Waiting For The Sunrise

Disclaimer: The following is a work of fan fiction based on the television series,Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. It is not intended to infringe on the copyrights of Landmark Entertainment Corporation or anyone else who may have legal rights to the characters and settings. I don't own the characters. However, I am putting them into an adventure since the show was cancelled and the writers/producers/directors/actors can’t put them into any new adventures.

Author’s Notes: There are many ways to change what happened in Retribution through fan fiction, and some of those plot bunnies just won’t leave me alone. They demand to be written. This one pestered me for quite a while. The end result isn’t exactly the way the original bunny dictated, but as I wrote, I realized the original idea needed a lot of tweaking to make sense. In this story, the original Power Base was in Colorado. Big thanks to Jen for taking a look and putting me on the right track. :)

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Waiting For The Sunrise

Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise.
I must think of a new life,
And I mustn't give in.
When the dawn comes tonight will be a memory too,
And a new day will begin.

Memories from the musical Cats

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

VOLCANIA:
48-07 Mark 22
(July 22, 2148)

Overmind’s voice boomed through the speakers, echoing across the throne room. “Doctor Stinson has not been truthful in his findings, Lord Dread. He is withholding information.”

Dread’s throne room, now modified to accommodate his biodread body, bore little to no resemblance to its previous design. His metalloid body never tired, so there was no need for a throne to sit on any longer. He required only a platform to stand on in order to maintain the illusion of mechanized regal nobility when an organic entered. Computers no longer had keyboards since he could plug an arm extension into a data port directly. A power access port was easily accessible in order for him to recharge his power cells. The room looked more like a robot maintenance facility, one that had become more of a personal chamber he ruled from rather than a throne room he reigned from.

“He believes that his experiment is more important than following my orders,” Dread answered back. He looked at the latest reports from Stinson’s experiment. There was some information useful to Dread’s plans. The rest of the report contained confirmations or refutations of Stinson’s research. Dread couldn’t deny the fact that if Stinson’s experiment was successful, it would give the Machine Empire another weapon to use against the insurgents and resistance movements that already existed as well as those that could rise up against them in the future. However, there were more urgent requirements that needed to be met that far surpassed any type of new weaponry or a scientist’s vaulted experiments.

“Why would he withhold information?” Overmind inquired.

Dread considered the question. Stinson was a scientist, and proving his theories as fact was a prime motivator. Stinson’s desire to prove his methods were successful had become a necessity to him. If he was withholding critical information… “He is buying time, Overmind,” Dread told him. “He wishes to keep his experiment active for a longer period of time, possibly because his results were not what he anticipated.”

Overmind processed the information which caused a momentary lull in the conversation. “His reports have shown a high percentage of success with the test subjects. Why would he require more time if his methods have been proven?”

“Only certain tests have been successful. He wishes to prove all his theories as valid,” Dread surmised aloud. “After all these months, he has merely concluded that his primary technique has yielded an expected but not a satisfactory result. That is not adequate for our plans or his research. Having this many test subjects at his disposal may not occur again. He is taking advantage of the situation.”

“You are not surprised,” Overmind concluded.

“No,” Dread answered dismissively. “He is a scientist with an ego and a point to prove. I would expect nothing less.”

Overmind made a slight noise, one unfamiliar to Dread. It was if the supercomputer was musing over a problem and sighed impatiently. “Overmind?”

“I find human behavior illogical,” Overmind answered.

If Dread could have laughed, he would have. “In this case, I find Stinson’s behavior completely rational.”

“What of the vegetation currently growing in the area of Power’s former base?” Overmind asked, changing the subject slightly.

“It is useful for Stinson’s experiment,” Dread answered. “The organics involved require sustenance, and that is found in the forest surrounding them. It is necessary that it remain intact for now.”

“Sensors indicate that it is growing at an exponential rate,” Overmind’s voice sounded strange. Was he trying to catch Dread in a verbal trap? “Its growth pattern has only recently begun to slow and stabilize.”

“Yes,” Dread agreed. “Once Stinson’s experiment is finished, we shall send in our own researchers to determine the source of its origins and such rapid growth. Whatever the cause, it could prove useful to our own purposes.”

“In what way?” Overmind asked, this time his voice was serious and curious.

“Until we know the cause, we cannot know the potential uses,” Dread explained.

Again, there was a pause, then Overmind observed, “You were aware that this project would take longer than computed or would generate results that were not expected?”

“I was aware of the possibility,” Dread told him casually. “We are dealing with organics and the study of human behavior, Overmind. Humans are rarely logical and as you have already stated, do not behave in a logical fashion. Not even a scientist intent on proving his theories. Since behavior cannot be predicted with complete accuracy, I took into account that the experiment would take longer than expected and adjusted our plans accordingly.”

Again, there was a processing pause before Overmind stated, “I understand. You took logical precautions to amend the illogical behavior present in this project.”

“A necessary step, I assure you." Dread’s sensors indicated an overunit approaching the door. With unique precision, Dread opened the door just as the overunit reached the intercom to request permission to enter.

“My lord?” the overunit walked hesitantly into the throne room to see the biodread sitting in front of the computer, his arm extension plugged into the data port assimilating information. Dread knew he still created an intimidating impression on anyone who entered his chambers. Such an impression instilled fear and awe in anyone who saw him, a situation that he used to his advantage to keep control of his army.

“Yes, Overunit Stevens?” Dread didn’t get upset over the continual interruptions as he once did. As a biodread, his mental capacity had doubled-tripled-quadrupled-quintupled to the point where data could be absorbed and tasks could be performed at a startling rate. Multitasking had become second nature. That meant that interruptions by overunits did not cause an interruption in his work.

“We have just received word from the prison. The identity of the prisoner Doctor Stinson sent there has been confirmed. She is not the organic you ordered to be reintegrated and delivered to the facility.”

Dread stopped accessing the data. He withdrew his mechanical arm and turned toward the overunit.

“The prisoner in question was sent there some months ago. Why has it taken this long to confirm that she is not the organic I ordered Stinson to deliver?” His voice was calmly curious, tinged with annoyance. Intimidation aside, he wouldn’t get his answers if the overunit became too nervous.

Stevens cleared his throat and took a deep breath. Reluctantly, he answered, “With respect, my lord, the prisons are operating beyond capacity, and the numbers of interrogations are higher than anticipated. The organic in question has been imprisoned in the high security section of the facility for the past five months, but reports show that she was not questioned immediately upon arrival. It appears that there was some confusion due to her being processed through Identification at the same time as a large group detained from an eastern settlement. She was recorded in the records as being a member of that settlement and not the prisoner you requested.”

Dread’s head tilted as he wondered incredulously at the overunit’s statement. The prison workers were too busy to follow his simple orders? “Are you saying that this prisoner was lost in the crowd?”

The overunit cleared his throat again, nervously. “Yes, my lord. The prison overunit sends his apologies and is coming here personally to resign.”

Having a biodread body had its drawbacks. A metal body meant no oxygen was necessary to sustain him or for speaking. He had no need to breathe, therefore no way to inflect emotion in his voice. Verbal cues were also lost, and intent expressed by facial expressions or sounds was no longer an option. He couldn’t scowl at the news that an overunit had failed completely was coming to resign. He also knew that becoming angry was not going to help matters any. In a steady, synthesized voice, he asked, “Who did Stinson send to the prison?”

“A genetic scan confirms that the prisoner is an overunit named Christine Larabee. She identified herself when she was delivered to the prison, but the prison overunit believed she was lying until he initiated interrogations. She was placed under intense questioning and it was through that process that she repeatedly identified herself. Her testimony convinced the overunit to run the genetic scan."

Christine Larabee? Freedom One? She had been captured and held in a resistance prison after her failed mission. How had she been digitized? Was the resistance prison attacked by Blastarr without Dread’s permission? Did she escape? One of his most faithful soldiers had been imprisoned wrongly in one of his prisons for five months? She was interrogated by Dread’s own people? The questions ran rampant through Dread’s mind. This so-called misdirection put him months behind schedule! If he could have taken a deep breath to calm himself, he would have.

Dread’s attention was focused solely on the overunit. “The prisoner I demanded to be sent there was to have been interrogated, her will broken and her mind reconditioned. What is Commander Larabee’s condition since the prison overunit believed her to be the prisoner?”

“Barely responsive, my lord,” Stevens answered in a quiet voice. “Her mental condition has deteriorated due to the intense questioning.”

Deteriorated? His loyal overunit had been interrogated to that point?  “Was any information of her situation or location before she was digitized determined from her interrogation?” Dread asked.

“Yes, my lord,” Overunit Stevens replied quickly. “We know that at the time she was captured, she was on a mission to bring the Resistance leadership together. Her activities were discovered by Power, and as she was attempting to shoot Power, her weapon was shot out of her hand by the pilot for the Power Team. She was taken prisoner by the Power Team and held in an enemy prison. She escaped during a prison riot a few days before Blastarr found her travelling through the wastelands.”

So it was the pilot who had thwarted his plans that time? Not just Power? That was another realization that he had not expected. Without hesitation, Dread ordered, “Have Commander Larabee returned to Volcania immediately. I will not have one of my most loyal soldiers left to rot in a prison fit only for the animals that live outside. Our physicians may be able to restore her mental faculties." He turned his head and focused on the overunit. Again, his voice a steady synthesized version of what it used to be, he demanded, “Now tell me this, where is the organic I ordered to be reintegrated and interrogated?”

“I don’t know, my lord,” the overunit answered lowly. “The prison overunit did an inventory of all prisoners living and dead and there is no one matching the particular organic’s description.”

In a raw anger, Dread’s biodread eye gazed menacingly down at the overunit. “Take a squad of troops to Doctor Stinson’s research laboratory. I want to know where my prisoner is. One of the few remains of Blastarr recovered at Power’s former base was his digitizing storage unit. Retrieve it and transport it back to Volcania. He was a loyal warlord and no part of him should be left in the custody of one who cannot follow the most basic orders.”

As Stevens hurried out of the throne room, Dread tried to regain control of his temper. Getting angry would serve no purpose, and emotions were not of the Machine. The Power Team continually thwarted his plans. Project New Order, Project Charon, Project Styx, the destruction of the resistance leadership – every attempt to destroy the enemies of the Machine Empire was disrupted by Power and his team. Over the last months, things had gotten worse. Dread’s forces were being annihilated battle after battle with resistance forces, and Dread had no doubt that Power was the one who planned and orchestrated those attacks. Once Dread got his prisoner that Stinson promised him, the Power Team was going to pay -- every single one of them, starting with Jonathan Power.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

ONE MONTH LATER

Personal journal dated 48-08 Mark 28. Sergeant Robert Baker recording.

We received a message from Elzer Pulaski a few hours ago on a secure frequency while I was on duty in the Control Room. He requested a meeting with the team, saying that he, Jim Mitchell and Andy Jackson, the soldier that infiltrated our base last year, would be waiting for us at a predetermined location. The captain hasn’t commented on the matter, but Hawk and Tank agree with me that it could be important. One problem is that Jackson ’s trustworthiness is still an issue. As far as we know, he’s never mentioned the base or our setup, but the captain is still concerned that Jackson has certain bits of information that he had no clearance for. If Elzer wasn’t going to be at this meeting, I don’t think any of us would have considered going.

We’ll fly through Colorado to a location about seventy miles north of where our former base used to be. News of a resistance group has been reported working in that area for the last few months. Elzer’s message was brief but it concerned us meeting the leader of this new group under the guise of exchanging ideas and battle tactics. He wouldn’t explain why over an open channel, coded or not.

I hope the captain will be all right. He hasn’t said anything about the destination or the fact that this is our first trip back to Colorado since last Christmas. None of us like to remember what happened last year, but it’s got to be worse for him. He doesn’t talk about it much, but I don’t think he’s ever stopped thinking about it. I hope nothing reminds him of those events. Meeting a new resistance cell means we need to be focused on finding out their strengths and how best to work with them, but we have no idea why Elzer wanted us to pretend that we’re going there for one reason when he’s taking us there for another.

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DAY ONE – Late afternoon

Hawk gazed through the front viewport of the jumpship but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the ground. Everyone in the jump ship saw the same extraordinary sights. They’d been flying over mile after mile of woods! Each mile gave them new sights to see, and their attentions were riveted on everything they saw. “Am I seeing right? Is that actually a weeping willow? It’s got to be twelve feet tall.”

Scout concentrated on what he could view from the co-pilot’s seat. “A pine tree, dogwoods, I think that’s an oak tree… look, bushes. And those are flowers. And birds! How in the world…”

“No idea,” Hawk almost whispered, his voice indicating his surprise. “We’ve got woods down here. Real woods. It’s green. It’s almost like someone raided our frozen seed stores and built a forest of their own.”

The look on Scout’s face was one of utter astonishment. “We did have seeds for some of these plants, didn’t we?”

“All of them frozen in boxes and crates down in the hydroponics lab,” Hawk answered. “It almost looks like it’s the entire inventory list.”

Tank rechecked the homing signal. “Pulaski should be a half mile to the southeast of our position.”

Hawk saw the modified personnel carryall partially hidden in trees. A transport, actually obscured by leaves and brush -- it was incredible! Elzer was using foliage for camouflage! Hawk thought days of using trees for coverage were long gone. “Got him,” he said.

He fought the crosscurrent that blew across the nose of the jumpship as he landed near Pulaski’s transport. Three men were waiting for them, all standing in the shades of taller trees to find a respite from the summer heat. What was strange was that they looked… well, the only word Hawk could think of was apprehensive. He glanced back and saw the captain waiting patiently.

“They look like they’re alone, Jon,” Hawk said. He didn’t receive a response, not that he was expecting one. Jon’s personality had grown darker over the last eight months, more serious and less prone to unnecessary conversation. “Good thing, too. I don’t want to run into any trouble on this trip. We’re down to one quarter ammo on the ship. We’ve got to find a way to resupply before our next mission.”

Tank rechecked other armaments as well. “We need a complete restock on all weapons. We used too much of the stores when we flew against Soaron a few days ago." He studied the sensor readings and verified Hawk’s assertion. “Captain, no one else is out there other than Pulaski, Mitchell and Jackson."

“That resistance group is supposed to be somewhere around here,” Hawk said as he stood up from the pilot’s seat. “Any sign of them?”

Tank adjusted a few controls, reading the numbers again in disbelief. “There’s a settlement about a mile east of here. Sensors show over one thousand inhabitants.”

That number got everyone’s attention.

“One thousand?” Scout repeated as he removed his headset. “That’s too many for a resistance group. That has to be a new settlement. Has there even been one with that many people since the Metal Wars?”

“Not many,” Jon answered quickly. “Any settlement that large would get Dread’s attention at some point. If that’s the resistance group, then they would have to be a mobile force just to find enough supplies to feed and arm that many, but we would have known about them much earlier if they were. That’s too many people to move at one time without anyone noticing.”

“And they’re out in the open,” Hawk observed. “That has to be a settlement. No resistance group could operate like that from the same place without being discovered and attacked.”

Scout shook his head at the thought. “Is it too much to ask for us to have a typical situation? Just once?”

Hawk laughed. “I thought walking into untypical situations was normal for us."

Jon moved toward the hatch, his demeanor seemingly curious. “Let’s go find out what Elzer’s got for us."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

August was usually the height of summer, marked by heat and high humidity, but in those woods, August was not the proverbial oven that it liked to be.

Since the Metal Wars, the seasonal torments worsened each year -- droughts and floods, violent thunderstorms, hotter summers and drier winters, barely a whisper of spring or autumn. Nature had been losing to the Machine for over fifteen years, and the Machine was taking its toll. Land was dying all over the planet.

At the landing site, however, the complete opposite was taking place. Before the Metal Wars, the area had been a thriving forest. After, Dread’s attacks had destroyed it acre by acre, bit by bit until it was a wasteland like so much of the North American continent. Now, by some mysterious twist of fate, the forest was growing back. Small to medium-sized saplings with sprouting leaves swayed in the hot summer winds, their roots digging deep into the earth to find more water in order to survive. Taller trees offered shade against a sun blocked by the ever present layer of pollution. Even the small brooks that meandered through the area seemed to be growing and expanding. Some could actually be called streams. Shrubs were scattered and blooming. Wildflowers were everywhere. The leafy tops of vegetables were cropping up out of the ground. Something had happened in the area – things were green and growing.

Hawk led the way to Elzer’s carryall with Jon walking beside him. Again, this wasn’t a surprise to Hawk. His leadership role had increased over the last eight months, some out of necessity, some out of Jon giving him more of the responsibilities. Hawk still considered himself a subordinate on the team, but he knew when to take the lead and when to follow. Jon’s focus had changed over the last eight months. He was concentrating more on hurting and destroying Dread than he was just helping everyone survive, and that was a lead Hawk was more than willing to follow.

Hawk understood Jon’s reactions all too well. When he lost Joanna, Mitch and Katie, all he wanted to do was hurt Dread. He’d had almost twenty years with his wife. They had spent a lifetime together, and losing her almost destroyed him. Jon had lost any chance of a lifetime with Jennifer in the base explosion. Jon loved her, but he hadn’t told her how he felt before she died. The guilt he was feeling would never go away. He was punishing himself by taking too many chances. Jon focused all his grief and anguish on destroying Dread. He extended no mercy to anything remotely connected to him or his Empire. Other resistance groups adopted the same angry approach and emulated the Power Team’s new style. One by one, Dread facilities were beginning to fall. The Empire was shrinking, not expanding. Biomechs and biodreads weren’t venturing into certain areas any longer due to the high number of mechanical casualties. As much as Hawk hated to admit it, Jon’s fury had given the Resistance a tactical focus it didn’t have before – it gave them a destructive edge.

The Resistance was starting to win after over fifteen years of fighting. The war had taken a different turn during those months, mostly because of Jon. Battle after battle, mission after mission, more damage was waged on Dread’s strongholds than ever before. Biomechs were obliterated by the dozens. Facilities were demolished, projects were disrupted, and supply lines were destroyed. Dread blamed Jon for the sudden change in the war and had vowed vengeance against the Power Team in any way he could get it, but whatever new approach he had planned, it was still a mystery. Hawk guessed that when they found out how Dread was going to strike back at them, it was going to be spiteful and cruel.

Hawk waved at Elzer as they approached. “Elzer,” Hawk called out in greeting. Elzer was dressed in his familiar camouflage fatigues, his gun strapped to his thigh, the ever present radio in the back of his carryall. Andy and Jim stood silently behind him, their meager possessions packed away in backpacks and their rifles slung over their shoulders. Perhaps they were letting Elzer start the conversation since their last meeting with Jackson wasn’t a good one?

“Hawk,” Elzer shook his hand. “Captain, good to see you.”

Jon responded in kind. “Elzer. How are you?”

“Fine." His voice was rushed and higher pitched, indicating that he was anything but fine. “Heard about that battle you guys had with Soaron a few days ago. That was pretty impressive.”

“We put the hurt on the biobird,” Hawk told him rather proudly. “He’ll be regenerating for at least a week.”

Elzer cleared his throat and looked at the team, his demeanor somewhat confused. “Uh, look, I know I must have sounded a little mysterious when I spoke with Scout earlier, but when Andy and Jim showed me what they found, I honestly didn’t know how to tell you anything over a comm line. I thought it would be better to get you here and show you in person.”

“Okay,” Jon told him, his voice unusually curt. “We’re here. What is it?”

If Elzer noticed a difference in the captain, he didn’t admit it. “Walk this way. We’ll explain as we go.”

They kept mostly on a tree-lined trail as they moved toward the settlement. It was an odd experience to walk in the woods under a canopy of leaves. Their legs swept through the brush as they tried to follow the makeshift path. Vines and thorns caught on their clothes, flower petals fell off as they walked through them.

Hawk scratched his hand on a nearby rose bush – roses? Actual roses? Real flowers? The sights they were seeing were difficult to comprehend. It had been years since they’d seen anything like woods. “So what’s going on around here?” he asked their guides.

Andy stayed just ahead of the group as he led the way. “A lot of stuff you’re not going to believe. We sort of fell into the whole thing,” he explained, his voice somewhat wary but serious.

“Fell is a good word,” Mitchell added. “The resistance troops around here dug Burmese tiger traps as part of their defenses.”

Tiger traps? That was an unexpected tactic. Ingenious and effective. Sometimes it was the simple ideas that had the best results.

Andy cleared his throat, somewhat embarrassed. “Jim and I were at the Passages about a month ago when a buddy of ours told us he heard a rumor about the forest growing again in a certain region of Colorado, and I mean growing fast. Did you guys get a take on how big this forest is?”

Tank kept looking around at the foliage, at the hints of wild animals in the area. He was as stunned as everyone else at the sight. “Sensors indicated that it’s over two hundred miles across.”

“Two hundred plus and expanding,” Mitchell added. “It’s slowed down a little bit, but our tests show that it was growing at maybe a foot a day there for a while."

Andy continued as he picked up his pace. “New trees, flowers, stubby grass, bushy little bushes. They’ve even got some brand new species in some areas. Not great for my hay fever, but I’m not complaining. We did a read-through of the reports at the Passages and found out there haven’t been any fly-bys in this area by anyone in months, so no one saw this forest from the air until about two months ago. Even then, there’s a blind spot about forty miles across in the area we’re at right now. You can’t get a video – it’s all static and interference. Some of the resistance cells found the woods as they were going cross-country, but the news that it existed moved pretty slow. Elzer heard on the radio that Cipher’s group found the southern region not long ago when he was out hunting for supplies. Scuttlebutt says that a few others have joined him and they’re exploring that region. This area we’re in now is patrolled by the new resistance group.”

Hawk almost stumbled over a tree root but Scout caught his arm and kept him from falling. “There’s food growing here, isn’t there?”

“Vegetables mostly. We found some apple trees, so there are fruits growing too,” Andy said cheerfully. “Anyway, a tech back at the Passages is studying the phenomenon. Cipher is getting him some soil samples from the southern tip of the area; we’re taking some from this region. He said the forest and its growth pattern seems to coincide with the unexplained explosion that happened around Christmastime.”

The unexplained explosion. Hawk slightly nodded his head in approval. Andy hadn’t told anyone it was the location of the original Power Base yet, not even his partner. Their secret was still safe, even though there was no reason to keep that secret anymore. He glanced over at Jon, but there was no reaction to the mention of the base.

Andy shifted direction slightly, trying to avoid some of the growing rose bushes. “Anyway, we got all the information we could about the area, that took a couple of weeks, and then we get here and fall into that tiger trap. After we clawed ourselves out of it, we were sort of invited to the settlement.”

“Invited?” Scout asked.

“Yeah. Guards, guns, you know the routine. Anyway, we had to prove we were who we said we were, and it took us a while to get them to trust us enough to talk to us and then let us go…” He paused, as if trying to find the right words to say. “Okay, just going to cut to the chase here and say we’ve got a huge mystery on our hands. All these people know is that they were suddenly ‘here’ about six months ago. They don’t know where they came from, who they were, who their families are, nothing. It’s like mass amnesia. There’s a doctor working near here, fellow by the name of Stinson, and what he told them is that it’s an aftereffect of memory damage caused by a malfunctioning storage circuit on a digitization unit. Said he’d seen it before.”

Andy’s trousers caught on a thorn bush and he paused long enough to untangle himself before he resumed walking. “If the digitizer on a biodread gets damaged, it can do some not so nice things to the nice folks who have been digitized. In this case, it affected all their memories, and they’re sort of linked together like a circuit. Just let one person remember something, and the circuit collapses and they all get their memory back. The problem is that if anyone forces a memory, then the circuit can destroy itself and can do more than minor damage to their brains.”

Scout stopped mid-step. The story was mind-boggling, but not impossible or unheard of. “Wait, the entire settlement?” Scout asked Andy. “All mentally connected from a failed digitizing unit? That’s more than I thought possible." He moved closer to Jon and explained, “Captain, I read some of the research on digitizing years ago when we hacked into some of Volcania’s technical files." There was no need to mention that the we Scout referred to was Jennifer and himself. No one mentioned her name if they didn’t have to, not around the captain. It didn’t matter – from the look in Jon’s eyes, he knew who the “we” was.

“Some of the Dread engineers were studying the aftereffects of digitization from people who were reintegrated. They reported cases like this but it was in small numbers, maybe three or four people being linked together because of how close they were to each other when they were digitized or as a result of a of sub-electronic connection that was made depending on where their patterns were stored in the digitizing unit. Some cases indicated there was some kind of external influence affecting or interrupting the digitization process on whoever’s being digitized at the time. There’s no way one thousand people could have been digitized at the same time." He turned back to Andy. “Jackson , you’re saying that over one thousand people are linked like that?”

“Every single solitary one. No exceptions. Even the little kids. Anyway, they didn’t know who they were, but they figured out stuff they could do like computer hacking, cooking, fighting, scavenging, repairing machinery, shooting, you name it. They pretty much figured out what they could do to make themselves a going concern. Then, one day, some clickers showed up. One of the people in the settlement led the fight and ended up being chosen as the leader. That’s the core of the newest resistance group in this area.”

“Wait,” Hawk said, suddenly realizing what Jackson had said. “Doctor Stinson has seen something like this before? How? Blastarr and Soaron were the only biodreads capable of digitizing people. Blastarr’s gone. Soaron’s spent more time regenerating in the last few months than he has fighting or digitizing. There’s a rumor that Dread’s designing a new biodread but it’s not supposed to have a digitizing gun. It’s being built mainly for attack purposes, not storage. How did Stinson ever see several undigitized people suffering from the aftereffects of a failed digitizing unit? Did he work for Dread?”

Jackson shrugged his shoulders. “No idea. I just know that’s what the folks here told me he said. He hasn’t been back in about a month. I think he used to be some kind of a medical big wig south of here. The story is people in every town and settlement in walking distance came to him. Don’t really know what he’s doing now.”

“The name sounds familiar though,” Hawk muttered. “Stinson… ”

“If he knows that much about what happens to people after they’ve been digitized, we’ll have to check him out,” Tank suggested. “Is the settlement separate from the resistance group or is the group working inside the settlement?”

“Neither,” Mitchell answered. “This entire settlement is one big resistance force.”

“The entire settlement? One thousand people?” Jon asked him. That was another mystery.

“How has this group stayed hidden all this time?” Tank asked.

Elzer waved his hand back and forth, disbelief showing in his expression. “They haven’t. They’ve been out in the open this entire time. They’re not hiding from Dread or the biomechs. Once they realized what they could do, they started making some hit-and-run attacks on local facilities for basic necessities and they’ve obliterated any metal monster that’s come after them." Elzer turned back to Jon. “Believe me, Captain, these people know how to fight.”

The team listened, absolutely astonished. The story was almost unbelievable. “Why hasn’t Dread hit them with everything he has?” Hawk wanted to know. “Soaron must do flybys around here.”

“Got no answers for you on that, partner,” Jackson explained. “We don’t know if the biobird has ever shown his beak around here, but the attacks by the biomechs have increased over the last month. The group’s been monitoring some serious movement lately from the local bases. They think the big bads are getting ready for some kind of big attack. Knowing the Dreadies, they could be waiting for the opportune moment or setting some kind of elaborate trap. These folks don’t know, and they don’t care. They just fight anything metal, and they’re kicking metallic butt while they’re doing it. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been in the business for over fifteen years.”

They kept walking, looking and listening as they approached the settlement boundary wall. Although the bricks were faded and crumbling, the wall was intact enough to give the inhabitants some protection and barricades in a battle. A hole in the wall served as the entrance and exit, but there was no gate to seal the area off. People were busy working and walking outside the wall, performing various tasks the team couldn’t determine from a distance. No one seemed to be paying them any mind.

Certain sounds began to get their attention, however. There were sounds they hadn’t heard in years. Birds singing, bugs chirping, wind blowing through leaves, water trickling over rocks. Parts of their past they thought long gone was living and thriving once again.

“Birds,” Scout murmured. “They’re singing.”

Tank stopped for a moment and listened. “That was a whippoorwill." There was a pause, then another bird call. “And that was a crow.”

Andy pointed toward some of the tree tops. Sun filtered down through leaves, the rays streaming through in dull, yellowish bands. “Birds’ nests,” he showed them. “Keep listening – you’ll hear all kinds of noises in these woods. Luckily, nothing’s growling. I don’t think that would be a good thing to hear. Growling things usually have teeth.”

Hawk glanced over at Jon who seemed more impressed with the news about the resistance group rather than the fact they were walking through newly formed woods. Jon looked back at Hawk, a hint of the old Captain Power in his eye. “A resistance group made up of people who have no knowledge of who they are, and they’ve been rather successful fighting Dread. That means they’re doing a good job.”

Hawk considered that. Was Jon thinking about how best to use a resistance group this big? Was his tactical mind thinking in the manner it used to eight months ago? Could a challenge like this bring back the old Captain Power?

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Andy agreed with Jon’s statement enthusiastically. “But now here’s where all of you come in. Well, actually, let me back up a few steps first to lead up to the point where all of you come in. Oh, by the way,” Andy stopped walking and turned back to the team, “since none of them remembered their names, they didn’t know what to call themselves. They found some books in the old buildings, and they all picked names for themselves out of the stories. There are some interesting names floating around here and some of them could make you laugh. Word of warning -- don’t laugh. It took them a while to choose names and they take it kind of personally if you make fun of them.”

Scout couldn’t resist. “You’ve got personal experience with that, Jackson ?”

“Sort of,” Jackson cleared his throat and started walking again. “Anyway,, we’d been here for about a week before we finally met the leader last night. She calls herself Annie. Once we did, we figured you guys wouldn’t just drop by unless someone you trusted asked you to, so we contacted our buddy Pulaski here. Annie didn’t mind him coming to the camp because they listen to Freedom Two sometimes when they can pick up the signal on their radios. He didn’t believe any of this either until he met Annie this morning and then he got in touch with you. We told her that we knew you and could get you to maybe drop by and say hi. You know, give her troops some pointers, show them some tricks, stuff like that. She agreed.”

“Why us?” Tank asked him. “If this group is as successful as --”

“They’re successful,” Andy interrupted quickly. “Very successful, but there might be some areas they could do better in. One problem is once they remember who they are, there might not be a resistance army here anymore. They may all want to go home if they still have one. They’ve just got to fight the bad guys until that day comes, but helping them out’s not the main reason we called you here. Believe me, one – you will definitely want to help keep this group going when you meet Annie, and two -- you wouldn’t have believed any of this if we’d just told you. You’ve got to see it with your own eyes.”

They crossed the entrance of the settlement boundary wall and walked toward a tent city outside of a group of one-level structures. People were everywhere!

Scout looked around at the way the camp was situated. “Where did all the tents come from?”

“Storage,” Jim explained. “An entire PX full of unused equipment was buried in one of these buildings. They pitched them anywhere they wanted to.”

Tank was the first to notice – “No guards?”

Elzer pointed out a few individuals walking around with guns. “We’ve been under surveillance since before you landed.”

One of the inhabitants approached, waving his hand in greeting. “ Jackson . Mitchell. I see you got them here." He looked like he’d just walked through a dust storm. His clothes were dirty but intact. Every time he took a step, dust would kick up from his pants and shirt.

Andy glanced back at the Power Team. “Yep. Jones, this is Captain Power himself." Then, to the captain, “Jones here is in charge of transportation and logistics and he’s one of the transport drivers. They’ve got all kinds of little outposts to help support the main campsite, and Jones drives protection detail for folks going back and forth in the personnel carryalls they repaired. Works mostly with a fellow named Frost a few miles away from the settlement. He’s pretty good driving any kind of moving vehicle.”

“It’s a knack,” Jones said proudly.

“He also works security and makes a home brew that will rip paint off metal. If you’re lucky enough to drink any, do not smoke afterwards and don’t drink more than half a mug or you’ll be sorry." Andy appraised Jones’ appearance. “What in the world happened to you?”

Jones looked down at himself. “Shovel. Latrine. The less said about that, the better.”

“You got stuck on latrine digging duty?” Jim asked him, his smile showing he was clearly amused.

“I did not get stuck,” Jones answered rather defensively. “I just sort of, you know, lost a bet and got stuck with someone else’s job today. Given how sore my shoulders are, I don’t think I dug pits for a living before I ended up here.”

Mitchell looked around as if looking for someone in particular. “Hey, Jones, have you seen Annie?”

“Nope, not lately, but knowing her, there’s only a few places she’ll be this time of day." He gave a nearby guard a salute and then gave the newcomers a nod of his head. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get the carryall refueled. Frost will want to get to the silo first thing in the morning. He’s worried about all the movement we’ve been noticing.”

There was that concern again, yet there was a nonchalant quality to his voice.

“Do you think Dread is about to attack?” Tank asked him.

Jones shrugged. “Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. If he does, we’ll fight him. That’s what we do." And with that, he walked off.

Hawk just shook his head. “What was that salute he gave the guards?”

“Like I said, Jones works security sometimes. Security personnel communicate with hand signals,” Mitchell explained. “Basically, we were just given permission to enter because he motioned to the guards not to shoot us.”

Oh. The team looked at each other warily. It seemed obvious to them that this resistance group had set up a rather advanced signal security system.

Scout asked, “They’re not worried about an attack? Do they know how bad one can be?”

“They know,” Andy assured him as he and Elzer brought out their binoculars and scanned the crowd of people. “They’ve been fighting them for months, and lately it’s gotten worse. They’re ready for them.”

Elzer scanned the crowd slowly. “I can’t see her,” he said to Andy. “You?”

Andy kept looking. “Nah, not yet. It’s late afternoon, so she’s usually somewhere out here, right?”

Mitchell pulled out his binoculars and looked in a different direction. “Did she say something about – wait, there she is. By the shuttle. Looks like she’s working on the engines again.”

Both men looked that way. “That’s her." Elzer gave Jon his binoculars and pointed in the general direction. “Take a look in front of the shuttle. Blue coveralls. Brown boots. That’s Annie.”

Jon took the binoculars and focused on the area. Then… he stopped. He didn’t move, he didn’t breathe.

Hawk put his hand on Jon’s shoulder. “Jon, what is it?”

Andy handed Hawk his binoculars and pointed almost excitedly toward the distant area. “Take a look. Same direction.”

Hawk peered through the lenses… he didn’t move, he didn’t speak.

Tank shielded his eyes from the sun, but he couldn’t make out any details of the individual Elzer and Andy was indicating. “Hawk? Captain? Who is it?”

Jon didn’t move. He continued to quietly stare through the binoculars. Hawk slowly pulled the binoculars away; not believing what his eyes showed him. “It’s Jennifer.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Annie picked up the old-fashioned spanner and carefully removed the last burned out wire from the circuit board. She then replaced it with a working lead attached to a sensor. Immediately, the readout indicated that the circuit board itself was working and usable. All she needed to do was replace all the wiring.

Although she was the military leader of the base camp, she preferred working on the broken equipment scattered around the base. She had a knack for building and repairing any technical piece of equipment. Yet, it seemed to be more than a knack. It was almost instinct. She knew what the equipment was, what it were used for and how the pieces were built even though she had no memory of ever seeing any of it. Understanding machinery came easy to her.

Tools were another mystery that she innately understood. For instance, the spanner she held in her hand was an all-in-one tool capable of a variety of tasks, but it was a much older model than what was currently available –how she knew that, she had no idea. It felt natural to hold the tool, to use it for practically any repair job necessary, but what seemed wrong was that it wasn’t capable of performing tasks she thought it should. Perhaps newer models were more advanced?

Repairing and rebuilding various bits of equipment and tools were jobs she performed daily, but she found that transports were a type of technology that captured her curiosity. They had found several troop carryalls and some smaller EVAC transports buried in the rubble of a collapsed garage. Annie’s first inspection of the vehicles indicated that their design didn’t seem adequate for carrying humans. They seemed specifically built to transport robots. Maybe the presence of vehicles like that was a hint about what their base had been used for? It was a thought that was quickly dismissed because they needed the engineers to repair them and give the group working transports. Finding out their purpose wasn’t high on their list of things to do.

Yet the shuttle had engaged her imagination, attention and spare time in a way the transports didn’t the moment they had found it. Workers digging another well found the shuttle buried under a few feet of dirt. Within hours, they had dug enough of the vehicle out of the earth for it to be identified. The first words out of Annie’s mouth were, “It’s a cargo shuttle. This is the type used about 35 years ago. ”How she knew that, she had no idea.

The ability to quickly identify the vehicle was another clue hinting at who she used to be. She wondered time and again if she knew how to fly shuttles. Maybe she was some kind of engineer or repair tech or pilot before? Maybe she’d remember one day. Until then, she could use her talents to get as many pieces of equipment working as possible. The shuttle was proving to be a challenge, and she reveled in a chance to test her engineering skills.

But that raised another question – they could definitely use the shuttle, she knew she could fix it, but could anyone fly it?

Tactically speaking, a shuttle afforded them more defensive opportunities and logistic capabilities than they’d had with only their existing vehicles. It could give them air support in a battle and move more personnel than a carryall if she could salvage it. The rest of the engineers declared the ship unsalvageable. The craft was badly damaged, the hull was pitted with holes, the engines fouled with sand, but she knew she could get it to fly. She knew. It was almost as if the ship was begging her to fix it so it could fly again. She didn’t know if she could fly it though, and that question was becoming more insistent the more curious she became about who she was. She knew what the controls were for, even what they would do in flight. When she got the shuttle repaired, she was going to give it a test-flight. If nothing else, it would let her know if she was a pilot.

The work so far had been long and involved. First, she had to get the interior electronics working before she could tackle the exterior. She didn’t have a lot of free time to work on the shuttle, so it would take months to just get the interior fixed. To some, they might have balked at the prospect of such a long, laborious task. For her, it was a perfect way to spend her downtime.

What wasn’t perfect was the ever-present heat felt on the surface of the base camp. The trees gave them some shade, but the temperature remained the same -- hot. She wiped the perspiration from her forehead as she started the painfully slow process of attaching new wires to the circuit. It was an intricate, delicate piece of machinery she had to handle with extreme care. The slightest lapse of concentration could cause her to drop the fragile mechanism.

“Annie! Hey, Annie!” a familiar voice called out.

She almost dropped the circuit, but she managed to carefully lay it on the table then turn toward the noise, and – Andy Jackson. There was no mistaking his voice. Trailing him was Mitchell and Pulaski. It was hard to believe that Pulaski was Freedom Two, the voice of the Resistance that they listened to when he was close enough for them to pick up the radio signal. Since none of them remembered who they were, the idea of meeting someone they deemed ‘famous’ was something of a novelty. Annie quickly wondered if he was famous in other areas of the country or just in their small part of the world. Behind them were four other men she didn’t recognize. That had to be the famous Power Team. Famous? Well, maybe to outsiders, but the team wasn’t nearly as famous to them as Freedom Two was. They had heard of Power over the last two months, but they were just other resistance soldiers, not anyone of note. Annie did a quick head count -- seven people were reported to have landed; seven were approaching, all present and accounted for. It had taken them a while to walk from their ships to the base camp. What had they been talking about that delayed them, she wondered.

“That’s Pulaski and Jackson, isn’t it?” Milo, the man who had become the second-in-command of the group, walked up behind her. Milo was average – average height, average weight, dark hair, dark eyes -- there was nothing remarkable about him physically. It was his brain that set him apart from others. His mind was a tactical maze. He could take vast amounts of seemingly unrelated data and compile it mentally into a useful tactic. He excelled in creating defensive strategies and traps with Annie. Together, they’d helped design a series of defenses that had saved the camp on more than one occasion. Squinting, he shielded his eyes against the afternoon sun as he watched the visitors head their way. “Took them long enough to get here. The scouts said they landed a while ago. I guess those are the new guys?” He didn’t sound impressed.

“The Power Team,” Annie answered. She took a good look at them as they approached. They didn’t look as formidable as their reputation told, but they weren’t wearing their armor. Maybe that made the difference?

“There are only four of them,” Milo remarked. “I never could figure out if they were a five-person or a four-person team. We heard both numbers. What do you think? Did they leave someone on their ship?”

Annie shrugged. “The guards said they locked up their ship before they came, and no one was left on board. Besides, four or five, it doesn’t matter. Jackson said he wanted to bring them here to give us some hints on how to run a resistance cell.”

Milo frowned. “I don’t know why. Aren’t we doing good by ourselves?”

“There’s always room for improvement,” Annie told him, smiling. “Besides, Jackson said it might be good for Power to see how larger resistance cells work together. They’re a small group; we total up to a few more than that. Maybe we can exchange information and tactics.”

Milo shrugged. “Whatever you say. You’re the boss. How far are you going to trust them?”

Annie watched the group get closer. “I don’t know yet. Let’s see what they do and how they act. Pay attention to everything they say. It could be they really are here to help, but if they have their own agenda, I want us to find out what it is.”

“Okay. Better put on your game face though. Here they are.”

Annie placed the wiring on the table next to the circuit, and she and Milo walked toward the approaching group.

“Annie,” Andy quickstepped up to her and shook her hand. “Hiya, Milo. We got the Power Team here, just like we said we would.”

Annie nodded to the men as a greeting. “Hello. You’ll have to excuse us. We weren’t expecting you to arrive so soon or we’d have had our strike teams here to speak with you,” she told them. That wasn’t quite true. Annie wanted to meet them first and gauge for herself if they could be trusted. The strike team leaders readily agreed to that given that a lot of the humans they’d met so far had been working for Dread. This way, Annie would be able to meet the team first while the strike team leaders took the opportunity to check them out surreptitiously. Annie saw several of them scattered around the area trying to appear as if they weren’t staring at the visitors. Some of her team leaders could use extra lessons in being sneaky. “Andy said it might take a day or two to reach you.”

She took a quick visual inventory of the newcomers. There was something familiar about them, about how they stood, their uniforms, the impression the four of them made standing there…

The youngest man had the air of a practical joker about him. The equipment he carried suggested that he worked with and hacked into computers. Plus, he carried a few ‘unobvious’ grenades on his belt. He knew demolitions perhaps?

The bigger man, well, all Annie could think of was that he looked as solid as a tank. He was standing still, more sedate and serene than Annie would have thought possible. She had the impression that he was a type of foot soldier, skilled in hand-to-hand combat, but she had no idea why. Maybe he was with the infantry?

The older man had a gentler quality about him. She didn’t think he was the leader of the group, but there was a feeling of authority emanating from him. She quietly noticed the calluses on his hands – they were very similar to hers. Perhaps he did the same work she used to? Maybe she could ask him what his job was later. Would that prove her theory that she was involved with aircraft in some way?

The taller man was the one that truly had her attention. There was a description she’d read in a book – tired soul and world weary – and that was the term she could ascribe to him. The look on his face made her think that he had the world on his shoulders. Yet it was his eyes that held her. When he looked at her…

There was something very familiar in the way he looked at her. Did he know her? Could he tell her who she was? Could he answer her questions about her past?

She put those questions aside. It wasn’t the time to ask. She needed to assess them. Their behavior was not what she was expecting. For a moment, Annie wondered if the members of the Power Team were suffering from the heat. They were looking at her in utter surprise. They were behaving in a similar fashion to some of the Dread Youth they had fought over the months. The Dread soldiers would see certain members of her army -- those that fit her description of blonde hair and gray eyes – and start spouting off litanies and demand to know how anyone loyal to the Machine could ever fight alongside animals. Guessing why they said that had brought about some very unsettling thoughts.

Milo subtly nudged her arm, and she understood the meaning. The famous Power Team they’d heard so much about didn’t seem quite as impressive in person. They looked rather ordinary. Then Annie looked at their eyes again, all of them. She could sense the sadness in all four of them but now there seemed to be surprise in their gazes. Such a contradiction would have a story behind it.

Andy cleared his throat and said in a loud whisper, “They really weren’t expecting all this.”

Annie nodded her head. Other visitors they’d met the last couple of months had held somewhat similar reactions, but the Power Team seemed more shocked than surprised. What was it they were seeing that no one else had?

Finally, the oldest member of the team stepped forward and shook her hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where our manners are. I’m Major Matthew ‘Hawk’ Masterson." He indicated each of the other men with him. Each stepped forward to shake her hand as they were introduced. They seemed slightly hesitant. “This is Sergeant Robert ‘Scout’ Baker, Lieutenant Michael ‘Tank’ Ellis and Captain Jonathan Power. I think you’ll have to excuse us. We’ve never seen a resistance group this large before. We’re just a bit overwhelmed. What you’ve done here is … remarkable.”

With a quick handshake with the captain, Annie asked, “Just Captain Jonathan Power? No call sign like the others?”

“Uh, no,” he said tentatively, his voice low. “No call sign. I’ve never needed one. ”

Annie suspected there was more of a reason than that as she watched the men become a bit more animated, more responsive. Whatever it was that had surprised them obviously didn’t surprise them as much anymore. Captain Power himself still seemed a bit stunned. He was staring at her, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable stare. It was more like a disbelieving stare. Maybe Masterson was right and their rather unique resistance cell had left them flabbergasted? Or maybe it was something else? Time could give her the answer. “Well, I’m sure Jackson explained that we’re here by circumstance rather than purpose?”

Masterson laughed. It was a good sound to hear. Not many people who had visited their camp laughed that often. They were usually tired of the fighting and had no happiness left in them. “That he did. He gave us the basics about none of you remembering your life before all this. He also explained that maybe we could give you and your teams some pointers about fighting.”

“We could use some pointers,” she said graciously. She wasn’t going to turn down help if it meant finding ways to keep her people alive. “We’ve been flying by the seat of our pants since we arrived here. We’ve managed fairly well, but --”

“There’s always room for improvement?” Masterson asked.

“That’s what Annie said,” Milo spoke up politely. He stepped up and shook hands with them as well. “I’m Milo. I’m in charge of the Command Center.”

Annie gave him a sideways look. “He’s being modest. He’s one of the best leaders we have here. He’s also the military second-in-command since our first big battle.”

“Modest?” Milo crossed his arms and looked directly at Annie but directed his conversation to the Power Team. In a proud voice, he stated clearly, “This lady leads attacks against biomechs, takes the lead when we go after Dread bases, and she’s fearless. She says I’m being modest?”

If the team noticed anything in the look Milo gave Annie, they didn’t say anything. If they noticed anything at all, they would have seen that Milo’s look was one of more than just respect for his group leader.

Annie just shook her head and patted Milo on the arm. “It’s a job." She looked back at their visitors. The idea that another group would stop whatever they were doing and help train another seemed a bit unusual. Perhaps more prying was in order? “I want to thank you. I’m sure coming here on such short notice must have interrupted your schedule.”

Baker disagreed. “No, no schedule. We go where we’re needed and when we’re needed. Personally, I think trading a few ideas would be good for all of us. You never know when one group will find a new trick to use that could come in handy, and Dread’s seen a lot of our tactics. We could use some fresh ideas ourselves.”

Annie took an immediate liking to Baker. He seemed happy and open, even more so than Masterson. Ellis and Power were still quiet mysteries. “Sounds good.”

She turned to Milo and ordered, “ Milo, why don’t you go get Bingley and Frost and meet us at the outer office? I’ll give our guests a quick tour."

Milo took a quick glance at the team. The look in his eyes told Annie that there was something there he didn’t trust. “I can take them if you want,” Milo suggested.

Annie picked up on his misgivings, but she didn’t give any indication. She knew she had to take the lead when the leader from another resistance team arrived. She felt as if there was some form of protocol involved although she couldn’t remember one, and this was the first time they’d met another resistance cell leader. Usually, their visitors were everyday soldiers that her people dealt with. Besides, she felt like her guests were somewhat uncomfortable being at their base camp, and she needed to find out why. “No, I can handle it,” she said, her intonation indicating that she wasn’t going to discuss the point.

He nodded, took a last look back at the newcomers and then left. Annie turned to her guests and asked, “Where would you like to start?”

Jackson rubbed his hands together. “Mess hall for me, Jim and Elzer,” he said with a slightly cheerful tone. “We haven’t eaten since yesterday, and you guys have fresh food. We don’t see that often. The rest of you have fun talking.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Annie decided that the tour she’d take them on would consist of only visible areas of the base camp. Infirmary, mess tent, training fields… it was a bit thrown together, but perhaps it was an impressive feat for people with no memories to decide how to structure a base or form an army? She pointed out various buildings and activities, but one of the purposes behind the quick tour was to observe the team’s reaction as they watched the goings-on at the base camp.

What the team couldn’t help but notice was that they were under intense and obvious scrutiny by guards walking the perimeter and keeping watch inside the campsite. At no point were they not being observed. Annie would make a motion with her hand and the guards would let them pass without a word or a blink, much to their guests’ surprise. Cultivating a series of hand signals would have been the easiest way to communicate with each other nonverbally when they became a fighting unit. However, despite Annie’s motions to maintain a respectful distance, they kept their eyes on the guests and had their hands on their guns.

Masterson leaned toward Power and asked in a low voice, “I wonder if all visitors are kept at arm’s length and under surveillance until they prove they’re friends.”

“Security’s tight,” Power responded, his voice not above a whisper.

Annie pretended not to hear. Eavesdropping on visitors was one way to learn their intentions. When she led them to various areas, she could feel their eyes on her, watching her. When she turned toward them to point out points of interest, they would avert their eyes or politely look toward whatever it was she was showing them, but she had their undivided attention. Their behavior confirmed that the Power Team saw something at their base camp that no other resistance group had seen, and she sensed that it had to do with her.

As they passed by the training fields, Ellis stopped to watch a group of foot soldiers train for close quarters combat. Their timing needed some work as well as their coordination, but it was obvious that they were trying to iron out the wrinkles in technique and style of a particular maneuver by repeatedly practicing the moves. “Is the instructor a trained combat soldier?”

Annie could only laugh as she tapped her finger on her temple. “We don’t know,” she reminded him. “During a fight with some biomechs, he realized he knew those moves. I asked him if he could teach them to us. Quite a few of us seem to know very similar moves.”

Ellis viewed the instructor with a practiced eye. His brow furrowed and he nodded as if in appreciation. “He knows what he’s doing. I know a few techniques he could adapt to his style very quickly.”

Annie smiled. “I think he’d appreciate it. He calls himself Felix.”

“Felix?” Baker inquired.

“Felix,” she affirmed. “There was a cartoon cat by that name once, but he prefers to tell everyone that it’s the name of a Roman legion. It was also known as the Fourth Lucky Flavian Legion that was created by the Emperor Vespasian in the year 70 A. D."

Annie looked at the confused looks of the men surrounding her. “We found history books to read through when we were looking for names to call ourselves. There were some interesting names in them.”

That seemed to explain the name Felix pretty well.

Captain Power had shaken off his stunned expression and was listening intently to everything they said but he seemed more attentive to Annie than she would have expected. He seemed somewhat amused by that answer. “History’s something Dread has been trying to wipe out. He keeps it away from his own troops so they don’t ever question him or his motives.”

Annie considered that fact. “Makes sense, in a warped, tyrannical way. You mean the Dread Youth have no idea of history?”

“History, literature, music, art, and they have no way to learn,” Power told her. “Dread keeps all that information from them.”

That could explain some of the behavior Annie had witnessed from the Dread Youth they’d met and fought. They seemed completely oblivious to anything other than their orders and the idea that the Dread Empire was the was-all, be-all and end-all of civilization. They seemed extraordinarily single-minded and focused on reciting certain sayings over and over again. Some had acted surprised when they saw her, and the various theories she had about that didn’t make her feel comfortable. She didn’t know if it was because she fit the same description they did or if they knew her from before. Of course, they had only had limited contact with them, so guessing at their behavior was still just that – guessing. “Sounds like you’ve seen this first hand.”

Ellis glanced at the training field again as a new group of trainees began working out. “We have a friend who was raised in the Dread Youth and escaped. She was deprived of a great deal of information. Once she was with us and had access to libraries and databases, she found out she had a keen interest in history. She enjoyed reading history books. She focused a lot of her attention on a period of time known as World War II because of the similarities of the Machine Empire and the Nazi Regime. She hoped that if she learned about World War II, she could find new ways to fight Dread.”

Annie felt a strange sense of déjà vu when Ellis mentioned World War II. There were a few books on the subject scattered around the camp, but the way Ellis described their friend’s interest had a familiar ring to it. “Deprived?” she asked. “We don’t remember our lives before, but I can’t imagine what it must be like for them to have everything important kept from them.”

Power walked next to Annie and asked, “Where did the name Annie come from?”

“I found a book called Anne of Green Gables. It was about an orphan named Anne Shirley who was adopted by a brother and sister named Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. By the time I found the book, we already had a few others who had chosen the name Anne, so I changed it to Annie. I did find out later that there was a play by that name.”

“It’s a good name,” Power stated.

“I like it,” she explained. “There was another book found called A Little Princess and suddenly we had about thirty Saras running around." She glanced back at the four visitors. “Where did get your call signs?”

“It’s our jobs,” Masterson told her. “I used to be a pilot, and my call sign was Hawk when I was commanding a squadron. Scout here is good at blending in with the surrounding area or disguising himself and doing recon. Tank is a one-man infantry. He can crash through walls. Jon’s the captain. To tell the truth, we go by our call signs more than we do our given names.”

Hawk, Scout, Tank and Jon… the captain needed no call sign, she thought to herself. She thought it might be a good idea to call them by their call signs. Maybe familiarity would make them feel more comfortable and more willing to talk? “So all of you sort of named yourselves, just not quite like we did,” she mused.

“Sort of,” Scout picked up a small circuit waiting to be repaired from a worktable as they passed by. “All this equipment has to be over thirty, thirty-five years old,” he said more to himself than anyone else. “Annie, do you know what this site was before?”

She shook her head. “All the information and clues we’ve found so far indicates it was some sort of military support base. We think it might have been used as a vehicle repair station and troop housing unit. We can’t find any evidence that it was a weapons base of any kind or a major outpost. Why?”

Scout held up the circuit he was studying. “All the technology I’ve seen so far is older. I think this place existed prior to the Metal Wars. Your techs are repairing and rebuilding antiquated systems to arm your forces. I might be able to help with that. We’ve had a lot of experience upgrading some of the older equipment to do things the designers never thought of.”

“We’d appreciate that,” she told him. “One of our technical engineers, Ed, would be a good person for you to talk to. He might like some new ideas.”

“Ed?” Scout asked her.

“One of the people who chose the name Edison. He’s Ed now,” she explained with a smile.

“One of the people?” Hawk looked confused. “How do you keep them all straight if there are that many? Are you using last names?”

Annie shook her head. “We considered it, but the majority voted that they had such a hard time picking out a first name, they didn’t want a last name. Everyone drew lots to see who got to keep a name and who had to choose another one. That way, it’s one person, one name with no repeats.”

Tank smiled at the simplicity of the entire naming setup. “What about Milo? Where did his name come from?”

“That was a nickname,” Annie explained quickly. “There were about twenty who chose the name Miles from someone named Miles Standish. That name was listed in a storybook, but the preface mentioned that it was based on a true story, so he may have been an historical figure as well. Milo was one of the individuals who drew the short straw and had to change his name. He thought Milo would work. No one else chose it, so there’s no confusion.”

“Seems fair enough,” Hawk noted. “You said a majority vote. I thought you were the leader?”

Annie stopped walking and thought for a moment. “I got the job after we were attacked by a squad of biomechs. I knew how to fight them, where they were vulnerable. It was almost like instinct. Anyway, during a battle, I’m the leader and the others follow my orders. When it comes to everyday life, we vote, but I’m in charge of the everyday running of the base camp. It’s working so far.”

She led the group to a small building on the edge of the settlement. Milo was there with two other men, presumably Frost and Bingley.

Frost was what an outsider might call a hard case. He looked rough and weathered, definitely tough. Sun and wind had aged his face to make him look older than he might have been. His clothes were worn and seen better days. He was every bit as big as Tank and looked just as strong. “This them?” he asked, unimpressed.

Milo nodded as he moved next to Annie in a somewhat protective gesture. “This is them.”

