Episode 17 - A Summoning Of Thunder
Jon’s yearly visit to his father’s memorial forces past mysteries and present concerns to collide with future desires.
Author’s Notes:The plot bunny for this tag wanted to fight me on it, whisker and tail. Big thanks to Kazthom for helping me out on this one. :)
EPISODE 17 - A SUMMONING OF THUNDER
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Power Base - Nighttime
In 1889, Oscar Wilde wrote that ‘life imitates art far more than art imitates life.’ It was a cliché that Jon had found it to be true. Real life embraced art in all its forms, absorbed the vernacular, created euphemisms that paralleled moments -- basically, life was influenced by the very artwork it created. Take sports, for example. Sports were an art form. They didn’t use a paint brush or a hammer and chisel. No, sports were an art form that involved skill and physical ability and mental prowess. There were rules and procedures, processes and expectations. There was a structure and a style that could be appreciated by the viewer, an understanding of what was going on by the population at large. Even more, there was a connection between what happened in a sport and real life. One such connection was the unique way sports verbiage crept into the everyday language. Sayings like ‘Win one for the Gipper’ or ‘We knocked it out of the park’ or ‘They talk a good game’ were common phrases. Maybe Oscar Wilde could have written that ‘life imitates sports far more than sports imitate life?’ It would have been just as accurate.
Baseball clichés ran rampant around the Power household. There was a simple explanation why -- it was a sport the entire family enjoyed. When Jon was a boy, he played on his local Little League team and his junior high baseball team. His dad would get season tickets for the home games every year, and they never missed a World Series no matter who was competing or where it was being held. His mother could quote players’ stats with incredible clarity. One habit she had was to use baseball analogies to make a point. There was one saying she repeated in particular that he’d forgotten over the years. What Jon had learned at Oasis reminded him of it, and it summed up his feelings after recent events. “At first, you think you understand how things are in the world. Then life throws you a curveball that knocks you off your game.”
That’s how Jon felt. Completely knocked off his game.
The feeling had come on gradually over the last few months. It had nothing to do with the fact that the anniversary of his father’s death reminded him that he had been fighting battles for fifteen years. It had nothing to do with fighting tactics not working. It had nothing to do with Dread escalating the war.
No, it all came down to discovering some hidden truths. Over the last several months, he had learned more about the details and less about the fiction surrounding the wars. The more he learned, the more he realized he didn’t know.
Professional truths --
Personal truths --
He had questions but no answers. When he visited his father’s memorial, he’d tried to talk out his confusion with his father, but as always, there were no answers.
“Hi, Dad.
Sorry I haven’t been here in a year. Dread’s been ramping up the war lately. We’ve had a lot of successes though. We keep tossing a wrench into the works, but he keeps coming back with something more devastating and devious.”
Jon listened to the relative quiet of the site. A gentle wind blew through the leaves of the small tree above him. Ripples in the lake casually slapped against the rocks on the shoreline.
“Lately, I’ve been finding out things I never knew about that happened before you were killed. I don’t know how it could have been missed. How much did you know about what Taggart was doing? Did you know anything at all?”
Again, he was met with silence.
“I remember when you were building the base and when you were trying to build up the resources there, you were so focused on the job. You didn’t have any distractions, at least, I thought you didn’t. Then I started to remember how you would take an hour every night and we’d talk. We talked about everything. Memories mostly about Mom and the ordinary things we did before the wars got so bad. As crazy as our lives were then, you tried to give me a small bit of time every day to still be a teenager. I never realized before how much that meant to me or how difficult it was for you to just stop working and preparing to fight. For a long time, it felt like that’s all I did. Work, I mean.”
Jon waited, but there was no response.
“Lately, Dad, I’ve found out why it’s important to take some time out for myself. You see, there’s someone... a lady. A special lady. I think you’d like her. Well, things are changing between us, and I like spending time with her. I taught her how to play chess, and she can beat me practically every time now. I’ve had to study some pretty complicated chess moves just to stand a chance against her. She’s a natural at tactics and strategy. Plus, she knows me so it makes it easier for her to beat me. I like her. I’ve never even thought that about someone before. I don’t know where it’ll lead, but...”
He had never said what he wanted to say out loud. Never before. It took him a few moments to gather his thoughts.
“She’s special, Dad. And we’re in the middle of a war that takes up practically all our time. Dread is getting deadlier -- I’ve dedicated my life to stopping Dread, no matter what it costs me. I know that the chances of any Resistance soldier making it through this war isn’t good and getting involved with someone is setting yourself up for a fall. The thing is I don’t really know what to do. I mean, I know what I want to do, but I don’t know if it’s the right thing. My focus has been on stopping Dread for fifteen years. It’s been my sole focus. Hawk and I have a team that’s almost designed to fight Dread. We have a chance, but I keep thinking that if I let myself be happy in any way, I’ll lose this anger I’ve got for Dread. I think I’d lose my focus, but then when I realize what Dread’s done, what he did to her and what I could lose, I want to stop Dread all the more.”
More silence. No answers.
“I really need your advice on this one. I think Hawk is up to something when it comes to me and Jennifer, but I haven’t quite put my finger on it. He’s said some things that make me think he knows things have changed between us, but he’s keeping a distance. I guess he’s letting us find our own way.”
He checked his chronometer. It was getting late. He needed to go.
“I miss you, Dad. I miss your wisdom. I miss having you to talk to. It’s never been the same.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “Hawk sends his best.”
“Bye, Dad.”
So many questions, so few answers -- life had thrown him curveball after curveball, and all he'd done so far is batter up. It was time to swing and hope he didn't miss.
“Captain, I’ve found something interesting,” Mentor said.
Jon looked up at the hologram. “Show me.”
Within moments, words began to scroll on the monitor --
Pursuant to Presidential Executive Order 28967, to be classified Top Secret:
By the authority vested in the Consortium of Countries by the International Constitution and the Laws agreed upon therein, and in order to establish a cooperative and productive form of war control and eventual peaceful relations among the warring nations, it is hereby ordered that:
Section 1. The designated military base and surrounding areas heretofore to be recognized as Groom Lake are hereby temporarily assigned to the persons known as Doctor Stuart Power and Doctor Lyman Taggart for the purposes of designing, constructing, testing and maintaining a computerized system necessary for the control of all war machines.
Section 2. Financial resources, any and all necessary equipment, land, buildings, security clearances, personnel, material resources, and additional required materials necessary in the pursuance of the stated goals in Section 1 of Presidential Executive Order 28967 will be immediately granted to Doctor Stuart Power and Doctor Lyman Taggart without restriction.
