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Voyager: Chapter 13

"So this is it?" I asked Dana as we walked up to the chain link fence gates of the communications base. At first I had been skeptical about the claims about Dana's abilities, but all those doubts had quickly been prove to be pointless. During the trip back, Dana had, on multiple occasions, diverted us around several patrols of Collectors. It was amazing, she would suddenly get real stiff and tell us to go another way and sure enough, when we decided to do a bit of scouting, there were collectors. It wasn't perfect, we did run into a few, but it was something. We made great time, only taking about half a day to get to the base which was located on the north side of Central Park.

I had been to the park on multiple occasions, it was considered a national landmark so it barely changed over the years, well before that is. I used to enjoy taking a walking down the paths that wound their way through the trees. The paths were still there, mostly, some were pock marked with craters now. But, the trees. A fire had torn through the park at some point, leaving black char in its wake. It would have made me sad if it weren't for a bit of green that I could see poking out from under the ash.

The base itself was hidden inside of an old brick building. I had seen it several times, but never made any thought about it. As far as I had known, it was just another building that had been marked for demolition, but never was. It was comically small when compared to the buildings that would have dwarfed it on both sides. It was so small in comparison that it had been half buried when the other buildings had fallen down. The front had been cleared out and was used to build additional barricades. A mixture of military types and civilians with guns guarded the front and let us in when they saw us approaching. I got a few glances, but nothing more, I was just another survivor that they had picked up.

"Home sweet home." Dana stretched her arms out to present it all. "The bad guys can't get us here." She didn't wait for the rest of us and ran off into the building.

"It's not much, but it is home." Tom walked up next to me and watched his sister disappear through the large opening where there used to be a pair of doors. "It's has kept us safe and with the antennae fixed." He tilted his head towards the thin red rod that spired out of the rubble on the roof. "Maybe we'll be able to really get stuff done."

"How do you think this Admiral will react when he hears that Crane is gone?" I asked him.

"I don't know." He answered, stroking his chin. There was a bit of hair there, the result of him going out for several days without shaving. "He did make Crane sound important. Did you get that feeling when you were with him?"

"Sort of." I shrugged. "He did have an air of confidence that was contagious. Couldn't help but follow him into situations that would normally cause me to run off in the opposite direction."

"I know the feeling. I mean, look at me." He spread his arms out. "Not strong, not actually very brave, but when I see my sister who is eager to just go romping off on what she would call an adventure, I just can't help but go off with her." He chuckled.

"You're really devoted to keeping her safe aren't you?"

"Of course." He stated matter of factly and grinned. "It's not just her either, we all need to watch each other's backs."

Just like how Crane watched my back. I thought, but didn't say. I kept telling myself that there was nothing I could do, but I just couldn't convince myself. I ran without even looking back once.

"Hey." Tom tapped me on the shoulder. "You alright?"

I looked over at him. He was slightly concerned. "Yeah, just thinking about stuff."

"Alright." He didn't push for any answers. "Let's head inside, I'll give you the official tour."

The inside was more impressive than the outside. There was an entire underground complex. The upper part that was on street level was made to look abandoned with old moldy walls and water damaged floors. This was all just a ploy to keep up the image that there was nothing going on. Downstairs was the exact opposite. It was not only larger, but cleaner as well. The technology was impressive and all with the blinking lights and dials, but what got me was the showers. There was working plumbing with hot water. No more rag baths and shitting in pot holes. It took Tom several attempts to pull me away from the faucet and continue the tour.

I learned about the jobs that each person was expected to do. It wasn't difficult. As the new person I was going to be given some of the more labor intensive jobs such as building barricades and moving rubble, I had no problem with that at all. It was just a small price to pay. There were patrol duties, gardeners, people that worked with the radios, a load of various jobs that were needed to keep the place working. Over time I would end up doing most of them, again no complaint from me.

Tom worked on the radios most of the time since he was familiar with technology. Susan, being the highest ranking officer, was recognized as the head of security and ran everything that had to do with weapons or the collectors. Carlos was good with actually working the radios, being the military nut he was. I didn't see him doing anything that required manual labor. He wasn't exactly in the best of shape, the hike from Times Square left him sweating and breathing hard. He had to be in better shape than several months ago, I'd hate to see and image of him before. For all I knew, he could have been a five hundred pound man at one point. I know, it's obvious, I don't like the man very much. He has access to showers and still manages to smell worse than the man who hadn't seen a working shower in what was just a few months away from a year. Whatever, I wasn't expecting to see much more of him.

