Right when we don’t need it.

Tacoma tops the rise slightly ahead of Poteet and Koda. She watches as he sweeps the line of sight with the muzzle of his rifle, head up and alert for movement, then drop it to part the grass at his feet.

No one home.

Lowering her gun, she sprints the rest of the way up the side of the windbreak to join her brother. The grass along the ridge lies broken and beaten down where two men have crouched to set up a grenade launcher, its abandoned tube tossed down halfway to the narrow blacktop road blow. By the roadside twin ruts run through the grass and weeds, a partial tire pattern visible where it has been printed in dust on the asphalt.

“Shit,” Koda observes.

Tacoma glances at her sharply, one side of his mouth canting up in a crooked smile. “Oh yeah. This road’s still got enough traffic that they pull off to park. Not good. Not good at all.”

“What now, Cap?” A frown crosses Poteet’s sunburned face. “Any chance these guys are friendlies?”

“Well, they don’t seem to think we’re friendlies, and I’m gonna defer to their opinion until proven otherwise.” He shoulders his rifle and heads back down the slope. “From now on, we keep close, drive fast, and shoot first.”

*

Bright sunlight streams through the windshield, almost blinding Jackson. Squinting, he flips down the visor, but that action brings no relief. With a grumbling sigh, he turns his head to look at his Commander-in-Chief, who is currently humming a song he can’t begin to identify as the passing wind tousles her golden hair.

“Problem, Lieutenant?” Kirsten asks, not taking her shaded eyes from the deserted access road before her.

“No, Ma’am. Except….”

“Except?”

“Well…could you maybe clue me in as to where we’re going?”

“You’ll know soon enough, Lieutenant. We’re almost there.”

This statement does nothing to calm the fears of a man who has spent the last three plus hours imagining one Doctor Dakota Rivers filleting him with a butter knife and dragging what’s left over shards of broken glass. He seriously, albeit briefly, considers jerking open the door, diving out, and taking his chances with the androids, or whatever other unsavory characters make up this stretch of backwater nowhere. His reverie is disrupted by a gentle pat to the knee.

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant,” Kirsten comments, smirking as she divines his thoughts. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I, uh, think that’s supposed to be the other way around, Ma’am.”

Kirsten’s laughter is rich and surprisingly uncomplicated, and he decides he likes it, even though, in the end, the privilege of hearing it will likely cost him latrine duty for the rest of his natural life. And beyond.

A short time later, he feels the truck slow, and watches as it pulls to a stop behind a large, thick copse of trees. It’s not what he expected, but years in the military have him prepared for almost anything. “I take it, Ma’am, that you didn’t drive us all the way out here just to commune with nature.”

Kirsten laughs again as she gathers her things. “You guessed right, Lieutenant. Sit tight. I’ll be right back.” She levels her sternest look at him. “Stay in the truck, if you please.”

With a sigh, he gives in to her soft-voiced command, slumping back against the seat and waiting for whatever may come.

‘Whatever’ comes sooner than he expects as he suddenly finds himself staring into a pair of android eyes. The only thing that keeps him from depressing the trigger of his weapon is the smile beneath those eyes; a smile that he has come to be acquainted with these past several hours. He blinks, shakes his head, then blinks again. The vision does not change. “M-Ma’am? Ms. President?”

“In the flesh, so to speak. You like?”

“If ‘like’ suddenly means ‘get the shit scared out of’, then yes, Ma’am, I like.”

Chuckling, Kirsten holds up a hand. “Here, take this.”

The cup of his palm suddenly holds a blob of flesh colored plastic. He looks at her inquiringly.

“Put it in your ear.”

With a bit of skepticism, he does as she asks, surprised to find the device sits easily in his ear canal.

“Good. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, but….”

Kirsten lifts a brow.

“Begging your pardon, Ma’am, but you’re like six inches away. It’d be pretty impossible not to hear you.”

“You have a point,” Kirsten replies dryly. “Hang on a second.” She disappears behind the truck. “Can you hear me now?”

“You sound like one of those old time cellphone commercials, Ma’am.”

“Should I take that as a ‘yes’, Lieutenant?”

Jackson fights the urge to snap off a salute. “Yes, Ma’am. I can hear you fine, Ma’am.”

“Good.” The android face appears in front of Jackson, taking another few years off of his life. “Now, this is what I need for you to do Lieutenant. See those trees over there?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“I want you to patrol them, but stay hidden. Just beyond them is a small manufacturing plant. I have some business to attend to there. You’ll be guarding my back.”