Section 3. The corporate entities owned by Doctor Lyman Taggart, legally designated as Taggart Industries and its subsidiaries, either existing or future acquisitions, will remain in the sole possession of Lyman Taggart. As per employment agreement with Doctor Lyman Taggart, any and all federal restrictions, regulations and taxations will be removed for the period of ten years in exchange for a salaried income for pursuing the stated goals of Presidential Order 28967 as stated in Section 1. Henceforth, Taggart Industries will exist as a living entity without governmental, federal, state or local oversight.
Section 4...
Section 5...
Section 6...
Those were the beginning sections of a long, tedious multi-paged pseudo-encyclopedia of legalese. That was not a language Jon was familiar with or comfortable trying to decipher. He gave up after Section 6.
“Mentor, how long is this document?” Jon asked.
The hologram looked thoughtful for a moment, then answered, “Fifty-seven sections with a variety of addendums. There are some sections regarding properties owned or ceded to Doctor Stuart Power. They were free of oversight as well.”
"Exist as a living entity without governmental, federal, state or local oversight," Jon frowned at that revelation as he read it aloud. “The government gave Area 51 to Dad and Taggart to build Overmind, but Dad had his own property as well?”
“There’s a listing of businesses that were put into your father’s name by the Consortium in an attached document.”
“What kind of businesses?” Jon’s curiosity was definitely piqued.
“The list includes computer manufacturing companies, construction companies, engineering firms, design facilities, software and program designing companies –”
“Sounds like every kind of business he’d need to build a base without Dread knowing about it,” Jon muttered.
“It would appear that both Doctor Power and Doctor Taggart had whatever resources necessary to build bases or establish any type of facility necessary without anyone’s knowledge.”
Without anyone’s knowledge? How could anyone not know? Massive movements of people and equipment, and all operating under everybody’s nose? “Strange,” he muttered out loud.
“What’s strange, Captain?”
Jon looked up at his father’s image. “That the entire world could get turned into a mechanized dumping ground and nobody realized what was happening when it was happening. Okay, let’s start this search from a different tact. Is there a list of Dread's companies?"
"No, Captain. Given the wording of the documents attached to the Executive Order, they only pertain to your father's holdings. If I were to use that as a basis for an assumption, it might be reasonable to assume that Doctor Taggart had a copy of the Presidential Order and attached documents that related only to him."
That sounded strange. “There’s nothing in the documentation we have indicating Dread’s property?”
“Nothing more than what’s already been stated,” Mentor explained. “Your father did try to access the complete documentation a few months before he was killed, but the information was lost.”
“So Dad didn’t know what Dread had.” Jon thought for a moment. "Then that could mean that Dread has no idea what Dad's resources were."
"It would explain how Dread had no knowledge of the property title transfer of Colorado Springs and the surrounding areas to your father. If he had, then he would have searched this area for the Power Base long ago."
Yes, it would explain -- wait -- "Mentor, did you say Colorado Springs? Don't you mean just the property necessary for this base?"
The hologram almost smiled. "No, Captain. I mean all of Colorado Springs and the surrounding areas. After NORAD and all land within a one hundred mile radius was ceded to Doctor Power, all territories were integrated into the scientific/military structure reclassified as Fort Stonewall under the command of General Terence Wakeley. Some years earlier, a new mandate was sent down from Washington establishing a new set of architectural rules for such city-integrated forts, and the first step was to construct a thick concrete wall around the perimeter of the property as the first line of defense. That would indicate the boundary of the specific region given to your father, but I doubt if much of the wall surrounding this area remains now."
Jon doubted it too, not that a concrete wall was of any real importance those days.
"Captain, if I may ask, why is knowing about Lyman Taggart's holdings so important at this time?"
Looking up at the hologram, Jon could see a slight shadow of his father's personality there. It was the type of question he would have asked a young Jon. "It may not be important or it may be the key to everything, Mentor. I don't know. Over the last few months, I've learned that things were going on that I had no knowledge of. Taggart was working behind the scenes to gain all sorts of political and financial power. He took over businesses that he used later on when he became Dread. I just want to know the truth."
No, he wanted more than the truth. He wanted answers. Bit by bit, he had seen things that made him question his preconceived ideas about... everything.
What had started his journey of questions?
Easy -- it was the mysteries behind the Dread Youth, mysteries that he didn’t even know existed that were the beginning.
He didn’t think that the few bits of information from Jennifer’s past would have been the same for all Dread Youth. Not all of them would have been taken as children, would they? Some would have been older? Some would have signed up? Where had they come from? How could they have appeared on those early battlefields without anyone knowing of their existence before Taggart merged with Overmind? So many of them with blonde hair and gray eyes...
It was trying to decipher the enigmatic history of the Dread Youth that made Jon question his understandings. The idea that conditioning could be broken like Jennifer had done, the fact that Jennifer could fight someone Tank’s size and win, the mystery about how all the Dread Youth looked alike -- there had been no real answers, but it all came to a head in Oasis. When Jon learned that mind control techniques used at a lab Dread took over were used on the Dread Youth, he needed answers. He wanted to find out more about how Dread came to power, how he used that power to destroy lives. He wanted to know if it was possible to set some things right.
Yet there was more to it than just wanting answers. The more Jon thought about the past, the more he had begun to believe that the history of the Dread Youth was the key to finding the information of Dread’s powerbase before the wars began. Somehow, they were tied together.
Yet there was one other consideration, another reason Jon wanted to find out about how Dread came to power and how the Dread Youth came to exist. He wanted to be able to give Jennifer answers about her past. Maybe she didn’t ask the questions very often, but Jon had no doubt that she wanted more answers than she had.
He was beginning to appreciate night duty more. What was it Jennifer had told him once? Someone can talk to Mentor with no one interrupting or avesdropping. Someone could indulge in more than just personal intellectual pursuits and Mentor would always keep it a secret. In fact, Mentor was good about keeping secrets, like the present they were making for Jennifer.
“Do we have any linear data about that time, Mentor? Some kind of timeline we can follow?”
Again, the hologram looked thoughtful. “My records show that Doctor Power was in the process of gathering data from a variety of sources such as digital newspapers, magazines and government documents concerning such information in the months before his death. I have no data of its whereabouts or if he was successful in acquiring it.”
Wait, newspapers? Magazines? That sparked a memory. “I think I do.”
