Chapter Text
Eight miles overland in the woods while maintaining vigilance against potential patrols, wolves and black bears was a good-ish amount of time to get one's head together. Not that Arnie's head was all that muddled up -- at least, not compared to how he could sometimes get, the odd poltergeist aside -- but he was glad for the time alone to slough off outwardly concerns and get down to the business he was trained for.
There was something meditative about being in the woods. Such a far cry from his first life, that. Every once in awhile, it still shocked him how much he had come to accept living on Earth, after viewing it with contempt for his first thirty-five years and indifference for several more.
He sometimes wondered, abstractly, if it was genetic memory. If whatever there was in him that defined him as human resonated with this ball of rock. If nothing else, he'd come to respect this world. It was something he and Enrico could agree upon, when they couldn't agree on anything else.
As a teacher or a student, Enrico Gruen had been a pain in the ass. Somewhere in his mid-to-late thirties, he had sported the most ridiculous mustache Arnie had ever seen and carried himself with a gittishness that Arnie could have only aspired to, back in the days he was a full-time git himself. Enrico was arrogant; if he had any socialization at all, you couldn't tell it by how he acted. And working with him had, at least for the first couple months, made Arnie feel like they were more akin to two rat-bastards zipped into a sleeping bag together to fight to the death than two experts in their respective fields.
Even Arnold J. Rimmer could see the irony of that.
Still, once they'd come to a grudging respect for one another, Enrico had known his stuff and taught it well, if with an occasionally cruel twist. If it was edible in the woods, Enrico could name it, explain it and prepare it. Trooping through the mixed deciduous and evergreen forest of Michigan, Arnie could see which trees he could bloody eat in a pinch, and he owed that -- and a great deal more -- to Enrico. He'd learned how to hunt small and large game; how to field dress it, how to preserve it. How to ride a horse and shoot a rifle and make a shelter. How to deal with hypothermia and the prevention thereof. A hundred other useful things.
Just like he had taught Enrico the basics of hand-to-hand combat and how to become silent and invisible when need be, even when walking on dried leaves and twigs prone to snapping. How to assess a threat and how to best get away from the threat, if it couldn't be taken out. How to survive in some deeper manner than just knowing what to eat and where to sleep in the woods.
Arnie couldn't say he missed the man. Which was fine; he was sure Enrico didn't miss him, either. The antagonism wasn't one-sided, after all.
Even then, being in the woods automatically put him back into that frame of mind. There was some comfort in the knowledge that he could survive here, just like this, with just what he had on him if he had no other choice. He'd been using Enrico's lessons to survive what was essentially homelessness now for four years.
And picking out which trees were edible kept him from thinking too much about the boys who'd dropped him off, and what their fate would eventually be. They had been blithely unconcerned when he'd asked what their plans were; according to them, they had some kind of arrangement going on with the Fourth World officers at the base about providing non-ration food in return for their continued freedom from conscription. Mostly wild game. It was their own little black market.
"It works, right?" the younger one had asked, in a passable imitation of Arnie's accent, grinning broadly. "We get to move around without questions."
The temptation to point out the number of ways that arrangement could -- and probably would! -- go bad was nigh on impossible to ignore. Those sorts of deals usually did; the party in power always had leverage and would inevitably use it. But there wasn't time to explain that, or really much else, so Arnie had asked, "What about when this mess is over? What are you going to do then?"
The older one was off to the side, leaning on the car. "Ov-ah," he had repeated, rolling the word around like it was a gobstopper a few times, until he got it right. Then he shrugged and answered, "Guess we'll figure that out if that happens? Not happening now, though."
There was a time when Arnie would have hit the roof over someone imitating him, no matter how innocently, but now it made him feel more sad than anything else. Still, they had been out of time, so he’d just sighed and nodded. "Yeah. Just-- be safe. As safe as you can be."
They'd waved it off with half-sheepish grins, closing the trunk and turning to get back in the car. Though Arnie still heard it back over a shoulder when one asked, "Where'd he go?" in something like awe less than a minute later.
By then, Arnie had vanished into the trees.
Now, the sky was just as gray as the day before and it was cold, though so far the weather had held. Arnie didn't feel the cold; beyond the jumpsuit, he had a ghillie suit on that he was going to leave behind once it was dark, so he was more worried about overheating than freezing. Larger bases required considerably more care, with their drones and infrared cameras. But a small one like this one usually only had one patrol out at a time. Overhead, the pale and undifferentiated sky held its peace; the ground was wet, but it wasn't raining.
He hoped Nance's potential squall line held off until it was time for them to make a break for it. Snow would make the broken roads more dangerous, but would also forestall pursuit.
Most of the forest floor was old pine needles; you couldn't really ask for better in covert ops than that. The litter swallowed the sound of footfalls. If he had to rank what kind of ground he preferred, this one was in the top ten; untouched snow, on the other hand, was at the very bottom of his list. Even he wasn’t capable of tracking across that without leaving footprints.
Still, slowly, the roaming thoughts fell off, seemingly by the step. Enrico. The boys. Even, eventually, which trees were edible.
