Chapter 4: NAFB (Patreon)

Nellis Air Force Base was originally three hundred miles away from L.A., give or take, but because of The Stitching, Earth had been haphazardly slapped together with Pharos half a year ago. Any long-range travel had been doubled in length and tripled in duration. Roads ended in dead-ends with swaths of Pharosian desert in between them.

Not to mention the monsters.

The hazards of the post-apocalyptic world effectively made a five-hour road trip into a two-day journey with potential ambush by humans, sand-worms, succadillos, etc. Camping was not safe, but they didn’t really have much choice in the matter. Jeb wanted to arrive at the base bright eyed and bushy-tailed, not dragging ass.

Being sharp could mean the difference between winning and not winning, and in this case, winning translated to ‘not dying.’

The first day was uneventful, and they camped in a small dip in the desert landscape that concealed their fire. That was when Jeb revealed the gravity of the situation to Legolas.

Jeb wasn’t sure if the drone could fully grasp the consequences of failure, but the little guy’s mission was super simple: Keep any planes leaving Nellis grounded. Legolas could definitely understand that.

Satellite imagery no longer existed, so Nellis couldn’t use that to detect Legolas, and he was too small for radar.

I think? That wasn’t Jeb’s department, really. Actually modern radar is pretty good, isn’t it?

Jeb glanced at the hovering black drone.

Let’s just hope they don’t have radar. Keeping a generator running purely to detect threats from the sky would be unlikely, given how few planes there were left…

On the off chance they do…

Jeb added several dozen layers of FMO shields to Legolas, and instructed him to ‘play dead’ if they started shooting at him.

As a backup ‘fuck it’ button, Jeb spent the rest of the night before bed weaving several dozen packets of Myst into his staff.

Nothing like an explosion of angry death stags to get the ball rolling.

Jeb put up a shield around the jeep with little whiffle-ball holes in it to make sure he didn’t suffocate, then went to bed for the night.

In the morning the two of them set off, with Legolas rising up into the air until he was so small Jeb simply couldn’t pick him out. Jeb wanted the drone to be in the stratosphere before they came within visual range of the base.

Thankfully all of North Vegas covered his approach pretty well.

Jeb was idling up the sidewalk, sneaking his way northeast toward the Air Force Base, using the huge buildings for cover when he caught movement from one of the abandoned casinos.

Jeb craned his neck and tried to spot what had tripped his peripherals.

When he looked forward again, there was a bare-chested man wearing a necklace made of cranberries. The twenty-five thousand dollar chips glinted in the sun as the man gave a barbarian roar and threw his hand forward.

The sidewalk melted and turned into a net of stone laced with some strange black substance, tangling Jeb’s tires and crisscrossing over the open top.

I just hope these guys aren’t cannibals. Jeb thought, putting the parking brake on. Cannibalism was the worst. The social contract also required him to murder cannibals, and anyone who hung around the desert in modern day was either a lawless robber or a cannibal: There wasn’t much food out here.

The possible cannibal sported some kind of dark makeup under his eyes and reflective tinfoil over a swaddled shirt wrapped around his head. He walked up to the driver’s side of the jeep and tapped on the window in an officious manner.

Jeb used the hand-crank to lower it, putting him and the odd man face to face, with nothing between them. The lifted frame of the jeep put them eye to eye. Jeb’s brown gaze perfectly equal with the barbarian’s blue.

“You know how fast you were going?” The barbarian asked, hands on his hips.

“About…ten miles an hour?” Jeb said. He had been using the sidewalk because it was mostly clear of rusting cars.

“You got anything to declare before you enter the Talon base?”

Oh well, it makes sense they’d watch their front door.

“I’m not a huge fan of aliens.” Jeb said dryly to ingratiate himself. Sarcasm doesn’t count as lying if you tell the truth in a way that sounds like the opposite. Jeb was neutral on the alien issue, but hopefully this guy took it to mean he hated them too.

“I mean, you got any weapons, anything to trade, or are you here to join the Talon?”

“The Talon?” Jeb asked.

“The Talon of Freedom.” The guy took a step back and spread his arms. “It might not seem like much right now, but with the water we’re able to pump here from the Colorado river and the arable land that got dropped in by the stitching, we’re going to have a thriving city here in just a few years.”

