2041 Sanctuary (Dark Descent)

by Robert Storey

  Sarah didn’t reply. Infamous, she thought, that’s all I need. She wanted to keep a low profile and stay under the radar in order to escape. If everyone knew who she was, that would make it that much harder to sneak around. She needed help and so she broached the subject she’d been plaguing Riley with once more.

  ‘Have you thought any more about Trish and Jason?’

  Riley sighed. ‘Again? As I’ve said a thousand times already, it was a problem getting you in. Locke would chew me a new one if I pushed him.’

  ‘Can’t you just ask? He might be okay with it.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, just to shut you up, if you meet the Deep Reach requirements in your tests then I’ll ask him about your friends working here at the SED.’

  Sarah brightened. ‘Promise?’

  Riley swore. ‘Yes, I promise; now get your butt back round this course. You’ve got three more circuits to complete.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  The final weeks of Sarah’s SED training came and went as quickly as the previous ones. During this time Riley had cranked up the intensity even further until Sarah ate, drank and slept Deep Reach. When yet another new day dawned Sarah rose early, an anxious excitement ensuring her night’s sleep had been spent in restless anticipation. A few days before she’d received word that she’d qualified for a position on Riley’s Deep Reach Survey Team. Riley, keeping his promise, had posed the question to the commander about Trish and Jason also being enrolled into the Exploration Division. Sadly, the answer had been a firm ‘no’. Riley suggested Locke might change his mind at a later date, especially if Sarah proved herself in the field, and today was the day she was about to be given that chance as her first deployment outside the USSB had arrived.

  As she walked through the main entrance to the SED, Sarah twisted the small tracking bracelet encircling her left wrist. She’d got used to the device now, but she knew the hindrance it presented to her cause. Now that she was a fully fledged member of Alpha Six many of the restrictions had been lifted from her MF Card, enabling her to move freely around the complex. The band, however, ensured her location was known at all times to the military and their surveillance systems. Apparently her presence unnerved the non-civilian, oversight committee and to ensure she didn’t wander where she shouldn’t they had requested she keep wearing the device at all times. She had wanted to point out that the tracking system obviously hadn’t worked when she’d sneaked into the SED, but she’d decided there was no point rocking the boat any further and to alert them to a possible flaw in its design would be downright stupid. Riley had said it was unheard of for an SED member to be so mistrusted, but it was something she had to accept if she was to be allowed off-site. No go areas included the scientific departments and the U.S. military’s laboratory complex, located in a highly restricted sector close by the SED itself. These laboratories were off limits to all SED personnel anyway, but Sarah had attracted special attention due to her past record.

  The last ten days had flown by as, even after her assessments, Riley, confident she would pass the tests, had then submitted her to an intensive course on the numerous protocols every Deep Reach officer had to be familiar with before they could venture outside the USSB. Now that all the preparations had been completed her excitement mounted at the prospect of exploring parts of Sanctuary untouched by humans. Of course she had already been outside the base and even operated Anakim devices, but this was different. She was now venturing out with state-of-the-art kit and backed up by a highly qualified and experienced team, who would take her into areas believed to be of great scientific and archaeological importance. If she was honest with herself, she couldn’t wait.

  An hour later, now dressed in her red and blue coveralls, Sarah looked at herself in the mirror of the women’s changing room. Turning round she peered over her shoulder and pulled her long blonde hair to one side to catch sight of the sign on her back:

  DEEP REACH

  SURVEY TEAM

  ALPHA SIX

  She then moved to look at the patch on her uniform’s shoulder:

  Steadying herself, she left the room with her head held high and strode along a couple of interconnecting hallways and into the main ready-room where the rest of her team were busy gearing up. She had already been introduced to many of the people in Alpha Six, but she saw a couple of new faces.

  A bald heavyset man, sporting a thick black beard, approached her. ‘Welcome aboard, I’m Jefferson.’ He held out a hand.

  ‘Sarah,’ Sarah said, introducing herself.

  ‘Looking forward to your first outing?’

