Extinction Event

by Dan Abnett

  “That’s a pretty fair assessment,” she said.

  “So, how do we stop it?”

  Helen stared at him. Then...

  She began to laugh. It was the most laughter, and the most genuine laughter, he had heard from her in years and years.

  “What?” he asked indignantly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not mocking you. It’s just that I suddenly realised you were serious.”

  “Of course I’m serious.”

  “You actually meant that. You honestly think there’s something we can do.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Nick, it’s already happened,” she said. “It’s history. We just happen to be seeing it first hand. You can’t stop it happening.”

  “So why are you here, if there’s nothing we can do?” he asked.

  “I wanted to see you,” she said. She smiled faintly, an old smile he had once adored. “I wanted to talk to you before it was too late. To apologise, perhaps, for everything.”

  “In the face of imminent disaster you undergo a change of heart, do you?” he asked.

  “I obviously still have feelings for you, Nick,” she said. “I came to the ends of the Earth to find you, after all.”

  “Funny,” he replied, not laughing.

  “Look, I don’t miss the world I left behind,” she said. “I like my life. I wander through the ages, and I get to see things no one has ever seen. I wouldn’t go back, but I have always been comforted by the idea that I could if I wanted to. I’m going to miss the world I came from when it’s no longer there.”

  “So you came to say goodbye, did you?” he asked.

  “I wanted to warn you, Nick,” she replied. “I wanted to warn you about what was coming. I hoped you might —”

  “What? Hoped I might what?”

  “Come with me,” Helen said. “Escape the end of the world and come with me. There are lifetimes to live. I could really use your company.”

  He looked into her eyes.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I just don’t have the time.”

  ***

  The glittering fragments of energy finally seemed to cohere, and the anomaly reopened. Its gigantic structure ignited across the Cretaceous forest, seething and rippling with silver light and rainbow colours. It made a noise like a heavy, metal ingot being dragged across paving stones.

  Cutter left Helen, and walked back to join the others.

  “What’s going on?” Hemple asked.

  “Cutter?” Jenny said.

  “We’re going through,” Cutter told them. “I’d tell you to go back the way you came, but I don’t think it’s going to be any safer that way in the long run. We’ve got to go through and see what we can do.”

  “Like what?” Abby asked.

  “Right now, I have no idea,” Cutter replied, stony-faced. He glanced at Hemple. “I think you should stop pointing your guns at Koshkin,” he added.

  As alpha team lowered its weapons, the Russian eyed Cutter doubtfully.

  “I’m going to need your help, Koshkin,” Cutter said frankly, “and you’re going to need mine. You’ll have to get your people on-side for me. We’ve got to trust each other — and fast.”

  “What about Helen?” Jenny asked.

  “Oh, she’s coming with us,” Cutter replied. “She’s got music to face, when all this is done with.”

  “Tiny problem,” Abby said. She gestured. They looked around.

  There was no longer any sign that Helen Cutter had ever been there.

  “Where the hell did she go?” Redfern snapped.

  “Dammit!” Cutter snarled. He shook his head wearily.

  “Spread out. Find her,” Hemple told alpha team.

  “Don’t bother,” Cutter said. “We haven’t got time to waste. We’ve got more important things to think about.”

  “What, like the world ending?” Abby asked.

  “That kind of thing,” Cutter agreed.

  He turned, took one last look over his shoulder, and led the group towards the anomaly. One by one, they vanished into its shimmer.

  Helen Cutter watched them go.

  She stood alone for a long time after they’d gone. Then she turned and walked away into the past.

  FORTY-SIX

  Siberia was a step away.

  They came back into the scorched circle of the impact site, and into a howling gale and a snowstorm. The wind, cold and hard, was lashing the trees around the rim of the blasted zone. The sky was white, and the snow was flurrying. Thunder was booming overhead. Every few seconds, light-ning seared the flat, white sky like the element of a giant light bulb.

  “Oh my God!” Jenny cried. “This is horrible!”

  “It wasn’t like this when we left,” Cutter replied.

  “To be fair,” Abby shouted back over the noise of the wind and pealing thunder, “it was pretty nasty! It was just differently nasty!”

  “Even for Sibir, this is unseasonal weather, Nicky,” Suvova told him, raising her voice to be heard.

  “It’s the anomaly,” Cutter called back. “The weather’s getting screwed up.”

  They struggled towards the treeline. There was no sign of anyone.

  “Maybe they all went back to the advance camp,” Bulov suggested, hugging his arms around his body to keep warm.

  “They would have left someone posted here,” Koshkin replied. “They would have known better than to abandon the position.”

  They headed into the treeline. The trees shielded them from the worst of the wind. Snowflakes danced and swirled through the forest air. Overhead, the canopy rocked and thrashed.

  “There! Over there!” Hemple called out.

  Lightning flashed. A sizzling crack of thunder followed. They could see figures through the trees ahead of them. Three men, in Russian uniform, had spotted them.

  Abby laughed.

  “It’s what’s-his-name,” she said. “It’s Torosyan.”

