Jaspre Bark - Dawn Over Doomsday

"Okay. And what about our horses?"

"I don't think the horses will be able to cross to the plateau. The heat from the lava is too great and they're likely to panic. It would probably take too long to lead them all across anyway. We'd have to take them one at a time because of the size of the bridge."

"Very well. We'll corral the horses out of sight behind the hills. Detail six hundred braves to hold the pass. Make certain we have at least a hundred of our best sharp shooters among them. I'll lead the rest of the troops across the bridge and onto the plateau. I want you to take up the rear to oversee the fortification of the pass and the safe passage of the troops."

"As you wish."

Hiamovi knew Ahiga was displeased with this order. The Navajo saw himself leading the whole army to victory while Hiamovi remained a remote figurehead, watching the battle from a safe position. Hiamovi needed his expertise in the rearguard action though. He also wanted to keep the young buck in his place. Hiamovi was coming to trust Ahiga less and less. He suspected the Navajo of working to his own agenda and wanted to diminish his growing influence within the UTN. If Ahiga was to fall victim to his own heroism in the coming bloodshed then Hiamovi would not be too upset. He would make a useful martyr.

As he handed his steed over to another brave and led the army on foot towards the pass, Hiamovi realised, to his shame, that he was thinking just like Ahiga. Perhaps that was the Navajo's great legacy to the UTN.

"We've just had some more news," said Bennet. He pushed his horn rimmed glasses back up his beak of a nose in a way that never failed to irritate Sinnot. "It gets worse."

"We've got over two thousand Native Americans camped outside our complex looking for a way to break in," said Sinnot. "How could it possibly get any worse?"

Sinnot hadn't slept in twenty-four hours. Not since he had been woken with the news that the complex's security had been breached. Since then he'd been forced to initiate a complete overhaul of the security protocols. He'd had to instigate the retrieval and reclassification of every bit of data stored in the complex, and personally oversee the detainment of Greaves and the two other intruders. He was in no mood for one of Bennet's reports. He wanted Bennet and Roth out of his office and the debriefing finished as quickly as possible so he could go and grovel to his masters in the patron's suite.

"Reports have confirmed that the Apostolic Church of the Rediscovered Dawn have also raised an army," said Bennet. "They're marching here and will arrive in less than twenty-four hours."

"The Apostolic…?" said Sinnot. "You mean the Neo-Clergy. I thought they'd disbanded."

"They've been undergoing a bit of a resurgence of late," said Roth, his pudgy moon face always wore an 'eager to please' expression.

"Why on earth are they marching out here?" said Sinnot. "Why don't they choose somewhere else to have their big showdown?"

"I would have thought that was rather obvious," said Bennet. "Like the intruders we just captured, they want to get their hands on all the biological weaponry we've been developing. Just like our patrons, they probably think it will allow them to take over what's left of the world."

"Quite," said Sinnot. "Frankly, I'm still more afraid of our patrons than an army of Native Americans or mad born-again Christians. Still this is something we're going to have to overcome, or we'll be in serious trouble."

Sinnot and all his colleagues referred to their paymasters as 'patrons', but they all knew it was a euphemism. They were their masters plain and simple. Men who were used to wielding untold power and using unlimited resources to do so. They'd been raised to do it since birth. It was bred into their bones. Even though Sinnot and his colleagues had once faced them down back before The Cull, had taken the Doomsday virus and bartered for their lives, the patrons still terrified him.

Sinnot knew it was only the plague that had killed so many that had paradoxically saved him and his associates. It hadn't taken them long to determine that the plague killed according to blood group. So Sinnot and his colleagues had developed a way to change their blood group. This was how over half of them had survived The Cull.

It was also their key bargaining tool with their masters, when they wanted to come in out of the cold. The ability to produce new strains of the Doomsday Virus had helped. If they'd been able to find out where the six hosts were hidden they'd have been in an even better position. Unfortunately when they fled their masters, Sinnot and his colleagues had split up into cells. The cell who had hidden the hosts did not survive The Cull.

Even still the secret of changing their blood group was enough to bring them back into the fold. For all their power, their masters could not isolate themselves enough to prevent infection. So Sinnot and his associates had come slinking back with their tails between their legs, but at least they were alive. They'd started work on guaranteeing their masters complete biological domination of their whole species once again.

They'd built this complex in Little Bighorn to start over. It was supposed to be impregnable and it was supposed to be totally secret. In the last twenty-four hours it had proved to be neither. He daren't go and tell that to his masters without a solution. They wouldn't like the idea of being the spoils of some war of faith.

"Why can't we just release something into the atmosphere on the surface?" said Bennet. "Something we can immunise ourselves against and let that take care of them?"

"We don't have anything that'll spread fast enough," said Sinnot. "Nothing for which we've got a fool proof antidote. We can't protect ourselves fully against any virus we have that's virulent enough to do the job."

"Haven't we got a workable strain of the Doomsday Virus?" said Roth.

"No," said Sinnot. "And there's no way we could release it without the proper controls in place."

"What about something from the armoury? There's those prototype sub-sonic bombs."

"And how would we launch them?" said Bennet with his customary sneer.

"We could use the micro gliders," said Roth. "We could send the guards up and get them to drop the bombs."

"The micro gliders are for aerial reconnaissance only," said Bennet. "You can't use them to go dropping bombs on people. They're not equipped for that."

"Also, we can't control the detonation or the blast radius enough to be safe," Sinnot said. "The sub-sonic bomb shreds all matter, organic and non-organic. We'd have to detonate it high above the ground so we didn't do as much damage to the complex as we would to the armies."

"What are we going to do then?" said Roth, there was more than a hint of panic in his voice. "We've only got forty armed guards in the place. There's over two thousand out there already and more coming. We can't possibly fight them all off and it's only a matter of time until they break in."

"Maybe," said Sinnot. "Maybe not."

"What do you have in mind?" said Bennet.

Sinnot smiled. "Stealth."

"Stealth? Can you elaborate?"

"We offer both sides exactly what they came here for. Or at least that's what we'll lead them to believe."

Colt looked out of his tent at the makeshift camp they'd erected in the parking lot of a half-built mall just off Highway 87. Earthquakes, plagues and nuclear strikes had ensured that this temple to consumerism had never been finished. All that remained was concrete and girders. When God didn't want a thing built, He didn't want it built. Even still, Colt couldn't help thinking that an earthquake or a plague or even an A-bomb by itself would have been enough. All three, now that was overkill.