  ‘Yes, very much.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. I’m the archaeological lead so I hope I can rely on your support when needed.’

  She smiled. ‘Of course.’

  Jefferson looked pleased and returned to what he’d been doing.

  The only other person she didn’t recognise nodded in her direction when she caught his eye. He had a cropped haircut and athletic build, and seemed much more withdrawn than the other people around him, keeping to himself and refraining from verbal interaction.

  Sarah became alert as Riley walked in, flanked by Cora, the woman she’d had the brief displeasure of meeting previously. Riley made a beeline for Sarah while Cora moved boisterously amongst the team, slapping people on the arm, hugging some and high fiving others. Sarah suspected Cora might be doing it to intimidate her; if she was it was working.

  ‘Let me help you on with your kit,’ Riley said as Sarah struggled with her multipurpose harness.

  She turned round so he could pull it up over her shoulders. ‘Thanks, I still can’t get the hang of this thing.’

  ‘You’ll get used it; it’ll feel like your second skin after a while.’

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ she whispered indicating Cora with a nod of her head.

  ‘Cora? She’s my number two, Deputy Team leader. Didn’t I mention that?’

  ‘No.’ Sarah felt like her parade had been well and truly rained on.

  ‘She may have given you a hard time, but out there you’ll want her at your back; besides, I’m in charge so I’ll keep her in check if she gets funny with you.’

  ‘I don’t need babysitting.’ Sarah’s expression turned angry. ‘I can handle the tattooed freak.’

  Riley laughed. ‘Of that I have no doubt.’

  Turning from her, now that she’d shouldered her heavy backpack, Riley addressed the twenty-two people gathered in the room. ‘Okay, quieten down!’

  ‘Listen up, Team Leader on deck!’ Cora shouted out at the top of her voice to help shut up those who had kept talking.

  Riley made a wry smile. ‘Thank you, Cora.’

  Cora gave him a mocking bow in response.

  ‘Right, we’re on an open-ended deployment commencing at twelve hundred hours,’ Riley told them. ‘All the other teams have already shipped out so we’re the last to go.’

  Sarah had thought she’d felt intermittent vibrations travelling through the room, it must have been the air-shuttles travelling down into the Earth.

  ‘Unusually our target zone will already be occupied by the time we arrive,’ Riley continued. ‘An SFSD unit was sent there three weeks ago, along with some military scientists. And before you ask,’ Riley said as many of them had begun to protest at the prospect, ‘I don’t know why they’re there. SED Command is not in the loop on this one so we’ll all have to tread carefully.’

  Jefferson looked over at the quiet loner. ‘Perhaps the lieutenant can shed some light on it for us?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ the man said.

  ‘Fucking bullshit!’ Cora fumed. ‘What’s the point of having army on the team,’ she gestured at the lieutenant, ‘if he can’t contribute?’

  ‘You know why he’s here,’ Riley said to her as everyone else looked on, ‘deal with it. Now saddle up; we’ve got a shuttle to catch.’

  Everyone filed out of the room and as Cora passed by the lieutenant she said, ‘Fucking
waste of space.’

  The lieutenant glanced up, appearing impervious to the hostility and hard stares of his team-mates as they walked by. He must be used to it, Sarah assumed, following Riley out of the door.

  As they approached the departure lounge – as some liked to call it – each person collected their helmet from a large wall rack, a sign above it reading Alpha Six, their team’s designation. The plethora of other racks surrounding it were empty, indicating they were the last to depart, as Riley had informed them. Sarah had been fitted for the sophisticated headgear a few days previous; she’d also trained on a simulator to get used to all the commands that were available on the inbuilt computer and its optical and audio systems. Riley had told her she wouldn’t need most of the functions the helmet provided, which was a relief, as even the basic communication procedures had been difficult to master.

