Chapter 4 - The Orders from Above
“Major Carter,” Hollis said, his voice dropping an octave.
“What is it, Gunny?” I asked, stepping forward.
“This just came down from the Pentagon through the base commander’s office,” he said, handing the sheet of paper across the metal podium. “It’s not a routine archive review.”
I scanned the header. My eyes tracked down the encrypted routing numbers, the digital signatures of the Joint Chiefs' operational directorate, and the specific assignment code designated for my clearance level.
My stomach gave a hard, sudden drop.
It wasn't a commendation. It was a recall order.
“What does it mean?” Dylan asked, stepping closer, desperate to bridge the chasm between us. He craned his neck to look at the paper. “Are you being deployed?”
“No,” I said, my voice tight as I processed the cryptographic codes at the bottom of the page. “Something much worse. The experimental software suite we used at Copper Ridge—the one that allowed us to map blind terrain during communications blackouts—was archived ten years ago when the program was supposedly shut down.”
Hollis crossed his arms, his face grim. “Supposedly.”
“It’s active again,” I continued, reading the operational summary aloud. “A ghost server utilizing our exact flight telemetry algorithms has been detected pinging from an unacknowledged black site in the Mojave. And the system is currently authorizing autonomous drone strike vectors using my old biometric override codes.”
Dylan stared at us, wide-eyed. “Autonomous? Without human authorization?”
“Without any authorization,” I corrected sharply, looking up from the paper. “Someone has resurrected the Nightfall protocol. And because my digital signature is hardcoded into the master root keys, the system thinks I’m the one commanding it.”
The implications hit me like a physical blow. If the Pentagon traced those unauthorized pings back to my active profile without me stepping in to shut them down from the inside, I wouldn't just be facing a court-martial—I’d be hunted as a rogue asset by the very government I had spent twenty years defending.
“How fast can you get to the Mojave site, Major?” Hollis asked, his military instincts instantly overriding his personal shock.
“Standard transport would take four hours by air,” I said, calculating the window before the next automated sequence triggered at midnight. “Unless…”
“Unless you take my unit’s tactical chopper,” Hollis interrupted, his eyes flashing with a fierce, quiet loyalty. “We have an unassigned logistical flight heading toward the sector in twenty minutes. Officially, you’re auditing base security records. Unofficially... Jackal Three pays its debts.”
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I looked at Hollis, then at my brother, whose expression had morphed from arrogance to a desperate, terrifying realization that the world was far bigger, and far more dangerous, than he had ever imagined.
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