Bingley was a smaller man. In fact, he conveyed the appearance of a professor who should be teaching a college class, not a soldier that led a resistance team. He looked at each man individually, his gaze indicating that he was taking stock of each one, sizing them up as to intent and purpose. “Power Team, huh? Pulaski and Jackson brought them here?”

“Thought they could do us some good,” Milo told them.

Annie stood back, arms crossed and almost smiled. “Boys, they’ve been in this business a long time. We’re here because this is where we woke up and didn’t know what else to do. They might be able to help us if we give them the chance.”

When the three men backed up slightly, Annie introduced them. “Captain, this is Frost. He’s in charge of gathering Intel and monitoring the borders of the camp. He’s set up a headquarters in a grain silo on a farm southeast of town. Bingley takes care of the power generators southwest of here." When she saw her people’s strange looks, as if they thought she had lost her mind telling Power’s team their assignments, she just shook her head and made a motion with her hand. Immediately, they relaxed their postures somewhat. “It’s okay,” she told them. “They’re here to help. I think we can extend a little trust. Besides, they might be able to help out with some of the personnel problems we’ve been having.”

The team noticed how she slightly stressed the word personnel. Did they think that something unusual was happening at the base camp?

She led the entire motley crew inside the building. It was incredibly cooler in there than it was on the outside and was a pleasant respite from the heat. There were small rooms filled with almost-destroyed office equipment, dismantled tools, spare parts, knick-knacks and bric-a-bracs – it could have been a storage building but it seemed to be used as some sort of main workplace for the area. There were a few larger rooms that had been cleaned out and turned into billet rooms with cots – it was also a sleeping area? They walked into a rather large office, and she invited them to sit down.

It was a makeshift room. Bookshelves filled with various books with a few odds and ends scattered about, a cot to sleep on, maybe a spare pair of clothes on the bottom shelf. Annie saw the team immediately stop and stare at the stacks of books against the wall.

Power picked up a book from the nearest stack: The Adventures of Daniel Boone. It was well worn, the cover almost falling off. Whoever owned the book must have read it many times. “This is, what, at least one hundred books?” he asked her.

Annie sat down behind the desk, Frost moved behind her and stood at a relaxed attention but still in a protective stance. Bingley stood in the doorway, Milo to the side of the room. Annie needed to make an impression -- no one trusted newcomers easily, and none of her people were going to trust the Power Team with their leader. It was up to the Power Team to prove themselves, so the interview was about to begin. “We found most of them just this week in one of the buildings we’re clearing out. Some were in lockers, others were in desk drawers. I don’t think there was a library at this site, but we’re planning on using one of the buildings as one. I think we need a more centralized location for the books so everyone can have easier access to them.”

Hawk was impressed. “There are more?”

“A lot more,” Annie explained.

“Dread didn’t destroy them all,” Tank said out loud.

Milo turned toward him. “What do you mean?”

“Last year, Dread tried to destroy all the libraries and books. He destroyed dozens of settlements before we could stop him,” he told them.

Destroying books? “We hadn’t heard about that,” Annie said, not surprised. “At first, we read as many as we could when we found them,” she told them. “Part of it was to get some idea about who we were or where we were. Maybe even get a feel for the people who were here and owned the books. Another reason was that we had no idea what was going on or why we were here at this base. We hoped they could give us some insight, but so many of the books are literature. Few of the history books even mention the Metal Wars. When we started making contacts with other groups, we learned more… although they were more curious at the fact there were woods for miles.”

Jon placed the book back on the stack. “When did you start meeting other resistance groups?”

Annie thought for a moment. “Almost two months ago. It took that long for any of them to find us in the woods. They had no idea we were here.”

“Did you meet any of them personally?” the captain inquired.

Annie thought that was a rather strange question, but she decided to play along. “A few. Frost, Bingley and Milo prefer playing meet and greet with newcomers. Why?”

“Just curious,” Jon told her. “You’ve been here six months that you know of, but the fact your group has been camped here has only been known to the Resistance for the last couple of months. Now that I see how dense the woods are, I can see why. But the Resistance leadership tries to keep communications open between the leaders of all the groups so we can work together on missions if necessary. This group has been rumored about for a while, but no one that you’ve met has reported meeting you personally except Jackson and Mitchell.”

“I see,” Annie hadn’t thought about making plans and strategies with other groups. They had enough to do just making plans on their own. Working together? That wasn’t a thought that had crossed anyone’s mind. “I didn’t realize there was any kind of connection between the resistance cells. You can imagine, we’ve had to learn how to do everything, and it’s been a slow process. We got our trial by fire the first time we were attacked by biomechs. We found out that some of us knew how to fight, some didn’t, but we had no choice… we fought. After that day, it seems we’re all learning on the job. We still are.”

“You’ve done well,” Scout admired. “Just what we’ve seen is impressive.”

Annie placed her elbows on the desk and clasped her hands together. “Thanks. I don’t know if I’d call it that, but we’ve managed. Lately though, the attacks are coming more often and each one is worse than the one before. It’s almost like they’re testing our capabilities before hitting us full force. We don’t know why, and we’re not sure what to expect or how to prepare for it. I know you’re busy, but any help you can give us would be appreciated.”

“You don’t have to ask,” Hawk volunteered. “Anybody brave enough to fight Dread gets our help.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It had been a dark eight months for Jonathan Power.

The dark didn’t happen all at once. It crept up on him slowly. After the base exploded, taking his heart and home from him in a violent eruption, he became numb. His mind didn’t want to accept what he knew, but it couldn’t deny the truth. Then he did what he had to do – he made plans and gave orders – but he was moving on autopilot. He was going through the motions of being the team leader and doing his job. The only reason he could even breathe was because he was numb and didn’t allow himself to think about what he lost.

They went back to the mountain afterwards to find… something, but there were no remains to bury. He placed a marker for Jennifer beside his father’s, and that was when the darkness descended. He had to say goodbye to her instead of having that conversation with her, but he could only say it to her memory. Maybe it was a survival tactic, maybe it was his mind’s way of dealing with his heart’s loss, but everything about him spiraled into a harsher, unforgiving realm. He became angry and inflexible. He wanted to hurt Dread in any way possible, for as long as possible.

The idealistic Captain Power was gone. He became Dread’s worst nightmare and for eight long, dark months, he rained all manner of destruction down on his enemy.

Then, out of the blue, they were asked to come to a base, and for the last hour, Jon had existed in a world of shock and disbelief.

Jennifer was alive.

Slowly, Jon felt the darkness going away. He felt the numbness ebb and diminish. For the first time in a long time, hope was beginning to form.

Jennifer was alive!

Jon sat there, unable to take his eyes off her. He listened, watched, assessed – it was Jennifer and she had no idea who they were. She had no idea who he was. She didn’t remember any of it – not her past, not her life, not even her name. At the moment, she was Annie.

As he watched her, he noticed that there were subtle differences between Jennifer and Annie. Some of her words, the way she spoke, how she structured her sentences – there was a harder edge to her words and her voice than there had been. She asked somewhat leading questions that would prompt a spontaneous answer. When she answered a question, there was a slight evasion of the whole truth or a polite acquiescence in her tone. That indicated that she was luring information from them to determine if they could be trusted. Her posture seemed more rigid, more expectant of a fight. Given their circumstances, that made sense. Yet that hard edge didn’t extend to her eyes. They were still the soft windows to a gentle soul with fierce fighting skills and courage that just didn’t end. If he didn’t know about what had happened to her and looked in her eyes, he would have thought that he was looking at Jennifer’s, not Annie’s. Jennifer was still in there, somewhere. He just had to find her.

Jon looked around the room to get a better idea of who Annie really was and how much of Jennifer was still there. The room bore testament to the fact that they were cobbling necessities together out of materials they found at the base. Board planks sat across cinder blocks to form a makeshift desk. Mismatched aluminum squares secured into support beams made the bookshelves. The topmost shelf was stacked with books. Jennifer always kept books on a high shelf, tools on a lower shelf within arm’s reach. Jon asked her why once, and she said that the tools were used almost every hour of every day so they needed to be in a convenient location. Books were what she read when she had time, so they could take the more prestigious position of being placed on a higher shelf. One lower shelf had a variety of odd items on it: a piece of a broken blaster, an old shoe and a yo-yo. Jennifer never threw anything away. She would find a use for it, no matter its condition, but a yo-yo? The entire world had gone to hell in a hand basket, cities were razed to the ground, seasons had been disrupted, people were starving – and there, sitting on a shelf in almost pristine condition, was a simple, unassuming yo-yo. For a brief moment, Jon remembered what it felt like to be a kid playing with a yo-yo. His mother had given him one when he was a boy, and he spent weeks teaching himself how to perform tricks. If the situation they’d found themselves in wasn’t so odd, Jon would have been tempted to try his hand at Walking-The-Dog.

Jon’s attention was drawn to the bottom shelf. It wasn’t just a spare set of clothes lying on the shelf. There, folded up in a neat stack of other items, was Jennifer’s power suit. It was ripped, torn through the middle, the wiring frayed and poking out of the material, blood caked around the edges of the rip, but it was there. He covertly nudged Hawk and darted his eyes toward the bookshelf. Neither man made any indication to anyone else that they noticed it. There was time to wonder about the suit later. Jon quickly looked away and saw other items around the room. There was a cot – maybe this room served as her quarters as well as an office?

Out of the corner of his eye, Jon noticed Milo watching him. From the expression on his face, he didn’t seem too happy that Jon was watching Annie so intently. The last thing Jon needed to do was stir up any anger or jealousy when they needed to appear friendly and helpful to the group. If they could help them, they would, but it would be easier if no one was at odds with each other. Jon had the distinct impression that Milo was interested in Annie but that she wasn’t interested in being anything other than friends with him. Jon hoped that was the case. He didn’t think he could survive going back to that dark, hopeless place again. He adjusted the way he was sitting, relaxed a bit. He tried not to watch her quite so intently, but it was difficult.

There was something else in Annie’s style of leadership that he found intriguing. Jennifer was always self-assured, but there was more of an authoritarian air about her now. Jon had watched the body language of everyone they passed. Even Milo, Frost and Bingley behaved in a similar fashion. There was a deference to Jennifer… no, Annie. He had to remember to use that name temporarily. She was the leader. She was recognized by everyone as the one who gave the orders. She’d ask, they’d do. It was a simple as that. However, due to the size of the group, there wasn’t the semi-relaxed command style that Jon utilized with his team. With a small team, a rigid, enforced leadership style wouldn’t work. All opinions and recommendations needed to be freely expressed so the small team could work together. However, with a large group, a more formal command structure was necessary due to the number of individuals involved. Communication didn’t move as easily or as freely within a large group, so there had to be an authority figure, one to make the ultimate decisions.

Jennifer was doing all that as Annie without remembering who she was or where she came from. She had no memory of leadership classes in the Dread Youth, no recall of leading biomechs or Dread Youth, no recollection of commanding resistance forces in battles they’d fought in. She was working on instinct, and it was serving her well.

Their story though… the facts didn’t add up. Approximately one thousand people were suddenly and surprisingly there, and their memory was gone due to a damaged digitization unit? They stayed out in the open and were still alive? They attacked various Dread facilities and fended off several attacks on their base? Dread hadn’t sent all his forces down on them? That made no sense.

Or did it?

Jon’s tactical mind began running through various scenarios, and few worked logically with the facts at hand.

His thoughts were interrupted by a radio communication. “Annie?”

She pulled a small radio out of her pocket. It looked more like a walkie-talkie from decades earlier rather than a more modern communications device. Apparently, even the portable electronics they used were refitted antiques. “Go ahead, Merlin.”

“We’re picking up movement. Jones is trying to track the direction, but we’ve got some interference. Looks like it’s biomech transmissions coming over the waves.”

“Again?” Frost muttered. “Don’t these guys ever get tired of attacking us?”

“And interference,” Milo complained. “That means a bunch of them are talking to each other.”

Scout whispered to Jon, “They seem more annoyed than worried.”

Annie waved her hand to quiet everyone. “It’s been two days since they hit us. Maybe they’re getting bored?” She spoke into the radio. “How long until we have definite information?”

“A few minutes?”

“Let us know, Merlin. Yellow alert. Prepare to go to red if it’s an attack, and we’ll join you.”

“Roger that.”

Hawk leaned back in his chair, wiggling a bit as he tried to find a comfortable position. The low sound of the warning alarm sounded outside. “Merlin? Would that name come from the King Arthur stories?”

Annie nodded. “And Jones is from Davy Jones’ Locker, Frost from the poet Robert Frost and Bingley from the Pride and Prejudice character Charles Bingley.”

Hawk glanced at his teammates. “I really like the way they chose names. It took me and Joanna months to come up with names for our kids.”

Jon was beginning to think that Jackson had understated his descriptions of how the group chose their names. They were taking names from anyone and anything they could find in order to establish an identity. However, as interesting as their name choosing was, Jon couldn’t help but wonder at the truth of how and why they were there. Maybe the truth was found back at the beginning… “Annie, have you been able to find out anything about how you got here?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “Literally, every one of us woke up here. We were lying on the ground at this very location. We didn’t know who we were, where we were, nothing.”

Milo leaned against the wall, observing their guests, Jon especially. “Imagine a little over one thousand people waking up and finding themselves lying in the dirt next to complete strangers. It’s not a good feeling.”

Bingley stood beside the door, perhaps also acting as some sort of guard? Jon recognized the protective stance – they were on guard against them. It made sense for a military unit. They were protecting their leader against an unknown element.

Jon leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Were any of you wounded badly? Broken bones? Internal bleeding?”

Hawk touched Jon’s arm. “Jon,” he cautioned him.

“No,” Annie answered, her voice somewhat curious as she looked from Hawk to Jon. “Why?”

Jon thought for a moment, then said, “Jackson told us that a doctor explained the memory loss, that it came from –”

“Stinson,” Frost scoffed. “We hear he’s a good doctor, but he hasn’t been able to help us any. He showed up a few weeks after we woke up and the only thing he said is that we were relatively healthy other than the fact none of us remembered anything. Used to, he’d fly here in his cargo ship, check out some of us, ask us stupid questions like if we’d met any new people or if any other resistance groups had visited and told us if he’d ever heard of them. Then he’d fly back to his lab again. Hasn’t been around in about a month. Personally, I think he’s a fraud." He looked at Annie. “Didn’t he say we were all affected by that gadget?”

Annie nodded. “A problem with something called a digitizing unit. Yes, he did. He said we were obviously digitized, and then we were brought here and released, but none of us remember anything before we woke up. Why?”

Scout cleared his throat. “The fact that no one was wounded is a bit unusual.”

Annie seemed to consider this. “Some would have fought back,” she murmured. “I should have thought of that. When the biomechs or the Dread soldiers showed up, some would have fought before being captured and some would have been wounded,” she concluded. “No, none of us were wounded like that. Some of us have a lot of scars. Doctor Stinson said some of them were surgical scars." Then, her eyes darted back to Jon. She seemed to remember something more. “Some of us also had nasty bruises and cuts that we couldn’t explain or figure out how we got them, so maybe some did put up a fight. I guess that’s another clue to toss into the mystery.”

So she is wondering what happened, Jon thought to himself. He was curious given how she spoke of their collective memory loss so nonchalantly earlier. “And none of you have had any hints or indications regarding your past?”

Annie shook her head. “No. Nothing. No hints, no moments, not even dreams or nightmares. We have some theories, but no one being wounded… that changes a few things.”

I’m all broken up inside. Jon remembered the pain in her voice, how she was fighting to get her words out when she was minutes away from dying. Those had been her words. How was she not hurt now? How was she still alive?

Bingley shuffled his feet, apparently uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “Captain, right now, it doesn’t matter if we can’t remember a thing. We have to survive. We had to learn to work together. That wasn’t easy because not all of us liked each other. Some of us still don’t. There are personality conflicts and cases of territoriality that would scare a biomech. What you see here now isn’t what it was like early on. We fought each other as much as we fought the robots. We learned fast that if we were going to survive, we had to work together no matter who we are or who we were. Memories aren’t as immediately important as finding food and water and fighting off the enemy,” he explained. “That’s all your team is here to help us with, not trying to pick our brains about pasts we can’t remember.”

Jon raised a placating hand. “I meant no disrespect,” he said quickly. “But it is puzzling. I know we can’t understand the problems you’ve experienced, and I know the questions we have aren’t nearly as numerous as yours, but we’ve got a lot of contacts all over the continent. Maybe we could find out some information if we knew more about your background here.”

“Bingley,” Annie jerked her head slightly and Bingley relaxed a bit. “Captain, you have to understand that we don’t know you and have no idea if we can trust you. We’ve heard of your team, but that’s all. We’ve only recently met Jackson, Mitchell and Pulaski, and just because they vouch for you doesn’t mean much since a stranger’s opinion doesn’t carry a lot of weight with us. We don’t know them, and none of us would remember if we met you.”

“And we’ve given you no reason to trust us,” Jon concluded. “I wish I knew how to prove you can.”

Annie leaned back in her chair, looking to the ceiling as if it could give her some inspiration. “Trust takes time. Look at all of us. We’re total strangers thrown together, and we’re forced to trust each other. That courtesy doesn’t necessarily extend to outsiders."

“So it’s not personal. It’s logical,” Milo added. “Tempers have a tendency to get a little hot here.”

Jon had no doubt that there was a lot of frustration going around the base camp. “I didn’t mean to add insult to injury. We really do want to help,” he explained.

Bingley cleared his throat. “Sorry, Captain. It’s an uncomfortable situation for us. We go to sleep every night hoping we’ll wake up in the morning and remember our pasts and we never do. Can you imagine what it’s like to look in the mirror and not know the person looking back at you?”

“It gets worse than us not knowing ourselves,” Frost added. “We don’t know who each other is either. No one knows who’s related to who or who hates who. Who’s married, who’s not – it’s hard to form certain relationships under those conditions. People can be brothers and sisters, others could be bitter enemies. You don’t want to cross certain lines when you don’t know where the lines are."

Jon heard something in their voices, some anger, some sadness. They wanted to know who they were, and they didn’t have the resources to find out. “We’ll do what we can to try to help you find out who you are,” he said, “but Jackson said we couldn’t force memories. If we did –”

Annie interrupted quickly. “It would be bad for us. We know. I think that’s the one thing that scares us. Not knowing is terrible. Forcing ourselves to remember and knowing we’ll destroy each other if we do because we’re mysteriously linked together somehow? That’s worse." She pointed to a hand drawn map of the area tacked up on the wall. “We’ve explored some of the area surrounding us, but we haven’t had a reason to venture too far from the base. So far, the Dread bases we’ve attacked and various ruins we’ve investigated are within a twenty mile radius of the base camp. We plan to go beyond that in the coming months. I think if some of us could find out what settlements we’re from, maybe we could go back there, look around and maybe something would be familiar. It would be more than we have now.”

“And it could trigger your memories,” Tank offered. “All Jackson told us is that they couldn’t be forced. Maybe showing something to someone isn’t forcing?”

Annie nodded her head. “We have to try something, but I don’t know how long it will take to find out where any of us came from. I hope everyone can keep a sense of patience until we do find out.”

Hawk smiled. “That might be easier than you think. There are over one thousand people here. That many don’t just disappear without others noticing.”

Jon hoped she’d jump at the chance, but there was something still bothering her.

She leaned forward, maybe hoping that someone had an answer. “Something I don’t understand is how so many could be imprisoned in this digitizer device without getting a lot of attention. That’s a large number of people to take prisoner. Transports would be noticeable and –”

“Wait,” Scout interrupted her. “Transports? Hold on a second -- do you know what digitizing is?”

Annie almost chuckled. “No. Doctor Stinson just said we were digitized, there was a problem with the digitizer and that’s what affected our memory. He made it sound like we were hit with some sort of stun blast and stuck in a cage.”

The four men looked at each other. Jon took a deep breath as the realization of what the group wasn’t aware of became apparent. He saw Annie glance at Milo who was watching their guests suspiciously.

“What?” Annie asked.

“A biodread has the capability of digitizing people,” Scout started to explain.

“What’s a biodread?” she asked.

She didn’t know that term? After her last bout with Blastarr? Again, Jon had to remember that they were speaking with Annie, not Jennifer. “You’ve never seen Soaron flying over?”

“Soaron?”

Scout continued. “Soaron is Dread’s biodread. That’s a type of robot that he designed. It flies. It’s superior to a biomech. Larger, autonomous, more sophisticated and more advanced than any biomech out there. It digitizes people, stores them in its memory and then takes them to Overmind who –”

“Wait,” Annie held up a hand to stop him mid-explanation. “Stores them in memory? It sounds like you’re saying people are being turned into streams of data and stored in a computer.”

Scout nodded his head. “That’s what digitizing is.”

Annie stopped.

She sat perfectly still.

Apparently no one -- not Jackson, not Mitchell, not Elzer, not Stinson -- had explained what ‘digitizing’ was.

Milo wasn’t quite so still. “Wait… we were turned into little bits of data and put on a hard drive?”

Bingley walked all the way into the room. “Inside a robot?”

Annie looked at Jon. Obviously, his earlier question now made more sense. “And I’m guessing digitizing doesn’t heal wounds,” she stated.

“No,” Jon told her. “People are restored in the same condition they were digitized in.”

“And no one was badly wounded when they woke up,” she whispered to herself. “Something’s very wrong with that scenario." She unconsciously touched her side.

Milo became suddenly worried. “Annie?”

She looked towards Milo. “I have scars that the doctor said looked like they came from emergency surgery to repair broken ribs and internal organs in my mid-section. He also said the scars didn’t look that old – in fact, he said that they looked very recent. He told me that the physical trauma that produced the wounds would have been profound and fatal. I would have been dead in minutes. For me to still be alive, it had to have happened before I was digitized… Unless…”

Jon could almost see the logical scenarios being played out in her mind. Still, they couldn’t say anything. Not yet. They couldn’t force any memories.

“Unless what?” Milo asked.

“Unless I was wounded before I was digitized, healed afterwards and then brought here.”

Frost leaned on the desk. “You’d remember that, wouldn’t you?”

Annie almost grinned. “Would I? We don’t know why we don’t remember now. If those of us with scars had been wounded and healed, why would we remember any of it?”

The radio alarm screamed for Annie’s attention. She picked it up and quickly pressed the transmit button. “Merlin?

“Annie! Incoming! North and west! Platoon of clickers each. More on the coattails.”

“Two sides?” Frost jumped over the desk and rushed out of the room, Bingley practically on his heels. “That’s a new one!”

“Sound red alert!” Annie ordered Merlin as she and Milo ran out the door, the Power Team following them. “Strike teams in position! Bring up weapons!”

The red alert alarm was blaring through the speakers as they emerged from the outer building. People were running, grabbing up weapons and hurrying to their battle stations. Children were picked up and taken to a secure location. Non-combatants moved out of the way of the armed soldiers. Guns were mounted onto turrets, front line personnel took position. Everyone moved as if they had rehearsed the performance daily.

Jon grabbed Annie’s arm and stopped her in mid-run. “What can we do?”

“Annie, they’ve got troop carriers on the west side!” Merlin informed her.

“Are you any good at taking out transports?” she asked Jon.

Without another word, Jon stepped back and nodded to his team. Simultaneously, all four pressed the actibadges on their uniforms and said, “Power on!” Immediately, the armored Power Team was standing before her.

She looked at all four… “Okay, that’s impressive,” she muttered. “Go west. We’ll take north,” she said as she and Milo ran toward the north perimeter.

Suddenly, they heard the roar of tanks and the crunch of metal feet as they marched. They turned and saw the approach of two tanks and a platoon of biomechs in the distance.

“They’re through the wall,” Jon pulled his weapon. “Hawk, take the high ground. Scout, disable the transport on the left. Tank, flank them on the right so you can get a clear shot at the other. I’ll have them aim for me.”

Hawk flew off, and Scout pulled a grenade from his supply belt. “I hope this isn’t their idea of a job interview,” he told them as he ran off toward the attackers.

“If it is, we don’t have references,” Tank added as he charged into the battle.

Jon found himself running toward the biomechs alongside other base camp soldiers. No one gave him a second look. They were focused, determined and well-prepared. The soldiers took position behind barricades scattered around the field and started firing, but Jon didn’t stop running. He sped to a location where the biomechs could see him – right out in the open.

Coordination was key to the plan, and it was a plan they had used many times in the past.

He aimed his blaster at the lead biomech and fired repeatedly. Hawk swooped in from above and fired down on the biomechs, tossing laser rings through their power supplies and head connectors. Scout engaged his suit’s holographic program and initiated the biomech hologram. He rushed up behind one of the tanks and slapped two grenades under the fuel cells before escaping in the opposite direction. Tank aimed his laser cannon at the nearest enemy transport and the moment Scout’s grenades went off, he fired directly at the fuel cells of the other tank. The explosion took out the remaining biomechs, leaving metal remnants scattered all over the field.

Frost was suddenly there beside him. “Pretty good,” he said. “You guys are fast. You know how to work together.”

“We know a few tricks,” Jon told him.

“Frost!” Bingley yelled as he ran past them. “Northside’s calling for backup! They’ve got more than one platoon attacking! One team, clean up here! The rest with us!”

Without hesitation, the Power Team turned and ran toward the northern perimeter. The biomech platoon was slowly advancing under the heavy onslaught of the base camp defenders. One by one, the biomechs were falling but another would come from the woods and take its place. Three strike teams had formed a picket line across the field, shooters were behind barricades, and the west side battle troops joined their firepower to theirs.

Through the dust and the smoke, Jon looked for Jennifer. She was behind a dirt-built barricade firing a grenade launcher at the oncoming troops, her aim deadly accurate.

“How do you want to hit them, Jon?” Hawk asked. “Looks like they’re handling this one pretty well.”

“Mini-tank on sensors!” one of the strike team leaders yelled.

No tank was visible, only the barrel of a gun poking through the trees.

Milo ran directly toward Annie. “Annie! Get down!” He yelled.

Annie didn’t have time to move before the mini-tank fired a round directly toward her. Milo jumped at her and shoved her to the ground as the blast hit.

Annie immediately jumped back to her feet. “Shoulder-to-air! Take out the tank!”

A soldier brought a missile launcher to bear and fired directly at the mini-tank barrel. His aim was deadly. The missile hit the barrel head on, destroying the vehicle and the surrounding biomechs.

“All weapons fire!” Annie ordered the strike teams.

As one, the teams fired their weapons in a concentrated blast, the shots slammed into the remaining biomechs. The majority of them shorted out and fell to the ground. The rest were easily picked off by sniper fire.

Annie and Milo moved back from the battlefield. In a loud voice, she ordered, “Get me casualties and wounded. Verify the biomechs are destroyed and see what you can salvage. If any of their memory cells are still functioning, get what you can. Secure weapons, munitions and everyone stand down. I want damage reports. Strike teams, you’re on the duty. Set up a perimeter and I want all sensors working double time! Get me spotters in the woods. I want to know if we can get a visual on anything else moving out there.”

Not far away, the Power Team watched. Jon saw Annie walk around as if the near explosion hadn’t happened. Milo stood close to her, always at her side, giving supporting orders to Annie’s primary ones.

“They didn’t need our help on this side. She’s good,” Hawk said in admiration.

“Covered all the bases,” Scout added.

“And she didn’t even blink,” Tank included. “There’s a lot of Jennifer in Annie.”

“It’s easy to see why she got the job,” Jon told them. “It shouldn’t surprise us. Let’s see what we can do to help now.”

What they witnessed next added another mysterious piece to the puzzle. The battle was over, the orders were given, but people were behaving as if the attack hadn’t happened. They were laughing, joking, setting up for nightfall. The wounded and the dead were carried off to one of the buildings – the infirmary perhaps? No one seemed sad or affected by the deadly results of the attack. From where they stood, they saw the group once again become the individuals going on about their daily lives, depicting the same image they presented when the team first arrived. They didn’t behave as people who had just gone through a battle.

“Uh, guys,” Scout motioned toward the various groups forming behind them. “Notice anything strange?”

“I don’t understand this,” Hawk said as he removed his breather mask. “Is it my imagination or are they not really affected by all this?”

Jon noticed group after group sitting back down inside tents or around campfires, acting as if they didn’t have a care in the world – “There’s no emotional aftermath,” he noticed. “They geared up for a fight, they fought, and now it’s as if nothing happened. Maybe that’s part of what happened to them?”

“It’s as if they’re going through the motions, no matter what they do." Tank observed.

Jon motioned for everyone to be quiet as Annie, Milo, Bingley and Frost approached them again. “How’d we do?” he asked Annie.

She smiled and didn’t have to consider her answer. “Very impressive. Bingley? Are they the real deal?”

Bingley gave Jon a nod. “No doubts, Boss. It’s them. They check out, suits and all.”

Scout laughed. “This was a job interview. Did we need to produce references?”

“Not quite,” Annie corrected. “Let’s just say we needed you to prove you were who you said you were.”

Ah, a trial by fire was the proof they needed. Jon suddenly realized that he’d been outmaneuvered by a very astute resistance commander. “Did we earn a little trust?”

“I think so,” she agreed quickly. “When would you like to start speaking to some of the strike teams?”

Jon remembered what she’d told them when they entered the camp about not having teams ready to speak with them. Was that by accident or by design? There was a change in Annie’s demeanor after Frost’s declaration and the team’s willingness to fight by their side – she was going to trust them. He wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but he decided to play along. “It’s late, you’ve just got out of a fight, and since we showed up a little earlier than you expected, how about tomorrow? Would that be all right?”

Annie smiled and nodded with apparent relief. “Tomorrow would be much better. No one likes to have their schedule hijacked without notice. I think after seeing how you dealt with those tanks and clickers, they’ll all want to speak to you concerning tactics and methods. I’m sure they’ll have some questions just like you will. Milo,” she casually nodded her head toward the battlefield, “why don’t you talk to some of the strike leaders and find out which teams are available tomorrow morning? Come up with a schedule? Have them meet after breakfast? Also, we’ll have to arrange burials and funerals for anyone who didn’t already have arrangements with friends.”

Milo took one last look at Jon – it was not a friendly look. “You got it, Boss,” Milo said as he mock-saluted and sauntered back to the strike team leaders.

Tank watched him leave. “Boss?” he asked her, clearly bemused.

“They started that a few months ago, and I have no idea why,” Annie explained. “Frost, we need to take another look at the movement in the surrounding Dread bases. This was the first time they hit us on two fronts simultaneously. We need to figure out why.”

Frost ran his hand through his hair. “No problem. Dread’s been stocking those bases with more biomechs lately. I think he’s getting ready for a major offensive, and we’re the ones he wants to offend the most,” he proclaimed as he walked toward the carryalls. “I’ll head to the silo tonight and get you the information as soon as I can. I hope Jones got the carryall refueled.”

Bingley turned on his heel. “I’ve got to get some supplies out of stock to repair one of the generators. If I can keep it online, we’ll have an uninterrupted power supply if the worst happens. You need anything here, Annie?”

Annie shook her head. “I think I can handle it from here,” she told him, this time her voice less authoritative, more reassuring.

As soon as he left, Jon ordered everyone to power down. Once again, they stood before Annie unarmored.

“Amazing,” she whispered. “How do you turn your clothes into armor like that?”

“Trade secret,” Scout said as he made certain his grenades were securely in his belt. “So was I right? Was that a job interview?”

“Uh, no,” Annie confessed. “Honestly, it was coincidence, but we did need to check you out. We had to make sure you were who you said you were only we didn’t know how. Bingley is the only one here had seen a Dread bulletin with your pictures or seen a recording of you and heard your voices. He found the recording on a reader an overunit had, but it was damaged and burned up after he finished playing it. I just had to keep you talking until Bingley was satisfied that you are the Power Team. I wasn’t expecting an attack that you could fight in to prove it.”

“Sneaky and brilliant,” Hawk said appraisingly.

Jon could only agree with their actions. It was a wise move on Jenni… no, Annie’s part. They had no reason to trust anyone, but they couldn’t not trust anyone. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

“No, it’s not necessary,” Annie explained. “We have specialized teams that do clean up and post-battle security.”

Hawk reached down and picked up a piece of a biomech that had landed near where they were. “How often do attacks on the camp itself happen?”

“For a while, it was rare. Then it became every few days. Now, it’s happening more often. After this battle, it might be two days before they attack again. Frost will get us the latest information about any new movement and we can gauge their attack strategies then.”

Tank pointed toward the camp in general. “Your people know exactly what to do in an battle. It was as if their movements are rehearsed.”

“In a way, they are. We train every day,” she assured them. “With the biomechs attacking more often over the last month, we’ve needed more training since we’re getting in a lot of practice.”

Again, Jon heard the nonchalant tone to her voice. This was a common event, so it wouldn’t affect them as much as it would soldiers who didn’t fight nearly every day.

“We’ll do what we can so maybe you won’t need so much practice." Jon was still curious about what Annie had said earlier. “You said before that you were having personnel problems that we could help with?”

“Tell you what, Captain, if you can contact the people you know, maybe find out who we are and where we come from, our personnel problems will undoubtedly disappear." Annie motioned for them to follow. “We don’t know how many more biomechs are in the woods, so you’ll be safer here than you would be back at your ship. I can show you to some empty sleeping quarters. We may not have a lot to share, but we do have the ability to be hospitable.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Annie led them inside one of the outer structures not far from her office. It wasn’t very big; just six rooms connected by a long hallway, one level and partially cleared out. Surprisingly, it wasn’t dusty or dirty. Evidence of excavating the building was evident – scratches in the walls, doors shoved against jambs instead of hanging on hinges, nuts/bolts/screws scratched, looking as if they had been recently tightened. They passed by the first two rooms. There were some benches and tables set up. The next two rooms had toys scattered across the floors, a couple of pool cues, ping pong paddles, balls of various size.

“Hawk,” Scout pointed to the paddles. “Ping pong,” he whispered, the sound of near glee echoing in his voice.

Hawk’s eyes lit up the moment he saw the items. “I’m not spotting you any points,” he said with a grin.

The last two had bunks and cots set up. All in all, it seemed as if they were setting up a school or a recreation hall.

Again, the temperature inside the building was much cooler than outside. Scout looked at a sensor that indicated the temperature. “How is the temperature regulated in these buildings?”

“It’s what the brick is made out of,” Annie explained. “It acts like adobe. It’ll keep someone cool in summer and warm in winter.”

“Impressive,” Scout admired the simple structure. “But if it’s so cool inside, why do people sleep in tents?”

“I didn’t say we did,” Annie joked.

That surprised Scout. “You’ve got enough buildings dug up to put almost one thousand people inside?”

“No, not quite,” she told them. “A lot of people like sleeping in the tents. Some of the younger ones think they’re living life like some of the heroes in the books. Like Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett or Robin Hood. Others feel more secure if they’re sleeping under a roof. Inside the buildings mean mud doesn’t rush in when it rains and birds don’t fly in and leave evidence they were inside. Besides, a building gives a little more cover than a tent does during an attack. Now this building is still a work in progress, but you can billet down here,” she told them as they approached the last two rooms. “Some of the engineers were down here last week. It’s easier for them to camp out in whatever building they’re helping clean out and repair, so you know those rooms are fit for habitation. They’re still patching up the ceiling and walls in this one.”

Hawk looked around approvingly at the structure. “So we won’t be putting anybody out?” he asked her.

“No. Another building had a shift in its foundation and one of the rooms caved in. They’ve moved near that one temporarily. They won’t get back to work here for about a week. They have declared this one safe.”

“Safe?” Scout asked.

“We had some fatalities early on when buildings fell in on people when we were excavating,” Annie explained, her voice sounding sad. “We’re planning on using this one as a school for the kids once we can build desks and get some basic teaching supplies, but they’re scarce so it’s been put a little lower on the priority list. We think the former occupants may have used this particular building to house visiting troops, but we just don’t know.”

“Now, just outside –” she led them back out and pointed toward the very large tent just beyond, “over there is the mess hall. An infirmary is just to the right of it. We’ve got a few sentries roaming around, and they know to keep an eye on you if you need any help. I wouldn’t bother the guards though. They’re pretty easy to spot. The sentries aren’t.”

“Sentries?” Scout basically studied the massive numbers of people moving around them. There were people strolling around the camp, others setting up their own personal campsites. Whichever ones were sentries strolling around the perimeter and keeping a watch on the camp, they weren’t obvious. “You couldn’t pick them out of a crowd,” he noticed.

“Would they need to be?” Annie asked, her voice sounding like she was about to laugh.

“No, not really,” Scout said approvingly. “It’s just a good way to camouflage your people. You hide them in plain sight. When you’re attacked, then the enemy doesn’t know which person does what job. It gives you a distinct advantage in a fight.”

Annie had considered that as a sound tactic when she implemented it. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” she said.

“I have to ask,” Scout made a sweeping gesture at the entire camp, “we have trouble finding enough food just for us. How do you feed all these people every day?”

Annie shrugged. “It’s been difficult but not impossible. We found a lot of food stored here at this site. It was in vacuum-sealed containers and cans, but some of it was still edible. There were something called MREs in the cold storage facility – the less said about them, the better. We found uncontaminated wells so we had fresh water, and there were a lot of dehydrated goods and powdered items so we didn’t starve. We’ve sent out hunters but there’s not enough game to lower their populations by hunting them. We have found a lot of root vegetables growing all in the surrounding area. According to Jackson , that’s why he came here – to check out the fact that there are woods. We’ve learned that that’s not a common thing to see in other places?”

“Not by a long shot,” Jon told her. “This is the first time we’ve seen anything that even looks like woods in years. Most other places are barren and desolate.”

“Barren?” Annie glanced out at the tree-filled horizon. “I guess we’re just secluded enough to not know what’s beyond the trees,” she mused.

Jon asked in a low voice, “Annie, we noticed that after the fight, everyone seemed to behave as if the attack hadn’t happened. Is that normal?”

“Normal? Is that unusual behavior?”

“It’s not in our experience,” Jon explained.

“Oh." Annie frowned in confusion. “I’ve never thought about it. We’re prepared for a variety of attacks, and they happen often enough that they’re more like nuisances. It’s not often we get more than a few platoons hitting us at the same time--”

“Platoons?” the four men repeated, astonished.

“I take it that’s not the type of fighting you’re used to seeing?” she asked Jon.

“Until recently, no,” he explained. “We’ve got a lot of experience with surgical strikes, infiltrating Dread facilities, and destroying supply lines at their source.”

Annie leaned against the wall of the building. “You’re a small team, so making surgical strikes would make more sense. We’re an entire base camp, so we would have some success with the broader attack. Jackson was right – there’s a lot we can learn from each other.”

The sound of a crying child reached their ears just as an older woman walked around the corner of the building carrying a crying, dark-haired child probably not even two years old. “I know, it’ll be okay,” she said as she patted the child’s back. She looked exhausted and as if she was reaching the end of her patience.

Annie called out to her. “Lydia?”

The woman’s eyes noticeably brightened when she saw them. “There you are, Annie. Maybe you could help? I can’t get her to stop crying.”

The little girl’s eyes seemed to light up the moment she saw Annie. Whimpering, she stretched her chubby little arms out toward her as Annie reached out and took her from Lydia. “Hi there, sweetheart,” she said as she hugged the little girl to her. “What’s wrong? Huh?”

“I don’t think she’s feeling very good. She has a little bit of a fever, but neither Julia nor I could get her to stop crying. At first, I thought all the shooting scared her, but it never has before. I thought a walk could help, but it isn’t,” the woman told her. Then, she noticed the four men accompanying Annie. “Do we have guests?”

Annie smiled and performed the introductions. “Lydia, this is the Power team. Let’s see if I have it straight: Captain Power, Major Masterson, Lieutenant Ellis and Sergeant Baker." She then nodded her head toward the woman. “This is Lydia. She helps take care of the children.”

“Lydia?” Hawk approached and shook her hand in greeting. “Did your name come from the book Pride and Prejudice as well?”

Lydia and Annie both laughed. Then Lydia rolled up the sleeve on her shirt and showed them a small tattoo on her wrist. It was a tiger with small wings. “I found some sheet music about Lydia the Tattooed Lady, and I thought it was apropos.”

Hawk laughed. “No argument there. Please, it’d probably be easier to call us by our call signs. I’m Hawk." He motioned to the others. “This is Scout, Tank and Jon.”

“Jon’s a call sign?” Lydia asked him.

Annie leaned over and said, “He doesn’t have a call sign. He’s never needed one.”

The little girl grabbed hold of Annie’s shirt with one hand and leaned over as if trying to get a better look at the newcomers. “What is it, Gracie?” she asked. “Want to meet our guests?”

Annie turned a little so the little girl could see the team. Hawk gently took the little girl’s hand and shook it in greeting. “Hi there, Gracie,” he said with a smile. He gently placed his hand on her forehead. “She does have a little bit of a fever. She’s too old to be teething.”

The little girl grinned and then buried her face in Annie’s shoulder.

“I have no idea what’s wrong,” Lydia told him. “Annie?”

“I don’t know anything about babies." Annie glanced back at Lydia.

That’s when they noticed Gracie kept clutching her ear.

“I think she has an ear infection,” Hawk told them. “My kids got them every now and then.”

“Is that bad?” Lydia asked him.

Hawk smiled. “It’s fixable.”

Gracie turned her face away from Matt, and Annie explained, “Gracie’s a little shy around strangers.”

“She acts like she’s yours,” Jon commented.

Annie smiled and hoisted Gracie up a little on her shoulder. “No, not really. She just knows me. She’s really attached to Julia. She’s another person who takes care of children. Some of us help out when we can, but it’s not easy to get away from our other duties.”

Gracie gazed out at Matt again and gave him a little smile. He smiled back. “Where did the name Gracie come from?” he asked Annie.

“A twentieth century comic named Gracie Allen,” Annie explained. “I found her biography in one of the buildings, and I liked the name. I think it’ll do until we find out who she really is and get her back to her parents.”

An added depth of awareness of what they already again knew hit the team. Children were there with no memory of their parents. Parents were there with no memory of their children. No memory meant – “You have no way of knowing who her parents are,” Tank guessed. This wasn’t just a group of people without their memories stranded in the middle of a reforming greenwood. These were entire families ripped apart and thrown together as strangers. It was an inflicted punishment that only someone with a sick sense of irony would indulge in.

Annie shook her head. “No. Doctor Stinson said he didn’t have the equipment to run genetic tests to trace who’s related to whom. Life for us started when we woke up here. Like we said, some of us could have been family, friends or enemies before, but now, it doesn’t matter. We have to get along with each other and work together if we’re going to survive. Maybe one day we’ll be able to find out if any of us are connected to each other in any way.”

It was clear that Gracie had formed a connection with Annie because she was more than content to sit in her arms. She curled herself up against Annie and sucked her thumb while keeping a close eye on the newcomers.

The team realized that there was even more going on with Annie’s group than they had thought.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

NIGHTTIME of the first day

As warm as the day had been, that night was deceptively cool. Sitting before their own campfire, the team observed the base camp as it prepared for the night.

The nighttime behavior was no less startling to the team than their first sight of the base. Campfires littered the entire area; the shadows of people walking back and forth in front of the flames gave indications of how many people lived at the base camp. Anyone flying overhead would see the fires and know they were looking down at a large settlement filled with hundreds of people. There was no concern that they were sitting ducks and easy targets for any of Dread’s forces. There still was no emotional aftermath of the battle. Was fighting so commonplace for them that it no longer shocked, surprised or saddened them?

Then there were the nighttime sounds they heard. Crickets everywhere! Frogs croaked. Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf howled at an unseen moon. Even the occasional bird could be heard calling out in the darkness.

“That was an owl,” Hawk muttered as he listened to the night sounds. “I thought they’d gone extinct.”

Tank sat down next to him. “We need to find out how everything is growing back. If we could duplicate the effect, then we could have areas like this all over the continent. Maybe all over the world.”

Scout warmed his hands before the fire. “Did anyone get a soil sample for Mentor to analyze?” Scout asked. “I’d love to know what could grow out there.”

“Potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, beans, peppers…” Hawk sighed. “Imagine having all the fresh vegetables you could eat. They’ve got that here. I saw some wild onions out there when we were walking in, I’m sure of it. I knew a cook at Fort Bragg that could make a delicious vegetable stew. He didn’t give anyone the recipe, but I know he used those ingredients.”

“And they take an ample amount of food in stride just like they do the attacks,” Jon noticed. “They don’t know how bad it is everywhere else… The woods extend in a one hundred mile radius from our old base, and they’re seventy miles from the center. That’s thirty miles from the edge of the circle…”

“And they’ve only ventured out twenty miles,” Scout said. “Maybe they really haven’t had time to go further than that?”

“I don’t know,” Jon shook his head and sat down on a chair made out of a wooden crate. “They don’t seem to be in any hurry to go beyond that twenty mile limit even though they’re being attacked here on a fairly regular basis. That just seems strange. I wonder why they wouldn’t want to find a safer location."

Hawk leaned against the wall of their billet and watched the goings-on of the people with incredible interest. “Look at them,” he said in a low voice. “Not a worry in the world. How is it they can know what kinds of threats are out there, fight them off and still not be concerned? If Soaron flew by right now, Dread would have every biomech in the area marching on this place.”

Scout glanced back at the crowd himself. “It’s all one big mystery.”

Eventually, Jackson found them and joined them around their campfire.

“Jackson ,” Hawk nodded his head in his direction. “Where were all of you when the shooting started?”

“Mess tent,” he reminded them. “The shooting was over with by the time we got to the northern perimeter. I told you these guys could fight. So what do you think?” he asked them. “We were right, huh? You wouldn’t have believed us if you hadn’t seen it for yourself.”

Tank nodded. “No, we wouldn’t have. It’s unbelievable. It also doesn’t make any sense.”

“One thousand people,” Scout muttered lowly so anyone walking nearby couldn’t hear him. “How many of them did we meet today?”

Tank chuckled. “Not many, and that’s including little Gracie.”

“Gracie,” Hawk just shook his head in disbelief. “Did you guys get a good look at that little girl? I think we know her."

Scout poked at the campfire with a long stick. “The mayor of Placerville ’s youngest daughter. The mayor and her husband were digitized along with hundreds of others when Blastarr and the biomechs hit that town before Christmas.”

Tank leaned back and gazed into the fire-lit darkness. “That means the mayor and her husband are somewhere around here too, along with most of the population of Placerville . We haven’t seen anyone from there that we know yet. Placerville was a supply town. They weren’t fighters, yet what we saw during that battle –”

“They’re all soldiers,” Jackson told them. “Somehow, some way, everybody here fights or they work support or they have something to do to help keep the bad guys out.”

Jon was still trying to make some sort of sense out of everything they’d learned. There had to be a logical answer to all of it. “Jackson , any idea how no one in the Resistance that’s been here before has met Jennifer?”

“None of the Resistance that’s visited has been another team leader,” Jackson explained. “Look, I’m guessing you saw how protective those guys were of Annie when you talked to them? They’re the ones who handle the visitors first. If someone higher up the ladder had been here before, she’d have been the one to meet with them and you’d have known that she was still alive months ago.”

“Good security,” Scout noted. “They protect the leader, and it looks like Annie is as protective of her people as they are of her. She may be trusting us a little bit, but she’s not going to give any of us free rein until she’s sure of us. That might take a few days.”

Jackson leaned back against the building. “Get used to it. Took me and Jim a while to prove we weren’t bad guys. At least she’s heard of all of you from others who came around here. You guys impressed her during the fight. You didn’t run, you blew up two tanks and you blasted a platoon of biomechs. I think the armor gave a little validity to your story. You proved you were who others said you were. She may not give you the keys to the supply cabinet anytime soon, but she didn’t toss you out on your rumps.”

Hawk threw another log on the fire, watched as the sparks flew up. “Notice how she didn’t show us anything we couldn’t have seen from the air or ground level when we got here? The tour was just for areas in plain sight. It’s one thing to think that she doesn’t know us, but for her not to trust us? It’s not like she trusted us overnight originally, we had to earn it, but this is just… uncomfortable.”

“She’s not Jennifer exactly,” Scout reminded him. “She doesn’t sound like her. Her words are different. Her voice is… I don’t know, harder? She’s Annie right now. She’s… the captain around here.”

“But she’s a lot like Jennifer,” Jon added. “Did you notice her office? Things she wouldn’t throw away, books on high shelves. Then there are the facial expressions, mannerisms -- my guess is that whatever happened to them didn’t change their core personality, habits or abilities even though it did take away their memories.”

“How’s that possible?” Hawk asked. “We are who we are and act how we do because of our past and our memories. Take away the memories, and the person is different. Before, she would never have gone through a battle like that, lost people she worked with and not give it a second thought.”

“They never do,” Jackson informed him. “I’ve seen them go through a couple of skirmishes, and as soon as the shooting stops, they’re back to doing whatever they were doing before they were interrupted. I was wondering if whatever happened to their memories might have done something to their behavior. It’s almost like how they behave is scripted. Bad guys attack, they’re supposed to fight back, so they do but they don’t really feel it the way we do. Everything’s so matter-of-fact with them.”

Scout stood and slowly paced around their campsite. “I’m no expert at digitization. None of us are, but none of this makes sense. Jackson , what exactly did that doctor say?”

Jackson shrugged. “That they’re somehow connected like a circuit.”

“Okay,” Scout paced a little faster as he tried to jog his memory of the digitization information he’d read years earlier. “Connected memories should only affect a group that’s digitized at the same time. But everyone here had to be digitized at different times. None of the biodreads could mass-digitize this many people.”

Hawk saw one fallacy in the logic. “What about that portable digitizer? The one we destroyed when Dread was tricking people into thinking they were going to a safe place where there was food and water and no bad guys?”

Scout shook his head. “Even that one had a limit,” he told them. “But this group -- they are all somehow connected like a circuit… a circuit that if it fails naturally won’t do any damage but could harm them if the circuit is forced to collapse…”

Scout stopped pacing.

“Scout?” Jon watched his teammate as he stared into the darkness.

“Why a circuit? Why are their memories connected?” Scout murmured, mostly to himself. He turned, looked at the rest of the team. “If I’m remembering correctly, and I’m not sure I am, what if everyone trapped in a digitizer really is connected on some electrical level? Everyone’s turned into the same type of data stream and stored in a digitizing hard drive. The data patterns could be interconnecting instead of being stored separately. Or maybe when the biodread is digitizing someone, that opens a port that connects the new prisoner to the ones already stored in its memory…”

Scout paused in his reasoning as if to reconsider what he was thinking. Then, “If that’s so, and we assume that Blastarr digitized Jennifer at the very moment the explosion happened, then that might have created some sort of power surge that traveled along the digitizing beam… and if each individual’s memory is stored in a particular way inside a digitizer… what if the explosion caused a problem with however a person’s memory is stored in a digitizer? That was the interrupting outside influence?” He looked over at the team and saw none of them were following his logic.

Jackson wasn’t following him at all. “But wouldn’t a person be digitized as a whole person? How would their memory be stored some other way?” he asked.

“No idea,” Scout said quickly. “We don’t really know a lot about what happens to people when they’re digitized. Even the techs in Volcania don’t know. What we do know is that they’re reduced to bits or streams of data. It’s possible that memory is stored in a particular way within that stream, and a power surge might have done something to whatever’s stored in that particular way… and I’m not making any sense,” he muttered. “I don’t know. I’m just trying to put some pieces together.”

“Maybe not,” Jon argued. “Athena Samuels told me that the machine touches you, that it knows what you know. We haven’t seen any evidence that Overmind has the detailed information from any digitized people because if it did, then it would know the locations of resistance bases because a lot of resistance fighters have been captured and digitized over the years. Overmind hasn’t systematically attacked any bases or gone after any safe houses.”

“So Overmind may not have any useful information from a digitizee,” Hawk repeated. “From what we’ve been told, Overmind knows the identities of people he digitizes, but does he have access to their thoughts or memories? And no biodread knows any information about the people they digitize – as far as we can tell. They don’t know the identities or their thoughts. Wait… could it be that a biodread really does only store the person, and it’s only Overmind that has the capability of learning anything from the digitized prisoners? Maybe a person’s memory isn’t stored in Overmind like a person?”

“It’s not a person,” Tank concluded. “It’s an aspect of a person, not something separate.”

Scout nodded his head and began pacing again, his theory starting to reform. “But memories are in the brain, and thoughts and mental commands are transported through the synapses by electrical impulses. Maybe…” he paused, turned, sat back down in front of the campfire. “If Hawk’s right and there’s a difference in how prisoners are stored in a biodread and in Overmind’s databanks, what if the power surge of the explosion altered the way Blastarr stored people? What if it did something to Blastarr that would have given him Overmind’s ability to get information from digitized minds? What if that explosion interfered with the synaptic activity that may have been present in the digitized patterns inside Blastarr’s storage cell? Somehow this power surge created a pattern of its own inside those patterns that was different from the usual? Maybe it’s not really connected the way we’re thinking of the term, at least not mentally.”

Hawk leaned forward and balanced his elbows on his knees. “We could go ‘round in circles about this all night. Let’s assume that they were all affected by the blast the same way. Then why would Stinson say that if one is forced to remember, it could destroy the circuit and harm them?”

Scout shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Wish we could figure something out to help them,” Hawk muttered. “If we could just figure out how some of this works —”

“They haven’t left,” Jon mused quietly. “They are here, out in the open, biomechs have attacked, they’re expecting a large force of them to hit them again any time, but none of them are planning to leave…”

Hawk frowned. “Jon?”

“Jennifer said that they haven’t had a reason to go too far, not that they haven’t had a chance." Jon stood up and looked at the group, at the site, at the boundaries now hidden in the darkness. “What if this connection also has to do with the site itself?”

Jackson raised his hand. “Cap, don’t mind my asking, but what do you mean?”

Jon looked out over the campfires. “Think about it. They woke up at this location, and none of them have left. Even their missions have been within a particular radius of their base camp. They stay here. Why? There’s nothing keeping them here, no reason they shouldn’t go beyond ruined cities or close settlements to find out if anyone knows them or go someplace where the biomechs can’t find them." When no one said anything, Jon provided an answer. “Maybe someone needs them here and something has convinced them to stay here,” he surmised aloud.

“But why?” Tank asked. “It’s a location from before the Metal Wars. Everything here is over thirty years old. It was abandoned years ago. What’s so important about this place?”

“I don’t know,” Jon thought hard. Even with all his experience with tactics, trying to figure out a byzantine problem like the one they were looking at was difficult. Still, some events were falling into place in a theory Jon had, and it was one he didn’t like. “Remember what she said? That she was all broken up inside?” Jon reminded them.

That got Jackson ’s full attention. “Broken up?”

Jon nodded, his mind obviously looking back at that moment. “Jennifer fought Blastarr and lost. Her suit was powered down. She was dying. She knew it. She was going to make a last stand and take Blastarr with her. You could hear how badly she was hurting in her voice during that last transmission. She said when they woke up here, none of them were hurt. Some have surgical scars…” Jon closed his eyes for a moment. “They must have been reintegrated, healed and then left here, but something must have happened to them to cause them to not remember any of it.”

Hawk saw where Jon was going. “We’re still missing a piece of the puzzle.”

“Trap maybe?” Scout asked. “Experiment of some kind?”

Hawk poked at the firewood, trying to keep the fire going. “But who would do that and why? And why wouldn’t she remember?”

“And who would have the capabilities?” Tank added. “There’s one thousand people here. That would take resources no one except Dread has, but I can’t see him doing that.”

“Can I toss something into the mix here?” Jackson leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Your base was blown up eight months ago. They’ve been here for six months. If all these nice folks came out of Blastarr’s digitizing box, then that means whoever got it and reintegrated them and nailed them back together and dumped them unconscious here without their memories had to do that in just two months. For a thousand people? I don’t know anybody with those kinds of resources to do something that labor intensive that quietly and on the sly. Not even Dread. Someone somewhere in Volcania would have talked. We’d have found out something about it by now.”

