by Chris Lofts
Helix Nexus
Chris Lofts
Nathan Helix Thriller Series
Book Two
2021
HELIX NEXUS
By Chris Lofts
Copyright ©2021 Chris Lofts
All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Produced and published in 2021 (R1.0)
Paperback ISBN 9798704670759
For Capt. Sir Tom Moore.
Also dedicated to the thousands of front line workers who served tirelessly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
1
Helix spun around on the escalator. ‘Move, move, move!’ he shouted, elbowing his way against the flow of commuters being carried towards the westbound platform of London Bridge hyperloop station. ‘Talk to me, Bruv,’ he snapped. A sea of disgruntled faces stared back at him as he fought to outrun the escalator’s descent.
‘His vital signs are going off the chart,’ Ethan replied via the cochlea implant in Helix’s right ear. ‘Something’s not right. It’s as if—’
‘As if what?’ Helix said, wading into the tide of humanity surging out of the rain, across the plaza towards the station entrance. ‘Call security, get someone up there.’
‘They’re on their way. His biometric profile is more akin to close quarters combat, not someone returning home after a busy day behind their desk.’
Helix wiped the rain from his face. His augmented ocular prothesis displayed the distance. 140 yards. At a height of six feet four inches, weighing 240 pounds, it should take him 20 seconds. Factoring in the self-driving buses, taxis and other Autonomous Vehicles, or AVs, between him and the entrance lobby of the Ministry of Home Defence, it was going to take twice that. He bolted, barging through a holo-ad, ignoring whatever product it was claiming had been tailored specifically for him. ‘Hold a lift in the lobby for me, Ethan,’ he said, leading with his left arm, sweeping bodies aside, deaf to complaints and protests. ‘I don’t fancy 55 flights of stairs.’
Approaching the ranks of taxis and buses he paused. ‘What the fu—’ Glass shards cascaded from the leaden sky, rebounding and scattering off the photo-voltaic roof of a taxi, peppering the patient queue of passengers.
Helix sheltered his eyes from the rain as he craned his neck upwards into the dark. The rain fell as green-white streaks in his night vision as he changed modes and scanned the grey exterior of the building towering above him, its summit lost in the low clouds. ‘Ethan? What’s—’
‘He’s falling. That can’t be—’
A shadowy mass expanded in his Helix’s vision, black against the grey clouds.
Commuters scattered and stumbled from the taxi as its windows exploded under the impact. Helix sprinted forwards. The shuffle towards the station entrance erupted into a mêlée of confusion as people scattered to put as much distance between them and what they assumed to be an explosion.
Screams echoed around the plaza as realisation swept over those closest to the horror. Helix blinked through the rain, his eyes fixed on the twisted form half-hanging from the taxi roof. He pushed through the crowd. Was that a breath? A sign of life? Adrenalin and impossible hope drove him forward. Nobody could have survived that fall. Helix didn’t believe in God, heaven or the afterlife, but had he just witnessed the soul of his commanding officer, mentor and friend departing his body?
He crouched beside the taxi. An epaulette, bearing a crossed sword and scabbard, a single star and a crown, lay amongst the glass and rain. The angry scar across the right cheek and missing earlobe of the body on the taxi roof confirmed the truth. General Yawlander was dead.
2
Helix pressed his thumb to the lift’s control panel and selected the 55th floor. He drew his Sig Sauer P226 from under his left arm and chambered a smart round. His chosen combination of old and new technologies gave him the reassurance of knowing that if all else failed at least the gun would fire when he pulled the trigger. He was still the best shot in the department without all the electronics. ‘Anything from the security detail, Ethan?’
‘Hold on.’
Ethan hadn’t said and Helix hadn’t asked if General Yawlander was already dead when he plummeted from the 55th floor. He ran the scenarios. Suicide – unlikely. Accident – improbable. Murder – possible. If the latter were true, the perpetrator may still be on site. Yawlander refused to have cameras in his private quarters so it would be impossible to get a replay of what may have transpired. Helix flexed his knees as the lift slowed toward the top of its ascent. ‘What am I about to walk into, Ethan?’
‘Neither of the security detail are responding. All comms are down.’
Helix dropped to his knee, his P226 held firm in a double-handed grip. The doors slid open. He scanned left and right before standing and stepping into the softly-lit corridor. The door to Yawlander’s apartment stood ajar. It was dark inside. With his right shoulder pressed against the wood panelled wall, Helix stepped forward on the plush magenta carpet. The door swung back and forth on its hinges. He paused. Tilting his head, he listened. A howl of wind from inside carried a distressed metallic rattle. He edged closer, seeing the sole of a military issue boot through the gap in the door. Dabbing the micro-switch at the base of his left molar with his tongue, he activated the Thought Control comms interface.
‘Man down, Ethan,’ he said inside his head. ‘Get a medical team up here.’
‘On it,’ Ethan replied.
