AL:ICE-9 (18 page)

As Sara was considering her next steps, a voice from the woods to the north shouted, “There they are!”

Shots rang out, as a group burst from the tree line.

“Follow us!” Sara shouted, as she turned and led the group to the trees in the south of the clearing. Using her team as a blocking force, she ordered her point and the team leader to take the group to the lift, while she and two other covered the retreat.

Firing with precision, they dropped two of the approaching men. This caused the remainder to go to ground, giving Sara and the others a chance to pull back. Stopping to fire, in an attempt to keep the pursuers face down in the dirt, she got the all clear from the team leader.

Leading the last of her team back at a dead run, they hit the lift just as it started to drop. Within seconds, it had lowered sufficiently to allow the roof panels to close, terminating any pursuit. She could see all the new arrivals scanning the floor space below, taking in the view. Funny thing was the women and children still looked afraid.

As the lift halted, Sara turned to speak to the group when she felt several rounds slam into her body, knocking her to the ground. Even with the wind knocked from her, she rolled and returned fire, killing the kneeling man and the one next to him, both who had shot her in the back at point blank range.

She could see one of her team members fighting with two of the men. They had jumped on her, trying to wrestle her rifle away. While they were fighting, the other members of the team traded fire with the last three. Fortunately, all the women and children had hit the floor when the shooting started.

Two of the non-combat members of Sara’s group had come to the hangar to assist, thankfully still fully suited. They drew their side arms and helped subdue the two men on the ground, using the pistol butt on the back of one head, the other giving up with the pistol in his face. She was again grateful for Jake’s insistence that everyone learns to fight.

With that, Sara scrambled to her feet in time to see the three combat team members dispatch the last of the men. She then turned to see the women and children huddled to one side of the hangar, having retreated during the fighting.

While her team checked the dead and restrained the only surviving gunman, Sara walked slowly over to where the group was huddled. Although her combat suit had done its job, she could tell she would feel the effects of those shots for days to come.

Standing before the huddled group, women holding their children close, she asked, “Anyone care to explain what’s going on?”

Slowly, one of the women spoke up in a frail voice, “we live in a small settlement not far from here. Those seven showed up earlier today while the men were out hunting. I think they have been watching us for a while. Anyway, they were taking us west, to trade off as slaves in the city. When you showed up, we were told the children would be shot if we said anything,” she finished before starting to cry.

“And those men following us, they were your people?” Sara asked, already knowing the answer.

All she got in reply was a headshake for yes.

Chapter 18

Jake awoke early the next morning, checking with Seven to find that Jessie and Ryan were still sleeping. He then decided to head to the gym for a workout. He always tried to maintain some form of regular exercise. However, the opportunities to do so were far from regular in his daily schedule.

Between the cardio and strength training, he spent a good two hours in the gym. He managed to finish his entire routine before the inevitable interruption.

“Jake, there is a call for you. It’s Sara, from Maine,” Seven supplied.

“I’ll take it here,” Jake answered, as he moved over to the floor mat area. He was still the only person in the gym for the moment.

In a second, a holograph appeared in the center of the mat, with Sara’s face about three feet tall.

“How’s Maine?” Jake asked.

“Maine is fine, it’s me that’s a wreck,” Sara replied.

For the next fifteen minutes, Sara explained, in detail, the events of the evening before. She told of the men banging on the hangar doors, with women and children in tow. Jake could hear the anguish in her voice as she relayed the story of their attempted deception. He could tell how upset she was to have completely fallen for it. Jake had to bite his tongue, waiting for her to complete her tale, specifically around the gunfight in the hangar.

“So where are the two prisoners?” Jake asked first thing.

“We have them in confinement. Apparently, all these facilities have detention block, we have just never had a reason to use it,” Sara answered.

“And the hostages?” he asked again.

Sara was slow in answering, but finally offered, “Well, once we found out the real situation above, we immediately went back to the surface with the women and children. Having all the families reunited defused the situation. Unfortunately, both of the men we shot were in critical condition, so we brought them in and Jessica, the medic here, has been working with ALICE-5 all night. So far both are stable, but not out of the woods yet.”

“Brought them in? You mean the rest too?” Jake asked slowly.

“They are being interviewed in the hangar by the ALICEs right now. Jake I couldn’t leave them outside while they waited to see if the men lived or died. Possibly killed by my hand, I might add. One is a husband, the other a son,” after a pause she added, “On the plus side there are 15 women and 7 children in their village. The men are 19 in all, so if the ALICEs approve, its 41 new recruits.”

