Far Cry 5: The Collapse
Chapter 22: All is safely gathered in
After waking up for a lunch of burgers and stuffed potatoes, Joey finally got a chance to give a first hand account of both what happened in the caves and the spur of the moment hotel attack including Sharky's unexpected assistance.
When she had finished her tale she looked at the gathered leadership and felt a wave of mild embarrassment wash over her. "Ok so that's what happened. I know the attack on the hotel was unplanned..." she said when Marcus held up his hand to stop her.
He had a large fatherly grin as he spoke and was making it clear how proud he was in her. "Joey relax... you were there on the ground, you read the situation and made a decision. Now did it go to plan? No not exactly but like with the attack on the youth camp: we make plans, we get there, and then everything goes to hell in a hand basket."
Jessica and the Sheriff nodded as he continued. "We had only just got done defending Nick's house when Roger read the situation and decided to attack the Seed Ranch. It was sudden and off the cuff but it worked, we didn't know how many peggies there would be there only that they likely would have just sent a majority of their forces against us. So right then and there was the time to attack, thus we did. Thus we dared and won. You dared and you won."
She returned the smile and felt better as the veteran commando praised her. She still wished at the time she could have at least bounced her idea off of Roger but it sounded like he would have approved as well and that was enough for her.
"So does this mean it would be ok for me to assault Joseph's compound and arrest him now?" She joked.
Tracey, Minkler, and Dmitri had looks of horror, the Sheriff was rolling his eyes catching her tone as was Jessica, Marcus however worked his jaw side to side much like Roger tended to do when he was thinking.
Eventually he spoke in a deeper Yoda like voice. "No. Not ready you are. Finish your training you must."
"You... you were joking right?" Dmitri commented watching the deputy and commando share a hearty laugh.
"Yes I'm joking. I can only imagine attacking Joseph now would bring absolutely every single peggie in the county rushing to his compound and we don't have the means to fight on that scale." She said.
The Russian sighed in relief. "Well in the mean time I would like to ask for your expertise in what we managed to get out of Feeney while you were cave crawling."
The mood around the planning table turned serious again as the intelligence officer grabbed a nearby shotgun shell and set it on map at the Jessop Conservatory beside the small purple, grey, and black painted miniature that Marcus had referred to as a 'Herald of Slaanesh' to represent Faith's current location.
"When I was at the conservatory there was a large cave at the back of property that was off limits to all save for Feeney's chemists. From what the doctor as told us and is supported by his documents is that cave is serving as the cult primary storage for Bliss, however he claims that they have approximately a million gallons stored within." He finished.
Minkler was the first to break the wide eyed silence shared by everyone save for Marcus. "A... million gallons, could the cult even make that much Bliss? Not to mention how could they store that much even in a large cave?"
She stared hard at the shotgun shell as she realized just what the cult had done. "Because its not a natural cave. In fact it is a relic of the early days of World War II that got forgotten at the start of the Cold War."
"What do you mean?" Minkler asked as out of everyone in the room he would have been the most likely to at least heard of such a thing.
Joey smiled as she settled in to explain. "Let me tell you a story of a government project that got lost in the bureaucratic cracks in the transitional years of post war America. In early 1939 the PWA, Public Works Administration was asked by the U.S War Department via using the Army Corp of Engineers as a intermediary about building supply caches for the Army in the local mountains should a foreign invasion of the west coast take place."
She reached for the shotgun shell and picked it up before she continued. "Now at the time the government was slowly gearing up for a possible conflict as things in Europe were heating up and Japan was arming up for something, so none of this was unusual and of course it would bring jobs to Hope County. Fast forward a year and the PWA is breaking ground on The Orville Fall Federal Supply Storage, simply referred to in the records afterwards as 'The Cache'. The site was chosen with the idea that they would dig a rail line to connect to the existing rail network through Mt. Harrison and have a rail depot on the other side of the mountains surrounding Hope County.
This of course didn't happen. After Pearl Harbor the project was scaled back to just digging out the cache and then just trucking in supplies, construction would continue at a increasingly reduced rate until the PWA was disbanded in June of '43 and the project was rolled over to the new Federal Works Agency. These guys then take a further two years to 'reassess' the need for the cache in the first place and decide that its still a worth while project but will need to be changed to fit the new national defense plans being put in place at the time. The site was left to rot and some kids in 1948 actually died when some of the work scaffolding they were playing on collapsed, that is why there was a record of any of this in the county archive.
So there after the Army Corp of Engineers comes and boards up the cache and when the FWA got rolled over into the modern day General Services Administration they asked the Army what the plan was for the cache to which they effectively shrugged and said 'We don't know.' The newly formed Air Force then asks the GSA to let them use the cache as a storage facility while they built the missile silos we know today and considered using it to store additional missiles and equipment needed to reload the silos but that idea never got past the proposal stage." She rattled off to the enraptured audience.
"I remember when they built the silo that Faith now uses when I was a little kid but I don't remember much beyond that. I was... only six years old back then." Minkler commented.
"The county notified the local Air Force command in charge of overseeing the construction that they would need to inform them when the cache was unsealed so they could put up additional signage to warn people to keep out. That never happened as the Air Force effectively forgot it even existed. After the silos were upgraded for the last time to Minuteman III missiles the Air Force finally handed over full control and ownership to the Bureau of Land Management and from there..."
"The Jessop's finally bought the land to add to their facility." Marcus added.
"Thus we come full circle to Rachel handing it to Joseph. But what does this place look like?" Tracey asked.
Joey chewed at her lip briefly as she grabbed a marker and a scrap piece of paper from a nearby trash can and started drawing. "Ok forgive me but I'm doing this from nearly 15 year old memories. Basically think of a multi-level car park I... don't remember how big each floor was to be but the Army was shooting for about three to nine million square feet per a floor of useable storage space and then have a total of ten floors all connected by a large spiral ramp."
"I know they have a lower entrance at Gethsemane Greenhouse, its serves as a entrance for that set of experimental greenhouses." Dmitri added.
Joey groaned a bit at the news. "That's suggests that once again the cult has been busy digging just like at John's silo. That second entrance was most defiantly not on any of the plans I remember seeing, at least not on that side of the mountains."
"Well Hudson I think what we need to do is at least recon that cave and find out what is really there. If the cult is keeping most of its Bliss supply there then we can figure out how to keep it from them." The Sheriff said as he leaned over the map once more.
