Uncommon Bravery, page 1
part #1 of Tinker/Knight Adventures Series
UNCOMMON BRAVERY
JAMIE MCFARLANE
FICKLE DRAGON PUBLISHING LLC
PREFACE
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CONTENTS
1. Homecoming
2. Plans in the Dirt
3. Scrub 'n' Buggy
4. Casualties of War
5. First Contact
6. Chip off the Old Block
7. Field Promotions
8. Toad in a Pokey
9. Front Line
10. Bridge That
11. Keyhole
12. Acceptable Losses
13. Back Door
14. Pinned Down
15. Whatever it Takes
Epilogue
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Also by Jamie McFarlane
CHAPTER 1
HOMECOMING
“Tinker and Knight. Just like old times.” Clara Daws sauntered into Elm Bluff Diner. “I didn’t know you were in town, Jeremy. Are you back for the fall?”
Jeremy Tinker turned from the counter and took in the enigmatic woman. A blush rose on his cheeks as he considered his long-term, not-so-secret crush, and once again found himself unable to form intelligent sentences.
Lester Knight set his coffee cup on the counter and elbowed his flummoxed friend in the ribs.
“Uh, hi, Clara,” Tinker finally responded, which brought kind amusement to Clara’s eyes. “They shut down the university. You know, until things get worked out.”
“Makes sense. What are you knuckleheads up to, then?”
“Sheriff gave me the day off.” Lester Knight stepped around his befuddled friend. “We’re taking the Hill Buggy over to Dog Bluff. Tinker’s working on that gravity system he installed last year. He says it can go totally negative slope. Right, Tinker?”
Tinker found his voice. “Shouldn’t be a problem. I pulled the system off a low orbit shuttle. It’ll hold a lot more than a buggy. Want to come along?”
“Sounds fun, but no can do. Dad has some big meeting with the Army,” Clara said. “I’m surprised Sheriff Elmore gave you the day off, Knight, what with those Kroerak bug ships in orbit.”
Knight lifted his eyebrows. “I didn’t hear the Army was in town. You think it has something to do with the bugs? Last I heard, Mars Protectorate showed up and is kicking bug ass. And for the record, I’m just a deputy.”
“Just a deputy with a Ranger commendation medal,” Clara said, rolling her eyes. “It's not regular Army. I think just reserves. Dad generally works with the Engineering Corps. They want us to build an earth dam at the bottom of the hill on Highway 32, before the bridge.”
“You’re closing the highway?” Tinker asked, furrowing his brow. “There’ll only be one way out of Elm Bluff if you do that. What if someone east of here wants to get to Omaha? That’s fifty kilometers to go around.”
“For the record, nobody asked for my opinion.” Clara paused for dramatic effect. “My job is to pick up breakfast. I don’t know much about what Dad and Captain Big-pants are planning. Fact is, it’d take days to move enough material to close off the road, so I’m guessing that’s not what we’re doing.”
“Order-up.” Joe Fisher, the grizzled owner of the diner, slid a bag across the counter to Tinker. “We’re almost ready with your order, too, Clara.”
“Catch up later?” Tinker nervously smoothed his unruly hair.
“Absolutely. Finally, the great and wise Dr. Tinker can explain to me everything he’s been learning at that big school in Denver.”
Tinker smiled mischievously as the turn of phrase presented itself to him. “For the record, I won’t be Dr. Tinker for another month.”
“You still have it bad,” Knight said as he carried a crate of water bottles to the back of the buggy.
“For Clara? Yeah. Is she seeing anyone?” Tinker asked as he transferred the bottles to the trunk of the vehicle they’d built virtually from scratch.
The frame of the buggy was light-weight, nano-crystalized steel, salvaged from a construction machine they’d unearthed at a scrapyard outside of Kansas City more than ten years ago. The remainder of the buggy had been built from salvaged parts, as the pair became acquainted with every scrapyard within a few hundred kilometers of their home.
“How’d you get the gravity box working?” Knight asked, changing the subject. He didn’t want to talk about Clara on Tinker’s first day back.
Tinker brightened. Knight didn’t usually show a lot of interest in the technology. “It was dumb. Some mechanic fried the insulated pathways by demagnetizing them. I took ‘em to the lab at school and re-polarized and re-programmed. It wasn’t that hard once I got into it.”
“Maybe not for you. I think the Rangers skipped that in our training.”
The pair couldn’t be more different. Where Tinker was tall, thin, and pale from too much time spent in a lab, with piercing blue eyes, Knight was slightly shorter, deeply tanned, and well-muscled from regular exercise.
“Hop in.” Tinker jumped into the open cockpit and pulled on the five-point harness. “Put this on.” He handed his friend a helmet that in its current state looked more like a cutoff sweatshirt hood than it did safety equipment.
When Knight donned the hood, it stiffened, conformed to his head, and extended a six-centimeter glass lens in front of his eyes. Moments later, the helmet registered with the data stores and AI in his clothing. Once registered, the clear glass darkened to his preference and a HUD popped up in his peripheral, awaiting any command that would require it to take a more prominent position in his visual range. “Where did you get this?”