  Each helmet had seen its fair share of use, with nicks and scrapes adorning the black protective outer shell. As Sarah knew, though, they were each tailor-made for the individual members of the Deep Reach team and as such they each had identifying marks. The person’s first initial followed by a full stop and then their surname adorned the right hand side in white block lettering, while on the front, above the visor, an individual’s call sign was placed. Sarah had been offered a huge array of fonts, colours and formats for her own call sign, which she’d also been able to choose herself. She hadn’t yet seen the finished article, so when she saw her helmet hanging on its hook a thrill of delight and pride ran through her.

  Riley chuckled. ‘Morgan,’ he said, noting her call sign, ‘not very original.’

  Sarah felt embarrassed by her lack of imagination. ‘I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound stupid and self-serving.’

  ‘What like mine?’ He pointed at his own name plastered across the front of his helmet.

  ‘Ace,’ she read, ‘not bad, and I like your picture of the Ace of Spades on the side.’

  He peered over at the other side of her helmet. ‘And your picture is?’

  ‘A white pentagon.’ She angled the helmet so he could see it.

  ‘Interesting choice, does it have any significance?’

  ‘No, I just like the shape,’ she said, feeling lame and cursing herself for even considering putting it on there in the first place. She wanted to be unobtrusive so God only knew what she was thinking when she told the designer to put an image mirroring the shape of her Anakim pendant on the side. In truth, she hadn’t been thinking and the five sided image had just presented itself at the time. She’d been more interested in the helmet’s shape. Two raised strips ran over the top, like two large, flattened ears and it was these elongated nodules which contained the lights, sensors and cameras; the controls of which fed back into the head-up-display, or HUD, on the visor, operated by the wearer’s eye movements and a cluster of command buttons on the outside.

  With her helmet in place, Riley led Sarah and the team out into the massive oval-shaped shuttle bay, overlooked by a large swathe of the Command Centre; its panoramic angled glass windows giving operators a perfect view of the launch platform below. The centre of the floor consisted of a large, thick, oval metal plate which Sarah assumed covered the huge similarly shaped hole beneath. Around the edge eight, fifty foot long, metallic platforms protruded from the flat concrete outer surround.

  Walking on a metal walkway around the edge, the many feet rattling the surface as they went, Team Alpha Six approached one of the platforms. On an unheard command, flashing red and yellow beacons spun into life and sirens wailed out an unpleasant tune as immense machinery ground into action. Before Sarah’s eyes the central metal floor separated out into a star-like pattern, each point sliding back from an ever widening hole in the middle of the room. Eventually, with a resounding boom, the process finished. The floor, now fully retracted, revealed the deep, wide shaft below, its smooth rock sides displaying the eight tracks that bore the air-shuttles down and out into Sanctuary Proper.

  After everyone had assembled atop the raised platform, Sarah watched as more mechanisms whined into action, presenting to the waiting passengers an air-shuttle from beneath. This was the first time Sarah had seen one of the machines and it wasn’t at all like she’d expected. Instead of an enclosed vehicle like a train or even a car, the air-shuttle consisted of a sharp contoured nose cone attached to an open compartment, which housed the seating. Around the chairs a silver skeletal sub-frame held everything together.

  ‘You’re up front with me,’ Riley told Sarah, waving a hand for her to move up to the craft’s first row of seating.

  Four abreast, the chairs ran in rows ten deep. At the rear, two substantial, remote-operated, all-terrain vehicles had been loaded, on top of which durable looking black and chrome crates had been lashed down, carrying essential supplies for their mission. These low-slung, snake-like, multi-wheeled robotic machines, encased in bright yellow metal panels that had seen their fair share of knocks and scrapes, were each fifteen feet long and would be their lifeline out in the dangerous environments that awaited them.

  After stowing their backpacks in an allotted rear compartment they moved to the front of the craft. Declining Riley’s offered hand, Sarah climbed into the air-shuttle, sliding into a snug winged seat. As she rested her head back onto the headrest, an audible click could be heard. Her head was now locked back, allowing only minimal movement up and down and left and right. A small beep emitted in her left ear and the inside of the helmet lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree, ice-blue digital dials and displays buzzing to life as the visor slid down over her face to lock in place.

  An efficient-sounding voice came through her headgear’s internal speakers. ‘This is SED Command. We are a go for shuttle launch in T minus ninety seconds.’

