Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

Stanton listened again before saying, “I’m going over to the works right now to see for myself. We’ve already started loading ordnance and filling the fuel tanks for your fighters. Worst comes to worst she can be one heck of a weapons platform and flight deck. Give me a few more days and we’ll have it worked out-if you think so, yes-okay, I’ll see you out here this afternoon.”

Stanton hung up the receiver and gazed across the tarmac at the two air ships.

“One of these days I’m going to catch a break. But not today.”

The Director slid open a drawer in a metallic desk and found a flask. Even he could not be sure exactly what the stuff was, but he knew it came from a bunch of hillbillies living in the Appalachians, therefore it must be good.

He removed the black cap, took a deep swig, and then re-sealed the bottle and returned it to its hiding place.

“Now that’s what I call aviation fuel.”

A moment later he exited the building alongside a middle-aged woman and one very fat man, two of his advisors. They carried blueprints and books while struggling to keep pace with their boss. The trio commandeered a golf cart and buzzed across the open space toward the ships.

“What did the general say?” the woman asked.

“Can he send us more workers?” the man asked.

“Put that to him yourself. He’s coming out this way later.”

A line of black marked the difference between the open pavement under the May sun and nearly a mile’s worth of shade beneath the docked ships.

“Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” Stanton switched his attention from his driving to the sky just before that sky disappeared behind the airship.

The fat man said, “Geez yeah. They kinda look like hawks.”

The woman said, “I didn’t think they traveled in flocks.”

The older man with the prosthetic hand led Ashley along the hall of the lakeside cottage to the rear room that served as Gordon’s nerve center.

“Thank you, Charles,” she said to Gordon’s assistant and he smiled in return as a sign of welcome.

One of the computer printers ran furiously; line after line of type coming off the inkjet at maximum speed. Voices on two different radios filled the room with conflicting sounds, one seemingly the local Internal Security band and the other a news broadcast decrying something about the military abandoning Little Rock.

To her surprise, Gordon did not sit amidst the chaos. Instead, he waited in his wheelchair by the sliding glass door staring at something outside.

“Gordon?”

He answered without turning, “Hello, Ashley. Please, come in.”

His expression appeared different than last Thursday morning when she confronted him over presenting his intelligence reports in person. On that morning he had stared into his backyard looking at something that was not there. This time, something specific held his attention.

“Anything wrong?”

“No, not really,” and turned to face here. “Take a look at this fantastic bird. I’m not sure exactly what it is.”

Ashley-who carried a paperback book in one hand-walked to his side and tried to follow his view.

Before she could say anything, Gordon complained, “Damn. It’s gone. Marvelous creature. Some kind of hawk I think. It was sitting out there in one of the higher branches just staring at the house for a good fifteen minutes.”

“I didn’t know you were a member of the Audubon Society.”

He flashed a grimace-or was it a smile-something-it was hard to tell with Gordon.

“Tell me, Miss Ashley, did you come all the way over here to cause me grief?”

“Yes. And lots of it,” she placed a hand on his shoulder and they shared a chuckle. She the waved toward the equipment going mad in the center of the room. “Something big going on?”

“Preparations. All the pieces are moving into place for that glorious last stand. Except for General Brewer, of course. He’s still tying up some loose ends before he heads out. You know, it won’t be long and we’ll have this lake practically to ourselves.”

“That will be a change. For us, at least. You and I, Gordon, we joined on a little later than the rest of them. I understand things were a lot quieter back when there was only a handful of them. Say, you never told me, what were you up to before you hooked up with Trevor?”

He shook his head. “Not today, Miss Ashley. I wouldn’t want to spoil our afternoon. What have you got there?”

She held a paperback aloft. He read the cover and said, “Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Yes, we still have some more reading to do, don’t we? Charles is putting together a late lunch; shall we wait or get started?”

She pulled a folding chair from a lonely corner of the room to his side and joined him in the light by the sliding glass door.

“I’ve done enough waiting,” she answered. “I think we should dive right in.”

“We should tough it out, is that it? My thoughts exactly.”

Ashley opened the story to a bookmarker.

“Okay, here we go, page fifty-six,” she cleared her throat. “You can’t judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man…”

Two hundred years ago the legendary explorers Lewis and Clark camped on the grounds of what is now Riverfront Park during their trip across Kansas. A different type of camp returned to the shores of the Missouri River there; one much larger and more chaotic.

The area served as a muster zone for retreating elements of General Casey Fink’s Third Corp as well as advanced units from General Jerry Shepherd’s 1 ^ st Corp. The former disembarked from rail cars via the tracks a few hundred feet to the west of the park on the far side of a destroyed highway. In fact, destruction ruled the outer perimeter of the base camp: an industrial facility of a kind had once operated there but all that remained were a few huge cisterns and the massive parking lot that now hosted hundreds of tents.

Shep had not wanted to move any of 1 ^ st Corp this far west. They belonged at the Mississippi. But developments on the ground demanded action.

He stood under a canvas cover discussing that situation with a collection of officers. These included General Casey Fink, whom Brewer and Trevor had left in charge of operations for the last week; General Cassy Simms of 2 ^ nd Mechanized; Captain Benny Duda who had been overseeing the deployment of his 1 ^ st Mechanized units around St. Louis; and Woody “Bear” Ross who had commanded a mobile artillery unit during the Wetmore battle but now sought a new assignment.

“Here’s what we got, folks,” General Shepherd leaned over a folding table and explained the predicament to the officers involved. Outside-in the bright mid-morning sun-Jeeps and squads of soldiers hurried to and fro giving the gathering of brass little attention. “It seems General Rhodes has got himself into a mess. The garrison at Newton got overrun before his boys could pass through.”

Shep traced lines on a map.

“The bulk of his boys had to abandon their train at Halstead. With the shit Voggoth pulled on us yesterday, that puts them behind enemy lines. That’s about four thousand soldiers plus an entire mobile artillery brigade that was on flatbeds taking a train ride.”

The markers on the map designated The Order’s positions. Casey verbalized what those markers showed: “Last night The Order’s advanced forces skirted Wichita and broke North right up Interstate 135. On top of that, they dropped airborne units supported by concentrated aerial bombardment on Newton.”

Shepherd said, “Long and the short of it, folks, is that Rhodes is getting pinched into a pocket. Those are four thousand soldiers we could use at the Mississippi, so I’m not fond of the idea of leaving them in a pickle like that.”