Since the thoughts of its mind were kaleidoscopic, it couldn't quite piece together matters of reasoning.

Nonetheless, the scent was alluring.

And like the others of its kind, it walked the warrens, searching.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

The Banshee glided slowly into the Portside Bay, hovered, and then lowered until it settled on its skids.

Tin Man glided inside with the pull of his cord. Once the bay door closed, the entire area was pressurized and the gravity level equalized, causing Tin Man to fall to the floor, hard.

When the Banshee's door opened, members of the Force Elite quickly exited and secured the perimeter with their assault weapons raised at eye-level and their heads on a swivel.

Skully and the pilot headed for Tin Man, who was laying on his side in the stationary 'up' position of doing sit-ups, and quickly noted the fracture in the tinted face shield.

"Lift it up," Skully told him.

The pilot crouched down, undid a couple of clasps, rotated the helmet, and then removed it. Tin Man's face was hardly recognizable. It was blue and gray, the color of dirty ice. His eyes, having been covered over with frost, stared at nothing in particular, and his lips appeared to be curving into a grimace of pain the moment his features suddenly locked up.

Now that Skully's team was down a man, the mission had grown far more difficult. Every man was an asset. Every man had his duties. Every man had his specialties. And though they weren't completely down, they'd surely been weakened.

Skully spoke into his lip mic. "Call out, people."

"Clear," stated Funboy.

"Clear on the stern side," said Meade.

"Good on my end," returned Juggler. "Area's clear!"

The team regrouped at Tin Man's body and memorialized him with a moment of silence before Skully eventually brought them back to remind them of the mission at hand.

"All right, people, listen up," he began. "This ship is steadily drifting away from Earth, so we have to move quickly. I want heads on a swivel and weapons ready. We're to stay in constant communication should the team split. I want everyone to know where everyone is, even without visual. Clear?"

"Hoorah."

"Constant updates, people. By the second, if necessary."

"Hoorah."

He turned to the pilot. "Remain with the Banshee. Secure it. And take Tin Man inside and put him in the Banshee's airlock for now. We never leave our own behind."

The pilot looked at Tin Man's body and at the odd configuration that it was frozen in. "Copy that," he said grimly.

"The president's whereabouts are unknown at this time, but with coordinated sweeps we should be able to acquire him within thirty minutes. Not one second more. We acquire the asset and pull out of here as quickly as possible."

"Hoorah."

Then came a rumbling as a large metal partition that divided the starboard side with the Portside Bay began to rise.

The members of the Force Elite quickly raised their assault weapons and directed them at the opposite side of the area, ready to battle.

As the door lifted, Air Force Six could be seen sitting in the opposing bay.

The team edged closer to the shuttlecraft, their fingers on the triggers.

And then a shadow appeared.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

New DC.

Oval Office.

"Mr. Vice President." The Attorney General sounded urgent as he entered the Oval Office. ""I'm afraid we have multiple situations on multiple fronts."

The vice president set aside documents. "Such as?"

The AG pointed to the bank of monitors that rounded along the curved wall. There were four rows of six, for a total of twenty-four screens. "Please, Mr. Vice President, if you will."

Vice President Schaffer tapped a code into a keypad on his desk, and brought up images of cities already laid to waste but burning. Towering columns of smoke rose from places like Old Pittsburgh and Old Memphis. And in the west, Old LA and Old Tijuana. The angles were taken from cameras attached to the undercarriages of Winged Banshees that constantly monitored the landscapes.

"All the Old cities have fallen to what appears to be a series of coordinated attacks."

"All of them? By whom?"

"Our best guess is that the Wasteland savages have taken the initiative. But it can't be."

"Why not?"

"Because there aren't that many Wasteland savages. At least not in these numbers. There can't be. Not after the president ordered their eradication two years ago. They're a dying breed."

"How many are we talking about?"

The AG took liberty to go to the presidential desk and let his fingers hover over the keypad. "May I?"

The vice president fell back into the seat. "Of course."

The AG began to type additional codes, the action bringing up new images, then zoomed in. "These were taken when the Banshees piloted down for a better view. What we're looking at here, Mr. Vice President, is Old Baltimore. And the scary thing about this is that it's very close to New DC, considering the location of an active war."