Scout kicked a small stone away and began pacing again. Trying to put two and two together in this case kept adding up to five. Maybe… “What if they all weren’t reintegrated? What if they only reintegrated the wounded ones first, healed them, and then put them all here? Or what if they all aren’t all from… Blastarr’s digitizing box?” Scout asked. “Good term, by the way,” he told Jackson .

Hawk shook his head. “Then how did the healed ones get here with no memory of being reintegrated, taken care of and then dumped here? And how is it they’re all connected – if they are?”

“As far as we know, they are connected,” Jackson protested quietly. “That’s according to Stinson.”

Scout kept moving, kept trying to work his way through the problem mentally. “What do you know about this Stinson?”

Jackson took a deep breath. “Just what they told me. He’s a local doctor. He’s got a lab somewhere in flying distance from here. I think they’ve plotted out the course. He’s trusted by a lot of people. He said he’s worked with resistance groups on and off for over a dozen years. He’s seen things most of us can’t even imagine. If his reputation is on the up-and-up, then if he says they’re connected, then you should be able to bet your spare change on it, but I haven’t laid eyes on the man. I’ve got no first-hand opinion of him.”

Hawk joined Scout in pacing their small area. “Stinson worked with some of the resistance groups?” he asked.

Jackson nodded. “From what he’s told them, yeah. Battlefield medicine, you know. He’s had to be a medic after battles. Some of the folks here told me that they don’t have a reason to doubt him.”

“But you do,” Tank asserted.

Jackson poked at the fire. “Like I said, I haven’t met the guy, I only know what I’ve been told by these nice folks, but he sounds a little too good to be true. The whole thing is just a little too neat if you ask me.”

Scout picked up stick and poked the fire as well. “Jackson , why did they trust you with all this? They didn’t know who you were but they seemed to have told you everything.”

“Not everything, they didn’t,” Jackson said cheekily. “We overheard a few things, guessed at other stuff. It wasn’t until we helped out in a fight while looking for food that they extended any courtesy other than basic hospitality to us. About that time, I just happened to meet a lady working on a busted down shuttle and was told she was the one in charge. I recognized her as your pilot and tried to find out what I could before contacting you. We told them what we knew, and they filled in some of the blanks. I do know that what we know so far isn’t the whole story. I don’t think they know it all but they ain’t telling us everything. I think the warnings Stinson gave them has some of them a little nervous.”

“Why does that name sound so familiar?” Hawk muttered.

It was Jon’s turn to pace their campsite. His thoughts were centered on the problem of how to get Jennifer back, and get her back safely. “How and why may not be the questions we need to worry about right now. We may get those answers if we can figure out a way to naturally collapse that circuit and get their memories back. Proximity could definitely be a factor since none of them have left this area since they woke up here and none of them seem inclined to leave.”

Scout looked back at the crowd. “We’d better keep any speculations to ourselves. I think we need to stick around here for a while, train them like Jackson suggested and see what we can find out. And there’s one other thing,” he hesitated.

Jon noticed his friend’s ambivalence. “What?”

“I think we need to see how much of Jennifer is there in Annie. Maybe if each of us gets a chance to talk to her, we can see if she says anything that’s Jennifer-ish?”

“Good idea,” Hawk said. “I think you and Jon will have the best chance of reminding her of Jennifer though. You two are the closest to her.”

Jackson rubbed his hands together in obvious glee. “Find out later,” he quipped with a big smile on his face. “I see supper coming.”

The team glanced over and saw Elzer and Mitchell walking toward them with a tray full of food.

Fresh vegetables? Jackson was right – speculation could wait until after supper.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Overmind was a logical computer. True, his mental merger with Lyman Taggart had changed them both and now Overmind was self-aware and much more attentive to the complexity of the human condition, but Dread himself was a human mind in a metalloid body. His human condition had not wholly dissipated with the transfer, and that fact alone caused Overmind some confusion. Humans were not logical, and Overmind did not understand them.

Before the transfer, Dread occasionally let his emotions take control. His desire for revenge and conquest sometimes overrode the need to perform tasks in a logical fashion. His almost fanatical strikes against Power’s team had cost the Empire hundreds of biomechs, dozens of Dread Youth and Blastarr. When Power’s base was destroyed, Blastarr along with it, Dread became quiet. At first, Overmind thought it a logical, unemotional response to the news, but he had failed to take into account that emotions came from the mind, and Dread’s mind existed in the biodread body he inhabited. Vengeance for his lost warlord became his goal, but his anger had no target. Power and his team disappeared for weeks after that event. Then when Dread salvaged what bits of Blastarr he could and was able to remotely access the last moments of the biodread’s existence from the warlord’s burnt databanks, his anger built into a vengeful passion. Power’s pilot had destroyed the base just as Blastarr digitized her. Sensors indicated that parts of Blastarr such as the digitizing storage cell had survived, but the warlord himself was destroyed. Dread wanted revenge, but they were a warlord down and there was an Empire to defend. They had to protect what they could, destroy the Resistance in any way possible, and until Power surfaced again so Dread could take his revenge, their goal was to extend the Empire’s reach as far as possible.

Dread believed that simultaneous attacks in various locations against the Resistance would disable their lines of communication and sources of supply. That became the foundation of all their plans of attack. Every method of distraction, destruction and disruption was utilized. Overmind believed it was an effort by Dread to draw out Power for personal retribution.

That was when the counterattacks from the Resistance became far more vicious than Overmind had ever recorded. Power’s attacks on any base, facility or outpost of the Machine Empire were rabid. If Dread’s desire for revenge against Power was methodical, Power’s ability to get revenge on Dread was frustratingly efficient. They worked alone, they worked with other resistance cells – they destroyed anything to do with Dread. The more Dread tightened his grip on the territories they claimed, the more rampant and precise the resistance attacks became. Overmind surmised that Power planned many of the missions. The tactics had familiar patterns to them, ones that Power used, and they were swift and unforgiving. The Empire had lost ground. They had to find a way to undermine Power’s influence over the Resistance.

That was when Dread’s scientific acquaintance, Doctor Stinson, made them an enticing offer -- to take the people encased in Blastarr’s storage unit and prove that people’s memories could be influenced, their identities buried, their loyalties switched, their behaviors altered, all to the Empire’s benefit. If he could fine-tune his methods of mind control, the Empire could eventually eliminate all resistance and make them loyal to the Machine. Dread would be able to turn them against their own people if he wanted to. Unfortunately, the outcome had been less than expected and cost more than the Empire could afford to lose. Yet Dread had not yet eradicated all evidence of Stinson’s experiment. He had not destroyed the base camp nor taken the subjects prisoner again.

Overmind checked his sensors and saw the Dread had not left the throne room. In fact, he hadn’t left the throne room for days. His full attention had been focused on the reports from the technicians and scientists who were studying the results of the experiments taken from Stinson’s computer. “Lord Dread, it has been a month since we learned of Stinson’s plans and you sent Overunit Stevens to his laboratory. Why have you not eliminated the group he was studying?” Overmind asked, truly curious.

The Dread biodread sat quietly in his throne room contemplating his answer. Finally, he said, “The plan to recapture the prisoners and destroy the site has begun. Stinson’s lack of foresight allowed that group to become more coordinated and provided them the time to train as a fighting force, build their defenses and secure their borders. Sending in small numbers of biomechs to attack their forces and determine their defensive capabilities over the last month was necessary in order to plan the main assault. However, Stinson’s actions may have created a great deal of trouble for us, but they inadvertently brought about a situation that could prove advantageous to us."

Dread reached out a mechanical arm and plugged himself into the data port. “Stinson was allowed to set up his research lab and perform his experiments provided he delivered a particular prisoner to me. He failed to do so and we have lost valuable time and resources including Overunit Christine Larabee, one of our most loyal military leaders. Some of our soldiers were able to salvage the recording discs from damaged biomechs made during recent attacks on the group. I’ve learned that this particular prisoner is alive and in a key position among the organics. We have reason to believe that members of multiple resistance groups have visited since we are now detecting movement in various locations in the forest. The organics in the camp now have vital information we can use. They must know how to contact some other groups or perhaps know where they are located. Our own agents we placed there will have valuable knowledge to share with us once we release them of the memory lock. After all this time, they should have a comprehensive knowledge of resistance tactics and codes.”

“Have our agents survived?” Overmind asked.

“Most have,” Dread answered quickly. “The overunit I assigned to the task has become a person of great importance and influence. I had not expected that, but his intimate knowledge of the inner structure of a resistance group can be used to our advantage soon.”

Overmind read through the list of names of the soldiers that had been mind locked and placed unconscious in the camp, only to awaken with no memory. There was only one overunit assigned the task, one that was on disciplinary suspension from the Dread Youth. “Why did you choose this overunit for this assignment?”

Dread had a quick answer. “For several reasons. He is intelligent, but he has grown insolent and self-serving. He is an intelligence agent who was punished for his behavior by being put in charge of a computer information hub. It did little to decrease his drive for recognition since he has a unique ability to sort through seeming random data and find patterns hidden within. He anticipated a few attacks from the Resistance with a high rate of accuracy. This brought him to the attention of his superiors again. His ambition for personal promotion is not of the Machine. All that must be countered for him to remain in his designation as overunit. However, his self-assuredness and his skills at being unobtrusive and unseen when among organics are an asset necessary for this assignment. He must not bring a certain type of unwanted attention to himself; he must remain above suspicion and not be considered a soldier of the Empire. He has a position of authority there, and his authority is such that it is not questioned. If he wishes to remain a soldier for the Machine Empire, then he will tell us all he has learned once he is returned to Volcania. Provided he survives until we can remove the memory lock.”

Overmind considered all that had been said, and although he might not have liked the answer, he was satisfied that these had been necessary tactics albeit long, confusing ones. “So delaying their destruction has allowed for the gathering of extra information necessary to abolish resistance cells in the near future.”

“Information is always valuable,” Dread explained, “when time allows us to gather it. I believe we have waited long enough.”

Overmind sensed that Dread was eager to be done with this particular job. “What is the time frame for your attack, and when will the group be eliminated?”

“With Soaron still damaged and regenerating from his latest battle with Power, we are forced to use only the biomechs from the surrounding facilities. They are moving into position for simultaneous attacks. We will strike in approximately two days’ time,” Dread answered.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After supper, a quiet descended on the camp that was almost palpable in contrast to the noise made during the day. All signs of the battle had been removed. Biomech bodies destroyed, some raw materials and weaponry salvaged from the battlefield. People not on duty settled down for the night. Most of the campfires had been doused and people had retreated to wherever it was they slept. There were guards patrolling the perimeter, sentries inside the camp keeping watch – they were out in the open, exposed, so why did it feel safe?

Elzer, Jackson and Mitchell had returned to their own missions after supper, leaving a puzzled Power Team behind to deal with the confusing turn of events. Tank and Scout took a walk to get a better idea of the layout of the base camp and to get acquainted with a few more people who hadn’t retired for the night yet. Sentries casually kept an eye on them as they wandered around, allowing them to go into certain areas, not allowing them in others. Both men found the opportunity to talk to several sentries that they passed, learning more about life at the base and their history of fighting the biomechs. They were friendly enough, more than willing to talk to the Power Team, but there seemed to be some sort of emotional detachment to their descriptions of their daily lives that neither Scout nor Tank could quite understand.

Inside, Hawk stared out the window of their assigned quarters at the stillness. So many people and it was suddenly so quiet? How was that possible? Then again, that had been a day for the impossible to be likely. Maybe he needed to put the word “possible” on the back burner for a while?

Behind him, Jon sat down on the lower bunk and sighed. Without something else to occupy his mind, Jon was finally forced to confront his feelings. He hadn’t done that in eight months. Hawk knew it’d been hard to have seen Jennifer, but Jon had risen to the occasion. He behaved like the captain of a resistance group and listened to the leader of another group, but now -- Hawk looked at his friend and saw the sadness in his eyes. Sadness, shock, surprise – the woman Jon loved was there, and he couldn’t say anything to her. She didn’t know him, and forcing a memory could do untold damage to her and one thousand others.

Those first few hours following the base explosion, when they knew that Jennifer was dead and that they would find nothing of her to bury, Jon had become angrier, sadder and more despondent than Hawk had ever seen him. Dread had taken Jennifer from him, and Jon changed. He put his idealism behind him. His resolve to end Dread’s reign transformed – Jon was out for revenge. There would be no mercy for Dread, no quarter given. Whatever leniency Jon might have allowed for Lyman Taggart was destroyed by Dread. Jon had become a much darker personality, a much angrier man than Hawk had ever seen him.

What Jon would never forgive himself for was the fact Jennifer had died without knowing how he felt about her. The guilt of that one fact had haunted Jon ever since. He never told her how important she was to him. If there had been a grave, perhaps he could have spoken to her that way, but there was nothing but a demolished mountain of stone, steel and rock, a marker bearing her name and the devastating memory that Jennifer had died protecting Stuart Power’s legacy and secrets, protecting her team with her own life.

Then, merely hours earlier, everything they had known for eight months was turned upside down when they saw Annie.

They were quiet for a moment, and then Hawk asked, “How are you doing?”

Jon almost chuckled. “I’m fine.”

“Jon?” Hawk wasn’t going to let him get away with a simple I’m fine.

Jon was silent for a moment, and then sighed. “Jennifer’s alive, Hawk. She’s been alive for eight months, here for six of those months while we’ve been fighting Dread thinking she was dead and gone, but she’s alive. We didn’t try to find her or rescue her. We weren’t there when she was reintegrated. We weren’t there when she patched up. We weren’t there when she woke up. She’s alive. I don’t know how she’s alive after that beating she took from Blastarr, and I can’t seem to get that straight in my head,” Jon told him.

Hawk didn’t know what to tell him. He certainly didn’t have a clue himself, but he understood the lament. It had been eight months. That was a long time to feel grief and guilt and unrelenting anger. “I think we’re all feeling guilty, but we didn’t know. We had no idea that there was time for Blastarr to digitize her. We were watching when it all happened, and we didn’t see or hear anything that made us think there was a chance.”

“We let her down,” Jon muttered. “We were the first people Jennifer ever trusted, and we weren’t there for her when she needed us the most. Now she’s here, and I don’t even know how to help her.”

That statement allowed Hawk some added insight. He said gently, “Jennifer’s one of the most resourceful people I’ve ever met, and it looks like Annie is too. I also think that maybe we shouldn’t think of her as Jennifer right now. She is Annie.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Annie,” Jon leaned back against the wall. “She doesn’t have any idea who we are or who she really is. Somehow, she’s healed, she’s alive and in one piece.”

“It’s not enough, is it?” Hawk asked him.

Jon shook his head. “No. It’s not enough. I want her to remember.”

I need her to remember, he thought to himself. The heartache he’d carried for eight months had changed. The woman he loved, the woman he thought dead was alive and well but still far away from him. He needed her to remember him. He wanted to tell her what he never had the chance to that day. He needed her to remember what she said just before. . .

Just before she died.

That last conversation was never far from his memory. It haunted his sleep; it invaded his nightmares.

All Jon could think of was that the Dread forces would reach the base before they could. He had to warn her. He had to let her know they were coming. “Pilot? Pilot, do you read me? Come in. Jennifer? Come in, Pilot. Do you read me? Come in, Jennifer.”

Long moments passed, and Jon’s worst fears grew. Finally, the vidlink activated, and Jon could see her crouching by the manual controls. “Jon?” Her voice sounded so weak. She was bleeding, holding her side and her arm – she was hurt.

They were too late. Blastarr was already in the base.

They had to reach her… he had to reach her. “Jennifer, hold on. Hold on. We’re gonna come.”

He saw Jennifer shake her head. “No, stay clear. The auto-destruct is no good. I have to blow… I have to blow the power … the power source. It’s the only way." Her voice fought for every breath. She was in so much pain. He could see it in her eyes. Jon could do nothing but sit in the jump ship and watch helplessly.

Jon could feel tears threatening to fall at the thought of what she was saying. “We’re on our way to get you right now. We’re on our way. There’s another way to do it.”

“It’s too late. I’m all broken up inside. Stay clear.”

Jon couldn’t tell how bad the wounds were, but deep down, he knew they were fatal. Even if he had been standing beside her at that moment, there was nothing he could do. He knew it from the depths of his soul that they were too late to save her. He was going to lose her, no matter what.

“I’m sorry we never got to finish our talk.”

Their talk. He wanted to so much to finish that talk. He needed to, but now…“Jennifer, don’t." He couldn’t lose her, not then, not ever. He had to find a way --

“I love you, Jon. So much.”

She was staring death in the face, and she had the grace and courage to tell him her heart’s secret with almost her last breath.

The roar of Blastarr’s approach sounded through the speakers. Jennifer looked behind her. Jon couldn’t see him coming, but he could see the fear and resolve in Jennifer’s eyes. There was no chance, no choice and no time.

“Goodbye. Just think of me sometime. Goodbye.”

She forced herself to stand. Jon could tell by the way she was holding herself that every movement was sheer agony. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe. He could only watch as she bravely met her fate on her feet.

Blastarr came into range of the vidlink. He targeted Jennifer with the digitizing weapon. “Surrender by order of Lord Dread!”

“Go to hell!” Jennifer yelled back, her hand automatically reaching for the manual controls.

Jon watched as if in slow motion as her fingers pressed the buttons to self-destruct the power source…

He saw her fingers move across the buttons…

There was a bright light…

Then the explosion…

There was no final yell of defiance other than her telling Blastarr to go to hell and then sending him there. There was no scream of pain, nothing but the roar of the fire and the explosion as it took her from him forever. Why didn’t any one of them consider that digitization was even a remote possibility?

“Just think of me sometime.”

Sometime? He thought of her all the time. He could still hear her voice; he could still see her eyes in those final moments. He would have been there with her if he’d had his choice. He’d have faced death with her so she wouldn’t have been alone.

For eight months, he could not bring himself to say that she died. She was dead, yes. She was gone. She was a memory that he carried around in his heart, but he couldn’t force himself to use the past tense word died. It was too final, too much of a past moment that cemented the fact she was gone, and he didn’t want to think about it. It was as if the word showed the passage of time without her.

For eight months, he’d felt like a shell of a person, speaking with Jonathan Power’s voice, seeing through Jonathan Power’s eyes, giving orders the way Jonathan Power would, but he wasn’t Jonathan Power anymore. He felt empty, like he’d been hollowed out from inside. He moved as if on auto-pilot, gave orders like he should but without the same idealistic conviction he once had. His heart was gone, and without it, so was his mercy. He was going to destroy Dread for taking Jennifer away from him, and there would be no quarter given. He was a changed man.

“It’s incredible. How could it be that none of them remember anything?” Hawk needlessly pondered. “How can they do what they’ve done without memories?”

No, none of them remembered. “I don’t know.”

The image of Jennifer holding that little girl suddenly came to mind. Years before, they’d gone to the Passages and ran into an old friend of Jon’s. She and her husband had just had a child and the opportunity came for Jennifer to hold the baby. She had no idea what to do. She’d never seen a baby that small before and was scared to even go near it. Hawk showed her how to hold a baby, how to support its head and cradle it against her. She was almost too scared to move in case she dropped it.

Yet, just a couple of hours earlier, Jon had watched her easily hold that little girl – that dark haired little girl – with a maternal skill. There was no apprehension, no trepidation. She just hugged Gracie to her and tried to comfort her and stop her crying. Eight months earlier, when Jon knew they would have their talk once she returned with the information from the data disk, he dared hope that one day they could have a family. It wasn’t a conscious thought, it was a mere whisper of a hope and a dream, but the idea was there, dancing in the back of his mind. Then when he lost her, he saw all hopes for his future buried inside a mountain. He didn’t think anymore about having a family, he didn’t think about having a future, but the sight of her holding that dark haired child made his mind consider thoughts he’d not allowed himself to have for eight months.

But hope didn’t keep the doubts away. Did Jennifer still exist or would she always be Annie? If they got Jennifer back, would she still want to have to that talk? Would she still be their Jennifer?Would she want to be? This experience would change her, there was no doubt about that, and the person she was now and would be later might be different from the woman he knew before. She was the leader here. Watching Frost, Bingley, Milo and Lydia – he looked up at Hawk when another thought crossed his mind. “Did you know Lydia?”

Hawk turned back to look out the window. “Not personally. I saw her a few times. Her real name is Olivia Parrish, I think. Or maybe it was Olivia Parketon? Our squadrons were assigned to the same base once before the war. I was under the command of Colonel Bill Vincent. Now that man was a natural born pilot. He pushed himself more than any of the other commanders ever did and he expected us to do the same. None of us would have been the pilots we became if it hadn’t been for him. Olivia was with Colonel Treading’s squadron. Treading was one of those commanders who gave the order then led the charge. He was a bit of a rebel. They flew guard on supply runs, saw a lot of fights. After the Metal Wars, she joined the UTO. That tattoo she had was their squadron icon. Their commander always had an interest in the Flying Tigers of the 1930’s who helped defend China against the Japanese so he used the name for his squadron. I think Olivia’s one of the few who could give Jennifer a run for her money if they tried to out fly each other.”

A pilot as good as Jennifer – that would be something to see. “I’m thinking there’s a lot of fighting talent here in this camp,” Jon said. “What I don’t get… what I don’t understand… all of them deposited here at the same time -- I’m still wondering if someone purposely put them here.”

“And why here? If it is an experiment that Dread’s conducting, perhaps having a lot of talent in here is necessary,” Hawk protested as he sat on the opposite bunk. “I honestly can’t think of a way how it could have been by accident.”

“It has to be for a particular purpose,” Jon declared. “I don’t like what the facts are adding up to.”

Hawk clapped his hands and weaved his fingers together. “Then there’s this Stinson. I swear, I know that name from somewhere but I can’t place it." Hawk stretched out on his bunk and found it to be surprisingly comfortable. “Maybe Scout’s right. We stick around for a couple of days, see if we can teach them anything and keep our eyes open. We may figure things out and get our Jennifer back.”

Jon lay down on his own bunk but it was a while before either man fell asleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

DAY TWO - Morning

The camp was up and making noise an hour before dawn!

Tank grumbled something unintelligible as he pulled himself up from his bunk. The mattresses on the bunks were more comfortable than the ones they had at their base. Maybe they could barter for new ones? He looked out the window into the still dark pre-dawn base and saw people moving around newly made campfires again. He smelled the unmistakable aroma of cooking from the mess hall.

That meant breakfast. He could hear his stomach growling.

Tank stood quietly so he wouldn’t wake up anyone else and watched how the camp started its day.

The first thing he noticed was one of the sentries standing watch over the building. Jennifer still had them under guard, being watched. It made sense. She couldn’t take any chances with her people with strangers in the camp, but she wouldn’t take the chance that the Power Team wasn’t being truthful. At that moment, Tank had a sense of how confusing their lives were – not knowing who they were or who anyone else was meant they had no idea who to trust. Obviously, extending a courtesy didn’t mean Jennifer was going to extend them total access to the base.

Campfires and torches were their only sources of light – did they not have lanterns, work lights or flashlights? That was a question he’d have to ask someone. In the training field, maybe thirty individuals were practicing close combat maneuvers. Just beyond them was another twenty people scaling a brick wall. To the right was a group crawling on their bellies underneath barbed wire.

It was a boot camp. Basic training.

He kept watching. Some children were carrying items to the instructors, others were writing down information on a reader – the instructor’s opinions of the trainees perhaps? He saw the cooks in the mess tent setting up the benches and chairs, getting ready for breakfast. Other individuals were sitting by campfires cleaning weapons. A few could be seen through open tent flaps sitting inside the tents checking supplies. What he did notice is that there were approximately one hundred people up and moving around. If they were training as an army, where was everyone else? Still sleeping?

Then Tank spotted Jennifer – no, Annie. He had to call her Annie, at least for the time being. He watched as she walked by each practice area and spoke to the instructor. He noticed how she stood aside when the trainer motioned with his hand and a new group entered a training field as the one Tank had originally watched left and moved to an alternate field to train on something new.

Each trainer ran his own session, and they worked in rotating groups. That was a useful way to teach. Tank assessed each trainer’s technique. He had a sense that some of their movements were instinctive, honed after years of training and fighting. Their muscles remembered the maneuvers even though they didn’t remember ever using them themselves.

Incredible.

Annie moved to the next group and spoke to another instructor momentarily. It seemed to Tank that she was getting an update on how well the trainees were doing. Then Milo ran toward her, a radio in his hand. Tank couldn’t hear what was being said, but he could just see Annie’s face. There was concern but no worry, as if it were news she had been expecting. She made a motion with her hand and the men they had met the day before, Frost, Bingley and Jones joined her and Milo. There was a serious discussion that followed – Tank could tell by the way Annie held her eyes. That look was pure Jennifer when she was determined to do something and she would allow no one could stop her.

Hawk walked up next to him, obviously awakened by the sounds outside. He kept his voice low so they wouldn’t disturb Jon or Scout. “Anything interesting?”

“Everything,” Tank answered. “Troops are training in the dark. I think they’re training for a nighttime attack. Jenni --Annie just got some news from Milo and then she called the others over. It looks like Frost and Jones are back from the silo they work out of. They must have news.”

“Think they’re planning something big?”

“I think they’re preparing for something big,” Tank observed quickly. “Maybe the increased movement they’re detecting in the area?”

Hawk watched the goings-on outside the window. “Possibly. What do you think of them?” he pointed toward Annie, Frost, Bingley, Milo and Jones.

“I think those individuals are the functional leaders of the group,” Tank surmised. “Security, power, transportation, command center and battle leader. I think Jones is the liaison for the four of them but he’s assigned to work with Frost since he works with security as well.”

Something funny was said because they started laughing as Jones made a motion toward the mess hall. Frost looked at his watch, pointed to the face and then at something in the distance. Jones patted his belly and Annie held up a hand while she laughed. She said something that amused everyone else, and then the men walked toward the mess hall. Milo paused, looked back and spoke to Annie who shook her head. Instead, she walked in the opposite direction toward another instructor.

“That ought to be us joking with her,” Hawk lamented.

Tank nodded his head as he kept an eye on her. “When she remembers, it will be.”

Hawk had picked up on one thing – “Milo likes Annie.”

“You noticed that too?”

Hawk glanced back at a sleeping Jon. “I hope it is just Milo who likes Annie and not the real person liking Jennifer. If we can help them get their memories back, I don’t want to see anyone hurt, especially Jon.”

After seeing what Jon went through after they thought Jennifer was dead, the idea that he could lose her again to another suitor wasn’t one Tank wanted to contemplate. “I don’t think we need to worry about that. I think she depends on Milo and he’s a friend, but nothing more. She doesn’t seem interested in him.”

“Because she doesn’t know if they’re related or not,” Hawk guessed. “Remember what they told us yesterday about how relationships are difficult here? She won’t let herself grow attached to any one person for that reason,”

They watched the small groups train together as the instructors put them through their paces. One trainer joined one of the sessions and caught Tank’s attention. His offensive moves were Dread Youth specific. He looked like he could have been Dread Youth as well. Tank knew that if there was one, then there would have to be others -- fighting alongside Resistance fighters.

“Dread Youth?” Tank pointed out the instructor.

Hawk nodded. “Possibly. But not all gray-eyed blondes are Dread Youth, and not all Dread Youth are gray-eyed blondes. We’ll have to find out. Any idea why there’s only a few training this early in the morning instead of most of the camp?”

Tank looked up at the night sky. It was still dark – “I can’t hear what anyone’s saying, but maybe they’re specialized teams?” It made sense – they had to be ready for any situation so there would be teams singled out for specific tasks. “Or maybe it’s easier to train before the sun comes up and it gets so hot?”

Yet they were training out in the open, no cover, where any and all could see them with infrared goggles. It absolutely boggled the imagination to think that the camp was still standing. They’d made no secret of their existence, and Dread hadn’t destroyed them? There had to be answers somewhere for all the questions.

Something very strange was going on.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

MESS HALL - Breakfast

The Power Team met a few of the instructors and strike team leaders before a rather tasty breakfast, and they all agreed to start training after everyone had eaten. It was also agreed that they would start their “classes” by finding out what the trainees knew and then expand on that knowledge if the team had anything to offer.

“That went well,” Scout commented dryly as he ate… something. “Anybody know what this is?”

Hawk sniffed the food. “Something with turnips? It’s pretty good.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever eaten turnips,” Scout added as he took another bite. “I wonder what other kinds of foods they’ve found.”

Jon pointed toward the perimeter. “One of the cooks told me they found the turnip patch growing wild out about fifty yards past the boundary wall. They found some vegetables out there that they can’t classify. It’s almost as if two seeds grew in the same place and formed a hybrid.”

“I wonder if it’s easy coming up with names for new vegetables,” Scout smirked. “They had a lot of fun coming up with names for themselves.”

Tank obviously thought the turnip dish was good because he was on his second helping. “How much do we want to talk to them about?” he asked Jon.

Jon took a sip of whatever it was they were drinking. All he could say about it was that it was warm and delicious. It wasn’t re-filtered water, and it washed down the turnip-surprise pretty well. A type of coffee perhaps? Some vegetation ground up and water passed through it? Whatever it was, it was good. “Today? I think we should limit any instructions to how the Dread forces work rather than teaching the group how to attack them. I think they already know how to do that. Since we don’t know exactly who any of these people are, I don’t want to give them any classified information or resistance tactics until we know more about them. Let’s find out what they know and work from there.”

Simple enough or was it?

“May I join you?” Annie had approached so quietly, no one had heard her.

“Please,” Jon moved over to give her room.

Annie placed her plate and drink down beside Jon’s and then sat down on the bench. “How did things go this morning?”

Jon knew she must have already spoken to her team leaders, but maybe she wanted their impressions as well? “We met with several of the strike leaders and a few of the instructors, and we think we can help. Just from what we’ve seen so far, your group has put together a regimen and a routine that works pretty well.”

“By necessity,” Annie added. “Sometimes, I wonder if we’d have done any better if we prepared for an attack rather than react and then try to figure out how to fight them. Most of the maneuvers we’re developing now have come about because of an attack.”

Tank cleared his throat. “Is that why you were training for night maneuvers before sunrise? You’ve been hit at night?”

Annie took a sip of her drink and nodded her head. “More than once. The first time it happened, we lost almost thirty people when the biomechs destroyed one of the outer buildings before we could muster enough fighters. The last three times they attacked us at night, they had to breach our outer perimeters. Each perimeter has its own defenses to slow down any enemy advances, and they took out a lot of biomechs. Still, some got in through holes in our defenses, and we’ve corrected them. Each time, they hit us a little differently, and we’ve tried to figure out different ways to fight them in various conditions. One thing we’ve learned is that the scope of their infrared sensors is curtailed by firelight or torchlight, so if we can move around with only that as our source of light, it could give us an advantage.”

Tank took another bite of breakfast. “Outer perimeters?”

“We have several perimeters set up,” she explained. “The outer perimeter is about twenty miles out.”

“Ingenious,” Hawk affirmed happily. “We noticed that there were only a few people training this morning.”

“Those were the specialized teams,” Annie explained. “We need every soldier to be able to do a wide range of fighting under any conditions, sort of like a one-person attack force, but we need some who can fight a certain way if necessary.”

Jon tried another bite of his turnip surprise. A one-person attack force yet specialists --that reminded him of his team, how they were structured. “So you have to prepare for any contingency,” he suggested.

Tank leaned over and asked in a low voice, “There is one thing we’ve been wondering about. You train out in the open. You camp out in the open. Aren’t you worried about Dread’s forces spying on you and attacking from the air?”

Annie smiled mischievously. “We did at first when we first found out that Dread and biomechs existed, then we found some of the defensive capabilities this site had. We’ve been able to utilize them.”

“Such as?”

“Have you tried using any of your communicators?” Annie asked them.

Immediately, all four checked their communicators. “I’m getting a signal, but there’s some interference,” Scout said. “Wait, I know that frequency… that would jam any signal a surveillance drone or camera uses. Is it something natural in the area?”

“Natural or manmade, we don’t know,” Annie shrugged. “There’s an antiquated signal generated somewhere nearby that we can’t triangulate, but wherever it is, it interferes with video signals for twenty miles in any direction from this camp. Audio can still go through on the lower communication frequencies like Freedom Two’s broadcast or our radio signals with minimal interference. Even the clickers can communicate but it’s with some difficulty. And as far as anyone coming in here on foot, we have guards and a system of signals that let us patrol for those same twenty miles in any direction. We can train at any hour of any day and not have to worry about being watched.”

Tank took another bite of the turnip surprise. “How can you be certain we can be trusted with information like this after only meeting us yesterday?”

“I haven’t told you any secrets,” she countered quickly, challenging them to say something. “You’re in our base; it was easy enough for you to figure all this out in the first few hours. However, in those few hours, we’ve had the chance to do research on all of you, interview you, and check all of you out. Once we determined that you’re on our side and you’re going to be training some of our people, you need to be aware that you might have problems communicating depending on what frequencies your radios use.”

Hawk sat back and sighed. “Jon, forget us teaching them anything. I think we need to learn from them. They’re sneaky.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jon spoke with strike team leaders about basic tactics the Dread forces used while Scout explained to several advance crews the various kinds of weaponry biomechs carried and how they could be hidden on the metal shells. Tank was enjoying himself immensely practicing hand-to-hand combat maneuvers with the ground troops, and Hawk explained to some of the guards and sentries how the Dread troops infiltrated towns in the past by both air and ground forces.

The resistance group had an innate ability to put all sorts of information together and adjust it for their own purposes. Even the general information the Power Team was giving them was quickly absorbed into their overall perception of the enemy and their fighting abilities. All through the morning hours, Annie would venture by the groups and listen for a while before moving on. She seemed impressed by what she heard, but what she was thinking, none of the guys could guess.

The “classes” each started out with some dated information, some ordinary military procedures and a bit of history of the fight with Dread. Some of the history was new information to the soldiers. The resistance group had been so intent on fighting to stay alive, they hadn’t considered exactly how extensive Dread’s forces were or specifically what he was fighting for. The placement of human minds into metalloid bodies and the subsequent annihilation of the human race? Dread was serious about doing that? No wonder he was considered a bad guy.

Hopefully, no one at the base realized that the Power Team wasn’t telling them anything Dread’s forces didn’t already know. Without knowing exactly who some of the people they were instructing were, the team didn’t want to risk giving someone working for Dread information that the Resistance used.

The instructors seemed to pick up on the fact that they were holding back information initially, and as one of the strike team leaders said, “It’s best to start at what we know and work up from there, right?”

The team realized quickly enough they didn’t fool anyone.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Scout thought he was going to teach the technical engineers how to adapt old equipment to new uses? Well, he did. He knew ways to turn old equipment into items used for military purposes, but what he soon discovered was that the technical engineers had learned how to adapt old equipment for everyday uses. Ed, the lead engineer, showed him some of their own inventions such as old car engines converted into temporary power generators, small windmills that turned grindstones to mill wild wheat into flour, and new ways to create steam power to help cook food and sterilize medical equipment. Their inventions were impressive; there was no doubt about that.

“Ever had fresh water before?” Ed asked him.

“Uh, no,” Scout told him. “Not until I came here.”

Ed led him away from the center of the camp. “Come on. Let me show you how we get that.”

“Do you haul it in from the streams in the forest?” Scout asked him as they made their way toward a series of freshly filled-in holes.

“Nope. We dug wells.”

One hole after the other was dug, seemingly following a particular path, most refilled with its own dirt. “Annie asked us if we could figure out a way to get fresh water in here easier than carrying it in buckets from the streams and safer since biomechs were attacking us out in the woods. We dug holes all over until we finally tapped into an underground stream. After that, it was easy enough to follow the path of the underground water route and dig wells over that path. We’ve got seventeen working wells right now.”

Ed and the other engineers developed different pulley systems that hauled the water buckets up from the wells without needing a lot of human effort. “Might as well make it easy for the little kids to get water too, right?” Ed told Scout. Pipes were used to get the water brought up from the wells to other locations, all using gravity to move the water downhill. “Saw it in a book on the Roman Empire,” Ed explained. “They had some aqueducts that ran for miles getting water from the mountains into the cities. Ours didn’t need to be that long. Annie asked us to keep it simple if we could, but try to get water to the main areas in the camp.”

Annie… “Annie’s idea, huh?” Scout asked him.

“Yeah, that lady thinks of solutions before the rest of us know there’s a problem. Her suggestions really got some of us thinking about how to make things better around here. Here, let me show you something…” Ed took him toward the back of the camp. There sat a well that looked like it had come out of an old storybook, out of a story set in the 1800’s. It had a wall around the top of the well hole, a bucket hanging from a metal bar and a lever that turned the bar and hoisted a bucket up or down. There were no gaps in the woodwork, no hint of hesitation in the welded metal joints. “You built this?” he asked Ed.

“First well house I put together,” he told Scout as he turned the lever that brought the bucket up from water. “I was feeling a little artistic that day and thought folks might like to have one well house that looks like it came out of one of the picture books. The rest of the wells weren’t built for looks, they’re for getting water.”

One for looks, the rest for function – the people at the base camp weren’t just surviving. They were finding ways to enjoy life even if it was something as simple as building a well that looked like an antique so everyone could have something novel to look at. “Any idea how you knew what you were doing?” Scout asked him.

“Not a single clue. It just sort of came to me when I picked up a hammer and a saw." Ed handed him a water ladle full of the clearest, cleanest water Scout had ever seen. “Try this,” Ed instructed him.

Fresh water… nowhere in Scout’s memory could he remember seeing much less tasting fresh water. Even as a child, water was not an easy commodity to get, but this…

“I’ve never tasted anything like it,” Scout commented. Fresh food, fresh water – they needed to find out how the forest started and was continuing to grow. They had to get basics like food and water to the rest of the population.

After the lesson and the tour, Scout walked around the base, his eyes scanning the equipment, the site, everything that the group was making good use of. It was an impressive attempt; there was no doubt about that. They made gadgets that had been buried in the rubble for decades work. They had refitted everything from old blasters with dead power cells to operate on solar batteries all the way to reinventing steam engines to power some of the cook stoves in the mess tent. He was more and more impressed with the skills he was seeing displayed by the group.

Ed wasn’t the first to mention Annie’s suggestions helping make things better. Several other engineers commented on her leadership skills and organization capabilities. If they had known Jennifer, then they’d understand why Annie was so good at organizing. It came naturally to her after growing up in a meticulous machine world where disorder was not logical, natural or allowed.

He kept looking around until he saw Annie at that cargo ship again, spanner in hand, working on the circuitry, just as she was doing when they first walked into the base. Somehow, he had a feeling that she would want to do that particular type of work in the few moments of downtime she had. If one thing had survived, it would have been her love to repair machinery and transports. What he wanted to know more than anything was how much of his friend was still there and how much was Annie.

He and Jennifer had always been close. Maybe it was because of their personalities, maybe it was because they both loved to tear apart and rebuild anything mechanical, but Jennifer had made a connection with Scout before anyone else. He always believed the reason for that was that he taught her how to have fun. Sure, Tank and Hawk helped her learn the history and the culture that she’d been deprived of and the captain had taught her what it meant to care for people, even complete strangers, but it was Scout who taught her how to laugh, how to enjoy music, how to dance – basically, he taught her how to have fun doing everyday things. That was a concept no Dread Youth had any experience with or even understood. He showed her that she could let her defenses down with her friends and enjoy herself and their company. He told her once, “Fun is what you make of it, and you can find fun in almost everything if you look hard enough. ” That was when she understood that playing music while she worked or talking about absolutely inane subjects while they were on patrol had a purpose.

It had been a long eight months since he sat in the workshop overhauling a fuel processor, listening to music and talking about absolutely nonsensical topics with Jennifer.

He missed his friend.

He sauntered over to the cargo ship. “Mind if I join you?” he asked.

Annie looked up from her work. “Uh, no. I’d appreciate the company,” she told him with a smile. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stay and listen to your lecture earlier, but I had a few other jobs scheduled for this morning.”

He sat down opposite her and took a good look at what she was working on. “You’ve got a good crew here,” he told her as he naturally helped her attach new wiring to the circuits, their hands not hitting each other’s despite the fact they were working on small circuitry. “I can’t imagine it’s been easy for any of you. More than a few of your people have given you the credit for getting them this far.”

Annie didn’t seem surprised that they were working together so effortlessly. For years, the two of them would work on any type of mechanical anything that crossed the worktable at the base, both able to move in concert with each other. Scout remembered it, but he was hoping that something about it would be familiar to her. Some of their actions must have been instinctive given how they handed each other the tools, each without asking. Something of Jennifer was still there in Annie.

“I can’t take any of the credit,” she admitted to him.

“I don’t know about that,” Scout said lowly as he attached a particularly fragile set of wires to one of the circuits. “From what I’ve heard, you’re the one who does most of the organizing here. Everyone I’ve spoken to thinks you’ve done a good job.”

Annie glanced up at him but didn’t stop working. “Really?”

“Trust me, it takes someone special to get this many people working together. It’s not easy organizing a fighting force or making these old bits of machinery work again so people can have a few basic luxuries like hot food, power and piped-in well water.”

Annie grinned and her attention returned to the circuitry in her hand. “Thanks, but I think they’re being generous. I really haven’t done anything anyone else couldn’t have done. I just got the job after a fight with biomechs. That’s all.”

“What happened that day?” Scout asked her. “If you don’t mind telling me, that is.”

Annie shrugged slightly. “It was the first big fight we had. Up until then, we’d only come across one or two clickers when we’d go out in the forest. We didn’t even know what to call them at the time. They were just some kind of robots that tried to shoot us. Those were little skirmishes, and we had no idea what these robots were or what they wanted. One day, a group of us were in the woods looking for new sources of water when we were attacked by a squad of them. They weren’t a recon group. They were an attack squad. They ran at us, shooting their guns. We didn’t have any weapons –”

“But you did,” Scout interrupted, inspiration coming to him. If there was one thing the Power Team knew how to do, intact memory or not, it was improvise weapons from items lying around. It didn’t matter if it was refitted blasters or baseball bats, anything could be used to fight clickers. It was exactly what Scout was lecturing on that morning. “You had the woods.”

Annie smiled again. “Exactly. Rocks, tree limbs, even streams since biomechs can’t swim -- I picked up a tree branch and charged the nearest clicker. I knew exactly where to hit it to take it down, and I honestly have no idea how I knew. I shouted to the others to do the same thing. There were a few other tactics like slamming a rock into a wire that led to the power pack…it’s simple when I try to explain it now –”

“But it wasn’t simple then because it was all new,” Scout finished for her. “You were going on instinct.”

“And since I seemed to know more ways to fight them, I was elected as leader of the group,” she told him without ceremony.

“It happened pretty fast." Scout tightened a screw on one of the circuit wires. “No matter how you got the job, you’ve got a knack for leading them.”

Annie shrugged. “To tell the truth, I’d rather be working on machinery like this than anything else. I’m happier doing that than I am any other time. ”

“I know that feeling,” Scout agreed as they finished up the first circuit and he grabbed the next one. “Is that why you’re repairing this cargo ship? Is it a project or a way to help keep sane in an insane situation?”

Annie tilted the spanner toward the circuit to loosen the worn wires. “Maybe both. I don’t know if it’ll fly or if we even have someone in camp who can fly it with any particular skill, but I’d much rather be doing this than worrying about the next attack of biomechs.”

The next attack of biomechs? Was she worried about the reports they’d been hearing of new movement? She didn’t seem all that concerned, but then, given their preparations, maybe they didn’t have to worry? They were prepared to fight and were just passing time until the enemy showed up?

If that were the case, then Annie had a great way to fill up her time until the clickers arrived. Scout took a better look at the ship. The metal was corroded in places. There were holes in the hull. The engines were full of sand. The landing gear was fouled. It wasn’t just a repair job. It was a total reconstruction. It’d take months to do the job properly, and that was if she had the proper tools and resources to do an entire refitting. “We’ll keep an eye open for other ships. There have to be some in better shape somewhere you can use or one you can strip for spare parts. This one looks ready for the junk heap.”

Annie gazed at the ship. Scout could see a longing in her eyes. “Not quite yet. When I realized I could repair it, it seemed important that I do just that. Then it felt like the ship was wanting me to so it could fly again – but that sounds strange, doesn’t it?”

Scout shook his head. “No. I help a friend of mine work on our jump ship and keep up the maintenance on it. You should have seen that ship when she first got hold of it. We could barely keep it in the air. The wiring and the engines had to be completely reworked. The fuel system was faulty. The computers – well, you get the idea. She worked on it for weeks and got it in top shape again. I honestly didn’t think anyone could.”

“You gave up on it?” Annie asked him.

“Not really. It’s just none of us have the same natural talent she does when it comes to repairing the ship. She says it talks to her. Not talking like we’re doing now, but it’s like there’s a connection between them and she can tell when it’s working fine or if it’s hurting. I think she can tell how fast it’s going just by how the wind outside sounds as we fly. She can tell if something’s wrong with it just by the vibrations. She really loves that ship.”

Annie clamped the new wires onto the circuit, then tightened the screws until the leads were secure. “It almost sounds like it’s her ship instead of one belonging to the team,” she commented.

“In a way, it is,” Scout agreed readily. He looked at their work, and realized that they’d just repaired three circuits without realizing it. “We kid her about it, too. She’s protective of it. She says that a ship will know if someone doesn’t care about it, so we talk to it, encourage it, yell at it, but if anyone messes with it, my friend does not let them get away with that. Even we pay the price if we put a dent in the hull." Scout smiled as he remembered a few times he pulled extra duty for getting the jump ship damaged.

Annie placed the circuits on the motherboard and began testing them one by one. “You talk to a ship?” Annie asked.

Scout laughed. He realized how ridiculous it sounded. “Sometimes. We know it’s not a living creature though. It’s just for fun.”

“Fun? That’s something we don’t get much of around here,” Annie told him. “But I guess fun is what you make of it, and you can find fun in almost anything if you look hard enough, right?”

Scout stopped working momentarily. Those were his words from long ago being repeated. “Yeah. That you can." In a quick change of subject, he said, “That spanner of yours looks like it’s seen better days.”

Annie held up the old-fashioned spanner. It was old, there was no doubt about that, but it was working. “Yeah, I’d love to have a new one. When I found it and picked it up, it was almost like I knew exactly what to do with it but it doesn’t seem to work as efficiently as I think it should.”

Scout motioned for her to hand him the spanner which she did without hesitation. Oddly enough, Scout was the only person she had ever trusted with her primary tool. It was like a skeleton key – it could get in anywhere and do anything. Even the captain didn’t dare touch the spanner without Jennifer’s express permission. “This model is over thirty years old too,” he told her.

“I found it in a tool room,” she told him. There were a couple of others, but they didn’t work at all. I stripped them of parts to make this one work. It gets the job done.”

“That it does. Sometimes, it’s interesting to think what these older ones could do, even if they can’t do everything the modern ones can. We only have one on the ship that we need, but we’ll try to find you a newer one. A good working spanner is more valuable to a tech or an engineer than any other tool they have." He might have said worth its weight in gold, but he wasn’t sure Annie would understand that reference.

She took the spanner back and continued working. “I’d appreciate it,” she told him.

“So,” he pointed his thumb toward the ship, “think you’ll actually be able to get this bird flying again?”

Annie glanced at the cargo ship again. “I hope so. I think it wants to fly again. And…”

Scout saw something change in Annie’s expression. “And?”

“And maybe once I get it repaired, I’ll find out if I just know how to repair them or if I know how to fly them as well. I’ve had this feeling that I might have been a pilot.”

She thought she might have been a pilot? Was it a memory? “A feeling? What kind of feeling?” he asked.

Annie searched for the right words. “I don’t know how to explain it. I know what the controls are, I know what they do, and I can imagine what flying might feel like. Sometimes, I think if I were to sit in the pilot’s seat, I’d know exactly what to do. I guess that doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“No, it does,” Scout told her. “Since you don’t know who you were or what you did, then maybe it’s a way for your past to talk to you? Give you an idea about who you were? It’s very possible you were a pilot.”

Annie placed the motherboard aside and picked up the fuel system controller that needed to be completely rebuilt. “Pilot. You know, I do like the sound of that. It seems familiar.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hawk couldn’t figure out if it was instinct, intuition or forgotten experience, but whatever it was, it served the group well. Maybe it was buried memories coming to the fore? Somehow, the guards and sentries weren’t learning how to fight so much as it seemed they were being reminded how to fight. If that was the case, then that meant that maybe they’d have an easier time helping the group get their memories back if they could remind them other things.

Maybe they’d get Jennifer back sooner than they thought.

For a brief moment, Hawk pondered his thought. Was it selfish to make getting Jennifer back their priority? Was it wrong to think that? He wanted to help everyone else at the base camp, but Jennifer was different. She was like a daughter to him. In some ways, Jennifer reminded him of Katie. Neither one paid any attention to the word impossible. Both were stubborn and independent. Both could use logic to convince others of their position on a subject with incredible skill. Katie and Jennifer would have been close in age; they might have been friends in another life.

Friends -- that was a word that had a significant meaning when it came to Jennifer. It took the team a long time to get through Jennifer’s anger and earn her trust. None of them had any idea what the Dread Youth believed until they met Jennifer that fateful day, so undoing all the brainwashing a Dread Youth was subjected to had been a learning experience. There was so much of life she was unaware of, and learning that most of what she knew was a lie angered her. It took a while for her to realize that no matter what happened in her early life, she was now free to learn the truth, to find out what it meant to be human. Eventually, she lost the rage against Dread but kept a healthy anger toward the evils of the Machine Empire. She was interested in everything and wanted to learn all about life. It took time, but she learned to smile and laugh with them, to share stories and jokes with them. But that was before. Now, she was doing all those things with Milo, Frost, Bingley and Jones, and Hawk wasn’t comfortable with that – even if she was Annie and not Jennifer.

No, he wasn’t being selfish. He was being human. He wanted his friend back, and until then, he’d help train a new resistance group and maybe learn a few new tricks himself.

Hawk found Jon right after lunch to discuss the day’s events. Jon was taking a quick water break before moving on to the next group to discuss basic tactics.

“Fresh water. Can you believe it?” Hawk asked him.

Jon shook his head as he handed Hawk a cup. “When was the last time you had fresh water? Not filtrated, not piped in, but fresh, straight-from-the-well water?”

“When I took you and Mitch on that camping trip to Yellowstone,” Hawk said as he sipped at the clear, cold liquid. “Stuart joined us the next day after trying to get the Joint Chiefs to pay attention to what Taggart was doing. I think that was just a month before everything went to hell in a hand basket.”

“About a month,” Jon agreed. “I remember Katie and Joanna came a day or two after Dad got there. Didn’t Katie have a recital that delayed them?”

“No,” Hawk corrected. “She came back from band camp, and she and Joanna came to the campsite the next day.”

“Band camp,” Jon reminisced. “She could play a saxophone like nobody’s business.”

“She loved jazz,” Hawk added. “There was a jazz camp she wanted to go to, but it was for older kids. No way was I letting my little girl go to that until she was older.”

Jon took another sip of the water, his memories of Yellowstone obviously playing in his mind. “Mitch and I went swimming in one of those hot springs. I remember that. The water coming over the falls was so clean and clear… now, so many of the water sources are polluted, I didn’t know there were any fresh water wells left on the continent.”

Hawk considered that for a moment, then answered, “We didn’t think we’d find free growing vegetables either, but they’re out there in those woods. Maybe the water and the vegetables being here are connected somehow?”

“We’ve got to find out how,” Jon told him. “This could get food to all the survivors.”

“Speaking of survivors, I’m beginning to see how this group has stayed alive as a cohesive fighting group,” Hawk commented. “It almost looks like the people who exhibited a particular ability are the ones who are training others. Remember when Jennifer told us that Felix found out he could fight a certain way and then she asked him to teach everyone else those moves? I think the rest of the trainers were found the same way."

“What about the teams?” Jon asked him.

Hawk took another sip of water. “I’d be guessing right now. I think they have training levels according to people’s skill. The trainers write things down when the troops are put through their paces – maybe it’s a way of ranking each soldier? Who goes on the missions may be determined by skill level – I think the strike teams are their elite forces and but they each have support teams. I don’t see anyone purposely putting teams together this way though.”

“The Dread Youth uses a similar technique to determine who’ll make youth leader or overunit,” Jon muttered. “It’s effective." He watched the various people go about their day, performing the tasks necessary to keep a base going. “I noticed that some of the people had a certain look to them.”

“Dread Youth, you mean?” Hawk asked him. “I noticed that too. Maybe they remember some of their training methods. How many of them do you think are here?”

Jon looked around, from left to right, then said, “Maybe thirty so far? I spoke to one earlier today, a strike team leader calling himself Patton. He claimed that he doesn’t remember anything before waking up here either.”

“You might want to ask Jenni – uh, Annie about how some of the people got the jobs they have. But seriously, why would a Dread Youth be digitized?” Hawk asked.

“I have no idea,” Jon admitted. “Unless they were being punished for going against Dread, they probably wouldn’t have been. It doesn’t make any sense unless they were placed here to act as spies.”

“None of this is making any sense yet. Maybe if we can find out more about the people, we can put some of the pieces together and figure out this puzzle.”

Jon poured himself another cup of water. “You said that Doctor Stinson seemed familiar to you,” Jon reminded him. “Any luck there?”

Hawk shook his head. “No. I’ll head back to the jump ship today and see what I can find in the computer." Hawk noticed that Jon seemed to stand still. Something had his attention.

Hawk looked across the field and saw what had claimed Jon’s interest. Annie and Scout were working on parts for the cargo ship when some children ran to her. Hawk could vaguely hear them ask for help and then he saw Annie take an item a child handed her and use an antiquated spanner on it to open the outer facing. Hawk noticed that Jon was watching her intently as she effortlessly attached wires and tightened screws so the children could be entertained by whatever recording was on the broken device.

“That girl’s still good with anything mechanical,” Hawk noticed.

Jon nodded his head. “They couldn’t take that away from her.”

“She seems a little more comfortable around children than she used to be." Hawk wondered if Jon ever considered the future with a wife, children or family anymore. He never spoke of it. Maybe that was the answer to his question?

They watched for a few more moments before Jon said, “They seem to like her too.”

Obviously, Jon wasn’t going to talk about anything like a future family at that moment. “She’s done an incredible job here,” Hawk commented.

“It’s more than any of us could have done,” Jon agreed. “She’s organized an entire army against Dread, and not a single one of them have any idea who they are or what they did before they were digitized. What happens when they remember who they are?”

When they remember… Hawk noticed that Jon didn’t say if they remembered. He didn’t know how to answer. Jon was worried, and truth be told, he had every reason to be concerned. If they got their Jennifer back, would she be content to be a corporal, a pilot, a member of a five-person team after leading an army? Then again, if she did remember who she was, would she want to lead an army? Jennifer had the leadership skills necessary for command, she had learned the people skills, she had taken the lead in several of their missions but her heart really did lie with flying the jump ship and working with a team rather than leading it.

But that was then. What were her interests now? Would being Annie change her so profoundly that she wouldn’t be their Jennifer anymore?

So many questions, but he was sure he knew the answer to the one question he believed was plaguing Jon. “I don’t know what’ll happen. I know it’s hard on the rest of us to not be able to tell her who we are or who she is, and I know it’s worse on you.”

Jon was quiet for a few moments. Finally, he said, “I can handle it.”

Hawk glanced back. He noticed the firm set to Jon’s jaw, the frown around his eyes. This was not Jon’s usual way of ‘handling’ anything. “Jon, I’ve known you since before you were born. You ought to know by now you can’t fool me. I know the woman you love is right here, and you can’t tell her anything. This is the same woman who used practically her last breath to tell you how she feels, and you’ve got to be wondering if all that will change once she’s Jennifer again.”