  Yuri Torosyan and two other troopers ran through the forest towards them. One of them blew repeatedly on a whistle. The soldiers slowed down warily when they saw Hemple and the rest of alpha team.

  “Make it clear you’re friendly, or there’ll be trouble,” Koshkin said to them.

  “Do it,” Cutter added.

  Hemple and his men slung their weapons on their backs so that their hands were free and open.

  Torosyan led the three men closer. He was so puzzled and excited that he gabbled at them in Russian.

  “English!” Abby shouted.

  “Where did you come from?” Torosyan asked.

  “A long way away,” Koshkin said, pushing forward. He began to speak with the soldiers in rapid Russian.

  “What’s he saying?” Cutter asked Suvova.

  “Koshkin is asking where the others are. Young Yuri is saying that everyone is out searching the woods for us.”

  “If Koshkin decides to sell us out, you will let me know, won’t you?” Cutter said.

  The Russian troopers led the group back through the woods, away from the impact site. Torosyan’s companions blew on their whistles again to attract attention.

  “What’s wrong with radios?” Cutter asked.

  “They’ve been in and out since the storm began,” Torosyan replied.

  “How long’s that?”

  “Three, maybe four hours.”

  The campsite established around the ATVs had been expanded since they had last seen it. Though the tanks had moved away, several more trucks and ATV vehicles had arrived from the advance camp, and a number of modular tents and weather shelters had been staked up. They were quivering in the fierce wind.

  The alarm whistles had attracted the attention of the sentries. Troops in gloves and heavy overcoats appeared, clutching weapons. Other personnel emerged from the tents and shelters to find out what the commotion was about.

  “Shvachko,” Bulov moaned.

  “Who?” Cutter asked.

  “The other FSB specialist,” Suvova answered.
“He’s bad news.”

  Shvachko, wearing black battledress and a fur-trimmed coat, walked towards them. He met Koshkin and they began to talk. Shvachko kept glancing at the alpha team members.

  “Ever get the feeling you’re not welcome?” Redfern asked.

  “Never mind him,” Abby said. “Look who else is here.”

  Connor hurried towards them from the tents, one sleeve of his overcoat empty around his strapped arm. Medyevin was with him.

  “You came back then!” Connor exclaimed. Abby gave him a hug.

  “Steady, ow, steady!” he said. “Arm, remember?”

  He hugged Abby a little more anyway. Then he looked over her shoulder and frowned.

  “Hang about,” he said. “Where did Jenny and the ass-kickers come from?”

  “It’s a long story,” Jenny said.

  “And we don’t have time to tell it properly,” Cutter added. “I need to pick your brains.”

  “Shoot,” Connor said.

  “What would you do,” Cutter asked, “if you wanted to close an anomaly?”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Shvachko’s expression was hard to read.

  “You look like you don’t believe me,” Cutter observed.

  “I am vouching for him,” Koshkin said.

  “I know, I know,” Shvachko replied. “It is, I suppose, that this entire situation is casting up many things that strain one’s credibility. I am trying to keep my priorities straight.”

  The three of them, along with Connor and Medyevin, were crowded into Shvachko’s command shelter. A rattling fan heater was running off the power plant of an ATV that had been backed up to the shelter wall. The light of the suspended lamps shivered as the building shook in the wind. Outside, the noise-shock of the savage lightning strikes continued to blast the air.

  Koshkin had sent Abby, Jenny, the ARC’s alpha team members and the scientific group — along with the two bewildered soldiers who’d been through the anomaly — to be thoroughly checked out by the medical staff.

  “I will need to examine you and the British professor, too,” Natacha Antila had told him. She’d come up from the advance camp with the reinforcements to run medical operations at the site.

  “We need to speak with Shvachko,” Koshkin had said. “Then we’ll submit to your exam.”

  Antila had sent them on their way with an admonishment to Connor not to over-exert his arm.

  “I’m wondering what your priorities are, precisely,” Cutter said to Shvachko in the command tent.

  “The continued security of the Russian Federation,” Shvachko replied smoothly.

  “Well, this is a pretty big threat to it,” Cutter said. “We need full cooperation. I’m not sure what will make you grasp the gravity of this. If we don’t stop wasting time, there won’t be a Russian Federation to secure.”

  “Is that some kind of ultimatum?” Shvachko challenged, leaning forward, his piercing eyes on Cutter.

  “Now you’re annoying me,” Koshkin announced, with a weary shake of his head. “What’s wrong with you, Shvachko? I’m telling you how it is, and I have final authority.”

  “Not actually,” Shvachko replied, turning his attention to his colleague. “When you disappeared, situational command passed to me.”

  “I’ve returned,” Koshkin growled.

  “I can no longer attest to your psychological fitness,” Shvachko said mildly. “Your tale speaks to a distinct fantasist mindset.”

  Koshkin shoved his folding seat back, and started to yell at Shvachko in Russian. Shvachko rose to meet him and shouted back. They were nose to nose. Connor flinched, fully expecting the specialists to come to blows.

  “Hey! Hey!” Cutter shouted, and bashed his fist down on the camp table.

  The men stopped and glared at him.