~o~o~o~o~o~
Morning – Next Day
Hawk had the morning duty, so Jon was happy to relinquish the control room to him. After sitting and studying documents all night, he needed to stretch his legs.
“Scout’s making breakfast this morning,” Hawk told him before he left the room.
Jon turned back to his friend. “Scout? I thought it was Tank’s turn.”
"It was,” Hawk said with a laugh. “Scout lost a bet.”
A bet? “Dare I ask?” Jon wanted to know.
Hawk shook his head. “It’s better if you don’t.”
“Right,” Jon smiled as he slightly waved and walked out of the room. To tell the truth, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Hawk, Scout and Tank had found new ways to amuse themselves recently, and the bet over the last few weeks seemed to be that the loser cooked the meals. In fact, Jon couldn’t remember the last time he’d been assigned to cook a meal, Jennifer either.
Three of his team were up to something. Scout was cooking breakfast? He lost a bet to Tank? Hawk was grinning like a Cheshire cat? Jon was right the first time -- maybe he didn’t want to know what they were doing. Whatever it was, it was working. He hadn’t seen his team this happy in a long time. They had a diversion, some happy changes in their lives and that was a rare thing in wartime. He was enjoying the changes he was experiencing in his relationship with Jennifer even if he wasn’t exactly sure where those changes would take them.
Life was like that. Everything changed, some for the better, some for the worst.
Jon’s mind went back to the problem he was currently wrestling with as he walked toward one of the unused storage rooms. For fifteen years, he thought he knew the truth. He saw the past as a simple, linear course of events that really started the war.
Stuart and Taggart built Overmind, they designed a variety of robots to protect Overmind in the event of an attack, Taggart merged his mind with Overmind one night, biomechs marched over the entire planet, Stuart was killed in the explosion at Volcania while Taggart was badly injured and turned into the half-machine Lord Dread. After that, it was a whole new war they had to fight.
That was it. That’s how he remembered it all started.
Simple. Clean. A neat focus on which to fight and a stream of connected events powerful enough to build resistance armies.
But now… things weren’t so simple. His memories weren’t the truth. There was more to the story.
He opened an access door and noticed the dust on the floor. They didn’t use this section of the base. It wasn’t needed, so there was never any traffic there. He hadn’t been down there in years himself. Maybe they should consider using it? A few of the rooms were big enough to be rec rooms. They could always use a little more diversion in their lives. They took their work entirely too seriously and needed a break from time to time.
Maybe that was an answer to one of his questions he’d asked his dad at the memorial site.
Rec rooms in the Power Base. That thought amused him. He wondered if Volcania had rec rooms. He didn’t think they did since Jennifer hadn’t mentioned downtime for the Dread Youth.
As he walked down the corridor toward the storage room, he had a curious thought about Volcania. How had it become such a massive construction in the first place?
Taggart had turned himself into a robber baron of sorts by buying up various businesses and laboratories years before Taggart merged with Overmind. That would have given him a fortune to start building an empire with. Volcania now existed where Detroit once stood. If Stuart had been ceded Colorado Springs, did the government give Detroit to Taggart? The fortress was huge and was always undergoing expanding construction. Currently, the main structure itself was nearly thirty miles wide, thirty miles long with the outerlying facilities expanding for miles away from the fortress. Fifteen years earlier, it had been approximately twelve miles wide by almost nine miles long. The city itself, several small towns, the buildings, the highways, the bridges, the infrastructures had all been consolidated into a massive solidly connected edifice. Jon had never wondered how Taggart completed that much construction in such a short amount of time or how he got the funding. He’d also believed that Stuart had been given everything he needed from the president and the Joint Chiefs to build the Power Base, but that wasn't quite the truth. Without any kind of oversight, there was a multitude of financial wells Taggart could plumb to fund his empire-building.
But even knowing that didn’t answer all the new questions he had.
Hawk once told Jon of a conversation he had with Stuart. Jon’s dad had asked, “How’d it go so wrong, Matt?”
How had it gone so wrong? When did it start going wrong? How did anyone not see what was happening?
Could knowing how it all started be the key to figuring out a way to stop it?
All these questions led Jon to one conclusion: he had to go “back” to the time before it had all started and find out when it all started and how it could have all gone wrong.
He finally reached the storage room. He had seen the boxes filled with old newspapers and magazines in there years earlier, but he’d never really taken a good look through them. Maybe, just maybe, some of the answers he was looking for were in there.
~o~o~o~o~o~
Late Afternoon
Fifteen years.
To Hawk, it hadn’t seemed like fifteen years had passed since Stuart was killed or since his own family had been murdered. It seemed like only yesterday. Time had flowed like quicksilver.
The fifteen years had taken their toll. When Hawk looked in the mirror, he saw an older man with thinning hair and a thickening middle. He was still in good shape physically. He could still fight and fly, but in another place and time, Hawk would have been ordered off field duty and given a desk job or a training assignment. After all the wars, after the annihilations, after civilization caved in on itself, there were no “age restrictions” on any job anymore, but he was feeling his age more and more. Then, after meeting Vi months earlier, he realized exactly how much time had passed. He wasn’t a young man anymore.
Yet his life hadn’t been empty. He had helped raise his best friend’s son after Stuart was killed. It was just the two of them at the Power Base since everyone else had left before Stuart had ordered the base lockdown in response to ‘Taggart’s threat. They had planned on bringing Joanna, Mitch and Katie to the Power Base to stay safe since it was locked down, but within a day of the explosion in Volcania, Overmind ordered hundreds of towns and cities all over the globe to be destroyed along with the people in them. When Hawk had first heard that his wife and children were gone, he didn’t know what to do. He felt like he was splitting into pieces from the inside. He had nowhere to go and no way to vent his anger. He secluded himself away in the landing bay and worked on the jumpship. He could hammer metal and rip apart circuits until he worked out some of his frustration. Sometimes, the anger would get the best of him and the jumpship would bear the brunt of his emotions. During one particularly loud tirade, Jon placed his hand on Hawk’s shoulder. Hawk glanced up and saw Jon looking back at him, understanding that they had both lost everyone and everything, but they were still alive. They would be each other’s family.
In those fifteen years, Hawk saw Jon grow from a remarkable young man to an extraordinary grown man. He watched Jon take his grief and his anger over Stuart’s death and pour it into creating something good – the Power Team. Hawk had never seen anyone become so dedicated to the collection of knowledge as Jon had. Every bit of knowledge he learned was used to try to save the human race itself. He couldn’t have been prouder of Jon if he had been his own son.