Obviously, Sara was trying to put a shine on what was clearly a disaster. Before he could say anything, she added, “On a separate note, I will never, ever give you grief again about requiring combat training to any of the staff. We had fire team combat maneuvers in the field and two of the non-combat team members had to jump into help inside,” she finished.

Jake sat for a moment, trying to suppress his natural instinct to run to Sara’s side. After a few more seconds, he simply said, “Good job, I am sending A Troop up to assist you. If the ALICEs approve of your recruits, get them into training programs as soon as possible.”

Jake could see the strain drop for Sara’s face as she realized she wasn’t going to be pulled from her current situation. While Jake knew he couldn’t praise her early actions, she had cleaned up her own mess.

----*----

Bonnie was down in the hangar with Robert, watching what they hoped would be the last load from New York. The storage hangar was nearly at capacity with the almost 2,800 pallets of gold, platinum and silver they had collected. She laughed to herself when she thought about the fact that the entire first order with the Wawobash would require only a little more than half of one. While there was no need to secure the metals from the staff, she did wonder what the aliens might try if they knew the depths of their financial resources.

One positive effect of having gold to throw at your problems was the Wawobash had recently notified them that the first three destroyers would be ready to ship out within a week. Jake’s fifty percent incentive for early delivery had them working continuously to complete the conversions necessary for human occupation.

Like all of the other facility commanders, she was under specific instructions to find as many new recruits as possible. Unfortunately, unless they literally emptied the local communities, they were down to single digit recruiting.

With that as a parting thought, she gave Robert a quick kiss and then turned to address matters that are more pressing.

----*----

Sara was sitting at the desk in her room, going over the feedback on the villagers they had brought in. Overall, they were no better or worse than most of the other recruits Sara had seen in the past. No one seemed to harbor ill will over the circumstances. With two exceptions.

The mother of the boy they had shot was not embracing the concept of an accident. She wasn’t with the hostage group, having been off in the woods at the time. She was mad as hell, and blamed Sara and her team for her son’s condition. Still in ICU, he was just hanging on. Even the ALICEs refused to try to predict his recovery. He was that touch and go.

The other exception was the wife. She had been one of the captives and had experienced the entire thing. She had actually seen Sara and her team member shoot down the two men. However, she had also been there when the captors turned on them all, watching the fight in the hangar. She was more understanding, but Sara could see the hurt in her face every time she looked at her.

Both might come around should both the men survive, but if not, well the entire village may choose to return to their homes. They were a tight knit community, and none of the analysis supported them splitting up.

That brought her to the two men in detention. She had gone down there earlier to see for herself. There were a dozen rooms, each with a bed, sink, shower, and toilet. Each also had a solid entry door, with a clear panel, about one foot square, allowing for viewing both in and out. Food and change of clothing delivery was via a small access door on one wall, empty trays placed back in the open recess once the detainee consumed the meal.

She could view both men, each in his own cell, from her display. All the cells had technology installed for both audio and video with no blind spots. Escape was impossible, only the bots and ALICE interacted with the prisoner. They had no other human contact until released from their cell.

ALICE-5 had been specifically involved in interrogating these two, as they had disrupted her reopening, spoiling the event. She was uncharacteristically upset at the turn of events and insisted in helping Sara make things right with the villagers. The amount of human emotion the ALICEs could display never ceased to amaze Sara.

  Sara felt, the displayed need for collaboration gave ALICE-5 a distinct personality, so once everything had settled down, Sara asked the standard question of naming. In keeping with her Alaskan sister, she chose Five as her familiar name.

The prisoners had very little to offer beyond a description of their fundamental existence. They had made a living preying on the weak and defenseless. For the last several years, they had been locating and robbing small settlements throughout the region, taking anything of value by force if necessary. That included people.

They explained they would take the people west, to the river, where men with sailboats would barter for them. One young woman could garner enough food and ammunition to last a season for one man. The kids would return less, but were still valuable. The boats would take the captives around the point of what Sara identified as Nova Scotia on the map, and then down the coast of the US to various ports of call.

There, the boatmen sold off some as slave labor. Others went to a fate far worse. The men in the cells had expected this haul to make them enough to last an entire year. Sara was very happy to have upset their plans, but now had no idea what to do with them.

She did gain two pieces of important information from the interrogation. The first was the cities to the west, the old Canadian cities, wanted nothing to do with these slavers. That gave her hope. The second was there were some boatmen to the west she very much needed to introduce herself to.

