Gas & Blood (Damned of the 2/19th Novella) - Rough Draft Finished

Panic

Sergeant Reddings and Sergeant Bonnham both flinched. They knew as well as I did that when all this was over there was going to be Hell to pay unless they could figure out someone to throw under the bus. Reddings had denied Stillwater's request for the lightning protections to be upgraded and repaired, and Sergeant Bonnham was the one who had not only seconded the denial, she had shelved the request instead of passing it up to Chief Warrant Officer Two Henley.

And that had killed forty of Henley's animals without his permission.

Henley and I had one thing in common. We did not forgive.

I followed Foster and Sawmoth into the room. One of the new privates, Garvey, was standing by the sensors with a clipboard. I knew without either of them saying anything what was wrong with one glance at the sensor board.

All of the eastern row of bunkers was flashing. Radiation was rising. And fast. As I watched the green telltales on the middle row began flashing.

"When did this start?" I asked, moving over to the readouts. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good. We had to have a breached bunker and a leaking warhead. And a bad leaker. The only reason I could think of, with all my training, is that one of the rounds had fallen over and the uranium had somehow come into contact with the radiation enhancing cage.

Which meant if it hit a critical amount of energy release, it would fizzle. That didn't sound bad, but it meant while it wouldn't go off with the full 125kt nuclear blast of a tactical nuclear 8" artillery round, it would still go off in the kiloton range.

Which meant Atlas would vanish up its own ass when the other rounds exploded, meshed together, and leveled the place in a 35 megaton blast.

And with what Timmons was doing, panicking the Guard leadership, start World War Three.

"What are we up to?" I asked, turning around and reaching for the phone.

"Not good, we're reading spikes, weird ones," Foster told me.

The phone was picked up on the second ring as the dedicated line went through. "Major Yeardly," The Major's voice was bored.

"This is Three One Seven, I need an encrypted commo line, ASAP," I snapped, and hung up.

Now that there might look like non-military commo, but it was done for exactly that reason. Major Yeardly worked in V Corps ChemCorps command, and that kind of call meant that he needed to not only get on an encrypted line, but he needed to get 7th Army and maybe even EUCOM on the damn line.

Shit, he might even need to get the President on the line.

"We've got another wave of spikes," Foster said. He paused for a moment, then cursed, "It's over the western row and heading across the back 40. Weird," His voice got a bit musing. I was busy opening up the codebook and snapping dials to the right combination.

The phone rang on the wall. A big, heavy one, with a cradle that was full of cryptographic hardware. When I picked it up it had a hollow, ringing sound to it.

"Go ahead, Three One Seven, this is a secure line," Major Yeardly's voice sounded tight.

"I've got massive radiation readings across my site," I told him. "You might want to put everyone on alert. Either there's been a nuclear event, or I've got a breached bunker and a simmering stack."

"What are the chances of instrument malfunction?" Another voice asked, the voice tinny and echoing.

"Slim to none, sir. These readings are consistent across multiple external bunker instrumentation, ground sensors, and sensors we've got up on poles," I told him. I looked at the gauges and readouts again. "Sir, this is going to sound crazy, but I think we're receiving fallout."