New World, Old Fight

by SGTBRONY

Chapter 12

Earth..
Near Bajuar Pakistan
Afghan-Pakistan Border Zone
Time: Unknown

After what seemed like an eternity I made contact with solid ground, I picked myself up and looked around. Nothing but empty desert greeted me for what seemed like forever. Tears were pouring down my face, it felt as though my heart had shattered into a million pieces, it felt like losing Jess again….

I pulled myself together after a few minutes and shot an azimuth with my thankfully still intact compass. Assuming I was still near the detonation site, North was Tajikistan, East would put me in India.

Time to get walking….

---

2 years… I’d been gone for 2 whole years before my miraculous “resurrection, (time dilation is a miserable bitch). After an indeterminate amount of walking (almost 5 weeks worth) and surviving on desert bugs and what little water I could dig up, I finally stumbled across the Indian Border barely alive, and suffering from enough ailments to kill a Terminator. I spent two weeks under the watchful eye of Indian army doc’s before the State Department was notified and pulled me out.

The whole car ride to the embassy the “Attache” (a polite name for an OGA Case Officer) they’d sent to collect my sorry ass kept staring at me like even HE couldn’t believe I’d shown up. The next weeks were a blur, debriefing was fun, a couple of OGA guys asked me questions I couldn‘t answer for about 3 days straight..

“Petty Officer Dunn, You were M.I.A for 24 months, And you have NO recollection of the interceding period? Not to mention that the last time anyone saw you, you were sitting next to live nuclear ordinance”

“I have no answer sir, I remember my team evacuating the area, next thing I’m waking up in the middle of the bush”

“Nothing more?”

“Negative sir, only what I’ve told you so far”

The one not doing the talking let out a sigh “The official story is gonna go like this buddy, your team was ambushed outside of Peshawar, you were captured and held but escaped, you will NOT speak of your involvement with stolen nukes, do we have an agreement?”

I lit another smoke “Good to go sir, I have a couple of requests”

“Name ‘em”

“ I want back on active duty, my old slot back if possible”

“Done, Frank? Put the hero on a flight outta here, Petty Officer? We‘ll be in touch”

I made my way back to the states, my mom and sister were waiting for me at Little Creek, we spent the next week relishing the fact that I was alive, I managed to keep my depression under wraps as they filled me in on the goings on. My sister Katherine had been named a professor of physics at MIT , didn’t surprise me in the least, Kat was a year younger than me and ridiculously smart, genius level even. Mom had moved back out west and established herself as a foster parent and educator, I was glad that things had come together for them, we’d all been through enough….

When I told them that I was heading back to active duty they weren’t too thrilled but understood all the same, thoughts of Twilight were consuming me. I had to get away…

---

6 months later.

“Hey man, we’re gonna head out, you coming?”

I looked up from the ’416 I was cleaning, “Nah, I’ll just hang here” I waved at the pieces of the weapon, “Got shit to do yet”

“Alright bro suit yourself, I’ll catch ya later”

A moment passed before I heard the door close

Then the tears started, I stood up and hurled the bolt group of the weapon hard enough to sink it into the drywall, “FUCK!” I screamed to the empty barracks, the pain was still there. Even after all these months I still saw her face whenever I closed my eyes. I needed some time off…

I requested leave from my CO with assurances that I’d have my work cell on at all times, he ended up giving me two weeks, people tended to understand shit like that when a guy came back from the “dead“. Mom was overjoyed to see me standing on the doorstep (My next scheduled leave wasn’t for 3 more months). I spent about a week bumming around my town, getting in fights and drinking way too much, traits I hadn’t had before the “Incident”. It got so bad that one night my mom and sister pulled me outside and demanded some answers.

“Mike, You’ve got us all scared. What the hell’s going on?”

I glared at my sister, “Let it go Kat”

“Bullshit, we’re supposed to be family, what are you hiding?”

I opened my mouth to yell, curse them out, rage at them for prying. Instead what came out was a choked sob as tears filled my eyes, “I can’t take it anymore”

Mom’s eyes welled up with tears, Kat stepped in and hugged me tight “bad huh?”

“Yeah, but it’s not the WHOLE story guys, the ambush was bullshit, I was never captured by any Haq’qani assholes”

Kat looked shocked “Well what the hell Mike?, you’re not making sense, Just tell me what happened, if it‘s classified so fucking what, I need to know what‘s going on.”

I wiped my eyes, pulled my shit together, “You sure you wanna hear this?”

My mom finally piped in “Of course, we just want to help you Mike, we love you”

“Yeah, I love you guys too.”

I took a breath and started from the beginning.

Kat sat there smoking one cigarette after another as I recounted my tale, Mom stayed silent. they nodded in all the right places as I told them about the terror I’d felt when the nuke was counting down, to the unbridled joy I’d experienced when I realized I was in love with Twilight. When I finished Kat stubbed out her smoke on the cement of the patio.

Mom broke the silence first. “You’re right, that does sound fucking nuts, you’re a lot of things Mikey but two thing you aren’t for damn sure is crazy and a liar, how can I help?”

“I told you it made no sense, I- what?”

