White.
The great icy expanse of the Anchorage mountain range seemed to stretch on forever; an endless field of blinding white broken up here and there by grey. It was a place that a man could fall into and get lost forever. It was breath-taking to look at, a four-hundred-mile long slab of nature that had existed long before mankind and would continue to exist long after humanity was gone. A more poetic soul might have written a song about it, but as the vertibird he was riding in flew over the landscape, all Staff Sergeant Nathaniel Jones could think about was the way the chill in the air was seeping into his bones.
The cold had a way of sneaking under his combat armor and right through his fatigues, settling under his skin and staying there as a constant reminder that he had forgotten what it was like to feel warm. Nathaniel shivered. Fuck Anchorage. It was a bitter thought, accompanied by daydreams of hot coffee and indoor heating. He stared out the window at the other two vertibirds flying alongside them in formation, his reflection staring back at him ruefully through frosted over glass. He'd always hated the vertibirds. The machines were the product of a twisted mind, he'd decided; an amalgamation of helicopter and plane that was both and neither at the same time.
There were seven other people in the aircraft with him, and he wondered what it said about its construction that a few more bodies might have thrown it off balance. He hadn't shaved in a week or two, a permanent five o clock shadow etched on his face and his dark hair growing more unkempt with each passing day. But command had been lax about enforcing discipline in the ranks. Nobody wanted to be in Alaska anymore, even the brass. Everyone was just so tired of the war with China. Just over ten years it had been raging; the last two superpowers on the planet fighting over the world's last oil reserves.
When the Reds had invaded Alaska in 2066, Nathaniel had been eager to enlist, ready to fight the good fight the way every Jones man going back to the second world war had. But after a decade spent fighting all over the planet, Nathaniel had had enough. War never changes was the Jones family motto, but it was only recently that he truly understood what it meant. The blue in his eyes felt colder somehow. Flat. Like the life had been drained out of it. Maybe it had.
What they'd done on the pipeline—hell, what they'd done over the course of the campaign to annex Canada for the states? There was an uncleanliness that stuck to him, something that couldn't be washed off. It was in his head, he knew, but the only person that truly understood that was Nora, the lovely wife he had waiting for him back home in Massachusetts.
They'd gotten married in august, a little over five months ago. Two months ago, he'd received new orders, had been told he was shipping out back to the front line. One month ago, he'd gotten a letter from Nora, telling him that she was pregnant; because of that picnic they'd had in the park the day before Halloween, the one that had taken a lusty turn. You're going to be a father, Nate. It made him pray desperately that the high risk mission his squad was on would end the war the way the brass hoped it would. If he missed the birth of their child—
Well, there were some things in life that had no do-overs.
"Damn, never thought I'd miss the sandbox." The scratchy voice pulled Nathaniel out of his thoughts, and he turned in his seat to look at the speaker, countering the sudden outburst with a tired smile.
"That so, Private Morris? I never would have guessed, what with all your whining during that tour."
"The Gobi Desert can go to hell sir," Morris replied with a cheeky grin, the act creasing the many scars on his face. "But at least sand doesn't get into the hard to reach places, melt and cause shrinkage." That earned a few chuckles from the other men in the aircraft. Nathaniel shook his head to hide the smile. Come to think of it, he missed the desert too. Well, not the sand in his shoes. Sand in his eyes. Sand in his mouth. The back of his fatigues constantly damp with sweat. But at least there he had been able to feel his fingers. He held back a cruder joke as someone had to maintain decorum and looked around at the rest of his squad.
Corporal Sullivan was calibrating his power armor for the drop and some small part of Nate envied him for not needing a parachute. The T-51 suit was supposed to be a huge step up from the old T-45's; winterized camo to help it blend into the battlefield and more bells and whistles in the armament department. But the suit turned whoever wore it into a tank on two legs. Winter camo or no, the Chinese were sure to see Sullivan coming from a mile away, if they didn't see the bright red of his hair and beard first. He was fearless. He'd fought in the battle for the sea of tranquility and honestly, how many people could say they'd been to the moon?
