Drifter

In the memory, Eli walked toward a large military vehicle. He had once heard a passerby refer to it as a hybrid of a school bus and an excavator. This comparison neglected the tan paint job and prodigious armor.

Eli wore a US army combat uniform, the rank of sergeant on his chest. On his right shoulder, the old stars and stripes. On his left shoulder, the patch that identified him as a member of an EOD team, the military version of the bomb squad. Under that, a ranger scroll, the symbol of those soldiers that had passed an elite course.

A young woman walked beside him. She wore blue jeans and a button-up shirt. Over this, a flack vest with the word “PRESS” emblazoned on it. Her sunglasses and short blond hair gave her an air that was close to, but not quite defiant.

“In your opinion, how is the war going?” she asked.

“It’s become a sick game where we try to keep them from blowing us up and they figure out ways around our countermeasures. My team’s mission is to deal with the roadside bombs.”

“And how is this achieved?”

“Usually via controlled detonation. Sometimes, we try to keep the devices intact.”

“So that you can study them?”

“Yes. We have to stay a step ahead of them. In order to do that, we have to keep the enemy from detonating them.”

“How do the insurgents detonate the IEDs?”

“They are very devious. They’ve used everything from buried wires to thermal cameras to trigger them. The most common is a good old fashion cell phone.”

“Really?”

“Yes.,” Eli grinned “Now, get in the truck, and hope that our jammer gets the job done.”

***

The bridge of Cavalier was crowded. The hive had forced Eli, Gami, and the other passengers into it. Presently, the ship was cruising down a hyperspace lane. A populated system was just a half an hour away.

The view out the forward-facing windows was strange. It was something like a thunderstorm. Clouds, only made of silver energy loomed in mammoth banks. These clouds were on all sides, at all elevations. Flat beams of light shot between them, the colors seemingly random. White dots grew out of nothing, burst apart just as they formed. A tunnel had been bore through this madness. Every once in a while, they passed one of the small structures that kept the lane intact.

Babur and the hive mind known as Shikakuu were sitting at one of the control stations. They had the guns they had taken from Eli and Gami lined up on the console. Skant, the veteran, was talking to him, trying to convince him to stop, just as they were trying to convert him to their cause.

“Destroying the power core would cause severe damage, but it wouldn’t destroy the ship,” Gami stated.

“Makes me think that our terrorist is still a novice.”

“It does suggest that.”

“But still, it would cost a fortune to repair. We need to jam the signal.”

“What if it works the other way around? What if losing contact with a continuous signal sets it off?”

“That’s too risky. The device that he showed us looked like a communicator. The bomb would be triggered when a call is placed to another communicator, which is wired directly to the charge.”

“How do you know this?” Gami asked.

“I was a combat engineer. I used to disarm bombs for a living. I’ve built a few too.”

“No offence, but this isn’t your primitive world.”

“You don’t think that I caught myself up? Besides, we stole munitions from the Sad’Daki to use against them.”

“Fair enough. So, we need to find a way to jam the signal or disconnect the communicator from the bomb.”

“Yes, but it’s probably set up to go off if we do that. I’ll have to take a look at it first. I’ve got a jammer that I took from a Sad’Daki patrol. It’s in the workshop.”

“Whether we go for the bomb or the jammer, the problem is still the same. We have to find a way to get away from him.”

***

In the memory Eli stood in front of his brigade commander, the highest, most severe authority they could immediately put him in front of. It was a whole room full of angry, men and women, each with a hair-trigger temper and the mentality of a prison warden. Outside the tent, a sandstorm converted the morning sun into an eerie orange glow.

The commander addressed him as one might address an animal that had misbehaved, “Private Cisneros, do you understand why we did what we did?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t think that you do,” this was his first sergeant, a man who he had not seen express joy once during the year and a half he had known him.

“First Sergeant, I completed the assigned task. I answered her questions and made us look good.”

“You endangered a journalist,” the commander countered.

“Sir. She understood the risks. She wanted to go. And her piece was very favorable.”

“She was wounded by an IED!”

Eli thought about making his case, that it had only been a minor wound, that they had promptly given her first aid. But he knew that it was a lost cause. So, he just said, “It built character.”

“Being a smart ass isn’t going to help you. On top of everything else, you slept with her!”

“It helped to give her a good opinion of the military,” he countered.

“This, this is why your military career will end in failure!” his first sergeant bellowed, “You can earn back the rank that you lost. You can receive awards and accolades. But at the end of the day, you will let your twisted impulses get the better of you.”