by Richard Dusk
Once beautiful villages of many vividly-colored houses built upon green grassed hillsides along the fjord, and with a splendid view of the snowed mountain range, lay torn to pieces and scattered on a large area among unmanned, rusty-eaten ships stuck in shallow water. But life didn't cease in here - a white arctic fox chased among all that debris a rabbit striving to escape and save itself.
They headed toward the cliffs of the valley's dead-end lined with a massive ice wall. Dead calm water like a mirror perfectly reflected the sky. Quadrangle-shaped ice floes hit the hulls and broke into pieces. As they sailed further, leaving two distinctive trails behind, the floes turned into ice plate stretching right to the bottom of pastel blue glacier. Kaiden pulled the throttle, and the ship began to slow down.
"What are you doing? We need speed to cut through the ice," said Garrett, but Kaiden ignored him, and they stopped at the thick ice plate.
"Garrett, this base was always protected better than any naval base in the world. The number of soldiers on regular days neared twice the amount of men in Nest, and look where this base lies. Do you think that the entrance would be so easily achievable to anyone without using brute force? They experienced ice everywhere while building this. Vince, enter the code and start the beta-twelve sequence for the front gate to open it. Others prepare for anchoring," he said while Vince wrote on the console. "This entire valley used to be covered with grey, dirty snow. When I saw it for the first time, I was fed up with technological inefficiency. We've made all the steps in our history wrong since the first one. But now it's pure white again as if never fell a different one," said Kaiden with satisfaction.
"Done. The code is accepted, and the sequence commenced."
At first, they stood in freezing air, raring to see the harbor, but it all looked to be different. No siren buzzing or beacons flashing; only the rustling of wind getting inside through gaps sounded.
"Did you use the right code to open the entrance?" said Lex when the suspense took too long.
She looked at Kaiden and Vince with their eyes fixed on the thick ice in front. Others stood confused the same as Lex.
"Are you sure we took the right turn?" said Garrett.
"We can build us a new port," proposed Pace slightly nettled.
"Guys, what's the matter? Where is it?" said Hodge, but no one answered.
A deep dull noise resounded through the valley. Something giant began to ascend from the depths.
"That doesn't sound all right," said Lex with pricked ears.
The noise grew stronger, and its source quickly neared to the ship.
"That's our base, though there is more ice than we expected," said Kaiden calmly.
Only he and Vince looked cool about it. Small waves, coming from below the ice, appeared on the water and swayed the ship lightly. Nearing dull noise speeded up, and waves grew bigger. A massive metal impact hit the ice, and Jillian flinched and grabbed Garrett by his forearm. A bursting iron structure forced its way outside. They knew its strength just from hearing it. Terrifying echo spread between cliffs and mountains, and only scrappy cracking and groaning sounded. When it almost wholly subsided, sudden overpowering muffled noise, reminding underwater explosion, spread together with a rattling of large rusty rolling gear wheels and severely struck the ice plate again. The repetitive sound of bursting and squeaking iron revealed its unyielding strength forcing the way through the ice. They counted seven distinct meshes of gearwheel teeth on the rail during which the metal structure moved by inches and pushed harder against the thick layer of ice. Wall above the ice plate cracked and sprayed the pressurized water towards them. Construction hit the ice again and broke through it. Crushed ice shot out into the air with splashing water streaming on the surface of the ice plate.
"Here it comes," said Kaiden, looking at large black solid steel reminding numerous bucket teeth that appeared few feet above the ice on the other side of the plate. "Cover your ears. The windshield's broken," he turned to check them. "Everyone, come on!"
"Why?" said Lex. "What's going on?"
"Just do it," he said authoritatively.
They didn't understand the reason behind but listened to this order. They saw Kaiden said something to Vince who nodded in agreement, but no one heard them.
Abrupt pressure wave hit their bodies, and Vince had to lean against the wall. Deep fissures appeared on the ice plate, and the ice wall started to crumble. Another stronger wave hit. Water spurted out from the cracks; large pieces of the wall began to break off and fell on the ice plate. Remains of foil placed instead of the windshields tore off and fell into the water. Jillian didn't expect such power the same as others and had to take two steps back to keep her balance. When the third devastating wave hit them, it pushed their ship further away, and another two windshields cracked. Ice plate shattered to pieces of infinite sizes and shapes, and fragments remained floating inertly.
"Is it over?" said Lex, vigilantly uncovering her ears, but she instantly got the response.
Cracking of ice spread through the wall from the front to the sides and far behind them until a short quiet moment came. They looked all around the ship where sightline allowed, expecting the next pressure wave, but a massive fragment of the ice moved faster to finish the work. The entire white, frozen lining of the valley noisily tore off like dominoes and splashingly fell into the water. Breakers coming from every side collided in front of the ship and gave them all a decent shower through broken windows.
"Yeah, why not?" Hodge spat around, wiping his face as everyone.
"What the hell was that?" said Jillian, still feeling uncomfortable from the impacts of pressure waves on her body.
"I think that Garrett will tell us exactly what happened," Kaiden squeezed the water out of his hair.