Across from him, their medic, Private Garcia was rubbing his rosary between callused fingers, muttering a prayer in Spanish under his breath. Nate had never put much stock in rituals like that, but he had to admit that Garcia had some uncanny luck about him. In all their time together, he was the only one in the squad who never gotten injured, something he claimed was due to the blessing of the archangel Michael.
Next to Garcia was Private Walsh who was testing two different scopes for the top of his modular laser rifle. He was a thin and reedy man, all awkward gangly limbs like a spider and thick glasses. Walsh looked as though he should be teaching a high school chemistry class, but for a nerd he had plenty of battle rage and that was on top of being able to take apart any weapon and put it back together with improvements.
The last member of the squad was sitting listlessly behind the machine gun emplacement. Clark was their sniper and had always been a quiet one, but the young man had had a thousand-yard stare ever since the pipeline. To tell the truth, Nathaniel had nightmares about their deployment there as well. He hadn't signed up to slog through Alberta. The living conditions there had been approaching third world status. Canada had been hit hard by the new plague and had suffered greatly over the course of the Sino-American war.
The brass could spin it however they wanted, but nothing heroic had happened there. There was nothing right about forcing people out of their homes, or shooting down unarmed protestors. The media knew damn well that those folks hadn't been commie sympathizers, but that was the official story.
One of the protestors they'd shot couldn't have been more than sixteen.
"You staying frosty, private?" Nathaniel asked as he made his way over to Clark. The sniper nodded slowly, his eyes drifting away from Nathaniel and back out to the snowy mountains ahead of them. Silence reigned between them for a moment before Clark sighed.
"Buddy of mine, Patrick. He got discharged on account of his mental health. They figured he was suicidal. Sent him back to Pennsylvania. Said he couldn't handle what we did on the pipeline." Clark sighed again, dropping his gaze to the rifle balanced between his legs. "Staff sergeant, I don't know that I'm handling what we did on the pipeline all that well either." Nathaniel gripped Clark's shoulder and gave him a reassuring pat. Randall was his first name, though he didn't use it all that often. He was a good kid. Reminded Nate of how he'd been when he first enlisted. Though Randall had gotten jaded a lot faster.
"It wasn't an easy thing we did, but we had to do it." Nate said it calmly but loud enough that the rest of the squad could hear it too. He knew everyone was feeling it. They'd lost pieces of their souls obeying General Chase's order to open fire on civilians. They'd lost Mordino and Patterson too, when Canadian guerillas had shown up for vengeance. "You can't think about that right now. Keep your head on the mission ahead. We're getting airdropped behind enemy lines and I need everyone at their best." The words were ashes in his mouth, but he said them anyway. "Your wife and kid, where are they again?"
"Salt Lake City, sir." Clark said with a small smile.
"And my wife is in Concord. Just remember that we're doing this for them."
Clark saluted and kept the smile. "Roger that, sir." He lapsed back into silence but he seemed slightly more at ease. Nathaniel got up and headed to the cockpit.
"Pilot what's our ETA?"
"About ten, fifteen minutes out sir. We're approaching from the far side of the mountain, so we shouldn't be within the range of their artillery." Nathaniel nodded.
"That's all I needed to know." He went back to the seating area and raised his voice. "Okay men, listen up, we're jumping in five, so I want everyone's chutes checked ASAP!" The squad scrambled to obey his order as he continued. "Once we hit the LZ, we are to rendezvous with a marine detachment under the command of one Sgt. Montgomery—"
"What, the jarheads need us to babysit them?"
"Can it Morris!" Nathaniel barked sternly before going on. "Our orders are to take out a trio of artillery guns that are blocking the aerial advance, which is why we're all carrying c-4. Now, as Private Morris is our demolition expert, it is imperative that he—"
"INCOMING!" the co-pilot shouted suddenly. The vertibird veered sharply to the left and threw Nathaniel off his feet. He hit the bottom of the craft with a thud but rolled and got back up quickly.