Jon leaned against a nearby table, his gaze never straying far from Annie. He set the cup down and looked at Hawk. “Things change,” Jon said lowly.

“Some things do. Some things stay the same. But I don’t think you have to worry about Milo. He may like her, but I don’t think she returns those particular feelings. That girl loves you, Jon. She just doesn’t remember. When she does remember, then she’ll know that we were all here trying to help her once we found her." They watched as Jennifer turned back to the workbench to resume working. She and Scout talked with each other, sometimes talking, sometimes smiling. “I wonder if Scout has found out how much of Jennifer is still there.”

“He’s been there for a while,” Jon told him. “She’s behaving like she did back at the base when they would work together on some repair project. If we didn’t know she was Annie, we’d swear it was Jennifer. She’s still there.”

So Jon had been watching her. Casually, of course, Hawk thought to himself. “You need to find out what you can too. If we can get her to remember one thing, maybe the rest of her memory will come back." He turned very serious. “I do know one thing -- she’s going to give me hell for rewiring the secondary power supply to the engines through the shields a couple of weeks ago. Then there are all the scratches I’ve put on the jump ship…”

Jon laughed at that – a genuine laugh. It’d been months since Hawk had heard that sound. “Forget the scratches. It’s those dents you’ll have to worry about. You might win some points with Jennifer if Annie sees you repairing the ship.”

Another thought occurred to Hawk. “Annie has no memory of Jennifer. Do you think Jennifer will remember being Annie?”

“Maybe,” Jon said. “I hope so. I think she’ll be angry with us for not telling her we know her.”

Hawk couldn’t help but laugh. “When that happens, warn the rest of us and we’ll make ourselves scarce. That young lady has one serious temper.”

For the first time in eight months, Jon actually seemed happier. “Remember that time Soaron blasted off part of the landing gear and Jennifer had to make a forced landing?”

“In that mud field? Dirtying up the hull? I didn’t know she knew that kind of language,” Hawk said as he remembered the incident. “She’d definitely been around us long enough to pick up some rather salty words. But that was nothing compared to the time I was flying the jump ship and had to crash though an old building to distract the biomechs so the rest of you could get away. I ripped off one of the landing gears -- boy, she did not let me live that down for weeks.”

“And made you do all the repairs to the ship,” Jon reminded him. “And have KP for a month.”

For a few moments, they reminisced about how things used to be, and Hawk saw Jon more contented than he’d been in months.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Command Center served as the information hub of the base camp. Every event that happened at the smaller outposts, the silo, the defensive perimeters, the forest, the camp itself – all of it cycled through there. Everything from newly discovered locations of vegetable patches in the forest to how many biomechs attacked/when/where/with what weapons was recorded and studied, the evaluations dispersed to the necessary personnel and then used to help build defenses for the base camp.

The room itself was discovered completely by accident during their first weeks there. It might have gone unnoticed since the building was underground, but a hard rainstorm washed away the topsoil which uncovered a round entry hatch buried in the dirt. The hatch itself opened easily enough, and armed with only torches to light their way, searchers went into the dark, stale underground facility. They found room after room of electronic equipment covered with plastic sheeting – every piece still functional just not functioning. At the end of a particularly long hallway was a pair of sealed doors that they had to pry open. The extraordinarily large computer room had been closed up for decades. The dust was thick and the air was musty. They let the room air out for a few days while they searched for someone who thought they knew how to check out the equipment. Milo was the first who volunteered since he could explain what a hard drive was and how a program worked. Carefully, without knowing how he knew, he began pressing buttons on a keyboard and brought up the systems database, the network, the diagnostics – surprisingly, he knew how to work a computer.

What no one knew at that time was that the room would open up additional avenues of protection against enemies they didn’t know they had.

Eventually, twelve work stations were set up and placed online on their own private network. A dozen computers, each manned by someone who understood the inner workings of codes and computer commands, became the place where all information was streamed through and collected. The noise of a dozen people and the lights of a dozen monitors all came together in a symphony of noise and bustle, and Milo felt surprisingly at home in the Command Center.

Along with understanding computers, he found out very early that he had an almost instinctive ability to group seemingly unrelated data into an organized sequential format – basically, he saw patterns where others only saw data. His ability to see trouble coming when no one else did was a factor in their survival. Seeing the trouble meant they could prepare for it, and Annie had proven time and again that she had an innate ability to create tactical defense systems against the problems that Milo saw. Together, they were a good pair, a good team, and maybe one day, he and Annie could be more than that?

Milo didn’t allow himself such thoughts very often. They interfered with his work, and he had to stay focused. If the movement they had detected was any indication, then they could expect an attack at any moment. He sat in the Command Center chair checking all camera angles and reading through the situation reports. At the moment, the base camp was secure, no one was attacking and everyone was at their duty stations. For the moment, everything was working smoothly. It wasn’t going to last, but as long as it did, he was going to relax.

Every now and then, he still marveled at how easily it had been for them to organize and form themselves into a cohesive unit. Well, it hadn’t been exactly easy but they had all come together with much less confusion than anyone thought they could after a rocky and sometimes violent start. There were times when they’d failed miserably and others when they survived just by sheer luck and circumstance, but they’d turned themselves into a thriving settlement and a working army.

Army – that fact alone seemed to be the key factor that surprised the other resistance fighters they had met. Those other teams didn’t have a group history that coincided with theirs. Naturally, none of them had woke up in a strange place without their memories, but from what Milo had learned from some of their visitors, most resistance groups formed one fighter at a time. They could afford the time and the opportunity to see if a new person would work within the confines of an already existing group. A new person needed to be able to offer the group something unique that they hadn’t had before, but team leaders couldn’t take the chance that a new person wouldn’t work well in the mix. There really wasn’t room for error. Annie’s group didn’t have that luxury. Everybody worked. Everybody fought.

Milo considered that particular difference. Reputations and rumors held that some resistance groups were more effective than others, some just louder than others, but each one had particular strengths and capabilities that no other group had. Maybe that was the reasoning behind what Power had asked Annie the day before? The groups would sometimes work together? Maybe one could do what the others couldn’t, so they would combine forces?

His group didn’t seem to have that problem, but then again, they were all in the same place at the same time, not scattered all over the continent with limited personnel and resources.

Taking all that into consideration, what were they? What could they do that no other group could? Organize complete strangers into an army? That seemed to be the one thing no other resistance group could claim. They had done everything themselves. They had proven they were inventive and resourceful, so why did Annie think that they needed anyone’s help training the troops? And why Power? What could he show them that they couldn’t figure out themselves or why couldn’t Jackson and Mitchell offered up training of their own? What made Power so important? Jackson hadn’t even mentioned Power’s name until after he met Annie and explained all about how good Power’s team was and what they could learn from each other.

Milo sat in his chair and fumed. His misgivings about the Power Team being at the base weren’t coming from insulted pride for the fighting ability of the soldiers at the base camp. Praise for their skills had been freely given by other resistance soldiers, and they had even impressed the famous Captain Power. They could fight, they were good, they defeated clickers time and again – but no, Annie was right – there was always room for improvement. There was always a need to know more about how to fight and survive. Just because Milo didn’t like Power being there didn’t mean that they could pass up the chance to find new ways to fight their mutual enemies.

Blasted clickers.

When the attacks had first started, no one asked why. They didn’t have time to wonder why. They just knew they had to fight to stay alive. They had learned some things about Dread, but the Power Team had explained the rest of the mystery behind him and his Machine Empire. Now, knowing that Dread believed metal and gears were superior to humans would have been laughable if so many people hadn’t already been killed and wounded. Dread was serious in his belief that everyone’s mind should be stuck inside a robot.

“Not me,” Milo muttered to himself. Being human was much more fun than being a robot ever could be. Humans could see and smell and taste and feel. What could a robot do? Process? Rust? Clank when they walked? Those Dread Youth they fought from time to time believed they wanted to be robots. Was there something wrong with these people that they couldn’t see how being a robot was bad? That humans were superior?

Then there was that whole digitization business Power’s team told them about. Everyone at the base camp had all been reduced to a data stream and stored on a memory drive. That was absolutely unbelievable – but that’s how they ended up where they were? It was utterly insane.

“Everything is quiet,” one of the computer techs announced as she gave him a disk with the morning’s recordings on it. “We’re still picking up movement beyond the outer perimeter though. Nothing’s come through yet. The silo’s picking up indications that there’s a massing south of us. They haven’t advanced from what we can tell.”

“They’ll get here eventually,” Milo said dismissively as he took the disk and placed it in the computer to download the information. Sure, the biomechs would show up, guards would sound the alarms, everyone would get in position, they’d fight, wipe out the clickers, clean up and then go on about their business. It was how they lived their lives, more so in the last month, but this time it appeared as if they were going to hit them with more biomechs than they ever had. Maybe Dread thought they’d made a nuisance of themselves long enough?

Did other groups have that particular problem or was their group the only one Dread was attacking that way?

He put thoughts about other groups out of his head as he went back to work. It was a quiet, slow day so far, so maybe it would be a relaxing shift? He focused the cameras and swept the base camp one more time, then he saw Power and Masterson taking a water break on one of the monitors, and all thoughts of relaxation fled. He moved a control to focus on the two individuals more clearly. They were talking, but Power was watching Annie again as she repaired one of the entertainment recorders some kids handed her. That guy had been staring at Annie since they got there, and Milo didn’t like it.

Granted, Annie hadn’t given Milo any hint that she thought of him as anything other than a friend and confidante, but Milo hoped that once they remembered who they were, they could become more than that if they weren’t related in some way. He felt a strong attraction to her the moment they first met. There was an air of authority about her, a confidence that seemed somewhat familiar but he couldn’t remember from where. There was a connection between them he couldn’t describe, but whatever it was, it allowed them to work together to protect the base camp.

Everything was going along fine, then Power showed up. What was it Annie saw when she looked at him? So what if he was tall, good looking by some standards, a captain, ran his own resistance cell? Annie didn’t seem impressed by any of that. Yet. Still, Milo had watched Annie when the Power team first arrived. When she looked at Power, there was something there, some kind of connection, some kind of recognition. It could have been nothing more than two resistance cell leaders meeting and both understanding the incredible burden that command placed on them. It could have been the heat. Who knew? What disturbed Milo was that Annie looked at Power the way he wished she’d look at him, and they’d just met Power!

Or had they?

What if Power knew Annie? That was a new thought. Could it be possible?

“Yeah, right. Wishful thinking, Milo,” he whispered to himself. He knew he didn’t have a chance against someone like Power. He saw himself as average and ordinary – there was no telling who he was or what he did before, but did it matter? Power was famous. He was pretty high up in the Resistance. His job was impressive, and what did Milo do? He ran a command center and processed data when he wasn’t fighting biomechs. His job didn’t come close to matching Power’s. Inequalities aside, he didn’t want to see Annie hurt if Power was playing her. She was a good woman. She had sacrificed too much and risked her life countless times for people at the base camp. She deserved to be treated better than that.

The more Milo thought about it, the angrier he got. The rumors about the Power Team were one thing; the reality was very different. They were just regular people, not some kind of invincible soldiers. What they’d been told by other resistance soldiers made Power seem larger than life, and he wasn’t. So what was the big deal about Jonathan Power? What made him so special? He wasn’t the only person fighting Dread.

And what if Power believed those rumors? He’d have an ego the size of a cargo ship. He might think that he could go anywhere and do anything since he was the Resistance’s golden boy. Maybe that attitude worked with others, but Milo wanted to make certain Power knew that he wouldn’t stand by and see Annie get used or hurt just because the captain thought he could get away with it. He motioned for one of the other technicians to take his chair, and he went outside, walking directly to the site where Power now stood alone.

A quick glance to the side, and Milo saw Masterson walking toward the boundary wall entrance. Was Masterson going back to their ship? He didn’t care. His business was with Power, and he quickened his pace.

“Hey, Power,” he said as he approached, noticing that Power was about to walk back to the training area. “Got a second?”

The captain turned at the sound of his name. “Hello, Milo,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve got a few minutes before I meet the next strike team. I think the leader’s name is Santana? Or Santa Ana ? What can I do for you?”

Power looked so sincere when asking his question that Milo almost felt guilty. Here was the Power Team, helping them out, and he wanted to yell at Power because he was jealous? He seemed to feel himself deflating a little. He could always yell at him after they were finished teaching them any new tactics, but still -- “Well… I just wanted to… uh… look, I don’t like the way you’re looking at Annie." There, he said it.

The look on Power’s face went from one of confusion to understanding to curiosity. “I see. I wasn’t aware I was doing that. Exactly how am I looking at Annie?” he asked Milo.

Milo didn’t know how to answer that didn’t make him sound like a jealous fool. He finally said in a single breath, “Like you know her. From before. Like you like her, and we don’t know you. You know, it’s not just us that can’t have any kind of relationship because we don’t know if we’re related. It’s to outsiders too. I don’t want to see her hurt if you’re not being honest.”

That seemed to make some sense to Power. The expression on his face indicated he understood Milo’s concern. “Milo, I give you my word. I would never do anything to hurt Annie. I have the greatest respect for her. We’re here to help if we can, and I think there are a few things we can learn from each other. I’m sorry if I was staring at her. I didn’t mean to, and I meant no disrespect.”

Power sounded truthful, sort of, Milo thought to himself. He was beginning to feel a little foolish. Maybe whatever connection he thought he saw between Annie and Power was just one that existed because they both lead resistance groups? Did it really matter? When Annie looked at Power, she was seeing something special, and she didn’t see it in Milo. “Well, okay. I like her, and I don’t want anyone to think they can hurt her without dealing with me.”

Power nodded his head. “I understand,” he said, his voice rather flat and not cheerful any longer. “I can understand your liking her. She’s a special lady.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Milo explained. “She’s too important to be trifled with.”

Power stared at him for a few moments, then, seriously, “I have no intentions of that,” he assured him. "I know you’re friends, and I know how important friends are. You’re lucky if you can manage one close friendship in these times,” Power told him.

He didn’t want Power to think he was jealous, but from the look on Power’s face, Milo knew he’d pretty much proved that he was. In any case, Milo knew that it was as good a time as any to let Power know exactly where he stood. “Yeah, I’m a friend,” Milo said quickly, trying to cover up any ideas that Power might have otherwise had. “We work together, and we look out for each other." He didn’t say that friendship would all they would ever have as long as they didn’t have their memories. That seemed to be understood. “And you’re right. Since we don’t know who we are, friendships are important to us. It wasn’t easy making them either since we don’t know who we are.”

Power looked over the campsite at the hundreds of people milling around. People collected themselves in small clusters, each a tightly formed group of friends. “I know all of you want to get your memories back, but you know things might be different when you remember who you are. You might be surprised at who you used to be and who you used to know,” Power mentioned.

Milo nodded his head as he leaned against the table. “Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see what happens when it happens. A lot of us are curious if who we are now is anything close to who we were before. That should be interesting.”

“It’ll be more than that,” Power added quickly. “Have you wondered what you’ll do once you do get your memories back?”

Milo had thought about that a lot, but he didn’t have any real answers, not even for himself. “Go home first, I guess. Find out what’s there, if I have any family or a home left. I guess I had a job I did before. Maybe go back to that?”

“Or do something completely different?” Power asked him.

“What do you mean?”

Power pointed toward the strike teams. “We’ve noticed that there’s a skill level among your soldiers. We think some may have been fighters before. Others, maybe not, but most of you have learned how to fight since you woke up here. Once your memories return, you’ll be faced with a choice about whether or not to keep on fighting. No matter what, those skills exist now, and it’ll be your choice what to do with them.”

Milo stared at him in disbelief. What was he talking about? “What choice is there? Dread’s the bad guy, we’re the good guys and the good guys have to fight the bad guys.”

“But not every good guy picks up a gun and shoots,” Power explained.

“Oh,” Milo hadn’t thought about it that way. “I guess what we decide when we get our memories back is going to make a big difference on our army here, huh?”

Power crossed his arms and stood in a more relaxed manner. “I would think so. It’s a possibility you may have to prepare for. There may not be an army here once you remember who you are. It may disband, and everyone will go their separate ways.”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead." Milo considered that possibility for the first time. People he knew and trusted, people he cared about – he might never see again if they left. “You know, most of what we know came out of those books we found, and a lot of this stuff isn’t in them,” Milo complained. “Some of those stories made the whole process simple. The heroes get tossed into an adventure and they go off and meet up with whatever bad guys are out there. They fight the good fight and then have a happy ending and everybody lives happily ever after.”

“But the hero has to choose about whether to turn back or go on in those stories,” Power explained. “That’s what makes them heroes – they make that choice to go on no matter how dangerous or hopeless it is.”

Milo had read plenty of stories like that. “Do you think it’s that easy?” he inquired, his anger now starting to go away. Maybe Power was really telling the truth and all they wanted to do was help. Maybe everything Milo was thinking was out of line. “Are there really people out there who can turn their backs on all the damage Dread’s caused and go about their business every day? They can sit at home and ignore it all and not fight? ”

“Yes, there are people like that, and no, I don’t think anything is easy anymore,” Power said as he looked over his shoulder. The next strike team was waiting on him. “Nothing’s like it is in those stories. We have to work for our happily ever afters, and you don’t always get happy endings.”

Nothing? Milo hoped that there was some ray of truth to the idea that all the hardship was worth going through for whatever happens at the end. “Too bad. I was hoping that there was one out there for all of us.”

Power smiled and shook his head. “I won’t say that won’t happen. There’s a chance that things will work out for most of the people here. It’s possible not everyone will like who they were or where they came from, but people will have a chance to start over if they can’t pick up where they left off.”

Milo took a hard look at Power. Okay, he was being truthful, Milo finally concluded. He and his team really did want to help. Power wasn’t out to hurt Annie, he wasn’t there to take advantage of any situations and he didn’t mean to be rude by staring. He really was living up to his reputation. “Oh.”

“So, is everything okay? Are we good?” Power asked him.

No, they weren’t good, but Milo had a better understanding of the man. “Yeah,” Milo ducked his head slightly. “Sorry to be such a jerk.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Power said. “You’re worried about your people, and I’d do the same thing in your place.”

Milo shuffled his feet slightly. “So if it’s all a choice, why’d you choose to fight?”

“It wasn’t much of a choice,” Power answered. “In a way, Dread made the decision for me." Power looked at Milo and said very seriously, “And in a way, the choice has been made for you. All of you were placed here for some reason. You’re attacked by biomechs and you fight to survive. You see yourselves as the good guys and Dread’s troops as the bad guys. Have you asked yourself why?”

Milo thought for a moment, and then answered, “They want to kill us for no good reason, and we didn’t do anything to them. We didn’t do anything to provoke them. Good guys don’t do that. That makes them the bad guys in our little tale." Then, he thought for a few moments longer, “Dread made us the good guys, no matter who we were before, and that wasn’t by our choice.”

Jon nodded and was about to walk off when he turned and said, “Exactly. You’ve all been given this rare opportunity to see life from a position you might not have otherwise. It might help you decide what you want to do later on.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was now a proven fact -- Milo liked Annie, and he didn’t like Jon. That was another wrinkle that Jon had to toss into the problem at hand. Fortunately, Jon didn’t believe that Annie felt the same way, but unfortunately, Milo’s feelings were an addition to every other problem that was present.

Jon honestly didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t the one in charge, he was there to help but he didn’t know how.

There was one part of the problem that touched on his tactical sensibilities. As good as this group was, there was the very definite possibility of it disbanding once their memories were back. Jackson was right, Jon thought to himself. Once they did remember who they were, maybe there wouldn’t be an army here anymore.

As he walked over to where the strike team was waiting on him, he began to think about what Milo said and what they’d observed since they’d been at the base camp. This group could fight; there was no doubt about that. They had a wide variety of capabilities but their perceptions were rather short-sighted due to what had happened to them. Without memories or knowledge of the outside world, their entire world consisted of the base camp and not beyond. They had no idea of the true nature of the Resistance. They had no idea how far-reaching it was or what it consisted of. An army could make all the difference in war against Dread, but what would happen when they learned the truth about themselves?

We didn’t do anything to provoke them. Good guys don’t do that in the stories.

Jon thought about that statement. He had no doubt that both good guys and bad guys were there, but Dread had turned everyone at the camp into ‘good guys.’ There had been no choice – it was fight or die – and suddenly Jon realized that it wasn’t just this group that was short-sighted.

We didn’t do anything to provoke them. Good guys don’t do that in the stories.

Since the base explosion, he’d become harsher, angrier. He’d struck Dread time and again without warning, but he always told himself that the provocation had been what happened at Christmas when Blastarr infiltrated the base and Jennifer was forced to blow it up. Jon attacked Dread’s facilities as randomly as possible to destroy as much as possible. He wanted to provoke Dread into making a mistake so he could rain more destruction down on the Machine Empire. Was Jon still one of the good guys or had he chosen to walk down an evil path? His intentions were to destroy Dread, to save the human race, but there was a well known place whose road was paved with good intentions.

Annie’s group fought because they had to. They fought because they were attacked. In a way, that placed them securely on the side of good because they fought to live and protect the innocents in the camp. The Power Team had been lashing out and destroying anything connected with Dread because they could. Jon could have laughed at the absurdity of that revelation.

Being at the base camp had been an eye-opening experience for him. He was seeing the war in a new way – or perhaps the old way? He lost the gloom that had been his constant companion for eight months. He was beginning to feel like his old self again, and the old Captain Power had hope that everything they fought for would be worth the sacrifice – like the heroes in the storybooks. There would be a happy ending somewhere in the future. Milo’s comments hinted that since books were their main connection to any knowledge they had, Annie’s people believed in the mutual exclusivity of good and evil. They fought with conviction; they fought to save the lives of those around them. They fought the good fight. Jon had lost that focus, he chose to give in to anger and despair.

Jon suddenly realized that it wasn’t just the people in Annie’s camp that had to make a choice, and for the first time in eight long months, Jonathan Power began to feel like his old self.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Quietly, Annie had asked each team leader to critique the Power Team’s ‘help’ that Jackson had been so eager that they give. Some had been a bit put off at the speed of the instruction, others were happy with it, but all appreciated that the team had started with instructions that were rather elementary but gradually worked their way into more complex ideas. They weren’t just jumping into the instruction under the assumption that the resistance group all knew the same information – they started at the beginning. Annie was impressed. She’d chosen that day to work on the cargo ship because of an ulterior motive -- from there, she had the vantage point of being able to keep an eye on their guests as they instructed some of the teams and their leaders, and she found them to be a patient, informative group. Agreeing to allow them in had been a good idea.

But, when reconsidering, was it a good idea? Their behavior when they arrived still confused her. It was almost as if…

Almost as if…

Almost as if they recognized her.

Her one hope for months was that someone somewhere would ‘trip the circuit’ and they’d all remember who they were and where they came from. She’d half-expected meeting people from neighboring settlements would do that, but that hadn’t happened. She’d never considered that an entire resistance cell could walk into their camp and possibly turn out to be former acquaintances or friends. Yet, if they were, why hadn’t they said anything?

Because Jackson warned them of what Doctor Stinson said. That’s why.

Even if they did know her, they couldn’t actually tell her. The danger was too great.

Milo’s words came back to her. “I thought they were a five-person team?”

She’d heard that herself, but there were only four of them now. Where was the fifth member that loved their jump ship so much, the one Scout helped work repairs with? She didn’t think that she was a member of the Power Team, but if she did know them from before and if she did have the ability to command a resistance group, then maybe they had worked together? Power had asked if she herself had met any of the other cell members personally, and he added that the various cells did work together from time to time… could she be known to other resistance cell leaders?

And who was this mysterious fifth member of the Power Team? Did Annie know her? Were they friends? Was there a reason she wasn’t with Power?

Knowing she had no answers, she thought maybe she could get a few from one of Power’s team if it wasn’t taboo to ask the questions. She saw Tank explaining hand-to-hand combat techniques to another infantry group. Scout was showing a demolitions team how to disassemble and reassemble a circuit board from a biomech and turn it into a small-charge explosive. There was no sign of the captain… maybe he was inside? Jon seemed to be the one most affected when they met her. Every time she looked around, he was someplace where he had an unobstructed view of her. She’d caught him watching her a few times – watching, not staring, not stalking. Maybe it wasn’t a case of the entire group knowing her – maybe he was the one who knew her from before if, indeed, he did know her?

She glanced around the camp. She saw Hawk head back toward their ship earlier – something about that term, their ship, seemed to evoke some deep emotions in her. It felt like possession and pride and comfort and safety all rolled into one, but she didn’t know why. Why did the thought of a jump ship make her feel contented? She pushed that thought away and looked around again. Everything was going smoothly, and she had some work she needed to attend to.

She walked into the outer building that she used as a field office and quarters, wondering if she should trust the Power Team enough to show them the main control rooms that were hidden in other buildings. Maybe they could make some suggestions for streamlining their operations…

Streamlining… that was a flying term. Again, her curiosity beckoned. Maybe she was a pilot before? Maybe she worked on ships? Could she have been an engineer or a repair tech on a maintenance crew? The questions were beginning to nag at her unconscious, trying to trick a memory up from the dark.

She walked in the relatively cool atmosphere of the building toward her office when she heard an odd noise. There was someone in there. She rounded the corner and looked through the doorway. Captain Power stood there winding the string around a yo-yo. She’d forgotten she had that on a shelf in her office. He must have found it while he waited for her.

She quietly entered the room and watched him for a moment. He flipped the yo-yo over his hand, it went down… and stayed. She heard him mumble something and then rewind the string around the toy. “You look like you’re having fun.”

His head turned toward her, a smile on his face. “Uh, hi,” he said as he kept winding the string. “I didn’t mean to just barge in without you in here. I wanted to talk to you, but I saw the yo-yo –”

“It’s fine,” she told him. “We don’t really have a locked door policy here. We do have a closed door policy though.”

“Closed door?” Jon tried to perform another trick to absolutely dismal results.

“Yeah. Since we’re a lot of people in a confined space, privacy is at a minimum. Sometimes, you just have to get away from everyone, so if someone goes into a room and closes the door, no one else is allowed to go in without knocking and without the express permission of the person inside,” Annie told him. “Sometimes, you really need some time alone.”

“That’s completely understandable. I can’t remember when we had any down time last. We can’t seem to get a day off,” he told her. “If you’re not busy, I wanted to ask you a few more questions,” he said distractedly as he began to flip the yo-yo over his hand and watch it reach the end of the string before it traveled back up to his hand. He did this a few more times, his attention completely on the toy.

Annie sat down at the desk and watched the captain play with the yo-yo. It must have been years since he’d seen one, and she wasn’t about to stop him from getting a little amusement. There was a strange smile on his face, as if he were remembering something pleasant. When they met the day before, she had described him as soul-tired and world-weary. Now, he seemed much more light-hearted, as if the weight of the world had been taken off his shoulders. Something had happened that cheered him up.

When the yo-yo went down on a toss and stayed, she heard him mutter something that she wasn’t sure wasn’t a curse. “I take it you haven’t seen a yo-yo in a while?”

Power started winding the string again. “Not since I was a kid. I used to be able to do some tricks, but I think I’ve forgotten them. You remember what a yo-yo is?”

“No,” she laughed. “I had no idea what it was when I found it until I looked through the book that was with it." Annie walked over to the stacks of books and pulled one particular volume out and handed it to him. It was a thin how-to guide of yo-yo tricks. “Actually, this book. I found it in the same drawer with the yo-yo. Maybe this will jog your memory,” she said with a grin.

“In a drawer?”

Annie smiled. “Those few items on the bookshelf were what was left in a dilapidated desk in here. I kept them on the shelf. I don’t know why.”

Jon gazed appreciatively at the yo-yo, his eyes looking as if he understood. “Maybe out of respect for whoever put them there? Because it might have been important to someone?”

She hadn’t considered that. “Possibly.”

Power immediately opened up the book and saw the diagrams and descriptions for yo-yo tricks. Within a few minutes, he was performing walk-the-dog and rock-the-baby-in-the-cradle.

“Impressive,” she said with a big grin. “How hard is it to do?”

“Tricks? They’re pretty easy. Once you remember. I can teach you a few if you want,” he smirked.

Tricks? With a toy? Play instead of work? Have a few minutes of fun just for herself? Annie thought there’d be no harm… no one was watching… no one could see… fun could be found everywhere if you looked for it… “Yes, please.”

He took the yo-yo and placed the string’s slipknot around her middle finger. He stood just behind her, a little to the side, and gently took hold of her wrist. It was an odd sensation, but she felt like there was something familiar… not in the touch, not in the proximity, but in the lack of awkwardness from standing so close to someone who was a virtual stranger. It made her wonder if maybe they were acquainted in some way from before.

“What do I do?” she asked.

First, he showed her how to flip her hand over and release the yo-yo. “You sort of drop it backhanded,” he watched as the yo-yo went down, “and then when it reaches the bottom,” he turned her hand over and gently brought her arm up a little, “you jerk your hand up slightly to bring it back up to your hand.”

She repeated the maneuver several times, finding an odd fascination as the yo-yo spun down the string and then came back to her hand.

“You’ve got it,” he said as she gave the yo-yo back to him. He put the string back on his finger and smiled. “Now this is called Walk The Dog." He let the yo-yo spin down, then he allowed the toy to touch the ground and it ‘walked’ in front of him for a few feet. He tugged his hand slightly and brought the yo-yo back up.

“That’s incredible,” she muttered. She hadn’t had the time to even look at any of the toys since she was usually busy with the camp, but she could see a definite need to use them to have fun. “What other trick can you do?”

“Uh… how about Rock The Baby?” Power let the yo-yo spin down again, then he draped the string over his index finger, used his thumb and his other finger to loop the string around to make a triangle, folded it down a bit and then let the yo-yo swing back and forth inside the triangle. Then he let the triangle loose and brought the yo-yo back up to his hand. “It took me a while to get the hang of that one. It’s not as easy as it looks.”

“Why do I get the feeling that a yo-yo isn’t just for children?” she asked him.

“It’s not. There used to be yo-yo competitions all over the world. All the contestants would try to out-trick each other. I always wanted to be able to do that, but I wasn’t quite good enough. I could do the simple tricks though.”

She noticed a slight look to his eyes, as if remembering a cherished moment from his past. She felt a bit jealous because he could remember something so simple, so important to him. “What else have you found?”

“Nothing much,” he answered. “We saw some ping pong paddles and a ping pong ball. I think that might keep Scout and Hawk occupied later. We used to have a ping pong table at our base, and those two would play for hours when we had some downtime, but that was a long time ago.”

“Ping pong?” she asked. She had no idea what Power was talking about.

“It’s an old game. You have a low net stretched across a table and you hit the ball back and forth over the net with the paddles,” he told her. He placed the book on the bookshelf but kept playing with the yo-yo. “I just finished discussing some tactical maneuvers with Santana’s strike team, and I was wondering if you had a few minutes free. I wanted to talk to you about some of your people.”

Annie frowned. “I don’t know what I can tell you. None of us remember anything.”

“Right,” Power smiled. “Sorry. Actually, Hawk and I were wondering about some of your personnel. How did they get the jobs they have?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, confused.

“Did they volunteer, did they show an aptitude for their jobs during an attack, did they –”

“Ah,” she sighed in understanding. “Most proved to have certain skill sets during an attack or during the course of the day. There are others who seemed to walk into the jobs without proving themselves on a battlefield. There’s no pat answer I can give you about that. We were all just trying to find our way.”

She sensed that Power was hesitant about the next question. “Did you notice that some of your people seem to fit the same general description?”

That was what was bothering him. It was something she’d wondered about herself. “You mean the ones that fit my general description? Blonde hair, gray eyes, some kind of military posture? Maybe with a distinctive ability to fight in a certain style with no knowledge of where it came from?” she asked pointedly.

He nodded. “Yeah. I do. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Annie waved away his comment and thought for a moment. This was the moment she was waiting for to ask her own questions. “Before I answer, I need you to answer a question for me.”

Power stood still. “If I can.”

“You knew me from before, didn’t you?” Annie asked him, her eyes not leaving him.

He stood there for a moment, as if uncertain how to answer, as she added, “I know you can’t tell me anything detailed. I’m not asking for that. Doctor Stinson told us all how pushing our memories could cause more damage, but… I can tell by your behavior. You knew me.”

Power hesitated, and then finally nodded his head. “Yeah. I did."

Was even that much information too much? She didn’t think so. “I was wondering. You in particular seemed surprised to see me when you arrived." Annie was quiet for a few moments before saying “I won’t ask you how we knew each other, but there’s one thing I want to know. It’s not exactly personal, and it’s nothing that should give the doctor anything to worry about, but I need to know.”

Jon waited, but she didn’t continue. “What is it?”

She was almost scared to ask the question. It had rolled around her worst imaginings since the first time she saw her face in a mirror after fighting her first overunit, but the need to know was strong. “When I look in the mirror, I see someone who could have been a Dread Youth looking back, just like those others you’re asking about. I look just like them, but if I had been a Dread Youth, if any of us had been Dread Youth, we wouldn’t have been digitized – at least, I don’t think we would have. I don’t know who I was or what I did before, but I need to know if I was a good person. I mean, if I was a Dread Youth, then I would have been bad, right? I don’t like the sound of that. I like who I am now, even if I don’t know who I am, but I’ve wondered if I’d like who I was before.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

That was all? Jon breathed a sigh of relief. That much, he could give her. “You were a very good person. You cared about people. You wanted to help those who needed it. You’d be willing to give up anything you had to save someone’s life." That was maybe a little too close to the truth? Did he violate the doctor’s orders? “I don’t know about those others who fit your description, but –”

“You have your suspicions,” she concluded. She nodded her head and sighed. “I’ve wondered at times myself,” she muttered. That seemed to satisfy her curiosity for the moment, but Jon knew it wasn’t enough. “I wish you could tell me the rest of it,” she whispered.

“So do I,” he agreed, “but when you do remember, you won’t need me to.”

Annie almost laughed at that. “When I remember? Don’t you mean if I do?”

“No. I mean when. You’re right, I know you, and that means I know how stubborn you are. You won’t let a mere memory block get in your way.”

“I guess I can’t ask you if we were friends,” she lamented. “I won’t ask if I had a family or a home. Maybe you can tell me this – my name wasn’t Annie, was it?”

Jon smiled and shook his head. “No. But I can’t tell you what it was.”

“That’s okay,” she told him quickly. “I just think it would have been ironic if I’d chosen my own name.”

She turned around and sat down on the edge of her desk. “Now, about these particular individuals -- you’re wondering if any of those people are Dread Youth.”

Jon sat down next to her, his hands tossing the yo-yo back and forth. “We’re wondering about everything. Nothing that happened here makes sense. We know none of you can answer any questions, but maybe if we had more of an idea of what happened when you woke up here, maybe we could figure some things out. It is very unusual for Dread to digitize his own people, and…”

“They may not be telling the truth. They might have already been here or their memories might not have been affected, and they’re agents reporting directly to Dread. They could be part of a trap,” she finished for him. “Then again, they could be traitors to Dread and were banished to the digitizer." She thought for a moment before adding, “When we first fought any of the Dread Youth, we honestly had no idea why a human being would be fighting alongside robots. Once, there was this youth leader who saw one of our strike team leaders, Ulysses, and just stopped. He stared at Uly for what seemed like a long time. Uly yelled for him to surrender and drop his gun, but the youth leader just stood there and finally said something about how anyone loyal to the Machine should be executed if they betrayed it. He got hit by crossfire so we didn’t get the chance to question him about what he meant.”

Jon didn’t remember meeting a Ulysses that day. “Does Uly fit the description?”

Annie nodded. “That he does." She suddenly had an inspired look to her eyes. “Imagine if people who look like Dread Youth were out here fighting Dread where everyone could see them. I wonder how that would demoralize the real Dread Youth if they thought some of their own had switched sides. Maybe that would get them thinking… or maybe they’d just think the Resistance set a trap.”

“Some very interesting thoughts have crossed your mind about them,” Jon chuckled. “As much as I hate to admit it, I have to wonder if any situation we go into is a trap. It’s part of my job.”

“Do you think this is a trap? Is that where Hawk went? To check out some of the information we’ve given you?”

She was just as astute as she ever was. Not much got past her, and she called him Hawk, not Major Masterson. “He’s wondering about Doctor Stinson. He said the name’s familiar but he didn’t remember from where.”

Annie placed her arms behind her and leaned back slightly. “If it’s a trap, then it’s an elaborate one,” she commented wryly. “Then we have to ask ourselves why it would be a trap. What would someone gain by placing one thousand people in the same place when none of them can remember anything? I don’t think it’s just to see what we would do during the normal course of the day.”

“It does seem a bit like overkill,” Jon agreed. “To be honest, we’ve been going through various scenarios, but we can’t come up with a logical reason for anything that’s happened to any of you.”

Annie shrugged. “Maybe it has nothing to do with being logical,” she suggested. “We might merely be a means to an end.”

Jon considered that too. “It must be some end,” he agreed.

They were quiet for a moment, then Annie asked, “Is ping pong more fun than a yo-yo?”

Jon placed the yo-yo back on the bookshelf and asked cheekily, “Want to find out?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The walk back to the jump ship gave Hawk more time to think about the situation. He could see Jon was getting his hopes built up that Jennifer would get her memory back, that he would get her back, but Hawk had to be realistic. There was a chance she could be Annie forever if they couldn’t figure out what was going on.

The problem? There may have been a lot of Jennifer in Annie, but Annie wasn’t Jennifer. If she never could be Jennifer again, Jon could lose her all over again, and that was something none of them wanted to see happen.

As soon as they saw Annie, Hawk saw the real Jon begin to surface. All day, he had watched Jon as he unconsciously let his keen tactical mind come to the fore as he instructed several strike teams, but instead of being cold and calculating, Jon spoke with a precise exuberance. Earlier that day, he actually laughed, something Jon hadn’t done in a long time. It was the Jonathan Power that Hawk knew well -- determined, courageous to a fault and with a subtle sense of humor. It was a man Hawk thought was gone forever. If Jennifer couldn’t come back, then Jon could retreat back into the angry shell he’d lived in for eight months. That would be good for the Resistance, but it wasn’t good for Jon or the team.

His personal loss affected a change in his tactics. Jon’s anger had fueled a surge of battle victories for the Resistance but it made him sullen and angry. It had a powerful effect on the team until they could adjust to their new reality of being a four-person team with an angry leader. They altered their personal tactics as well. They became harder, tougher and angrier. They lashed out at Dread with an unbridled vengeance for what he’d taken from them. As long as Jon walked that path, Hawk would gladly follow his lead. He wanted to destroy Dread, the biodreads, the biomechs, Volcania, anything remotely connected to the Machine Empire. In one explosive moment, their idealistic view of the war had changed perhaps irrevocably. They had become more realistic in regards to the war and fighting. It had become a brand new war.

There was an irony about it all – when they first met Jennifer, she as full of rage after learning the truth of what Dread had done. They had waited patiently for her to work through the anger so she could use that newfound sense of injustice to fight for the Resistance. Now, there they were, the four of them, enraged for eight months at what Dread had done to them, and they used that anger to fight Dread. Talk about an emotional turnaround!

Now it was all changing. Just knowing that Jennifer was alive had caused a profound effect on all their attitudes over the course of less than two days – they were actually happier than they had been in months. Anger over her loss was gone, that rage that prompted them to destroy anything connected to Dread had lessened. Hawk was beginning to feel like his old self, and he believed the others were feeling the same way.

Everything would change depending on whether or not they got Jennifer back. Jon would change, the team would change, the war against Dread would change. Jennifer as Annie in charge of an army could build a more powerful Resistance, but Annie as Jennifer meant that the team would be whole again and they could help build a more powerful Resistance.

Hawk didn’t like making the choice between the personal good and the greater good, especially when it came to a friend – but not this time. This was one time when he was choosing the personal good. Come hell or high water, he was going to do everything he could to get his team back together.

The walk through the woods allowed him to unwind a little bit from the morning’s instructions. Strolling through a shady lane – who would’ve thought that was possible? The leafy canopy overhead blocked out some of the summer sun and provided a respite from the heat, but when he reached the jump ship and climbed aboard, it was unpleasantly warm inside. He left the hatch open so the mustiness would air out of the hold and could cool off a little. He knew he could be in there for quite a while.

“Okay, let’s see what we can find,” he said to himself. He remembered the name Stinson from somewhere, he just couldn’t remember where. Hawk sat at Scout’s console and started searching for the name Stinson. Within moments, a picture and a biography showed up on the screen.

Doctor Anthony Stinson, medical doctor, psychological researcher, biochemist. Alias: Professor Lloyd Fisher, research scientist employed by Broadstrom Laboratories. Escaped from custody after being convicted of multiple felonies including embezzlement, kidnapping and tax evasion. Established other research laboratories in various locations prior to his arrest.

Professor Lloyd Fisher. That was a name Hawk definitely remembered, and that was how he knew the name Stinson. Fisher had been in the news for weeks prior to the Metal Wars. He was a memory expert and a behavioral analyst. Stinson used the name Fisher in order to keep working after he lost his degree due to some college grades-buying scandal discovered years after he graduated. He siphoned money away from Broadstrom Laboratories to his own private offshore accounts to fund his research. He was developing a technique he claimed could alter memories or behavior in the hopes of turning criminals into law-abiding citizens through the use of hypnosis and a type of low-grade electric stimulus to the neurons. Some early successes brought in legitimate funding from some of the federal law enforcement agencies for research.

His notes proved that he also believed he could literally transfer memories, not just copy them, from one organic body to another or from one organic body to a computer. He would recruit volunteers for his experiments – the homeless, professional guinea pigs who accepted money to be experimented on, convict volunteers who would get a sentence reduction or early release if they joined the control groups. Then there were the rumors that he needed more individuals to create a larger control group but the scientific oversight committee at the labs refused. They believed his theories did not meet the scientific protocols of the day and were too far out from the mainstream theories accepted by the scientific community to be taken seriously or to merit any further funding. He resorted to kidnapping fifty individuals over a three-year period and placing them in one of his own privately built laboratories to conduct his experiments before he was discovered, arrested, tried and convicted. After his escape from prison, no one heard from him again. As far as Hawk knew, none of his theories were ever proven as legitimate methods, but he might have been the one to give Dread the idea about putting undying human minds into metalloid bodies.

Hawk kept reading… university degrees… honorary and earned… live interviews, articles, books… then he reached a newspaper article printed in a scientific journal with an endnote about Fisher written a few years before he was arrested -- Minor field of research includes the possibility of changing, removing or adding memories by chemical, electronic or auditory means. Experiments involving behavior modification or redefinition indicate some success.

Minor field? Then what was his major field? And chemical means? That was a worrisome thought. Hawk tried to recall the news blasts… right. Something about the use of an external chemical compound to block memory -- this allowed for the introduction of new memories into the patient’s mind by various means.

Or maybe in the case of Annie and the rest of her group, no memories and an altered behavioral response to events? No, probably not, not since he and the rest of the team weren’t suffering from any kind of memory loss and they were still behaving as themselves… he believed.

He remembered from college psychology classes how certain types of external stimuli could alter behavior – differences in light and sound could make minor behavioral changes, create headaches, change sleep patterns, but the lack of memory truly puzzled Hawk. How could so many be without memories? How could Stinson have done it? Other researchers in the field basically laughed him out of the scientific arena once full disclosure of his theories and methods were made public, Hawk remembered that. Then there were some incidents where his memory-altering chemicals were delivered to individuals at government facilities. Some conspiracy theorists thought that he was trying to take over the government at the time. They never proved that he was the one who sent the packages, and he had an airtight alibi. There had been no trial for that particular offense and no one was ever convicted for exposing anyone to the chemicals.

Come to think of it, no one was ever diagnosed as having suffered any ill effects from the chemicals, but all that had happened just prior to the Metal Wars starting. A scary thought crossed Hawk’s mind -- if the chemical compound was successful, then maybe that led some people in the government being turned into mindless puppets, to do what Taggart wanted them to do because their memories had been tampered with? They remembered incorrectly how things were supposed to be done? That could explain how it was so easy for Taggart to do some of the things he did to get in power. To think that someone like Stinson a. k. a. Lloyd Fisher could have helped orchestrate the near annihilation of the human race and was now ‘helping’ one of his friends not remember her true identity was not a comfortable thought.

Hawk researched old police files. Even the FBI, the CIA and Interpol had investigated Fisher. They were among the first to realize his real name was Stinson and exactly what he was trying to do. After he was finally caught and charged with kidnapping, a plea deal was set in place provided he allocated fully. Stinson was subjected to police interrogations that lasted days. The Feds and international organizations had a turn at interrogating him as well. Page after page of questions and answers, Hawk realized the utter depravity of the man. All he cared about was proving his theories. It didn’t matter what happened to the subjects he used.

One passage in particular caught his eye.

Detective O’Reilly: So why kidnap those fifty people?

Stinson: It was time to widen the control group.

Detective O’Reilly: Why?

Stinson: I’ve worked with a variety of subjects, and one thing I’ve found out is that every human mind is different. What works on one won’t work on another. Someone could be immune to one method of control while another’s mind would utterly collapse under it. Now, imagine if there were an external event that put every mind in a control group into the same mental state or condition or created the same physical or mental response. If I can determine what that external event was and find a way to mimic the mentally connecting properties and then induce a mental or behavioral change through that connection, then I’ve proven my theories. A kidnapping is a particular external event, isn’t it?

Detective O’Reilly: And fifty people were enough?

Stinson: Fifty? Hardly. What I plan to prove will take hundreds, maybe thousands, and I don’t have a facility large enough to do what I want to do. The fifty was just to give me enough varying mental properties to determine the degree of an external event that would be necessary. They were just a step in the process, not the process itself. What I require is a much larger group of people to undergo a particular external event powerful enough to have a profound effect on the mind.

Detective O’Reilly: And what about the people you used for your experiments?

Stinson: Some were very receptive to the procedures. Others weren’t.

Detective O’Reilly: Almost 87% of the individuals you used now have serious brain damage or physical problems. Some will never regain their memories. Some can only remember the day they’re in and have no ability to retain anything else. You destroyed these people.

Stinson: But I proved that some of my theories were effective, didn’t I, Detective? People’s memories and behaviors can be changed.

Detective O’Reilly: Why change them in the first place?

Stinson: Because I can seems like such a weak reason, doesn’t it? Think larger than that, Detective. I get to prove my theories. That is very important to me, but I’m not altruistic in any sense. Imagine being able to change the way mass amounts of people think. Governments and corporations all over the world would be clamoring at my door, begging me to turn the thinking of entire populations into what they dictate, offering me anything I want. Then again, what if I wanted to rule the world? I could change the way everyone thinks and behaves toward me.

Detective O’Reilly: You want to rule the world?

Stinson: Why rule it when I can own it?

A large group of people…

A facility large enough…

A particular external event…

Hawk sat back and considered everything they’d discussed so far. The base camp was a large area with a large group of people who had all undergone a particular external event: digitization. “Oh, no.”

Stinson said he needed a large enough facility, and Jon had mentioned that the proximity or the location could be a factor. If whatever it was that was affecting the group was within the boundaries of the base camp, the site where they first woke up, then it was possible that staying there was keeping them from remembering. Yet, how could one person remembering who they were collapse the circuit? At some point, everything the team had learned and guessed at would have to fit some kind of logic, right?

Unless…

Chemical, electronic or auditory means…

Auditory? What if… Hawk turned, reached over to Tank’s console and ran a quick scan. After a few moments, the results returned – there was a low-grade electronic pulse being emitted from somewhere… Hawk retooled the sensors to determine the source, and the readout established that the signals were coming from old-fashioned radio transmitters miles away from the camp. The strongest pulse came from the ruins of a building in what used to be a small town about five miles away. The pulse was low enough to be almost completely missed by the sensors.

Hawk remembered the conversation at breakfast –

“Have you tried using any of your communicators?” Annie asked them.

Immediately, all four checked their communicators. “I’m getting a signal, but there’s some interference,” Scout said. “Wait, I know that frequency… that would jam any signal a surveillance drone or camera uses. Is it something natural in the area?”

“Natural or manmade, we don’t know,” Annie shrugged. “There’s an antiquated signal generated somewhere nearby that we can’t triangulate, but wherever it is, it interferes with video signals for twenty miles in any direction. Audio can still go through on the lower communication frequencies like Freedom Two’s broadcast or our radio signals with minimal interference. Even the clickers can communicate but it’s with some difficulty. And as far as anyone coming in here on foot, we have guards and a system of signals that let us patrol for those same twenty miles in any direction. We can train at any hour of any day and not have to worry about being watched.”

The pulse from the transmitters was what was interfering with the communicators, but it wasn’t that Annie’s team didn’t have the right equipment to pick up the frequency --- the frequency was coming from several different directions and interfering with their ability to triangulate the signals, and their equipment was over thirty years old. There could be basic equipment degradation that came with age that didn’t allow them to isolate the signals.

What affected them had to be auditory and electronic, not chemical. The more Hawk thought about it, the less he believed that Stinson used some kind of memory-altering chemical to suppress their memories. A pulse beacon sounding repeatedly on a frequency that humans couldn’t hear, a memory effect kept active by a repeating electronic pulse… could that be what kept the group from remembering?

He needed Scout. Scout knew more about this technical mumbo jumbo than he did, but Hawk believed he’d found the answers everyone had been looking for.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

DAY TWO - Night

Hawk wasted no time telling the rest of the team what he found out. He built the nighttime fire and explained everything in great detail.

“Low grade electronic pulse sent through radio transmitters?” Scout repeated as he paced around the campfire.

“He once researched the use of chemical compounds for memory changes years ago,” Hawk reminded him. “But I’ve got my doubts that he used that here. If it was a chemical, wouldn’t we have been affected? We’ve been here for a while now and haven’t noticed any changes in our memories.”

Jon placed a hand on Hawk’s shoulder. “We weren’t digitized,” he said lowly.

That got the team’s attention.

“The particular external event,” Jon sighed. “Think about what we discussed last night. If Scout’s theory is right, then the base’s explosion occurred just as Blastarr was digitizing Jennifer, and it affected the patterns of the people that were digitized. It might have affected the memory patterns themselves, we don’t know . It’s possible that this pulse is using that particular effect experienced by the data patterns to suppress their memories. There may not have been a need for Stinson to use any type of chemical compound in his experiment."

Hawk agreed. “That’s one of the theories that ran through my head when I read all this.”

“It’s not just the metal creatures that are monsters,” Tank suggested as he poked the fire. “What if we move everyone outside of the pulse radius? Would they remember? Would it be safe?”

Hawk shook his head. “We don’t know if Stinson has been telling them the truth, but if he has been, there’s no way to move over one thousand people out of the area at the exact same time. He told them if one person is forced to remember, then it could harm the others. How is that possible?”

Scout stopped pacing. “Because it isn’t a circuit – it acts like a circuit!” he slapped his head. “Then that means… but how… there’s no way… if the whole thing was an accident… Why didn’t I see it before?”

Hawk held on to the stick of firewood he was about to throw on the fire at Scout’s exclamation. “See what?”

Scout was grinning. “Okay, think about it. We’ve been working on the assumption that all this started when Jennifer was digitized, and it looks like that guess may be right. We know someone deliberately put them here, and now we’ve got reason to believe that Stinson had a deliberate hand in suppressing their memories, but what if all of this isn’t deliberate? What if part of everything that’s happened was a coincidence? Out of Stinson’s awareness or control and he took advantage of it?”

“How?” Tank asked him.

Scout sat down and concentrated. “There’s no way anyone could have known anything unexpected happened that day. Not Dread, not us, not anyone. As far as anyone knew, Jennifer blew up the base, destroying Blastarr and killing herself. Then someone goes into the ruins and finds the digitizing storage unit with viable data patterns. There’s no reason to think that anyone trapped in there would be affected differently from any other group that was digitized. And if it was Dread’s forces, then why didn’t they download them into Overmind like they usually do? Why were these particular people chosen to be put here?”

The others considered what Scout was asking. There had to be a logical answer somewhere in the mystery.

Hawk threw the stick on the fire. “If Dread let Stinson have all these people, he doesn’t do anything without a reason. Why would he do it?”

“I think it’s a good bet that even if Dread did let Stinson have everyone here, he didn’t know Jennifer was one of the digitizees. He’d have hunted her down if he did,” Scout continued.

“Maybe Dread’s not involved,” Tank suggested half-heartedly.

“It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” Scout quoted the old saying. “Maybe Dread’s not involved. We’ve got two months between the time the base blew up and they woke up here. There is no way Dread could have reintegrated that many people in that amount of time anywhere without someone hearing about it. Maybe it was an outside job with Stinson working alone?”

“That’s a lot of work for one person,” Tank added. “Somehow, in those two months, Stinson realized that an auditory or electronic control was needed to suppress memories. How did he know?”

The four of them sat quietly around the fire, each trying to think of reasons, either logical or otherwise.

Tank stared into the flames, his brow furrowed in concentration. “How many people would it have taken for Stinson to know what type of control to use?”

“Not many,” Scout said, his voice low, his eyes looking off into the distance as he tried to think through the concept. “If Stinson reintegrated just a couple of people, he could have used them as the control specimens in this experiment. Then it was only a matter of finding the right auditory frequency to control them – if they really are connected some way, like a circuit, then they’d all be affected the same way.”

They sat quietly again, each man trying to make sense out of their speculations and the facts at hand.

“Next mystery,” Jon suddenly spoke up. “Stinson learns which frequency to use, then one thousand people are reintegrated and inundated with the same auditory frequency so they don’t have memories. Some were badly wounded. We know Jennifer was, but she was healed when she woke up here. How do you reintegrate that many people, heal them and --”

“He reintegrated the wounded first,” Scout said suddenly. His eyes almost lit up in the simplicity of the idea. “Think about it – he’s a scientist. He needs every subject he can get for his experiments. Wounded ones may have thrown off his results somehow. It might have skewed the data. He finds out which ones were wounded – easy enough if he ran a diagnostic on the storage drive -- reintegrates them first, heals them, reintegrates some who weren’t wounded, finds out how to control them, then brings everyone else out of the digitizer, unconscious probably, and lands them here." Scout stood and began pacing again. “But his experiments worked. They have no memory and their behavior is a little off. Why keep them here instead of taking them prisoner again after he proved his theory?” he muttered to himself. “Unless he didn’t prove his theories…”

He began to verbally walk through their thought processes again. Talking mostly to himself, talking fast, he repeated most of what everyone had said. “A power surge was created by the explosion when Jennifer was digitized. Okay… let’s run with that idea…if a pulse was created then, it passed through all the patterns stored in Blastarr and connected them. Somehow, Stinson found out that he needed to use an auditory signal for the experiment. He knew he needed to maintain the auditory presence of the pulse, so he had to find a place to do that, but how did he know he could use this place… unless this site was already equipped with every type of control method he could possibly need.”

“The transmitters, for instance” Hawk agreed.

“Exactly,” Scout continued. “This entire site may be some kind of outside laboratory he’s been using. When they were reintegrated and Stinson knew which method had to be used, he placed them here in an area that could be pounded by a similar pulse travelling through the atmosphere. Dang it, that’s why they’re here in a place that’s decades old! The auditory pulse he needs to control them is sent over a low-grade frequency only old-fashioned transmitters can transmit! Our equipment is too sophisticated. The pulse would be changed by the difference in equipment. If they had required a different frequency, Stinson might have had to use another location. This area of Colorado still has some equipment that has basically gone untouched after the initial destructions in the Metal Wars. These transmitters are probably some of the few still working."

“What does that have to do with their minds acting like a circuit?” Tank asked him.

