Roddy said nothing. He nodded once to express his understanding.
Silver leaned forward, elbows and forearms resting on his desk, studying Roddy’s face for signs of distress and reaction. Roddy forced a look of resigned boredom on his features. After a moment, Silver seemed to see whatever he’d been looking for. He sat back in his chair, rubbing his left hand with his right through the always-on gloves, and considered his next words.
“Light, I’m a bit concerned about Deirdre.”
Roddy startled. Silver never expressed concern about anyone. “Oh?”
“She’s been… unfocused of late. When she received my reminder that we needed to meet to discuss our objectives for this trip, she ignored my summons, then arrived late and appeared quite flustered during our discussion. This is… unusual for her.” He glanced at Roddy, a curious look on his face. “Have you any reason to believe the doctors misdiagnosed her?”
Roddy blinked.
In a society still looking to rebuild its population after nearly going extinct a few centuries earlier, cultural norms dictated couples produce many children, bolstering the numbers of the population. Roddy knew there were alternative reasons. The Western Alliance government also wanted increased numbers to augment its military prowess. In polite society, no one dared mention such crude motivations.
In the hours before their marriage and its consummation, Roddy had been informed that his wife had undergone a medical procedure for a rare health issue in her younger years. The procedure saved her life, but doctors declared she’d never bear children. Roddy had been devastated; in this culture, failure to produce descendants would be a badge of dishonor. But he’d stayed with her, and over the course of their marriage, despite their constant efforts to prove otherwise, the medical assessment had proved accurate.
Oswald, in his indirect though unsubtle manner, wanted to know if his daughter’s recent behavioral shifts were explained by an unexpected pregnancy.
In answer to Oswald’s question, Roddy shook his head. “No, sir.”
Privately, he wondered if Deirdre’s infidelity might provide that final proof of the medical diagnosis.
One way or another.
Silver opened his mouth to speak once more, then paused, his eyes turning briefly distant. He frowned and looked at Roddy. “Did you hear something? A thumping noise, perhaps?”
Roddy frowned and listened intently into the silence before shaking his head. “No, sir. I don’t hear anything.”
“Odd,” Silver said. “It sounded like something fell.” He set his hands upon the desk once more, and Roddy noticed how a deeper thump sounded from the man’s right hand than the left, a mystery he’d never solved. “It’s no matter, I suppose.” His face turned serious once more. “Light, regardless of her current mental state, it is imperative that Deirdre join us for this trip. No excuses, no exceptions. I’m making it your responsibility to ensure she’s aboard when we leave. Am I clear?”
Roddy nodded. “Certainly, sir.”
“Dismissed, then. I’ll see you on board in thirty minutes.”
Roddy rose and left the room, taking a deep breath as the door clicked shut behind him.
It was time to face his wife. He didn’t yet know if it would be a meeting or a confrontation.
He took two steps before realizing something was out of place in the reception area.
He looked around, noticing the complete silence before realizing that Audrey wasn’t at her desk. He shrugged. Perhaps the woman had gone to grab a bite to eat.
Roddy walked across the lobby and moved to the door on the opposite side of the building. A palm reader controlled access to what lay beyond the door. Silver had insisted upon this singular variant to the badge reader system in operation throughout the rest of the Diasteel compound. This door provided entry to the most profound of Diasteel’s secrets. Silver didn’t want something as simple or likely as a lost badge to put that secret at risk of exposure.
Roddy put his hand on the reader, feeling the cool surface on his skin, and watched as the screen turned green and the door lock disengaged. He pushed the door open and jogged up the steps, rehearsing his comments to Deirdre. He’d have to play it smooth for now, and confront her when they returned home. He wasn’t sure it was a home now, though, just a shared address.
He swallowed.
He reached the top of the steps and pushed the door open.
The hangar rested upon a mass of Diasteel beams and reinforced concrete, thick enough to prevent the sounds of the secret from reaching the masses below. They’d designed the tower to hide the secret from everyone, everything from the empty floor between Silver’s personal suite and the rest of the building to the artificial cloud machines, all to ensure no one saw what rested before Roddy now.
A flying machine.
To the world, this machine was mere myth. But for Roddy, the myth had been quite real since he’d been introduced to the Special Forces fleet years earlier. He’d learned to fly the craft, soon becoming the most skilled of a minute number of pilots. His skillset meant he’d gotten to do something else most humans had never considered.
Armed military combat.
Water travel was slow and expensive. They could hike across the expanding polar caps, but one could never tell when the ice turned thin, and exposure put soldiers at risk. Invasions, of an offensive or defensive variety, were thus little risk through conventional travel methods.
The air force changed that.
Roddy flew hundreds of missions in his years with the Special Forces, depositing fresh troops on the ground in Eastern territory, picking up the wounded for their often-final return trip. On more than a dozen occasions, he’d come under heavy fire while working with his passengers to remove their supplies from hiding for the flight home. In one case, those he’d come to rescue died in a firefight before he ever got them aboard. He’d watched as they’d exploded from the hits from the explosive weaponry, and had been forced to shoot his way back to his craft and fly in a reckless manner back home.