"High energetic, resonance waves from the gate. They had to produce enough energy to break through that few feet thick ice. The shock you felt-" a discontinuous, coarse buzzing sound of alarm resounded through the valley.
They finally saw the entrance to the port from which the sound came. Two high concrete pillars of gray color embedded in the cliff held a massive black radial gate with a white Diamond symbol between them. The metal grid platform over the entrance hid under the cover made of rock wall above. Fifteen damaged spotlights hanged ripped out above the metal door leading inside, same as the railing and ladder to the platform.
The gate began to rise and exposed darkness inside. Kaiden pulled the throttle, and the ship moved towards the opening. They sailed slowly, evading massive ice floes that would easily break off both hulls. As they were passing below the gate, they heard dripping of water on the ship's roof. The second they entered, the metal gear wheels began to rotate and closed the gate echoing through the long tunnel ahead. Alarm buzzing stopped, and they ended up in the complete dark.
Chapter 23 Punishable Deeds
Sailing in the dark, they listened to the echo traveling far into the depth of the tunnel. Garrett heard others breathing and rustling of their gear. He saw nobody but felt that Vince or Kaiden is moving in front of him along the control panel.
"Let there be light," Kaiden switched ship's lights on with a considerable amount of irony in his voice.
Bright beams filled the space ahead of them, and they immediately had to cover their widely dilated pupils.
"Kaiden, it hurts like hell!" grumbled Pace with others, but Kaiden only laughed.
Once their eyes got used to it, the ship moved ahead and revealed the large tunnel that looked like abandoned in a hurry. High walls and arch of color and texture of wood ash covered with construction dust were made only of raw rock, cut out to create a passage for ships four times bigger than Manta. They sailed in a wide water corridor between two unfinished concrete piers with metal lattice sticking out. The water level substantially lowered in comparison to the time when the building of the base began. Brown color on the sides of the pier showed the height where the moss grew above the surface. On both sides left abandoned several devices a
nd heavy machines used for construction. Most of them seemed to be fully employed to work at the moment when workers decided to leave them. On the left side, where the tunnel continued to another section, stood a giant machine next to rail with wagons of truck height fully loaded with tons of rock debris and prepared for departure.
"What is that?" Jillian pointed at the robust machine taking too much space. It looked like an underground drill with a blunt, flat tip capable of making a tunnel of train size.
"It's Phoenix," said Kaiden. "They used it to bore tunnels between segments of the facility. It liquefied and deflagrated the rock. There are no supports needed as the material immediately hardens and creates the vault."
"You vaporized rocks?" Jillian watched a thick bundle of cables powering machines, gate, and the railway track, run far into the tunnel.
"Molding is a more accurate term," said Kaiden.
"Anyway, what happened here?" Jillian looked at overalls scattered among the machines.
"They had to flee because of X-RON," said Kaiden. He aimed the ship's lights from the iron bars sticking out of walls to the damaged catwalks hanging from the upper wall, high above the ground.
"And?"
"Well, it's an underground base. What do you expect?" he said tongue-in-cheek. "Diamond planned to build bases around the whole globe that would serve as, let's say geopolitical strategy points, despite that Diamond officially never had any serious political interests. This corporation thrived on funds paid by many generous and anonymous sources to avoid a humiliating government lobby. They didn't need anyone to perform research without interruption as buyers longed for the products Diamond developed. If someone refused the offer, the next one in the queue immediately accepted. Anyway, they began six, no, seven years ago right at this place. This island represented a perfect place to extend influence. Vast uninhabited planes where they could build anything they wanted. From large underground bases to sheltered runways. Military applications and research objectives weren't the only two tasks considered to be performed. Garrett, you've had to hear something about projects they did here," he turned back, but Garrett just shook his head. Kaiden smirked and continued.
"You've got to know at least one. This base is the place where they transported X-RON and prepared it to be reassembled. They shipped everything in here and then transferred to its final position. The security clearance to the levels belonged only to those in the know of it, and they allowed the presence only of two soldiers to oversee the protection of X-RON. You know the way it worked in Diamond - the fewer people knew about it, the better it was. That's why they never took you here.
They planned to build seventy bases around the globe, but none of them meant to be as big and significant as this one. It runs deep, right below the mountain like Nest, and then all the way to the top. They even drilled the peak to create a lookout and install an anti-aircraft system for possible threats. When I came here for the first time, they assigned us a task to do the convincing of the inhabitants, who, of course, noticed our activities.
We explained to them all the benefits of having full storages of mass destruction weapons, which could terminate any conflict that would ever arise, buried below their feet, but they disagreed and protested against everything and threatened to shout it from the rooftops. I wondered every single day about their primitive fantasy that they had a choice. Ah, the good old times," he said satisfied. Jillian looked at Lex, who shrugged a little.