Scout’s pacing increased, he became somewhat agitated as he spoke. “Circuits have connections. The connections have to remain active for the circuit to work properly… The transmitters are using the same frequency…” Scout was so engrossed by the idea, he was almost buzzing. “What if the transmitters are linked as well?Since everyone here was in the same place at the same time, they all act like signal boosters, sort of. If one so-called signal booster were to go down, then it would affect the transmission of the signal from person to person. It would be a slow process, but the signal wouldn’t move as it should. The transmitters could sense that. Any type of slow degradation could do some kind of damage to the link or if the source of the signal senses any type of interference, it could send out a signal that could hurt them or kill them. It’s not forcing their memories that’s the danger – it’s if whatever’s sending that pulse senses a change in the flow of the transmission of the pulse."

Hawk stood up and looked around the camp, his stance indicating his anger. “If we’re right, then this could be much bigger than we thought. We need to find out how Stinson got the storage unit to start with, if he’s working alone or with others. If they get their memories back at the wrong time, that might cause more problems than it solves.”

Scout shrugged. “Maybe Dread got it from the ruins and he gave it to Stinson. Maybe Stinson just needed guinea pigs and got the digitizer himself.”

Hawk looked at Scout, a disbelieving look to his eye. “Blastarr? Dread’s pride and joy? I don’t think Dread would leave him in his worst enemy’s destroyed base or hand him over to someone like Stinson.”

“They may not be something we have to worry about just yet,” Jon interrupted them. “All we can do right now is speculate, and we don’t have a lot of evidence to prove these theories one way or another. We have to find a way to safely trip the circuit that’s connecting them. We know we can’t get them all out of the affected area at the same time. One thousand people? We don’t have the resources." This time, Jon got up and paced around their campsite. “We can’t force any of them to remember anything because of what we’re assuming and what Stinson’s said. What if we destroy whatever’s making the signal?”

Scout waved his arms. “Whoa, no, uh uh. Not without more information,” Scout said. “That could be the worst thing we could do. We may have to shut it down before we destroy it. There’s no way to know –”

“Then let’s ask Stinson,” Hawk said. “Tomorrow. Let’s fly there and see what he can tell us.”

Jon glared at Hawk. “You think he’ll give us any answers?”

“We can be very persuasive,” Hawk countered quietly.

“Do we know where he is?” Scout asked.

Hawk shook his head. “No, but I’ll bet Annie does. Didn’t Jackson say something about them plotting a course to Stinson’s lab?”

“Oh, there’s more,” Scout told them, a genuine smile on his face the first time that night. “She thinks she may have been a pilot. She even said something to me today that I had told her some years ago, almost verbatim.”

Jon looked up at Scout, hope showing in his eyes again. “She called Hawk, Hawk, as well, not Major Masterson. And she remembered how to play ping pong this afternoon.”

Hawk resumed his seat. “You played a game of ping pong against her?” The grin on his face practically stretched ear to ear. “Jon, Jennifer’s good at that game. She beats me and Scout at more games than I care to confess to.”

“I know!” Jon agreed happily. “Once she realized she knew how to play, she had to spot me fifteen points. She still beat me.”

Tank seemed quite amused at that news. “Maybe our being here is reminding her of her past? But if we’re right, then Stinson lied about one person remembering being able to harm them.”

Scout started pacing again, this time more frantically. News that more and more of Jennifer’s true self was surfacing seemed to spur his need to figure out the entire problem. “Maybe not. If the pulse is what’s keeping their memories suppressed, then it’s doing it artificially. I mean, it’s not like any of them got hit in the head and lost their memory like they did in old movies. The pulse’s control could be limited… They’ve been told they can’t force a memory, but if they remember naturally, it might not disrupt whatever’s in their brains that connect the signal, and they still act as signal boosters. Getting their memories back without disrupting the signal… but they’re in range of the pulse beacons… no… that won’t work. They probably wouldn’t all get their memories back if one person remembered who they were, no matter what Stinson may have led them to believe…”

Scout stopped. Jon, not wanting to wait, hurried over to him. “What is it, Rob?”

“The location may be the key to all of this. If they go outside the pulse beacon range, then they can’t act as signal boosters. It would destroy them because the circuit would collapse. If they remember who they are while inside the pulse beacon range, then they would still be acting as signal boosters but the signal capabilities would be rendered ineffective for them. The transmitters wouldn’t realize that there was any problem…”

Hawk was utterly perplexed. “So?”

“So, I’m guessing that one person remembering who they are won’t switch on everyone else’s memory because the pulse beacon would still be in effect and still be using them as signal boosters. There’d be no change for the people who didn’t remember. I think the idea that one person remembering would allow the others to is a lie Stinson told them. Solving their problem can’t be done here. We may have to nullify the signal completely at the transmitters. If we can figure out a way to shut down the pulse beacons – if it’s safe to do that – then we shut them down correctly and everyone would get their memories back while their safely inside the pulse beacon range. That’s a long shot though." Scout turned toward Jon. “I’m really guessing about all this, Captain. If we’re going to help everyone here, we really need to find out what Stinson was doing, how he did it and what he knows.”

Hawk stretched a bit, loosening up muscles that had been sitting still for too long. “I guess that means we’re going on a field trip.”

Jon nodded. “I’ll go ask Jenn – Annie if she’ll show us where Stinson’s lab is tomorrow.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

VOLCANIA

The plan was elegant in its simplicity – or so Dread believed.

Intricate plans involved many steps which could be derailed at any moment, so the simpler the plan, the better. That was a hard-learned lesson after so many battles lost to Power and his team. Dread had put a lot of hours into planning multi-level security and logistics for his projects only to have them destroyed by Power because he always found a flaw in the plan. This time, there would be no ruse, no hiding, no distraction. This plan would be forthright and obvious. What was even more gratifying was the fact that Power was nowhere in the vicinity. He hadn’t been seen in the days since he fought Soaron.

“You seem somewhat satisfied, Dread,” Overmind’s voice echoed through the throne room.

“I am, Overmind,” Dread’s mechanized voice answered. “I have placed our fighters in a large perimeter around the base camp. We are uncertain if their sensors are capable of recording our movement at that range, but it is of no matter. After a month of test infiltrations and mock battles, we know where their weaknesses are, where their personnel are positioned and exactly what types of armaments they have to defend themselves. Our attack should come as a complete surprise to them. We will take as many prisoner as possible and destroy the rest.”

Overmind processed the information. “What about Chase, the organic you wish to use to trap Power?”

The Dread biodread’s head turned toward the speaker. “She will be in the base camp. She has fought inside the main structure every time we’ve attacked over the last month, so we know that is her position in a battle. I have downloaded her likeness in the biomechs’ databanks with instructions to find this organic inside the boundary wall and capture her alive. There will be no reason for failure.”

Again, Overmind considered this information. Dread could hear the processors whirring in the background. “You are sending only biomechs. Why is Soaron conspicuously absent and why are there no Youth Corps soldiers assigned to this offensive?”

Dread placed his arm into the dataport and began downloading the recent reports from facilities all over the Empire. “Soaron is still regenerating and will not be fully functional for several days. As for the Youth Corps soldiers, there seems to be some confusion on their part when they meet our undercover soldiers in battle at the base camp. They question the basic precepts of loyalty to the Empire in those circumstances. They do not understand how so many once loyal to the Machine could betray it and fight alongside a resistance force. Since we cannot tell any of our troops of the individuals we placed there under a memory lock, it creates needless confusion. The biomechs will not suffer any such attack to their belief system.”

“I understand,” Overmind told him.

Simple plan – send in the biomechs, capture Chase, capture as many as possible for interrogations and destroy the base camp. What could be simpler.

“What if the biomechs fail?” Overmind asked him.

“We have contingency plans,” Dread quietly explained. “If the biomechs cannot secure the area, then drones will be flown in to create a fiery perimeter, cutting off all avenues of retreat. There will be no escape for anyone at the base camp.”

Again, Dread could hear the gentle sounds of Overmind’s databases analyzing the information. “The organics at the base camp have proven they can defend the area and destroy our biomechs with a variety of techniques.”

If Dread could have grinned, he would have. “Indeed they have. However, they have only fought small numbers of biomechs. Their defense tactics are geared for the small incursion or the surgical strike. They will not have anticipated or prepared for what I am about to launch on them.”

“When will the attack begin?”

“Within hours,” Dread informed him as he continued on with the daily business of running his empire. The base camp would fall soon enough, and Chase would Be his prisoner. It wouldn’t be long after her capture that Power would fall into Dread’s trap.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

DAY THREE – Late Afternoon

The plan had been simple or so Jon thought.

Ask Annie to show them where Stinson’s laboratory was, fly out there and talk to the man. Persuade him to tell them the truth. Annie had seemed hesitant to go that far from the base camp with an attack of unknown enemy numbers pending, but the mere mention of flying out there in the jump ship changed her mind immediately. Her entire face lit up at the thought of flying. They made plans to go as soon as the sun was up the next day.

Simple, right?

It was late in the day before Annie could leave. New reports of biomech movements had the group leadership concerned, and some high level meetings with strike team commanders were underway from breakfast throughout the afternoon. Dread was planning a major offensive, but none of the group had any plans of leaving. They were making plans to stay and defend.

The Power Team continued working with various strike teams, answering more questions about Dread and developing a few new tricks to use in their next fight against biomechs. Surprisingly, no one seemed worried about the impending attack. Defenses were set up, weapons were placed in strategic places -- it was a rather busy morning for everyone, but absolutely no one seemed concerned that they were about to face what could be the largest offensive in their experience.

“This is strange,” Scout commented as they walked toward the base camp entrance. “Look at them. None of them seem worried at all.”

Tank pointed out a group that was preparing for hand-to-hand combat not far away. “Felix told me earlier that they’ve been planning for a larger attack for some time since the number of skirmishes has increased over the last month. He thinks there will be more biomechs on foot than in transports. They’re planning what he calls the Cannae defense. It’s inspired by the one Hannibal used against the Romans when they outnumbered him. He said it’s the first time they’ve tried it and he’s curious to find out if it’ll work.”

“Jon,” Hawk stopped walking and turned to the others, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Maybe we ought to wait until after this attack before we go see Stinson.”

Jon glanced around at the camp, at all the individuals preparing for the fight, preparing for the night, preparing supper – “They’ve been detecting movement for days. Now they’ve got new movement coming from different areas. Biomechs could attack an hour from now or a week from today. They’re putting their people in place and they’ll be on the alert until the biomechs attack. This is exactly what they’d do if we weren’t here, so I don’t think our presence means much.”

“But what if we find out the truth?” Hawk asked. “If we can reverse what Stinson did, should we wait until after all this happens?”

“I vote no,” Scout interjected. “I say if we can undo it, then that’s what we undo. We might be able to get everyone out of here before there’s an attack. They wouldn’t have to fight.”

“That could be dangerous,” Tank obviously agreed with Hawk. “If we can undo everything, that could leave them vulnerable because they wouldn’t be the same army any longer. They’d have their memories back, and some of them are not soldiers.”

Jon raised his hand to silence them. “We’re putting the cart before the horse. First, we need to find out exactly what Stinson did and if it can be reversed. Let’s see what we can find out from him before we start talking about the next step. Annie said she’d call an end to the meetings pretty soon, so I’ll wait for her. You three prep the ship and keep an eye on the sensors for anything strange moving in the area. We don’t want to get caught out in the forest if biomechs start moving around.”

With a nod and a wave, the rest of the team went to the jumpship to do pre-flight. Jon walked around the camp as he waited for Annie to finish her meetings. He listened to the conversations as he strolled past people. The mood of the camp wasn’t any different than it had been for the previous two days, and yet everyone was aware that there was a pending attack. How could they all stay so calm? Any other resistance group would be under red alert.

As he passed by some of the tents, he noticed other preparations being made. Guns were being cleaned and loaded, rifle sites were adjusted, various types of hand weapons like knives were being sharpened. Shoulder-to-air missiles were being checked out and prepped for launch. They had such a strange assortment of weapons and an ability to use them without hesitation. Maybe all their practicing and training kept them from becoming too apprehensive or anxious at the thought that they would be fighting very soon. After all, that was what training was for, to be prepared when the fight happened. Regardless, Jon couldn’t imagine leading an army with such an attitude. If fear was a necessary emotion to heighten people’s awareness and instincts in a battle, how could you lead an army into battle when there was no fear? Yet, they were more prepared to fight in unison than Jon had ever witnessed soldiers to be.

Prepared – that was a word that had developed multiple meanings in Jon’s mind over the last few days. These soldiers were ready for anything that came at them. Nothing shocked them. Nothing surprised them. Maybe that was part of whatever it was Stinson had done to them, but it was still quite a revelation to a seasoned soldier who had fought everything Dread could throw at him. However, prepared for anything was something Jon wasn’t when he landed at the camp. He had expected to see a successful new resistance group fighting from a base hidden in a settlement. He had no idea he’d find what he did. He was a professional soldier, a career soldier, and he had seen a lot in his years of fighting, but he wasn’t prepared to see Jennifer alive and well. He wasn’t prepared to see a massive resistance cell with men, women and children working in various ways to fight Dread.

The children… that was a surprise no one was expecting. The day they arrived, they didn’t notice many children, but the next day, they began to see more and more of them helping the adults prepare for battles or playing in certain areas. Certain individuals were assigned to care for the children full time, but it wasn’t a type of daycare. The children helped the adults keep the camp running. They helped gather and prepare food. The older ones were assistants to the trainers, the younger ones worked half days with the rest spent playing and, Jon assumed, some type of schooling since the building they were going to use as a school hadn’t been completely furnished yet. Everyone behaved like their behavior was what they’d always known – and in truth, it was. Since none of them had memories, all they knew was what happened at the base camp. Still, whoever the children were, who their parents were, all of it was still a mystery.

But maybe it was a mystery they could help solve once they visited Stinson.

Jon looked at his watch, and the hour was getting late. If they were going to fly there and back while it was still daylight, they needed to leave soon. Jon thought it wouldn’t hurt to walk by Annie’s office to see if the meetings were over with.

As he walked around several of the tents, he saw the leaders of the camp speaking to each other outside the outer building Annie used as an office. Bingley, Frost and Jones were there – obviously returned from their posts outside the boundary walls. Milo was there as well, standing by Annie and seemingly unwilling to be moved from that position. Jon waited, but he couldn’t help but overhear.

“The power cells are working at 100%,” Bingley explained. “We should be able to deliver an uninterrupted supply of power to the Command Center.”

Milo looked at a checklist. “Buffers and batteries are in top working order, so if the power supply does get halted, we should be all right for at least thirty minutes before we need the backups to kick in.”

Frost looked at a hand held sensor again. “There’s no movement at the moment, it stopped about a half hour ago, but we know how these tin cans work – they’ll hit us when they think we don’t expect it. I’m betting on a simultaneous attack myself.”

“That’ll be tough to fight,” Jones added. “We can have the usual personnel at the strategic points, but if we’re looking at a hundred or so of these things hitting us all at once, we could be in trouble.”

Annie held up her hand to get their attention. “It’ll be tough, but we’ve got some surprises on our side that we’ll have to utilize. That might help balance the odds. Frost, when do you think they’ll hit us? Best guess.”

Frost looked at his sensor, checked his reports, and finally said, “Any time, to tell the truth. They’ve been hitting us in small squads over the last month, and they’ve hit us someplace different each time. They’ve got the measure of some of our defenses and are probably prepared for them. Still, it takes time to get a lot of these clickers into position before they can arrange a coordinated attack. With the massive amounts of troops being moved into areas all around us and with them concentrating more of them to the south of us, they know where some of our critical points are.”

Annie seemed to consider what she heard. “Can we protect the power generators and the silo with the defenses and weapons we’ve got there now if a major attack hits with, say, fifty biomechs at one location?”

Frost shrugged his shoulders. “We haven’t practiced for anything like that at the silo or the power generator, but we haven’t seen them attack with that many yet either. Our areas are secluded, so no reinforcements could reach us in time. We’d be on our own. We only have skeleton crews, so I’d say probably not. In the base camp itself, we can hold off an army."

Milo handed Annie a reader, perhaps one with all the information they had at the moment. “All right,” she finally said. “Take extra guards with you tonight. Make sure your personnel are armed. Frost, Bingley, if you need to evacuate, do it. Lives are more important than buildings. Jones, you’ll go with Frost but keep yourself available in case transports are needed. Milo, I need all sensors in the Command Center focused on as many areas as possible. Strike team leaders need updated locations of the biomechs by the minute. From the information we’ve got now, they could attack any of our sites outside the main camp first." She looked over other information. Jon tried to look like he wasn’t eavesdropping, but he thought that perhaps Annie saw him standing there. “Have the infirmary get ready for casualties. The mess hall will need to store as much water as they can for easy use. We’ll need to set aside the usual areas for the dead.”

“You still planning on going to Stinson’s?” Milo asked her.

Annie nodded. Jon noticed that she looked his way that time. “According to the information Hawk got, Stinson’s a fraud and a liar and an escaped convict who did to people what’s been done to us. It’s a good guess to say he knows more than he’s told us, and if I can find out something useful, it might help us.”

Jon overheard them muttering, their voices too low to make out any words. Then he saw Frost, Bingley and Jones leave. That left Milo and Annie standing there talking. Milo hadn’t seen Jon, so Jon kept his distance until they were finished. Still, he couldn’t help but overhear what was being said.

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea, Annie,” Milo told her. “We don’t really know these guys.”

Annie handed him back the reader. “They’ve got a ship to get us there, and Stinson’s lab is too far to walk to and get back before sundown. How else are we going to find any answers?”

“We don’t know if they’re telling the truth that Stinson could be involved somehow. They could be making it up to… well…”

“To what, Milo?”

“Dang it all, Annie, I don’t know. I know they’re here to help, but I just don’t trust them. Especially Power. He’s always looking at you.”

Jon had hoped that everything was all right between him and Milo, but apparently it wasn’t. Milo didn’t like him or trust him.

Annie took a deep breath, and then answered quietly, “He knew me. Before. That’s all.”

The look on Milo’s face was utter surprise. “Why didn’t they say anything?”

“Jackson told them what Stinson said about forcing memories. He didn’t give me any personal information about myself, but he did tell me he knew me.”

Milo took a couple of steps away, then stepped back, the put his hands on his hips. “And how do you know you can trust him?”

“Don’t you mean them?” she asked with a slight smile.

“Him, them, whatever,” Milo combed a frustrated hand through his hair. “We met them the day before yesterday, and you’re willing to go off with them? That’s not a smart move.”

“We need answers,” was Annie’s calm reply. “And don’t worry. I can take care of myself. I’ve been training as well, you know.”

From Milo’s posture, Jon could tell that he didn’t like the idea of Annie going off with them. He was being overprotective, just like that first day when the team came into the base and spoke with them.

“I don’t trust Power,” Milo repeated. “He may be the hotshot resistance fighter that Dread hates, but that’s all we really know about him.”

“Milo,” Annie gently took hold of Milo’s arm, and Jon felt a twinge of jealousy. The look in Annie’s eyes showed that she did care about Milo. Jon hoped it was nothing more than friendship. He didn’t think his heart could take it. “I know you don’t trust him, but trust me. For some reason, I know we can trust them. I feel it in my gut. They want to help.”

Milo blew out a frustrated breath. “I don’t like it,” he muttered loudly, “but, you’re the boss. Keep your communicator on at all times though. If we have to come get you, I want to be able to track your signal.”

“Yes, sir,” Annie offered a mock salute as Milo walked off.

Once Annie was alone, Jon walked over to her. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he told her.

“Don’t worry about it. Since we have no locked door policy, there aren’t a lot of secrets around here. Are we ready to go?”

“Absolutely. The others are already at the jump ship. Are your meetings over with?” he asked casually as they walked toward the boundary entry, Jon asked, “I mean, is everything okay?”

“As okay as it can be,” Annie told him. “The attack is coming at any time, so everyone knows to be on alert.”

They really thought it was going to come soon. Should they leave now? Maybe Hawk was right. Should the trip to see Stinson wait? “It’s okay if you leave for an hour or two?”

“It’s fine,” Annie smiled and nodded. “Defenses are in place. Besides, they’re big boys and girls, Jon. I may be in command, but they know what to do when attacked. We’ve trained so everyone does what they have to without being ordered to do anything and knowing what everyone else is doing as well. They don’t need to be told, and they don’t need me to hold their hands.”

Jon took a quick glance again at everyone making preparations for… everything. “You really do have a good group here,” he told her.

Good group, good leaders, well-prepared -- all professional attributes of a working army, but the one thing Jon noticed with gratitude was the ease with which Annie called him by his first name. She sounded more like Jennifer.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

As they approached the ship, Annie felt something akin to pride and satisfaction, but she didn’t know why. There was something very familiar about the style and shape, something recognizable in its form and lines. The battle scarring looked somewhat odd to her, but she didn’t know why.

“Nice ship,” Annie said as they entered the hold. “It’s a TF, isn’t it?”

“From its nose to its thrusters,” Scout said as they each took their accustomed seats.

Accustomed seats? Annie seemed to recognize the configuration, but she couldn’t remember from where.

She moved toward the front, her eyes taking in everything she saw. The TF was familiar… but how? She quickly noticed that Hawk almost sat in the co-pilot’s seat, then immediately switched to the pilot’s seat. If he was the pilot, then why did he start to sit in the co-pilot’s seat? Something was wrong with that move. She didn’t say anything, but seemed surprised when Hawk asked, “Think you’ve ever flown a ship?”

“Not that I remember,” she answered quickly, her eyes not leaving the console. “I seem to know a lot about ships, so maybe I did?”

“Take the co-pilot’s seat, and let’s find out.”

With a big smile, Annie sat down in the co-pilot’s seat and looked at the gauges and instruments. It all seemed familiar, but not quite comfortable. She glanced over at the pilot’s seat – those instruments seemed very familiar. She felt like she could fly the ship on instinct alone.

“Want to sit here for a minute?” Hawk offered. “Take a view from the pilot’s seat?”

“You don’t mind?” she asked.

“Not one little bit." Hawk got up, moved over and Annie took the pilot’s seat while Hawk sat in the co-pilot’s. “Feels right,” he muttered to himself. “Ringing any bells?” he asked her.

She carefully looked at the control panel in front of her. Something was familiar. She reached out and touched the panel… smooth metal. She knew the feel of that. “I’ve been in a ship like this before,” she whispered mostly to herself. “At least, I think I have.”

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Scout asked her.

Annie nodded her head as she continued to physically explore the pilot’s area. The seat, the throttle, the thruster controls – she knew where every single control, button and switch was without thinking about it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jon watched from the captain’s seat. If there was one thing in this world that could possibly jog Annie’s memory of being Jennifer, it was the jump ship. Jennifer loved that ship. It was her ship and woe to the person or biodread that damaged it. “Let’s see if we can help you recognize anything else. Take her up,” he said. It took a great deal of willpower to not say Pilot.

Take her up…

Annie, seemingly without thinking, reached over and ignited the engines from the main console. She opened the throttle and the ship took off more smoothly than Hawk could ever get her to do.

“You’ve got the touch,” Scout said, the admiration evident in his voice. “Hawk can’t get this temperamental ship to take off or land without a few bumps and jumps.”

Everyone watched her. The smile on her face told them more than anything how she felt.

“Feels natural?” Hawk asked her.

“It feels like I know what she’ll do before I press the button to do it,” she told him. “Maybe I was a pilot.” She glanced back at Scout. “What do you mean temperamental? She feels like she handles fine.”

“For you, she’s handling fine,” Hawk pointed out. “This ship just doesn’t like me as much, I guess. ”

Annie laughed. “Do you think the ship has feelings?”

“You’d be surprised,” Jon answered quickly. “How far is it to Stinson’s lab?”

“Not far if you’re flying, more than a few of hours by foot. It’s almost twenty miles from the base camp. Do you really think Doctor Stinson is the key to all this or just part of the memory problem we have?” she turned her head to look at Jon.

“Stinson isn’t exactly an honest person,” Jon explained. “He hid his past from everyone. That has us curious.”

“And we trusted someone who turned out to be an escaped convict,” Annie said dejectedly.

“You had every reason to,” Scout told her. “From what we’ve been told, Stinson has made a name for himself these last years as a competent doctor. He treats a lot of people. The problem is that Stinson isn’t really a doctor, and his research is too close to what happened to all of you, so we think he’s involved.”

Jon kept an eye on Annie as she watched through the viewport silently for a moment. He thought she was processing the information. “I hate the idea that we let someone like that in our base. Do you think he’s the one who took away our memories? All by himself?”

“It’s possible if he has the equipment,” Tank answered. “Do you know if he’s been in this area long or if he’s come here recently?”

Annie kept her eyes on the ground below as she flew over the newly growing trees and foliage. She didn’t look back at the team. “He was at the lab we’re flying to when we woke up. One of the visitors to our camp said he was much further south of us before that, but I don’t really know. Why?”

“We were in this area for a long time,” Tank answered, deliberately hiding the truth. “I don’t recall hearing the name Stinson before.”

Annie began the ship’s descent as they approached the lab. “Was that your base in the mountain?” she asked.

Four heads turned in her direction.

“Mountain?” Hawk asked.

Annie nodded. “Our sensors found the remains of what looked like a base inside a mountain dozens of miles from the base camp. Turns out it was an old NORAD installation. Scans indicated that it had blown up recently. It must have been massive.”

Scout stood up and walked behind Annie. “Your sensors can reach that far?”

“We have good sensors and good equipment techs who can increase their range,” Annie bragged.

Scout nodded his head and smiled. “That’s true. Did any of your people go to the mountain themselves?”

“No, not yet” she said. “We were able to use long-range sensors once we found a frequency that the equipment could use without interference. No one really wanted to go to the mountain if there was nothing there to find.”

“Exactly how far is the mountain from your base?” Jon asked. They knew, but did Annie?

“About seventy miles,” was the quick answer.

Seventy miles was out of the proximity range of the electronic pulse. It was further out than any of the camp personnel had traveled. They had only traveled in a twenty mile radius according to Annie, and it all lent credence to the theory that the pulse was keeping them at the base camp.

“It was our base,” Hawk confirmed sadly. “We lost someone there. Our pilot.”

Annie’s brow furrowed. “You did?” She was quiet for a moment, then inquired, “Is your pilot the one who worked on your ship? Kept up the maintenance on it?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hawk almost laughed. “None of us would dare go near this ship with a spanner unless she was there watching. It’s her ship. We just fly in it.”

“You lost your pilot but your pilot is the one who took care of the ship?” Annie reconfirmed. “I thought Scout said that he works --”

Jon cleared his throat. This conversation was getting dangerously close to forcing a memory. “Let’s talk about that later. I don’t want to keep Stinson waiting.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Stinson’s Lab

Tank led the way, Hawk brought up the rear. Scout, Jon and Annie walked in the middle. It was quiet. Even the echoes of their feet walking on the floor in the corridor sounded flat and dull. The atmosphere was rank and thick even though the temperature inside the building was relatively cool. They all felt as if something was wrong and had their weapons drawn. An all too-familiar stench reeked in the air. They put rags over their noses and mouths to try to block out some of the disgusting odor. Along with the familiar sickening smell was one of charred wiring and burnt materials.

Scout leaned over and whispered, “Annie, have you ever been here before?”

“Not that I remember,” she answered. “Stinson always came out to the camp. He told us the general location of his lab, and we plotted a course to it from our Command Center once in case we needed to get to him. We never did.”

Tank motioned for everyone to stop and be quiet. He eased around a corner, gun at the ready… “Now we know why he hasn’t come back to your camp in over a month,” he said as he motioned for them to follow him.

Just inside the door was what was left of a corpse. Scout pulled out a scanner and took a few readings. “Whoever this was has been dead for at least a month. Decomp makes any identification impossible.”

Annie looked at the corpse, mentally judging size and clothes. “I think that might be Stinson. That’s the lab coat he always wore when he came to the base camp. Those are his boots. He also had some sort of chain bracelet on his wrist with symbols on it.”

Tank picked up a length of metal and carefully pulled back the lab coat’s sleeve to show a chain bracelet with numbers around what was left of the wrist. “Any idea what the symbols are for?”

“That’s the logo for Broadstrom Laboratories,” Hawk said.

“It’s the same logo on some other items in here,” Scout pointed out.

“Maybe this is one of Stinson’s personal laboratories? That’d explain how he had everything he needed to perform a large-scale experiment,” Hawk suggested. “And everything in here is a mess. Maybe there’s a security camera somewhere that recorded everything?”

Scout looked around the lab and frowned. “Good luck finding it."

“First, see if you can find the ventilation controls,” Jon ordered. “Let’s air out this room.”

Immediately, Tank found the ventilation control lever and pulled it up. Fresh air began to flow into the room, cycling out the odor.

“That’s better,” Scout said as he removed the rag from around his nose. “At least we can breathe.”

Stinson’s laboratory was in shambles. Everything had been stepped on, knocked over, smashed or blasted. Computer consoles were shot, circuits were completely destroyed. Wires and data disks were scattered all over the floor. A month’s worth of dust covered everything, and there was evidence of some kind of animal activity in the dust. The entire lab had been wrecked.

“What a mess." Annie pointed out bloody spots on the floor, and the walls showed that there had been a fight of some sort. If the body was Stinson’s, all the signs indicated he had put up a fight.

Scout carefully walked over to the computer, blew off the dust and patched in his portable drive. He accessed the information via his own personal computer. “We’re in luck,” he told the others. “One of the secondary drives on Stinson’s computer is still intact.”

Annie walked around the lab as the team talked among themselves. “There’s something familiar about the place,” she said to herself but the rest of the team heard her.

Scout looked back at her. “How familiar?”

“I don’t know. The feel of it. And the smell of burnt wiring and twisted metal. It feels as if this was a last stand…”

A brief flash crossed her mind --

Biomechs scattered over the floor…
Crawling over the metal bodies…
Shots fired low…
"Surrender by order of Lord Dread.”

Where did that come from?

“Let’s hope whoever attacked this place is gone,” Jon said as he leveled his gun in front of him and walked around the room, checking all the recesses for any surprises. Obviously, he didn’t feel safe remaining there or wasting time. “Scout, can you access the surveillance system or the database?”

“A lot of the database is fried, but there are entire files I think have to do with the base camp. It’ll take me a while to look through all those." Scout punched a few keys on his keyboard. “But we do have the recordings from the surveillance system. Date stamp says this happened a month ago. I’ll put it on…” he glanced around the room, “the one monitor that’s still intact.”

They watched the recording of what could have been Stinson’s last moments as a group of biomechs and some Dread Youth soldiers rushed into his laboratory, guns pointed at him.

“Overunit Stevens, what is the meaning of this?” Stinson demanded.

“Doctor Stinson,” the overunit called out, “you have defied the will of the Machine and disobeyed Lord Dread. You will submit to punishment." The biomechs surrounded Stinson.

Stinson’s voice was adamantly defiant. “Disobeyed? In what manner? I followed Lord Dread’s commands to the letter!”

Stevens stepped further into the room and placed a projection disk on the floor. Immediately, an image of Dread appeared.

The team saw what Dread had become for the first time. He was as tall as Blastarr had been, but he was more equipped for working with a computer console rather than fighting on a battlefield. He had no gun mechanism on his forearm and no digitizing equipment. Two metal arms, two metal legs, a mechanical head incapable of expressing emotion -- he had his wish. He was now an immortal mind in a gleaming metalloid body. He was no longer human in any sense. “Biodread Dread,” Scout mumbled. “Definitely not an improvement.”

“Lord Dread,” Stinson stammered slightly. “This overunit –”

“Is there by my command, Doctor Stinson. You have failed me.”

Stinson stood up straight, his anger almost glaring out of his eyes. “I have set up the trap exactly as you needed. I used my techniques to place more than one thousand people without memories in an area so they could easily make contact with resistance groups while I ran my research. Some of your own soldiers are temporarily under a memory lock but they’re learning how the Resistance operates and learning where they are located or how to contact them exactly as you ordered. They’ll be able to give you detailed reports of resistance procedures. On my own, I arranged to have a contact of the Resistance send a particular individual to investigate the growing vegetation in the area within the next few weeks so he would eventually meet the group and contact others. He will bring Power himself since there is a past acquaintance between them. Not only that, the pulse beacon carries a message that forces them to mentally refuse to leave the general area so all the information you are searching for can be contained for easy access once the experiment is completed. When exactly did I fail you?”

The Dread image swiveled its head toward Stinson. “How did you fail me? I gave you permission to conduct your experiment and prove your theories in exchange for your cooperation in bringing down Captain Power and his team.”

The look on Stinson’s face was one of confusion and fear. “My lord, I am fully supportive of any plan you have to get rid of any resistance cell, Power in particular, and I have offered my full assistance to further that goal, but my experiments were not conducted primarily for that purpose. I had no idea –”

“Are you that unaware, Doctor Stinson?” Dread’s tone was mocking, his head completely still, his eyes firmly directed on Stinson. “You are merely a means to an end. Bringing down Power will not be a task easily accomplished. It must be done methodically and covertly. One must pander to Power’s altruistic nature by threatening something he cares about, something he would willingly give his life to protect.”

Stinson moved from one foot to the other, his nervousness apparent. “Power risks his life every time he fights the Empire, but he’s never been one to fall into a trap easily, my lord.”

“No,” Dread agreed. “Now thanks to you, my latest trap for Power has been tripped before it was even set.”

“I don’t understand,” Stinson argued.

“I had sensors monitoring Blastarr’s systems when he was in the Power Base. A systems fluctuation indicated that Blastarr initiated a digitizing process mere moments before detonation. According to communication frequencies monitored during the infiltration, the only person from Power’s team that was in his base was his pilot. She was digitized.”

“Dread knew,” Scout voiced his disbelief. “He’s known all this time.”

Hawk sat down next to Scout and rewound the recording to listen to Dread’s speech again. “We assumed it was a coincidence. It wasn’t. Dread had a hand in orchestrating the whole thing.”

“Your payment for the privilege of conducting your experiment, or rather, your orders were to reintegrate the pilot first and deliver that traitor to me. ” Dread’s voice became mechanically menacing.

“He was after her,” Tank whispered.

“You could perform whatever experiments you wished with the other reintegrated organics as long as you allowed them to set up a base to draw resistance forces here so we could learn how they operate. One of my primary goals for your experiment was to gain this information from the reintegrated organics so we could eventually capture every member of every resistance cell in existence once we learned of their locations and access codes. We would then destroy them one by one and bring an end to the war.”

Stinson was so angry, his face was turning red. “Lord Dread, the primary goal of this experiment was to prove that the memory and the behavior of entire groups of people can be influenced, changed, made to serve the Machine by external means --”

“That was your primary goal which is of no matter to the Machine Empire,” Dread said condescendingly. “Only the will of the Machine matters, and destroying Power is the Machine’s primary will.”

“My lord –“

“You failed to deliver the traitor to me,” Dread reminded him.

“I thought all of Power’s people were traitors, my lord,” Stinson argued.

“They are, but the pilot has earned my personal attention.”

Hawk rewound the recording and listened to that part of the conversation again. “Remind me why we haven’t killed him yet?”

“Your personal attention, my lord? What makes the pilot so important?”Stinson asked.

In a menacing voice, Dread answered, “Former Youth Leader Jennifer Chase betrayed the Machine, but that is not where her value lies. She has become a person of great importance to Power, and that is a matter of the utmost significance in the war against him.”

Dread was after their pilot, and she was who Stinson was to deliver to Dread, So what happened? Annie saw the team glance furtively at each other, then at her. Something was going on. Was she supposed to recognize something that was said or remember something Dread referenced?

“She was to have been reintegrated immediately upon retrieval of Blastarr’s containment unit and taken to the prison for interrogation before being returned to Volcania to be used as bait in a trap against Power,” Dread reminded him. “He would risk anything to retrieve her, and we would have been able to capture him. ”

“And I did just that,” Stinson argued. “The first person to be reintegrated had to be this Jennifer Chase. She was returned to the prison after reintegration. Just as you ordered.”

Overunit Stevens walked over to Stinson and looked him directly in the eye. “The organic that was taken to the prison and interrogated was not Youth Leader Chase. It was Overunit Christine Larabee, one of Lord Dread’s most loyal soldiers who had been taken prisoner by Power and who had subsequently escaped a resistance prison. Apparently, she was found by Blastarr in the wilds and was digitized before his unforgiveable destruction by Chase.”

“Larabee?” Hawk repeated. “Why weren’t we told she escaped? We tossed her in one of the most secure prisons we’ve got.”

“What?” Stinson’s voice carried his disbelief. “That’s not possible. The last person registered as digitized was the first person I reintegrated. That had to be Chase.”

“What is the date on the data pattern of the organic you sent to the prison?” Dread asked, his voice sounding ominously calm.

Stinson brought up the records from Blastarr’s computer system. “Right here, my lord. The last person recorded digitized was on 47-12 mark 23. That was the pattern I reintegrated and sent to you.”

Dread’s image became very still. “The Power Base was destroyed on 47-12 mark 25.”

“That’s why we didn’t know,” Jon told them. “It was two days before Christmas. We were too busy fighting off Dread’s attacks to read alerts about a prison escape.”

Stinson paused for a moment… “There’s no record of anyone being digitized on that date. How… no, wait, there was someone trapped in the digitizing processor. I thought it had been the result of the explosion because the date on the data pattern was unreadable. It wasn’t processed as the others were… it was trapped in transit… are you telling me that was Chase?”

“Where is she?” Dread’s image asked.

“She must be at the base camp somewhere. I don’t remember which one she is. I do know that the organic that was caught in the processor was critically wounded. Nearly fatal. I almost wasn’t able to keep her alive due to the extent of her injuries. She required a great deal of medical care. I put her in a medically induced coma to keep her alive as I performed the necessary surgeries then. And we can’t remove her right now either. The pulse beacons use the subjects as conduits. That connects them on a neural level. If we remove Chase now, it would ultimately shut down the experiment and destroy the subjects because the signal flow would be interrupted.”

“Would it destroy Chase if she were removed from your experiment?” Dread inquired.

“Removing her from the area affected by the pulse beacons would remove her from the conduit connection. She would be fine, but everyone else would suffer long term damage. The experiment would have been for nothing. All this time and effort… my lord, we cannot just shut down the experiment. In order to maintain mental integrity of the rest of the subjects if you want to remove Chase, we’d have to stop the pulse beacons simultaneously and if we do that, then you won’t get the all the information you’re looking for. If you want to destroy the Resistance, this is the best way to get the Intel you need and perhaps a new tactic to control any rebellious factions. Imagine the possibilities, my lord. With a sound or an electronic pulse, you could control thousands of rebels who dare to fight you. My theories will offer the best offensive --”

“You mean your theories offer you the best way to squander my resources on your ineffective experiments to modify behavior,” the image taunted him. “Do you think me unaware of your goals? As a scientist, proving your theories are paramount. You wish to alter a person totally, from the way they think to the way they behave with absurdly laughable techniques. I am through allowing you to waste my time.”

“My lord, everything you planned can still happen. Chase is there. She cannot go anywhere. The pulse beacons will not allow her to leave the area. Once we get the information about the other resistance groups, we can end the experiment successfully. You’ll have the information you want, a new method to stop resistance fighters because I will have discovered a full-proof means to mentally control a wide variety of individuals, and you’ll have Chase as bait in a trap for Power,” Stinson reasoned. “My lord, everything will go as planned.”

The overunit heard something over his earpiece and moved away from Stinson and the surveillance cameras. The scene on the monitor continued on, showing Stinson watching as the biomechs destroyed his life’s work, demolished all his equipment. Finally, Overunit Stevens returned. “My lord, sensors indicate that there is movement in the area but they are not venturing in this direction. Should we stay or do you wish us to evacuate?”

The image swept its head around. “Evacuate for now, Overunit. Our forces shall return once we know the most expedient and judicious way to find and extract Chase safely and deal with the remaining reintegrated organics. I will not have my plan to destroy Power thwarted by mistakes again." He turned back to Stinson. “For your utter failure to fulfill your obligations to me and the Machine Empire, you will be cleansed immediately. ”

Everyone was quiet as they watched the biomechs and the overunit issue their own form of punishment on Stinson.

“This was a trap?” Annie asked them. “We were brought back, our memories changed or suppressed, forced to behave differently and placed there because a scientist wanted to prove his theories? Stinson wanted to experiment, and Dread wanted us to bring resistance groups to a place where they could be captured? So they could learn how the Resistance operates? That makes no sense. Very few have found us in the forest, and none of the individuals we’ve met have been captured. At least, none that I know of.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Scout shook his head. “First of all, some of the people you’ve met could have come and gone with no one knowing the first few times. They might have been doing a recon miles away from your outer perimeter. Those that did pass by that outer perimeter may have found you by accident. Few like Jackson and Mitchell came here on purpose. They basically tried to sneak in but were caught in your tiger traps. I’m guessing you’ve only had a couple of members of a resistance force visit at one time. Most don’t work in full groups like we do. If Dread and Stinson were waiting for an entire group, they’ll be waiting for a long time.”

“But how would Dread know when anyone was visiting our camp?” Annie asked quietly. “Are they watching us?”

Scout continued his search through the computer files. “I think they expected Stinson to be watching you, but he got so caught up with his own experiment, he forgot to tell anyone when visitors came calling. He wanted to see how all of you would react, what you’d learn and how you’d adapt it to your lives. He’d take that information and use it as a baseline for rebel behavior. Once he had that, he’d know how to change that behavior and even their way of thinking,” Scout surmised.

“How did he do it?” Annie asked him. “How did it all start?”

Scout kept looking through the files, opening and closing them faster than Annie could follow. “We were speculating last night about that, and it looks like we were more right that I would guessed. We considered that when Jennifer was digitized, the base exploded and created some kind of link between all the data patterns in the digitizing storage unit. I think that might be oversimplifying it, but the final result may have been similar to that. Stinson found all this out when he reintegrated a few people. He learned that he could control all of you to some extent through sound. He’s been transmitting a pulse beacon from transmitters surrounding the base camp. It’s what’s suppressing your memories and making you behave differently.”

Annie walked behind Scout and read through the file he was looking at. “Exactly how are we behaving differently?”

Tank tapped her shoulder to get her attention. “Little to no emotional response to a battle. It’s as if your reactions are scripted, not really felt.”

“And the Dread soldiers Stinson was talking about?” Annie asked. “The ones under a memory lock that are at the camp? Stinson didn’t sound like they were digitized by Blastarr along with the rest of us. Does that mean they weren’t digitized? Then how would they be connected to us?”

Scout spread his hands and shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re just there with suppressed memories and not connected to the rest of you but are affected by the pulse beacons in a similar way. I’m sorry, Annie, some of this is way beyond any scientific research we’ve ever read about. We’re guessing at a lot of it.”

“And look at this,” Scout drew their attention to the next file. “According to some of this data, Stinson’s research on altering or transferring memory and behavior had gone from the theoretical to the ridiculous. Here, look,” he showed them the notes of a particular experiment. “He was going beyond just taking away and changing your memories… he was trying to have an effect on your capabilities. It just didn’t work right. He couldn’t get past your own natural abilities.”

“How?” Annie asked.

“Looks like he wanted to turn someone into something else by implanting someone else’s memories. For instance, he wanted to turn someone who isn’t a fighter into one by planting the thoughts of soldier into their minds. Another one says he wanted to take commanding officers or town leaders and make them subordinates, turn lower ranking military personnel into commanders, cooks into engineers, engineers into computer coders…” Scout stopped.

Annie was still reading the file when she found a disturbing entry. “This one is one of his early notes about wanting to completely change someone’s personality and loyalties. He wanted to be able to turn a massive number of resistance fighters into loyal Dread troops by means of a low-frequency pulse. That didn’t work with us." She read more. “But he did dictate our behaviors… he controlled what we did. In a fight, we’d behave a certain way and after… we’d behave a certain way."

Tank looked over her shoulder and read more of the research. “That explains why there was a lack of an emotional response to the battles you’ve been in.”

“But how?” she wondered aloud. “Someone attacks, you fight. Afterwards, you clean up and take care of the dead and wounded. You keep the daily tasks going… is that any different from how all of you work?”

Scout turned in his seat so he was facing her. “Like you said. Something happened, you had a particular response, but we noticed that your responses were a little off. I don’t think Stinson ever learned how to control how you felt about the things that happened. It’s almost like he cut you off from your emotions and all you could do was react to a situation in a prescribed manner."

She thought for a moment, tried to process the information. “We’re not real,” she whispered.

“You’re real,” Hawk disagreed quickly. “All of you are very real. You’ve just had your memories suppressed or changed and your behavior modified.”

That didn’t make Annie feel any better. “No, that’s not what I mean. I’m not really Annie. I’m one of a bunch of characters in a play that Stinson wrote and directed. He wanted to implant memories and change people’s loyalties -- you can’t trick someone into being something else unless you know how the something else works." She looked at the equipment, the lab, everyone else in the room. “He had to learn how resistance forces operate and think in order to know how to work against them. His first step was to turn us into one. That gave him the first clues about how to change resistance forces into loyal Dread troops.”

“It looks like that was what he was up to, at least partially,” Scout agreed. “Sounded like Dread wasn’t really on board with Stinson’s experiment. Although, it’s probably why Soaron’s never been to the base camp to attack you and why you’ve only dealt with biomechs -- Stinson was using all of you as a mass experiment and needed most of you alive and Dread let him keep you alive because he thought he had Jennifer and found out a month ago he had Larabee instead. Dread gave him the equipment, the subjects, the site and the time to prove that he could alter people through his research as well as get the information Dread wanted. Only Stinson didn’t deliver on his end of the bargain.”

Annie almost grinned a sad grin. She turned toward Jon, anger flashing in her eyes. “He was allowed to do all this to us in exchange for Jennifer Chase so Dread could use her as bait in a trap for you… she was a youth leader that worked for the Resistance, and Dread considered her some kind of traitor?”

“She was loyal to the human race, so she was only a traitor to the Machine Empire,” Jon said lowly. “That’s enough for Dread.”

Annie raised an eyebrow at that comment. It all started to come together. The thoughts ran randomly through her mind.

The prisoner Stinson turned over to Dread was an overunit digitized by Blastarr.
Most of them were digitized by Blastarr and reintegrated later.
Last person digitized was Chase.
Chase was a youth leader.
Rumor held that the Power Team consisted of five members.
Chase was a member of the Power Team.
Hawk said that they lost someone when their base was destroyed. But Chase was digitized by Blastarr.
Scout talked about the person who repaired the jump ship in the present tense.
Chase was in the camp.
Chase could be used against Power.

The random thoughts become a pained sequence of events. “So your pilot, the fifth member of your team, was a youth leader that Dread wanted to use to trap you. She’s the one you lost when your base exploded." That time, she shook her head in disbelief. “A former youth leader joins with a major resistance group – that had to sting Dread pretty bad. I’ve been told that he likes to brag that his army’s unfailingly loyal. And she was digitized --”

“Apparently,” Tank answered quickly.

“Apparently? Wait. . . you didn’t know?” Annie asked him. “None of you knew that your pilot was alive?”

Tank shook his head. “Not until we found your group,” he answered. “We thought she was dead.”

Annie thought through the last few days -- the team’s willingness to help them, their surprise at finding to so many people who’d been reintegrated, it was all coming together in an awful mosaic. No wonder they wanted to help so badly and didn’t want to leave the camp too soon. They wanted to find their missing team member and get her back. “So she’s at the camp. You saw her, and that’s why Scout was speaking about her in the present tense. Have you been able to talk to her yet?”

Jon stood up a little straighter. “It wouldn’t do any good if we did. We can’t tell her who we are because there may still be a risk if a memory is forced to the surface. Stinson might have been telling the truth about that." He looked at Scout. “Have we got confirmation on the location of the pulse beacons?”

Scout found the file with the location of the beacons. “All four of them,” Scout agreed. “I can’t believe how simple his delivery system is. Pulse beacons sent out over old fashioned radio transmitters. Who would have thought to use those?”

Hawk leaned over to look at the monitor. “Where are they?”

“They’re set up at various places surrounding the base. They’re miles out though. We’ve got to shut down the beacons simultaneously and then destroy the transmitters so they can’t be restarted.”

Jon took a quick look at the computer monitor. “Are the transmitters used for any other purpose?”

Scout shook his head. “Nope. According to this, they only carry the pulse from the beacons. The files do say that the transmitters are interconnected by the flow of the signal itself, like we thought. They’ve been modified so they don’t have radio transmissions interfering with them. They just interfere with some of our frequencies.”

“Wait,” Annie held up her hand, walked away from them for a moment and gathered her thoughts. “The flow of the signal? What does that mean?”

“Uh…” Scout seemed to search for the right words. “Since all the data patterns in the digitizing storage unit were connected, Stinson used that same premise with the pulse beacons. He uses all of you to help connect the flow of the beacons’ signals by turning you into signal boosters. The signal passes through each of you, maintaining a particular flow rate to the next transmitter. As long as that connection stayed the same, everything Stinson was doing worked.”

Annie stared at him, her mind running through all the information she was hearing. “All of us? We’re all connected on some level that Stinson exploited?”

“That’s one of the reasons why if you went outside the twenty mile radius, you would have been out of range of the transmitters. The signal wouldn’t get boosted by you and slow it down or speed it up, but it would disrupt the flow rate. That might destroy his experiment. It could have done mental damage to all of you as well. That’s why he programmed all of you to stay in a certain area.”

“All of us,” Annie whispered. “Okay, the Dread soldiers placed there without their memories, there are still questions about them and how they’re connected to us since I doubt they were digitized, but what about the dead? A lot of us have been killed in these battles. They can’t be used as signal boosters any more, can they? It hasn’t affected us, has it?”

The others stared at Scout. Had no one thought to ask that question? Immediately, he turned and started looking through the files. “Dead or alive, he could use them all,” he muttered.

Hawk frowned. “You’re going to have to explain that one, Scout.”

“Uh… they still acted as signal boosters even though their brains didn’t work anymore,” he said. Turning, he saw both Hawk and Tank looking confused. “Think of a pinball machine. It has those bumpers that the ball bounces off of. If one of the bumpers stops working, stops making noises or lighting up, the ball can still bounce off of it. It can still do what it’s supposed to do and you can keep playing the game.”

Hawk and Tank looked at each other. “Oh,” they said simultaneously.

“That makes sense,” Tank agreed.

Annie listened carefully, but she didn’t want to get her hopes up. “So now what? Do you think we’ll get our memories back once the pulse beacons are destroyed? Will we be ourselves again?”

Scout glanced up at her and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

No, Annie wouldn’t get her hopes up. She looked around the room, sighed and slowly walked out. She just needed a few minutes to get her anger and frustration under control.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jon walked out of the lab and saw Annie leaning against the wall. She had that angry look Jennifer would get from time to time after she first left the Dread Youth whenever she discovered another bit of truth that Dread had kept from them. This time, it was Annie with that look. Years earlier, she would need a few moments alone to deal with her anger, and then he would sit with her and let her talk it out. Sometimes, that was all he could do, but he was happy to do it. More often than not, she just needed for someone to know what Dread had done, how he had done it and how twisted his mind had become. Jon had been her sounding board and helped her work through the rage that filled her then. He wished he could do the same for Annie. Maybe she’d let him?

He walked over next to her, leaned against the wall himself and touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know. None of it’s real. Not us, not our lives. They used us. I hate being used." The anger filled her voice. “I don’t know where the lies end and the truth begins. Stinson got to use us as an experiment and all he had to do was hand this Jennifer Chase over to Dread for the chance to do what he wanted." She looked up and saw the sad cast to his eye. “I’m sorry. She’s a friend of yours. I didn’t mean to sound –”

“No, it’s okay. You’re angry and you’ve got every right to be,” Jon assured her. “And you’re right. She’s a very special friend.”

The way he said that last sentence surprised her. “Special?”

Jon sighed. “Very. I’d never met anyone like her before. She opened up my eyes to a lot. All the talks we had about life – she never took anything for granted because so much had been taken from her. She wanted to learn as much as she could about everything she could.”

“It sounds like you two talked a lot?” Annie asked him.

Jon nodded, a slight grin on his face. “All the time. About everything. But there was one talk we didn’t finish. We had a mission that we were about to go on, and we were interrupted. I told her I wanted to finish our conversation once we got back, but we never got a chance. She ran into Blastarr.”

Annie took a good long look at Jon, and he gazed back at her intense gray eyes. She understood. Was it the way he said his words? The look in his eyes? Their behavior when they first arrived and everything they’d done since? “Dread said she was important to you and that you’d risk anything to get her back. You couldn’t take any risks with our memories because it would also endanger her.”

Jon nodded. “Like I said, she’s a special friend, and she’s very important to me.”

“She must be if you’ve done all this for us over the last few days on rumors of what Stinson said.”

He smiled, and then glanced back at Annie. “It wasn’t just for her. We also wanted to help everyone at the base camp.”

Annie nudged the point a little more. “This talk you were going to have with her, can you still have it if she gets her memory back or has the situation changed?”

“I hope we can talk,” Jon explained quickly. “I hope she wants to have that conversation after everything she’s been through. I should have said something a long time ago, but I didn’t and I can’t tell her anything now. At least, not yet.”

Annie’s brow crinkled as she pondered what Jon said. “I don’t understand. Was what you were going to say to her difficult to say?”

“Difficult to say, but not difficult to feel,” Jon explained. He hesitated for a moment, then knew in an instant that this could be the only time he could have the talk. “I love her, but I didn’t tell her.”

“I didn’t mean to pry. Do you mind if I ask what happened? Why you didn’t tell her?” Annie asked him. Then quickly added, “Sorry. It’s none of my business.”

Jon thought for a moment, as if he was determining how he could answer that question without revealing too much. “I was going to when we had that talk. I finally got up the nerve.”

That statement had Annie smiling. “Wait a minute – Captain Jonathan Power was scared of having a conversation? I know I don’t know you that well, but that doesn’t seem to fit your reputation.”

Jon didn’t know how to answer that question.

“Do you know why you were scared?” Annie urged him to answer.

“A little,” he finally said. “She’s unique. I’d never met anyone like her who didn’t let the fact something was impossible stop them before. Jennifer sees everything as a challenge to test her skills or an opportunity to learn something new. She never lets anything stop her. She has this practical idealism that as long as we keep fighting, we’ll beat Dread one day. She’s never doubted that. Someone with that kind of resolve can be a little intimidating, and to be honest, no matter how I felt about her, I didn’t really think I’d measure up.”

Annie leaned her head back against the wall. “So she’s strong?”

“Very. She’s had to be. She couldn’t have survived what she did before we met her if she wasn’t.”

“She has a history?” Annie asked.

“She escaped the Dread Youth,” Jon explained quickly. “You don’t do that easily.”

“So you were scared to say anything,” Annie observed. “What about her? Do you know how she felt?”

“I love you, Jon. So much.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Just before the end." Now that he had started, he didn’t want to stop. Maybe if he told her what happened to the team’s pilot, then Annie might remember something… He took the risk. “She was at the base, and we were talking on the vidlink when Blastarr got there. We thought she was killed in the base explosion but then we found out a few days ago she was digitized." That was only a confirmation and an affirmation of what Annie already knew and suspected. No forcing of memories with that statement.

“And now you know she’s alive and at the base camp. She doesn’t remember you, and you can’t tell her anything until everyone gets their memories back,” Annie concluded. “This couldn’t have been easy for you.”

“Harder than you can imagine,” he said in a low voice. “All this happened to her, we weren’t there for her when she needed us… now I find out she was payment for the experiment, but Stinson didn’t come through. Although that overunit did say that Christine Larabee went through interrogations. I can’t say I’m sorry to hear that.”

“How do you know this Christine Larabee? If you can tell me, that is.”

“She’s someone we ran into last year,” Jon explained. “She tricked us. Made us think she was with the Resistance but she was actually an overunit who worked for Dread.”

“Last year…” Annie mused. “I wonder what I’ll remember from last year if we can get our memories back. Maybe I’ll remember Freedom One." She was quiet for a moment, then, “I know a lot of this is personal, so why are you telling me all this?”