"Can we just blow the tanks?" Jessica asked looking at her husband.
"We could however we run a high chance of taking out anyone that might be held prisoner at the conservatory. That's a damned high cost to pay." He growled.
Joey set the shotgun shell down back on the map as she looked at the routes in and out of the area. "I can add that to the 'to do' list then. Find out what the interior of the cache is really like then if its possible sneak into Rachel's compound and get an idea of the number of living prisoners."
"Nothing else Joey. Just get information, God in heaven I feel like I'm sending you straight to the gates of hell to die." Sheriff pleaded.
"If I see Rachel I am going to take that shot. Kill her and the cultists in this region will be rudderless." She said looking at the concerned faced of the other leaders.
"Hudson I want Rachel dead more then just about anyone in this county, but if we loose you then we loose a lot more then just a Deputy." Tracey said much to the surprise of everyone else.
"She's right. While we have made great strides in disrupting the cult's operations the war is hardly over. We have to never lose sight of the future no matter how temping it might be strike now. Just yesterday I stood before Joseph, in his church... alone." Dmitri admitted to the shock of everyone gathered.
"I know that by not killing him there when I had the chance could have condemned dozens if not hundreds of people, but I had to get the information on Feeney back here. It's the kind of weight that men such as myself have to bear for better or worse. Keep that mind Hudson, killing Faith... Rachel at the first moment might not help us down the road especially if its at the cost of loosing you and your findings." He said grimly the moral strain clear on his face even if he didn't speak of it directly.
She simply nodded as the weight of his own personal sacrifice made her pause. "Well if I am going to be sneaking into Rachel's own compound, I better go back to bed now."
Joey slipped away followed by everyone else save for Marcus who called out to Dmitri.
"Dmitri if you could hang back a moment please." He said looking the other intelligence officer in the eye.
The Russian nodded and came back to the map table. "Let me guess you want to pre plan a rescue mission or an estimate of how many people could be in the conservatory?"
Marcus shook his head. "No but if you have even a decent estimate I can see what we can scrape up. No what I wanted to ask is from your observations what is the mental state of Rachel and Joseph in honest terms."
Dmitri started fiddling with a pencil that laid on the map before he finally could bring himself to talk. "Marcus the cult... is wounded and its starting to effect Rachel, her actions thus far have been less carefully planned and relied more on gambles like moving everything from the Fly Shop to the hotel. Why would she do that? If anything the opposite would have made more sense, instead trying to defend a far flung holding she should bring everything closer."
He snapped his head up leaving the pencil back on the table as he looked at Marcus. "If she looses much more foot hold she is going to get desperate and unpredictable. If say she finds out that we have Feeney or finds out Joey was in her compound I would expect her to finally break and do something drastic like attacking the jail again. I think without a constant solid connection to Joseph she is in too deep over her head to know what to do on her own."
Marcus smiled at the news. A out of control Herald while dangerous is going to not only waste time but fuel, ammo, and lives trying to lash out, the only sticking point was surviving said lashings long enough for the Resistance to finally crush the exhausted cultists.
The other point was the lack of support coming from Joseph or Jacob for that matter. A girl Rachel's age without any direct input from older, wiser heads is bound to start making mistakes and those mistakes have a habit of stacking up.
It was a repeat of what happened to John. He was chipped away and left high and dry by his family without support. The difference was John at least was locked up in his bunker, Rachel seemed dead set on staying at her birth family's conservatory which made her much more vulnerable and if what Joey suspected even more accessible.
'Could we capture Rachel? Would we gain anything from grabbing her? No... John or Jacob maybe but not 'Faith'. Joseph has replaced her several times already so what trouble could another time cause?" He thought before refocusing on Dmitri.
"On the matter of Joseph... he appears to be mostly unbothered by events thus far. He was preaching the normal lines of being strong in this time of Resistance for sake of everyone else. Beside that he recognized that him coming directly to Feeney would cause a major security concern that could throw Feeney's work off schedule. Nothing else seemed to have changed for the brief moment that I could observe him."
"Well as long as he keeps thinking that in the end God will save him and his flock no matter how bad things get, then I'm willing to let him wallow in denial so long as he doesn't launch any missiles." Marcus said folding his arms in thought.
"Is that still our current theory? That Joseph has built more than one missile?" The Russian asked.
He nodded solemnly. "I have yet to see or hear of anything to suggest otherwise thus I would rather assume he has a weapon then be surprised. You said that Feeney had a way of shutting off the Bliss production in the silo but actually getting in is a different story. Its still locked up tight and Mack's boys have already confirmed that."
"If Rachel had any sense she would have at least start packing her people in the bunker. But that could be seen as weakness both to her followers and maybe even Joseph." Dmitri added.
A silence was shared between both soldiers before Marcus broke it once more. "Our choices remain the same in the end. The faster we take down the cult the better our chances of avoiding a missile launch with all the world wide danger that brings."
On that grim note the men left to attend to their other duties the future in their own opinion looking uncomfortably uncertain now upon further review.
Joey felt like she was being squeezed all over her body as if she was diving deep underwater and whenever she could briefly manage to open her eyes all she could see was light green fog all around here before she was forced to shut her eyes to protect against the pressure around her.
Finally she landed on... something solid, she hadn't even known she had been falling given all the pressure on her but as she 'landed' the pressure stopped and she could look around her.
She was in a open field with tall knee high grass and clusters of pure white Bliss flowers. On instinct she reached for her shotgun but found nothing, her pistol and knife were both found to be absent as well.
"Hudson once more we see that you have only slipped further into the sin of 'Wrath'." A smooth and familiar voice rang out from somewhere in the fog.
"John... you're dead. I watched Roger crush your fucking skull! I heard you beg for it!" She turned in place looking for the cult showman. The sound of footsteps in the grass besides her own finally gave her something to focus on and out of a fog bank came John Seed dressed in his usual finery looking as smug as he always did.
"Tell me Hudson have you... found peace yet? After everything you have done after leaving my bunker have you really gained anything? All the death, all of the destruction you alone have caused, and yet even now you plot to kill more. You called me a monster... honestly I think you should check a mirror first." John said smiling.
She gritted her teeth in frustration even as she backed away from the approaching man. "I'm doing what's needed, defending the people of Hope County... my home from the cult!" She growled.