"We had to cut them off from the rest of the world to conceal Diamond's presence. They had no connection, no ships, no planes. Nothing they could do. No place where they could whine about stopping us. We declared Greenland's airspace restricted for two months and monitored all ships sailing along the coast. Many of them refused to follow the order to change their course and had to be sunken. I enjoyed the night operations - always the smoothest ones. They couldn't see us coming on the boat, and we simply captured the crew and sailed with the ship away to send it to the bottom. We couldn't allow any information leakage. Greenland ceased to exist. We kept the whole population under lock in their villages and simply took everything they had in their light-hearted life to begin convincing them."
"What did you do to them?" said Lex.
"We followed orders. Why do you care? You were not part of the task," said Kaiden.
"What did you do?"
"Did you ever hear a simple saying not to ask questions when you're not allowed?"
"Whether I'm a soldier or not, it's my duty to protect against all threats, even if they are coming from my own rank, Kaiden."
His sigh sounded irritated but with perfect inner balance.
"Vince, take the wheel," he stood up, and his eyes fell upon Lex.
He walked calmly towards her and stopped so close that his mid-long hair almost touched her face. The respect his posture commanded was nearly tangible. Even though he was a head taller than Lex, she didn't give an inch. Their eyes fought silently, but none of them turned away.
"Well, Lex, you swore to protect the corporation from threats, not civilians. Your duties are with the corporation, not your nation, so forget the nonsense about threats within your rank," he increased stress in the voice. "No one cares what you think. You are not here for that. I see you don't know what an order means, and I don't care, but rejecting them is obviously just a minor problem for you. You are just a soldier, so you should understand your place in this world and let others make decisions. Nobody asked for your opinion or wanted to listen to your demanding. You're asking me what we did, and I've said we followed orders received. I admit it wasn't a standard process that you would see happen every day, but it certainly fulfilled the requirements for the classification level of this operation," he said a few inches from her face.
Lex still didn't move a muscle. She stood firm like sculpted in stone, and Kaiden stepped back.
"Of course, the world powers accused Diamond of illegal invasion and occupancy and demanded to know what we were doing here. We couldn't risk losing. Failure is not allowed. It took all teams a week to search throughout the island and gather people to three restricted zones. Despite many violent attacks and gunfights, we established the order in the end. We used their homes, villages, ships, and every place we found and kept them under twenty-four-seven constant surveillance. Two days later came an order saying that the exposure risk is too high and must be reduced to zero level. They gave every zone one bulk carrier, and we loaded people in the hatches. Fifteen thousand people per ship were forced to board with spread news about their relocation and a better life elsewhere. When we set to sail with these giant ships, we headed directly to the Arctic Ocean loaded with charges. At the right time and place, we abandoned ships and detonated explosives. It took them about thirty minutes, but they eventually sank. Simple and cost-effective. The world had no idea that anything of this happened. They could never find those ships because they are too deep on the bottom of a trench with all hatches welded together. We couldn't risk that amount of bodies to appear on the surface."
"You…" said Lex disgusted but couldn't find suitable words to express her mind. "You killed forty-five thousand people by a single click? How could you?"
"Remember who you work for, Lex. This corporation doesn't approve the attitude you have," Kaiden took his place at the wheel again. He ignored others staring at his back. "You are a pawn in this world the same as everyone else."
"How could you get away with that?" said Vince.
"You've spent enough time here to know the answer. Diamond made a cover-up story about snow blizzards. We had access to all strategically important satellites required to feed the weather simulation across the world - everyone saw the same. The made-up images of the storm destroying the island and photos from the capital flooded the media all over the world, and repeated eye-witness evidence from the studios made people believe the fairy tale. Who do you think cared? Ordinary people toiling away every day got their news from TV, and those few interested had no influence on public op
inion. The governments spoke greatly about the help provided to Greenland, but in the end, they did nothing. The fear and money showed them the correct way of minding their own business. It's not that hard to convince people about the truth you want them to believe when you are persistent.
In the meantime, we partially replaced the missing population with hired people who were astonished by an offer of the carefree rest of their lives paid by exchange for their silence and playing happy Greenlander theatre. Anybody who came was convinced with widely taught truth that the island is still the same as once before. Do you think that population stats reflected the reality? Diamond made up everything. Just five thousand people sufficed. Who would bother searching for people in the country that is not strategically important? A dead empty island except for a few areas. If authorities searched for a missing man, they received a confirmation that the person is still alive or dead. That's all they did to make their bureaucratic tick.
And regarding all sunken ships and some dead people, all it took was to blame the blizzard. That my friend is how you conquer anything you want. Just put enough effort to make people not care about you. Repeated news won't be news anymore but common knowledge everyone got used to. All victories are accompanied by victims as there is always someone willing to put up resistance. The media just didn't speak about it. As I've said to Lex, the world is a chessboard, and if you're just a pawn, you've got to pick the winning side."
Vince looked at Lex, who breathed in to start another argument, and gestured her to keep it for herself. She glared at him and walked away. Jillian tapped Garrett's hand and followed her. The ship moved forward and came to the point where corridor curved to left. They passed through it to an entirely different-looking place. Unlike the tunnel behind them, they finished this part. No machines, no tools or exposed rocky walls, only the same train rails as they've seen before. Branching to another water corridor on the right ran along with their, separated by a pier in the middle broad enough for two trucks driving side by side.