He pointed at the casinos. “And these giant casinos are just chock full of useful parts. Steel beams, large glass panels, air conditioners, stoves, you name it. Tom the electrical guy even managed to hook up the movie theater. We’ve got all the marvel movies.”

“Sounds like you guys are growing fast.” Jeb said glancing around. He was totally surrounded by half-dressed men and women wielding everything from guns to spears. They were coming out of the woodwork to rubberneck at his idling jeep.

“That’s right,” the fella preened. That’s right, I don’t know this guy’s name

“Call me Jeb,” Jeb said, holding out his hand for the man to shake.

“Cecil. Nice to meet you Jeb.”

“It’s been fairly pleasant so far.” Jeb said, eyeing the people looking back at him. “Probably not gonna stay that way, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“I work for one of the Emperor’s hench-women and I want to chat with your boss about becoming a double agent.” Jeb wanted to have a chat about becoming a double agent because it would get him where he wanted to be.

The mood soured pretty quick. Gun were drawn, hammers cocked, and a few spears were even lowered toward Jeb.

“Step outside your vehicle with your hands on your head,” Cecil said, Myst swirling dangerously around his hands.

Jeb complied, stepping out of the car a moment before being roughly thrown to the ground. Thick ye olde shackles were thrown around his wrists in a matter of minutes; pre- Tutorial handcuffs were jokes to anyone with more than fifteen Body.

Once that was done, they hauled Jeb away, and he spotted a woman jump into his jeep and drive it down the road, the asphalt and inky black tentacles receding back into the ground.

Neat.

A bag was thrown over Jeb’s head, followed by a collar, and he was hustled into what was most likely a van and driven for about forty-five minutes before they dragged him back out, stripped him and sat him down on a plush chair.

Plush?

Jeb’s ass had only a couple seconds to process that information before the bag was torn off his head, revealing…

Huh. I expected a basement.

Jeb was in a V.I.P. room at an especially fancy casino. The Palazzo maybe? Jeb didn’t know for sure, because he’d never been in any VIP room, let alone The Palazzo. The electricity was on, and the overhead lights worked, casting the luxurious steak dinner set out in front of him in a warm light.

“Wow, I was expecting a basement and torture,” Jeb muttered as his wrists were unshackled.

“We can do that instead if that’s more your speed.” a woman’s voice said. “Sorry about the clothes, standard procedure.” The person who unshackled him walked around and into Jeb’s field of view before sitting in front of him.

Immediately Jeb was intimidated. The old lady was workaholic thin with hands gnarled and scarred from decades of relentless work. She had steely hair cropped short in a buzz cut. If there was anything Jeb knew about lady officers; the ones that were in it for the long haul were not to be fucked with, and this particular one sported the look.

“It doesn't bother me too much,” Jeb said. “It’s close to ninety degrees in the shade anyway.”

“I suppose it is.” She said, pouring herself a glass of wine from what was no doubt the casinos reserve for high rollers. “I hadn’t noticed, really. Body makes it easier to tolerate high temperatures. We haven’t had a single recruit pass out from heatstroke in the training yard, much to my disappointment.”

Jeb glanced around, but it was just him and her in the huge room. That meant the woman felt as though she could defend herself should he choose to attack her. And that meant she probably could.

Jeb picked up the knife and fork, watching her reaction carefully. She took a sip of thousand-dollar wine, her gaze uncomfortably strong.

Jeb shrugged internally and started sawing away at his steak.

“Where’d you get steak?” He asked around a piece.

“The stitching didn’t kill all the animals. There’s a fair amount of cattle wandering the wastes, dying to dehydration and predation from alien fauna, but we’ve saved plenty of them.”

“Food’s actually quite plentiful now that there are several billion less people on the planet to share it with.”

Jeb swallowed slowly. He knew it was bad, but several billion?

“How do you figure?” Jeb asked. “You can’t possibly have a planet-wide census.”

“About seventy-two percent of all the populations I’ve surveyed died of starvation or violence in the first six months after the stitching. Most of that from urban areas. Apply that percentage to the entire world.”

“You know what’s funny, Jeb? Can I call you Jeb?”

“And I call you…?”

“You call me General or Ma’am.”

Jeb’s training kicked in, his back straightened without his permission. “Yes ma’am.”

“What’s funny is, even with that catastrophic loss of life, we still outnumber the aliens six to one. They’re pissing their pants at our sheer numbers. They chose to send you, after all.”