"Status report!" he bellowed to the cockpit. "I thought we weren't in range of their artillery!?"
"We aren't!" the pilot shouted back as he tried to regain control of the aircraft. "Small arms fire, they have men with missile launchers and gatling lasers on the slopes!" Nathaniel swore. The landing zone was supposed to have been cleared by the marines sent in before them. Someone had dropped the ball.
"More incoming!" the pilot cried out.
Nate looked out the open door of the aircraft just in time to see the vertibird to their left explode in a colossal fireball, sending flaming shrapnel, bodies and cargo in every direction. The heat of It reached him for a moment, almost kissed his face. For their sake, he hoped the soldiers riding in that one had gone quick. Missile must have hit an engine or maybe the c-4.
The vertibird banked suddenly, first to the right and then to the left. This time, Nathaniel could hear the whistle of the missiles whizzing past them. "Pull up! Pull up!" The co-pilot screamed. A heavy impact rocked the cabin, throwing everyone around. Walsh almost rolled out but was saved by his safety harness. The alarms were blaring and the air smelled like ozone and burning metal. It was acrid on his tongue. It sounded like rain was hitting the aircraft, but Nate knew they were being peppered with machine gun fire. "Right wing has suffered critical damage! Our engine is failing and my co-pilot is gone! Sir, your men gotta jump now!"
Nathaniel swore.
"We're bailing out! Go, go, go!"
The vertibird spun like a corkscrew but the squad starting jumping. First Walsh, arms and legs akimbo, followed by Clark and Garcia. Sullivan dropped like a stone in his power armor. Morris was last and then Nathaniel jumped himself.
The world spun as he tried to picture Nora's face.
And then he was falling, down, down, swallowed by the icy field of white that was rushing up to meet him.
"Easy on the trigger, remember what I taught ya."
Nora lined up the shot and exhaled slowly, the lessons her father had drilled into her from childhood whispering in her ear. A moment later she blasted the bird out of the sky. It had been a while since she'd last used birdshot, so it was good to know that she hadn't forgotten anything, even if she had missed several ducks before finally nailing one. Her father grinned, wiping bits of energy bar out of the grey of his beard. Duck season would be over at the end of the month, so he was trying to get as much out of it as he could.
He whistled for his hunting dog to retrieve it and chucked a stone into the water. They were out at the creek behind his cabin, out in the hills behind concord. A little slice of the wilderness, though the community of Sanctuary Hills was only a short drive away. It was cold, but she had bundled up for this excursion, especially since she was three months pregnant. "That ducks gonna be good eatin. Lemme tell you, better than any of them processed meats the government pretends is food." He polished off the rest of his bar and crumpled the wrapper, jamming it into his pocket. Nora gave him a sidelong glance. If this conversation was headed where it looked like it was—
"You know Nora, the government ain't ya friend. Look at this vault nonsense they got in the news again. Packing people in bunkers like sardines inna tin can. Now that's just asking for trouble." Nora sighed and handed him the rifle. Whenever he started to rant like this it was difficult to get him to stop.
"You've been saying that for twenty years' dad."
"Don't make me any less right," he responded with a shrug. Yessiree, and every day we inch closer to the apocalypse. Panic in the streets. Disease. Food shortages. I heard on t'radio the other day that we got a second serial killer on the loose in Boston now."
The Nuka-Killer. Some sicko that drowned his victims and left the bodies for the authorities to find, nuka-cola bottle caps jammed into their eye sockets. Seemed like the state of the world had been bringing out the crazy in people more and more. They were getting desperate. The value of the American dollar had been dropping steadily since she'd been in high school and she was pushing thirty now. Inflation was at an all-time high. Their family was relatively financially stable, but that she owed to her dad convincing her and Nate to put most of their savings in gold.