John laughed loudly at her words only furthering her anger. "'Doing what's needed.' Just like Rook am I right?" He waited a heartbeat to see if he could get a answer but continued. "Face it Hudson, Roger Rook I am willing to admit is the most inhuman being I have ever encountered. Indeed I am even willing to admit that like you described he is a machine... but you aren't."
It was now time for her to be confused as she tried to guess at John's play. "Your point?" she ventured.
"Rook is a machine... cold and unfeeling. He can wade through a school full of children and as long as they are his enemies he can and will butcher them all to the last and then think nothing of it. But you? You are still human Hudson even now you have to keep telling yourself, keep lying to yourself that you are getting used to fighting like Rook. Just how many lives have you ended in just the last week? Just how much destruction have you wrought? Your soul is not just stained with the blood of the innocent whose only crime is trying to reach for Eden... but it is burdened, in fact its overburdened because you know deep down that what you are doing... is wrong." John said as he closed within arms reach of her and she lashed out with a hard right cross to his face.
But her strike passed through him as if he were made out of mist and he reached out with incredible speed and grasped her by her throat and threw her down on the grass, pinning her in place.
"Tell me Hudson why do you think Rook keeps you around? Is it because he loves you? Because you are so ripe and willing to sate his lust? Because you are so willing to blindly follow his orders?" John continued to speak as she swiped at him as she also clawed at the hand pinning her to down to the ground but only found more mist.
"You know the answer! The... real answer... not the bullshit dogma driven shit you keep pushing." She gasped as she felt his hand tighten a fraction more.
John laughed and laughed some more and with each moment tightened his grip a little more. "Oh Hudson... I do know the answer. The reason why Rook keeps you around is because you are or rather were still human. You still have feelings and even the least bit sense of morals, but with every act of brutality you commit against the cult even at his beck and call you burn away more of that humanity."
He pulled himself closer to her face nearly nose to nose. She could feel the heat and moisture from his breath even as she tried to get away from him. "You are just another resource Hudson to him... you are the counterweight to his machine like tendencies and when you burn though your humanity and become little more than a killing machine like him you will be useless. You know full well he can have any number of women throw themselves at him and he can have his pick of them all... meanwhile you are just a pile of ashes on the wind."
"Lair!" She croaked as she felt him grip ever harder.
"Am I? Do you think that continuing to play commando will somehow make you more appealing? Do you really think that bathing in the blood of the faithful will somehow make you worthy of his attention?" John thundered, but before he could say or do more a single pistol shot rang out and John was struck in his right side throwing him off of her but not killing him outright.
She looked left as she took in lungfuls of air and could see a tall well built man in a Deputy's uniform approaching. The sound of his footsteps through the grass were mostly drowned out by the rattle of his duty belt as he came closer.
"Josephine, you better not listen to a damn word this motherless son of a bitch says, you hear?" The lawman said as she sat up.
John had also recovered and now looked at his blood covered hand as he inspected his wound with utter shock. "And who in God's good name are you supposed to be?"
The lawman laughed hardily and John visibly flinched at the sound. "I'm the other Deputy Hudson." He proceeded over to his daughter and with a outstretched hand that was taken he hoisted her up to her feet.
"Dad?" Joey croaked as her voice broke and tears threatened to fall. Her father Edward Hudson was as she remembered him, reasonably fit for his age with bright and friendly green eyes and carefully tended short black hair that he would go to the barber every Saturday morning partly to be cleaned up and partly to shoot the breeze with the other Saturday regulars.
He wore a older version of the department's uniform of a slightly darker almost olive drab green compared to her own uniform but he still wore the same black Stetson she now wore.
"Josephine, I'm not going beat around the bush. You are doing great, hell I don't think I could have done half the fighting you have or stand up to the cult nearly as well as you did even before this war. You've have held up against everything the world has thrown at you and never wavered even once." Her father spoke in a familiar warm tone.
"Dad... John is right I have killed a lot of people recently." She tried to speak but was silenced from the slightly disapproving look he gave her.
"Josephine. Josephine... you know that you have done everything to avoid the killing. You upheld the law as fairly as could be asked of you, but the moment the cult locked down the county the usual system no longer applies. You then fell back to basics, to serve and protect the public and its by that rule you have taken the war to the cult. You aren't doing this for glory or fame or riches... you're doing to make sure that families like Earl's don't wind up just being another cluster of white crosses in Jerome's graveyard. You're doing this to bring justice for all of those white crosses that the cult has already murdered. Now that's settled there is Rook..."
She felt like she needed to say something. Anything to help justify her reforged relationship with Roger but instead of the expected disapproval she only saw him smile.
"You know that Roger needs you. You are indeed his counterweight, his conscious, and you are also the only woman that could even hope to keep up with him. He always wanted you to be stronger, to be better, to go further then you thought possible. That's why you two broke up the first time, you both needed to grow a little before picking things up again. He became every bit the solider his forefathers were and you found your calling upholding the law like the last few generations of Hudsons did."
His words finally broke the dam in eyes as she wept openly, even with her mother's approval of her choices she always wondered in the dark recesses of her mind if her father would have been so approving. He likely would have wanted her to finish her degree in Geosciences regardless of the job market as few things had bothered him more than half finished work but now all of her doubts were swept away.
He reached up and wiped a tear from her cheek and smiled wider. "Roger Rook loves you because you are strong and you never shied away from improving. How much better can you say that you have improved by blowing up statues, infiltrating enemy outposts, and leading rescues?" He embraced her now fully before continuing. "Roger Rook would never let go of a woman like you, after all how many can say they fought off a doomsday cult?"
She giggled at the realization but was cut off by John's annoying voice.
"Uh hello I am still here? You know Herald of the Word of Joseph?" He said as he now stood fully upright seemingly unaffected by his previous gunshot wound.
The elder Hudson rolled his eyes hard. "Yes you are still here and let me tell you right here right now that I don't take kindly to rapists especially rapists looking to commit such a act on my own daughter."
It was John's turn roll his eyes. "Well it's not really rape its more of a effective means of getting women to admit their sins. Besides Joseph for some reason said not to do more than the basics to Josephine here, which do work but take time and careful..."
The lawman just drew his gun once more and shot John in the head dropping him mid sentence. He turned back his daughter and holstered his gun before once more embracing her.