“We replicated a bunch of helmets with a military surplus pattern I found at school.” Tinker’s voice came through the helmet’s speakers.
"We never had anything this nice in the service," Knight said. "Better armored, maybe, but the audio is excellent."
"We might have tweaked the pattern with some intellectual property of dubious provenance."
"I'm a sheriff's deputy. Let's avoid confessions."
"Strap in. Wouldn't be good to have you bouncing out." Without further warning, Tinker mashed the accelerator, causing a spray of dirt and gravel to rooster tail behind the vehicle.
"Frak, Tinker, take it easy." Knight struggled to clip the ends of the harness together as they catapulted down the washboard gravel drive of the Tinker family homestead.
"Felt like you were being evasive when I asked about Clara earlier," Tinker said, his voice coming through louder to compensate for the sound of wind whipping through Hill Buggy's open cab.
“Maybe not the best time to talk about this,” Knight said, his HUD showing they were moving at thirty-five meters per second and still accelerating. “You need to slow down.”
"Feel how smooth that is?"
The town of Elm Bluff sat at the top of an odd, geological formation at the western edge of Iowa called the Loess Hills. According to scientists, ancient glaciers pushed great mounds of dirt and deposited them in a two to ten-kilometer-wide, three-hundred-kilometer-long, elevated strip that rose sixty meters above the otherwise relatively flat plains of the state.
At that moment, however, the most significant aspect of the bluffs for Knight was that Tinker's homestead was only two kilometers from the edge. Even more important was that Hill Buggy had already chewed up more than fifteen hundred meters of that distance and Tinker showed no inclination of slowing.
"It's smooth," Knight agreed, nervously. The gravel drive had given way to rough ground several hundred meters back, but for whatever reason Hill Buggy didn't seem to hit every bump like it had in the past. "You're starting to worry me, though."
"Just tell me, already," Tinker said. "You're horrible at keeping secrets."
"Damn it, Tinker," Knight said. "What happens if your gravity system doesn't hold? Falling sixty meters will kill us if we don't have an inertial damper."
"True enough. Feels like a good day for a test run, don't you think? And, when did you turn out to be such a pansy? You were a frakking Ranger already."
"Frak. You know. Don't you?" Knight said. "You bastard. When did you figure it out?"
"So, it's true? You and Clara?"
"Only for a few months. She dumped me six weeks ago."
Tinker pulled hard on the steering controls and put Hill Buggy into a sideways slide. Knight watched with nervous anticipation as the edge of the bluff approached at an alarming rate. His heart pounded in his chest when Hill Buggy came to a stop, its tail mere inches from the edge.
"She dumped you?" Tinker asked, smiling happily.
Knight punched Tinker in the arm, barely pulling back. "Are you frakking crazy? We could have died!"
"Shouldn't have done that," Tinker said, rubbing his arm.
"You were freaking me out. I thought you were going to…"
"Kill us?" Tinker pulled the acceleration stick.
Knight watched in horror as a spray of grassy dirt erupted from heavy treaded wheels and Hill Buggy catapulted backward off the cliff. His stomach lurched as they hung in the air for just a moment before plunging downward.
CHAPTER 2
PLANS IN THE DIRT
Clara Daws shook her head as she looked back through the diner’s glass window. Tinker and Knight back together again. They’d been like her brothers growing up and she thoug
Her old grav-truck hummed across the worn brick streets of Elm Bluff. Weeds filled in the cracks between the bricks. She’d have to remember to bring it up at the next town council meeting. The town’s image as a well-manicured picture of days gone by was a legacy she’d accepted when elected to the council. It would have been substantially less expensive to pave over the old street, but it was one of a kind. Just like her truck, she thought, patting the dashboard.
A sense of unease settled on her as she drove the twelve kilometers out to the cleverly named ‘Daws’ Earth Moving’. The news channels had been reporting the arrival of the fleet of alien warships as an exciting moment of first contact. Rumors swirled on non-sanctioned news sources about space combat leading to heavy losses. She wasn't sure who could be trusted, but blocking Highway 32 wasn’t the action of a confident government.
Cresting one last hill, her family's business came into view. The familiar barns where equipment was stored and repaired dwarfed the small office off to the west. In the parking lot, she expected to see the familiar tan and brown camouflage vehicle favored by Captain Chuck Noister, her dad's typical contact with the Army Corps. What she wasn't expecting was a convoy of heavy Army vehicles lining both sides of the road, and two jeeps sitting crosswise, blocking the highway.
She jammed on the brakes, her old truck's grav plates whining in response. With a quick hand, she snagged the bag of breakfast rolls before they slid off the seat beside her. She didn’t have enough hands to catch one of the coffee cups with a poorly attached lid. Hot coffee splashed down her leg.
"Frakking hell!" she yelped as she pulled to a stop a few meters short of the blockade.
Clara recognized one of the two uniformed men standing next to the jeeps. She used to babysit Jimmy Wynn, a town kid who worked for the grain co-op. With a rifle slung over his shoulder, he held his hand up unnecessarily indicating for her to stop, walking up next to the truck when she did.