During those years, Jon had taken his father’s research and expanded on it. He’d advanced the power suit technology past anything Stuart may have ever dreamed of. He’d put together a team that was the bane of Dread’s existence and had helped protect what remained of civilization on the North American continent. Jon was very much a stubborn young man who wanted to do things his own way, but he always listened to Hawk’s advice. Their father/son relationship had grown over those years. Still, Hawk always wondered if he’d done right by Jon while he was growing up. The saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” was not something Hawk wanted to see happen to the boy. He wanted Jon to have a life of some sort, some recreation, some relationships – heck, the boy needed some fun. He was entirely too serious for his own good. Hawk would take him to various outposts and bases when they had some free time, and Jon was able to interact with people his own age. When he wasn’t looking for people to make up the team he had envisioned, he was having some fun. He made friends, met young ladies and took advantage of whatever forms of recreations the outposts had. Sometimes, they had dances, sometimes sports. Hawk wasn’t the only parent trying to give the younger generation some feeling that not all was lost.
When Tank had joined them, he had suggested adding a little more fun into their daily lives, but not much changed. When Scout joined, he had an infectiously happy personality that almost forced their fledgling team into more social occasions. That was when Hawk saw a real change in Jon. He would smile and enjoy himself for a few hours those few times they could go on R&R.
When Jennifer joined the team, they undertook an all-out effort to introduce her to life. Showing her all the fun, all the happy, all the colors and all the sounds that Dread had destroyed become a goal for the team. Over the years, Hawk had seen Jon relax more and be a ‘regular guy’ from time to time, but lately, when Jon was with Jennifer and they didn't know Hawk could see them, he saw his foster son actually happy for the first time in years.
But when Jon and Jennifer returned from Oasis, Hawk saw a subtle change in his young friends. In the landing bay, he saw that Jon and Jennifer weren't hiding their feelings from each other anymore, but they weren’t quite open about their feelings with anyone else. Hawk didn't know what was said between them, but whatever it was, it gave him hope for a future for the two young people.
Jon was happier. Serious, always watching out for any action by Dread, but he wasn’t consumed with the war. For weeks, Hawk saw a much more relaxed Jon. That was something he never thought he’d see. Jennifer? There was a subtle difference in her behavior as well. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Maybe she was a hint more outgoing? No, that wasn’t right. More relaxed? No, not that either. Whatever it was, Hawk had noticed a difference.
Then came the anniversary of Stuart’s death. Jon was reminded of what he had lost and what he could lose if they didn’t stop Dread, and Jon began exhibiting some old behavior. Every year, Jon would talk himself out of going. Why pour salt into a wound? Did going to a memorial and talking to his dad actually work? Stuart wasn’t there. He’d been killed in the Volcania explosion. Then, for reasons only he knew, Jon would get his gear and his gun and fly the jet out to the memorial.
The past held its share of secrets, that was certain. Every member of the team had their own secrets that they didn’t share for whatever reason. One secret Jon held onto, one that only Hawk knew, was the location of Stuart’s memorial and the exact date of his death.
It was personal. It was private. It was something of his that he could hold onto and no one could take away from him.
Hawk thought that Jon wouldn’t go that year. He wouldn’t drag himself down into that emotional quagmire again, but whatever it was that drove him to visit the grave was pushing him to go that year as well. Usually, Jon could sneak out before anyone other than Hawk saw him leave, but this year, Jennifer had walked into the control room just as Jon turned to go. Hawk saw the look Jon gave her. He could almost read the thought that crossed Jon’s mind – Jennifer was someone else he could lose if Dread wasn’t stopped.
It was no secret that Jon disappeared on the same day every year. The others thought it was for personal reasons, a personal anniversary of some sort and accepted that as the explanation. This time, for the first time, Jennifer asked, “Where does he go?”
“Back,” Hawk answered, noticing that Jennifer didn’t ask for further explanation. Yet she asked -- another indication that her and Jon’s relationship had changed. She felt confident enough to ask the question but not ask for details.
Back. If they could turn back time and change history, none of them would have lost what they did.
Back. That was explanation enough. No one would ask anything else.
Jon had stayed less than an hour at the memorial and had left just as Mentor picked up two aircraft heading to the area. Hawk never knew what Jon told Stuart. Then again, when Hawk visited the secret memorial he had for his wife and children, he never told anyone what he said to them. Some things needed to remain private.
He hoped Jon told Stuart about Jennifer.
The yearly visit seemed to ground Jon to a certain extent. His outlook on the war and his determination to stop Dread usually seemed recharged. This time… something was different. Jon seemed less grounded and more introspective. Something was different on this trip, and he hadn’t been acting like himself since he returned.
That was two days ago.
Hawk wasn’t just a major on a resistance team. He was also the surrogate father to the man who ran the team. It was his responsibility to find out what was going on. Besides, if he didn’t, Scout and Tank would pester him to find out what was wrong with Jon and that it had better not have anything to do with Jennifer. After all they’d done to nudge the two together, the last thing anyone wanted to see was something coming between them.
Hawk reached Jon’s quarters and knocked. He waited, then knocked again. Finally, Jon said ‘Enter’ and Hawk opened the door. It wasn’t the first time he had come in to find the room a disaster area, but the last time was when Jon was about seventeen years old. They had suffered several losses against Dread and Jon had lost his temper. His quarters had borne the brunt of it and Jon’s baseball bat.
But this disaster? It was a systematically organized mess of strewn paperwork and old magazines and newspapers.
It was research.
Jon sat in the middle of the floor, looking over page after page as if looking for some obscure clue.
“Do I want to know?”
Jon looked up at Hawk and shrugged. “Life threw me a curveball, and I’m not sure how bad it is yet. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for. What’s up?”
Excuse. He needed an excuse. “Uh, information on the latest troop movements on the east coast just came in. Mentor’s studying the numbers, but he doesn’t think there’s much there. It looks like Dread is redeploying his resources.”
Jon looked back at the old newspaper in his hands. “Redeploying them where?”
“He’s moving them west at the moment. We’ll know where soon enough,” Hawk explained, wondering what Jon was looking for.
“He probably thinks that he needs more troops in the western regions. Jennifer and I found out there aren’t many out there,” Jon mused quietly.
“Where did you get all this?” Hawk asked. “There haven’t been paper magazines or physical newspapers in over 100 years. Everything was digital.”
“I think Dad got them on paper in case we lost our digital libraries. I’ve seen these down in the storage rooms for years, but I never looked through them. Oh, I found something you might be interested in,” he said as he reached over and pulled a newspaper picture out from under a stack of papers. He handed it to Hawk with a grin.