“Yeah, about that. Could you not drop a nuke on Solmnath? I’ve got an orphanage there, and I would much prefer the children I’m responsible for to stay alive.”

“You sent them out of town before you came, didn’t you?” She shot back. Jeb froze with the fork halfway to his mouth, trying to figure out if she had spies on him or just good instincts. Who wouldn’t send their kids out of town?

“I don’t keep tabs on you specifically, but you are one of the characters of Solmnath. Word of what you’re up to finds its way to my ears.

The steely old lady sat back in her chair, studying him. “I find myself conflicted. Part of me wants to congratulate you for saving all those kids and entrapping the slimy fucks farming them.”

“Well, I –“

“The other part of me wants to make a blood eagle out of you for working with the alien regime.”

Jeb’s jaw clicked shut.

“I like my lungs on the inside.”

“I guess we’ll see where the day takes us,” she said with a hint of a smile. “Now, tell me everything you know about your handler.”

“Her name’s Vresh Tekalis, You’ve probably seen her on the Reaper broadcasts. She worked directly for the emperor, she-“

“Vresh Tekalis? The enforcer? The bitch that saws people’s heads off?” The woman interrupted.

“Yeah, that one.”

“What do you mean by ‘worked’?”

“She was demoted recently in part because she chose me as a deputy, then she was reassigned to work on the ‘nuke problem’.”

“Identifying traits?” The woman asked, raising a hand and beckoning. Jeb made out a silvery pulse of Myst and a moment later a man hustled in with a pen and paper. He was gawky and sported acne scars across his face, and moved with an odd gait, like he was being extra careful.

“Why do you need that? You already know what she looks like -”

“It’s so I can establish what you look like when you’re telling the truth.”

“Well, Vresh is about six three, plus a foot of horns, She comes from a rich family so she acts refined without really thinking about it, and she’s incredibly –“

The man with the pen and paper banged his toe against the table, dropping the general’s paper on the table and clutching his foot.

Clumsy.

“Hot.” Jeb said, glancing down at his spoon as the messenger left. “Both in the temperature sense and the attractiveness sense. She’s got tits the size of watermelons and a tendency to burn her clothes off, which makes her an absolute delight to be around.”

The soldier’s reflection froze for a moment at the crass mention of Vresh’s boobs.

Gotcha. Vresh had said she’d be within a mile. So the question was, was she testing his loyalty or was she here to make sure the nukes got destroyed even if he failed?

Por que no los dos?

Jeb glanced up at the iron-haired woman, who was watching him with a cocked brow.

Where was I? Oh right, I left off on boobs.

“I’d guess she’s a little naïve due to her upbringing, but most of it’s been squeezed out by being an Enforcer, She’s level one hundred at least, so you can bet she’s killed a lot of people.” Jeb continued without missing a beat.

“Class, Abilities, Myst Core?”

“I um…don’t know that.”

“Relax. I didn’t expect you to.”

Whew.

“There’s about a million little details we’ll get to in your debrief before we can release you back into the wild, Jeb. Let’s start with everything you can tell us about you. Level, Class, Core, Abilities?”

That made Jeb sweat a little bit, but he answered truthfully, trying to slog through the details without being evasive was good policy for when he needed them to overlook a single half-truth later.

“How long is this going to take?”

“A couple weeks,” The woman muttered, flipping to her next page. “You’d be surprised at how much actionable information you don’t know you know.”

“Can I ask a question?” Jeb asked.

“You just did. Twice.” She said, scribbling down his most recent answer.

“Are you really planning on using nukes against Solmnath?”

“Why, you gonna stop me?” She asked, a dangerous chill in her expression.

“I was hoping I could persuade you not to, but if you’re set on having a plane leave this base with nukes, I’m not gonna stop it.”

Legolas is.

“Good. Let me show you something.”

She pinged with Myst and the same gawky, acne-riddled messenger boy that Jeb was sixty percent sure was Vresh in disguise ran back in with a map.

It showed a horrifying juxtaposition of America stitched together with another landmass of about equal size.

“We made this based on a composite of Pharosian maps and ours.” She said, spreading the hand-drawn paper down on the table. Some parts of it were more detailed than others, a result of firsthand surveying of the stitching.