That was an easy question to answer. “I may never get a chance to tell Jennifer anything if we can’t help you get your memories back. At least I can tell you." No, it wasn’t telling Jennifer, but talking to Annie could be the closest Jon would ever come to finishing that conversation with Jennifer. “I never actually said the words out loud before to anyone.”

Annie nodded in understanding. “Maybe one day you’ll get to tell her. So what’s the overall plan? Or did you bring me out here just because I knew where Stinson’s lab was?”

“Actually, that was main reason. Plus, there was a good chance we would find out something you need to know. Now that we know what’s going on, we might be able to destroy the pulse beacons. We just have to figure out how and when. Scout needs to read through what he can find of Stinson’s research." His voice sounded strained, as if he were running out of time.

Annie became quiet. She found a wire on the floor, picked it up and began to play with it. Her brow was furrowed, deep in thought.

“Annie?”

She tossed the wire onto the floor and looked back up at him. “You didn’t know your pilot was alive until you saw her at the base camp. Now when you saw me, you were completely stunned. You told me you knew me from before, and as surprised as you were to see me, I can imagine it was harder on you to see your pilot and not say anything. Yet, you told me you knew me and not her. Why?”

Jon didn’t have an answer. Finally, he said, “You needed to know some of why we were there." Did that sound like it made sense? Like it was a good reason and not a quickly thought-up excuse?

“How many of my people does your team know?”

That was a loaded question. “A few. We learned that some of the population of Placerville is there, and we used to go there for supplies so we’re acquainted with some of the citizens. Hawk knew who Lydia was. He didn’t know her personally though. I’m sure there are others we’ve met --”

Annie pushed herself away from the wall and walked around the area. “Do you realize how angry they’ll be if they find out that you knew who they were and didn’t tell them anything?”

“But everyone’s been told that forcing someone to remember –”

“Telling someone you knew them isn’t forcing,” Annie reminded him. “Now we have all this information about Stinson… And they have to know… I’m going to have to tell them something,” she mused aloud.

Jon hadn’t considered the future ramifications of keeping silent about knowing certain individuals. Of course, they would have wanted some hints just as Annie had, but the team had not said a word to them. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he told her.

Annie chuckled. “Sometimes, all we can do is live in the moment without considering all the consequences." She paused for a moment, then, “Okay. They’ll have to know the gist of it, and I won’t lie to them. I’ll get the team leaders together and tell them that you’d met a few people you were acquainted with and found out your pilot was there but were too concerned about Stinson’s warning against forcing memories to tell anyone you knew them at first. You had plans to talk to some of them, but things began happening fast and you didn’t have the opportunity. That’s the truth, just not quite all of it. Think that will work?”

Jon thought it over. As a leader, Annie had to be honest with her people, but as someone connected to this mental maze that Stinson set up, she couldn’t be completely honest just yet. Jon didn’t realize that he’d put her between a rock and a hard place. “I hope so.”

“Mind if I give you a bit of advice?”

“No,” Jon confessed. “I don’t mind at all.”

“Talk to your pilot, tell her you know her. It doesn’t matter if we get our memories back or not. Just knowing that someone out there knows us even if they can’t tell us anything helps.”

Jon could only agree. “Point taken.”

There was a crackle over her radio. “Annie?” Milo’s voice called her over the speaker.

She pulled the small device out of her pocket. “Go ahead, Milo.”

“You coming back any time soon? We’re reading a lot more movement in the usual and not so usual places. I mean a lot. Frost just contacted us about something happening out his way at the southeast transmitter, but he said he didn’t think it was anything to worry about yet. Probably just a little skirmish, but he wants us at the ready.”

Jon almost smiled at Milo wanting to know when she’d be back. Milo didn’t view Annie as just his commanding officer and wasn’t happy that the Power Team seemed interested in taking up as much time as possible with her. If they got their memories back, Jon hoped that there wouldn’t be any problems between him and Milo.

Annie keyed the mike on her radio. “I’ll be back soon. I found out what’s happened to us. Have the strike team leaders there when I arrive and I’ll tell everyone at once.”

“Roger that.”

“Do you think it’s a good idea to tell them anything just yet? If we’re about to get into a fight, maybe the news should wait?” Jon asked her. “If we can find out how to undo the connection Stinson put –”

Annie waved her hand, waving away her own protests. “They have as much a right to know as I do regardless of the trouble coming." She thought for a moment. “And since it looks like I really was a pilot and Stinson had a cargo ship, I guess he’s in no fit shape to argue if I take it -- if it’s still functioning. I think we could use it. That cargo ship I’ve been working on is still too far gone to fly.”

“It’ll be night soon. Think you can fly in the dark?” Jon asked. He knew Jennifer could fly blindfolded through the Grand Canyon at top speed, but what were Annie’s flying skills?

“I think I can,” she said. “At least, it seems like I can. I can’t explain how I know that.”

Jon smiled at the unsure self-assuredness sound in her voice. “Okay. Contact us if you need anything before we get back to your camp, all right?”

She nodded and said, “I will. I think we’ll be all right though. Unless Dread sends out all his troops, we’re pretty good at taking care of ourselves. And a night attack? It’s what we’ve been training for." She gave him a small wave goodbye and left.

He watched her walk toward the makeshift hangar bay. That was when he realized that Annie had said, “Maybe I’ll remember Freedom One. ” Jon had called her Christine Larabee.

She remembered something else.

Maybe there was hope.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jon hurried back into the lab. “Scout? What have you got?”

“Something I don’t like. Stinson put in some fail-safes. It looks like we could shut down the beacons from here, but the transmitters have a program that will automatically restart them after a specified time. There’s also a time-lag program that allows the transmitters to transmit a fake signal temporarily until the pulse beacons could be restarted if one were to stop for whatever reason. Basically, this keeps that pulse transmitting all the time and keeps that mental circuit connecting everyone at the base camp active. Just shutting down the beacons from here won’t be enough. Then I checked out his termination programs for the transmitters themselves, and they’re complicated. They’re initiated by passwords and keycards, and we don’t have either. He’s also got a contingency protocol that sends out a killing program to everyone involved in the experiment if the transmitters are shut down without the passwords and keycards if the pulse beacons are still operating. Then there’s another pothole – the beacons are rigged to shut down at different speeds, and that means the mental circuit would be interrupted and everyone at the base would be killed if they didn’t cease functioning at the same exact time. It looks like Stinson wanted to protect his test subjects but had everything rigged for a complete self-destruct if he needed it.”

Fail-safes? That sounded like a Minoan maze! “So what do we do?” Jon asked him.

Scout kept punching buttons on the computer and reading the data as he thought out loud. “Like I said, the beacons have to be shut down at exactly the same time. If only one goes down and stays down, then the transmitters will recognize the loss of one of the signals and destroy the mental circuit. Then the transmitters would have to be destroyed to keep the fake signal from initiating and re-establishing the mental circuit. The timing on this has to be perfect the very first time." Scout looked around. “Wait… where’s Annie?”

Jon shook his head. “She’s flying Stinson’s ship back to the base. Milo contacted her. They’re picking up some activity. How long until you can give us actual times on the beacon and transmitter shutdown?”

“There’s no way to know. I have to keep digging. Stinson didn’t put that information in an obvious place or it didn’t survive the demolition.”

Jon looked around the room, looked at the destruction – all this devastation and Stinson’s experiment was still for nothing. He was too close to getting Jennifer back, but he had to be patient. He was not going to destroy their chances of rescuing her and the rest of the people at the base camp.

Still, it meant they had some options. He put his tactical mind to work. “But we can shut the pulse beacons down from here? By remote?” he asked.

Scout showed them a schematic of the entire area. “Absolutely. This system uses a basic radio signal, just like old remote control. That’s why Stinson chose that particular site to drop off everyone he reintegrated." He keyed a certain schematic. “The four transmitters are all in a certain proximity to the campsite. Basically, he had all the equipment he needed and it was convenient."

Convenient? “Okay, is it convenient for us?” Jon asked him. “You said that the beacons are programmed to shut down at different times and the transmitters can keep a fake pulse going temporarily even if the pulse beacons stop. The transmitters can’t be shut down unless we have the passwords and keycards. Can we shut the beacons down by remote, rig explosives up to the transmitters and then blow everything up at the same time?”

Scout smiled. “All we need to do is determine the length of time it takes for each beacon to shut down since they’re all different. We set the explosives on the transmitters, have this computer send out the signal that will initiate the shut down sequence so the beacons all cease functioning at the exact same time, then have the timers on the explosives key off of the shutdown, and those transmitters will go up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. They’ll take the beacons with them. It’s just a matter of the equipment picking up the correct signals. Timing’s crucial on this though, Captain.”

“What about the mental circuit?” Tank asked. “If we destroy the beacons and the transmitters, what will happen to everyone?”

Scout took another look at the data, rechecking and reconfirming what he hoped was true. “I can’t find any files that indicate if Stinson had factual test results about the beacons or the transmitters. From what we heard, my guess is that he thought Dread wanted the test subjects alive only with altered memories and altered ways of thinking so they’d be loyal to him. Knowing that Stinson wanted to preserve the experiment at all costs, I’m thinking that he would have been too scared to not have as many safety programs in place to ensure the base camp’s survival. Then, when he was ready, he could end the experiment, hand everyone over to Dread and walk away with the results. I think if we can shut down the beacons at the same time and destroy the transmitters, our plan will work and everyone at the base camp will remember who they are."

“Let’s hope,” Hawk said aloud.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The dwindling light from the cloud-covered dusk gave Annie just enough illumination to see the ground. Without hesitation and with an assuredness she didn’t realize she possessed, she flew the cargo ship back toward the base camp. She couldn’t resist keeping an eye on the view outside the front viewport. Watching the ground go by, flying over trees and grassy areas, flying felt so right! Her, the ship, she felt like the controls were extensions of her arms. She could almost sense the speed of the ship by the sound of the wind outside. She felt a thrill that seemed so new yet so familiar.

She had to have been a pilot before.

Jennifer Chase was a pilot, right?

Could she be Chase?

Now where had that question come from?

She shook her head, trying to clear out the thoughts sneaking into her mind. She wasn’t Jennifer Chase. She wasn’t a member of the Power Team. If she were, wouldn’t Jon have told her at Stinson’s lab after everything they’d learned? The captain had strong feelings for the pilot, but he was worried about forcing memories which was why he hadn’t said anything to Chase -- but he also hadn’t behaved in any way that led Annie to believe she was Chase. Yet, his behavior when they first met, the way Jon watched her, what he said about his feelings for the lost pilot…

Could she be Chase?

She tried to not think about that possibility. It was ludicrous. She was just Annie, someone Jon knew from before. That was all. Jon was in love with Chase, and if she had been Chase, she’d have felt it during that admission he made, wouldn’t she?

Further proof that she was just Annie was the fact Jon admitted that the main reason they had asked her to come along was because she knew where Stinson’s lab was. What was the rest of the reason? Was it really because they might learn the truth and she needed to know? One look at his face told her that he was anxious and worried – for his lost pilot perhaps? – so she didn’t pursue the question. Was he worried about trying to get her back? Could they find a way to stop Stinson’s experiment without harming anyone? Even now, Jon and his team were trying to figure out a way to solve the base camp’s memory problem, but it wasn’t only for the people at the base camp. They were going to a great deal of trouble for a friend and teammate they thought dead.

But that was what friends did for each other. The people at the base camp had learned the hard way that they had to get along even if they didn’t like each other if they were going to survive. Real friendships formed along the way, small groups became close, but all those relationships seemed different than the friendship displayed by the Power Team. Annie knew memory was the key. The Power Team knew each other, knew each others’ secrets, lived in each others’ lives and they shared a past. Their friendship was much deeper than any relationship she’d seen at the base camp. In some of the books she’d read, the characters were friends and would risk anything to help each other. If that scenario had any truth to it and wasn’t complete fiction, then that was why Jon was trying to help them so he could also help Chase even though she had no memory of him. She was a friend.

Chase had no memory of any of the Power Team… Annie pondered Jon’s behavior when they first met a few days earlier. He was completely surprised to see her. If he thought her dead or missing in action, then seeing her must have been a surprise. Her not knowing him must have taken him aback somewhat. Knowing now how he felt about Chase, Annie realized that seeing their pilot, their friend, somewhere at the base camp and realizing she had no idea who they were must have been extremely painful.

“Annie, sometimes you need to think further ahead,” she chastised herself.

Why didn’t she ask Jon what Chase looked like or if he knew what name she went by? If she knew who Chase was, maybe she could help him find a way to talk to her, even if all he did was say hello and tell her he knew her before.

Or had he already told her?

Could she be Chase?

They lost their pilot when the base exploded, and they thought she was dead, but Scout had talked about their pilot in the present tense just the day before. Maybe Scout was assuming that they would find a way to get her memory back and their team would be together again? Scout told Annie how he and Chase worked together repairing parts – just as they did…

Could she be Chase?

No, she didn’t think she was, but at that moment, did it really matter? She was Annie, leader of a resistance army. As long as she didn’t remember her past, very little truth could be told if Stinson’s warning about forcing memories really was true.

She considered everything she heard at the lab, everything she and the base leadership had discussed over the last few days, everything she had seen over the last few days -- her mind tried to sort through all the data.

They were an experiment.

Stinson had used them for an experiment to prove his theories on memory and behavior control.

Stinson’s payment to be allowed to conduct such an experiment with Dread’s digitized prisoners was the pilot for the Power Team so she could be bait in a trap for Power.

Stinson didn’t deliver Jennifer Chase to Dread and was murdered for it.

Stinson had been dead for a month, so what was happening with the experiment? Why had one month passed with no massive attacks from Dread’s forces to wipe out the so-called failed experiment? Was Dread waiting for something in particular to happen?

There had been little skirmishes over the last month, all at various places around the base camp, never a full-scale attack. Why? Was Frost right? That it was because Dread was testing the measure of their defensive capabilities? Because he was trying to find Jennifer Chase? If her capture was still important to him all those months after the Power Team lost her, then Dread would expend as many resources as he needed to find her once he learned he didn’t have her, wouldn’t he?

What was going on? There were too many questions and not enough answers.

Annie heard a crackle over the radio. “Annie!”  It was Frost.

“This is Annie. Go ahead, Frost.”

“We’ve got massive troop movement! Dozens of biomechs heading straight for the silo! Dozens! More coming in all directions!”

A massive attack? Dozens? Nighttime… just the type of attack they’d been training to fight.

“Evacuate!” She yelled into the radio. “I’m on my way. I’ve got Stinson’s cargo ship. Have everyone ready to board as soon as I land.”

She banked the cargo ship toward Frost’s position and flew at top speed. She made another call on the radio. “ Milo?”

“I heard, Annie. We’ve got more clickers coming from all directions, mostly from the south! You get Frost, we’ll start countermeasures here. Get back here fast!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Standing outside Stinson’s lab, Jon watched his team, all with power suits activated, as Scout handed them each an explosive with an unattached timer.

“Timing’s crucial on this,” Scout explained. “Almost everything we’re doing is by remote signal, so no mistakes are going to happen. I hope." His voice sounded less than absolutely sure. “Strap the bomb to the power box at the base of the transmitter, attach the timer, press the activate button and then get out of there. That won’t actually turn the timers on then. The timers are programmed to synchronize with each other but just to be safe, they won’t until I trigger them remotely which I’ll do once we’re all clear. Once the timers are all activated, they’ll synchronize with each other, send out a remote signal to begin running the program here at the lab that will shut down the pulse beacons in a sequence so they’ll all shut down at the same time. When all the beacons stop pulsing, the explosive timers will kick in and five seconds later, all four transmitters will be history.”

Jon felt like they were winging the mission, not thinking through all the possibilities. “Is five seconds enough?”

Scout looked at him seriously. “I’m hoping it’s not too much. If those transmitters’ programs kick in and send out the fake pulse… Look, this entire plan is going off the theory that it's only the pulse beacons keeping their memories under wraps. Once those beacons go silent, that should release them. They’ll be themselves again. If the transmitters kick in the fake signal before the explosives blow up, the mental circuit starts up again and reconnects everyone at the base camp. The explosion could hurt them. It’s risky, but it’s the only way we can do this with any hope that it’ll work. And before anyone asks, five seconds is the least amount of time I can rig the timers for. They’re the only timers I have with me, and it’s the way they’re designed. We don’t have the materials for me to rig up new ones.”

Jon nodded his head. It was a risk, but what choice did they have? “Okay. I’ll take the jumpship. Scout, you and Tank take the sky bikes. Hawk can fly to the last transmitter. Let’s see how quickly we can do this.”

Scout and Tank moved away, but Hawk grabbed Jon by the arm and pulled him aside. “Jon, I know we want to get Jennifer back, but are we moving too fast? Even after hearing what Stinson and Dread talked about, we’re still not one hundred percent sure that what we think happened actually happened or that any of this will work.”

“I know,” Jon admitted. “Matt, they’ve picked up a lot of movement lately and they’re preparing for a battle. If we could get their memories back for them, then they could leave the base camp before the biomechs attack and not have to fight. If they fight, a lot of them could die and we’d never forgive ourselves if we had a way to help get them out of here and didn’t take it.”

“I’m not arguing any particular point, Jon,” Hawk explained. “Just the timing.”

“Do you have a better idea?” It wasn’t the first time he had asked Hawk such a question in a bad situation. There were other times when their backs were up against a wall, and they had to improvise. They had to take chances.

Hawk shook his head. “No, but I don’t want to see you hurt again. Losing her once almost destroyed you. I know you don’t want to lose her now. We don’t want to lose her either.”

Jon had turned the plan over in his head countless times. Yes, he was being selfish. Yes, he wanted Jennifer back. Yes, he was willing to take whatever risk that was necessary to get her back, but was he was not willing to risk her. Still, given their information, this was the only way to free the people at the base camp.

“We won’t,” Jon told him. He didn’t know for sure, but he forced himself to believe.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Annie landed the cargo ship just a few yards from the silo in a clear field. Biomechs were swarming through the woods. She could see glints of light reflecting off their armor, could hear the crunch of feet on leaves and sticks as they rushed through the trees. Some of her soldiers were in strategic defensive positions to protect the silo, firing their weapons in continual fire, but they were outnumbered. She fired the cargo ship’s guns at the metal platoon directly in front of her, blasting every biomech in its wake to clear a wide swath between the silo and the ship. She grabbed her radio. “Frost! Where are you?”

“Hang on, Annie. Everyone’s coming out. Be ready to fly. ”

Jones led people from the silo, rushing them across the cleared area toward the ship. They shot at the biomechs as they ran, but time and the odds were against them. Annie left the engines idling in the cargo ship as she exited and helped Jones cover the runners. She placed her fingers in her mouth and whistled as loud as she could. “Everybody! Get on board! Now!” she yelled over the blaster fire.

Maybe twenty people ran across the field toward the ship. The biomechs shot a torrent of blaster fire in their directions, trying to stop them. Several soldiers were gunned down, they fell and didn’t move. Annie kept shooting, stayed focused on the enemy, tried not to get distracted by the screams of the wounded and dying.

“Get the wounded aboard!” she yelled to them as she shot a lead biomech directly in the head. “We’ll have to come back for the bodies!”

Jones crouched beside her and helped her return fire.

“I think we’re in trouble, Annie,” he said over the din.

“Think you can fly a cargo ship?” she asked.

Jones glanced at Stinson’s craft. “Don’t know. Never tried.”

A shot hit near Annie. She whirled, fired and hit the biomech directly in the power pack. “Get in the pilot’s seat,” she ordered. “We might have to take off fast.”

“You got it, Boss,” Jones said, using Milo’s name for her.

As Jones rushed on board to have the ship ready to go at a moment’s notice, Annie looked up at the top of the silo. Dozens of biomechs were swarming the upper ladders and walkways, tearing through the metal to get inside.

“Frost!” she yelled into the radio. “You’ve got incoming!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jon flew the jumpship as fast as he could, feeling a little out of sorts sitting in the pilot’s seat. He could fly the jet with relative ease, but the jump ship preferred a lighter, surer touch. Jennifer had retooled every bit of equipment on the jump ship to be more responsive with less movement of the controls. “You miss Jennifer, don’t you?” he whispered to the ship. Hopefully, soon, Jennifer would be back at the controls of the jump ship… if she wanted to be.

If? That sudden thought scared him – what if she didn’t want to be a corporal on his team anymore? What if she wanted to command her own resistance team after being so successful with this one? Annie was good at her job, and she had proved it to the satisfaction of everyone at the base. She could lead a team, no question about it.

No, her not wanting to be on his team wasn’t what truly scared him. It was the idea that he hadn’t let himself think about -- what if she wasn’t Jennifer anymore?

There had been hints since they had been at the campsite that Jennifer was still there, just buried under the Annie personality. So much of Annie was Jennifer, but there was a harder edge to Annie that Jennifer didn’t have. Would that remain if they got Jennifer back? Would she feel the same way that she did that fateful day?

He pushed those thoughts aside and concentrated on the mission at hand. He would deal with whatever happened when it happened and not worry about it until then. Too much was at stake to allow himself to get distracted.

The proximity alert sounded as he neared the transmitter. It stood out in the middle of nowhere. There were no ruins, no buildings, no power lines, no signs that anything other than the transmitter had ever existed in the area. It towered alone over the landscape. Small bushes, wildflowers and saplings grew around it. Vines were beginning to grow up the scaffolding of the transmitter. It and nature were becoming one.

In a sudden bit of inspiration, Jon wondered if their base exploding did something to the area that started the natural growing process again. Their base was directly in the center of the new forest, so was it too far fetched an idea? If it did have a hand in jump-starting the forest, Jon hoped that blowing up the transmitters didn’t stop it.

He landed the jumpship near the transmitter and carefully picked up the bomb and the timer. Time to see if their hunches were right.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“That can’t be right,” Milo muttered as he rushed from monitor to monitor. “They’re coming from everywhere now, not just south and moving fast. Have we got numbers?”

“Hundreds,” a computer tech answered quickly. “Several hundred. How’d they get past our perimeters so fast?”

“We probably have a lot of dead guards out there now.” Milo keyed his radio. “Felix, four platoons heading toward your group. Can you hold?”

There was a moment of static, then, “We can hold. Ulysses’ team is moving up to secure our right flank. He’s reporting maybe fifty troopers there. Patton is on the left and Santana is guarding our backs. They’re counting dozens incoming.”

Milo kept looking at each monitor as the strike teams spread out to give themselves as wide a defensive line as they could. “I think we’re in big trouble.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It could work. Hawk kept telling himself that. Jon had been known to pull rabbits out of his hat from time to time. Luck had been with them for years, at least until Christmas last year when their luck ran out. They had to rely more on skill, practice and vengeance than anything else for the last eight months, so maybe they were owed some good luck?

It was a simple plan, and those had a tendency to work, right? Stop the beacons, blow up the transmitters and everything might get back to normal. Maybe.

He looped low toward the transmitter and saw rabbits – rabbits? – running through the grass. Rabbits? Yes, cute little fuzzy bunnies with furry ears and a fluffy tail! Where had they come from? They had seen some wildlife since they’d been there. They had heard some of the birds singing and the crickets chirping, but rabbits?

“Guys, I’ve got rabbits here!” he called into his communicator.

“I just saw several deer,” Tank answered back.

There was a bit of static before Jon said, “Make as much noise as you can to scare them away. There’s no point in hurting any animals when we do this.”

Jon was worried about not hurting the rabbits. Hawk’s cheeks almost hurt from the grin he wore on his face. That was the Jonathan Power from before, the one who revered all life. He’d even worry about wildlife.

Rabbits. Hawk kept watching the small creatures running from the sound of his jets. Life was back in the greenwood.

Maybe it was a sign of good luck? After all, a rabbit’s foot was a good luck charm, right? And rabbits had four feet. . . .

Maybe their luck had just changed.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Bingley ran through the corridors with the rest of the protective detail, everyone trying to reach their battle stations before their defenses were breached. “All right, we’re short on time. Protect the generators and keep the power supply to the base camp streaming. If we have to cut power, we’ll hit the outer sections first. We keep the base camp itself going, is that understood?”

Everyone nodded in understanding as they hefted their guns and rushed to their posts.

“Bingley?” Milo’s voice came over the radio. “What’s your situation?”

Bingley took a quick look at the security monitors. “Power’s at 100%, everyone’s armed, we’ve got maybe one hundred biomechs knocking at our door.”

“Can you hold them off?”

Bingley looked at his skeleton crew, looked back at the monitors at the overwhelming number of the enemy. “As long as the electricity stays on, we can electrify the doors, the outer walls and the grounds outside and zap the hell out of them, but we won’t last long if they bring up reinforcements. Defenses aren’t built to handle this many troopers. We could be looking at an overload.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Tank flew as quickly as he could as low as he could to his designated transmitter. He saw deer, rabbits, squirrels, birds – wildlife was abundant in the forest! He had no idea that many varieties of animals were there.

Where had they come from? Had they been hiding in the wastelands scavenging for food like humans, only unseen and unheard? How had they adapted and overcome such harsh conditions and managed to survive?

Creatures thought long gone were alive again. Then again, they had thought Jennifer dead, but she was alive. Maybe there was something mystical going on in the forest. Fables and folktales held that there were all sorts of magical creatures living in a forest, protecting the small creatures that lived there, but with Dread destroying as much life as he could, the magic seemed to be gone from the world. Over the last three days, Tank could have argued that there was a new type of magic born to the forest. How else could what they believed was gone come back alive?

He saw the transmitter up ahead and revved the sky bike’s engines up loud, scaring away any and all wildlife. He saw a flock of crows fly off and two deer run deeper into the woods.

Maybe they could transplant some of the animals if they could find a way to make woods grow back in other regions? Could they make the woods grow back in other areas? That was something to think about.

“I’ve activated the timer,” Jon’s voice sounded over the communicator.

“Setting the timer now,” Hawk answered.

“I’ve just reached the site,” Scout added.

“I’ve just reached my location as well,” Tank informed them.

“All right,” Scout’s voice sounded happy. “Let’s do this thing! Let me know when we’re ready to rock and roll!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The base camp was in complete battle mode. Felix led the infantry time and again in hand-to-hand combat against the biomechs. The strike team commanders turned their teams into a proverbial stone wall between the biomechs and the people they were protecting. Shoulder-to-air missiles took out large numbers of biomechs, but more and more replaced them. Rifle shots from snipers joined the cacophony of explosive noise echoing through the base. The biomechs were running at the base camp from the forest, using the trees and the nighttime to hide their numbers visually. Not knowing exactly where they would come from next meant that the resistance forces couldn’t reposition their troops fast enough to counter their advance.

The pandemonium in the Command Center was deafening. Numbers, names and situations were being called out simultaneously by computer techs and battle analysts. Milo used his innate ability to take all the small bits of information being thrown at him and put them in a pattern.

“Report from Bingley and Frost!” someone hollered. “More clickers have arrived at the power generators. They’re about to be cut off. Asking for reinforcements if we can spare them. Frost and Annie are in big trouble. They are completely cut off at the silo.”

“We don’t have support to send,” Milo muttered. “What are they doing? No transports, all on foot, trying to box us in… they want to catch us alive?” he muttered to himself.

“Milo!” the tech yelled. “Frost! Bingley!”

“Right. Somebody try to raise Power. He’s got a ship. He can reach them faster than we can.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Scout quickly strapped the bomb to the scaffolding, attached the timer, pressed the activation button and raced back to the sky bike. He took a quick look around. The transmitter was built in the middle of what used to be a town. Now, most of the buildings were caved in and quietly turning to kindling. Old cars mostly rusted away sat on the side of the road. Wildflowers grew in the street, tree tops were poking out of rooftops. Bushes grew along the roadways and grass was cropping up everywhere else. Things were green. It had been years since Scout had seen green. It reminded him of what he saw when he was a little boy, before Dread’s wars destroyed everything Mother Nature had given them. He hoped they could figure out exactly how the forest growth started. Maybe they could rejuvenate the planet. With only a mere moment passing, he took off and flew toward the rendezvous point. “How are we doing?” he asked into the radio.

“Mine’s set,” Hawk told him. “I’m airborne. ”

“Mine too,” Tank added. “I’m flying back now. ”

“Captain?”

“It’s all yours.”

Scout pulled out the remote. “Okay, everybody cover your ears. This is going to be loud." He pointed the remote toward the bomb on the transmitter and pressed the button.

The timers activated…
The timers synced together…
The signal to Stinson’s laboratory went out…
Feedback showed that the computer was systematically shutting down the beacons on a schedule that would force them to stop functioning simultaneously…

Then the five second countdown began.

Five…

Four…

Three…

Two…

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Annie put down more cover fire as Jones took position outside the hatch of the cargo ship, motioning for their soldiers to get inside and strap in. The biomechs had surrounded them, and there was nowhere else to run. They couldn’t make a stand at the silo. It was too open. They had to get back to the base camp.

Another look at the silo – the biomechs were inside! She could hear the shooting coming from the control tower. “Frost, get out of there!” Annie ordered into the radio. “I’m coming in!”

“No, all of you stay back!” he yelled through the radio. “The top floors have caved in, I’m trapped, and those clickers will be down here in moments. I’m all busted up, so I’m not going anywhere.”

He was all busted up…

I’m all broken up inside. The thought went through Annie’s mind; a serious feeling of déjà vu surrounded her. The words echoed through her. “Frost, there’s another way. We’re –”

“Forget it, Annie. I’m done for. I’m hitting the self-destruct, and I’m taking them with me. Now stay back. ” There was the sound of a crash, of a door being smashed open, the sound of mechanical voices, blaster fire, then Frost’s voice cut through the din. “Die, you sons of bitches!”

The silo exploded, the cloud mushroomed over the field…

Moments later, all around them, four more explosions fired the horizon, creating brilliant flashes and a loud series of bangs as the transmitters were destroyed. Night temporarily turned into day in the bright light of the blasts --

Annie stood there for a moment, entranced by the view, trapped in a memory.

I’m all broken up inside.
I love you, Jon. So much.
Jennifer, don’t.
Just think of me sometimes.
Surrender, by order of Lord Dread!
Go to hell!

Annie stood there, gun in hand, her gun arm now hanging slack at her side. She looked around as the light dimmed… woods, trees, grass, flowers, brush…

She was at the base. She was hurt, all broken up inside. Her suit was powered down completely. She had to contact the others. Blastarr was coming for her. The control to destroy the power source was just down the corridor. She crawled across the floor when she heard Jon calling her… “Pilot, come in. Come in, Jennifer…”

Jennifer?

She looked at Jones, at others standing still on the field. All of them had a confused look on their face.

“Uh, Annie?” Milo’s shaky voice came over the radio. “We’ve got more incoming. Sensors show Frost is gone. Are you guys all right?”

Were they?

Annie could ‘see’ moments… conversations… explosions…

There’s another way!

The voice… his voice…

Jon’s voice…

She wasn’t at the base. She was miles from there. She was in a field at the site of a now-destroyed silo with biomechs attacking.

There was a sound behind them. She and Jones turned – several platoons of biomechs were headed straight for them. She grabbed the radio. “Milo, we’ve got incoming!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“We’ll be back at the campsite in a few minutes,” Hawk announced from the pilot’s seat. “Think it worked?”

Jon shrugged. “Let’s hope so. Tank, can you pick anything up on the radio?”

Tank adjusted the frequency on the communications console. “I’m hearing something strange. It’s coming over one of the primary biomech frequencies.”

Jon turned his chair toward Tank. “How strange?”

“Attack codes, time coordinates, weapons designations… something about requesting drones…”

“Drones? They’re worse than battling Soaron." Hawk didn’t take his eyes off the front viewport. It was almost too dark to see anything out there, but the very last dregs of the daylight gave just enough light to make out certain forms. “Jon, there’s movement all over the ground down there. I think –”

A blast slammed into the rear of the ship. “We’re taking ground fire!” Hawk yelled as he fought to avoid the laser blasts from the ground cannons.

Tank looked at his sensors in disbelief. “It looks like Dread must have sent out half his army!”

“Evasive maneuvers! Return fire!” Jon said as he hurried to the front.

“There’s too many to count, and we’re low on ammo,” Scout called out. “The entire area is crawling with clickers. There must be hundreds down there. They’re heading toward the base camp.”

Jon jumped into the co-pilot’s seat to help Hawk fight to keep the ship steady as Scout concentrated on aiming at the clickers. “Tank, contact the base camp. Let them know what’s coming!”

“We’ve got an incoming signal,” Tank said as he adjusted the controls, zeroed in on the communication. A few words came through the static. “… Under attack…” was the one phrase that came through loud and clear.

“Captain, looks like they know. We’re receiving a message,” he told Jon as he put the sound on the overhead speakers.

“… Biomechs… south… are not… numbers…”

“That sounds like Milo,” Hawk told them.

“Tank, see if you can get a clear signal." Jon picked up a mike and tried to speak through the static. “Milo, this is Captain Power. Do you read?”

“Power?” That answer came through clearly. His voice sounded strained and unsure, very unlike the man they’d interacted with for several days. “We’ve got ‘em coming from all directions, mostly from the south though. . . Countermeasures are working at the moment but they won’t last forever. Annie and a platoon are where the southeast silo used to be. Frost blew it up, took out a phalanx with him. They’re taking heavy fire and are completely cut off. Bingley’s group is at the southwest generator trying to keep our systems working but they’re under attack too. We’re hurting on manpower and time here. We can’t get to either of them. ”

“Copy that. We’re closer to Annie’s position,” Jon told him. “We’ll pick them up first. You’ve got more biomechs heading your way.”

Jon motioned for Hawk to take the jumpship to the southeast. “Good thing the silo’s not far.”

Hawk pushed the jump ship to its fastest speeds. “They’re getting hit from the south. That’s where Frost and Bingley are stationed.”

“They were right. Dread knew exactly where to hit them,” Jon responded angrily. “All these little battles they’ve been going through showed the biomechs where they needed to attack first.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Mayday, mayday, we are in trouble! Clickers coming hard and fast, and we’re getting low on ammo. We are cut off. Cannot retreat. Repeat! Cannot retreat!” Bingley’s voice sounded as scared as Annie was beginning to feel.

Annie rushed the final few people as they carried the wounded toward the cargo ship as the next group of biomechs came into view. How was she going to stop them? Her options were dwindling. She saw what could have been a foxhole behind a fallen log between them and the biomechs. She could use that position to create a distraction if she needed to. “Everybody, get on board the ship NOW!” she yelled frustrated that it was taking too long to get everyone aboard. Mere moments mattered.

“Annie, we’re squeezing them in. We don’t have any more room!” Jones yelled back to her. “Sensors showing we’re almost over the weight limit!”

“Are any of the carryalls working at all?” she called back.

“No, those were the first things they destroyed.”

That meant they had to fly out. There was no other choice.

Blaster fire riddled the side of the ship as she shot through the front line of the oncoming clickers, and they hit the ground hard. There were still five people to get aboard, two of them wounded, and Jones was right. There wasn’t room in the ship – not that it mattered. Everyone was getting out of there. Too many biomechs firing at them… the final soldiers climbing on board and the wounded weren’t going to make it. They were sitting targets. Annie took one look at the oncoming enemy soldiers, one last look at her soldiers in the hold of the ship. Decision made. She jumped off the hatchway steps and ran past the last five as they were forcing their way into the ship. “Jones, get in the pilot’s seat. Take off!” She didn’t wait to hear him argue. She would create a diversion to give the ship time to escape. She ran to the foxhole, firing the entire way, and placed herself between them and the cargo ship. She was not going to let the clickers advance any further. She wouldn’t let them destroy the cargo ship. Her people would get away. No more of her people would die at the silo that day.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hawk sped over the terrain, trying to keep calm as the advancing darkness melded with the darkness of the forest, making everything difficult to see as Tank announced, “Almost thirty biomechs still functional at the site, a lot of ground fire, more are heading in that direction. I’m reading human life signs.”

“Can we get in? Jon asked.

“Jon!” Hawk called his attention up to the cockpit. “We’ve got visual. Looks like they’re trying to make a break for it.”

Some distance ahead, they could just make the cargo ship in the fading light. Several were on the ground, not moving, but one was remaining in a makeshift foxhole covering the escaping ship.

“That’s Jennifer,” Hawk told them. “She’s not flying the ship, and it looks like it’s taking off.”

“Put us between her and the clickers,” Jon ordered. “And everybody power on.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Take off, Jones!” Annie ordered over the radio. “Do NOT wait for me!”

“We can’t leave you,” Jones responded over the radio, arguing his point.

“Help Bingley, then get everybody back to the base! Protect the people there. That’s an order!”

“Aw, dammit, Annie,” was Jones’ reply.

“Go!”

Annie watched as the cargo ship slowly and clumsily took off, straining under the weight of too many people. She realized immediately that Jones wasn’t a trained pilot, but he could maneuver the ship. He’d get them to safety. That was what was important. She concentrated her blaster shots on the remaining clickers. She had to buy time for the base camp. She couldn’t let these clickers get any further. If she could bottleneck them -- another roar caught her attention and the jump ship came into view. The jump ship! She’d never been so happy to see that ship before. Hawk landed it between her and the biomechs. Almost immediately, the rest of the team rushed out of the ship, firing at the enemy and heading toward her foxhole.

Jon was the first to jump in the foxhole with her as he helped stop the advancing biomechs. “Thought you could use some help,” he said.

“Good thinking,” she answered. A blaster shot crashed into the ground next to her as Jon covered her, letting his armor take the brunt of the next attack.

“You were supposed to contact us if you ran into trouble,” Jon asked as he wiped out four clickers with a single grenade toss.

“Things got a little busy,” Annie explained quickly as she shot out the feet of another group of clickers bearing down on them.

Scout tossed several grenades into the crowded robots. “This must be some popular tourist attraction,” he joked.

Annie fired another round at a biomech about to jump on Tank. “Absolutely. Everybody comes here this time of year,” she called back.

Hawk remained inside the jumpship, firing the onboard weapons into the melee. That was when Annie got a good look at the jumpship. It showed evidence of weapons damage, of explosions, of ground shot. “Why does the jump ship look like that?” she muttered as Scout threw another grenade toward a cluster of biomechs.

“We’ve been busy,” Scout answered. “They shot at us after we spotted the biomechs. Should have been after we blasted Stinson’s pulse beacons and transmitters. They usually don’t appreciate our work.”

Annie shook her head. “Do they ever?” She fired at another clicker heading straight for Tank. “But the rear panel is gone. You’re flying it when it’s like that? How are you staying in the air?”

“Jon!” Hawk’s voice echoed from the ship’s hatch. “Just heard a report from Jones to Milo. He’s spotted more trouble heading toward the base! The clickers have regrouped and are advancing from another direction!”

“We’ve got to move,” Annie told Jon as he pushed her out of the foxhole. “Either Dread knows about the attacks on the beacons or this is the big attack to destroy the base camp.”

Annie ran. Annie didn’t stop, she didn’t wait. She charged past Hawk, through the hold, rushed into the pilot’s seat, waited until everyone was on board and without a moment’s hesitation, launched the jump ship from a landed position to full-speed flight.

“Hey, this ship can’t do that,” Hawk almost yelled as he sat down in the co-pilot’s seat, strapping himself in and helping her where he could.

“Oh, yes, she can,” Annie muttered. She patted the console and then veered port toward the generators.

“Want me to fly?” Hawk asked.

“No, I’ve got it,” Annie told him as she expertly maneuvered the ship. “Bingley, this is… Annie, do you read?”

Silence.

“Bingley, respond.”

There was static, then Bingley’s voice answered. “We’re good, Annie. Cargo ship got here just a few minutes ago, and we got the upper hand. Wiped out the clickers. We’ve got two working carryalls to carry some of us.  We’re heading back to base now. Milo just radioed they’re in trouble. They’ve got incoming from another direction, and countermeasures are low. Numbers in the hundreds as far as we can tell at the moment. Specialized teams are on point, but it’s gonna be messy. ”

“Affirmative,” Annie turned the jumpship toward the base and called again. “Milo? SitRep.”

Milo’s answer came back quickly. “Things are a bit confused here, we’re confused, but we’re doing our jobs. Looks like a few platoons were sent south to take out the silo and the power generators. The group you fought is down 75% and now heading this way. The ones that hit Bingley are history. They electrified a bunch of them. The main body regrouped once the transmitters exploded. They’re coming from the east, but we’ve got movement from all directions” There was a brief pause, then, “Countermeasures now expended. We’re on the defensive, fighting hand to hand. Strike teams are in position and are taking out as many clickers as they can, but we’re outnumbered and outgunned. We didn’t train for this many!”

“How many are in the main body coming from the east?”

A moment passed, then, “Even with all the damage we’ve done, maybe twelve hundred?”

Twelve hundred clickers.

One thousand, two hundred walking, murdering tin cans left to attack. There was no telling how many Dread had been originally sent.

Dread was coming to destroy the experiment and collect on Stinson’s debt.

Okay.

“They’re coming from the east? Milo, what’s their exact position?”

“Hang on… Annie, you’re good. They’re approaching the trenches. We’ve got maybe ten teams in position there already. ”

“Flank them! Force them into the trenches. We’ll approach from the north.”

“North?” Scout asked. “Why north?”

She didn’t have time to answer him fully. She just answered, “Contingency plan." Then, Annie said, “Tank, I need a focused array. Full battery in a condensed blast.”

“That’ll use up what’s left of our firepower and destroy the cannons,” Tank said.

“No, it won’t,” she answered. “The cannons can take up to three times that pressure and not explode.”

“How do you know that?” Scout asked, his voice sounding suspicious.

“TFs have titanium shielding on the interior of the gun barrels,” she said as she brought the jump ship in low, practically skimming the ground at full speed. “Milo, how’s it looking?”

“We’ve got one hellacious firefight going on here, Annie. Our guys are forcing a lot of the clickers into the trench, but they’re fighting back something fierce. We can’t contain them in the area much longer.”

“All right. Tell our people to duck down or find cover. I’m less than twenty seconds away from the north side triggers.”

“Got it. I’ve got our shooters in place to take out the south side triggers.”

“Tell them to use their best judgment and fire.”

“You got it, Boss.”

Scout stared at Annie. “Triggers?”

Annie took a breath. “We put in more than Burmese tiger trips as protection. We dug wide trenches north to south on one of the eastern perimeter barriers, sort of boxing us in on that side and wired them with manual explosives in case something like this happened. The north side triggers are tricky. We built them out of some old shielding equipment that has to be blasted with cannons to detonate them. South side triggers were made out of different materials and can be set off with something as small as a grenade. There’s no way Dread knows about all of the traps we set out. Twelve hundred clickers is probably what’s left of the full complement of soldiers from all the Dread facilities in a hundred mile radius. Getting rid of most of them buys us time for an evacuation or a redeployment while we destroy what’s left.”

Hawk looked back at Jon. “Like I said -- sneaky.”

Annie pointed toward the trenches just ahead on the horizon. The fiery blasts from the muzzles of dozens of weapons lit up the entire ground. The air was full of smoke from the massive gunfire as the resistance soldiers blasted the biomechs, forcing them into the trench. Bodies were scattered everywhere, both human and mechanized. It had been a bloodbath. She changed the frequency to the general frequency and called into the radio again. “This is… Annie. Everyone back!”

Jon moved up behind her quickly. “Now what?”

“Watch." She aimed the ship’s cannons at what looked like a large supply box at end of one of the trenches. With a quick press of a button, the cannons fired a massive volley and hit their target. The box exploded in a fiery eruption, igniting explosives at the north end of the trenches, each one sending a fireball blasting down the channel, evaporating every biomech in its wake. The south side trigger blew up in the distance. More fireballs rolled down the trenches, putting an end to the rest of the clickers.

“WOO HOO!” A very happy shout came back over the speakers. “Way to go, Boss!”

“Milo’s happy?” Tank asked rhetorically.

“He’s happy,” Scout concluded.

“Milo, what’s the count?” she asked.

“Most of them gone! Maybe 90%? We got ‘em! We can handle the rest in hand-to-hand…We… hold it! Something incoming -- eastside up! Drones!”

“Drones?” Tank repeated. “The biomechs were talking about those earlier.”

Annie grabbed the steering lever. “Drones,” she spat out. “Hang on.”

She turned the jumpship toward the direction the drones were coming from. She saw seven rockets blazing in the distance, closing fast. “Milo, I’m counting seven. What do your sensors show?”

There was a pause. “Seven’s the unlucky number, Boss. ”

“They’re staying in formation,” Annie muttered. “That’s not right. They shouldn’t be flying together like that…” Then, “ Milo, are you picking up a frequency?”

Another pause. “Annie, you’re brilliant! It’s pulsing on 3.7. ”

Annie smiled a strange smile. “Launch ground missiles when the frequency stops pulsing,” she ordered.

“Launching on end of target pulse.”

“What’s a 3.7 frequency?” Jon asked, confused.

“A preprogrammed attack maneuver that was transmitted to the drones at pre-launch and one we know how to fight. Basically, they’ll crash and explode in a circle about a half-mile from the base camp, keeping us from evacuating or retreating. It’s been used on us several times before. They’ll fly around until the pulse stops, then they’re programmed to head directly for specified targets,” she told him. “Better strap yourselves in. This is going to be a bumpy ride." She couldn’t keep the thrill of piloting a jump ship out of her voice.

Hawk grabbed onto the arms of his seat as Annie placed the ship into a sharp turn starboard to veer away from the drones’ sensors. “We used up our ammo on the north side triggers. We’ve got nothing left to shoot at them. Have you ever fought drones from a ship before?”

“No,” Annie grunted through clenched teeth as she tightened her grip on the controls, steering the ship into a steeper bank, then to port, allowing the drones to advance past them without targeting them. “Fought them from the ground with shoulder-to-air missiles. This should be better.”

“Better?” Scout double-checked his seat restraints to make certain he wasn’t going to be tossed all over the cabin from the maneuvers Annie was making. “We’ve got nothing to shoot them down with, and drones are programmed to track any engine or thruster fire. Our engines are going at full throttle.”

“Exactly." Annie turned the jumpship 180 degrees, lining up behind the seven drones. She could see their thrusters firing in the front viewport, the fiery exhaust better than radar to show her their position. “ Milo, have our missiles home in on the jump ship’s navigational signal as their primary target and the drones only as a secondary target. I want them coming after us first.”

Scout blinked. “Six months as a resistance group, and they have ground missiles?” he muttered to Jon.

“They’ve got everything, I think,” Jon answered lowly. “Maybe we can restock the ship out of their stores.”

“Affirmative. Keep your speed up. Do not slow down. I’ve got the missiles geared for drone speed, and drones can go faster than that ship you’re flying. You’re gonna have to do some really fancy maneuvers to stay ahead of them.”

“Got it,” Annie answered.

“3.7 just stopped pulsing. Launching missiles now. Uh, Annie, you really do know how to fly a ship?” Milo’s voice sounded uncertain.

“Apparently,” she said, a smile tugging at her mouth.

“Navigational signals on old TFs are hooked in with the engines. You lose your engines, you lose the nav sigs. If that happens, you better hope you’re nowhere near the drones because those missiles are going to be heading right for them. ”

“I know, Milo.”

Hawk held on to the arms of the seat as Annie veered toward the oncoming missiles. “They’re heading straight for us,” he warned needlessly.

“I know,” she muttered as she kept an eye on the sensors. The proximity alert sounded as well as the tracking alarm. “Okay, they’ve targeted our navigational signal." She raised the nose of the jump ship to a 90 degree angle and went straight up, then turned again so the ship was flying level.

“What are you doing?” Hawk asked her.

“Making sure the missiles have locked on us before I make any moves. Sensors show that they’re following…” Annie explained, her voice steady as it conveyed her concentration on the task at hand.

“Missiles closing in!” Tank yelled.

“Use any countermeasures we have left,” Jon answered back, his voice urgent.

“No,” Annie turned the jump ship again dove back toward the drones. “Drones can’t see anything coming at them from above and they can’t maneuver when they’re using a 3. 7 frequency program fast enough to avoid a direct attack from any direction other than in front of them. Our missiles are locked on this ship. We approach the drones from twelve o’clock, and the missiles will follow us into them. Since the drones can’t maneuver as well –”

“The missiles can take them out?” Hawk asked, disbelieving. “You sure the drones won’t focus on us when we’re flying right through the middle of them?”

“We learned how to fight them in previous attacks. The 3.7 frequency means the drones’ primary targets are the pre-programmed locations outside the camp but their secondary target will be any weapon crossing their noses, not ships hitting them from any other direction. I’m not attacking them from the front. We hit them from the flanks, above and from the rear. If any get past us, they’ll deal with them on the ground with shoulder-to-air missiles, but I’m going to even the odds a bit first." She glanced back into the hold. “Just hang on. This is going to twist your insides into knots." Annie pulled the jump ship directly into the path of the last drone, pulling left at the last moment. The first missile couldn’t change trajectory fast enough and slammed into the drone. She turned to port, then flew straight up, maneuvered so the ship was above the flanks, turned 180 degrees and dove down. She sped between two of the drones, two of the missiles crashed into them. The explosion shook the jumpship. Sparks flew inside the hold, igniting small fires in the circuitry. Both Jon and Scout grabbed fire extinguishers and put out the flames starting on the consoles. The ship shuddered and creaked.

“The ship can’t take this,” Scout said pointlessly.

“Yes, she can,” Annie whispered more to herself than anyone else. “Four more drones… Tank, how many more missiles are following us?”

Tank checked the sensor. “Two more.”

“Two more,” she repeated.

“ANNIE!” Milo’s voice screamed over the radio. “A new frequency is pulsing from the drones! 5.8!”

“5.8?” Hawk asked.

“We may be in trouble now,” Annie muttered. “5.8 means a program to change primary targets from a location to a ship’s navigational signal. One of the biomechs on the ground must have changed it. Okay… our missiles are targeting the drones as secondary targets… I need to get them targeting the drones as the primary targets and I’ve got to get the drones targeting the missiles instead of us… I’ve got an idea. Let’s see if this works.”

“Good idea, I hope?” Hawk held onto his seat, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the armrests.

She had to get into position fast. There’d be no second chance. The drones were just ahead of her, just slightly to the right, speeding away. They were faster than the jump ship. She had to squeeze every bit of speed she could out of the engines. The missiles still followed her, gaining slightly. Positioning was crucial. She banked to starboard, full throttle, the missiles following behind. She turned sharply to port and matched pace with the drones now directly in front of them, the missiles not losing their clear lock on the jumpship. She flipped the switch that transferred all power to the engines. She had to get well past the drones. She had to get in front of them. She had to go even faster –

Faster…

Faster…

Smoke filled the cockpit. “The engines are overheating!” Tank yelled over the noise.

Annie lined the jump ship up behind the drones, every ounce of power letting her gain on them. Then she pulled the jumpship up, flying over the top of them, full speed, the missiles matching her mach for mach. She heard the drones howling beneath them as she increased speed well beyond structural limits. They shot past the drones, the missiles staying on the jump ship’s tail, ignoring the drones as if they weren’t there. She counted off the distance. “One hundred yards… three hundred… six hundred… one thousand…” Then Annie turned the ship in a wide 180 degree arc in mid-air, not slowing down, the sound of metal screaming at the sudden change in the g-forces. “Come on, sweetheart, you can do this,” she whispered. “Just ignore the rear panel that’s not there." She flew at full throttle at the oncoming drones –

“Your idea is to fly at them from the front?” Hawk murmured. “I thought that was a bad idea!”

Annie could feel the ship shudder and jerk as she pushed it beyond its specs. She flew toward the drones. The missiles were still locked on the jump ship’s navigational signal, the wide turn allowing them the few moments necessary to get closer to the jump ship.

The team comprehended was Annie was doing. “We’re about to get turned into a very flat sandwich,” Scout mumbled.

“No, we’re not,” Annie told him. There was one maneuver that she could perform to guarantee the drones were destroyed.

“Hang on! Secondary targets are about to be the primaries,” she yelled as she shut down the engines in mid-flight as she approached the front line of the drones, forcing the missiles to lose their primary target – the jump ship navigational signal that switched off when the engines did. The secondary target of the drones became the missiles’ new objective just as the drones targeted the oncoming missiles’ directly in front of them as their target. The jumpship curved not very gracefully and fell as the drones and missiles hurtled toward each other. The two enemy launches slammed into each other, the explosions taking out every last one of them. The shock wave blasted over the jump ship, shaking it violently.

“You did it,” Hawk said as he tried to catch his breath. “And we’re falling.”

“Engines are burned out,” Tank said, worry shading his voice.

“No, they’re not,” Annie told them as she fought to pull the ship into a glide. Hawk grabbed the co-pilot’s controls and helped her pull it back. Annie reached down below the console with one hand and continually pressed an emergency re-ignition button. “Come on, come on,” she muttered. “Ignite –”

The ship plummeted to a few hundred feet above the ground before the engines started up. They could see small campfires just beneath them. They were right over the base! “We’ve got to get beyond those,” Annie told Hawk as they both pulled the jumpship up slightly, the engines kicked in and the thrusters shook the ship. “Slow down,” Annie told the jumpship. In response, the jumpship slowed, relinquishing control back to the human pilots instead of gravity. They maneuvered beyond the campfires, beyond the boundary walls and easily, Annie landed the jumpship in the soft dirt in a field outside the base with hardly even a bounce.

For a moment, no one said a single word.

Then --

Scout whooped! “That was the best flying we have ever lived through!” he laughed. “That was incredible!”

Annie didn’t say anything. She sat back in the pilot’s seat, closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath.

Hawk placed a hand on her arm. “Scout’s right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen flying that good. You okay?”

Annie nodded her head as she leaned forward and patted the console. “We’re fine.”

“We’re fine?” She saw Hawk glance back at the rest of the team. Did she say something wrong? Those two words had meaning, didn’t they? A pilot, a ship, didn’t the two work in tandem?

Movement out the front view screen got her attention. “We’re not fine!”

“Annie! You’ve got incoming!” Milo’s voice shouted over the radio. “Sensors show last platoon of ‘em! We’ve got a strike team heading your way but the clickers will reach you first! No one is close enough to you to give support before they get there!”

Maybe twenty clickers were running toward the jump ship’s position.

Jon didn’t wait. “Power on your suits. Let’s take care of this last bunch,” he said, his voice sounding more animated than anyone had heard in a long time.

As Scout, Hawk and Tank rushed out of the jump ship, Jon turned to Annie. “We’re wearing armor, so it’s safer for us. Maybe you should stay here?”

“You wouldn’t want me to miss all the fun, would you?” she asked with a smile. She drew her gun and followed Jon out of the ship. She took cover under the ship and began firing at any oncoming trooper as the team spread out and rushed into the fight.

Several clickers focused on Annie, firing at her exclusively but unable to get a clear shot through the landing gear. One shot hit the under-hull, denting it.

“Hey! I hate repairing dents!” Annie whirled around and began firing in the new direction. Without hesitating, Jon joined her and helped her shoot down the clickers. “These tin cans never learn,” she muttered.

Shots hit the ground at her feet and Jon pushed in front of her to block any shots. Two direct hits shut down his power suit but Hawk’s deadly aim took down the last few clickers who focused on Annie.

“This is getting dicey,” Jon muttered.

“Good thing they don’t know how to find cover,” Annie told him as she took down another biomech.

One by one, the clickers fell under the onslaught until there was nothing left but shining metal bodies on the ground. It was all over in less than a minute.

The team regrouped at the jumpship. Annie sat down against the landing gear, pushing her hair out of her face. For a brief moment, there was a silence that only existed immediately after the last gun ceases to fire in a battle. No sound, no movement, just a moment of utter stillness. Annie looked out into the campfire-lit darkness, at the metal bodies littering the ground, then just shook her head and tucked her gun back into its holster.

Then, a single cricket began to chirp.

A cricket on the other side of the landing site answered.

In the distance, a bird cawed.

