Unfathomed (The Locus Series Book 1)

by Ralph Kern

  ***

  “Time elapsed three minutes, altitude is now thirty km, down range six km, and we are at Mach 1.6. Beautiful!” Donovan cried out. “We have good chamber pressure in the one oh four. Temperature is looking good. Everything is on the button.”

  ***

  Mark 104 duel-thrust booster took the small missile higher, the curvature of the Earth becoming more and more pronounced as the missile rose. The deafening roar of the engine had stopped far below. Now the missile was racing upwards soundlessly as the air thinned. It wasn’t in space yet, but it was a good portion of the way there.

  The missile streaked ever higher, spearing through the mesosphere and then thermosphere. Finally, it reached space.

  ***

  “Stage two separation... Now!” Donovan cried out as he checked his console. “Altitude ninety km, down range fifteen km. We are at Mach 7.1.”

  ***

  The cylinder of the Mark 101 engine seemed to drift away from the rear of the missile, falling below slightly before being incinerated by the much smaller third-stage rocket engine erupting into life. The now far-lighter missile head streaked upward at an even more furious rate of acceleration, unencumbered by the rest of the rocket.

  ***

  “Altitude five hundred km, ma’am. We’re leaving the International Space Station far behind now. Down range fifty km and we are at Mach 12.8. Ts and Ps are still good. Standby.” An urgent beeping came from Donovan’s console. He frowned, quickly tapping away at his keyboard. “Looks like the guidance system is interrogating the Ignatius about why it isn’t receiving information on a target and it’s counting down for a self-destruct.”

  A single bead of sweat trickled down Donovan’s cheek as he frantically worked at his console. After a moment he gave a sigh of relief as the beeping stopped. “Self-destruct canceled.” Donovan glanced briefly at Slater. “Apologies, Ma’am. Must have missed a fail-safe. We’re looking good now.”

  ***

  The engine throttled down and the flame torch flickered to nothing. With the release of more explosive bolts, the final stage was left to begin its long fall to the surface seven hundred km below. The pointed nose cone popped off and tumbled away, releasing the tiny LEAP. The monopropellant thrusters began firing on the LEAP, lances of white-hot flame burning to keep the projectile on course.

  ***

  “The LEAP has been released, ma’am. It will begin its rotation shortly. It’ll continue straight up ballistically until we reach around nine hundred km, then it will begin coming down. We didn’t program for higher than that as we may lose the data-link without battle-space support.”

  ***

  The small drum that was the LEAP continued to fire its thrusters in short, violent spurts, turning the seeker head back toward the Earth.

  Even from more than twice the altitude which the ISS orbited, the Earth was huge, filling the sky. The vast ball of green, blues, yellows, and whites drifted in front of the camera as the LEAP rotated.

  As if designed for the purpose from scratch, the camera started taking its pictures and squeezed the images down the datalink to the ship far below.

  ***

  “Datalink is holding... we’re getting the first image come through,” Donovan shouted.

  On one of the large screens, a picture began to appear, thin line by thin line, like an image being downloaded on an exceptionally slow internet connection.

  “Well done, you two, well done,” Slater murmured as the image slowly loaded itself onto the screen with painstaking slowness.

  “We are now at nine hundred km, and beginning to fall back. Datalink is weakening but holding as we expected. Just a waiting game now, ma’am.

  The image filtered down slowly but surely, then another, then another.

  Mack looked at the display closely. Her eyes were practiced at picking at small and subtle details from far above, a skill that she had cultivated in her long years as a pilot... a skill which she didn’t now need. What was before her on the screen was so obvious. And so terrifying.

  “Oh shit,” Mack whispered.

  Chapter 34 – Day 14

  “That’s a lot of ships,” Davey said. “I’ve never seen them all together at once.”

  “That’s everything we have,” Bautista replied. The two men were on the bridge of the Liliana, surveying the ragtag fleet which had assembled around the Titan.

  There was a mix of everything from the graceful lines of island hopper ferries to dirty, workman-like fishing trawlers, and every kind of craft between. Twenty in total.

  “If Ignatius can still fight, we’re going to lose them all,” Davey murmured. “That helicopter’s going to be bad enough, but that warship will rip us all apart.”

  “Karl’s last message said he’d managed it,” Bautista said with more confidence than he felt. “We’ll be fine.”

  The Liliana sailed in closer to the Titan, the flagship of what was now an armada.

  ***

  “This can’t be,” Solberg said in disbelief as he stared at the CIC master screen. “What the hell has happened?”

  The best image they had was on the display. Much of it was obscured by roiling masses of white cloud, but enough was uncovered to show the major landmasses.

  A large section of the North and South American eastern coasts were visible and recognizable, yet they were folded in toward each other as if they were a mouth closing on Nest Island’s location. Both continents were much farther west than they should have been.

  Most features on the mainland had changed. The peninsula of Florida was half of its original size, only a stumpy central spine visible. The coastlines were all different as well, with strange new bays and protrusions of land. It was only the overall shape which was roughly the same.

  “Nothing could have done this.” Slater looked intently at the display, her voice tight but controlled. “There are no weapons in the inventory which could come close.”