He’d gotten awards for that one, and he’d thrown them all into the ocean.
When Oswald Silver told him he’d purchased a similar craft for his business travels and asked if he’d run clandestine flights for Diasteel, he’d jumped at the chance. Flying—something he loved—without the unending stream of bullets and death? And a generous paycheck? How could he resist? He’d gotten cruel notes from those left behind, cries of treachery and treason. Many refused to speak to him ever again. Even those who would, like Gambit, reminded him of his “betrayal.” Roddy didn’t care.
Right now, he’d prefer being shot at to facing his wife.
He located the fuel hoses and snapped them to the external tanks, flipping the switches on. The spare tanks were full; he’d topped them off with fresh fuel the day before. As the primary tanks filled, he opened the spare tank holding bays and loaded the tanks aboard. Fifteen minutes later, the craft was ready for takeoff. They’d open the ceiling and soar into the sky overhead, above the true clouds, before setting course and heading for their as-yet-unnamed destination.
Roddy washed his hands free of the fuel, took a deep breath, and walked up the plank into the craft’s interior.
“Deirdre?”
He didn’t get a response.
He called again, walked around the craft, and quickly realized that Deirdre wasn’t there.
Where the hell had she gone?
He had to find her. Silver had made her presence on this craft his responsibility.
He jogged back down the steps to the reception area and frowned.
Audrey hadn’t returned.
He’d never really liked the woman—her constant flirtations alone were sufficient to spark that feeling—but he felt a sense of unease about her situation. Audrey didn’t leave her post like that. He looked at the door and frowned. Were the thirty minutes Oswald had given them provided not for their benefit, but for his?
He winced, took a step, and noticed the a
ltered texture on the carpet. He stepped back and bent down, examining the spot. A stain marred the spot, one still damp. He dabbed a finger into the spot and held it up to his nose. There was no mistaking the combination of scent and texture.
Blood.
Fresh blood.
He felt a chill run down his spine as his eyes fell upon the unmanned reception desk and he remembered the thumping noise Oswald Silver had heard. Roddy sprinted to the desk and peered over the side, his heart in his throat.
Audrey lay prone on the ground, her eyes wide and lifeless, blood streaming from a gaping hole in her chest where her heart had once been.
His remorse turned to fury.
He glanced in the direction of Oswald Silver’s office, and made his decision.
Deirdre had cheated on him. She’d fought her father in relation to going on an apparently essential business trip. And now she’d shot and killed her father’s receptionist and lover dead in cold blood.
To hell with Oswald Silver’s demands.
He was leaving Deirdre behind on this trip, not caring if that decision might leave him fired or dead, because at the moment he had no idea if he could see her cheating, murdering face without killing her.
He stared at Audrey’s body, an idea forming. Audrey would help him pull off the ruse until it was too late for Oswald to change his plans.
—————
SHEILA CLARKE
—————
…the myth of the ancients developing powered flight has spawned other myths… some stories claim flying weapons carried bombs from distant lands to impact targets with startling accuracy…
The History of the Western Alliance, page 3,008
THE EXPLOSION KNOCKED HER FROM the General’s grasp and threw her off his back. Sheila managed to land on her feet with a cat-like dexterity she’d never before demonstrated. She had little time to marvel over her feat. The General had lost his balance and fell, and in what she considered a shameful instinct, she sprang aside, rather than trying to catch him.
He slammed into the metal stairs and rolled once before bracing himself with his feet and seizing one of the steps and looking up.
Sheila felt that move trumped her perfect landing and stared at the General. The collision with the stairs ought to have stunned him, even cracked a vertebra, and yet he seemed unfazed. The wild look in his eyes told her he’d not forgotten his dire warnings of some unknown calamity about to unleash because of that mold—he’d called it Ravagers—and the explosion just ended.
Jamison sprang at her.
She backed against the railing and snaked her arms through. “If you pick me up now, you’ll break both of my arms. Are you willing to do that?”
He stared at her, and then looked down the steps. “If necessary to save your life? Yes. Broken bones heal.”
She gripped her shirt, hoping he didn’t mean it. She needed answers, even at the expense of a broken arm. “Tell me, Mr. Jamison. What does that mold do? Why are you willing to execute a self-destruct sequence against our friends?”
He glanced down the steps once more, fear in his eyes, and she could see the calculation in his head. He was trying to figure out how long he’d humor her stubbornness. “It’s not mold, Sheila. It’s a machine. They’re machines. They’re all incredibly small, but they’re still robots with computer minds and the ability to do a specific task.”
Robots? He had to be kidding. “No robot would look like mold. And what could it possibly do?”
His exasperation grew. She knew it was important for him that she understand, but his face and previous actions made clear he wasn’t above winning the argument by brute force if necessary. “Think of cancer cells. Incredibly small. They do one thing well in that they find healthy cells and destroy them. Imagine a machine that was like a cancer cell, that was programmed to find a specific kind of cell and destroy it.”