  “How much more proof do you want?” Cutter demanded. “You’ve been working out here for some time, Shvachko, and you’ve seen — first hand — creatures that should not exist in this time. We’re sitting about half a kilometre away from the physical evidence of a collision impact. What else do you need, exactly, before you admit that our story is pretty well corroborated?”

  “Just because one impossible thing turns out to be true after all,” Shvachko answered, “it does not automatically follow that all impossible things are true. The erratics, they are quite extraordinary I grant you, but as I understand it, the received scientific view is that they are survivals.”

  “We have moved on from there, actually —” Medyevin began.

  Shvachko pointed a finger at him, and he stopped.

  “You, you do not speak.” He looked back at Cutter. “I was set against recruiting your expertise in the first place.”

  “That’s one way of describing our kidnap,” Cutter fired straight back.

  “I believe your ideas, your very presence, is polluting the integrity of this situation. It is a federal problem, and it should be contained and dealt with by federal agencies. Not foreign nationals.”

  Shvachko looked Koshkin straight in the eyes.

  “My recommendations, supported by General Markov, have been endorsed overnight by the government executive. Your actions in this matter have been officially disavowed, Koshkin. The instruction is that, should you reappear, you should be stood down. Authority has passed to me, and I intend to use it to pursue other, more rational remedies to this situation.”

  “Disavowed?” Koshkin echoed.

  “You brought foreigners here, Koshkin,” Shvachko sneered. “You risked igniting a major international incident — with Great Britain, of all places. You broke most of the international rules governing the extradition and securement of prisoners in custody. If that wasn’t enough, you started to listen to their wild theories, and ended up colluding with their fantasies. You let this boy strip down field equipment, and use a secure laptop to build some kind of magical dinosaur scanner.”

  “It was an anomaly detector,” Connor said quietly.

  “Do you know what he actually did?” Shvachko asked Koshkin. “He used the laptop to send an email for help.”

  Koshkin glared at Connor.

  Connor shrugged.

  “Hey, you kidnapped us. Sorry.”

  “Good God,” Cutter said. “I understand that this is a difficult situation, but can we try and stay on topic? A bigger problem than dinosaurs is heading this way. If you want proof, come with me to the anomaly. Come through, and see for yourself. See with your own eyes.”

  “Would I be able to trust them?” Shvachko answered.

  “What?”

  “First I’m told this problem concerns a prehistoric survival,” Shvachko said. “Then I am told it’s a hole through time. As I said, there are other, more rational explanations that I intend to investigate. I’m having new scientific groups flown in from universities in Moskva and Novgorod.”

  “What are their areas of specialty?” Cutter asked.

  “Psychological warfare, behavioural stimulation and suggestion patterns,” Shvachko replied.

  “This is psychological warfare?” Cutter asked with an incredulous laugh. But the FSB specialist remained firm.

  “Perhaps drug-induced, possibly through the use of psychotropic agents in the air or water, or even through microwave broadcasts,” Shvachko said. “There are also acoustic and infrasonic methods that will be checked for.”

  “So you think the dinosaurs aren’t really here,” Cutter said. “You think it’s all one big shared hallucination?”

  “I think it’s possible that this remote region is having some new system of warfare tested on it,” Shvachko said. “The notion that this situation is a mass hysterical hallucination engineered by foreign powers is rather more credible than prehistoric survivals and holes in time, so you’ll forgive me if I take seriously the security of the Russian Federation.”

  “But —” Cutter began. He was cut off with the wave of a hand.

  “Tell me this, Professor Cutter,” Shvachko continued, “just out of c
uriosity: if I were to accept that what you’re claiming is true, that there is a giant comet hurtling towards us through a hole in time, what would you have me do about it, exactly? What actions would you be urging me to take?”

  “The anomaly has to be shut,” Cutter replied. “It has to be shut to shield this era from the blast. Connor and I have discussed this. The anomaly is a complex and powerful electromagnetic phenomenon. We don’t understand it precisely — of course we don’t — but we think the best chance you’ve got is to detonate something that will emit an intensely fluctuating magnetic field. An electromagnetic pulse, basically.”

  “An EMP, like you get with a nuclear blast,” Connor put in helpfully.

  “We think a strong enough EM pulse could collapse the anomaly,” Cutter said.

  “So, what you’re saying is that you’d like me to detonate a nuclear weapon,” Shvachko responded.

  “Of course they’re not!” Koshkin snapped. He looked at Cutter. “Are you?”

  “Of course not,” Cutter echoed. “There are other ways to produce an EMP. Most of them are military applications. There are electromagnetic bombs, E-bombs, designed to disable electronic systems.”

  “E-bombs often use explosively pumped flux compression generator technology,” Connor said, “or EPFCGs if you want to get all technical. But it doesn’t have to be a transient electromagnetic device like an E-bomb, it could be a chemical or gas dynamic laser, or a maser, because microwaves would do it, or even a decent directed-energy weapon like a HERF. That’s —”

  “A High Energy Radio Frequency weapon,” Shvachko said. “I know what HERF stands for. Are you proposing to build one of these devices, the two of you? Just knock one together quickly before the world comes to an end? What will you need? A field radio? A laptop?”