of a basketball when the hand grenade exploded with a muffled 'whump.'

The farmer looked up to see Max standing there...obviously weakened. "Who are you....what are you?"

Two of the soldiers quickly grabbed the man and the nearest said, "That's one of those aliens you don't believe in...only this one's a good one...he's on our side."

The man appeared to pull back in fear…gathering his family around himself, realizing that he almost lost them all. He gazed up at the officer…fear in his eyes.

“Take it….take it all….do whatever you want to me….just leave them alone.”
Max looked at the four of them…she had amber eyes….not as rich as those of Liz…but still … in another life…that could have been his family there. The thought came unbidden to his mind, ‘Another life, Max? What would that be?? Three? How many chances do you think you ought to get? Now you want to screw up a third time as well?’

Max’s hand went in to his pocket and he drew out the pouch. He reached in and took out the largest of the diamonds within it.

“Here…take this…sell it…trade for more oil…” He hoped they’d get to use it. They area they lived was downwind of where the Skins’ halon factories would likely be built.

He got back in the hummer, already starting to recover from the blast. But he’d be tired for hours. He shook his head sadly as he remembered back to the time when he thought his powers and those of the other three would be enough to defeat the Skins.

‘You were an idiot, Max. Even with all three of the others…plus Nasedo, you wouldn’t have even made it out of the White Room without her.’

How had he ever believed he could win without her at his side? How had he believed he could even live without her?

These thoughts filled his mind as the convoy crept slowly on toward Missouri.

[greywolf]

2100 McCook Nebraska

There are over a thousand men in an infantry regiment and the most lonely man in the regiment is the commander. There are a number of very pragmatic reasons that the commander can’s socialize with his subordinates, even in the ages before some of those subordinates were women. But even a commander needs a social life…someone they may talk freely with. Generally, that’s going to be another commander.

Now strictly speaking, Bryan wasn’t Max’s equal…he was senior in rank by nearly a month. But that was close enough…close enough for two people who had started in very different worlds but who both had somehow managed to survive in the current one while hundreds of thousands had not…especially since their friendship went back nearly eight years. Anyway, that’s what Bryan was telling himself when he rode in the command hummer to visit Max in his small command headquarters.

The building had once been a large farmhouse..but it was long abandoned…probably decades before the war. It was hard to keep family farms going in the eighty’s and ninety’s…and the main problem wasn’t economics. Large families would be raised, but after high school the kids would go to the big cities to make their fortunes…or to college…and they’d never return. Max’s quarters had once been the upstairs master bedroom with a small sitting area, and when Bryan showed up…just wanting to talk, it was there that Max took him.

Bryan pulled out a bottle of beer and smiled at Max. “I’d have brought another for you, but since you don’t…well I did find a bottle of tonic water for you.”

Max smiled as he opened the bottle, looking at the flames crackling from the small fireplace. The fireplace burned dried field corn, something Nebraska had always had in abundance but now with transportation breaking down seemed to be everywhere.

“What’s on your mind, Bryan?”

“Well….I was just feeling so lonesome I thought even a conversation with you would be welcome, Max.”

This was the usual opening salvo for what would become a battle of good natured kidding….but Max let it go…. and that worried Bryan. It wasn’t exactly a social call. Bryan had been worried about Max. He knew that Max could be sullen and brooding at times, but everytime they’d talked on the radio Max had seemed more and more distracted.

“Seriously, Max. We’ve known each other for a long time….”

“Yeah…I guess if you’d been through the orientation a couple weeks sooner we could have met in the White room…”

That actually cheered Bryan up, at least Max had some of the old fire in him.

“Yeah, well I only met Price once and if it’s any consolation I think he probably disliked African-Americans at least as much as he disliked aliens…”

“You know…at the time I’d never have believed I’d someday look back upon that time as the ‘good old days..,’ Max said. But as he looked in the fire it was like he looked back in time…and those really had been good days. He’d do it over again, he realized, the drugs…the electric shocks….the near drowning…the jumping off into the icy water…and most definitely the night spent in a junked van in the middle of nowhere….because she’d been there.

Yes, any kind of life with her was better than living without her. What wouldn’t he give for those fourteen years…or even just one of them? And how little he’d done with the second chance giving up those fourteen years had cost him?

As the silence dragged on, Bryan knew that Max was lost in thought…but even still he had to ask him.

“Max…you don’t think this mission is going to work, do you?”

“The mission? To interdict the enemy forces on the other side of the silos and buy time for Colonel Taylor and his personnel to do whatever it is they expect to do….” Yes….we can do that. We’ll be significantly outnumbered and outgunned, but if we get in good defensive positions we can certainly slow them down. We can do that…”

“But you don’t think it’ll do a damn bit of good, do you? What you said to Jefferies…You don’t think Taylor can pull this off, do you?”

Max looked at his friend and sipped his tonic water, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t know…I guess I’m no expert….but I doubt it. When you think of the problem…well, I used to know this girl who was really bright….Miss Scientist we called her in High School. I was her lab partner from junior high through until the middle of senior year, and I can almost hear Liz now explaining the problem to me just like when we were lab partners. There’s just too much volume of air out there. I mean…look at the Skins and their halon. They have these huge factories in China and Europe cranking out that stuff by the ton-load…have had for months, and except right near the factory it hasn’t been concentrated enough to have much effect. Hell, that’s why they are moving in from the East. They don’t know squat about the silos…they’re just going to build more factories. Know I don’t know much about the throw-weights of those missiles…let’s say they each can hold a ton each. Hell Bryan, one of those factories probably puts out more than that in an hour and they have dozens of them…and are making more. To blanket the world with an agent using only a couple tons of it? Nothing is that potent…not Sarin…not VX…not anything I know of.”

“A biological maybe?”

“Bryan…you ever captured a Skin? I’ve been fighting them longer than anybody and they just don’t capture…..poof….skin and dust…remember? And it’s not like we can just go to the nearest lab supply house and order a few dozen of whatever the Skins equivalent of white mice from their home world is either. It’s not that I don’t want to believe…I just don’t see how it could be true..”

“Well, maybe you ought to ask your friend Liz….,” Bryan started…until he saw Max’s face go ashen. ‘Oh God, she’s the one…,” he thought.

“Yeah, well I can’t do that. She would have been just starting her third year at Harvard when…well..…Boston.”

“I’m sorry, Max…I didn’t know.”

“Yeah…well, that was a long time ago….maybe we should concentrate on what we do when we get to the silos.”

“I guess I don’t understand, Max,…if you don’t think this will work…why did you accept the assignment. Jefferies offered you an out?”

“Yeah, well he offered you an out too…and you have a wife and kid. I wish you’d taken it. Because it doesn’t matter if that agent Taylor thinks he has works or not, even if it did it would take a long time for it to diffuse down through the atmosphere…days anyway, maybe weeks. Even if the agent did work, it wouldn’t work quickly, and when the Skins see that first missile go up, they are going to be all over those silos. That’s why I want to be there. So I can kill Skins.”

Bryan didn’t say anything, just nodded his head as if he believed Max. Bryan was starting to realize what Max already knew. Max was determined to be there, fighting until he was killed, because he had nowhere else to go.

They made some plans for deployment of their forces after getting to the Whiteman silos the next day and a somber Bryan returned to his unit.