Dan squinted as he tried to make sense of the report in front of him. At some point, the numbers blurred together into an incomprehensible smear. The tallies of ammunition, equipment, food, and combat-ready soldiers probably made sense to someone, but to him they were just numbers. He still didn’t understand why a unit with two thousand people in it might only have fifteen hundred that were combat-ready.
Sighing, he put down the paperwork and stood up. He’d been pushing himself too hard over the last couple weeks. Integrating Bowman’s old units into their forces while simultaneously helping DuBlanc set up a civil infrastructure was well more than a full-time job. Hopefully, a walk to clear his head would be what he needed to make some sense of the figures and reports whirring around his mind.
Exiting the building, a wave of heat and humidity clubbed him in the face. Even with the air conditioning running full blast in the administration building, it didn’t eliminate the entirety of Florida’s oppressive weather. It was different outside, though. He’d barely stepped out and already he was sweating.
Squinting his eyes at the morning sun, Dan made his way to the nearby fitness center that his command staff had taken over. He might need a walk, but he’d be damned if he was doing that outdoors.
Around him, the streets hadn’t returned to their pre-war bustle, but people went about their business warily nonetheless. The streets were quieter than Dan was used to. That was partially a function of gasoline rationing that had emptied them of most cars, but an aura of fear also hung over the civilians. As much as Dan’s subordinates might assure them that things would be different, most people were reluctant to believe them. Too much had happened under Bowman.
It was a shame, really. This was a time when humanity should be coming together to rise up against an external threat. Instead, most people spent more time ignoring the conflict or fighting against other terrestrial forces than they did contributing to the war against the Orakh.
He pushed the door to the fitness center open, taking a moment to enjoy the cool air as it closed behind him. The temperature and humidity still wasn’t anywhere near what he’d prefer, but at least they were liveable.
Lacing up his shoes, Dan closed his locker. Most of his team had gym apparel stashed at the building. Given their highly physical role, none of them wanted to get out of shape, even if the nanites reduced the probability of that happening. Of course, given the heat and humidity, a separate set of clothing and access to showers was a necessity. Trying to work through paperwork was hard enough without everyone smelling like a rotting gym sock.
The main room was almost empty, letting Dan pick the treadmill closest to an air conditioning vent. Cranking up the resistance, he accelerated to a jog, trying to erase the fog and stress of administration with good, old-fashioned endorphins. Before too long, Jennifer exited the women’s locker room and picked the machine next to him.
Dan dialed back the intensity of his workout. He hardly needed to push himself, but from the way Jennifer made eye contact with him as she wove through the exercise equipment, she wanted to talk. He’d never found puffing for breath during a conversation particularly conducive to the exchange of information, and Dan suspected that today wasn’t the right time to test that opinion.
“Dan.” She nodded as she programmed her workout into the machine. “I thought you’d still be buried in sorting out the new organization charts right now.”
“I should be.” Dan winced. “It seems like all I’m doing these days is sorting through the logistics of upscaling from a handful of commandos, a couple drone pilots, and a couple armored vehicles to an entire goddamn army. The worst part is, every time I’m about to complain, I get a glimpse of what Abe and your Dad are doing. I’m only seeing the good ideas. They’re sorting through something like ten times the crap I am.”
“All via paper ,too?” She shook her head. “That sounds absolutely brutal. We have plenty of people just sitting on their hands as we find a role for them. Why haven’t you put someone to work just scanning everything?”
“Sam’s suspicious of anything electronic at this point, and I’m not sure I blame her,” Dan replied. “It sounds like the information warfare capabilities of both of the oligarchs out in California are on another level. Like, even if we had an entire team on our end, they’d probably be able to worm their way in. Right now, the only sensitive data we have on a server is on the Viceroy in her lab, disconnected from everything. Some of Abe’s old friends are guarding the lab and preventing anyone from getting near it. The only way to access those files is by getting past them with an ethernet cable.
“My office isn’t secure.” Dan shrugged as his feet kept pounding the rubber of the treadmill. “Too many people are in and out of there on a daily basis. We almost certainly have spies from the oligarchs sniffing around, but by locking the papers up every night in an analog safe, we make it hard for them to steal more than a sheaf of paperwork at a time.