“The Empire has control of all of this area, but its only major foothold in the west is Solmnath.” She said, tapping on L.A./Solmnath

“Currently Vegas is sandwiched, with Solmnath on one side, and the rest of the empire on the other. If I remove this stronghold from the map, humans can easily claim the west of the continent for themselves.”

She drew a line with her finger, using the mountainous region that ran through Oregon down to California as a boundary.

“From there, we can use the desert as a natural barrier while we solidify the defenses of a new America. Nellis will act as an early warning system and forward base. We’ll be able to bomb any feathered sumbitches who try to cross the desert before they even get close.”

“So…how are you gonna stop the Imperial Enforcers? The aristocrats? The Emperor?” Jeb asked with a raised brow. “These people are fantastically powerful, and I’m fairly sure a little bombing isn’t gonna dissuade them as much as you seem to think they will.

“Oh I’ll be able to dissuade them,” She said with a confidence that took Jeb aback.

How on Earth does she think she stands a chance against the emperor et al? Sonofabitch caught a sawblade moving near the speed of sound between two fingers, and I’m pretty sure that was him phoning it in.

How could someone expect to ward off an entire empire after destroying a city? Retaliation would be swift and over the top. Hundreds of men and women with hundreds of levels apiece would stream west. The entire east coast would unite to take them down. Without having someone with hundreds of levels, they would simply get torn apart by imperial –

Jeb controlled his expression as he realized the general’s plan. There was no way to dissuade her from blowing up Solmnath, because it was about more than just clearing a stronghold, or how many civilians might die.

She was going to be the one flying the plane, the one dropping the bomb.

If XP is awarded to the guy who knowingly takes the action that leads to a death, what does the guy who dropped a bomb that kills millions get?

Even if she only got a hundredth of the normal Impact for killing people because of the slight separation of cause and effect…Let’s see, three million people living in Solmnath divided by a hundred gives me thirty thousand. Damn.

Whoever drops the bomb is going to rise to a level that could give the emperor a run for his money overnight. And I’m ninety-nine percent sure she’s gonna wanna be that person.

She’s a goddamn reaper!

Now Jeb had to act like a dumb-fuck and not let it slip that he could see the woman’s trajectory.

Thankfully any grunt worth their salt had mastered the art of playing dumb in front of a superior officer until they lost interest. It was the same concept as a brown bear: Play dead and they might not order you to restack an entire semi full of exercise equipment.

Of course those coping mechanisms didn’t really prepare someone for being a double agent: Being a sneaky bastard did that.

The rest of the interview, Jeb spilled his guts with half-truths, and bent over backward to not make waves. He hemmed and hawed about blowing up his orphanage, but finally agreed with the general that it did make strategic sense.

She didn’t expect him to be immediately on board, so he didn’t pretend to be. However, because he was a stranger of dubious loyalty, they kept the magic sealing collar on even after he was dismissed.

After they got everything they could out of Jeb in one sitting, they locked him in a penthouse that made his old apartment look like gum on the bottom of its shoe. It had its own kitchen, five beds, each of them king sized, a living room with a sofa, bigass working tv with a dvd player, exercise room, and a fully stocked minibar.

As far as prison cells went, it was pretty flattering. Jeb knew they were buttering him up because they still thought he was possibly going to flip on the empire.

Flip on the empire? Jeb thought, sipping a beer in a silk robe as he glanced out the surveying the dry fountains on the strip below him. Was I ever on the empire’s side, really? Jeb didn’t really want to be on a side. But if I had to pick it would be the side that doesn’t use nukes.

That being said, Jeb was too old to see things in black and white. The empire wasn’t the good guy, and these people weren’t the bad guys. If he could eliminate their WMD’s he’d happily let them go back to killing each other one at a time. Like God intended.

And hey, maybe not supporting the American forces here and now would lead to their inevitable downfall and lots of deaths, but it would be a gradual downfall, giving plenty of time for moderate-minded civilians like Cecil and his family to jump ship before the ride-or-die fanatic’s final blaze of glory.

Beats nuking three million people and starting a war that spans the entire continent.

One way or another it was going to be messy. Jeb chose the brand of messy that didn’t involve his orphanage.

“Ring love daddy?” Jeb asked, glancing around. He waited for his ring to show up but the Trigger must not have heard him. So they’re probably not keeping my shit in the same building. Smart.