“So…” She paused, her mind racing. “The mold is a cancer cell?”
“The mold is the equivalent of pulling the cancer cells of every person who ever died of the disease out of their bodies and throwing them in that tank. But those machines—they aren’t living cells, Sheila, they’re machines called Ravagers—they don’t do something like cancer cells. They do something far, far worse.”
She thought back. “They… destroy buildings?”
“That’s a symptom. The equivalent of the healthy human cell for the Ravagers is the physical bonds of cells. With some coded exceptions. They seek them out and destroy them.”
She tried to make sense of it. She couldn’t remember her science classes, but remembered that individual cells at the element level would bond to each other to make large batches of those elements. Elements could bond with other elements to make new materials like air or water.
Which meant if those machines destroyed the bonds…
They’d destroy all matter. Buildings, roads, people, plants, wildlife…
“That’s… impossible.” She whispered. “Isn’t it?”
“I wish it were,” he replied. “The coding as I last knew it exempted air and water and possibly one other substance.”
“Diasteel?” It made sense, then, why he’d wanted to get the material in the Diasteel tank immediately.
He nodded.
“But you can outrun it, right?” She’d moved back to problem solving mode, seeking the weakness. “That mold down there. It can only move so fast. You could get in a ground car and drive far away.”
His face fell. “That was the weakness.” He shook his head, his eyes glancing down the stairs once more. “But they’d figured out how to address that problem. That was the message meant for me in leaving behind that little stash of Ravagers yesterday. There’s no scarcity issue now.”
“But then—”
His eyes flicked down the stairs once more and she saw the transformation take place. She looked down the stairs herself, down toward the door guarding the room they’d left just minutes before.
The wall below seemed to pulse, as if melting, and the thick concrete drooped toward the floor, taking on the appearance of the mold in the tank. The Diasteel door remained unblemished, but fell to the ground with no support structure.
The mold had—no, the machines—the Ravagers had… but… that couldn’t be possible. Could it?
As she watched, Jamison pounced, unwrapped her arms, and threw her over his shoulder.
She didn’t protest this time as he sprinted toward the door, too preoccupied with the idea that this horrible weapon appeared to be breeding before her eyes.
Jamison sprinted up the steps three at a time without slowing down. He reached the door, and she could hear him undoing locks as she watched the Ravagers ooze slowly toward the stairwell. She realized now the futility of her earlier statement. Yes, you could outrun the machines for a time. But if it destroyed everything in its path and multiplied, you’d run out of places to hide.
They burst into the sunlight and he set her down before shutting the door behind them. “Like that will stop anything,” he muttered.
He turned to face her. “Let’s go. We need to get far away from here before the self-destruct occurs.” He sprinted away, and she had little choice but to follow, blinking in the bright sunlight, feeling her boots crunch the gravel on the path they’d found.
She remembered it now, the self-destruction of the Bunker he’d ordered. “He thinks it will neutralize the Ravagers inside. Stop them from spreading.” She felt a tear trickle down her cheek. It was an awful burden he’d shouldered, knowledge of this terrible weapon, and a more terrible burden to know he might one day need to destroy his workspace with his employees still inside. But she could see what he meant. They’d built the Bunker for secrecy; entry and exit were through a mechanism capable of only moving one person at a time in or out. They might—might—have saved one life if they’d sounded the alarm. The rest would die in a mass panic, perhaps crushed and trampled by frantic personnel desperate to escape the horror rising from
below. In many ways, she thought, the self-destruct, if instant, would be a mercy killing.
She frowned. Something wasn’t right, though. Her pace slowed just a bit.
“Micah! Stop for a second!”
He stopped and turned around, concern on his face. She realized he thought she was winded and needed a break. “Are you okay?”
“There’s a swarm of killer miniature robots after me, but nothing I can’t handle.”
He offered a faint smile.
“I have a question. The self-destruct mechanism is a bomb, correct?”
He nodded.
“And the idea is that the bomb and the self-destruct would destroy the Ravagers inside the Bunker and prevent them from spreading?”
He nodded again. “Correct.” He glanced up. “The bombs should be there shortly.”
Why had he looked up for a bomb? Odd. “But… if that’s the case… why didn’t the first bomb destroy them?”
He hesitated. It wasn’t much. But suddenly she knew.
He’d known about the machines all along but told no one. He’d brought them to the Bunker because he’d known Diasteel would restrain them, save for a bomb specifically designed to destroy the indestructible material. He’d taken time to offer leisurely explanations of how someone had broken into his office and stolen his badge before “realizing” that person had gone to plant just such a bomb below. And yet somehow he’d known that a bomb that could decimate a tank supposedly able to restrain this awful weapon wouldn’t destroy material inside, but activate it from sleep to activity.
Bombs didn’t destroy the material.
Bombs only destroyed the walls constraining the Ravagers.
“You’ve been in on it the whole time,” she whispered, feeling her face flush. “Everything you’ve done has brought us to this moment, just like you knew it would.”
The Ravagers Box Set: Episodes 1-3 Page 13