Dana, being the fun loving girl that she was, could often be found in the gardens that were located behind the building. They had found great success in growing tomatoes, but most of it was potatoes. They required little care and could be grown in large amounts. Tom had spoken about how they were looking for corn to add diversity, but seeds were hard to come by since the birds that had once relied on the handouts of people, were getting to all of the seeds before them. It was good to know that others shared my hatred for the birds, although for different reasons.

We stopped in the main radio room since Susan, Carlos and Dana were all there gathered around a small mic. Carlos was seated in a chair and was messing with the dials and various switches of the radio. Although he was only focused on the small box that was the radio, the entire room had equipment that was dedicated to getting the strongest signal possible since it was designed to work without satellites.

"Good, you're here." Susan said when she saw us walk in. "You'll be able to tell the admiral about Crane better than me."

I walked over with Tom and stood next to Susan while Tom went over to his sister who was now messing with her hair.

"It's not complicated, you know what happened."

"True." She conceded. "But, by the way the admiral spoke. He'll want exact details. I think he knew Crane."

Great. I was about to break some bad news to some man who had an entire fleet at his back.

"Shut you two." Carlos warned us with a wave of his hand. "I'm starting to get a signal."

"This is Admiral Anderson." A voice came through. There was some static and the noise in the signal muted the Admiral slightly. "Report your situation."

Susan grabbed a small mic that was sitting in front of Carlos and held it up to her mouth. "We've returned from a scouting mission and have come across some information regarding Crane." She looked over at me. "A survivor who had been with Crane."

"Been with? What do you mean?" The Admiral demanded, the static cut some of the venom from his voice, but it was there.

Susan held the mic up to me and nodded. I reluctantly took it, nervous at being the bearer of bad news. I brought it up to my own mouth and took the deep breath before the plunge.

"Crane was taken by the alien a few days ago." I could have stopped there, but Susan said he would want details. "It was at Times Square, we were being pursued and he covered my own escape but was unable to escape himself. I didn't see him get taken, but I didn't see him after I escaped myself." I set the mic on the table as if I had just touched a cursed object.

There was silence for several minutes. Normally I liked silence since it meant there was nothing moving around, but this was an uncomfortable silence as we waited to hear what the Admiral had to say.

"Shit." He finally replied dryly. "I feared this would happen. But, he was a soldier and did what he thought was right."

"What's going on there?" I didn't see Dana who had snuck up to the mic and snatched it.

"Hello Dana." The Admiral said warmly, but then went back to a military tone. "Mars is safe. The alien forces have stopped trying to attack the various cities here."

"Does this mean you'll be sending help to Earth?" Susan took the mic from Dana who tired her best to look disappointed, but quickly just ended up in a quiet giggling fit when she couldn't frown.

"Negative. The idiot politicians who managed to survive and set up a proxy government have voted and have declared Earth as lost."

"That's Bullshit."

"Lost?"

"The hell?"

Each of us yelled out at once.

"They have it in their head that once some ships leave Mars, the aliens will come back. They may be right as well. Their ships are a lot faster than ours. We need every ship we have to prevent anything from getting down to the surface." He tried to explain, but it hardly dulled the steaming anger that was coming off of most of us.

After that, the conversation ended with the Admiral promising to try and get a vote for an official evacuation. It was sad to think that we might end up leaving Earth behind, it was home. Even people who had been born off planet had seemed to always want to come here to see it for themselves. People on Earth always spoke of wanting to go see the rings of Saturn or the Great Red Spot, but whenever I talked to tourists that came from off planet, they told me about how they had gone through months of rigorous physical exercise so their relatively weak bones could hold up under the Earth's gravity. It was amazing to think that the precious blue pearl had been so easily abandoned.

I'm sure the others felt the same way. It was their home too. No other place was like Earth. Mars, although it boasted the largest forest in the solar system, was still red and a pain to the eyes. You had to live underground on Venus and there wasn't even any ground to live on beyond the asteroid belt. No vast oceans or deep blue sky, the beautiful and cherished things we had were here. I didn't really want to leave, but I didn't want to stay either.

"Major!" A soldier ran into the room panting and sweating.

"What is it?" Susan asked him.

"There's a situation at the front gate." He was breathing really hard and was doing all he could to keep a stiff posture.

"What kind of situation?"

"You'll want to see for yourself."

We all rushed out, following the soldier as he led us out to the front gates. There were was someone there standing with several people aiming their guns at him. He had his arms raised up slightly in a nonthreatening fashion and had a great big grin on his face. It... It was Crane.