The Last Run: A Novella Read Online Free PDF

that only a trained eye could detect. Mulligan had overseen the backhoes that had ripped up the earth personally, for he wanted this part of the test to be as close to reality as possible. If a catastrophic event did befall the nation, the last thing a rig commander could want was for the vehicle to get stuck a hundred miles or more away from Harmony, and that was a point Mulligan strove to drive home with each of his trainees. The terrain might not be your friend, but it would never be more than a wannabe enemy if you knew how to read it.
    Mulligan gave CJ her training missions. Some of them she would accomplish herself; others would be undertaken by Mulligan, only he would do dumb things, like attempt to close on a building without first surveilling it for hostile activity, or pretend to drive straight across terrain that the rig couldn’t possibly mount. The goal here was to get CJ to speak up, to be part of the cockpit team and point out potential dangers before they became the real McCoy. To her credit, she did just that. Mulligan remained impressed.
    “Okay, last one, and this one’s all on you,” Mulligan said, two hours later. He gave her a set of coordinates. “Steer to that point. You’ll find a large patch of broken terrain. There’s only one safe way across it, and you have to figure it out. You can use every tool the rig has to help you, but the area has been substantially altered from what you’ll find on the moving map display. Remember, your crew is depending on you not to do anything dumb and get the rig stuck.”
    “Roger that, Sarmajor,” CJ said.
    “Prove it,” Mulligan answered.
    CJ steered to the coordinates Mulligan gave her, and ten minutes later, she brought SCEV One to a halt. She regarded the massacred earth outside the viewports for a long moment. There was a stirring from the second compartment, and Peter stuck his head inside the cockpit for a moment. He made a discouraging noise in his throat, then returned to his station without saying anything. CJ finally turned and looked at Mulligan.
    “How long do I have?” she asked.
    “You have as long as it takes, so long as it’s not more than one hour,” Mulligan said.
    CJ turned to the multifunction display before her and reviewed the millimeter-wave radar returns. “That’s over a quarter mile across,” she said.
    “And how deep?”
    “Another quarter mile. How long did it take to dig up that much real estate?”
    “Sergeant Lopez, you are wasting a lot of time, here.”
    “Understood.” With that, CJ faced forward again and scanned the instruments and the broken ground before the rig’s slanted nose. Mulligan leaned back in his seat and reached into a pocket on his tactical rig. He pulled out a cigar and stuck it in his mouth, content to chew on it while watching CJ work her way through the problem.
    ***
    “ A H, COMMAND, this is early warning,” a voice said over the headset Benchley wore. “Harmony Six, you need to take a look at this, sir.”
    Benchley looked up from his console at the rear of the base’s command center. The center was the brain of Harmony Base, where all operations were overseen. A fairly large room, it consisted of a main situation display at the front, which in turn was surrounded by several smaller screens that were readable even from Benchley’s position. Three rows of computer workstations separated him from the display bank, and the center was currently fully staffed with thirteen section operators and the major players on the command staff—essentially, himself and Corinne Baxter, who sat at a second station to Benchley’s left. He cut his eyes toward the main display, which bore a computer-generated Mercator map. It was one of the constants at Harmony Base, for there was no better way to get an idea of what crisis might be brewing than to look at the map that was transmitted to them straight from NORAD, itself located deep in the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain. What he saw made him frown.