----*----

Jake had spent the last few days with Jessie and Ryan in Alaska. He found he really enjoyed the roll of daddy and was starting to think more about all his children spread around the continent. As an only child himself, he had never had the experience of brothers and sisters. His only memory of family was a distant cousin growing up, whom he saw infrequently. He started to think about bringing the children together in a single location, once they got older, to enjoy the experiences he never had.

Once he was sure all was well, and Jessie was up and around, he decided to make a run to Lanai. Jacob had indicated that the first of the transport ships there were close to completion. The transports requiring less work than the patrol models were quicker to finish. While technically the exact same base model, the patrol variant had much heavier hull plating and armaments. Both carried stasis shielding and repulser drives, but as the entire ship was made of iron and steel, it would never be faster than light capable.

Posting his flight plan the day before, so everyone knew how to get a hold of him, he headed out early the next morning. Using the same fighter he had commandeered in Texas, he said his goodbyes and headed southwest to the Hawaiian Islands. At over 3,000 miles away, it was still going to take him well over an hour to cover the distance. Once airborne, he set the autopilot and started going through his daily reports.

He flipped through all the normal chatter about training and transfers. One particular report caught his attention though. It wasn’t very detailed, it simply referenced Sara taking A Troop on a scouting mission west of Five. Apparently, there was some kind of confrontation, resulting in the burning of numerous sailboats?

Debating if it was something he really wanted to know about, he filed it away for later. By the time he had finished, the navigation system warned him he was closing on his destination. Alerting Lanai, the name ALICE-6 had chosen for herself, of his arrival, she opened the hangar doors. He slowed the fighter to a stop over the opening, and then he slowly lowered it inside.

As he settled to the floor of the hangar, Jacob greeted him with a wave. Standing there beside him was Becky, smiling and waving vigorously as well.

“What are you doing here?” Jake asked as he climbed down from the fighter.

“I wanted to surprise you!” She exclaimed, while running up and jumping into his arms, a habit he both enjoyed and dreaded.

At all of 5’ 4” and 100 pounds soaking wet, she would always manage to knock him back a step or two.

After a long kiss from Becky, Jake was finally able to extract himself. He was then able to shake Jacob’s hand, with Becky still wrapped around one arm, smiling broadly.

“Let me go get changed, and then we can check out the ships,” Jake said while waving for Jacob to follow. It was a standard practice for all the ALICE facilities to stock a change of clothes for Jake in the locker area off the ready room. Part of the standard design for all locations, the room was originally intended as a briefing room and mustering point for pilots flying missions out of each location.

Jake’s locker was right up front and, with Becky and Jacob standing by, he was out of his flight suit and into a more comfortable set of clothes in minutes. Lanai had provided him a t-shirt, shorts combination that he favored for the more tropical environments.

As they exited the locker room, Jacob led them out and across the open hangar area to the extremely large bay doors across the way. Each was marked in large lettering, completely across both doors, indicating whether it was Bay 1, 2 or 3.

Heading into Bay1, whose doors were slightly ajar providing a gap 10 feet wide. Jacob led the two inside and up to the railing defining the edge of the recess. With a wave of his hand, Jacob said, “These are three of the transport models. As you can see, we actually had to alternate them right to left to get them all to fit.”

What Jake saw were three extremely large ships, two laying crosswise in the bay floor from left to right. The middle ship, flipped right to left, to accommodate the wider rear third of the ship. This gave the impression of a huge interlocking puzzle.

As Jake knew, the bays were about 2,000 feet long and 600 feet wide, so these ships were at least 500 feet, nose to tail. Shaped like a fat T, with the nose of the ship as the base of the T, the last third was where the T crossed. There, they had attached pods that tripled the width. He assumed they were accessible from the central hull and as they were as wide as the center, it tripled the internal space there.

Jake knew from the designs, he and Jacob had reviewed, that this area was additional storage space for this version. At the nose were two ramps that dropped, allowing for loading and unloading of people, troops, or cargo. The top of the nose section also had hatches that allowed for the use of the integrated cranes. Recessed when not in use, the cranes could lift materials not easily transported up and down the ramps.

  Scanning the length of the ships, Jake noted that at the stern section of each, where the extra pods were, there was a large flat platform over the entire area. It reminded him of a carrier deck, with an elevator clearly outlined in one spot, providing access to the inside of the ship below.