"Josephine let me say this in closing: Stay safe, believe and trust in yourself, trust Roger, and tell your mother I love her."
Joey bolted upright from her cell bed gasping and sweating heavily. The small alarm clock that she had acquired was beeping as she reached over and slapped it to put it on snooze long enough for her to remember how to turn off the alarm completely.
As she became more aware of the time and her surroundings a massive sinking feeling fell on her. 'Oh God... I just had my first Bliss trip. Am I going to wind up like Roger? On the brink of death and fighting to just breathe?' She thought as she got dressed for her next mission against the cult.
'Calm down Joey... it could have just been a run of the mill nightmare. It's not like we haven't been put through a bit of a traumatic experience these last few weeks... still I should probably talk with Dr. Ferguson before I head out.' With her mind at least put at ease somewhat she made her way to the medical ward to talk with the doctor.
When she entered he along side Marcus were using a tape measure on Roger. "Ok Marcus, survey says... 90 inches on the dot. So he's right at an additional 12 inches of growth." The doctor stated as he read of the tape measure.
Marcus scoffed. "Well at least he is already well acquainted with the 'Big & Tall' section of most stores. If he survives this he'll be up there in the world records too."
"How is he doing?" She asked as she approached the two men.
Doctor Ferguson looked up at her as he wrapped his measuring tape. "Honestly I think he is on the upswing. He is breathing easier and sleeping more, that said if his eye movement is anything to go by he is going through some very intense dreaming. That said you look like you had a rough nap yourself."
She nodded her head slowly and Marcus was the first to comment. "You think its a Bliss trip?"
She nodded again. "Yeah I think so... or well... it could be just a nightmare."
"Well I'll add that to your notes then. As your doctor I would strongly suggest considering counseling considering the fact that between combat and being effectively a POW who has been tortured mentally and physically. Still in lieu of proper counseling just know that if you need to talk with someone I'm always available." The Doctor said as he pulled out a small note pad and began making notes to himself.
"I'm here too Joey, so's Jessica. Like I told Roger when he got back from his first action, don't hold it in and don't try drinking it away. Neither of those have worked well in the history of soldiering." Marcus added his two cents.
She wiped at the slight moisture that started to build at the edges of her eyes. It was reassuring to know that she had so much support at hand but the moment was passing and there was work still to be done.
She and Marcus walked to the planning table where the Sheriff, Tracey, Mack, and Dmitri were waiting for them.
"Hudson good to see you up. I hope you got some rest because from what we have pieced together its not going to be a easy night." The Sheriff said.
"Well that's why I'm here. I'm spear point after all." She said with a smile.
Dmitri returned the smile briefly before pulling out a large knife that he was using as a pointer. "Ok then lets get started. The first phase of mission is to cross the river, you will prestage at the Seeley residence once again, Mack here will take you there once we are done."
He moved the carefully painted Saint Celestine miniature that Marcus had long since picked out to represent her and put it from the Jail to right across from the Gethsemane Greenhouse. Mack started talking. "We stashed a canoe in a pile of brush next to a boulder close to the shore and you'll use that to get across."
Dmitri nodded and continued. "Now at the greenhouse there is no quarters on site so all of the staff resides at the conservatory, even the guards are split into twelve hour shifts and travel between locations. Now on the matter of guards per Feeney's orders there are only four, two are posted at all times at the entrance of the cave and two more are roaming the grounds. He placed a lot of bets on the fact that between the brewery and the conservatory being so close that it was a waste of man power and supplies to have a large force at the greenhouse."
"Ok so I cross the river then slip past the guards at the cave entrance do we know anything else about the inside of the cave?" She asked looking at the spy.
He shook his head grimly. "No we don't besides Feeney's claims that its full of storage tanks and other supplies, the usual food, water, medical supplies, etc..." He sighed softly his disappointment clear. "I really should have found someway to get inside before coming back."
"It's ok Dmitri. What you have given us already is leagues more then what we could have ever hoped to get from just outside observation. It's my turn to go fill in the blanks." She said with a smile.
It was Marcus's turn to hem and haw before bringing up the next point in the briefing. "Joey there is one other thing... a optional objective if you will, but I want to stress optional and circumstantial. The external hard drives that Feeney has built in system back up software among it is an emergency 'vaccum' mode, you just plug it in to a given computer start up the program and hit the panic button and it will block everything running on that computer in order to shove it all into the drive."
"Ok sounds handy especially if you you are running on backup power and want to save everything quick." She commented.
"Indeed. Now that functionality can be put to our use by letting you get access to any peggie computers that might be there and pull more data. The drives are massive so you shouldn't have to worry about running out of space unless someone is like Feeney and stocked up on old movies and more porn then what you can shake a stick at." Marcus chuckled as she stayed focused on conservatory on the map.
"So basically if I get a chance to access Faith's computer I should take it. Right?" She finally looked at the elder Rook.
He only nodded and the Sheriff stepped in. "Marcus I think you are asking for a bit much..."
The other man held up his hand. "I know that's why I am stressing and I say again optional. I rather let you know of what a opportunity could look like rather than let you go in blind. Joey I am serious don't go hunting for trouble. Explore the cache, locate any prisoners, and get us some numbers. If you can safely get more intel do so but don't risk yourself anymore than needed. We'll give you a camera to take as well if you see anything else that might be of interest snap a few shots off."
"I copy. Anything else?" She said as she looked at the gathered leaders.
Tracey piped up for the first time. "Yeah, right before you get to your canoe we have arranged for Nick to do a quick strafe of the brewery. No bombs or anything major just enough to get people and things moving toward the brewery. Hopefully the attack will distract the guards long enough for you to get in and out without firing a shot."
Marcus harrumphed. "That's the idea but don't think you can skimp on your guns. If something goes wrong and you have to shoot your way out you'll be grateful for packing a full load out. That said if something goes wrong I'll have the Mini-Revelators on stand by and we will do everything we can to come extract you but... well that plan is iffy to say the least."
Joey flashed a confident smile. "So don't start any firefights because support may not be available. Got it."
The briefing had ended and she followed Mack who would be driving her back to the Seeley cabin but when they had gotten to his truck they had found a oversized stowaway already on board.