Switching to night vision, the wind greeted him as he slid through the gap. The roar was reminiscent of airborne deployment from a military transport: a transition from humming tranquillity to roaring wind-whipped chaos as the load ramp yawned open, framing a lightless chasm into which everything was sucked. Pausing next to the fallen officer, Helix maintained his aim. Sweeping the shadows and recesses of the room, the once-comfortable sitting room rendered in his vision in shades of ghostly white and green. The headless corpse of Monty, Yawlander’s beloved golden retriever, lay in the middle of the room. Regulating his breathing, He stepped over the dog and deeper into the apartment. The rain-laden air snatched at the blinds through the shattered edges of the triple glazed window. A second officer lay next to the splintered remains of a small table, a lamp shattered on the floor beside it.
‘Sitting room clear,’ he reported over the thought comms despite knowing Ethan would be following his every move. He paused at the archway separating the sitting room from the kitchen. No further human casualties. Tiny silver bodies lay on the black granite floor beneath the shattered remains of the tropical fish tank set into the wall. Rommel, Yawlander’s Persian blue cat, lay skewered with a broad-bladed knife to a wooden chopping board on the kitchen counter. ‘It’s a fucking massacre. Kitchen clear. Moving to bedroom.’
To the left of the door, his back to the wall, he pressed the bedroom door handle. The door swung inwards. The room was undisturbed. The bed made. A military history book on the side table with a pair of reading glasses. Helix deployed two spherical HD nano-cams from a panel in his right boot. Their view of the underneath and sides of the bed materialised in his right eye. Clear. He stepped inside and waited while one cam entered the walk-in wardrobe and the other the adjoining ensuite bathroom. ‘All clear.’
Spinning towards the sound of urgent footsteps from the hallway, he rec
ognised the uniform and insignia of the medical detail. ‘All clear,’ he called. He looked up at the dormant LED lights set into the ceiling. ‘Lights on,’ he instructed. Nothing. If Helix was old-school in his choice of weapons, Yawlander was prehistoric when it came to technology. He located a switch next to the main door. The room filled with light revealing the full extent of the struggle that had taken place.
‘Jesus!’ Ethan whistled in Helix’s ear.
‘Just given me a couple of minutes, Ethan. I need to think.’
Helix took time to scan each corner of the room, focusing on any detail that might provide clues. Ethan would follow and record everything via the real-time HD feed from his brother’s right eye. Yawlander hadn’t gone down without a fight. Shattered glass, overturned and broken furniture, littered the room. His side-arm lay on the small table next to the entrance door, beneath the hooks holding his cap and the leads for his dog and cat.
The four-man medical team divided into two pairs. The status of each casualty was established, followed by silent shakes of the head towards each other. They collected their medical bags and filed out of the door.
Helix pivoted towards the shattered window swinging his P226 up at the sound. A drone hovered outside, its rotors buzzing in the wind as it fought to maintain its position. Helix blinked as the machine identified him with its broad fans of red laser light. ‘Major Nathan Helix,’ he barked. It was always better to give a verbal confirmation. They’d been known to shoot first and ask questions afterwards.
The drone dipped through the window, landed on the floor and began deploying its scan-orbs and crime scene collection bots.
Helix holstered his P226. ‘Have you requested a full forensics team, Ethan?’
‘On their way. ETA 30 minutes.’
A heavy, blue-covered book lay open on the floor next to Yawlander’s reading chair. It was one of the many first editions that packed the old oak bookcase. The pages of The World Crisis 1915, by Winston S. Churchill, flapped in the wind, drawn towards the gaping hole in the panoramic window that framed the cloudy night sky. It was impossible to tell from the middle of the room that 500 hundred metres below lay the beating heart of London.
He crouched next to the chair. A gold-framed photograph lay underneath. The face of Yawlander’s daughter, Lauren, smiled behind an angry crack in the glass. He left it where it was, not wanting to compromise any forensic evidence. The promise he’d made to the child’s late mother tugged at his heart. How much more loss could an eight-year-old endure?
A faint beep in his ear drew his attention. He folded back the flap in his jacket sleeve covering the graphene communications screen. He tapped, accepting the inbound call. ‘Helix.’
‘Good evening, Major. Julia Ormandy—’
‘Home Secretary.’
‘Your initial thoughts?’
‘About?’
The Home Secretary’s sigh conveyed her impatience. ‘Well, given your precise location and the fact that General Yawlander has just plummeted hundreds of metres to his death, I was hoping you might give me an update.’
Helix ground his teeth. Ornery Ormandy, as she was known by some, held two cabinet positions. He was ambivalent about politics and didn’t understand why they hadn’t abolished her secondary position as Secretary of State for Defence after the police and military had merged.
‘It’s early days, ma’am. We have—’
‘In my office. I’ll expect you in five minutes.’
Helix stared at the Call Ended notification on the screen.
‘What’s your take, Ethan?’
‘Not much better than yours. What the fuck does she expect? It’s been less than 15 minutes. We’ve got the thick end of fuck all at the moment.’
Helix grinned. Ethan’s expression could be translated as ‘absolutely nothing’. Its opposite was ‘the thin end of fuck all’ which could, depending on his brother’s mood, mean something, but still not much. ‘It’ll be a short meeting then,’ he said, turning towards the door. ‘I’m going to seal the apartment. Get the forensics team to contact me as soon as they arrive. At least that’ll give me an out if she’s still revelling in the sound of her own voice.’
