Ex-Isle by Peter Clines (electronic reader TXT) 📕

if you don’t make contact alone. This could be a real scary moment for some people if they’ve gotten used to their world. I could bring a backpack, maybe offer them a few goodwill tokens, that sort of thing. There’s got to be something useful we’ve got extras of.” He glanced at the huge captain. “I could bring one of Freedom’s beacons so Barry can find them again later.”

“It would take you almost two days to cover such a distance,” said Stealth.

“I could do it.”

“Where would you sleep? You would be in the middle of the ocean, hundreds of miles from shore.”

“I could…I could bring a raft or something.”

Her face shifted beneath her mask. St. George recognized the movements of her lips and cheekbones. “The more important issue,” she said, “is Eden. After last night’s fire, it must be our priority.”

“Agreed,” said Richard. He looked up at Freedom. “How secure is it at this point, Captain? Can we start sending people up there?”

The giant tipped his head once. “The main building is secure, sir, and the existing fence line there is intact. St. George has helped us expand and reinforce several key sections, but there’s still a few areas that aren’t as solid as I’d like. The watchtowers and gates still need some work, too. Overall, though, I think it could be occupied without compromising anyone inside.”

“There is another issue,” said Stealth. She turned to St. George. “You and Zzzap are the only two capable of rapid travel between the Mount and Eden. If both of you go to this island, we will have no emergency response team.”

“We could send extra guards up there,” St. George said.

The cloaked woman bowed her head beneath her hood. “Extra guards means less personnel working in Eden itself.”

“Only for a week or so,” said Barry.

Richard rubbed his temple. “I’m not sure we can spare a week of manpower with the current state of our food supply.” He looked at Stealth. “Without a summer harvest from the trees we only have enough left for, what, two months?”

“Forty-three days,” she said, “if we continue at our current level of rationing.”

“We could swap out the assigned guards for my soldiers,” said Freedom. “Each one of the Unbreakables is worth at least three regular guards. That effectively triples the manpower up there without using any extra resources.”

Stealth’s expression shifted beneath her mask, and St. George felt his own mouth tighten. The super-soldiers from Project Krypton had become a standard part of the Big Wall’s defense forces. They were a big part of why the Big Wall had never failed.

Freedom acknowledged the looks with a deliberate nod. “First Sergeant Kennedy’s been considering something along these lines anyway. She wanted to take a fire team up there and put them through their paces. Some of them have been getting a little…lax.”

St. George thought of Taylor gleefully punching exes with his brass knuckles and thought “lax” was a polite way of putting it.

“It’s still not much up there for defense, though,” said Richard, “especially if the fences aren’t one hundred percent yet.”

“What about Cerberus?” asked Freedom. “How much longer until Dr. Morris has it rebuilt?”

St. George shook his head. “I just talked to her about it this morning. She’s still at least six weeks away from having it finished. The basic framework’s done, but it doesn’t even have any armor or weapons yet.”

“So right now it’s a high-tech vulnerability suit,” Barry said.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Richard sighed. “Perhaps we should put off going out to this island. Just until we can get Eden established and Cerberus up and running.”

“We’ll lose it,” said Barry.

“But you’d be able to find it again eventually,” said Freedom.

Barry shrugged. “Yeah. I could track some of the currents and stuff but…well, we are talking about the Pacific Ocean. It took me the better part of the day to find Hawaii once, and I knew where to look for it. And it was glowing.”

Stealth crossed her arms beneath her cloak. “There may,” she said, “be another option open to us.”

“NO,” SAID DANIELLE. “No, absolutely not. No.”

Stealth crossed her arms. “It is the best solution to our problem.”

“No, it’s a crap solution.” The redhead gestured at the frame stretched out across three worktables in front of them. “There’s no armor at all, not even dust shields. No padding or supports, either. Assuming whoever was in it didn’t get bitten by the first thing they ran into, an hour in this would rip them up.”

“Danielle…” started St. George.

She pulled up her sleeve and pointed at a line of tight stitches in the contact suit, then at a thin scab along her thumb. “See that? I cut myself last week just doing a few test shots with the auto-crossbow. Cut my thumb putting my arm in and then sliced the suit while I was cocking it. There’s a hundred points like that all over the superstructure.” She reached out and tapped one of the support struts on the arm. It rang.

“We are not discussing someone wearing the battlesuit, though,” said Stealth. She gestured over at Cesar. “We are discussing someone being in it.”

Cesar bounced on his toes. He tried to keep his face blank. Everyone saw the smile creeping up across his tight lips.

St. George nodded. “It won’t matter that there’s rough edges or no armor because he’ll just be the battlesuit. Right?”

A barely restrained nod from Cesar.

Danielle shook her head again. “Nothing’s protected. If the suit’s walking around like this it’ll be getting dust and grit into everything. It’d be like driving a car without the air filter.”

St. George glanced at the bare struts of the torso, then back at Danielle. “We’re talking about a week, tops.”

“George, doing it for a day could ruin some of the components. Do you think I have Cesar sweep in here all the time to keep him busy?”

“Yeah,” said Cesar. His smile cracked. “Wait, you mean that was important?”

Her fingers tightened into fists. “And you want to send