"Damn it Cheeseburger get out!" She called but the bear only scowled at her followed by a deep growl. Mack meanwhile was looking at the completely compressed suspension on his rebadged peggie truck. "This is what I get for not picking the 1 ton Ford." He muttered.
She was at a loss, Cheeseburger was clearly wanting to come and wasn't taking 'No' for an answer. Maybe if it was Roger giving the order the bear might have considered staying but it seemed as well behaved as he had been with her he still had his limits.
'Damn it we are dangerously close to being late.' She thought glancing at her watch.
"Fine then you can come. Not like I have much a choice I guess." She finally relented getting a single wet bear kiss in return. She turned to Mack who was struggling to not to smile too much at the sight. "Laugh it up Mack, lets get going before we are late or the suspension gives out."
The drive to Seeley's was done in silence giving her chance to notice the sheer number of impaled bodies lining the roads heading toward the conservatory. From what she had heard from Mack when he was talking with the Sheriff and Marcus that even the few remaining body parts from those killed at the hotel were mounted by the Cougars.
There wasn't a major road that didn't have peggie bodies lining its sides and she couldn't help but smile. Roger had held to his word and the residents of Hope County had embraced his goal wholeheartedly. A sudden thought occurred to her as they pulled up to the Seeley cabin.
Marshal Burke hadn't woken up again since he first came out of his Bliss induced coma but she figured that he would be a up coming problem when he did, and the impaled bodies wouldn't help with that.
'He'll probably go off on the Sheriff and me for failing to up hold the law or common decency or whatever else he can cook up and use that to justify why HE should be in charge. Marcus will not take kindly to that I think.' She thought as the truck stopped.
Cheeseburger jumped out of the bed sending the tail end of the truck bouncing up nearly a foot after having to deal with 2500 pounds of war bear. Mack glanced at his watch and noted the time.
"Ok its almost 9 o'clock think you can hike down to Gethsemane in two hours in the dark?" He asked the Deputy.
She pondered on the question. The rough time timetable for the whole mission was about six hours, two hours travel on foot from the cabin to the crossing point at which point Nick was scheduled to make his strafing run. They had planned roughly an hour to sneak into the cave and explore it sufficiently and to make her way up to the conservatory, of course once she was in the cave the table became more of a suggestion rather than a order.
'Then there is the extraction. Coming back through the cave might not be possible and I might have to hoof it out of the conservatory or hijack a vehicle. Still in any case I don't want to be anywhere near here with the coming dawn.' She thought before answering Mack. "Yeah I should be able to do that pretty easily its everything else that I'm not so sure about."
Mack gave her a sad look. "You know its not too late for me to tag along..." He started to say before the words died on his lips.
"Thanks Mack but and don't take this as an offense, but we are already risking enough sending me in. Still thanks for the offer." She said clasping the young man on the shoulder.
With that said she started on her hike along the road towards the crossing point with Cheeseburger in tow. She kept walking as much as she could along the drainage ditch on the far side of the road hoping to keep as a low of a profile as possible as she walked past the relatively poorly lit conservatory across the river.
'Thank God they didn't want to waste money on more lights. Even from here it looks like there are plenty of dark places that I can creep through.' She thought as she pressed on.
A few miles away Nick soared through the moonlit night sky over the Henbane. He had been busy since the attack on the Misery with coordinating with the Cougars and other Resistance forces hunting down shrines, hunting parties, and any patrols that the cult dared to send out on the roads.
Tonight would be simple though as all he had to do was a fast long strafe of the Whistling Beaver Brewery with the 20mm and fly out of there as fast as he came. Just enough to cause a distraction for Joey who would be somewhere nearby so she could pull a sneaky stunt on the cult.
"The King of the Skies never sleeps! He will swoop down on you at all hours of the night! Especially considering I don't sleep with a newborn Princess... of the skies... in the house. I might need to work on that delivery." He said to himself as he tried once again how he would describe this war to the inevitable news and TV show folks that would likely come once they beat the cult.
Just the very idea that they were so close to finishing off Faith was making everyone start thinking about what they would do after the war. Insurance claims followed by dreams of new equipment, trucks, or rebuilding homes was the most common of dreams mentioned over meal time conversations. More than a few fighters had managed to strike up new relationships with their fellow fighters and those conversations often led to dreams of dates that could be and activities to follow.
For him besides handling the media all he wanted to do was take care of his wife and daughter. Kim had been working and running things in the southwest portion of Holland Valley in much the same way Mary May had taken over for Jessica Rook when she left to tend to her son and be close to the frontlines so to speak.
She oversaw the rations, collected reports from the patrols, organized the hunting parties so as to prevent over hunting and fishing, and so much more. He had tried to get her to slow down but to no avail and to her credit little Carmina was always at her side happy as can be.
He neared his objective and cleared his head of anything unrelated as he could see between the mountains on either side of the river the Brewery peeking out among the pine trees. He pushed the plane to full throttle and took his time to line up his gun sight and visualize his next actions.
When he passed the old rope bridge that bridged the gap between and the neighboring peak he squeezed the trigger on his cannon. The six barreled cannon quickly came to speed and sent a stream of explosive rounds roaring into the night, their red tracers more resembling a laser to the uninformed.
At the brewery most of the peggies were asleep save for a handful of night guards. A sniper on the roof peered through a pair of binoculars at the surrounding area tiredly.
He had been forced to pull a double shift because the other sniper decided to kill himself the night before, worse still he did it right after dinner in front of everyone adding to the mess that had to be cleaned up. The sniper had heard stories from other men passing through that a increasing number of faithful were deciding to kill themselves rather than face the prospect of fighting 'The Demoness' or her forces or worse still 'The Collapse' itself.
It was cowardice in his opinion and their priestess stationed at the brewery said as much. Still such thoughts did little to levitate the fatigue he was feeling and the buzzing of some big bug he couldn't seem to swat away wasn't helping things.
The next few things happened so fast he didn't have time to fully comprehend them until it was too late. First things first he felt a surge of pain race up both of his legs as some sort of fireball erupted at his feet. Intense pain was only compounded when he fell to the ground and saw that he had nothing but bloody stubs of shredded flesh that ended right above where his knees were supposed to be.
He now saw the line of angry red tracers coming from a yellow float plane rapidly closing on the brewery. The plane was wagging itself around as it continued to fire its gun, covering the entire exterior of the building with explosive impacts. Another round impacted a few feet to his left and he felt chunks of roofing material slash across his face only adding to his pain.