Hawk glanced at the photo of three happy kids waving at whoever took their picture. “Printout of the local paper with you, Mitch and Katie in your Little League uniforms.” Hawk remembered the day that picture was taken. Their team had just won the playoffs. Katie had caught the game-winning out, Mitch had hit a grand slam and Jon had played catcher that time. “Morgana took that picture and sent it in to the paper, I think,” Hawk suddenly remembered. The kids had kept goofing around and not standing still until…
There, just to the side of the picture and not really in focus, stood Lyman Taggart next to Stuart. Both were a bit blurry, but Hawk remembered how Taggart had made some jokes and gotten the kids’ attention and then promised to buy everyone ice cream if they stood still for a few seconds so Morgana could take the picture. Joanna had commented that if the kids ate all the ice cream Lyman promised them, they’d be three times their size.
It had been a fun day -- one of the last fun days they all had together before the wars encompassed the entire globe. Before Taggart began to become obsessed with power and immortality. Before everything started to change.
“Score was 20 to 14,” Hawk said proudly. “You three did a good job that day.”
“It was teamwork,” Jon quipped as put the newspaper in a particular pile.
Hawk watched Jon glance at the piles, wondering what he was looking for. “Okay, I give up. Either tell me what’s bothering you or I’m going to start a recycling drive. Or maybe a bonfire.” He glanced down at the nearest pile. The magazine was dated June 2125. What was so important about twenty-two year old newspapers? Something nudged at his memory. “Wait a minute, I remember these now. Stuart sent the archives a list of papers and magazines he wanted to look through while we were building the base. This is them?”
Jon stood up and stretched his back a bit. Obviously, he’d been sitting there a while. “Yeah. They were still in the original boxes down in storage. I think he was looking for something…”
“And now you are,” Hawk observed. He glanced down at the stack of papers by his feet. What was in that stack? Papers of incorporation? What was Jon looking for? “What is it, Jon?”
Jon blew out a breath, then moved over to his desk. He moved the papers he had stacked in his chair and sat down. “Have you ever wondered if we could have stopped Dread before any of this started?”
Hawk chuckled. “Only all the time. It’s too bad we can’t go back in time. If we had known then what we know now, could we have kept the world from being destroyed? But we didn’t know. Everything changed after he merged with Overmind.”
“And the next day, biomechs were all over the planet,” Jon reminded him. “Volcania was already up and running. He had biomech soldiers, overunits, human troops, human scientists and technical personnel already in position. He had been training Dread Youth for years. On the day it all started –”
“He had everything in place,” Hawk finished.
Jon looked up at his friend. “Did you ever ask yourself how? What did he do beforehand and how did he do it without anyone knowing?”
~o~o~o~o~o~
Jon waited for an answer, but there wasn’t one.
“Even your dad didn’t know,” Hawk finally said. “He knew that Lyman was obsessed with power and immortality, but to hook himself up to a computer? No one saw that coming.”
Jon nodded. “When Dread caught me that time, he wanted to hook Dad up to Overmind so he could know the same things he did.”
“Stuart wasn’t interested,” Hawk commented.
“Not in the least, but he was trying to buy time to get me out of there. I think that was when I realized that the Lyman Taggart I knew didn’t exist anymore. Even Dad couldn’t reach him.”
Hawk sat down on the floor and looked through some of the real estate deeds. “By then it was too late, Jon, but,” he motioned over the mess of papers all over the room, “what are you looking for?”
Jon looked at the paper that showed the three kids, looked over at the magazines dated in the 2120’s. The world had been different then. Green grass, tall trees, blue water, clear skies, visible stars…
He’d been a carefree kid, playing baseball with his best friends, going on picnics, watching fireworks, going to school, he and Mitch were notorious for playing jokes on people.
Hawk had been a captain in the Air Force. He, Joanna, Stuart and Morgana had been four good friends who occasionally took trips together, let their kids play at each other’s houses, joined the PTA and the parents’ groups at school. Barbecues – Jon had forgotten about the barbecues! Stuart and Matt would argue about the best way to stack charcoal and the perfect way to cook a t-bone.
T-bone… it’d been so long since he’d had steak! He’d forgotten what it tasted like.
Tank would have been at Babylon 5, a volunteer for genetic manipulation and training no one realized would go so wrong for so many.
Scout remembered a little before the wars started. He mentioned a few things over the years – playing games, family get-togethers, general memories.
And Jennifer… “Hawk, do you know the few memories Jennifer has before she was with the Dread Youth?”
Hawk nodded. “She only remembers that one day. She was chasing a butterfly?”
“A blue one,” Jon added. “She mentioned that it was a blue one.” At the trial in Oasis, she had let it slip – growing up in Volcania, she had never known that there were such things like ‘blue’ butterflies. She didn't even know about butterflies.
“Blue, huh? She also said she saw soldiers coming, someone picked her up and ran with her. Something about statues. Why?”
How could Jon explain this? “She thinks she might have been about three years old when she was taken, but she’s not sure. But she found out before she escaped the Dread Youth how long Dread had been training children to be in the Dread Youth.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Hawk inquired.
Jon shook his head. “He started building the Dread Youth at least twenty-two years ago.”
“Okay. Twenty-two years ago,” Hawk considered that.
“And Dread came to power fifteen years ago,” Jon reminded him. “Twenty-two versus fifteen?”
Hawk closed his eyes for a moment. “I never did the math. Fifteen years wasn’t long before your dad died. The Dread Youth was started –”
“Maybe seven years before that. Maybe a little longer,” Jon explained. “Jennifer’s memories have her being trained for the Dread Youth as soon as she was taken which could mean that Dread’s coming to power as quickly as he did was part of a long term plan he had ironed out. I don’t think it was him taking advantage of the resources he’d already built up. Not where the Dread Youth is in the timeline.”
Hawk picked up the nearest paper. It was an article of incorporation for a hospital that was specifically designed to cater to the children of several schools and orphanages that Taggart had ‘purchased.’ “He was building his army out of the children he was supporting.”
“More than that.” Jon pulled a few more papers from the stack. “When we were at Oasis, Arvin told me that he worked at a laboratory that Taggart took over in a corporate buyout. He used the psychological manipulation research designed at that facility to brainwash Dread Youth. Arvin said he recognized his own processes when he saw the first youth soldiers. What surprised him when he met Jennifer is that anyone could break through the conditioning. It was designed to be resistance-proof. It may be possible that Dread used multiple methods on them –”
“Stolen from other places and experimented with to see what worked best?” Hawk finished.