  “Well, something did,” Solberg whispered.

  “Could that polar shift have anything to do with this?” Slater glanced at Laurie.

  Laurie swallowed before shaking her head. “No, that would just effect the orientation of the poles, I can’t see how it would have done anything physical to the... to the geography.”

  “Something is starting to make sense, though,” Kendricks said slowly, forming the words carefully as his mind processed what he was seeing.

  “Pray tell,” Solberg didn’t even look at him, just carried on focusing on the display.

  “Continental drift. Every continent moves slowly, right?”

  “Yes,” Laurie said. She moved over to stand before the screen, regarding it carefully. “But that’s a slow movement. Tiny. I think it’s something like a few centimeters a year.”

  “Yeah, but think about it. We’re getting all kinds of temporal weirdness here. We have ships in this region that have appeared years before others. What if we’ve somehow gone backward or forward in time. That would explain,” Kendricks paused then gestured at the screen. “This.”

  “That is ridiculous,” Solberg said, without his usual fire. “How the hell would that happen? You’re talking like we’ve dropped down some kind of... some kind of time hole.”

  Those in the room could only shrug.

  ***

  The ships and boats of the fleet had clustered around the huge flagship, Titan. As one, they came about and began to sail in the direction of the fiery setting sun.

  Chapter 35 – Day 15

  “Passengers and crew,” Solberg swallowed, his voice catching. He lowered the microphone to his waist and cleared his throat, looking over the collected mass of people gathered in the promenade. How am I to tell them, when not even I understand? Bringing the microphone to his lips again, he started speaking again, “Passengers and crew. Yesterday, as you saw, the USS Paul Ignatius launched one of its missiles with the express purpose of using it to map the area. We have the results of that now.”

  There was s
ilence across the promenade. Thousands of people just looking at Lars Solberg. He slowly turned around on the span, to address the people behind him.

  “We have spent the time since trying to process what we have seen, to understand it. What the missile showed was that...” Solberg paused again. “It shows that the world is not as we know it.”

  A murmur washed over the crowd. Everyone looked at him intently.

  “The world has changed. The continents have moved, that is why we were lost.”

  “How?” a voice shouted out of the crowd. A single spokesman for the thousands clustered down in the promenade.

  “We don’t know,” Solberg could only hold up his hands at the torrent of noise that responded to him. The anger and fear was palpable.

  Slowly, over long minutes while Solberg held his arms up, trying to placate them, the noise subsided, with one last cry of, “And what about our families?” ringing out.

  “We don’t know,” Solberg repeated. “But what we do know is that we are safe on board the Atlantica. We have the protection of the United States Navy and we will do our utmost to get you all home. And I do promise you that, that we will get you home.”

  Solberg lowered the microphone again, more aware than ever the promise he had just made, he might not be able to keep.

  ***

  “We need an objective; a light at the end of the tunnel, whatever you want to call it,” Reynolds said. He was seated at the head of the table in the conference room. It had been a subtle shift of power, the two senior captains deferring to the older man’s presence.

  “And what do you propose?” Slater asked, tapping her pen lightly on the table edge.

  “There are two obvious ones,” Reynolds said. With a groan, he stood and went to the screen, displaying the map of the now-strange world. He pointed at the distant coast of America, what would have been the Eastern Seaboard before the jaws of the two continents had started to close. “Somewhere along here are three major cities—New York, Philadelphia, and Washington—or where they should roughly be, anyway. With the clear and obvious... flooding that has occurred upon the Floridian peninsula, they would be the best bet for some kind of survivors of this catastrophe. They are certainly the closest major cities to our current location.”

  “If we go by Liam’s hypothesis though, those cities might not even be there anymore, or not exist yet,” Slater said quietly. “Whichever way we are looking at, they won’t be there.”

  “Maybe, but then it is certainly something we need to discover, and sooner rather than later.”

  “You said two obvious objectives?” Kendricks asked.

  “Yes, the second one is that in a couple of weeks this locus, whatever that may be, will appear. That may be our only chance of establishing just what has happened.”

  Slater regarded the map with her cool blue eyes. After a moment she began speaking, “We are extremely limited by our current fuel loads. While Atlantica can make the journey to the Eastern Seaboard, or the Southeastern Seaboard as it now is and back, unless she is willing to offload a substantial portion of fuel to the Ignatius, we cannot. Bottom line though, if we go in convoy, once we make for the States, we are going to be stuck there.”

  “Exactly,” Reynolds nodded. “That is why that, although the temptation is to make straight for the mainland, we need to resist it. The most efficient use of our supplies would be to remain here until we can investigate this locus and then, if need be, we can push on to the U.S.”

  “But we do have another concern.” Solberg had been subdued, depressed even since the first pictures from the LEAP had come in, his usual cutting nature diminished. “Food. We are using it up at a far faster rate than we can replenish. Even with those work parties we sent. We aren’t going to get anything close to a substantial crop for weeks.”

  Reynolds leaned back and looked across the table. The most critical issue was feeding the thousands aboard the Atlantica and the hundreds on Nest Island, and there was no easy solution. There was a supply and demand problem that simply couldn’t be closed.