'Why Father? Why does it all hurt so much?!' He asked himself as his lone uninjured eye settled on the 60mm mortar that had been mounted to the roof of the brewery. He watched as if in slow motion a line of bright and fiery impacts like a line of deadly flowers each one a far cry from the peaceful Angel's Trumpets that Herald Faith had planted all across the region.
The line of burning death blossoms led straight to the boxes of readied mortar shells and from that moment on the sniper no longer had to worry about pain or fatigue.
While the heavily built wood and stone structure of the brewery prevented even Nick's 20mm cannon from outright penetrating the walls and roof, the mass of mortar shells being set off was too much to resist. The shockwave collapsed the section of the roof the mortar was mounted to and proceeded to the interior ripping and tearing the pipe work and worse still rupturing the main brewing vessels.
Pipework and brewing vessels that had been long since converted to mass produce Bliss.
Once more the Henbane river valley was rocked with the equivalent of a multi-ton fuel-air bomb that sent a massive fireball racing into the sky. This was a problem not just for the local cult members but Nick as well.
All Nick could see in front of him was flames as he flew through the resulting fireball. He looked at his instruments and noticed that he was loosing altitude fast and his engine was on the brink of stalling, he quickly leaned the engines fuel mixture to try and keep it running with the far less oxygenated air mass he was going through.
He couldn't however do much of anything to prevent his decent however as the superheated air of the explosion meant that everything from his wings to his control surfaces had only a small fraction of the lift and function. Further complicating issues was the blast wave batting the small float plane around.
All Nick could do was pull desperately at his controls as he watched the river race up to meet him and he prayed that he could see his wife and child one more time.
Joey was still a quarter mile from where the canoe was stashed when she first heard Nick strafe the brewery as planned then she saw the massive explosion and fell into the drainage ditch as she felt Cheeseburger place himself with surprising gentleness over her as the blast wave roared over them and all around she could hear and then see parts of the brewery landing around her along with massive splinters of wood from the surrounding trees.
Just about every bird in the area had been rudely awakened by the blast and was making their displeasure known as they few away from the blast. But the only airborne object she concerned herself with was Nick's plane falling way too rapidly toward the rivers surface.
'Oh God! Please don't crash Nick! Please don't crash! Please don't crash!' Her mind screamed as she watched in horror as the plane started to slowly pull its nose back up and its engine could be heard powering up to full throttle.
Her thoughts suddenly flashed to the night Carmina was born how she and Roger had been asked to be Carmina's godparents should the need arise and here she was watching that need manifest itself.
Just a few scant feet over the river Nick felt the wings and more importantly the elevators bite into cooler and denser air and the engine start to rev back to its full power as it too found unsullied air to breathe. The plane rotated hard and he felt the floats firmly kiss the waters surface before he pulled the plane back into the sky.
From the conservatory poorly aimed and sporadic machine gun fire raced around the plane but was little threat to him. The blast might have awaken everyone in the county but his strike was simply too fast for anyone to be able to competently react.
Back at the Jail Marcus had been on the roof with his wife enjoying a quiet moment as they waited for Joey to report that she had made it across the river and was about to enter the cave when he saw the glow of an explosion that highlighted the outline of followed by a all too familiar rumble through the earth this time notably stronger as well. Then not long after a odd gust of wind came from the east that in Marcus's reckoning had to be part of the blast wave that was funneled by the local geography toward their location.
He scrambled for his radio. "Nick its Marcus was that you?!"
Gut wrenching silence dominated the next minute until Nick came back. "Yeah that was me. I think I hit something extra sensitive that time, but hey at least they are going to be distracted right?"
Even though Nick's words were of his usual good nature the old commando could hear in his voice that the man had gotten far too close to dying for his tastes.
"Yeah Nick we will take it. You go home and hug your wife and daughter." He replied sagely and let the man go back to flying. In a few minutes he could hear Nick's plane following the river and he and Jessica waved as he flew over.
"Well it looks like his plane is still in one piece. Still..." Jessica mused and her husband picked up on it.
"Yeah he definitely had a close call. We knew the brewery was making Bliss but you remember that place was built like the shop. Heavy stone and concrete walls galore, they did that specifically because they were worried about surviving any major rock slides that might hit the building." Marcus commented as he continued to watch the yellow float plane disappear in the direction of Holland Valley.
"It might be able to stand up to a rock slide but when you start mass producing an explosive drug all bets are off. Do you think Joey is ok?" Jessica asked.
Marcus didn't answer immediately as he worked his jaw side to side in thought. "Yeah she should be fine. By now she would be close to the crossing point by my reckoning and I think if she were hurt she would call in, we just need to trust her honey. She might not be Roger but she's a lot tougher and smarter then what I think most people and herself give her credit for."
Some miles away Joey crawled out from under Cheeseburger as she watched several peggie gun trucks race toward the flaming brewery on the road on the other side of the river. Or at least what little of the structure remained if she was being honest as she noted just how bright the fire seemed as it lit so much of the surrounding area.
'Got to keep pushing and reach the cave before they give up.' She told herself as she now started jogging down the road trading some stealth for more speed to reach the large boulder that Mack as said his people had stashed the canoe to get across the river.
In another few minutes of jogging she could see the large boulder that Mack had described but hoped that what else she was seeing was just a trick of the shadows from the burning brewery. The canoe could be seen peeking out from a pile of pine branches and other miscellaneous brush used to hide it during the day but the reason why the canoe was even visible was because it had been crushed into two pieces from a large piece of what likely was a holding tank of some sort the size of a small car.
"Oh God no... why can't these missions go smoothly for once?" She asked herself dejectedly as she neared the wreckage. Cheeseburger tucked his head against her side in a supportive manner and got a light head scratch for his concern.
She turned to the bear. "Ok we can't turn back and I still need to get across the river but its too fast for me to swim with all this gear on, what do we do?"
She wasn't expecting an answer of course, more than likely she would need to reach the bridge that was next to the brewery and sneak past the cultists there then work her way back to the greenhouse and the cave entrance. In any case turning around simply wasn't an option as too much relied on finding out what the cult had and how many prisoners they still held within the conservatory.
Cheeseburger ran off to the edge of the water and squatted down before looking over his left shoulder and using his left front paw to scratch his back.