Then the sound of yells and cheers from in and around the base echoed through the darkness. Annie immediately stood up and glanced off in the direction of the shouts, a big smile slowly creeping across her face.

“They’re yelling?” Scout queried.

“They’re yelling,” Tank confirmed.

“I’ve never heard them yell like that before,” Annie told them.

Jon walked over beside Annie, placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her a gentle squeeze. “Are you all right?”

She didn’t say anything for a few moments. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s been a busy day. It’s been a while since I’ve had to fight in an aerial battle and two ground battles… good to know I can still handle the adrenaline rush." she said. She looked back at the ship, at the now dented under-hull and smiled. “These dents will have to be hammered out and that rear panel replaced before this ship goes anywhere." She noticed that some people were heading in their direction, cheering, smiling, laughing. Then Annie heard more noise on her radio. She pulled it out of her pocket again and increased the volume with a slightly shaking hand. The voices of very happy people cheering came over the speakers. She refused to suppress a smile.

“We did it! We did it!”
“Get a head count! Is everybody all right?”
“No more clickers on the sensors!”
"All the drones are history!”

Tank poked Hawk in the arm. “Now that’s an emotional response to a victory in battle.”

“Everybody get to a terminal or a radio and check in.”
“Check in how? Real name? Other name? I know who I am!”
“Me too!”
“This is Vincent. My real name is Warren Simpson.”
“Phillip. I’m really Stephen Meadows.”

Again and again, people began to introduce themselves, both the name they’d chosen and their real name.

Four men looked at their pilot expectantly as the voices chimed over the speakers. Annie leaned back against the metal landing leg for a moment and just listened. There was a cryptic smile on her face as if she knew a secret.

Hawk moved in front of her. “Annie?” He said her name.

She shook her head. “No, don’t call me that,” she said. “I’m not Annie. My name’s not Annie. It was never Annie. That was a character in a book –”

“Annie! Who are you?” Milo’s voice almost sounded like he was laughing. “My name’s Parker Andrews! I’m from Detroit .”

Jones’ voice broke in. “Paul Barrett! I’m from Millford!”

Before Annie could say anything, Bingley’s voice interrupted. “I’m Victor Rast from Collins. That’s about a half-hour’s walk from Millford!”

“We’re neighbors. I’m from Barbary,” someone else chimed in. “I’m Eleanor Pullings.”

Voice after voice came over the radio saying who they were and where they were from. The people standing by the jumpship listened as everyone got acquainted.

The team appeared amused as exuberant voices overlapped, introducing themselves.

“Very emotional,” Hawk observed. “Definitely not scripted.”

Finally, Milo’s voice came back over the speaker. “Annie, your turn! Who are you?”

Annie stood there quietly for a moment, and then answered into the radio. “Jennifer Chase. I’m from… Colorado." She left it at that. Then, she whispered to herself. “I’m Jennifer. That’s my name. It’s Jennifer. It’s not Annie.”

Four eager smiles met each other. Scout moved next to her so he could see Jennifer properly. “Colorado?”

Jennifer shrugged her shoulders and nodded her head. Then she grinned. “Yeah, Colorado,” she sighed. “I’m not explaining my Dread-Youth-in-Volcania past to them. Not after fighting biomechs and drones today. Not to mention that there are a few other Dread Youth who may have been digitized or were put here to spy on us and I don’t know whose side they’re on now. And I’ve got --”

Without another word, Scout swept her up in a big bear hug! “We got our Jennifer back!” he said. “It worked! Blowing up the transmitters worked!”

As soon as Scout let her go, Hawk hugged her, a big grin on his face. “Kid, we were really worried we wouldn’t see you again there for a while. Don’t get me wrong, Annie was great, but she wasn’t you.”

Before Jennifer could say anything, Tank picked her up in a hug. “Next time, you get out of the base if a biodread gets in. We’ve had to put up with Hawk’s limited flying skills for the last eight months.”

“What do you mean limited? I’ll have you know I can fly that jump ship,” Hawk said mockingly.

“Not as good as she can,” Tank told him.

Jon stood back and let everyone get their hellos and their banters in before he hugged her, but before he could take her in his arms, the crowd reached them.

“WOO HOO, ANNIE! You guys did it!” Felix yelled as he grabbed Jennifer in a hug as well and spun her around. “That was some fantastic flying! Seven drones? I didn’t know these old cargo ships could move like that! Hey, wait – ” He held her at arm’s length. “You really are Jennifer Chase. I was at Haven when all of you showed up there. I’ve been living in Millford for the last few months… sort of. I mean, I did live there until Blastarr showed up--”

“We all lived somewhere until Blastarr showed up,” Bingley stood nearby, looking the worse for wear, the excitement showing clearly in his expression. He leaned over toward Jennifer. “Now we know you really are a pilot, not just a mechanic or an engineer,” he had to speak loudly over the yells and cheers.

Yes, she really was a pilot. Jennifer knew who she was now, so did everyone else. Everyone remembered who they were, everyone was happy that they’d fought an entire army of biomechs and won. Was it time to celebrate or time to evacuate? It didn’t matter that she remembered she was Jennifer, that she was with her team and they were happy to see her. She was still Annie in many respects, she still had responsibilities. She had a base to check on and a post-battle protocol to follow. It didn’t matter if she wanted to scream or yell like everyone else, whether it was in joy or anger, she had a job to do.

Another thought just came to her. “Aw, the kids!” She moved off to the side where the rest of her team was standing and grabbed the radio again, turned to a private, secure frequency. “Milo… uh, Parker?”

“Go ahead, Jenny.”

“We need to find out where everyone is from. Make a list. I’m sure everyone will want to go home and it’ll be safer if we have people travelling in groups. And find the mayor of Placerville and her husband. They’ve been using the names…” she tried to remember the names they used – there were so many to try to remember – “Nellie and Allan. Take them to Lydia and tell them to find a little girl called Gracie. She’s their daughter Shannon. Oh, and find the Dread Youth that are here with us. Put them in isolation until we determine their status. Dread planted some spies in here with us. Get a list of the wounded and the casualties. We’ll need their correct names if we can find out who they are.”

“Nellie and Allan?” Scout asked her.

“Nellie for Nellie Bly the journalist and Allan for Allan Quatermain from King Solomon’s Mines,” Jennifer explained. "Found those names in books.”

“You got it, Boss… uh, Jenny. You know, real names are going to be hard to remember after all this!”

“I can live with that,” she muttered just as the group of triumphant people who had fought the enemy and won swept them all into congratulatory hugs and pats-on-the-back. Jennifer got caught up in the jubilatory wake but her mind was concentrating on other post-battle issues.

She was Jennifer, but part of her was still Annie. She still had a job to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Despite the celebratory atmosphere going on everywhere, there were still duties that needed to be performed. As if on auto-pilot, Jennifer heard the medics calling off the numbers of wounded and the dead they’d found so far, the scouts giving shouted reports of camp damage, techs and engineers giving her equipment reports – all of it interspersed with people happily introducing themselves to each other with their real names. Jennifer gave the usual post-battle orders out of habit rather than needing to think about the details: take care of the wounded, secure any weapons, make certain all biomechs were shut down, make sure all bodies were moved respectfully to the infirmary’s morgue… death, destruction and battle were all wrapped up in the sudden resurrection of memories and self-awareness. The moment seemed to be almost surrealistic, but she alone knew the truth behind all of it, and her anger was growing. Dread, Stinson, the trap, the payment… she could feel herself shaking from the fury she was feeling.

Jennifer had to get away from everyone and everything for just a few minutes. The noise was nearly deafening, the closed-in feel of the crowd almost suffocating. She needed to think. She needed to process. She needed just a few minutes of quiet to get things sorted out in her head.

She needed to get control of her anger.

She pulled herself away from the throng of people, away from the resistance group Annie had led; away from her team… her team… she was Jennifer Chase, corporal, pilot for the Power Team. She wasn’t Annie, yet she was Annie, leader of the largest resistance group on record.

She was Jennifer; she was Annie.

Right then, she was confused.

More memories began to filter through her mind now that she didn’t have to concentrate on the battle and surviving. Scenes from her childhood, growing up in the youth barracks, her training in the Dread Youth, her pride in being chosen the youngest youth leader in history, learning the truth behind the slogans, that terrifying time she was alone in the wastelands after escaping Volcania, the guys finding her, joking with Scout, talking with Mentor, flying with Hawk, working with Tank, Jon…

Jon. There were special memories that included him.

There were two months missing from her memory when she had been digitized, reintegrated and healed from fatal wounds. Maybe that was a blessing in disguise? A little luck tossed her way? Her mind protecting her from memories she didn’t want to have?

Then there was the six months at the base camp. Fighting, surviving, wondering who they were and where they came from, not knowing why they were there…

How had they done it?

She heard someone call her name off in the distance, a very familiar voice but she ignored it. There were too many people around, all meeting and greeting and smiling and talking and crying – far too many people making too much noise. She couldn’t concentrate, and the thoughts that were running through her mind were raising her temper. That was not a good situation for a resistance leader. She needed to present that calm exterior that group leaders sometimes had to hide behind to do their job, no matter how angry or upset they were.

“Annie!” Who was that calling her name? She looked over, saw it was a woman she knew as Jane just waving excitedly at her, not wanting to stop and talk to her. Like all the others, Jane was happy to know who she was and where she came from and was greeting as many people as possible. More people came up to her, shook her hand, patted her on the shoulder and told he what a good job she’d done against the drones, how they had taken out hundreds of biomechs, how it had to be some kind of record, and on and on and on.

She’d given her orders, they were being carried out, there was nothing else she could do until Milo brought her the reports – no one would miss her if she disappeared for just a minute or two. She hurried across the camp until she reached her quarters in the outer building that also doubled as her office. Milo would know where to find her when he had information to tell her.

Standing in the doorway, there was a moment of unfamiliarity. This room had been her quarters and her office for most of the time they’d been at the camp, yet there was a sudden impression that it was the first time she’d seen it. It was the same walls, the same desk, the same bookshelf, the same cot with the thin mattress – nothing was different -- except her. She was seeing the room through Jennifer’s eyes, not Annie’s. She walked over to her cot and sat down.

She just needed a moment to get all the facts clear in her mind so she could suppress her anger.

Over one thousand people had been deposited at that site for Stinson’s experiment.

Stinson was supposed to hand her over to Dread as payment for the experiment and as a way to get to Jon.

It was just luck that she wasn’t the data pattern Stinson thought she was.

He had healed the injured prisoners, dumped them all at the site, and then forced them to stay in range with a sub-audible pulse beacon – all for a memory-altering experiment.

All that they had gone through, all that they were, all of it was Stinson’s doing and…

It was all a lie.

For six months, they’d lived in a false world engineered by Stinson.

She didn’t want to wrap her mind around the would’ve/could’ve/should’ves of the situation. She didn’t want to think of what might have been if they had been found sooner, if the beacons had been stopped sooner, if the biomechs had attacked and beaten them. She didn’t want to think of the futility of it all. Too many at the base camp had sacrificed their lives over the last six months, and for what? For an experiment?

They’d been used. She could feel the raw anger building again. She couldn’t afford that. She was the military leader, and she would behave like one for as long as she needed to and as long as the job was hers. Exhibiting a professional attitude when everything around her was in shambles had become habit, but the rage… she needed to control it before she did anything else.

She forced herself to think about everything that needed to be done in a short amount of time. There was so much she had to do. The casualties – despite all the confusion and onslaught of memories, it was possible they could collect the true names of some of the dead. Milo would get the casualty list together. Funerals would have to be conducted and graves would have to be dug. This time, maybe family members could be found to help officiate. It wouldn’t just be a camp commander saying last words over fallen soldiers; it would be people who knew them sharing their memories of them.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something on the bookshelf. She reached out and pulled her torn and mangled power suit from the pile. Jon must have seen it when they were in her office the day the team arrived, but he couldn’t say anything. She stretched it out and saw the giant tear through the midsection. The wiring poked out from the sides of the rip, dried blood was around the edges, and the smell of burnt metal was still present in the fabric.

“I’m all broken up inside!” Her words echoed in her mind. She’d been hurt so badly. She could remember the pain of the broken ribs, how they pierced her, how she was having trouble breathing let alone standing. When she had crouched by the communicator talking to Jon, she could feel the cold already seeping into her limbs. She knew she only had moments to live. That was why she had told him she loved him – she didn’t to leave the world without telling him that truth.

She’d told him to stay away because there was no other choice and no second chance. She didn’t want him to die with her or get caught because he tried to rescue her when she knew it was pointless. She only had moments before her injuries killed her, and there was no way the jump ship could reach the base in time.

She remembered forcing herself to stand – she would meet death on her feet, not crouching on her knees in excruciating pain. Blastarr charged into the room, Jennifer reached back and pressed the manual controls to destroy the power source ---

She had a vague memory of seeing the digitizing beam being focused on her just before the fire roared into the room, before the heat could sear her flesh --

What had Stinson said? “The organic that was caught in the processor was critically wounded. Nearly fatal. I almost wasn’t able to keep her alive due to the extent of her injuries. She required a great deal of medical care. I put her in a medically induced coma to keep her alive as I performed the necessary surgeries then. ”

Her power suit was ripped apart. He’d ripped it apart to perform the necessary surgery to keep her alive.

The power suit was special to her. It had been her first real possession that was hers and hers alone. It was a gift. She’d never been given a gift before that. The suit imprinted on the wearer, so she would be the only person to ever wear it. It was unique.

Unique – that was a word she had never heard before she met the Power Team. As a Dread Youth, she had been one of many, a face in the crowd, a cog in the Machine. She had no individuality. She was expected to know her lessons, and what was expected happened. She served the Machine, and that meant absolute obedience. There was no self, there were no personal preferences or joys or miseries. Humans were a plague on the planet and had to be eliminated. Only those who followed the will of the Machine would one day attain the glory of becoming an immortal mind in a gleaming metalloid body.

Then she escaped from the Dread Youth, fled Volcania and the lies she had been inundated with since childhood. She learned that she was a unique individual with a distinct personality and a right to live as herself, not as a cog in a machine. She had the chance to learn what she loved and what she hated – she became Jennifer Chase and left Youth Leader Chase behind.

Then she was asked to add Corporal Chase to her identity and given a power suit. She had earned the right, not because of what she knew or who she was but because of what she did and believed. It had been a long road for her to travel from a youth leader to a resistance leader. The difference wasn’t just in miles or attitude; it was in her mind as well. She had to learn all that Dread had kept from them. She had to learn that there was more to being human than having a beating heart and working lungs. It was so much more than merely being organic. Being human was a state of grace that no machine could ever understand. Humanity was a priceless gift that no one should be able to take away.

That long journey that began with a single step led her to Jonathan Power, the Resistance, even the suits. At first glance, it was nothing more than a simple suit made of material and wires and powered-down armor, but no, the power suit was much more than that. The suit was a weapon to fight Dread. They fought his Empire. They fought even if the odds were against them. The suits were symbols that represented the lengths the team would go to in order to fight, but it was the person inside the suit that did the fighting. It was the person, the soldier, the one who would risk everything to stop a madman from destroying the world.

It didn’t matter if she was Jennifer or Annie, that’s what she did – she fought. Even if it was futile, even if it was a sham orchestrated by Stinson, even if death was the outcome, she fought. She had done that as both personas because Stinson couldn’t change who she was at her core. Annie was true to Jennifer’s beliefs, and neither would be used in someone else’s machinations.

In the end, did it matter if the last six months was all an experiment? She would have fought regardless, but so many had fought, some had died. Were their deaths in vain? Had they died needlessly? No, they hadn’t. They fought to protect the people in the base camp. Whether orchestrated or not, the fighting was real. It was the fact that it had been a game Stinson and Dread had played with them that angered her.

Dread and Stinson had used them.

Jennifer loathed being used.

She sensed rather than saw that she wasn’t alone. “That was a very impressive bit of flying,” Jon said.

He was using the tone he always used when he knew someone needed to talk. She looked up and saw him leaning against the doorframe. It was a familiar pose. She’d seen him strike the same stance at other times over the years when he was volunteering to listen to her no matter what she needed to talk about.

The difference between a few hours ago when they talked and that moment was that she knew who he was. He wasn’t a stranger visiting her base camp anymore. He was Jon, the man who taught her what it was like to be human and to care about others. Jonathan Power, friend, captain and group leader – maybe more. “It wasn’t just me. I can only take part of the credit. The jump ship did most of the work."

“Only if you’re flying,” Jon observed. “I don’t think she likes Hawk at the controls as much as she does you.”

“She’s used to a lighter touch, that’s all,” she pointed out. She looked at her hands, touched the calluses still on her palm. “When you guys showed up, I noticed that Hawk had the same calluses on his hands that I did. I was going to ask him where his came from. I had been wondering if I was a pilot, and if Hawk was, then I’d know for sure.”

Jon straightened up. “I could have told you that you were a pilot.”

If Jennifer wasn’t so angry, she would have laughed. She wagged a finger semi-jokingly at him. “No, you couldn’t, remember? You couldn’t force our memories on us. Or so Stinson said." She placed her hand on the gaping hole in the power suit and felt the sharp edges left by the wiring and the circuitry.

Jon walked in the rest of the way and kneeled down next to her. He touched the power suit. “I can repair this, you know.”

Jennifer folded the suit over so the midsection was on top. “Stinson must not have known what it was or he would have given it to Dread or known I was the one he was supposed to turn over to him.”

“He got Freedom One instead. I still can’t say I’m upset about that.”

No, that didn’t bother Jennifer much either. Should it bother her that she wasn’t bothered? “It took them months to realize it. If they’d found out sooner, they’d have killed Stinson and come after me a long time ago. A lot of people here would have been killed if that had happened." Jennifer picked at one of the wires that protruded out of her suit. “I didn’t know what this was,” she murmured. “I woke up and I was wearing it under my clothes. I didn’t think anything of it except it was torn in the middle, and I had scars there. I didn’t realize the suit was something I should have wondered about, and later on, it didn’t seem to matter.”

“Jennifer –”

“None of it was real,” she stated emphatically, her anger getting the better of her and tingeing her voice. “The attacks were all setups to turn us into a working resistance group so Stinson could learn how to work against us and tell Dread. He turned us into toy soldiers fighting a fake war that Dread conducted. He scripted our movements. He just wanted to experiment on us. Everything we did was a lie but it was real for us. Too many people died fighting --”

“I know." Jon moved in front of her and took hold of her hand. “I know you’re angry about it – you’re so angry, your hands are shaking – and you should be. It was real for you. All of it. Those biomechs came here to test your defenses, and their orders had to be shoot-to-kill. You came up with ingenious tactical systems that Dread couldn’t have anticipated like Burmese tiger traps and explosively wired trenches, and you kept these people alive. Dread and Stinson may have orchestrated all of it, but they weren’t pulling their punches.”

He was right. She knew he was right. It didn’t make her feel any better that the whole thing had been a trap.

Every bit of it had been a trap.

She shook her head and sighed.

“What?” he asked.

“The last time I talked with you, when I was at the base, I was caught in a trap. Then when you find me, find all of us here, it’s another trap.”

At that, even Jon had to smile. “Let’s not make a habit of this, okay?”

She looked up at him, but she couldn’t return the smile. “None of this should have happened, Jon,” she said. “We shouldn’t have been digitized. We shouldn’t have been dumped here or used as live subjects in a lethal experiment.”

Jon nodded. “No, you’re right, it shouldn’t have happened. No one has the right to do what Dread and Stinson did." He gripped her hand tighter. She could feel herself still shaking because she was so angry.

She shook her head. “I hate being used. Dread used the Youth Corps to further his plans without regard to anyone. Stinson used us to prove his theories. They were going to use me to get to you. . ."

Jon wove his fingers with hers and didn’t let go of her hand. “Yes, Stinson used you, and he had no idea that his mistake would cost Dread so much and didn’t care what it cost anybody."

“Lots of biomechs and Cadet Corps personnel,” Jennifer agreed. “It cost us a lot more though. A lot of good people died never knowing who they really were, and they shouldn’t have.”

“I know,” Jon said reassuringly.

Jennifer was seeing Jon in a new light. She understood now just how terrible a burden it was to command a resistance force. It was so different from leading a group of biomechs or corps cadets like she did when she was a youth leader. No one in Dread’s army cared about the individuals in a command; they didn’t worry about saving lives. The Resistance did. All lives were sacred. No one except someone who had commanded others could understand what the resistance leaders dealt with on a daily basis. They had both shouldered the responsibilities and accepted the consequences. They both made decisions that affected others’ lives. They were both now on an equal standing that they didn’t have before.

“I don’t know how you’ve done this job for all these years,” she told him. “I’ve had it for six months, and I feel like … I don’t know what I feel like.”

“This job isn’t easy,” he answered. “Sometimes, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. But you take one disaster at a time, make one decision at a time, hope it’s the right one and try to look like you know what you were doing the entire time even when you don’t. You tie yourself up in knots hoping you’ve made the right decision, and you stay awake nights trying to come up with contingency plans and wondering what Dread is up to and what life-risking decisions you’ll have to make tomorrow."

“That pretty much describes it,” she admitted.

Jon put his finger under her chin and lifted her head so he could look her in the eye. “I know what you’re feeling. Too many times, I’ve sat in my quarters at the base after a particularly dangerous mission and wondered if I made the right decisions or if I put us in danger when I didn’t have to. Sometimes, I’d get so angry at Dread, I’d have to go off by myself to calm down.”

“Getting angry won’t help matters any. I know that,” she said.

“Only someone who’s walked in our shoes would,” he added. “But I learned a long time ago something that no one ever tells you – there’s no manual for this job. Most of us in charge are winging it on our best days. You went so far beyond that here, and you did an incredible job. I don’t know anyone else who could have done what you did, and you did it so well. You’ve definitely raised the bar when it comes to leading resistance groups."

That, Jennifer could laugh at. “Sometimes it felt like we were in freefall without a safety harness." She took a deep breath, her mind automatically reverting to the role of base camp commander. “We need to prepare. After everything that’s happened, Dread will hit us hard and probably fast to get even. Or he’ll hit at other settlements and tell them it’s our fault they’re being attacked because we destroyed so many of his troops. He won’t let this go.”

“He never does,” Jon commented. “He doesn’t care what he has to risk to get revenge. And,” he made certain she was looking directly at him as he said, “no matter what Dread does, it is not your fault.”

Jon did know her well. She still blamed herself for what happened at Sand Town, but this – no. She would not blame herself for anything Dread did.

“And it’s not Annie’s fault either,” he added with a smile.

Jennifer had to smile back at that. “Annie was good at getting into trouble. I don’t know what part of me was Annie or how much of Annie was Jennifer,” she admitted, confused.

Jon gripped her hand a little tighter. “I can tell you one thing I know for sure -- Annie was Jennifer. We all saw it as soon as we walked onto this base. It was in your words, your posture, how you approached a problem. You’ve always had a direct way about you, but Annie was a little more blunt. But then you’d say something or do something that was Jennifer, not Annie. One difference is that there was a harder edge to you than we’d ever seen before. You were still in there somewhere, and we just had to find a way to get you back safely.”

It sounded logical enough the way Jon explained it. “Remember when I asked you if I was a good person when you knew me from before?”

Jon nodded his head. “I wanted to tell you more than that,” he answered.

“There was a part of me that didn’t want to know,” she told him. “All this time, I had no idea how real Annie was or if she was a personality I was using because I didn’t know who I was. To be honest, I liked who I was as Annie, and I was worried I might not like the real me once I got my memories back, no matter how much I wanted to know who I really was."

“I think Annie was real,” Jon confirmed that thought clearly. “But Annie was still Jennifer.”

She noticed her hands had stopped shaking. She wasn’t as angry. How many times after she had escaped the Dread Youth, when she was filled with rage, did Jon just let her talk until her anger was gone? Too many times to count. “I shouldn’t let it get to me this much,” she whispered. “I’m still in charge. I’ve got to at least look like I’m handling everything that gets tossed at me.”

“It’s all right. It proves you’re human,” Jon explained. “I’d be worried if you didn’t react to everything that’s happened to you over the last eight months.”

React? Then why was her reaction the opposite of everyone else’s? Why were the others outside laughing while she had to go to her quarters to regain control of her temper? “I should be happy that I know who I am and I’m alive like the others, but --”

“You’re angry because you know the truth,” Jon reminded her. “You know why you were here. They don’t. When they find out, they’re not going to like it either. I think some tempers are going to flare when you tell them.”

Jennifer closed her eyes for a moment. “I didn’t get a chance to tell anyone about Stinson or his deal with Dread,” she said aloud. “I was heading back here when I got the distress call from Frost that the biomechs were attacking. I flew in and tried to help, but there was nothing I could do." The irony of the events of that day didn’t evade her notice. “Frost died the same way I almost did,” she frowned.

Jon leaned a little closer. “What do you mean?”

“He was trapped, hurt, the biomechs had ripped their way inside the silo and there was no way out. I told him I was coming in but he stopped me. He blew up the silo rather than let them get anything from it. He never got a chance to know who he really was or why we were put here." She thought about those last moments in Frost’s life. She knew how he felt, how scared he must have been, how determined. “He shouldn’t have died like that, alone.”

“He wasn’t alone,” Jon assured her. “You were there, listening, talking to him. It was all you could do, but --”

“But it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t get to him to save him. He was trapped."

Jon thought for a moment, then said, “Was Frost the type of person who would have wanted to go down fighting?”

Jennifer nodded. “Frost? Yes. And take as many of them as he could with him. You should have seen him in some fights. He’d go hand-to-hand against a biomech. Once, he punched one so hard, it dented its head. He was fearless. When we’d go into a nearby Dread facility to look for supplies, he’d be right there beside me. I never saw anything scare him, not really. I have no idea what the real person would have been like. Jones always called him a hard case. I know he’s not the only one we lost, there were several others killed at the silo, at the trench, here at the base, but he was my friend and I was talking to him over the radio when he triggered the explosives. I couldn’t help him.”

“But he knew you were there to hear him,” Jon reminded her.

Before Jennifer blew up the base, Jon’s voice had been her lifeline. For that brief moment, only the two of them existed. Had she been that for Frost? Had knowing that someone was there listening to him, was scared for him, did it make a difference in that last moment?

“You’re not as angry,” he said. He didn’t let go of her hand, not that she wanted him to.

“You always did let me talk until I calmed down,” she told him. “I don’t know where you found the patience.”

“Patience had nothing to do with it. I’ve always liked talking with you. You always asked the best questions,” he quipped.

She could only smile at that. “I always had those,” she agreed readily, then sighed. “Everyone has a right to know what happened here, that they were being used and were bait in a trap. I’ve got to find a way to tell them what Stinson was doing.”

Jon thought for a moment. It wasn’t an easy task -- weighing the pros and the cons of telling everyone everything from time to time and determining the best time to do it. Finally, he motioned toward the outer area. “Maybe tell them a little later tonight? You’ve got a base full of happy people out there. They’re all finding friends and relatives. Some were talking about where their homes were and if the settlements were still standing. I think I heard someone mention something about a party. It’s your call, but my vote is to let them have their party first. Let them have a few hours before reality has to set back in. You all deserve it.”

A party? She didn’t have to think about it. “A party might be fun. We’ve thrown some interesting ones. And you’re right. Everyone deserves a few hours downtime. They won’t be so happy when they hear the entire story. Besides, I doubt Dread has any more troops to send against us tonight.”

Jon’s forehead furrowed slightly. Both knew that statements like that had a way of backfiring. “Wishful thinking?” Jon asked her.

“More like hopeful thinking,” she sighed. “More than twelve hundred biomechs would have taken up the majority of the Dread forces in the area, and we pretty much destroyed them all." She paused for a moment. “I still don’t know how we did it. A bunch of people who had no idea who they were suddenly remembering in the middle of a fight… and we wiped out that many troops in a single battle when we remembered who we were.”

“And seven drones,” Jon reminded her. “Don’t forget them.”

She felt another surge of anger at the thought of what drones could have done if they had hit the base. “I guess Dread decided capturing me to trap you wasn’t important anymore since he was determined to destroy us. If they had missed their target, they could have wiped out everything.”

“You didn’t let them,” Jon reminded her. “Like I said, that was remarkable flying you did out there, and you’ve done an extraordinary job here. You built and led an army.”

An army… Looking at their numbers from Jon’s point of view, they would have been an actual army, not just a resistance group. “It had to be the largest organized force Dread has dealt with since the end of the Metal Wars,” she mused.

“I wouldn’t doubt it. I would guess that he found this group’s ability to fight the biomechs more than impressive. Maybe that’s why he finally sent all the forces from this area that he could muster after you – your army was becoming too powerful,” he suggested. “I’ve been told that commanding this many troops isn’t easy. You made it look that way.”

“Not me,” she countered easily. “I had Frost, Bingley and Milo working with me. Jones most of the time, too. I couldn’t have done any of it without them.”

“You’ve got a good group,” he repeated light-heartedly. “I know I’ve been lucky enough to have a good team to work with as well, including a pilot who went AWOL about eight months ago,” he joked.

Jennifer smiled at that. “That really wasn’t my fault,” she explained. “I was unable to comply with orders like meeting at the drop-off point.”

Jon gave her a comically-serious look that expressed his opinion of that comment. “Really?”

“Really. Blastarr interrupted my plans,” she told him teasingly.

“Mine too,” Jon added. “You see, you and I didn’t finish that talk we started, and I had every intention of doing just that until Blastarr showed up.”

Jennifer smiled. Their conversation – it had been one of the laments in her last communication with him that fateful day – that they didn’t get to finish their talk. “But you had that talk with Annie." She teased him.

“And she gave me some very wise advice,” Jon told her. “She said I really needed to talk to my pilot when I got the chance.”

“You’re pretty sure we were going to finish that talk,” she teased him.

“Sure enough to know how my end of the conversation would have gone since I finally got up the nerve to tell you how I feel – even though I told Annie.”

Jennifer tilted her head. “Really? How?”

Jon’s hand slipped behind her neck and pulled her to him. He kissed her, simply and gently. He pulled away and smiled, his eyes not leaving hers. “Like that,” he told her as he kissed her again.

Jennifer liked the way he would have carried his end of the conversation. She heard footfalls echoing down the hallway that she promptly ignored.

“Hey, Annie, uh, Jenny, got the reports and how about we – whoops! Sorry!”

Jennifer felt Jon smile at Milo’s interruption. Their eyes shared an amused look, then Jon quickly moved to sit beside her on the cot. She looked up at her new-found friend of six months. For a moment, she wondered about Milo. He’d had a crush on her. Would he still have feelings now that he remembered or would his feelings be returned to whoever he might have been involved with before?

Given the suspicious way he was looking at Jon, those feelings were still there.

“What have you got?” she asked him.

“Few things – we’ve got the Dread Youth personnel, and they’re talking. Lots of them aren’t happy with what happened to them and they’re interested in switching sides. Turns out Dread didn’t ask for volunteers from the cadets. I thought maybe Power could talk to them to see if any of them are serious or if it’s a trap. There are a few who are spouting the litanies, so they’re a lost cause.”

Jon nodded. “We can do that.”

Milo looked at the paper in his hand. “Casualty list. The numbers aren’t as bad as we thought. Some at the trenches turned out to still be alive and wounded, just unconscious. They’re with the medics now. We lost the few at the silo, Frost, thirty-two at the trenches and twenty-six here inside the perimeter. We got lucky that we didn’t lose more. We’ve already found family members for some of the deceased to take care of the bodies. The rest, we’ve been able to find out who they are from acquaintances so we’ll need to handle those burials. I’ve planned a memorial service for everyone we’ve lost tomorrow morning, and you get to officiate.”

That was one concern she was glad Milo took care of. She’d planned so many of those over the course of their battles. “Okay. I found out some information at Stinson’s lab I’ll tell everyone about later. It’s not good news. And now how about we… what?” she asked him with a contented grin.

Milo… no, not Milo. She had to remember his name was Parker… cleared his throat and shuffled his feet a bit. “I know we just got out of a fight and a lot of people died, but there’s talk of getting a party going, and they want to know if it’s okay with you. I think there’s a lot of nervous energy out there they want to work off. Too many are too happy and they want to celebrate.”

Jennifer laughed. She glanced back at Jon who was smiling. Apparently, things hadn’t changed just yet. She was still Annie; she was still in charge, sort of. “Since we vote on non-military matters, my vote is that a party is a great idea.”

“Good!” Parker almost yelled, his eyes not really going far from Jon. “The band is already getting the instruments out and tuned up.”

“Band?” Jon asked her.

Jennifer nodded. “We have some people here who know how to play musical instruments. They formed a band.”

“You’ve got musical instruments?” Jon asked incredulously.

Parker nodded. “Guitars, drums, a couple of saxophones, a keyboard. We’ve got everything here.”

Jon grinned, then glanced toward the outer door. They could hear happy people talking outside. “Parker, do they know how to play music we can dance to?”

Parker shrugged. “Sure they do. You should hear them when they play. Fast songs, slow songs, you name it. Why?”

Jon looked back at Jennifer, an intense look in his eyes. “The last time we danced, I don’t think we actually finished.”

“Oh… you two have danced before?” Parker’s voice sounded somewhat strange.

“We’ve danced,” Jennifer told him, her eyes not leaving Jon’s.

Parker stared at them. He got very quiet, very still, then asked, “Uh, just out of curiosity, Jenny, are you really that fifth member of Power’s team that we were wondering about?”

Jon’s gaze didn’t leave Jennifer’s. There was something very comforting and tender in the way he looked at her. He took her hand in his, his thumb stroking her fingers. “She’s our pilot,” he answered.

Parker looked at Jennifer, he looked at Jon. “Okay, gotcha. Pilot. Right. Should have guessed. I’ll just leave you two alone and tell them to get the party started. I’ll tell everyone you’ll join us later."

After Parker left and closed the door, Jon took her face in his hands and kissed her again. Jennifer heard Parker’s voice in the hallway as he mumbled, “Getting kind of warm in there…”

Jon lifted his head momentarily, glanced at the door and asked, “Is that closed door policy still in effect?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Milo? So?” Jones rushed up to Milo. “Party?”

“Party. Pull out your best kegs and get it started,” Milo told him and grinned as Jones ran off to spread the word.

Parker, a. k. a. Milo, felt like he was sleepwalking. He knew his part of the post-battle routine as well as anyone else did. He knew his responsibilities and knew they had to be carried out before any party, but something was very wrong. His life had been turned upside down with the return of his memories. Like everyone else, he suddenly remembered his name – that alone made him happy – but then the rest of his life suddenly flashed in his mind. He couldn’t pay any heed to the memories because they were under attack. He was so caught up in the moment trying to survive and keep people alive that he didn’t give any thought to who he was or where he came from. Too many things needed doing, too many people needed protecting, too many clickers needed destroying – no, he didn’t have time to think about who he really was when life and limb was on the line.

He heard a loud cheer. Jones had reached a large group and told them about the party. A lot of people needed to let loose. They needed to be happy. They’d just won a victory. They had a right to feel good about being alive. This was one vote that Milo could agree with completely no matter the timing.

He looked at the reader in his hands. Everything Annie – no, Jennifer, he had to remember her name was Jennifer -- had asked for, he’d got. As many names of the wounded and killed that could be found out was written down. He knew every one of them – not by their real names, of course, but as friends, colleagues, associates and fellow-soldiers. These were people he worked with, joked with and had literally lived with for six months. These were people he cared for and worried about.

“You okay, Milo?” Bingley walked up beside him, taking a long look at the base camp as people rushed around. Yes, a party was beginning to take shape. “Can you believe it? We actually survived that attack.”

“Yeah. It’s Parker Andrews, by the way,” he said mechanically.

“Victor Rast,” Bingley told him. “Remembering real names is going to take a while.”

“Looks like we’ve got time. Maybe we should wear name tags?” he suggested.

“It wouldn’t hurt,” Victor agreed.

Milo remembered something Victor had said earlier. “You mentioned you were from Collins? What did you do when you lived there?”

Victor suddenly had a wistful, happy look on his face. “Would you believe I ran an underground power plant?”

Underground? Why did that sound strange? “Why underground?”

“So Dread and his cronies wouldn’t find it,” Victor told him. “That’s one of the ways he tracks settlements. He looks for power spikes. It’s easy to mask their power signatures if their underground.”

Dread. He dictated so much of their lives, didn’t he?

“What about you?” Victor asked.

Parker thought for a moment. “I sort of ran a place like a command center for a while.”

Oddly enough, they performed similar jobs at the base that they did in their real lives. Parker shook himself out of his thoughts and looked down at the reader again. “I guess we’ll be heading back to our old jobs after all this.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to do that job anymore. I think I want to be a soldier now,” Victor explained. “A lot of good people died here over the last six months. I don’t want their deaths to count for nothing.”

Parker looked out over the crowd and nodded. The idea that the choice of what he did was his… it was a heady thought. Where he came from, no one really had a choice. You were given a job, and you did it. The idea that there was a choice… he had to grow accustomed to that. “Yeah, I think a lot of people want to do that. We found out we could fight the good fight. Look at Power’s team. They seem to have a pretty good thing going -- fighting and flying all over the place. They fight wherever they’re needed. Why can’t the rest of us?”

“Captain Power himself. Can you believe they actually came here? They help out a lot of people, but they’re not ones to stick around and train troops." Victor rocked back and forth on his heels. “I know part of it was because he saw Annie. I know they knew each other from before, but there’s more to it than that. Did you notice how he kept staring at her these last few days? It was a lot more than disbelief that she was alive and didn’t know him.”

“Yeah, well, like you said, there was a lot more to it than that,” Parker said, almost unwillingly. “I don’t know exactly what’s between them, but they, uh, worked together." Do you really want to think about that? he thought to himself. No, he didn’t. He didn’t like the idea that Power had some kind of a relationship with Jennifer, but what could he do? Annie knew him in another life. It was odd – he felt like he lost something he never had.

“I heard that mentioned at their jump ship. She was with the Power Team when they were at Haven.”

“Yeah,” Milo sighed. “She was the fifth member of the Power Team. Their pilot. Probably still is.”

Another cheer further out went up. Obviously, Jones wasn’t wasting time spreading the good word about the party.

“You know, that explains a lot of things, especially Power’s behavior,” Victor observed. Looking around, they saw people greeting old friends and family members. They saw children reunited with their parents – little “Gracie” was back with her mom, the mayor of Placerville . Jennifer would be happy about that. “Where is Jennifer?” Victor asked. “She had that angry look she gets sometimes after a battle.”

Parker motioned toward the outer building. “Back in her office. She needed to calm down before making an appearance. I don’t know what it is, but she found out something at Stinson’s lab that she wants to tell us about later. She doesn’t usually get this mad after a fight, so I think that has something to do with it. She and Power have been talking. They’ll join us later.”

“They’d better hurry,” Victor indicated the party set-up in full swing. “I think this one will be an all-nighter, and it won’t be one to miss.”

“An all-nighter, huh? I don’t think they’d think they were missing anything,” Parker muttered to himself.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

And they partied!

The band played any song they could remember or improvise. Fast songs, faster songs, folk songs, old time rock and roll, some classical pieces with a good beat and rhythm, slow romantic songs – people were on their feet enjoying themselves as themselves for the first time in months.

Feasting, drinking, it was a moment to celebrate. Nighttime progressed and with midnight still hours away, they kept on with the festivities. Extra campfires were set to help light up the area, lanterns were brought out – no one wanted to stop.

Jones brought out several more kegs of his homemade brew as well. “Come one, come all. Get some while there’s still some to be got!” he yelled.

Hawk and Tank managed to get to the front of the line. “ Jackson told us we’d have to be lucky to get any of your home brew,” Hawk told him. “We haven’t been able to get any all evening.”

“Better believe it,” Jones said as he filled only half a mug for both men. “We only bring out the good stuff on special occasions. It takes a few weeks to make, and it’s gone in double-quick time. Don’t drink it fast and don’t smoke afterwards.”

Tank sniffed the drink. “What would happen if we did?”

Jones leaned over and said with a self-satisfied grin, “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

Hawk and Tank gave a mock salute to each other and was just about to take a first sip when Jennifer walked up behind them, looking flushed as if she’d been dancing, and said, “I wouldn’t drink too much of that too fast if I were you. Half a mug would be more than enough.”

“That’s what Jackson said." Hawk sniffed the drink. “Is it that potent?”

“We’ve used it to clean some of the equipment,” she explained. “It takes a few times to build up any kind of resistance to it. I can drink a half-mug and not have any after-effects.”

Tank took a sip, made a face and coughed. “Very potent,” his voice came out in a rough whisper. “What did he use in this? Battery acid?”

“How’d you know?” Jennifer joked.

“Hey!” Jones turned his head toward the team as he poured another party-goer a mug. “Do not be giving out my recipe there, Annie.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she hollered back, clearly amused at still being called Annie. It was going to take a while before people remembered real names.

Scout came rushing up to them and gave Jennifer another big one-armed hug. The guys were so happy that she was Jennifer again, alive and well and back, they didn’t act like they were going to stop giving her hugs any time in the near future. “Ya know, I’m getting the distinct impression that this is not the first party you’ve given around here.”

“It’s not,” Jennifer told him. “We may not have had emotional responses to the battles, but we certainly knew how to celebrate.”

“You should see the food the cooks just put out –”

“Food?” Tank interrupted him. “Where?”

Scout jerked his thumb back in the direction he came. “That way. Wait until you see that spread! Where in the world did they get that many vegetables?”

Jennifer looked around and nudged her head toward the entrance of the camp. “Out in the woods. All sorts of things are growing fast out there.”

“Yeah, but that much?” Scout asked, remembering all the vegetation they’d seen. “Hey, we never did figure out why everything that’s growing out there started growing about the time the base exploded.”

“You didn’t?” Jennifer asked, a knowing gleam in her eye.

“Wait a minute,” Scout narrowed his eyes as he stared at her. “You know why the forest is there, don’t you?”

Jennifer grinned and nodded her head. “I do now. I’ve had a little time to think about it. When the base exploded, the seeds we had frozen down in the hydroponics lab blasted out, probably through the venting system before the mountain caved in. The blast cloud itself could have easily crossed over a one hundred mile radius, so all those seeds rode the blast cloud and got spread out over that distance.”

Hawk glanced out into the darkness. “And it made woods grow. There’s a tech back at the Passages who’ll be happy to know that. It should save him some time on research." He took a sip of his drink and made a sour face. “Whoa,” he mumbled, his voice hoarse after one sip. “Powerful stuff,” he forced himself to say. “That’ll get you three sheets to the wind faster than vintage cognac." He coughed several times to clear his throat. “I didn’t think that the blast cloud would reach that far.”

Jon walked up to them, got himself a half-mug of Jones’ brew and handed another one to Jennifer. Jon sniffed and took a sip -- “That’s beyond potent,” he rasped out. “I can see how a little could go a long way." He coughed to clear his throat. “Maybe the explosion triggered the seeds’ growing process somehow? Made it faster?”

Jennifer took a quick sip of her drink. “I’d say the explosion thawed them out pretty quickly. It also shook loose some of the bedrock so underground streams reached the surface. That’s where the fresh water came from. Any residual radiation sparked a growth spurt, and we had vegetables and trees growing in no time. Luckily for us, the radiation didn’t have an adverse effect,” she told them, her attitude changing slightly, making her sound more like Annie.

Scout took hold of Jennifer’s arm and pulled her slightly to the side. “Okay, I want to know something…”

While Jennifer was temporarily occupied, Hawk turned to Jon. “So, everything okay? We do have our Jennifer back?”

Jon smiled and nodded her head. “Yeah, she’s Jennifer. There’s still a lot of Annie left over. I’m guessing that everyone has a lot of their new identities blending in with their old ones.”

“It won’t be easy for any of them for a few days, I wouldn’t think. So where have you two been?” Hawk asked. “This party has been going on for a few hours.”

“Dancing,” Jon told him. “Talking.”

“You mean the talk you two were supposed to finish?”

“Yeah, the talk. We started it, didn’t quite finish it, but there was a lot that needed to be said,” Jon explained. “They have a closed door policy here, so when someone sees a door is closed, you don’t go in unless you knock and are invited. We were able to talk without being interrupted.”

Hawk glanced over where Jennifer was explaining the answer to whatever it was Scout had asked her. She seemed happy, more like their Jennifer. She wasn’t the only one. Jon was happy as well. “You two are good for each other,” he told Jon quietly. “You can always finish the talk later on now that you’ve got the chance.”

There was a low whistle, they looked over and saw one of the guards motioning toward a point behind Jennifer. She turned and saw Victor Rastand Parker Andrews trying to get her attention. She raised her hand and made a motion in response. “Be right back. Bingley -- sorry, Victor and Parker need me for something." She turned up the mug and drank down the brew in a matter of a few gulps, much to the surprise of her teammates. She handed Jon the now-empty mug with a smile and then rushed off to see what they needed.

Hawk looked at the empty mug, then at his almost-untouched one, then back to the empty one. “How’d she do that?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Everyone sat at the tables, on blankets on the ground, wherever they could find in order to enjoy the food as the band played some songs that didn’t hit quite the same decibels as the ones they danced to.

Hawk took a bite out of his corn on the cob, savoring the taste and the feel of it. “We have got to see if we can trade for any of this food,” he said, his mouth full of kernels. Then, he looked toward Jon. “They’ve got to have some stockpiled. Where’s Jennifer?”

“Right here,” she said as she joined them, her plate full of food as well. She was smiling, and she seemed a little happier, like the world wasn’t sitting on her shoulders any more.

They all noticed it. “You look like the cat that ate the canary,” Scout told her. “What’s up?”

“Just checking on a few things, had a talk with Victor and Parker, made a few decisions. Things like that. I may not be Annie anymore, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have the job,” she said smiling. “Parker has the names and hometowns of almost everyone here, and they can head home in groups tomorrow morning. Some wanted to go home tonight, but there were too many who didn’t want to leave a good party this early.”

“Not with food like this,” Tank agreed wholeheartedly. “Can we take some vegetables home with us?”

“Yes, you can take some vegetables with you,” she patted Tank’s shoulder. “And we have the memorial service to attend to in the morning. I don’t think anyone wanted to leave without a proper tribute to everyone who died.”

“Who officiates at those?” Tank asked.

“I do,” she told him. “I’ve had to officiate at too many funerals here,” she said lowly.

Victor stepped up on the makeshift stage and motioned for the band to quit playing for a moment. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I won’t keep you from your food for too long –”

“Make it fast, Bingley!” someone yelled out. “Don’t want the food to get cold!”

Bingley smiled and waved his hand in submission. “Absolutely. Oh, and my name is Victor Rast but since we’re all having some problems remembering real names, I think I’ll stick with Bingley for a while." After the sound of happy chuckles dissipated, he grew solemn for a moment. “Tomorrow morning, at dawn, we’ve planned a memorial service for those we lost today. Families have already held small, private funerals, but we want to say a few words not only for them, but for all we’ve lost." He paused a moment, perhaps letting his words sink in. “Since we all want to go home or see if we still have homes, we’ll split up in to five groups tomorrow since most of us came from five specific settlements that Blastarr attacked before he digitized us. Zero hour is tomorrow morning, 9:00 a. m. We’ll have the gathering locations marked. We’ve still got some working carryalls, but a lot of us will have to walk home.”

He got very quiet for a moment, very serious. “Now, there’s been talk about keeping this resistance group going since we’ve done a pretty good job kicking metallic backside.”

Cheers and hoots and whistles sounded from the group.

Bingley smiled. “Yeah, we did good. I talked to Annie… uh, sorry, Jennifer, and she agrees that there’s no reason this fighting group can’t keep going. In one month’s time, if anyone is interested in reforming a group, meet back here. I know a lot of us weren’t soldiers before, but that’s what we all were for the last six months. We may not be who we once were, but we’re more now than we were before. Stopping Dread is the responsibility of all of us out here. We’ve got the chance to do more than we thought we ever could because of what Stinson did to us. So whatever you decide to do, it’s your choice. We just wanted to toss that idea out to you.”

Bingley waved his hand at the band and walked off the stage. The music played again, and everyone turned back to their food.

Tank took another bite of his supper. “Potatoes au gratin. I haven’t had this in years,” he said. “We talked to some of the Dread Youth that were here. Most want to fight alongside the Resistance. What will happen to them?”

Jennifer pointed to an area far from where everyone else was gathered. “Parker’s talking to them now. The ones who are pretty adamant about going back to Dread will be taken to one of the POW camps west of here. The rest will be separated and sent along with the others as they go home. They’ve got a long way to go to prove their loyalties have changed, but some are willing to give them that chance. Maybe they can find a way to integrate themselves with people who live out here.”

Scout leaned toward Jennifer and said in a low voice, “Did you tell them everything about Stinson?”

Jennifer nodded. “I told them what I knew about him and what I saw on that recording. They should know why all this happened to them and why friends and family have died and why settlements have been destroyed.”

Hawk put his food down. “Did you tell them that Blastarr was stopped in the base that used to be in the mountain seventy miles from here?”

“That didn’t come up in conversation,” Jennifer assured him. “They already know they were digitized by Blastarr, Stinson got the digitizer and reintegrated us after he got it. No one asked where he got it from, only who. I didn’t see a need to mention the base if no one asked."

Tank reached over and grabbed another roll. “Do you think enough will want to come back and continue fighting?” he asked Jennifer.

She nodded her head. “I think so, but right now, everyone wants to know if they still have homes and families. That has to come first.”

“Well, I hope no one minds,” Hawk muttered, “but getting seconds on this food is coming first for me tonight, and I want just a little bit more of Jones’ home brew.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

DAY FOUR – Very Early Morning, Before Dawn

The noise outside was getting a little loud, a little uncomfortable.

Hawk felt like someone was playing the drums on his head. He hauled himself up to a sitting position. Somehow, he’d made it back to his bunk, but he didn’t remember how. Every sound echoed loudly through his head. Never again would he touch Jones’ home brew. Never. Nosirree. Nuh uh. No way. That stuff wasn’t just powerful – it was toxic. How in the world anybody could be ready to march home after drinking that stuff was a mystery. Then again, Jennifer had said that she’d built up a bit of a resistance to it. Maybe others did too?

“Ssshhhh,” Scout said, holding the side of his head. “Don’t say a word,” he whispered. “Whatever they’re doing outside is loud enough.”

“They must be breaking camp." Hawk buried his face in his hands and didn’t move. Finally, he mumbled, “I can’t remember the last time I was hung over." He lifted his head and saw Tank moving slowly as he stood up. “I thought you couldn’t get drunk, Tank. Didn’t the scientists take that ability away from you at Babylon 5?”

Tank barely nodded. “I can’t get drunk, but I can definitely have a hangover. I don’t understand – I only had two mugs.”

Two mugs… Hawk only had one and a half, and he was this sick? No wonder Jackson had warned them about it. “Hey, Tank, tell me I didn’t do anything as embarrassing as Scout did last night.”

Scout sort of raised his head at that. “Why? What’d I do?”

“You don’t remember?”

Scout looked at both men. “What?”

“First, you got up on stage and sang Frank Sinatra tunes,” Hawk told him.

Tank tried to stand up straight without holding onto the bunk but had to do so slowly. “Then you did impersonations of Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart and James Cagney.”

Scout glared at the two men. “I did not do that.”

“Yes, you did,” Hawk told him.

“Was I any good?”

Hawk couldn’t laugh. His head wouldn’t let him. “They liked your James Cagney.”

Tank finally stood on his own, but he was still listing to one side. “Hawk challenged all comers to an arm wrestling match.”

Hawk stared at him in disbelief. “I did?”

Tank barely nodded. “The captain had to keep you from challenging them to a real wrestling match.”

“He did? He was sober?” Hawk glanced at Jon’s bunk. It hadn’t been slept in. Obviously, Jon didn’t come home last night. Then again, Jon and Jennifer had not been seen for a while before the party either. Maybe that meant…

Then again, Jon did say they danced and they talked. There was no reason to doubt him or think that anything else was going on, right?

“Where is the captain?” Scout asked.

Hawk smirked but didn’t answer directly. “Since he barely even had a quarter of a mug of Jones’ home brew, my guess is he isn’t the least bit hung over and is able to get up and walk around. There’s no telling where he might be right now. He might be helping organize the evacuation.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jon leaned discreetly against the jump ship as Jennifer examined the jump ship using a flashlight to light the hull. “It’s a good thing you warned me about not drinking too much of Jones’ moonshine last night.”

“I take it you saw a few hung over people this morning?” Jennifer asked him, already knowing the answer.

“Not many, but more than one,” he told her, clearly amused.

“Most know not to drink more than half a mug, but this was probably the last big party we’d have. Everyone wanted to commemorate the moment. I think a few may have forgotten that moderation is a good thing when it comes to Jones’ brew. You did notice that it was only a certain few who indulged a little too much? Everyone else seemed somewhat open to the suggestion to have a good time at the party and controlled themselves.”

“Yes, I did notice that,” Jon laughed. “Hawk, Tank and Scout should have headaches this morning. So it seems that the rule is a quarter mug doesn’t get you drunk, but it does seem to lessen inhibitions?”

“A little,” Jennifer smiled. “Why else would Scout get up and sing the way he did? Most everyone left the party sober, but I don’t think we’ll hear any complaints from anyone who didn’t overindulge."

Jon turned slightly so he could get a better view of her. “You won’t hear any complaints from me.”

Jennifer blushed in response. She focused her attention on inspecting the outside of the jump ship like a jeweler inspected a precious stone. She could tell instantly that her ship had been put through the wringer more than once over the last eight months.

“Should I apologize in advance for absolutely anything you find wrong with it?” Jon asked, half-jokingly.

“Might be a good idea,” she mused as she found more structural damage. “If you didn’t, I think you guys would be apologizing to me all day." Jennifer ran her hand along the hull, feeling the telltale signs of weapons fire and wind shear and heat stress. She double-checked the rear panel area. She could see the internal circuitry. That would have to be repaired before she took to the sky again. There were so many scratches, so many dents, so many repaired areas… “What did the guys do to you?” she whispered.

She had a sneaking suspicion what she was going to find on a close-order inspection of the cabin. She unlocked the hatch – they didn’t change the locking code after they thought she was killed? – and went inside, Jon following closely. Sitting in the pilot’s seat, she glanced around at the control panel. There were signs of obvious tinkering and repair work, but it wasn’t careful or meticulous. It looked like patch work.

Then, she glanced down at the lower panel and frowned. She should have been able to reignite the engines immediately when they were in the freefall, but that didn’t happen. Why not? One of the main reasons would be a cross-wiring of the power supply, but where? She thought for a moment… if she were Hawk and had to do a quick repair job in mid-flight, where would she have to change the wiring of a power supply? Inspiration came to her, and she stood up and opened the overhead compartment, removed an upper panel covering – “You rewired the secondary power supply to the engine through the shields? Were you trying to burn out my engines?”

Jon had an innocent look on his face. “We had to wire it that way,” Jon’s voice sounded through the hold.

Jennifer looked back and saw Jon trying not to smile at her. “You had to, huh? And exactly why did you have to?”

The grin finally broke through. He knew they were in trouble. They’d done something to her ship. They’d risked her engines. “The primaries went out on us during a battle a few weeks ago and Hawk had to do some fancy repair work to stay in the air.”

That simple? She knew there was more to the story than that. “And he didn’t adjust it back?” she accused him, now unable to keep from grinning in return. She couldn’t help it. It felt so good to banter about her ship! “He kept the secondaries online like this all this time? No wonder I couldn’t get the engines to re-ignite. The shields were draining off some of the power needed. How’d you keep flying without falling out of the sky?”

Jon spread his hands and shrugged. “Luck?”

She glanced at the patched wiring then back at Jon. “Rear panel is gone, internal wiring is completely messed up, dents all over the hull -- okay, that did it. My ship. No one flies her but me. I can see hours of overhauling time ahead for all of you. I may make Hawk fly that thirty-five year old cargo ship I’ve been working on lately instead.”