  “The two fishing trawlers we have are working overtime,” Slater said. “They are the only way of even beginning to stem that particular tide. But yes, we’re going to have to hope that either this locus is able to return us, or when we reach the coast we can find food, no matter what condition the country is in.”

  “And what condition is the country going to be in?” Solberg waved his hand at the map display on the conference table. “Even if everyone came through this event with us, then the damage to the infrastructure will be immense.”

  “A good point,” Reynolds agreed. “There is the very real possibility that even with our current logistical problems, we might face the prospect of being in far better shape than anyone on the coast.”

  “My first instinct,” Slater said slowly, “is that we have to consider what relief we may be able to offer. But then the practical side of me says—”

  “That we have no relief to offer,” Reynolds interrupted. “Heather, the thought we may not be able to help anyone is painful to you. I know this, because that is my feeling too. But what is the cardinal rule of first aid?”

  “Don’t become a casualty yourself,” Slater said quietly.

  “Exactly. If there are survivors, we should—no must—help them. But we have to do it in the most effective way. We will assess when we get there and render aid in a controlled manner.”

  “If we are able to,” Solberg said pointedly. “We are going to have no food to offer.”

  “If we are able to,” Reynolds repeated.

  Chapter 36 – Day 15

  “One, two, three, four...” Jack counted the small plastic boxes on the security room table, each containing one hundred rounds of 9mm Parabellum ammunition, tapping them with his pen nib as if to confirm their existence.

  Satisfying himself, he put a tick on his clipboard which contained a list of what he was taking to the island. There wasn’t nearly enough ammunition to do a full range day, but he wanted his security recruits at least to be refreshed on firing an actual weapon. He was willing to let them use a few rounds for training.

  Walking over to the armory itself, Jack unlocked the door with the two keys he now had possession of and began counting out the handguns.

  “Hey,” he heard from behind him.

  Turning, he gave a smile as he saw Laurie stood in the doorway of the office. “You’re not supposed to be allowed in here.”

  “I used my feminine wiles.” She returned his smile as she came in to the room.

  “I really need to have a word with security if just a pretty face is getting you past them,” he said in a joking manner. And I actually do as well. This is just the kind of thing that needs to stop. Still, it’s good to see her. Jack gestured at one of the chairs. “Take a seat.”

  Sitting down, Laurie glanced over the table full of ammunition boxes and cleaning kits. “So you’re going to be training these guys commando-style?”

  “I wish. But no. They all have firearms experience. I just need to get them shooting again, and make sure there’s no ‘Walter Mitty’ types who have been exaggerating about their experience.”

  “Yeah, I imagine there might be more than one of them.” She picked up one of the ammunition boxes and gave it an experimental rattle, hearing the noise from within.

  “Any more news?”

  “No,” Laurie sighed, placing the box down. “Not yet. People are scared but there are just no answers to give them. We’ll make for the locus, and if whatever is there can help us, then hopefully we are going home, otherwise...” She trailed off, giving a helpless shrug.

  Turning back to what he was doing, Jack opened one of the black foam-lined plastic cases, and began clearing the handguns in a deft, confident manner and placed them carefully within.

  He heard a sniff from behind and looked back, and saw Laurie cupping her face, her shoulders rocking. Pausing, he didn’t know what to do. Her behavior was a stark contrast to her
sunny demeanor of a few seconds ago.

  Hesitantly, he approached, then stood over her and lay a hand on her shoulder. She leaned into him, her cheek buried in his stomach as she began sobbing.

  He began stroking her hair, making cooing noises. “It’s okay. We’ll be okay.”

  Pulling back, she looked at him, her eyes red. “It won’t be. You haven’t seen it. Everything’s changed. Everything! And we’re trapped and we’re not going home. There’s bloody pirates trying to take over the ship given half a chance, and assuming we survive them, we’re either going to slowly starve to death or end up drifting without fuel. How can we be okay?”

  Awkwardly bending his prosthetic leg with his hand, Jack knelt next to Laurie so he was looking her in the eyes. “It will be. We’ve got a warship to protect us and we have a destination. Let’s not write ourselves off before we’ve exhausted those options.”

  “How can you be so fucking calm all the time?” she snapped.

  “You just need to break big problems down to little problems, then kick their asses.” Jack replied, taking her hands in his. “Take my... problem from a few months ago. I lose a leg? That’s a big problem. I need to figure out how to walk again? That’s another big problem... but if I can overcome that, then I overcome the problem of having only one leg. And how do you walk?”

  “By taking steps.”

  “By taking steps,” Jack nodded. “Pretty small, uncertain steps at first, but gradually getting bigger. Eventually, after a while, you get to be able to run again. Then all of a sudden, the lack of a leg isn’t so big a problem anymore.”

  Laurie looked at him for a moment before giving a sniff. “And what’s the next problem to overcome on that front, Jack?”

  Jack looked down. “I don’t know. I don’t think there are any more stages. I can run, can’t I?”

  “I think there is. I think you need to accept what everyone else here already does.”