Joey figured he was just itchy but he growled at her before repeating the motion more vigorously this time. It slowly dawned on her what her bear was proposing. "Roger isn't going to believe this..."
She mounted the war bear like a horse before leaning forward across his broad back as he stood up and steadily marched into the water. Even with the fast current Cheeseburger had little trouble paddling along and keeping her upright and virtually dry in the process which was something she honestly quite appreciated.
She took the opportunity to look at the still burning brewery as she could see the faint shadows of men running around the inferno but had no hope of figuring out what they could hope to be doing as the building what little remained was far too gone to put out with anything short of heavy firefighting equipment. Her to right the conservatory was now fully lit but from her point of view she couldn't make out anymore detail then that.
Up ahead was the Gethsemane Greenhouse which was little more than a single wood shack surrounded by several small plots of Bliss flowers under arches made from steel tubing. A pair of plastic covered structures similar to the flower plots likely housed any on site processing equipment for test batches of Bliss.
'If stealth was optional I wouldn't mind torching the place as I passed.' She thought angrily as Cheeseburger made contact with the shore. Joey was about to dismount when Cheeseburger surged forward racing across the shore then across the road toward the brushes surrounding the southern edge of the greenhouses.
She wanted to stop him but it was all she could do to hold on as she watched the scenery rush by until he came to a skidding halt behind the brush. Slipping off Cheeseburger gave her the closest thing to a bear smile and a happy sounding growl.
"Yeah yeah you did good boy. When we get home I'll see about trying to dig up some extra fish for you as a reward." She said hugging the bears large head. "I got to go now, you stay here... I really hope you are as smart as I think you are."
Cheeseburger gave her a quick bear kiss before curling up to begin napping. With him safe she grabbed her radio. "Demoness to Grey Reaper, I have reached the greenhouse and I am about to go for the cave now."
On the other side Marcus picked up his own radio. "Good to hear you are still alive. Remember ghost in, ghost out. Don't engage unless you absolutely have to, but if you do don't hold back. Make sure you comeback alive and in one piece above all else."
"I copy, going dark now." She said as she started crouching through the bushes toward the only source of light besides the few lights around the wooden shack. The cave entrance was larger than she expected as this was clearly sized for light truck traffic. As far as guards the two she was warned about were nowhere to be seen no doubt distracted by the attack on the brewery, she wondered what her chances of leaving this way would be once they returned to their post but that was something painfully far off in the future.
Entering the cave she knew that calling it a cave was a misnomer, it was a honest to god engineered tunnel. The leveled floor complete with drainage grates along the sides and the smooth cut walls with lights every ten feet or so were the work of careful construction. The lights right now however were only on every 50 feet or so and not very brightly either, likely part of some sort of power saving scheme the peggies were enacting.
The tunnel angled slightly upward the deeper she crept passing the few illuminated wall lights quickly. Looking back she was out of sight of the entrance and couldn't see where she was going except for going slightly up. The silence of the tunnel was only broken by the grinding of her boots against the ground and to her at least her own racing heartbeat as she felt the air pressure change and could see up ahead a much better lit chamber up ahead.
She started jogging as fast as she dared toward the well lit chamber and only stopped when she reached the massive open chamber and had to process what she was now seeing.
The chamber was only 20 or so feet tall but extended all around for hundreds if not thousands of feet from her position. Nearby clustered together were ten corrugated steel tanks each about 15 feet tall and nearly 50 feet in diameter each connected to a maze of pipework that ran in between and above the tanks to someplace beyond her sight. In the distance she could clearly make out row upon row of heavy industrial shelving fully loaded down with pallets of only God knows what.
Even though she had seen the cult build a nuclear missile the sight before her was still shocking in the extreme. How many years had the cult been building this? How did they miss the cult building all of this? What else did the cult have up their sleeve?
She walked around the nearest tank found a sight glass indicating how full the tank was. "100,000 gallons... oh God... if they have 10 tanks a floor assuming they are all the same size. Feeney was low balling us! There could be 10 million gallons of Bliss in this place!" She exclaimed probably louder than she should have but no one seemed to be nearby.
Suddenly she felt incredibly vulnerable, she was stuck in a massive storage complex full of highly explosive liquids and if a firefight broke out here she or the cult could easily blow themselves up a thousand fold if not more.
'Calm down Joey, just focus on getting topside and finding any prisoners. We will figure out how to deal with this once were are outside of the immediate blast radius.' She thought. Of course her next thought was just how far was the blast radius could be with this much Bliss.
"Roger I really wish now you could do your human calculator thing and figure out just much danger we really are in." She said as she started following the signs on the walls indicating the entrance to the next floor.
On she walked floor by floor thankful that it seemed that the restricted access to the Cache at least spared her from having to dodge patrols, either that or the peggies were still dealing with the aftermath of the brewery exploding. Every floor she would check the storage tanks and shelving, more fully loaded tanks of Bliss and more foodstuffs. This would change as the foodstuffs of the lower floors gave way to mountains of ammunition.
She and the rest of the Resistance leadership had wondered for sometime at just how the cult was supplying itself despite now weeks of combat and the cultists preference for 'spray and prey' amongst its less experienced and less trained members. Now she could see hundreds of thousands of rounds of 5.56 NATO, 7.62 NATO, .50 BMG, and notably smaller lots of 2.75 inch 12 gauge shells. There were other smaller lots of ammunition in either common Russian cartridges and some oddballs that even she couldn't recall what they were for. There were even some boxes of ammo that she estimated predated WWII.
The crates that the ammo were stored in were from all around the world: South Africa, India, Australia, China, Canada, and a few from the US Army. She took out the small digital camera she had been issued and double checked that the flash was off before snapping pictures of all the shipping information she could find.
'I'm kinda glad that tracking down the sellers of all this ammo is probably not going to be on my shoulders, still it would be nice to know.' She thought as she moved back toward the ramp to the next floor.
She was now on the second floor and feeling exhausted. A quick check of her watch told her that she had been walking nearly three hours underground which meant that she was now facing having to creep around the conservatory at dawn which according to Dmitri could be dangerous given the early schedule that some of the cult members maintain especially those in teaching or food preparation.
This floor had in addition to the now normal ten Bliss tanks but smaller fuel tanks full of gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and propane. What shelving they had on the floor were larger crates of heavy ammunition like mortar rounds and RPG rounds, nearby were the launchers, mortars, and more of the anti-air missiles she had already seen back in Holland Valley.