"The feds are useless, as sure as my name is Charles O'Connor. They never did catch that psycho clown boy down in D.C. So I wouldn't count on them catching this nuka-creep or the Fens street Phantom either." He paused for a moment in his rant, mulling something over. "Who comes up with these names anyway? Sounds like a friggin comic book."
Nora smiled wanly and stared up at the empty blue sky. When he got like this it was best just to let him run out of steam. Then she'd try to discuss what she'd come up to his cabin to talk about. "That's what's wrong with society," Nora knew this part well and started mouthing in sync behind him while he was stooped over the creek. "Society got too goldurned lazy. Handheld computer this, robot butler that. Cars that run on nuclear power." She expected him to segway into something about the damn commies next but instead he brought up her job.
"I'm just glad you never got mixed up in that Eddie Winters business. World's going to hell, and that man right there is the devil hisself." Nora shook her head, her auburn hair getting caught by a sudden gust of wind.
"It's a real shame that he slipped away dad. I thought for sure they had him on this last one." So many people had been trying to nail that mob boss to the wall. Detective's Perry, Buchanan and Valentine to name a few. It had been the biggest case to ever come across the desks of the law office she worked at. But she supposed it was for the best that she hadn't been picked. As a criminal defense lawyer she might have become part of Winters team and having to defend a scumbag like that would have pushed her to the brink.
Before taking maternity leave, she'd handled two homicide cases and a vandal and gotten two of them off scot-free. Because one had been clearly innocent and the evidence against another had been circumstantial at best. One of these days she was going to convince her dad to purchase space in the nearest vault. It was insurance, just in case one of the countries finally decided to use the nuclear option. It seemed more likely every week.
"President don't know his ass from his—" her father started to say.
"Dad, I still think you should reserve a spot in the vault, there's still space." she said it abruptly, changing the subject. It was why she had come out to the cabin in the first place and she was starting to get annoyed about not being able to get a word in edgewise. Her dad was harder to argue with than any of her opponents on the bench. He'd had a fit when she had purchased a Mr. Handy from General Atomics to help her around the house, insisting that the damn robot was going to malfunction and slaughter her entire yuppie filled suburban neighborhood. He had refused to visit for weeks.
Granted, bots were a little intimidating. They were about the size of a bicycle, and looked like a spherical octopus with multiple mechanical limbs and attachments for cooking, cleaning, gardening and the like as well as three eyestalks with which to cover all the angles. Nora wasn't sure what had unnerved her father more, the fact that the floated a few feet off the ground due to its built in jet booster, that it was nuclear powered, or that its artificial intelligence was programmed with a British accent or that it had introduced itself to him as Codsworth.
"Bah!" he snorted. "Nuclear bombs or not, you ain't stickin me in the ground until I'm good and dead, y'hear me? It's ree-dick-yew-loos," he muttered, drawing out every syllable for effect. "Why d'ya think I spent so much time teaching you how to survive out here? If your mother—" he bit back whatever he was going to say and Nora took his hand. Her mother had passed when she was still in middle school and her father had never quite recovered from it. He turned to look at her, his eyes crinkling with warmth and sadness. "I'm proud of you, you know. For getting an education. Ha! My daughter the lawyer." He wagged his finger at her knowingly. "But I bet you none of those stuffed shirts down at Suffolk know how to stalk a deer or take a gun apart and clean it."
"Yeah, you'd be right." She said with a grin, picturing her coworkers getting lost in the woods.
"That's my girl." Her dad said with a soft chuckle. "And my grandbaby!"
Nora smiled and rubbed at her belly. She was just beginning to show. Hopefully, Nate would be back before the due date. He was still knee-deep in Alaska and the last news report she'd seen had said the Chinese front line was holding steady, though they hadn't taken any more ground. The experts said they believed the war would soon be over, but they'd been saying that since she graduated high school.
"Dad," she tried to start again.
"Oh, no, I won't hear any more of this vault nonsense."
"Dad, your hunting hound is eating the duck." she sighed.
"Oh, dammit."
Nora shook her head and took the rifle back. Time to shoot another one.