John Ringo - Islands of Rage and Hope

“Yes, sir,” Faith said. “I’m about halfway through my AAR on the hospital operation.”

“Issues?” Hamilton asked.

“I’m still getting used to military report-writing procedure, sir,” Faith said. “And the report really boils down to ‘There was nobody home.’ I’m not sure how much more there is to write. I mean, I do know there is more to it than that, sir, but there’s not much. I can’t seem to find enough words to fill out a full DF.”

“Then don’t,” Hamilton said. “Write it up as you would and turn it in. You’re right. There wasn’t much more to it.”

“Yes, sir,” Faith said.

“Captain Wilkes wanted at least a thousand words?” Hamilton asked.

“Yes, sir,” Faith said.

“I come out of a slightly different culture,” Hamilton said. “The more information and less verbiage the better. I don’t care if it is only three lines, if it has all the information needed and avoids buzzwords. If it doesn’t, then we’ll talk.”

“Yes, sir,” Faith said.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at the officers’ call, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said. “Type it up, put it on the server. If there are any issues we’ll cover them tomorrow. Oh, and this time don’t run it past Staff Sergeant Januscheitis first.”

“Yes, sir,” Faith said, gulping.

“Zero nine hundred,” Hamilton said, waving at his forehead. “Be there.”

“Congratulations on your clearance of Guantanamo, Captain,” General Brice said.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Steve said in a puzzled tone. “I think the congratulations should go to Captain Wilkes, however. It was his plan and execution, General. And we’re still a bit up in the air over where to get materials for the vaccine. We’re considering a sweep of the Leeward Islands.”

“Which is critical,” Brice said. “But they’re going to need to hold in place rather than start the sweep. Or perhaps start it but not for that primary reason.”

“Ma’am?” Steve said, cautiously. “Something you haven’t been telling me?”

“Many things, Steve,” Brice said, sighing. “Many things. But not ‘keeping secrets’ from you. You said, ‘don’t joggle my elbow.’ By the same token…Captain, I’m looking at the world here. And there is nothing you can do for most of the world. We know where five of our supercarriers are that were at sea. Four are aground, one is sunk. Because it would be idiotic, I don’t say ‘Captain, would you mind going to the Seychelles and clearing the Carl Vinson ?’ You don’t need the stress of knowing. Sorry to bring that up.”

“I understand, ma’am,” Steve said, nodding. “I would if it was even vaguely conceivable. What does that have to do with Gitmo?”

“Nothing,” Brice said. “In the same way, I decided not to say ‘clearing hell out of a small island is really important and really time critical because…’ Let me just say that there is good news and better news. The good news is that we’ve found you an MD and a world-class microbiologist.”

“Where, General?” Steve asked curiously. “Walker?”

“No,” Brice said, chuckling. “His expertise is more in taking lives. The better news is that you’ve now created a condition in which she and her colleagues might be able to land.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “I’m going to admit to total confusion, ma’am.”

“Those current videos we sent of the night sky,” Brice said. “They didn’t all come from satellites…”

“Change of agenda for the meeting,” Steve said, pulling up a satellite shot of an island. All of the officers as well as Walker, Gunny Sands, Sergeant Major Barney and Chief Schmidt were present. General Brice and Dr. Dobson were attending via satellite video. “Marines and some presently unspecified Naval forces will head down to the Leeward Islands. Part of that will be to sweep for any remaining medical supplies, textbooks and so on. Part of it will be other missions. Which is the primary focus of this meeting. First, the good news. We now have a possibility of getting not only a microbiologist but several mechanical engineers, a former SEAL and, will wonders never cease, an MD.”

“Where?” Walker asked.

“Well, that is in part up to Colonel Hamilton,” Steve said. “General Brice?”

“We’ve been looking at this mission for some time,” General Brice said. “Mission is to thoroughly clear a small island—our suggestion on that is Anguilla in the British Leeward Islands—and then secure a golf course on that island.”

“General,” Walker said, “with the forces that we have, securing a golf course would be functionally impossible.”

“It’s not a suggestion, sir,” Brice said, sir. “It’s more of a desperation move. And it’s not exactly ‘secure the golf-course.’ It’s ‘secure the island with focus on the golf course.’ We’re just hoping that the Dragon can hit an island .”

“Dragon?” Faith said excitedly. “They’re real?”

“The ISS resupply vessel?” Sophia asked. “I didn’t think they were personnel rated.”

“Oh,” Faith said. “Rats, I was hoping…Oooh, astronauts?”

“The ISS,” Colonel Hamilton said, shaking his head.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Sergeant Major Barney said.

“I thought it was evacuated, ma’am,” Faith said. “That was what we’d been told, ma’am.”

“Which was true for values of true, Lieutenant,” Brice said. “When it was impossible to return the full crew, we were holding off on mentioning that there were still five on the station. Just before the Fall, a prototype Dragon crew vehicle was shot up to the station with, well, as much in the way of supplies and parts as they could fit. But the decision was made for the crew to remain in space. The crews have reduced immune systems, along with dozens of other physical problems. Dropping them into the middle of a plague was not a good idea. Everyone hoped that…we’d be able to keep things under control. Get a handle on the Plague. Three returned on a Soyuz. What happened to them, and one of them was an American mission specialist, we don’t know. But five are still trapped on the station. The Dragon has never been tested for human reentry. It has been refitted for it, but… They’re out of time, materials, air and their last heat exchanger is about to fail. When it does, the ISS will turn into an oven. A really, really hot one.

“The problem has been, well, obvious…”

“A sufficiently large area sufficiently clear of infected,” Colonel Hamilton said.

“Which has people there to help them and people with vaccine ,” General Brice said. “There’s an ironic aspect to this. The initial Dragon was similar to the early U.S. space missions: it was designed to land at sea and be picked up by boats. The one that was sent up as an emergency resupply and rescue vehicle was their ground landing prototype. Even if things got bad, they envisioned that someone, somewhere, would hold the land and, of course, there was no way that they could get help in an apocalypse at sea .”

“Oh, God,” Sophia said, holding her hand over her mouth and trying not to laugh.

“Yes, Ensign,” Brice said drily. “They’ve been up there for months watching the squadron build and cursing their luck. Some of those night sky videos, they provided.”

“How accurately can they land?” Walker asked.

“Much more than Soyuz, apparently,” Brice said. “They say they think they can hit the driving range on the golf course. Assuming that an untested prototype works. I’m saying secure the whole thing and set a perimeter to stay out from under—well, an untested prototype space-to-ground landing vehicle that has some pretty serious rockets it uses to land.”