‘I’ll run back over your scan of the scene to see if there’s anything obvious. How the hell did that window break?’
Helix picked up Yawlander’s Glock 19 from the side table with his gloved right hand. He sniffed the muzzle and ejection port. ‘His weapon hasn’t been discharged.’
‘That BB gun isn’t going to touch that glass. You’d need an armour piercing round.’
‘I realise that. Anyway, even if he had got off a shot, the gun wouldn’t be back on the table.’
‘You’re going to be late for your audience.’
‘Shit!’ He pulled the door closed behind him, pressed his left thumb to the screen, punched in his override code and scanned his left retina. ‘OK. Door locked.’
‘There’s a lift waiting for you.’
‘I’m going to take the stairs. It’s only five floors.’ He located the door and pushed through into the bare concrete and steel stairwell. ‘Check the lift logs, Ethan. See how many requests there were to come up to his floor. Take a look at the cameras in all the stairwells to see if they picked anyone up.’
‘I’ll get Sofi on to it.’
‘Becoming your stock answer.’
‘That’s a bit harsh. Even I can’t out-think a neural network. Artificial Intelligence isn’t the future any more. It’s here, so you might as well suck it up.’
‘If you say so.’ Warm stale air laced with cement dust rose to meet him as he jogged down the stairs. ‘I need you on silent while I’m talking to her ladyship. If I need anything, I’ll use TC.’
3
Julia Ormandy’s office suite occupied the entire 50th floor. Her preference was for the ancient corridors of the Palace of Westminster. On the occasions she visited the Ministry of Home Defence building she was accompanied by a retinue of minions and security that required a three vehicle convoy to carry them.
A receptionist, with an auburn hairbun equal in size to her head, looked Helix up and down.
‘I’m Major—’
‘Yes,’ she said, her nose wrinkled as if she could smell something unpleasant on the end of it. She stepped from behind the raised desk. ‘Come.’
Helix followed, impressed that she could walk in the business suit she had sprayed on that morning. He checked his own reflection in the glass walls, brushing concrete dust from the sleeve of his smart-fabric jacket.
Two security guards flanked the double office door bearing Ormandy’s name and titles.
‘Stay,’ hairbun instructed, her finger pointing to the floor behind her as she slipped through a skinny opening in the door.
Grimacing at one of the guards, Helix muttered, ‘Maybe she’s gone to get a stick so we can play fetch.’
The guards remained impassive. They could have been Remotely Operated Synthetics or shrink-wraps as he and Ethan preferred to call them. Increasingly common in the security services, they were almost impossible to tell from human.
The door swung inwards. ‘Come,’ hairbun said, wagging her finger.
Helix ignored the temptation to bark and scamper into the dimly-lit office.
‘Thank you, Gemma,’ Julia Ormandy said from behind a wide desk and a wall of holographic displays. She dismissed the receptionist with a flick of the wrist.
Helix raised his eyebrows. So the copper-knob stick insect had a name.
‘Do come in, Major. I’d offer you coffee, but I imagine our meeting will be short.’
Helix came to a halt in the middle of the room. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’
The hum of the air-conditioning vents filled the silence. Ormandy drummed the three fingers of her left hand on the glass table-top, her head tilted, eyes – one blue, one green – fixed on him. ‘It’s a very—’ She looked back to the tabletop. ‘What is it now, Gemma?’
‘Sorry to disturb, Home Secr
etary,’ the receptionist said from the desk. ‘I have your daughter. She sounds upset.’
Ormandy sighed. ‘Put her through.’ Getting to her feet, she folded her arms.
Helix nodded towards the door. ‘I can—’
‘No. I won’t be long,’ Ormandy said as a miniature 3D rendition of her teenage daughter paced around the glass desktop, dressed in jeans and a black mesh crop top.
Helix looked around the office. He tilted his head towards an open door behind Ormandy. Was that a bedroom? A faint whiff of perfume drifted on the air. A mirrored interior door reflected a bathroom beyond.
Ormandy caught him looking. ‘What’s wrong, Christina?’ she said, pulling the door closed.
‘Did you tell Clyde that I couldn’t go to Tabitha’s coming-out party on Thursday?’ the kid spat.
Ormandy tilted her head back and closed her eyes. ‘No, and this could have waited. I’m busy.’
The petulant hologram glowered at Helix. ‘He’s an improvement on what you normally tie to your bed after a hard day at the orifice,’ she said, eyeing Helix.
‘Christ, she’s a live one!’ Ethan whispered into Helix’s implant.
‘What is it they used to say? Hashtag awkward.’
‘Christina, I told Clyde you had to be home by midnight, that’s all.’
‘Don’t give me the whole “school night” lecture, Mum,’ the kid said, making air-quotes with her fingers. ‘I mean, what is the point of education? There are fewer and fewer jobs thanks to Gaianomics.’ She stressed the syllables of the economic policy in a robotic tone.
Ormandy’s nostrils flared. ‘Mind your manners, young lady.’
‘Why’s that?’ Christina whispered. ‘Is she listening? Watching? Adjusting my medication or signing me up to an anger management workshop?’