“How has integrating the new troops been? I haven’t heard any complaints, which I’m counting as a victory so far.”
Her expression soured momentarily. “The soldiers that have remained behind are fairly eager, but getting them organized has been a hassle. Bowman had most of the Third Infantry division in Florida. Between the people Abe and Dad thought were unfit and the people unwilling to sign on, we ended up with about half of an armored brigade and three-quarters of an infantry brigade. We’ve seized the vehicles and equipment from the soldiers who decided not to sign on, but we don’t have enough people who can drive Strykers and Bradleys at the moment.”
She reached forward, slowing the pace of her workout slightly before continuing. “We’ll have them cross-trained in a couple of months, but integrating them will be a bit of a problem. They don’t have much experience working together, and at points, I’m entirely recreating companies from the scraps of two or three other units. It looks like it’ll all work out, but it’s going to take some time, and I really don’t know how much time I have.
“Completely unrelated aside.” She glanced up and cracked a grin at Dan. “How much time do I have, and where will I be deploying? If you’re dropping us in Manhattan to fight the Orakh, I’m going to have a drastically different set of skills to focus on than if you have us driving tanks around Northern California. Just a heads up would really help a girl out.”
Dan jogged in silence for a couple of minutes, his attention focused on the plate glass window overlooking the nearby street. It was just rumors, but everyone was already speculating on how much longer the NYPD could hold out in New York. Manhattan was completely devoid of terrestrial life, and the Orakh had several colonies on the mainland that the locals weren’t able to eliminate. They weren’t really expanding for now, but now that the Orakh warriors could land safely, it only felt like a matter of time before the NYPD were in over their heads.
No matter what route he went, the endgame would have to be clearing the Orakh from New York. There were just too many people at risk to leave the situation for long. Of course, the oligarch warlords in Ohio, Texas, and California all had access to enough resources to make a battle with the Orakh fairly perfunctory. By the same token, if his forces expended all of their efforts fighting the Orakh, they wouldn’t be a credible threat against a warlord, and his future plans would stall out fairly quickly.
“California,” Dan said finally. “Our biggest advantages are the armor and our ability to use magic. If we can knock off an oligarch or two and gain that capacity, we’re in a position to completely upgrade our forces. From there, we should be able to hold our own against the Orakh fairly easily. If you give us a couple years, magically imbued soldiers in power armor should be capable of holding their own against pretty much any Tellask line unit that I’ve heard of.”
“Anderson Drummond or Peter Best?” Jennifer asked after a second. “It sounds like you want to grab tech from both of them, so maybe we should figure out which one to hit first.”
Dan shrugged as he pressed the button ending his workout. “Honestly? I think a literal raid would probably work on Drummond. We just need to figure out how he went about making the nanites and steal some machinery. I obviously don’t know the exact specifics of what the machinery looks like, but I suspect that we’ll be able to load it up into the Viceroy and warp out with a proper distraction.
“I don’t think anything pinpoint will work on Best.” Dan smiled wryly. “I’d be surprised if anything smaller than a converted car factory could build these suits, and I don’t think there’s any way we’re going to be able to sneak that out in the dead of the night. For him, I think we’re going to have to match our suits up against his and hope that magic gives us enough of an edge to take him down.”
“So,” Jennifer nodded, a look of faux concentration on her face. “The plan is to figure out where Drummond keeps whatever science fiction 3D printer he uses to make the nanites, create enough of a distraction to draw off the guards, then storm in, grab the stuff, and make our daring escape? Sounds great! I’ll get working on something with Dad and Abe right away.”
Dan winced. “Preferably with less swashbuckling than that. There’s just something about the way you describe it that makes it sound like we’re just daring fate to fuck this up horribly. We’re just one ‘it can’t get any worse’ away from everything going absolutely to hell.”
“Don’t worry,” Jennifer winked at him as she stepped off of the treadmill and grabbed a towel from a nearby rack. “Everything will be fine. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Dan closed his eyes, a look of defeat settling over him. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