  Sarah’s nerves came to the fore as their imminent departure loomed, an anxiety deep in the pit of her stomach matched only by the rising excitement within her mind at the prospect of her first air-shuttle ride out of the USSB.

  ‘Keep your arms down,’ Riley’s voice said next to her when an odd shaped metal frame swung up from between her legs and wedged against her shoulders and chest, securing her in place.

  She moved her forearms and hands, getting used to the odd sensation of being unable to move the rest of her torso. ‘I can see why they call it the rollercoaster,’ she said, her voice a little shaky.

  Riley gave her a pat on the knee. ‘You haven’t seen anything yet. Just relax – try and enjoy the ride. The front seats provide the best view, but I know many people shut their eyes during their first trip.’

  I don’t like the sound of that, Sarah thought, as the air-shuttle shuddered to sink down through the floor’s thick concrete and into the area she’d seen once before during Riley’s tour. A loud clanking noise filled the air and the shuttle slid to the left before latching onto the twin rails above. In front of her, the track twisted out into the abyss and then sharply down and out of sight.

  A transparent screen raised out of the nearest part of the nosecone, providing a windshield for the journey ahead. Either side of the vehicle, technicians and ground crew went along the rows checking each person was secured in place. The man who checked Sarah’s security bar yanked it backwards and forwards a few times increasing Sarah’s anxiety further.

  ‘Is it supposed to do that?’ Sarah asked the man in concern as the bar moved a couple of inches from her and then back again.

  He grinned. ‘First time?’

  ‘Does it show?’

  ‘Just make sure you don’t bite off your tongue when the rocket fires.’ He tapped her helmet twice and raised his hand above his head. ‘Clear!’ he shouted to a colleague and moved away.

  Sarah felt sick. ‘Rocket? I thought this was an air-shuttle?’

  ‘It’s a series of long drops, climbs and straights,’ Riley said. ‘Some sections need extra speed to navigate the twists and turns. A warning message on your visor will tell you when the boosters are about to be fired. Hold tight
—’ He sounded excited as the air-shuttle crept forwards. ‘Here we go!’

  ‘T minus fifteen seconds to launch,’ SED Command informed them through their helmets.

  Sarah’s visor, tinted around the edges where all the computer displays were located, threw up a red countdown timer in the central clear section where the field of vision was unimpeded.

  The air-shuttle had reached the twist in the track and Sarah’s view spun one hundred and eighty degrees upside down. Her body sagged against the restraints. She hung there, sucked forwards by gravity as they settled into a holding position. Suspended by powerful brakes, the immense sheer drop below now engulfed Sarah’s eye line, the light around the massive oval shaft fading away into a pitch-black hole a hundred yards beneath them.

  The countdown timer sank under ten seconds and SED Command spoke again. ‘T minus seven seconds … five, four, three, two, one – launch.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  A sense of weightlessness stole over Sarah’s body as the brakes released, sending the air-shuttle plummeting into the bowels of the Earth. Despite the front screen, wind ripped at the passengers’ clothing while a speedometer on Sarah’s visor shot up to one hundred and twenty miles an hour in the blink of an eye. Down and down they fell. Small lights flickered on along the shuttle’s interior surfaces and powerful main beams stuttered to life on the nosecone, illuminating the track and tunnel ahead.

  Sarah wondered when the drop would end; the answer soon came as the air-shuttle gained traction on the rails above, the tunnel curving upwards – or was that downwards? Her sense of time and space was fried as they flew onwards. When the tunnel levelled out they slowed, but Sarah could see a disturbing sight ahead; the track twisted out of view as all seven tracks around them diverged. They were soon plunging downwards once more, regaining momentum in freefall, but this time within a much smaller tunnel, increasing the sense of speed tenfold. The rock walls sped by at a dizzying rate. Her head slewed to one side when the tunnel bent left, the turn followed by a series of stomach-churning, three hundred and sixty degree spirals, sending her helmet rattling against its support as they continued to fall.