The last floor being the top most floor of the Cache wasn't nearly as well lit, the dimmed lights making for odd shadows from the web of pipework leading from the lower level storage tanks as they lead to what she could only guess were massive pumps for the rapid transfer of the liquid drug.
The only other items on this floor were a small motorpool of heavy flatbed trucks, tanker trucks, and a large number of forklifts to facilitate the loading and moving the cults stored stock. Lastly was a mobile office trailer complete with roaring window air conditioners that was sparsely lit.
She moved toward the trailer and could hear a TV blaring through the thin walls even over the loud air conditioners. The windows were covered in heavy black out drapes but she could make out a computer in the back corner away from where she guessed the TV was situated judging by the sound.
'Must be a night guard or something.' She thought as she crept around the exterior of the trailer until she found a back door blocked by some cardboard boxes of the 'Word of Joseph' and quickly cleared them away neatly. She couldn't help but smile as she easily moved the heavy boxes of books with so little effort. Unknown future side effects aside she had to admit the increase in muscle and overall strength she had from her Bliss exposure was something she couldn't complain about.
Unsurprisingly the previously blocked door was unlocked and she was able to slip in. She appeared to be in the tiny break room/kitchen section of the office trailer and could now hear more of what was going on in the main space of the trailer.
"Oh help me Stepbrothers! I'm stuck and I can't get out." A woman's voice rang out from the small TV as Joey peeked around the doorway to the lone peggie sitting at his desk with his back towards her.
It was clear by the movement of his arm that he was busy jerking off and fully absorbed in the porno he was watching. 'Well Dmitri did say that discipline within Faith's part of the cult is starting to falter so this isn't surprising. Still wish I didn't have to see this.' She thought sourly as she noted just how close the computer she saw earlier was to the doorway that she was watching from.
'Ok peggie just keep jerking it long enough for me to get what I want.' She thought as she took her pack off and dug out the first of the two backup hard drives and began to crawl as quietly as she could manage toward the computer trying to keep the peggie in sight.
Once more even the sound of her racing heartbeat seemed too loud as she hooked up the drive to the computer. She was glad that Marcus had managed to jury rig a battery back to the drive so she only had to deal with one cable as with another glance to the jerking cultist she woke up the computer. She thanked God that her luck was holding as it came up to the desktop, in a another moment she had the backup program running and she glanced at the file names that raced across the screen as the software did its work.
'Oh wow they kept all of their shipping records and even organized them into separate categories! It shouldn't be that surprising honestly. John's bunker had detailed records as well so Faith is likely to be no different. Marcus is going to love digging through this.' Joey thought with a smile as the volume on the peggie's TV increased.
"Wait Stepbrother you're not supposed to put that in there! OH GOD YES!" The woman on the screen cried.
'Roger is going to be howling when he hears about this and good lord Mary May is going to never let this down.' She thought as the software completed its task.
Quickly she disconnected the drive and slipped back to the kitchen even as the peggie was groaning from his ministrations. Finally out of the trailer and back in the Cache she quickly made her way to the entrance that opened out to the rest of the conservatory.
There weren't any guards outside the Cache as she had hoped and instantly made her way toward the labs wing of the conservatory building. Dmitri had given her a hand drawn map of the conservatory even going so far as to mark a suggested route to get to the labs and the holding cells directly attached to them.
The interior hallways of the conservatory were eerily dark and quiet as Joey worked her way through them. The white walls were adorned with countless pictures of Joseph and the rest of the Seed family, various scenes from the bible, and the odd nature photo of some place outside of the county.
She had only just opened the door labeled 'Labortory: No unauthorized persons beyond this point!' when a angry sounding woman's voice could be heard alongside several sets of boots on the tile floor from further down the hall.
"We can't wait for Feeney to get back to the conservatory and the Inquisitors have only managed to cross the river last night. Rook has organized his forces a lot better then any of us expected." Rachel said as she walked toward the hallway that would take them to the Labs.
"That only makes the Inquisitors mission all the more important. As far as Feeney is concerned if we need more test subjects then we can make the punishments for breaking the Projects rules more harsh at least until we can capture more locals to replace our stocks." A man replied.
Joey dashed through the door and found herself in a small white a grey themed lobby complete with a tall curved secretaries desk with a pair of heavy steel doors on either side. On one set of doors was a sign stating that offices and observation deck lie behind them while the other was just marked 'Labs'.
She desperately ducked behind the secretaries desk and folded herself as best as she could under it. When the door to the lobby opened she held her breath and wished she could stop her heart.
"Shall we go to the observation deck my Herald?" One of the men with Rachel asked calmly.
"No I want to be up close and personal for this experiment. This is a new beginning to this war, no more mercy, no more quarter... I don't know for sure if 'The Father' would fully approve of my choices but that is my burden to bare. I must be at the forefront for this." She said the angry venom dripping from every word.
Joey could hear the man's heavier footsteps as he moved closer to the desk followed by the sight of a hand snake from over the top of the desk to hit a button mounted just under the edge of the desktop and with a virtually silent click the door leading to the lab opened and Rachel followed closely by the man who turned out to be one of Feeney's chemists though likely a senior one judging by his grey hair and beard. The rest were Chosen likely Rachel's personal guard.
Only when the door shut and lock again did Joey breathe again. She was shaking from the stress of getting so close to being caught and entertained the idea that perhaps she should go back with what she had and call it good.
'Marcus would understand... he did say not to go hunting for trouble. But the prisoners would be held in the labs and if I don't get a count at the very least then it will make mounting a rescue all the harder.' She shuddered as she tried to work out what to do.
'We are the tip of the spear Joey.' She heard Roger's voice in her head as she looked at the door leading to the lab. Even though she was nervous about getting caught in the depths of the enemy's stronghold if she didn't do the work here and now they likely won't be able to get the info they need any other way. Even sending in Dmitri as a messenger again was risky and asking for a lot from the man, especially in light of just how much he had already risked getting them Feeney.
'I have to do this... I have to go and take responsibility for getting the Resistance the information we need to keep pushing against Rachel. Everyone's is counting on me to the lead the way. God Roger I wish you could be here with me.' She thought as she hit the button behind the desk and walked through the open door into the labs.