What was left was just him, the woods, the mission and the sense of existing only within a moment, nothing but a phantom crossing between pale light and pale shadow.
There were two perimeter guards at the base; they ranged around looking like zombies, their forms thin despite their padded black uniforms. Even with his night-vision goggles making them less distinct, Arnie could see how emaciated and wrong they looked.
The same two guards as had been there since he arrived, just before twilight. Night fell over all of them just the same.
He wasn't so arrogant as to think they were no threat, but he liked his odds. He took even the most fluffy of operations with deadly seriousness, at least in terms of never forgetting it was life or death, but he was also good at assessing his own skills against most opponents these days. Two coulamine-addicted perimeter guards who were probably only weeks from a grave weren't that much of a threat, and he had it in his heart to pity them.
There was a point, seven years ago or so, where he had trained against two dozen fully-functional AI guards in a tight, complex solo operation, all of them armed and the scenario's safeties set at their lowest point. Getting hit in those training scenarios would have put him hard on his back and inevitably in the infirmary, though it wouldn't have killed him; he had that much sense, at least, to not override those safeties completely, no matter how heartsick he sometimes felt in those waning days of the original ShadowKnight.
He had buried so many people by then -- family, no matter how long it took him to call them that -- that training was the only thing keeping him sane. ShadowKnight as an organization had shifted long since to becoming a public non-profit, headed up by his Nance. Rick and Mike were long gone. Arnie hadn't been on a field mission in decades, but he kept sharp. He honed himself into a razor-edged shadow, and that was saying something, because he'd already been pretty damn good.
Nance had sometimes come down to watch him running simulated ops in the sub-basement of the other mansion, and the look she would give him was burned into his brain; he never knew how to define what that expression was made of, because it was so many things. Love. Envy. Pride. Sorrow. Acceptance, of a sort. They had been holding each other afloat for a very long time by then. She never told him to knock it off. In his gratitude, he helped her as she ran the new, public non-profit she had built ShadowKnight into and so he spent a fair bit of time in Boston learning how to be an administrative assistant to that powerhouse of a woman.
Nance coped better than Arnie did, by a long shot. She was so proud of her new people, all coordinators and counselors and outreach specialists; all smart, bright, hopeful young people. She watched their science division release new cancer treatments. She directed their housing department into buying and building new affordable homes for families. She did all of that and so much more. And Arnie was proud of her, because she had done what he could only pretend to: She'd adapted and accepted and then made something great of it.
He'd once had his own triumph like that. He had been a typesetter and pressman at Mitchell Printing, a regular working class bloke, and he had never been so content in his life as those years, living in Brooklyn and doing a job he loved with all his heart.
But then the shop had shut down, the Linotype was in a museum and like he had done his entire life, he'd shifted into survival-mode and never quite escaped it again.
He liked to believe she would be proud of him now. He thought, realistically, that she would be. But he couldn't ignore that she would also possibly be sad, too.
She was about ninety-six when she died. The last day they were together, they rode home on the train from Boston to New York, and Nance had slept with her head against his shoulder, white hair reflecting every color of sky and tree; instead of going over paperwork for her, he'd rested his head against hers and dozed in and out, for the moment something like peaceful.
When he went to wake her the next morning, in their silent home, he knew almost before he knocked on her bedroom door that she was gone. Three days later, he was her pallbearer. Less than a week after that, he was gone himself, into another timeline altogether.
Now, even with all extraneous thoughts as subdued as they could get, he could feel her behind his shoulder watching.
He was sure she’d approve of what he was going to do. The original ShadowKnight had never been a rebel organization, but Nance had been all the way into her soul.
The fleet of trucks was parked next to a hangar that had been converted into a warehouse. On the tarmac was an old C-130, painted in the matte black and gray that Colonel Green seemed to prefer. There wasn't any movement over there, but it looked like they had been in the process of loading, rather than unloading, the plane. Very likely, those supplies were bound westward.
Arnie was patient; he slipped in and out of the shadows, his ghillie suit gone since he no longer needed it, and stopped when the perimeter guard passed, watching them as they did. Both of them were sick -- addiction was cruel -- but only one of them was wheezing quietly. They didn't talk between them. In the thin light from the base, they looked even worse than they had initially.
The base was large, counting runway and hangars, then other buildings which looked to be storage for ammunition and barracks. Around the base housing were various Jeep-type vehicles. Posted at what looked like the ammo storage were a pair of stationary guards, leaning on either side of the large doors.
He took his time and paced the entire perimeter, letting the night deepen and getting a feel for everything. The fence wasn't electrified, so where he crossed it wouldn't matter. When he got to the other side of the runway, he was able to use the night vision again and check out the trucks in more detail. They were all closed up, so lousy luck as it was, he was going to have to open enough of them up to see which ones were carrying food and which were carrying drugs. Some of them, no doubt, were going to be distributed throughout the other bases in Michigan. Some were probably empty and headed back south for more cargo. The ones branded Crossman were undoubtedly coulamine.