Ah well, I got three days before the shit hits the fan.

Maybe not enough time for them to give him free run of the place, but enough time to make a plan and act on it.

For tonight at least, we can relax and gather our thoughts. Jeb thought, downing the second half of his beer before squatting in front of the minibar, grabbing an expensive cider to wash it down with.

BOOM!

A muffled explosion made the entire building shake, sending a faint trace of dust down from the ceiling that hadn’t been cleaned in half a year.

I really hope that wasn’t the Appraiser, Jeb thought, heading to the window and popping the top off his cider barehanded.

Perks of inhuman Body.

He couldn’t see what was going on, because his luxurious prison cell faced to the south, so Jeb didn’t know if it was an emergency or if they were test-firing some artillery.

A klaxon sounded above Jeb’s head and the lights in the room turned red and a woman’s pre-recorded voice began giving him instructions on how to locate the fire escape.

I guess that rules out a training exercise, Jeb thought, taking a sip of his cider and heading for the door like the nice lady asked.

Before Jeb got halfway across the room, a kid with an assault rifle over his shoulder and a thick iron sword dangling from his waist peeked into Jeb’s room.

“He’s still here. Orders?”

Jeb took a sip of cider.

“What’s going on? Anything I can do to help?” Jeb asked. He could stand to stretch his legs, get more information about where his objective was, and ingratiate himself with the locals. Three birds with one stone.

The kid and three of his friends flooded into the room and double, triple checked Jeb’s Myst collar, all while the klaxon sounded above their heads and that damn prerecorded message made it difficult to hear.

“Mr. Trapper, the General orders you to stay in your room! If we see you outside of it tonight, we’ll consider you hostile and shoot on sight!”

“Yeah, but what’s going on!?” Jeb shouted to be heard.

“That’s our business! Stay here!”

They stormed back out of the room with all the abruptness that they’d had when they checked on him the first time, leaving him by himself with nothing but flashing red lights and klaxons to keep him company.

Jeb chugged the rest of the bottle and burped.

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I stay there will be trouble.

If I go it could be double.

If Jeb left the confines of the room, his plan to infiltrate without bloodshed went up in smoke, but if he stayed, he might get caught up in –

BOOM! The hotel shook around him again.

Whatever that was.

Jeb pressed his ear to the floor-to-ceiling window of his fancy prison. Through the thick glass he was able to make out the sound of gunfire. About twelve seconds later, Jeb watched an ant-like creature the size of a volkswagon crawl right down the main strip.

And that’s the deciding factor right there.

“Collar too tight.” Jeb said. The Mystic Trigger buried under his skin created a sawblade of telekinetic force on either side of his neck and began grinding its way through the Myst collar. When it touched the material that sucked up Myst, the blades flickered out of existence, but the thick steel that made the collar challenging to remove had been compromised.

Thing’s probably expensive, Jeb thought with a wince as he snapped the two halves of the damaged magical band off his neck.

Once he had access to Myst again, Jeb retreated into one of the side rooms and cut a little hole in the bottom of the glass window, jumping out before reaching out with Myst and dragging the bed over to cover the hole.

It would buy him…like an extra fifteen seconds?

Jeb flew up and out, silk robe fluttering behind him like superman’s cape, aiming for the northeast, clearing the building in a matter of seconds. Finally, Jeb was high enough that he saw the entire Air Force Base sprawled out in front of him.

It was worse than he’d expected.

In the center of the base was a pillar made of pure Faradan stone, maybe five feet across and twenty feet tall, at least from where it stuck out of the ground. Glowing runes whirled on the outer face of the strange contraption.

That wasn’t what caused Jeb the most concern, though.  To the west of the base, the hangars and paved parking lots and even some of the trees were…sludging.

Is sludging a verb? Because that’s what they’re doing.

A  hundred-foot circle of land and everything inside it was turning brown and melting before it dipped down into some kind of sinkhole. Out of the brown sludge, armored creatures emerged like the orcs from the Lord of The Rings movie. Just kind of…birthed from the gunk.

They weren’t ants exactly. They had six legs and appeared somewhat insectoid, but their armor was thick and grew off their body in large plates. They only walked on four of their six legs, while they held heavily armored forelimbs in front of them that they could seamlessly match to others of the same species to make a biological shield wall.

Ants didn’t form shield walls.