In a somewhat playful mood, Jon asked, “Does that mean that my AWOL pilot is coming back to work?”

Jennifer sat back down in the pilot’s seat while Jon took the co-pilot’s. “I don’t know,” she said with a smirk. “There could be some tempting job offers after all this. You know I love a challenge, and it looks like the only challenge you can offer me is a ship that needs a lot of work –”

“And you’d be in charge of the ship and its repairs and could order anyone to do anything you want,” he joked, the look in his eyes hinting at a double meaning.

Jennifer raised her eyebrows at that comment. “And the base blew up which means no hangar bay to work in –”

“New base, new hangar bay,” he corrected cheerfully. “New tools, new equipment – we’ve got anything you can think of. And as far as a tempting offer goes, I have one that will guarantee that you’ll accept my job offer over all others.”

“You sound sure of yourself,” she commented. “It must be something pretty important.”

He leaned forward and said in a serious tone, “We have a brand new spanner that’s hardly been used.”

“New spanner?” Jennifer sat back and pretended to think the offer over. “That does make a difference.”

“I can also toss in a captain who’s crazy about you.”

“Well, that does sound tempting and could be the deal breaker,” she answered cheekily, “but working for someone else… I don’t think I’ve completely stopped being Annie yet.”

“That’s not altogether a bad thing,” Jon said, his amusement evident. He leaned close, took hold of her hand and whispered, “I rather liked Annie. ”

“Oh, you did?” Jennifer smiled at that. “And after last night, after that long talk we had, should I be jealous?”

“No. As much as I liked Annie, I love Jennifer a lot more.”

“You do?”

“I’d be more than happy to prove that to you if you want me to.”

Jennifer smiled, then glanced out the front viewport. The sun would be up soon, and there was a memorial service to attend and people to evacuate. “Another tempting offer,” she told him as she gave him a quick kiss. “We’ve got to help a lot of people get home first.”

The radio in Jennifer’s pocket dinged for her attention. She pulled it out and pressed the transmit button. “This is Jennifer.”

“Yeah, Jenny, this is Parker. Is Power with you?”

Jennifer saw Jon mouth the word ‘Jenny’ as she handed him the radio. “This is Power,” Jon said.

“Look, I need to talk to Jenny and you before everything gets busy today. Have you got a the time?”

“Of course. If you’d like to talk now, we’re at the jump ship.”

There was a brief pause, and then Parker said, “I’ll be there in maybe ten minutes. ”

“I wonder what he wants,” Jon said aloud.

Jennifer shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s Parker. He’s good at noticing the little details, so maybe he’s thought of something we haven’t. It has to be something important.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“You can do this. You can do this. You can do this." Parker firmly believed that if he said that enough times, he would believe it.

Who was he kidding? He was about to do something that would change his entire life. He’d never done anything like what he was contemplating. The moment the idea appeared, all thoughts of sleep left. He had tossed and turned, flipped the idea over and over in his mind.

The last six months had been a learning experience the likes of which he couldn’t have imagined. He may not have known who he was, but he found out more about himself than he knew before. It was odd -- the experiment stripped away all the pretenses, all the ideas, all the pre-conceived notions and left only the honest remains of the innocent person. Parker could judge his former self through the eyes of the honest person he had been for six months, and he knew who he wanted to be now. He’d tried to pretend his past wasn’t his, tried to force himself to think of himself as just someone else who had lived in the wastelands and was digitized by Blastarr – but it wasn’t true. His life was as far from that illusion as it could be. He didn’t want to be the person he used to be anymore. He wanted to be who he wanted to be, not what someone else forced him to be. He knew what he had to do -- he just had no idea how to do it.

Power was right -- it was all his choice, and choice was a new concept. Once you choose a path, then what? How do you take that first step? How did anyone know where that first step would take them? There were no assurances that the end of the path would lead to a specified designation. And what if you stepped wrong or put a foot on the wrong path? These questions kept him awake all night along with a sudden realization and revelation -- since his life’s path was now his choice, he had to live with the terrible burden of taking responsibility for what he chose.

Life just got a lot more complicated.

He approached the jump ship, it’s form still hidden by trees and the darkness of the pre-dawn hours. He could see the outlines of Jennifer and Power standing outside the ship, the interior lamps giving off just enough light so he could see they were facing each other,. He watched as Power reached up and slowly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, as his fingers stroked down her cheek. Jennifer was looking at him, holding his other hand. Then Power leaned over and gently kissed her, placing his arm around her waist and pulling her closer. There was a gentleness there, something someone didn’t normally see from a career soldier.

Power wasn’t there to take advantage of any situation, not the way Parker thought he was trying to do when he was Milo. No, Power was in love with Jennifer, and it was obvious the feeling was returned. It was that love that had prompted Power to do anything and everything he could to free them from Stinson’s experiment. Despite everything he’d been told for years, emotions were pretty powerful motivators.

Parker knew he never had a chance of being with Jennifer any more than Milo could have had a chance of being with Annie. There was too much in the way. He hadn’t made a fool of himself even though everyone knew how he felt about her. He had challenged Power, but Power hadn’t treated Parker any differently once everyone got their memories back. He hadn’t taunted Parker with the fact Jennifer had chosen him. Parker wasn’t certain that he would have been so magnanimous. Honestly, if a woman as incredible as Jennifer Chase had chosen him, could he have been the bigger man and not flaunted it in front of Power?

Thoughts like that weren’t going to get him anywhere. The way Power looked at her, the way she looked at him – no matter what Parker wanted, Jennifer would never look at him that way. He had to chalk it all up to a fantasy that would never happen.

Well, if Power could be a good guy and behave decently where Parker was concerned, then so could he. He still didn’t like Power, probably never would but he understood him a little better now than before.

He cleared his throat as he approached. As one, they looked his way and then walked out to meet him. He noticed that Power kept his hand on Jennifer’s back as they walked. The movement was natural, not taunting. He wasn’t showing off. He was just being a gentleman.

Just as they reached him, Parker took a deep breath and prepared to relate the most difficult story he’d ever told in his life.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Less Than One Week Later

Dread waited impatiently in his quiet throne room for the overunit to report back. Anger was an emotion, emotions were not of the Machine, Dread was now a machine, but it didn’t matter – he was angry. Stinson’s entire experiment had been a fiasco from start to finish. Time lost, entire phalanxes of biomechs offline, cadets and an overunit not heard from and Chase missing. Of all the plans Dread had conceived in the last few months to capture or stop Power, the ones that showed the greatest probability of success were the ones where Chase was the bait in a trap. Was he ever going to be able to stop Power?

Dread believed he was well beyond the ability to have emotional ties or yearnings, but he was still quite capable of knowing when others had them. He first realized the opportunities afforded him by knowing the relationship between Power and Chase was more than he’d first thought when he listened to the conversation before the base explosion. Recordings surreptitiously made of Power by observation globes over the last months had proven the depth of the younger man’s feelings for Chase. First, there was the reluctance of the other team members of ever mentioning Chase’s name around the Power. Then, on the rare occasions when they did, Jon’s eyes would become angry and sad. It was far more emotion than a superior officer would normally have for a subordinate. There was real feeling there, which meant Dread had a weapon to wield against Power – if he could get Chase.

Stinson’s failure had pushed Dread’s plans back and now, Dread was angry.

Finally, the message he was waiting for arrived.

“Lord Dread,” the overunit’s voice was rather shaky and cracked as it sounded over the speaker, “there’s no one here. ”

“What do you mean there’s no one there, Overunit?”

“The base is completely abandoned, my lord. The buildings have been emptied. It would appear that the group moved on a few days ago.”

Dread fumed at the notion that months of waiting had been for nothing. “Is there any sign of our troops at the site?”

“Destroyed and dismantled biomechs, my lord. None of the Dread Youth placed in the camp are here either.”

Dread’s logical mind could only come up with two possible conclusions – either his troops were discovered and executed or discovered and taken prisoner after the final battle. Either way, they were useless to him. “The biomechs called for a drone strike. Is there any evidence that the drones reached their targets?”

“None, my lord. We’ve found some drone and missile debris. It looks as if the drones were destroyed in mid-air.”

Which meant Chase had the opportunity to escape the base camp. Had Dread been aware of the total destruction of the drones, he would have engaged another contingency. He would have made certain no one escaped. He needed Chase in his power, and destroying every organic in that base camp would be a small price to pay for that goal. “What is the condition of the transmitters and beacons?”

“Our sensors were correct. All were completely destroyed, my lord. Doctor Stinson’s computers have been dismantled, and the few hard drives we could salvage are so badly damaged that we cannot rebuild them or get the information from them. Overunit Stevens and his troopers did an exceptional job carrying out your orders. There’s evidence that someone has been in the laboratory in recent days. Footprints, hand prints, dust blown off equipment, but we don’t know what they were looking for or what they found.”

Dread fumed. Yes, Stevens carried out his orders to the letter. He killed Stinson and destroyed his lab. What else was going to go wrong with this assignment? “Can you ascertain in what direction the inhabitants of the camp escaped?”

“We are unable to track them, my lord. The vegetation in the area has made hiding their paths much easier. Also, the rains have helped erase any footprints.”

Rains? “Overunit, did you say rains?” Hard rains were a thing of the past for the North American continent. A few showers would happen here and there sporadically, but actual rains?

“I did, my lord. The forestation has created a natural concentrated area that forms and encourages rainfall. There is a lake beginning to form near the center of the forest next to a destroyed mountain.”

A lake was forming in the same area where Power’s base used to stand? The explosion could have formed a crater… yes… that was possible. The crater filled with water over time and created a small lake. That couldn’t be allowed to continue. Nature had no place in a Machine world. Nature served no purpose, yet a forest was forming. If Dread could have scowled, he would have. That means more precious resources would have to be used to scour that land back into the barren ground it had been. “Raze the buildings to the ground, Overunit. I don’t want a single brick remaining.”

“Yes, my lord.”

This was insupportable. The time, the resources, the opportunities wasted – Dread was not happy with the outcome.

Another overunit entered the throne room and stood at attention at the base of the throne. Dread focused his mechanical eye on him. “What is it?”

The overunit cleared his throat and said hesitatingly, “My lord, you ordered us to inform you of any news concerning Captain Power. A contact has arrived with news thatCaptain Power and his team met with the resistance group at the base camp less than a week ago. Our contact states that the Power Team was asked to teach various fighting techniques to Doctor Stinson’s test subjects. He also has reason to believe that it was Power himself who destroyed the transmitters and beacons Doctor Stinson was using.”

Dread physically turned toward the overunit. “They were there? Why are we only now learning of Power’s involvement with the test subjects?”

The overunit politely answered. “This was the earliest our contact could get the information to us. He was under the memory lock when Power first arrived at the base camp and was released from it when the transmitters were destroyed. We’ve learned that Power and his team were at the base camp during one of our attacks prior to the last one. However, every biomech was destroyed so no information was retrieved from any data bank. There was no way to know that they were there. The contact is waiting for an audience with you.”

“An audience?” Dread repeated angrily. “Send him in. Is there anything else?”

“Yes, my lord,” the overunit continued. We’ve learned that Power’s team destroyed a biomech manufacturing facility in Sector 15 themselves an hour ago.”

“That is not surprising,” Dread was hoping for more usable information. “He attacks those regularly.”

“My lord, there are five people on his team again.”

Five.

Five?

Five!

“What is known about this fifth member?”

“A woman, my lord. Our contact overheard Power refer to her as Jennifer when they were at the campsite. He claims she is their pilot.”

Pilot.

Jennifer Chase was once again with the Power Team. They were once again whole. The original five were reunited, and Dread had only himself to blame. If he had been more hands-on, if he had not allowed Stinson access to Blastarr’s digitizer so unsupervised, if he had confirmed that the prisoner sent to the prison was the traitor, if he had attacked the base sooner, if, if, if, if, if….

“Send in the contact,” he said as he motioned for the overunit to leave. Once he was alone in the throne room, he contemplated the turn of events.

Overmind’s voice boomed through the throne room. “Dread, you are angry. I thought you were beyond those emotions now.”

“The plan to use Doctor Stinson’s experiment to turn resistance groups to our cause has failed, Overmind. The war must continue.”

“Yes, it must,” Overmind agreed.

Dread watched the organic walk into the room, his step calm, sure and confident. He watched him approach, set a jug on the steps of the throne and then sit down beside it.

Dread was not amused. “You are insolent still. I would have thought spending time as an embedded agent without your memory in the resistance camp would have taught you humility.”

“Not a chance,” the contact said. “If anything, it taught me that the Machine Empire isn’t quite what you think it is. It’s easy enough for a bunch of amnesiac strangers to best your troopers in battle, and you wonder why you’re laughed at by people in wastelands.”

Dread ignored the veiled insult and looked at the jug. “What is that?”

The contact glanced down at the gift he brought Dread. “Something you probably don’t think about anymore. It’s homemade brew, cooked up by a guy who went by the name of Jones at the base camp. It’s almost toxic but, according to Major Masterson, it can get you three sheets to the wind faster than vintage cognac. Thought I’d grab me a last swig of it before everyone went their separate ways.”

“Tell me about the Power Team. You overheard Power call the fifth member who recently joined him Jennifer?” Dread asked him.

“Jennifer Chase, pilot extraordinaire. Let me tell you, Jenny can out fly drones and land that jump ship on a wing and a prayer. Too bad you didn’t get a chance to see her perform at that last battle. It was something." The contact took the stopper out of the jug and sipped at the contents. “Aaahhh… nothing like moonshine, huh, Dread? Or are you beyond things like that these days?”

Ignoring that rude statement, Dread asked, “Where are Stinson’s test subjects?”

“His test subjects or Power’s Team?” The contact looked back at Dread and then answered, “All gone home, Power too, but if you’re interested, you might be able to catch the new group in about three weeks if you’re lucky – I’m sure one of your other spies will be by to tell you that soon. Anyone interested in keeping up the good fight against you is supposed to regroup at the base camp then, and given how good they are in a fight, you’re in for some serious trouble.”

Three weeks? Dread could wait that long. Even if the experiment was a failure, perhaps all his efforts weren’t wasted if he could wipe out a resistance group. “Chase was the leader of the base camp. She always fought inside the protective walls of the camp. How is it none of the biomechs I sent to that location during the final battle were able to capture her?”

The contact looked directly at Dread. “You programmed them to look for her and capture her alive, didn’t you? That’s what they were doing. I thought they came in on foot with only rifles so they could capture as many of us alive as possible. If they’d come in transports, they could have run a few people over. Well, just to let you know, she wasn’t inside the base camp when you attacked. She was with Power when they went to check out Stinson’s laboratory. She saw a recording of what Stevens did to Stinson and the lab. She got all the answers and then told us. We had some not too happy people when everyone found out, but it didn’t stop one hell of a party."

“A party?” Dread asked.

“Good one, too. Jones brought out his home brew, we had music, singing, dancing. Then the next morning, everybody went home.”

Home? That explained how she returned to the Power Team, but not why. “Has she abandoned the new group to return to Power’s Team?”

“Abandoned? Are you kidding? The one thing that lady would never do is abandon the group." The contact paused for a moment. “But is she with Power’s team? Yep. Returned, working, fighting alongside, flying the jump ship, yeah. She’s there. She’ll stay with Power, lucky guy. She’s got some good reasons for not wanting to lead the new resistance group if they decide to form one in a month. It’s a tossup who’ll be leading it. There are a lot of people who could do it, that’s for sure, but Jenny’s damned good at the job, but she would rather be one of a few fighters than leader of the many. She might want me to lead or Bingley or even Jones. We’ve got the most experience.”

Dread wondered what the contact meant by his comment that Chase might expect him to take over for her. “Are you capable of leading such a group?” If he could, then that could help Dread’s plans considerably. A Dread soldier in charge? The resistance group could be destroyed before it had a chance to form.

“They trust me, so sure. I could, but I won’t,” the contact told him. He stood up and faced Dread. “When you had Stinson force me to forget who I was and dump me in the middle of your experiment, you made one big mistake.”

Dread tilted his head and listened. “Indeed? What mistake was that?”

“I had free will for the first time in a long time. I was part of the inner circle at the base. I was part of the upper echelon, and I had to fight to survive because you kept sending your troops to kill us. I saw people die protecting virtual strangers, protecting children who were only yards away. You know all those slogans and litanies you had us learn all those years? As soon as I remembered who I was, I saw the truth missing from them and the lies behind them. Organics aren’t inferior. In fact, we’re superior to machines. You wanted to be an immortal mind in a metalloid body, good for you and more power forever, but I know how stupid and ridiculous that is now.”

Dread’s eyes glowed in anger at what the contact was saying. “You speak treason.”

“No,” the contact shook his head. “I’m telling the truth. You see, I can see it all now. I can see what the truth really is, and the lies you believe in aren’t it. Know what’s really ironic? With every other spy you put in there, you made certain to put in one of your golden-haired Dread Youth. Me, I’m not one of your cookie cutter soldiers." He touched his hair. “Dark hair, see? No one thought I was a Dread Youth soldier or a spy for you so they didn’t look twice at me when the spies were rounded up and arrested and interrogated. But here’s where the irony is -- we had a former Dread Youth risking her life every day leading us and protecting us with and without her memory. Maybe that’s why she and I worked so well together. We both came from the same place. Know what else? Everyone pretty well knows she was a Dread Youth by now because one look at her, and you can see that she used to be one of your cookie cutter soldiers. She’s not that anymore. If a youth leader like her and an overunit like me can see the truth, how much longer will it be before others do?”

The contact laughed ruefully. “Power basically told me that once the Dread Youth in the camp got their memories back, then they had no excuse fighting for Dread except that it’s their own choice. Sounded strange at the time, but I figured out what he was saying. Once you have free will and you know the truth, then you get to choose for yourself if you want to be good or evil. Them being good and you being evil, that is.”

The contact walked toward the door, apparently secure in the misconception that he was going to walk out of there alive. “Know what, Dread? I fought for you because I believed the Machine was the way of the future, that it was superior. That being organic was not the way to go. That emotions were bad and made us weak. It’s all a bunch of lies." The contact paused momentarily, then he added, “I saw a man willing to risk his life and the lives of his team to help the woman he loves and the people trapped with her. I saw the same woman, someone I had feelings for, risk everything to save us and save that team." He turned back and looked directly at Dread. “I get it now. You’ll do whatever you have to for someone you care about or for an ideal you believe in. I learned that, and it’s the way life should be. Your way’s wrong.”

Dread walked down the steps of his throne and towered over the contact. “What makes you think you will leave alive after insulting me and the Empire?”

The contact chuckled. “Nah, you wouldn’t kill someone for telling you the truth, especially when there’s no one else here to hear it. Besides, you know I’m not stupid enough to have come in here without letting someone know where I was and make a few contingency plans of my own. I’ve got to tell you, it wasn’t easy working up enough courage to tell anyone about the little assignment you sent me on. I finally did the morning we evacuated. Power was not happy when I explained to him I used to be an overunit and that you had Stinson put me in the base camp to spy for you. Then again, he might not have been happy at me interrupting them because he was alone with Jennifer. She wasn’t thrilled with the news either, but Power understood when I told him I had a change of heart. I even told him I’d come in here to prove it. You see, he’s seen it before. And believe me, if Youth Leader Jennifer Chase can prove that not all Dread Youth are evil, then maybe I can too. Me, Overunit Parker Andrews. Given what I know about you and your Machine Empire, maybe I can make a difference now.”

A loud boom and a thunderous rumble echoed through Volcania. Red alert alarms screamed as troopers and Dread Youth rushed to battle stations. Dread checked his sensors, but nothing was registering.

He turned back and saw that Overunit Andrews was gone.

He extended his mechanical arm and locked it into the data port. He accessed the exterior cameras and observation drones. Large holes were blasted in the exterior of Volcania by missiles fired from enemy ships shooting multiple targets from the perimeter to the structure itself. Enemy soldiers infiltrated Volcania through the gaping holes, destroying countless biomechs and doing untold damage.

Dread directed the troops to various locations that needed reinforcing.

“Dread,” Overmind’s voice once again sounded over the speakers. “What is happening?”

Sudden inspiration struck Dread. He turned and picked up the jug of homemade brew and found it surprisingly heavy. He shone a light inside – and found no moonshine, only an audio/visual frequency jammer was inside. Overunit Andrews had walked into his throne room not to gloat, but to plant a jamming signal so resistance forces could attack unseen and unheard until it was too late to counterattack. He saw a piece of paper inside, and he retrieved it with a small antenna-like extension protruding from his arm. The message written on it was from Overunit Andrews. It was short and simple.

Pretty ingenious way for a bunch of amnesiac strangers to attack a fortress, isn’t it? Oh, by the way, we decided that three weeks was too long to wait and formed our resistance group a few days after we evacuated the base. You might want to consider giving up now rather than wasting all your time, energy and resources fighting a war you’re not going to win.

Furious, Dread answered, “We are under attack, Overmind. The plan has backfired on us, and we have been betrayed.”

But perhaps not all was lost? Dread replayed the conversation he had with Andrews.

Jenny…
She’ll stay with Power, lucky guy…
I saw the same woman, someone I had feelings for, risk everything to save us and save that team…
You’ll do whatever you have to for someone you care about…

His former overunit had feelings for Chase. If the woman could not be used as bait in a trap, then perhaps she could be used to drive jealousy into Power’s heart, especially if such a division could disrupt the Resistance as a whole.

Maybe Dread could use Chase after all…

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Four Weeks After The Base Camp Evacuation

Dread stomped through the corridor, his metallic feet crushing any steel, rock and debris in his way. He ignored the Dread Youth who guarded the gaping holes in the structure as the biomechs worked to repair the damage and rebuild the outer walls. He dodged incoming blaster fire as all movement became targets for the hidden resistance forces that struck from cover. He easily shoved aside the twisted girders that blocked the passageway and the fallen metal plates that crowded the floor. Repair crews welding broken sections of ceiling and cracked steel walls scurried away to avoid the angry biodread as he marched past them. Everywhere he looked was the charred wreckage of his damaged fortress and the almost relentless efforts to rebuild. The repair work was going slow, and in some cases, futile. Every time the crews repaired one section, another surprise attack by the Resistance damaged another. His resources were being stretched beyond capacity, and his Empire was being torn apart.

Dread crashed through a barricade of fallen steel support posts and biomech bodies before punching his way through thin steel walls to the research laboratories. His approach was loud and obvious, and he wanted it that way. He wanted everyone to know his mood. He could have taken the long way to his destination since those hallways had already been cleared by the maintenance crews, but he wanted to hit something and smash things, even if it was only wreckage. He charged through the damaged areas and added to the devastation. It didn’t make him feel any better, but it let him vent some of his frustration.

He swept into a computer laboratory at the end of the corridor, his footfalls shaking the very floor. Several scientists stood nervously and then backed away, cowering at the sight of him. Only one stood up to greet him. Disheveled and dirty from the ever-present dust falling from the explosions, he tried to appear less afraid than he was, but Dread’s appearance definitely affected him.

“Lord Dread? How may we serve you?” he stammered.

In a manner completely opposite from his entrance, Dread casually sauntered over to the scientist and asked in a deceptively calm voice, “Professor Garrett, I want the results from your analysis of Stinson’s research. Now.”

Garrett shuddered at the sudden change in Dread’s behavior. “Yes, my lord. We’ve sifted through the reports he sent back and what little could be retrieved from his laboratory near the base camp. We’ve found that –”

“I am not interested in long explanations." Dread towered over the scientist, his voice a menacing threat, “The Resistance is waging a new war against us. The Power Team alone has obliterated over twenty power stations, electrical plants and buffering facilities that feed this fortress. We are running on emergency back-up generators that are not designed for long-term use. Cipher and his team have infiltrated and destroyed dozens of support posts. We cannot call up additional troops, materials or resources to reinforce unsecured areas. Some of the Dread Youth have become traitors and joined the enemy. They are employing a method of random internal sabotage to undermine us. The soldiers from the base camp continually attack all varieties of facilities of the Machine Empire. Need I remind you of the destruction they alone have waged on us over the last month?”

“No, my lord. We are well aware of what that army has done recently,” Garrett quaked in fear but tried to look as if he wasn’t scared.

Dread stood up straight. “If we are to rebuild, then we must target that army’s destruction. It is not as mobile as other Resistance groups, so we will have the greatest success stopping them first. Stinson controlled them, he controlled their minds, and he controlled their behavior. Tell me how we can reassert that control.”

“We can’t,” Professor Garrett said quickly.

Dread became very silent, very still. “What do you mean we can’t?” he asked, his voice low.

Garrett cleared his throat and took a few steps back. “My lord, according to what we know and what we can surmise from Stinson’s research, the mental control exerted by the pulse beacons required all the minds of each individual in the experiment to be in the same geographic location that was under the influence of the pulse beacons. They’re scattered now, my lord. It would be impossible to round them all up again, and that’s assuming that they’re all still alive.”

Again, Dread lamented the fact he no longer had facial expressions. He could not even close his eyes in disappointed anger.

“And there’s something else,” Garrett explained further. “Apparently, if any of the test subjects were to reacquire their memory while still being within range of the pulse beacons, the pulse couldn’t suppress their memory again unless it was discontinued and then re-engaged. There’s no information or indication that some sort of mental resistance or immunity develops. The question came up about the possible results if the experiment were to be restarted with the exact same individuals in a sequestered geographic location, and although we have no research notes to back this theory, it’s possible that the exact same pulse wouldn’t have the exact same effect. We don’t know the answer to that at this time.”

Dread stood there very quietly. Then, “Are you telling me that Doctor Stinson used research meant to learn how to control Resistance forces to create one of the most well-trained armies ever to stand against the Machine Empire?”

“Inadvertently, yes, my lord,” Garrett choked out. “It wasn’t his goal, but it was the result.”

“And we have no control over them?”

Garrett cleared his throat. “No, my lord. We don’t. No control and no way of stopping them using Stinson’s research as we understand it.”

No control… he had no way of controlling any of the individuals which meant he could not control the army and turn them into loyal Dread soldiers. He could not control the base camp leadership which meant he could not control Chase. He could not use her in any way to stop Power.

This was unacceptable.

“Find a way,” Dread ordered as he turned and left the room, the other scientists quivering silently in fear.

He stalked back through the corridor, this time taking the long route back to his throne room. Everything connected to Stinson’s experiment had been a waste. Time, personnel, resources – all of it gone with nothing to show for it except for the unified resistance forces turning everything he’d worked for into utter chaos.

His Empire would not fall at the feet of organics. It would not face defeat at the hand of animals. He would not lose the world he created.

He reached his throne room and stopped as soon as he entered. It looked… different. He hadn’t realized before that except for the computers and the dais, it was an empty room. He knew there was no furniture, no accessories, but he hadn’t truly realized it until that moment. It reflected his new life as a biodread -- it looked almost barren without the entrapments organics believed they needed to make their lives more comfortable. He had been like that once. He had allowed himself luxuries like chairs, tables, a bed. It was all needless accoutrements that the weak required.

He was no longer weak. He was a biodread. He was of the Machine. He was the immortal mind in a metalloid body that didn’t require rest. He didn’t require sleep. Days and nights passed almost imperceptibly. Time itself had become something of a non-existent factor for him. A new thought came to him – he had always been in a hurry to destroy Power. Overmind had always tried to teach him patience. Victory over Power would one day be theirs. Now, Dread understood Overmind’s caution. Time mattered to organics, it didn’t matter to the Machine. Whether the Machine was victorious that day, that year, that decade – it didn’t matter. The Machine would win and soon, all organics would be purged from the Earth.

And one day, Dread would have the satisfaction of seeing his Empire built over the bones of Jonathan Power.

Dread pushed that thought aside. His need for vengeance against Power for all the devastation he’d caused the Empire had to be delayed and the more immediate threat of the new army addressed.

What was their current situation? Intermittent internal communications had slowed information processing down to a crawl, so updates were not immediately known. Dread Youth were forced to go from section to section to retrieve necessary data and then transport it physically to a working computer. It took time to navigate the damaged corridors which meant some information was dated by the time it was brought to the necessary individuals. The few times one section could access another, data was cut off mid-upload due to power failures. No sustained communication had been possible since the initial attack on Volcania.

As destructive as the initial attack had been on Volcania, certain battles that followed had been worse. In organic terms, it was as if the Resistance had caught their second wind. They inflicted as much damage as they could. Entire sections of Volcania were completely destroyed. Hundreds of soldiers, both biomech and organic, were killed. The surviving troops were demoralized. They kept asking their superiors how animals living in the wastelands could possibly do so much to the Machine Empire. Doubt in Dread’s abilities to protect the Empire was beginning to spread. Doubt in Dread’s dream of the world was beginning to infect the true believers.

He had been at a loss at what to do. Logically, all that could be done was being done, but it wasn’t enough. At one point, even Overmind sounded concerned.

“Dread,” Overmind’s voice filled the room. “The Resistance is attacking our western flanks once more.”

Again, Dread wished he could exhibit frustration. “So I have been informed. I’ve sent what troops I could muster to their defense.”

“It will not be an adequate force,” Overmind replied.

“It will have to be enough. Other troops are likewise engaged.”

“What of Soaron?” Overmind inquired.

Dread wished he could take a deep breath. “He has waged war against all aerial forces of the Resistance when he is in battle. He is regenerating.”

“He has been forced to regenerate repeatedly over the last weeks.”

Yes, Soaron had. So much so, he could not be brought to the defense of Volcania. “The enemy has inflicted many injuries on him.”

There was a silence, then, “Yet Soaron has not achieved any victories over them.”

“No, he has not, yet he has inflicted damage on them.”

“It is not enough,” Overmind repeated Dread’s words.

No, it wouldn’t be enough. Nothing he’d done for almost a month had been enough. Never before had he seen such annihilation. His beautiful, perfect Machine Empire brought to a near-grinding halt by mere organics bent on destroying him and all he had built.

He didn’t understand. What was the difference that allowed the Resistance to inflict such ruin? With the exception of the Power Team, they’d been nothing more than irritants for years. Now, they were a force to be reckoned with. It had to be more than a mere army of once-controlled townsfolk used in an experiment. Biomechs had captured several enemy prisoners and interrogated them, but they were met with a stony silence. Finally, only days before, one prisoner made a statement during the long hours he was held and questioned before execution.

“What is your purpose?” the overunit yelled. Not receiving an answer, the overunit slapped the prisoner. “Answer.”

Again, the prisoner remained silent. Finally, before the next round of truth-telling drugs could be administered, the prisoner looked directly at the Overunit conducting the interrogation and announced in as clear a voice as he could, “To Mother Earth, we are the body organic. She is our heart; we are her hands. The world is merely in transition. It’s not perfect. We will make it perfect. We will bring back the world from before. Our blood and our fists will mold the new tomorrow.”

Was that a joke of some kind? An insult? It was a bastardization of the Litany of the Anti-Life all Dread Youth recited. These organics wanted to destroy the world, turn it back into what it was instead of the mechanized perfection that only the Machine could give them. Why were they fighting the inevitable?

Dread didn’t have any answers anymore. Everything had become confused. His near perfect world had become a damaged world with the resistance groups tearing down everything.

Overmind hadn’t been very forthcoming with his opinions or insights either. There was nothing but silence coming from him lately. He had become more and more reclusive, not speaking to anyone, not even Dread. Whatever it was the computer was thinking, he kept it secret from everyone.

Dread took his accustomed spot in front of his computer and placed his arm into the data port. Report after report of Resistance attacks all over the continent, numbers of destroyed biomechs, Dread Youth taken prisoner or killed – his reputably unbeatable forces were being beaten by everyone who fought him.

It was anarchy.

Dread was angry, but more and more, he was growing scared. Emotions were not of the Machine, but it didn’t matter. Dread was becoming more afraid each passing day. Scenarios of what could happen if he couldn’t beat back the resistance forces played through his mind – the utter destruction of Volcania, all the biomechs destroyed, all the Dread Youth dead. Everything perfect in the world reduced to ash and ruins.

Then, there was Overmind. Dread had no idea what his thoughts were about the recent events. It didn’t matter. Dread would win no matter how long the war took. He would persevere. He was of the Machine. He followed the will of the Machine.

“Dread,” Overmind’s voice was menacing over the speakers.

“I am here, Overmind.”

“You allowed this to happen to us,” the computer said.

Surprised, Dread turned toward the speaker. “I allowed none of this to happen. Stinson is the traitor who created this chaos. We will soon have it under control." Even Dread didn’t believe that last sentence.

“You gave Stinson Blastarr’s digitizing storage unit. You gave him the time and the resources to allow the reintegrated prisoners to become an army. You did not maintain a close oversight of Stinson’s progress. You allowed Stinson a great deal of unsupervised freedom for one concession, the former youth leader. Your desire to stop Power and best the Resistance overtook your responsibility to protect this Empire.”

Dread sat there quietly. So that was what Overmind had been thinking? The loss of so much was to be placed at Dread’s feet? He was the one to be held responsible? He didn’t think so. “The plan was flawless. The execution of it was flawed. The fault for the failure will forever be Stinson’s and his desire for personal gain rather than to his responsibility to the Empire.”

He could hear Overmind’s databanks whirring as they processed the information.

“And lest you need to be reminded, Overmind, you approved the plan at every juncture.”

“Your plan, Dread. Your assurances. Your contingencies. I am displeased.”

“Stinson was punished for his failure,” Dread reminded him.

“As you shall be yours,” Overmind’s voice was drowned out as an electrical charge slammed through data port into Dread. Lighting bolts scattered across the throne room, ricocheted off the metal ceiling and across the walls. Dread’s screams of pain echoed into the corridor.

Overmind’s voice repeated quietly through the chamber, “As you shall be for yours.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Eight Weeks After The Base Camp Evacuation

Outside the Power Base, Mother Nature was once again deceiving unsuspecting people. Snow fell silently on the ground, creating a pristine white landscape unmarred by the rocks and boulders lying buried deep beneath the cold canvas. To look at it, one could think that Mother Nature was an artist to create such a peaceful tapestry, but it was all a deception. Snow that cold, that deep was a danger to anyone who dared cross it. Beneath the snow lay the deadly ice that was a mile thick and growing.

Mother Nature was very good at creating a beautiful but deadly combination, but even the danger Mother Nature could create was no match for the danger that Hawk Masterson found himself in at that moment.

“They are.” Hawk disagreed.

“They aren’t,” Jennifer told him without looking up from the engine.

“They are. I fixed them myself. I know I did.” Hawk tried again. “I replaced the entire primary power supply. Those wires are good.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the primaries.” Jennifer used the new spanner to remove two circuits from the engine’s motherboard and held them up for Hawk to see. She pointed to the wire leads that fed into the circuits. “The ship had a vibration coming from the stern when we fought Soaron yesterday. That means the insulated material covering the connectors on the secondaries has degraded. When you rewired the secondary power supply to the engine through the shields, the temperatures on these particular circuits increased causing –”

“Condensation on cool-down which turns into rust on any exposed wires which causes a vibration in the stern due to power fluctuations created when the power transmission is disrupted in any way,” Hawk bowed his head, admitting defeat. “The secondary wires aren’t the ones I fixed. I promise, I will change them out.” He raised up two fingers. “Scout’s honor,” Hawk joked.

“Scout’s not the one who rewired my power supply and let the leads rust without replacing them,” Jennifer joked back, purposely misinterpreting the joke, much to Hawk’s amusement.

Recharging the sky bike’s power supply nearby, Scout yelled, “Hey, don’t get me in any trouble, Hawk. You’re the one who messed with the gadgets on the jump ship, not me.” He turned to Tank for help. “Back me up on this, okay?”

Tank, ever the peacemaker, added, “Scout’s right, he had nothing to do with Hawk rewiring the secondaries which kept us from crashing and would have done more damage to the hull. And the engines. And us. But we had nothing to do with Hawk not replacing the leads on the circuit which could have caused us to crash and doing more damage than we’d like to consider,” he grinned. “That’s all Hawk’s fault.”

Hawk glared at Tank. “Whose side are you on?”

Tank laughed. “It’s the jump ship. I’m on Jennifer’s side.”

“Good way of staying out of trouble,” Scout muttered.

Jennifer shook her head and started to remove the wires from the circuit. She said to the ship, “Your leads are rusting and everyone’s making jokes." She patted the side of the jump ship. “Don’t worry; we’ll get you back to 100% again.”

Jon walked into the hanger bay and watched his team. Two months had passed since the day they landed at the base camp, and listening to them as they worked together, joked with each other, it was as if there had been no time apart. Everyone fell back into the routines similar to the ones they had before the explosion, personally if not quite professionally. It didn’t happen overnight, but they finally reached the point. So many things happened to change them during those eight months, and they had grown stronger because of them.

One thought was never far from Jon’s mind. Before, they had had so much success in battle that succeeding on a mission was something they took for granted. The destruction of the Colorado base showed them otherwise. They no longer expected luck would be with them, that they’d get through a mission unscathed or all come back alive anymore. Any of them might not return. That was a fact driven home to them in a horrific manner that horrible day, and it wasn’t one any of them would dare forget.

Yet, despite everything that had happened, the jokes were there, the conversations were flowing -- the synergy was back. To use a phrase from an old movie, he had the band back together.

“We’ve just received some more good news,” he announced as he walked over to the ship.

Everyone stopped working and gave Jon their undivided attention. “Some things you know, some things are being reported again… Cipher has more results from our coordinated attacks over the last two months. Starting with the initial attack on Volcania just a few days after the base camp evacuated, the surface destruction went as we thought it would. We destroyed about two-thirds of Dread’s power generators, Cipher’s team disrupted the supply lines sending raw materials to biomech factories, and Victor Rast’s army took out about 70% of Dread’s aerial forces guarding the fortress when they tried to stop the attack on Volcania. What we didn’t expect was an overloaded communications network from overunits and youth leaders requesting help from inside Volcania during the attacks. It brought the entire internal system down temporarily, and Parker Andrews did a great deal of damage to the communications matrix computer by setting off an explosion that basically buried that computer. According to Cipher, they’re still trying to dig down to it or hook up the system through another computer, but we inflicted so much damage on the fortress, they’re having minimal success.”

Tank chuckled. “How minimal is minimal?”

Jon read the report out loud. “Continual attacks by rotating resistance teams has caused so much damage on the Volcania, they’re forced to work around the clock repairing the structure itself. Internal systems aren’t getting the attention they should because Dread keeps moving troops to the outer repair teams.”

“When you’re good, you’re good,” Scout joked. “And we are good.”

“Now this is new -- it seems Overmind blamed Dread for all the problems they’re having with the Resistance and let him know in no uncertain terms that it shouldn’t happen again.”

“This sounds interesting,” Hawk said expectantly.

“Overmind overloaded Dread’s circuits, and he was out of commission for a couple of weeks,” Jon informed them casually.

“He didn’t kill him?” Scout wanted to know, sounding disappointed.

“Not yet,” Jon answered. “I don’t think Overmind can afford the loss of any of his resources which is why Dread is still alive. Mentor’s analysis shows that at the moment, Dread’s forces are pushed to their limits. Our attacks are forcing his troops to thin out, and they’re much easier targets. Our subsequent battles have slowed down biodread movements, and the Resistance leadership is calling for an all out attack on anything of Dread’s over the next couple of days before we plan another coordinated assault. They want to hurt the Machine Empire as much as possible before Dread is in a position to fight back again. If luck is with us, he’ll soon be out of commission.”

There were smiles all around. “All right!” Scout shouted. “You realize what this means? We win, we throw a party.”

Dread out of commission was some of the best news anyone had heard in a long time. “Don’t plan a guest list just yet,” Jon cautioned them but happily. “We’re finally getting the upper hand in this war. The Resistance leadership also wants us to coordinate with Victor and figure out another tactic that will really surprise Dread. We’ll coordinate it with basic attacks other groups will simultaneously conduct. They said they want to add insult to injury.”

Hawk placed his screwdriver on the nearby workbench, the smile still obvious. “Annie’s army turned the tide for us.”

Jennifer shook her head. “Not Annie’s. It’s Victor’s army now.”

Scout sat down on the sky bike, leaned back and crossed his arms. “You know, we’ve all wanted to ask… we want you here, believe me, but why didn’t you stay in command of the army? They’d have walked through fire for you if you gave the order.”

“Maybe,” Jennifer conceded, “but I think I’m better at flying a ship than commanding a resistance group.”

“Aw, come on, you were great at that job!” Scout prodded. “You blew up biomechs and shot down drones. Isn’t there more to it than that?” he smirked.

“Has to be,” Hawk added. “Some kind of military tactic maybe? You guys were way too sneaky not to have something up your sleeves.”

Scout agreed. “She came up with some interesting tactics as Annie. Burmese tiger traps, wired trenches, hand signals –”

“Or she doesn’t trust Hawk with the jumpship,” Tank told them.

Jon stood silently by, amused at the verbal bantering, as Jennifer put up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I did think about it for all of two seconds. Victor and I discussed it the night of the party, and believe me, it was tempting. I knew I could do the job, but we started considering the possibilities and the contingencies, and that discussion made us both realize that there was a greater tactical advantage if I didn’t.”

“Knew it,” Hawk slapped his leg in delight. “There was some sort of military ruse going on.”

“Sort of,” she explained. “Try looking at the Resistance now from Dread’s point of view. Victor’s army has one high profile overunit and over twenty Dread Youth in its ranks. This team is high profile and has a former youth leader who blew up Blastarr and led that army for six months as its pilot. The idea that people who were once loyal to Dread are abandoning him and joining resistance groups can’t be hidden or covered up anymore. Dread can’t ignore us or try to convince anyone we don’t exist.”

Hawk looked thoughtful for a moment. “For a long time, you were the only Dread Youth to have ever escaped – at least that we knew of. Dread was able to keep news of your existence under wraps for years.”

“Yeah,” Scout agreed. “And sometimes, when we ran into other Dread Youth who recognized you, they were surprised. They thought you were dead.”

“They were shocked,” Jennifer agreed. She leaned back against the hull of the jump ship, her mind clearly seeing something that happened months earlier. “We had the same thing happen to us when Dread Youth soldiers met us at the base camp or in any of the areas we fought." She paused for a moment, then, “Victor and I discussed using that to our advantage.”

“This will be good,” Tank told them.

Jennifer could only smile and nod her head. “Consider this -- if all the former Dread Youth on our side were assigned to their own particular team, then that could give the impression that no one out here really trusts us and doesn’t want to fight alongside us. It would look like we were working alone and would be dismissed by the Dread Youth as a rogue group, not really a resistance group. To counter this, the idea we had was to spread out the former Dread Youth as much as possible. Victor and Parker have assigned the former cadets to the most mobile strike teams, and they’re sending them on missions all over the continent. Dread soldiers are facing off with former colleagues during these battles, and we’re attacking Dread facilities everywhere now. Whenever one of the Dread Youth sees one of us, it might make them question the litanies and everything else Dread has told them over the years.”

“It’s a crack in the armor,” Tank said. “Like with Cadet Erin when you tried to convince her that Dread told her lies.”

“In a way,” Jennifer agreed. “But even if we were to dismantle the Dread Youth to any degree, most of Dread’s army is made up of biomechs. Fighting them out here and destroying the biomech manufacturing facilities will only work so far. We’ve got to stop them at the very beginning of their assembly. There are hundreds of these biomech factories, and we don’t have the personnel to destroy them all. The idea is to convert some of the cadets still inside Dread’s army and use them for surgical strikes inside the facilities. We could force such a drop in their numbers that Dread might have to pull the rest of his existing troops back to Volcania to protect it, and let’s face it, he’d be putting all his forces in the same location.”

“All his eggs in one basket, it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel." Hawk applauded. “Like I said, Jon, they’re sneaky. We could learn from them.”

Jon admired the way she thought through various aspects of the decision. If seeing was believing, then the Dread Youth would see their colleagues behave opposite to every litany they’d ever learned. It could possibly open their eyes to the truth. “Sneaky works,” Jon agreed.

“Win their hearts and minds,” Hawk said out loud. “That was part propaganda and part tactic that was started in the mid-20^th century and used ever since then. Basically, get the enemy’s people on your side.”

Jennifer nodded. “Victor asked Parker what he thought of the idea, and he agreed that the more of us that are out here fighting Dread in as many different resistance cells as possible, the better the chance we have of getting soldiers still in the Dread Youth to question him. The last time anyone could tell, it was having an effect. Parker found out that some of the Dread Youth in Volcania have switched sides and are helping us now. There have been a few reports of increasing internal attacks that no one in the Resistance leadership ordered, so some are working on their own.”

That got Tank’s attention. “Speaking of Parker, why didn’t he want to lead the group? He was your second-in-command."

“A good one, too,” Jennifer said as she carefully placed the spanner in her belt. “But he was an overunit. He knew that would keep some people from trusting him no matter how many times he proved himself. That could undermine Victor’s plans to try to get more Dread Youth on our side. Tactically speaking, working as the second-in-command is the best place for him. It’s definitely more effective. Other Dread Youth would see one of their own obeying someone from the wastelands. That’s something they could never imagine since they believe anyone living outside Volcania is an animal. Besides, he was comfortable as Annie’s second; he thought he’d be better off as Victor’s second.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Jon concluded, knowing they didn’t have a lot of time to waste if they were going to meet up with the other cells to plan an attack. He placed his hand on the hull. “How are repairs coming along? Is she ready for another trip?”

Jennifer crossed her arms and gave Hawk a serious look.

Hawk cleared his voice and said with a grin, “As soon as I go down to storage and find new wires to replace the ones on the circuit that have rusted.”

Jon shook his head in amusement. Hawk had let wires rust? He had to be in trouble with Jennifer. “How long?”

“Give us a couple of hours,” Hawk answered as he motioned for Scout and Tank to follow him. “Come on, you two, it’ll take a while to shuffle through all those storage boxes. It’ll take less time if all three of us are looking.”

“Uh, we didn’t have anything to do with that rewiring job,” Scout said loudly as they walked away. “Jennifer knows that,” he said even louder.

“You’re trying to win brownie points, aren’t you,” was the last thing Jon and Jennifer heard Hawk say before they were out of hearing range.

Jon sat down on the hatchway steps as Jennifer finished up a few more tasks. “There was one other bit of good news,” he told her. “I just wanted to share it with you first before telling the others.”

She looked at him and smiled that secretive little smile she only shared with him. “How good?”

He held up the reader in order to quote the report. “According to a report written by a research tech at the Passages, transplantation of organic material found in the forest now growing in the specified region of Colorado has proven successful. Experiments show signs of complete reversal of deforestation in devastated areas. Recent count indicates thirty experimental forests growing at exponential rate and presence of wildlife is indicated.”

Jennifer took the reader and re-read the words. “We can bring the forests back,” she repeated. “Something good did come out of the explosion,” she whispered to herself.

So much destruction, so much pain, but something good had come from that horrific moment in time, and it wasn’t just destroying Blastarr. “I still don’t want to make a habit out of doing things like that,” he suggested as he took her hand and gently pulled her over to him. She sat down next to him and placed her head on his shoulder as she read the report again.

Looking around the hanger bay, seeing and hearing the differences in his team, knowing that good news was coming in daily instead of rarely – Jon couldn’t believe how different things had become. For the first time in his life, he could honestly say things were good. The Resistance was beginning to win the war. The botanists and eco-scientists were able to help the earth’s forest come back and allow the planet to recover from Dread’s destruction. For the first time in over fifteen years, the human race had a chance of coming back from the brink of a manmade disaster.

Yet the world itself wasn’t the only thing with an optimistic future. On a personal note, he and Jennifer had settled into a happy relationship. Knowing how empty his life was without her and now how rich his life was with her, he wondered why he had ever been reluctant to tell her how he felt. It wasn’t easy for either of them. Sometimes, they could steal moments away and forget there was a war on. They could spend time together without worrying about the next attack. Then there was the stark reality that there was a war to fight and sometimes they had to forget they were a couple. Finding a balance between their personal and professional lives hadn’t been easy, but keeping in mind that they were finally getting the upper hand in the war, that it could be over with sooner than anyone thought, that meant their relationship could change. They wouldn’t have to go out and fight anymore. They could find a place all their own and build a home. They could have a family. Maybe those thoughts that once danced in the back of his mind could become reality, but what he was truly grateful for was that Jennifer shared the same thoughts and dreams.

Yet those eight months were still with them in some form or another. Every now and then, he’d see glimpses of Annie. Sometimes it was in Jennifer’s words or her tone, sometimes in her interpretation of events and tactical solutions to a problem, but something of Annie had survived. Jennifer’s strong determination had been strengthened by Annie’s sensible confidence. The woman sitting beside him had always been a formidable blend of curiosity, resolve and willpower. Now, there was an added facet of control that only developed after commanding people in dangerous situations. It came from the burden of weighing lives against the greater good when planning defenses and attacks. It came from knowing that sometimes one had to sacrifice so others could live. That wasn’t a decision any commander ever wanted to make, but it was those decisions that changed a person. Jennifer was Jennifer but with Annie’s rather blunt edge and command perspective.

The first few days after she got her memory back had their confusing moments. She was trying to be Jennifer – but maybe she was trying too hard. At the time, they were coordinating with Victor, Parker, Jones and other important figures from the base camp as they travelled to their homes. Those that no longer had homes or families were temporarily rerouted to Placerville which was still standing. She coordinated the logistical nightmare of moving hundreds of people who needed relocating with a great deal of skill and confidence. She was still very much Annie, making decisions and giving orders. After those few days, when memories began to settle down a bit and identities began to stabilize, she had to make a choice about who she wanted to be. Finally, she prompted Victor to make the major decisions for the army, but when he hesitated, she reminded him that if he was going to lead the army, he had to always appear decisive even if he didn’t know what to do. Victor’s response? “I always worked for you, Jennifer. Or for Annie, that is. Running the whole outfit? I don’t know how you did this all these months.”

Letting go of the army and handing it over to Victor was perhaps one of the most difficult problems she faced in those early days. It had been a hard choice, deciding where she belonged and how to behave. She felt a huge responsibility to take care of everyone at the base camp even after they evacuated. After months of being the one who looked after everyone and everything, that was completely understandable. It had become a habit and a routine ingrained in her daily life. Yet, for reasons Jon still didn’t understand, she stepped aside and let Victor take over. Jon knew it wasn’t out of reluctance or inability. That woman was entirely capable of leading an army – she’d proven that with great success – but she’d never truly explained her decision.

She and Jon talked a lot during that time, mostly about decisions made in battles and choices made in the aftermath. Some decisions still haunted her, some she learned to live with. There were times when it was difficult for her to distinguish between Jennifer and Annie, but as the days progressed, she found a contented balance between both identities. As Jon told her before, Annie was Jennifer, only with a harder edge. All she had to do was give herself some time to figure out how all the pieces of her new-found self fit together. He was more than willing to give her all the time she needed.

He’d asked himself what he would have done if they couldn’t get Jennifer back. Although he did like Annie, he loved Jennifer, but there were a few subtle differences. Fortunately, luck was with them, and he didn’t have to answer that question. She was alive, she was there, they were together – Jon knew that only a particular set of circumstances had allowed that to happen, and he didn’t take it for granted. One slight change, and the outcome could have been completely different. She could have stayed with the army, and he would have been as alone again as he had been before they found the base camp.

Still, his curiosity was piqued. “I was wondering, was that the real reason why you didn’t want to take command?” he asked her.

“Mostly,” she smiled up at him. “Well, partly. I do think Victor’s plan of trying to get more Dread Youth working against Dread might have some success, but not much. We won’t get the numbers Victor hopes we will, but even a few would be a victory.”

The plan was a long shot, but it was a good plan. If there was a chance to bring any Dread Youth out of the darkness and into the light, they’d take it. “To tell you the truth, I’m glad you decided to come back here.”

She gave him a quick kiss and answered, “Well, you did make me a very good offer, you know.”

“You’re a tough negotiator. Ship, hangar bay, new base, brand new spanner ---”

“And a captain of my own as well,” she humored him.

“Is that what sealed the deal?” he asked, a grin on his face.

“Actually, it was the part where I’d be in charge of the ship and could order anyone to do anything I wanted.”

“It’s always the ship. What’s a captain to do against that kind of competition?” he joked. He weaved his fingers with hers and clasped her hand tight. It felt good to be able to joke about everything that happened, but there was something off, something not quite right. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

Jennifer wrapped her arms around his. It was hard for him to imagine that something so simple was once a wishful thought, that such closeness was only a dream that would never come true. Now, there she was, right next to him. There were times when he thought it really was all a dream and he’d wake up alone to find out none of it was true, that she wouldn’t be lying there next to him and he was the angry man in an empty shell. That wasn’t a place he wanted to go back to. He gently swept her hair behind her shoulder. “Jennifer?”

“I really did think about taking command,” she told him. “The problem was that I had a lot of Annie in me at the time. I felt like I needed to keep command because they voted me into the job. It was my responsibility. But then I reminded myself I was Jennifer, and I was a pilot. I know I could have done the job, but I didn’t think I could do as good a job of leading a resistance group as Annie did, so I had to make a choice.”

Jon often wondered what he would have done with his life if he’d had a choice. What if the war hadn’t happened, if his father hadn’t died and if he hadn’t had to fight? Life had given Jennifer the rare opportunity to choose. For someone who had grown up without choice, the idea that she could do whatever she wanted or whatever she needed to in order to live her life was one she pursued. She chose to fight alongside him, with the team. “No matter which one you chose, you’d do a good job,” he praised her. “I’ve seen you command, you know. You’re a natural.”

She smiled up at him and he placed his arm around her waist to pull her close. “I know I could have done a good job, but…” she glanced back at the ship, “so can Victor and I think I can do more here piloting this ship than I ever could leading a resistance group.”

A new realization dawned on Jon. In all their conversations, he hadn’t considered that maybe some of Stinson’s theories had been proven. Even though he couldn’t change their core abilities – like being able to pilot a ship – maybe he did alter how effectively they could use their abilities? That would have changed a task someone was naturally inclined to do into something they could do but didn’t excel at? “Do you really think Annie did a better job of leading them than you would have? Annie was you.”

“Not quite,” Jennifer leaned back and thought about her answer. “I’m a better pilot than Annie was. Annie could fly a cargo ship but she couldn’t have flown against drones. I’ve led troops of youth corps cadets and biomechs programmed to obey, but Annie led an army of very independent soldiers. I don’t think it’s a stretch for me to say that Annie was a better resistance group commander than I might have been, but Annie couldn’t have out flown me if her life depended on it. Besides, I’m a former youth leader. That could cause me the same problems Parker might have for being a former overunit. Victor and I gave this a lot of thought, and we agreed that we need people to be in the places where they’ll be the most effective, not just where they can do a good job. I think I can be more effective here, on this team, flying this ship, than I ever could by leading an army. It brings home more of a point to Dread if a former youth leader is on his worst enemy’s team rather than just leading an army against him.”

But there was something Jon still wanted to know. “So choosing to be here –”

“I really don’t want to be anywhere else,” she said as he kissed her.

Jon leaned back as well and looked admiringly at her. Maybe Stinson’s experiment had made that change – Jennifer was an expert pilot who could fly anything with wings. Annie knew what the controls on a ship could do and had a natural inclination to fly, but it wasn’t her forte. In the same way, whereas Jennifer led troops, Annie led an army – Stinson took Jennifer’s leadership skills and moved them up a couple of notches to a level where those skills became predominant in Annie. What if they could use Stinson’s experiments against Dread?

“You’re grinning. What are you thinking?” she asked him, clearly intrigued.

He didn’t realize he was grinning. “A sudden thought just occurred to me,” he said, his brow furrowing in amused concentration. “It looks like Stinson’s research proved his theories, and his experiments did do some of the things he hoped they would like changing people’s professions. I was wondering if we could use that research against Dread?”

Jennifer considered that before returning his grin. “Any idea where we can find some transmitters?”

The End

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