“And look at this,” Jon handed Hawk a deed.
"Genetics laboratory in California?” Hawk asked.
Jon nodded. “Look at the date, and then think about what was happening around that time in Taggart’s life.”
Hawk noticed the date was at least twelve years before he became Dread. Twelve years... “Wait, didn’t Taggart have a sister who was killed in an attack about that time?”
“Glynnis Taggart. I don’t remember her. I think I was only three at the time. I do know that their mother, Fran, loved to know the meanings of names and wanted all her children to have names that meant the same thing.” He gave Hawk a written biography of Taggart that was used as part of the advertisement to recruit potential investors in some of his companies. “The Taggarts were born in the San Fernando Valley , so their mother gave them names that meant ‘from the valley.’”
“Lyman and Glynnis?” Hawk shook his head. “Okay. Nice promo bit, I guess. Was there a point to it?”
“According to some of this paperwork, he made a move to get this particular genetics lab a couple of weeks after his sister was killed. I don’t know if there’s any significance to the date. Dad told me that Taggart was devoted to Glynnis. They were close. It almost killed him when he lost her, but then he makes a move to buy the lab that quickly? He uses the fact he was from San Fernando to make the board more sympathetic to him and vote him in as chairman of the board. Two months later, he buys up another genetics lab. Another one a month after that. It looks like he went on a two year personal mission of obtaining genetics labs all over the country.”
“You’re not just looking for evidence of how Dread built up his power base, are you?” Hawk asked him.
“There are so many things we don’t know about him, Matt, because we never looked at the very beginning of his empire. If we could figure out some of these secrets, maybe we’d have a better chance of finding ways around him. Maybe we could find new resources to help us or other weapons he’s had hidden away. Maybe if we start back at the beginning, we could find out everything.”
Start back at the beginning? There was more to it than that. The dates on the paperwork were the hint -- seven years before Taggart became Dread. That was a significant time for one of the team. It wasn’t just Dread’s origins that Jon was looking for. Hawk waited a few moments and then placed the papers in his hand back on a nearby stack. “You want to know more about Jennifer?”
Jon sighed and nodded his head. “She doesn’t even know what her real name is, where she came from, nothing. She’s wanting answers now. Maybe we can find a place to start looking in these files. I mean, the clues from her past gave me some hints about Dread's past. They might be closely linked. If we find out one, maybe we could find out the other –”
“And answer some of her questions as well as ours,” Hawk said with a slight grin.
~o~o~o~o~o~
Some of this research was beginning to make sense to Hawk. Although Jon and Jennifer had debriefed them about what happened at Oasis, more happened than they had told anyone. Hawk suspected that more had been said between Jon and Jennifer. Did some of it have to do with Jennifer’s past? She was very selective about how much information she told, even to the four men she trusted with her life.
“So we start back at the beginning,” Hawk said. “Lyman was obsessed with power. I didn’t know how much. Stuart did though. Years ago, power was defined by wealth, influence, position in society, public perception…” Hawk picked up several articles of incorporation. “Looks like he wanted to be a captain of industry. Lots of industries. He wanted to be a powerhouse like the robber barons of the late 19th century.” He picked up real estate deeds and property transferals. “Here, he bought up orphanages and schools. He wanted to be an influence on kids. Let them all know his name. There are a few dictators in history who did the same thing.” He looked at one bit of paperwork where Taggart had levied a takeover of a conglomerate that owned dozens of hospitals. “And he wanted to be seen as someone who wanted to help mankind. Being the person who brings hospitals to areas with limited medical care would have got him some positive press.”
“So maybe his buying up all these companies was just something he wanted to do, but using these resources to further the will of the Machine was something separate?” Jon asked.
Hawk considered that. “It’s possible. Maybe once he merged with Overmind, he found new uses for all these businesses.” Then, another thought came to Hawk. “But he was training the Dread Youth for years... perhaps he was planning a military coup at some point and wanted his own private army? How could he do that? He’d have to house them, clothe them, feed them, train them --”
“Maybe in Volcania for a few who could survive more intensive training perhaps?” Jon answered.
Then, Hawk began to see what Jon was looking for. “Others that weren’t were conditioned to follow Dread at the schools he owned?”
Jon shrugged. “It’s possible, but the logistics of it don’t work for me. Someone would have known something somewhere. Where were these schools located?”
Hawk double-checked the locations. “Detroit, mostly.”
“Detroit? And he owned Detroit, and there was no oversight.” Jon found a picture of Volcania from before the wars. “Volcania as we know it today wasn’t finished until a few years ago, but Jennifer says she grew up in Volcania. Here, we have proof that there were other children kept in orphanages in schools. Or maybe what the older Dread Youth called Volcania isn’t the fortress itself.”
“The Detroit Metropolitan area,” Hawk rationalized. “He may have just been starting construction on Volcania, connecting all the buildings in a single area into one large structure and then connecting it to other large structures. The Youth training schools could have been who-knows-which-one of the complexes on the site.”
Jon leaned over and grabbed the city plans for Detroit that were drawn just prior to the foundations of the fortress being laid. “According to this, Taggart Industries was awarded literally all of Detroit and miles surrounding it. And,” he found the petition Lyman Taggart had placed with the state government asking permission to change the name of area,” rename it The Volcania Consortium for official purposes. It would still be Detroit, but the entire expanse could be referred to as Volcania as a means of describing it in some legal paperwork.”
Something else occurred to Hawk – “That was done with other towns and cities all over North America. It started out being the best way to go for tax purposes, rationing out some resources, allotments of utility companies. At one point, they were grouping off closely linked towns to turn them into a type of self-sustaining forts and complexes. Fort Boxer, Fort Alden, Fort Crockett, there’s several hundred like that all over the country. That came in handy when the wars first started. It was easier to mount a defense even though it was easier for the enemy to place them in a siege situation.”
"He had the resources, the space and the raw materials he needed to build an army and create a technology that took over this planet."
"And he started it all years earlier. How did we not put all this together?” Hawk wanted to know.
“The information was scattered and buried in paperwork. Besides, we’ve been too busy to connect the dots,” Jon complained. “Why were so many opportunities to stop Dread missed, Hawk? Not just by us, but someone in the government had to have suspected something... no, they wouldn't have. There was no oversight from anyone. No one knew what he was up to because no one saw the paperwork, so to speak.”