“With all respect, Ma’am,” he protests, “wouldn’t it be easier to guard your back if I could actually see it?”

Reaching through the rolled down window, Kirsten claps Jackson’s broad shoulder. “Not this time, Lieutenant. I need to do this alone.”

“But—.”

Kirsten’s face goes stony. “No ‘buts’, Lieutenant. I’ve given you a direct order, and I expect you to obey it. Without comment, and without question.”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he shoots back, “but your safety is more important than any order you could give me. I can’t—I won’t let you walk into some unknown structure alone and unprotected.”

“You can, and you will, Lieutenant Jackson.” Taking a breath, she consciously reins in her temper and softens her voice. “Darius, you can’t come with me.”

“Why? Would you just mind telling me that, please, Ma’am? You’ve kept me in the dark for hours now, and I think I at least deserve something! Please?”

She looks at him for a long moment, then nods. “Did you hear the story of what happened at Minot?”

“Bits and pieces. I know you were there to try and get the android code.”

“I was. And if your General Hart hadn’t decided, against all good sense, to bomb the place to smithereens, we might not be in the trouble we’re in right now.” She takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly, forcefully pushing away the memories of that time. “I have another chance, Darius. Not the same chance, but a good one. And as much as I value your protection, if you come with me, that chance will never be realized. Can you understand?”

“Not really, Ma’am. But…I accept your reasoning. I just—need to help, in some way.”

“Believe me,” she replies, relieved beyond measure, “you will be. That earpiece will allow you to hear everything that’s going on. I’ll be able to communicate with you through it, and if I sense any trouble, you’ll be the first to know.”

“How?”

“I’ll say….” She thinks about it for a moment, then smiles. “Nun lila hopa.”

“Nun lila hopa,” he repeats dutifully. “What does it mean?”

Kirsten blushes faintly. “That doesn’t matter. For our purposes, it means ‘Lieutenant Jackson, your presence is required, NOW!’”

He laughs a little, though his insides are twisted up tighter than a roll of barbed wire and every instinct he possesses is screaming for him to grab her, throw her in the truck, and hightail it back to the base, damn the consequences. Still…. “Okay, Ma’am. I got it.” He looks up at the sky. “How long to you think it’ll take?”

“A few hours, no more. I’ll let you know when I’m headed back, okay?”

“It’s not okay, but I’ll follow your orders, Ms. President.”

Kirsten smiles. “Thank you, Lieutenant. I’ll see you soon.”

A moment later, she’s gone.

*

“Ho. Ly. Shit.”

Koda stares across the field, in wordless agreement with her brother. Behind them, Larke lets out a long, low whistle. “Dayyyum,” he says. “You didn’t put any funny medicine woman stuff in the water, did you Ma’am?”

“Nope,” she answers, not quite believing it herself. “It’s really there.”

“It” looks like nothing so much as an extraterrestrial grasshopper, from Jupiter maybe, with heavy, drooping wings and squinting compact eyes, squatting in the middle of the prairie that stretches away to the horizon. The curves of the intake turbines of the twinned jet engines, though, just visible above the tall grass, name it for what it is.

“A B-52,” Tacoma adds. “A. Fucking. B-52.”

Slashed across the field from northwest to southeast, the scar of its landing shows bare earth gouged up to either side; a fine dust covers its metal skin from the nose back. The crash, or forced landing, depending on how one views it, is recent; the binoculars show no sign of green sprung up on the low berms ploughed up by the bomber’s skid over the pasture. Koda lowers her optics and says quietly, “Get the Geiger counter, Larke.”

“You think there’s nukes on board, Ma’am?” he asks as he turns back to the line of vehicles parked on the shoulder.

Dakota shrugs. “All we know right now is that if there are, they didn’t go off. What we need to know is whether they’ve been breached.” Larke goes white to the gills, and she adds, “If they’re there at all.”

When he has gone, Tacoma says quietly, “All right, we know someone’s still up at Minot. Someone who’s trying to fly nuclear bombers.”

“Not very successfully, it seems,” Koda answers.

“Not this time. Maybe next.”

Koda nods. “Maybe next, thiblo. Or maybe the time after that. If they have another crew.”

Tacoma looks from the downed plane to his sister and back. He says musingly, “Not likely, is it? I don’t think Ellsworth could muster a full crew for one of those monsters; Manny and Andrews sure as hell aren’t qualified on the heavy stuff, and I doubt the Colonel herself is. And the droids have to have hit Minot even harder than they did us. We got a rogue on our hands, tanski.”