Kat put her hand on my shoulder

“We’ll have to start by diagramming what exactly went on at the moment of detonation and work back from there, if I can get back to the college and work uninterrupted. I can run some simulations on how this is even possible. Then we can get on how to replicate it. If anyone asks, I‘ve got tenure, they can suck it”

My heart almost exploded, I opened my mouth but I couldn‘t find the words, I wrapped them in a tight hug

“Thank you so much Ma”

She snorted into my shoulder “ I always knew you were meant for greatness honey, plus now I can rent out your old room”

I felt the tears coming again, bittersweet now. I couldn’t help but smile “That’s fucking low Ma”

Mom pulled away and looked me in the eye “I won‘t lie to you sweetheart, this is gonna hurt me, I lost you once and now you‘re asking me to do it again. But when Jessica died I saw something break in you, something that destroys people, and for a long time I worried that my son was gone for good, just now when you were telling us about this place and this girl, er, mare? For the first time in years I saw my little boy again, and that’s worth everything to me, will I be sad? Yes, will I heal? I can’t say. But I know for a certainty that you need to be there with her, so don’t doubt yourself, just go. We’ll see each other again one day.. I’m sure of it.”

She hugged me again, tighter this time “I love you Mikey”

I squeezed her back “I love you too Ma”

Kat just smiled

“I’ll grab my keys”

With that we jumped into my truck and with a final wave to my Mom, tore off into the night…

---

18 hours later…

“Kat…KAT, we‘re here” I shook her awake as we pulled onto the MIT campus.

Her eyes fluttered open and she stifled a yawn “The way you fuckin’ drive? Christmas miracle” she sniped, digging in her jacket for a smoke.

“Hey fuck you mate, I’m a trained professional”

Neither one of us was able to suppress a chuckle as we headed inside. I stretched out on the couch in the lab as she got to work, I don’t know how long I was out, when I was jolted awake by Kat shaking my shoulder.

“Mike, I think I’ve got it”

I was suddenly wide awake. “How?”

“At the epicenter of a Nuclear blast, in the first 10 to 15 nanoseconds when the atoms split, untold amounts of energy is released. Enough to do exactly what you’ve proposed, from what you’ve told me the instability was due to the medium, I just need to recreate it, sans the destructive force”

I snorted, “Simple”

“Hey, Physics is the ONLY exact science, If there’s a way to do this Mike I swear on the family I’ll make it work, God only knows I don‘t want to lose you again. But with what you‘ve told me I don‘t know Mickey, I just want you to be happy. No matter what that means.” She smirked “ And think of the possibilities, I could stabilize the effect and we‘d be the team that pioneered inter universeal travel”

My temper flared “Don’t even go there Kat, you have no idea how pure this place is. I’m lucky that MY presence there didn’t fuck it up entirely, I don’t even wanna think what would happen if the place became a tourist attraction”.

She winced “Yeah, I totally see your point. Sorry Mick.”

I shook my head “No worries kiddo, Its human nature. Point being we can’t let this get out, Nobody can know. IF we get it to work”

“I gotcha bro, not a word. Figures common decency would fuck me out of my Nobel” she said with mock seriousness. “I need a smoke”….

---

3 days later

I was in the cafeteria grabbing a bite to eat, we were lucky that it was the middle of June. Any other time the campus would be swarming with people, questions would be raised. I was halfway through smearing butter on an onion bagel when Kat came thundering through the door.

“Mike I got it working”

I was stunned “How?”

“I was running an equation and it all matches up, Mike, I think I can send you back.”

“When?”

“As soon as I can get a couple of bugs worked out”

“And how does one go about doing that?”

“I’d need the readings from the detonation”

“Where would they be?”

She grimaced, “That’s the tough part, the DOE holds all seismic and spectral data on nuclear incidents”

“How the fuck do you expect us to get the readings from the Department of Energy? That blast was classified black, as far as the rest of the world is concerned I was never there”

“There’s gotta be a way around that, if I can get those readings I can open a portal down in the lab using a matter accelerator”

“Kat, there is no way around that, why are they so important?”

“Every nuclear event has its own energy signature, no two blasts are alike believe it or not, In this context I believe the frequency will act like an address. Put simply, without it you aren‘t going anywhere”

I felt the beginnings of despair creeping up on me, I had no idea how we would go about getting the data Kat needed to send me back. I couldn’t just call up the DOE and ask for it, I’d never get the reports, it would raise questions I couldn’t answer. Then…An epiphany

A wicked grin spread across my face “I’ve got a call to make”

Comments

[SGTBRONY]

2034029 Thanks man, that's actually what I was aiming for. It's more of a love story than a war story, I feel like a lot of these stories blur the lines between Earth and Equestria. My goal was to have those lines clearly defined from the get-go, with a little violence (namely the Diamond Dog scene) to keep our heroe's dual nature in the back of your mind. Here's a guy who's highly trained, dedicated and lethal, but also a regular guy (hopes, dreams, etc.). He's lost one woman now he's set to lose a mare, how far will he go to get her back, things like that.

[Science-Mare]

FUCK YEAH