Missed? “They weren’t missed. A lot of it was politics. To do what he did, he had to have elected officials on his payroll. Plus no one in the military or Washington was willing to drop a nuclear warhead on our own soil. They wanted to negotiate since Taggart almost held the entire world hostage. Did I ever tell you about when I got my power suit? What I said?”
Jon shook his head. “No.”
“Well, Taggart had you, and Stuart had gone to Volcania. I knew it was a suicide mission for him. Mentor had just gone active and told me about the suits. There was a 50% chance that it could all go wrong, so I told him if it did, he needed to contact Earthforce Headquarters Pentagon and call for an airstrike on Volcania.”
“It would have worked,” Jon told him. “The fortress wasn’t fully functional then.”
“It might have, but I survived activating my suit and went after you and Stuart. But here’s the wrench in the works, Jon – when I was telling Mentor to contact Earthforce, there was no Earthforce anymore. It had been dismantled and basically destroyed hours earlier. Washington was taken over by biomechs, every single politician was detained, digitized or killed. Everything was gone. You see, Dread gave Stuart an hour to get to Volcania after he took you. That hour was when he made his final takeover of Washington. He kept Stuart distracted so he couldn’t do anything to stop him or warn anyone.” He paused for a moment. “I can see how important this is, but why the sudden interest?”
Jon frowned. “No one ever stopped him. No one ever stood in his way. It’s like they opened a path for him and he charged through while a few tried to prepare to survive him, not fight him. It makes no sense. He got the resources to build Volcania while the politicians were scratching their heads and twiddling their thumbs, trusting that there was going to be one big fix for all the wars that were being fought. He was gathering technology, Intel and military forces… did he plan it all and we missed it or did he decide to take over the world after he merged with Overmind, and he had all the resources and was gathering even more?” Jon moved a few stacks of papers and stood up. “How many lives didn’t have to be destroyed?”
“Hindsight, Jon,” Hawk told him. “We just didn’t know then.”
“We could have stopped him, the governments could have, the armies… no one did. And look what he did.”
Hawk knew there was another condemnation there. Look what he did to the Dread Youth. Look what he did to Jennifer.
Hawk had never really viewed the events in that way. “If they had, then we would be very different people, Jon. Stuart would probably be heading up some research and development firm in Silicon Valley. I’d have general’s stars on my shoulder, probably working at the Pentagon. You, you could have been anything from an electrical engineer to a systems developer to an Air Force general. Tank might have been in the military anyway. Scout and Jennifer? They lived most of their lives either in war torn areas or under Dread’s influence. There’s no telling what they would have been or done. I think the only thing I can say for sure is that we probably wouldn’t have ever met any of them.”
Jon laughed at another old saying of his mother's. "If things were different, then they wouldn't be the same," he quoted.
Hawk smiled. “Joanna used to say that a lot. Usually to Stuart when he couldn’t get an experiment to go right and he’d start complaining abut the laws of physics and not being able to change them. Then, when an experiment did go right for him, your mom would say he hit it out of the ballpark.”
Jon nodded. “If all his plans for Overmind had worked --”
“Grand slam,” Hawk said. “It was a gamble. We all knew that. It just didn’t pay off.”
Jon leaned against the wall. “How much of what we did or didn’t do helped create a monster like Dread?”
“Don’t go down that road, Jon,” Hawk warned. “I have, and it’s a dead end. Stuart couldn’t stop kicking himself for helping create Overmind which ultimately led to all this. It was good intentions, but you know that paves a road to a well-known place. People wanted the wars to end, they hired Stuart and Taggart to end them, and it just didn’t work. Stuart tried to make things right again. He ran out of time.”
Jon sighed. “I always wondered what Dad had planned. Built this base, designed the suits, created Mentor, but what else did he have up his sleeve that we don’t know about? He was spearheading the fight against Dread, he knew he probably wouldn’t be coming back when he went into Volcania, but he was planning on taking Dread with him.” Jon paused for a moment to catch his breath. “Matt, do you ever wonder how Dread survived the explosion and Dad didn’t?”
“All the time,” Hawk told him. “Maybe Stuart was in the direct line of a blast. Maybe Dread was shielded somehow?”
“Do you ever think that maybe…”
Hawk wasn’t going to lie to him. “Every now and then, the thought creeps in. Maybe Stuart did survive and is in Volcania somewhere. Maybe Soaron got inside the structure just in time and digitized him while he protected Dread. I’ve gone over so many scenarios, each one a little crazier than the others, but I don’t believe that Stuart survived. If he had, Dread would have used him as bait in a trap for you. He hasn’t.”
Jon nodded and sighed. It was hard to argue with logic. "Sometimes, I wish I could talk to him just one more time, find out what he had in mind, hear what he’d have to say. Right after he was killed, I thought maybe he had survived and Dread would set a trap for us, but day after day passed and Dread didn’t try to trick us into a fake rescue. He and I never talked about what I should do if he was killed or how I should stop Dread. No hint at all about the suits or Mentor. He kept all that secret, and he didn’t have time to tell me any of it.”
“He would have,” Hawk believed. “He would have wanted you to know everything he had in mind.” Hawk waited a moment before saying, “I miss him too. I never had a friend like him before.”
“It hurt when I lost him, Matt. Even more than when we lost Mom. It was just him and me for a long time."
Hawk nodded. "I know. Losing someone you care about rips you apart from the inside, and everything we do keeps the wound raw. When I lost Joanna and the kids, there were days I didn't want to breathe. I did though because I had to. And here, we all know that we have a dangerous job. Any one of us might not come back from a mission someday." They'd had so many close calls, but the look that Jon gave Jennifer before he left to visit the memorial was proof to Hawk that the thought of losing her someday had crossed his thoughts, and it was a thought he didn't want to entertain.
"We've been lucky so far," Jon protested.
Hawk wanted to say that luck wouldn't last forever, but sometimes, no one needed to say the obvious out loud.
"I wonder what Dad would say to all -- " Jon pointed to the piles of paperwork -- "this. What we’ve done. How we’ve done it. The team."
"Stuart could be opinionated,that's for sure," Hawk told him as he stood up and stretched slightly. "Especially when it came to something he really believed in or someone he cared about. If things were different and he was here, I have no doubt he'd be proud of you and what you've accomplished and how hard you've fought. He'd like Scout. I think he'd actually make Stuart laugh. And Tank? I could see him and Stuart getting along fine, but I do know one thing,” Hawk mentioned as he walked toward the door, “he would have really liked Jennifer and would've told you that you made a good choice. Personally, I think he’d want to know what took you so long to figure that out.”