"What's going on, Jimmy?" Clara asked, tamping down the anger she felt at the coffee dripping down her tight pants into her shoes.
"Gotta turn around, Clara," Jimmy said. "Highway 32 is closed; nobody gets through."
"I'm going to work, Jimmy." She pointed at the buildings only a few hundred meters over his shoulder.
"Not today, Clara. We have our orders and you're not on the list."
"What list? And, what dumbass puts a road block on the back side of a hill?" Her frustration finally boiled over. "Is anyone in charge here? I'm supposed to be meeting Captain Noister and Dad. Move your truck."
"I'll call it in," he said, looking away sheepishly.
"Good, and get someone up on that hill so you don't get killed."
Clara looked down the line of National Guard vehicles at the young men and women all in uniform. Somewhere along the line soldiers had become kids, most of them barely eighteen years. The sight of Jimmy Wynn holding a rifle added to the overall unease that wrapped around her heart. She didn't like to think she was one who gave credence to rumors, but official news reports didn't line up with what she was seeing.
Jimmy held a hand over his ear, listening and speaking. He finally turning to one of the soldiers next to him. After a brief conversation, the soldier jumped into a jeep and backed it into the shallow ditch. Stepping out of the way, Jimmy waved her through.
Clara slowed as she pulled alongside. "What's this all about, Jimmy?"
"I'm sorry, Clara, we're under orders not to talk.” He scowled. "But it's not like they'd tell us anyway. Sorry about the blockade. We'll move up the hill."
"Thanks, Jimmy. Be safe, okay?"
He nodded. "You too, Clara."
The parking lot was never this full. Daws employed forty heavy equipment drivers and another half-dozen mechanics, but their schedules were such that most worked less than twenty hours a week. They only had equipment for half of them to be driving at any time. At her father’s request she'd sent a message out, announcing a mandatory, full-company meeting scheduled to start in ten minutes.
"They're all in Bay-1." Jayce Simmons stood from the reception desk as Clara approached her dad's office. "I'm supposed to bring you with me."
Clara cocked her head, setting the bag of breakfast rolls on the desk. "Dad met with Captain Big -Pants when I was off grabbing breakfast?"
Jayce looked at the ground - refusing to make eye contact. "It wasn't a long meeting."
"Damn it."
Clara took off down the hallway that led to the garages behind the office building. Pushing through swinging, double doors, she found herself in the midst of a crowd of Daws employees, all talking in excited, low whispers. She worked through the crowd and caught her dad's blue eyes as he tracked her approach. He stood next to Captain Big-Pants on a hastily assembled platform. A good-looking man, well into his sixties, Ralph Daws had a permanent tan on his face, neck, and arms from a lifetime in the sun, preferring outside work to office management.
A look of chagrin crossed his face as he broke eye contact and tapped on the small microphone attached to his earwig. "All right, everyone. If we could quiet down, it looks like Clara's here and we can begin. If you would give Captain Noister your attention, he has information to share with us."
Clara glared at her father, knifing her way through the crowd. He'd sent her away so he could have his meeting in private, and wasn't about to give her a chance to berate him about it.
"As you've all heard, the Navy is engaged in a conflict with aliens that arrived in our solar system over a week ago," Noister said, quieting the room almost instantly with a promise of news. "It had been hoped we could communicate with this alien host, but so far all attempts at diplomacy have failed."
"What's that got to do with us?"
Clara recognized the voice as belonging to Joe 'Toad' Thedford. A murmur of concern rippled through the room.
"Quiet down, folks. Give the captain a chance."
"Thank you, Mr. Daws," Noister said. "The fact is, our Navy is taking a hell of a beating and Central Command believes an invasion is imminent."
The room erupted in chaos and it took several minutes before Ralph Daws was able to regain control.
"Tell us straight, Ralph. Why are we here?" Toad's voice was the loudest.
"We're closing Highway 32," Daws said. "The bluffs are a natural defense against a ground assault and the Guard is setting up Elm Bluffs as a fallback position for the regular army. Our job is to fill in the ravine to twenty meters so nothing can get around."
"You're crazy," Toad argued, evidently appointing himself as the spokesman for the group. "Even with every machine in the shed working around the clock, that'd take weeks."
"That's right, Joe." Furious as she was at him, Clara appreciated how her dad could bring calm to any situation. "Preliminary estimates show fifteen hundred hours of digging. That's eight days if we keep our buckets and excavators running at ninety percent. It's going to take sacrifice from everyone, but people, we're talking about our home."
"I have family in the valley." Clara didn’t catch who'd said it, but the sentiment was shared by several.
"We're leaving the door open," Captain Noister said. "Anyone who wants on the bluff will be allowed in, but no traffic east will be allowed. If anyone wants to go west to Omaha, Highway 32 will be open as long as possible. We'll set up refugee camps south of the highway."
At the mention of refugee camps, the room again erupted in chaos.
"People, listen. I'd never ask you to do something I'm unwilling to do. But this emergency is as real as it gets, and people's lives depend on us. Clara, I need you to get us organized. Will you do that?" Ralph Daws looked to his daughter.