From what Arnie could tell, he could avoid passing by the barracks and stationary guards if he crossed the runway, but doing that would have him in the open, and even at night that was more risk than he liked. The other option was coming back around and slipping over the fence where the treeline grew right up to it, though that would mean passing the barracks and the ammo storage guards. The lighting fell such that he would have to slip shadow-to-shadow and be very quick about it.
He already knew which way he was taking the truck he chose, as well as two alternate routes if the base personnel were more on the ball than anticipated; if he somehow lost all of those chances, then he'd ditch and bolt and abort the whole thing, though he knew how frustrating that would be for everyone. Tom and the Reverend would leave him behind to find his way back to Toronto if he wasn't at the rendezvous at the appointed time, and that was fair. So, once he knew the score, he went back to where he planned to cross the fence and just settled down for a little longer, crossing his arms, held within the sharp, clean scent of evergreens.
Night snugged down close; tightened around the pitch black of his jumpsuit like a vacuum seal. Still no snow, but he could smell impending rain; everything had that sticky humid feeling to it. If it didn't turn to snow by morning, he'd be surprised.
Of course, he'd be gone by then, too.
One.
The perimeter guard had passed six minutes ago, which put them around a corner and out of sight. Guards at the ammo storage remained stationary.
Two.
He was already crouched and now made sure the treads of his well-worn boots were dug into the ground and not pine litter.
Three. And go.
The voice that gave the order could have been Scott's or Mike's or his own. Arnie pushed off and darted to the fence, textured gloves slipping through and gripping between links as he scaled it at the pole, where it would make the least amount of noise. When he got to the top, he had the snips out of his pocket and clipped the straight-strung barbed wire, one two three strands, bent them back each side, shoved the snips back into the same pocket. Then it was over and once he was able, he jumped and landed with the softest thump in a crouch, darting a quick look around in all relevant directions before he was off like a runner from the block.
Even when the ground went from grass to cement, his footfalls were silent; he skirted the furthest out he could from the light's radius, and with the backdrop of night, he was past the edge of the next building before the stationary guards could even think to look in his direction.
He had less than twenty minutes before the perimeter guard came around and could potentially see him breaking into trucks. Arnie didn't waste any time.
He was a touch winded when he finished his thousand-feet dash, but nothing he couldn't calm again quickly. Before he'd even come to a complete stop, he pulled the lockpick kit out of another pocket, keeping his ears out for any sounds out of the ordinary as he moved behind the first truck. Luckily, no chains were securing the doors for transport yet, so he only had one lock to negotiate.
Early on, when he'd learned to pick locks, he'd thought Eat this, cajun, every single time he'd successfully done so. Now, he didn't think anything, he just worked it until it clicked and then winced as he turned the door handle and inched the door up enough to peer inside. Even with the night vision goggles on, it took him a few seconds to pick out the Crossman logo.
Ah well. He didn't think he'd be so lucky as to get one first try.
He eased the door back down and moved onto the next, head on a swivel the whole time. In his pocket was the micro-chipped key that would unlock the steering wheel column of any of these uniform box trucks, though he'd have to peel said column under the key to pull the ignition switch up. Peeling a column was some full-on dodgy behavior he'd never have been caught dead at in his first life, and it kind of delighted him doing it now.
Scrumpin' for cars, apparently. The thought got a smirk out of him, even as he checked the next viable truck.
More drugs.
All the while, he was keeping a running count in his head how much time he had. He could just dive under one of these things and hide until the perimeter guards passed, if need be. Only for one circuit, given timing, but he could.
Still, he'd rather just get it done. He moved onto the next, skipping a few white trucks, and picked another dark one at random. Everything remained quiet; there weren't a lot of lights on back here, and those were blocked by the shadows of the trucks.
Third time lucky. This one opened to a fully packed truck with rations. Arnie nodded to himself and closed it again, then slipped around to the driver's side door, sliding his lockpick kit back into its pocket and pulling out the extendable lockout tool from another. One quick jimmy down the weather stripping and the door lock popped.
He took a few moments to pause there and listen, and to look around; when all remained quiet, he opened the door and slid into the driver's seat, pulled it closed, then wiggled his fingers like a maestro over the steering wheel with a self-satisfied smirk for a couple of seconds.
By the time he'd stuck the key in and peeled the column as well as any professional car thief, the smirk had turned into a full on grin of mischief.
He bit his lip around that grin as he jammed the flat blade of a screwdriver against the ignition switch, pulled it up and started the truck with a rumble. There was no going back now.
He thought, this time not to himself, Hey, Listy, check this out.
The giddy cackle in the back of his mind was a good match for his full-throated laugh out loud as he whipped the truck into reverse, tires screeching in protest, and then slammed it into drive and took it at inadvisable but necessary speed across the taxi-way and for the road to the north, picking the gate with only a chain on it to crash through.
Only the perimeter guards caught a glance at him, having jogged unsteadily to the sound of the truck, and neither of them were sure what was driving said truck.
Just that it looked an awful lot like a mad, giggling ghost.