He could imagine Jon’s expression at that statement.
~o~o~o~o~o~
Jon sat back down in the middle of the paper stacks and tried to reshuffle them back into their original piles. He had a few more clues, a few more details, but not the answers he was hoping to find. He felt like he was looking at a giant jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces missing.
But he did know one thing -- Lyman Taggart hadn’t created the Machine Empire all on his own. Others had helped create the opportunity, and he’d taken advantage of it because no one watched what he was doing. Even Stuart Power himself had a hand in all that happened even though his intentions were to make the world safer, but Taggart had bastardized his work.
Maybe if his dad and Taggart hadn’t built Overmind...
Maybe if Taggart had never merged his mind with the computer’s...
Maybe if the government hadn’t removed all the oversight...
Maybe, maybe, maybe --
He wished his dad were there. He wished his dad could answer his questions. All his questions.
“If things were different, they wouldn’t be the same, would they?” he asked himself.
There were so many things he wanted to change, so many lives he wanted to help. All that might have been needed is one person doing one thing different to alter the course of history.
Then what if he’d never met Jennifer?
One single change in the past, and everything could have changed in the future. Civilization could still exist. Cities would still be standing. People would still be alive. It did point to the idea that if the world had never gone through the titanic struggle to survive, he might never have known her.
He couldn’t imagine not knowing her.
Was that being selfish?
“I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever seen a room at this base this messy. Ever.”
Jon turned around the moment he heard her voice. Jennifer stood in the doorway, smiling. One look at her, just the mere sight of her standing there, and all those questions he’d asked his dad seemed to answer themselves. All the doubt and confusion went away. If anything, she clarified what he was fighting for.
“You should have seen it when I was a teenager,” Jon told her. “Let’s just say I wasn’t the neatest kid in town.”
“Hawk let you get away with that?”
Jon sort of shrugged. “Not really. I outgrew it.”
“Well, Scout’s requested me to tell you that since you missed breakfast and lunch, you’re not missing supper,” she said as she walked carefully over the paper piles. “Papers?”
Jon turned slightly, carefully, making sure he didn’t knock over any of the papers and moved some away so she’d have a place to sit. “It was some research my dad started before he died. I think he was wondering how Taggart’s Machine Empire was as advanced as it was by the time he became Dread. He got all the information in hardcopy form.”
She sat down next to him, picked up one of the nearest newspapers and read the headlines. “NORAD Declassifies Hidden Base Inside Cheyenne Mountain. Red Sox Maintain Winning Streak with 10th World Series Win In A Row, Dow Up For Third Month In a Row. It almost reads like another language,” she commented as she put the paper back.
“I thought the same thing when I found some documents written in some legal language,” he agreed.
“What have you found out?” she asked him.
Jon looked at one pile in particular. He had stacked certain papers that went into detail of Dread’s past financial transactions. “Lyman Taggart didn’t become Dread or build his Empire overnight. He started earlier than that, but the information’s incomplete. I’ve found out some of the things he had, but I’m guessing at what he did with them --”
“Genetics laboratories?” Jennifer mumbled out loud. “Hospitals? Orphanages? He was given Detroit and it was renamed...”
“What is it?” he asked.
She looked up at him, the gleam of realization reaching her eyes. “All this happened when he was still Lyman Taggart. He hadn’t merged with Overmind. It wasn’t just the influence of a machine that made him evil.”
“No, it wasn’t just machine. He wanted power back then,” Jon stated. “He found ways to get it.”
Jennifer picked up one of the title transfers. “He likes to tell the Dread Youth that he was chosen by the Machine to lead the world through the transition. I wish we could use all this to convince others that it’s all a lie.”
“We might be able to someday. Look at what else I found.”
~o~o~o~o~o~
One by one, they went through each page of the stack. They began to put the papers back in chronological order when they heard Scout’s voice over the communicator. “Jennifer, do we need to send out a search party?” His voice carried the hint of a smirk they knew had to be on his face.
She glanced back at Jon, smiling. “I forgot. I was supposed to come get you so you would eat supper.” She keyed her communicator. “We’re on our way, Scout. We got caught up in some paperwork.”
Pilot looked at her chronometer and realized it was much later than she thought. Time had gotten away from her. She turned her head to find Jon standing beside her and his hand extended down to her. His skin was warm as his fingers curled around her hand, gently pulling her to her feet. He didn’t let go as soon as she was standing. He kept her hand securely in his. “Supper sounds like a good idea, huh?” he asked.
Before she could say anything, Scout’s voice came over the communicator. “Paperwork? Please don’t tell me that’s code for something?”
Jennifer was about to answer when she heard Tank’s low chuckle next. “I don’t think so, unless you’d like to make a bet?” Scout wasn’t talking to her.
“After this morning?” Scout’s voice almost sounded surprised. “No thanks! I’m tired of having to cook this many meals because of losing a bet.” Everyone on the other side of the communicator laughed.
Jennifer looked quizzically at Jon who placed a gentle finger to her lips, motioning her to keep silent and listen. Obviously, the rest of the team didn’t realize the channel was still open.
Hawk almost sounded like he was trying to stifle a laugh. “Maybe you should tell them that since they showed up last, they get KP again? More time together without us interfering or overhearing?”
Jennifer felt like she was blushing. She and Jon were being talked about. They had become a topic of conversation? When had that happened?
Jon reached over, took her wrist and shut down the channel on the communicator. She felt the blush rise a little higher at the touch. Still warm. Still gentle, and still not letting go as soon as he should. Or could.
“I knew they were up to something. I just didn’t know what.” He looked back down at her. “Want to have some fun with them?” he asked, a mischievous sparkle in his blue eyes.
She raised an eyebrow at the idea. “What do you have in mind.”
Jon thought for a moment. “We’ll have to be subtle for a while. For tonight... maybe tell them we’re taking KP duty because we need to talk about some things?”
Jennifer saw the opportunity for a little diversionary fun. “Maybe tell them we need to talk about some paperwork?”
“Good idea,” Jon chuckled.
The communicator dinged for her attention again. “We’re on our way,” she told Scout.
“Good. Supper’s getting cold,” Scout told her.
Without letting go of her hand, Jon led them out of his quarters. Jennifer found that she liked the physical connection and held his hand tighter. “So, any idea what they’re betting on?” she asked him.
Jon smiled. “Hawk said I didn’t want to know.”
The End
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