Unfathomed (The Locus Series Book 1)

by Ralph Kern

  ***

  Grayson watched the Seahawk circle him, expecting at any moment a stream of hot tungsten to riddle the lifeboat. For whatever reason the helicopter was holding off, postponing a quick but bloody end.

  “Come on, come on,” Grayson muttered, glancing back down to the horizon, trying to pick the Liliana out. The column of cloud seemed to have lost integrity completely, the whole thing tilting away to one side as streamers of mist gently flowed off it.

  Finally, he saw the white shape of the Liliana heading toward the lifeboat. Within minutes he had pulled alongside, and Grayson unbuckled himself and clambered around the seats within the mega lifeboat to the entry hatch.

  As he reached it, it sprang open.

  “Welcome back to the fleet,” a familiar voice said as a hand reached down.

  Grayson took hold of it and felt himself being hauled up.

  “Jesus, Urbano, you look like shit.” Grayson saw the closest thing he had to a friend in this godforsaken region. His face was covered in cuts and his left arm was bandaged. It was his eyes which were the most different. They had a look that Grayson recognized from his old life. The thousand-yard stare, they called it. The eyes of someone who had had enough fighting. Someone who was battle weary and just wanted out.

  “And you,” Bautista regarded Grayson up and down with those distant eyes, “look like you’ve been eating well.”

  “Get me back to Kristen and James, Urbano.” Grayson started climbing up the rope ladder to Liliana’s deck.

  “There might be a problem with that.”

  Grayson paused and said through gritted teeth, “This better be good.”

  Chapter 64 – Day 24

  “I still don’t like this,” Slater said quietly to the others. “Perry has orders to smash every ship he can if this goes south.”

  The RIB roared toward the Osiris, the spray washing over those on board—Slater, Kendricks, and Reynolds.

  “A good fallback, but this needs to end, Heather,” Reynolds replied, huddling into his wax jacket.

  “Maybe,” Slater looked at the growing superyacht. The RIB curved around to the stern, finally closing on the platform lowered in preparation to greet them.

  ***

  The conference room was, again, even more palatial than anything that Atlantica could offer. On one side was Vaughan, wincing in pain, his arm in a sling from the gunshot to his shoulder. Next to him was Jack and Laurie.

  As Reynolds entered, Laurie flew at him. Automatically the old man wrapped his arms around his daughter, hugging her so tightly the breath was squeezed out of her.

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” Reynolds asked, his voice muffled as he spoke into her shoulder.

  Drawing herself back, Laurie said, “I’m fine, daddy.”

  “You’re the one who spoke on the radio?” Vaughan asked with a wry grin. “You must be fairly senior. Typical. If I’d known she was your daughter... Anyway, well played, my dear.”

  “You shut the hell up,” Reynolds barked, pointing his finger at the smug-looking man.

  “John,” Kendricks laid a restraining hand on Reynolds’s shoulder. “Let’s find out why we’re here.”

  Glaring at Vaughan, Reynolds finally gave a nod and seated himself at the table.

  For a long moment, the whole room was silent, everyone ignoring the rich assortment of canapés and drinks on the sideboard. Surrounding them on the wall was artwork which seemed expensive. Given the opulence of the surroundings, it didn’t seem like it would be fake.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?” Kendricks said pointedly at Vaughan.

  Giving a sharp hiss as he shifted himself to look back at Atlantica’s captain, Vaughan asked, “What does?”

  “Being shot in the arm. The doctor says I’ll be suffering for the rest of my life from my own little mishap. “I’ll probably have all kinds of aches and pains going on.”

  “I don—” Vaughan started. The door opened and Bautista entered. The athletic man moved around the table and prowled to a free chair. Vaughan stared daggers at the man. “You. Running off like that, you little shit.”

  “Oh shut—” Bautista started to say.

  Again they were interrupted as another man walked in. He was silver haired, wearing a navy polo shirt. He was known to many in the room. Conrad Wakefield, billionaire technology magnate and venture capitalist. A man who was known to have his fingers in so many pies that he probably didn’t even know where half his wealth came from.

  “So,” Wakefield said as walked to the sideboard and looked at it for a moment. Selecting an apple, he crunched down on it before making his way to sit at the head of the table, still chewing. Finally swallowing his mouthful, he casually leaned back in a chair. “Why the hell are you guys shooting at each other?”

  “Perhaps,” Slater’s voice was icy cold, “you can tell us?”

  “Perhaps I can,” Wakefield smiled, his casual demeanor fooling no one in the room. The burning intelligence in his eyes was too intense. “I’m Conrad Wakefield, you may have se—”

  “We know who you are,” Slater interjected in a frosty voice. “What we want to know is what the hell is going on here?”

  “Very well, but it is a bit of a long story. Everyone eaten?” Wakefield gestured at the sideboard. “No? Okay.”

  “Cut the bullshit,” Vaughan snapped.

  “Business before banter, huh?” Wakefield looked around the room, and was greeted with icy silence. He gave a shrug. “As you wish. Tell me, what do you know about the Permian-Triassic event?”

  The frost didn’t thaw, but frowns of confusion creased the foreheads of several in the room.

  “It was one of several large extinction events,” Laurie spoke slowly. “Not the dinosaur one. Another, but beyond that my knowledge is a little lacking.”

  “That’s right,” Wakefield nodded. “In fact, it was far more serious than the Cretaceous-Paleogene event you are referring to. Actually, out of the six major extinction events, the one that took out the dinosaurs was one of the least destructive to Earth’s species overall. That one merely wiped out seventy-five percent of all life. No the P-Tr event was a touch more serious, taking out something in the region of ninety-six percent of marine life, and seventy percent of the terrestrial species.”

  “Mr. Wakefield, I must admit, I love the film Jurassic Park, but I’m failing to see the point in the history lesson,” Vaughan said.

  “The point, kinda, is that the K-Pg event would have been a hell of an inconvenience to humanity, on a species level, but it would probably have muddled through, considering our technology, in some form. For the P-Tr? Well, the best theory is that one was in fact multiple extinction events hitting the Earth at once. If the human race had been around during the P-Tr, we would be gone, kaput, exterminated. There’s no point in preparing for it, as we can’t do anything about it.” Wakefield took another bite of his apple, crunching away on it, seeming to think about his next few words. “And, if we can’t do anything about it, what is the point in telling anyone it’s coming?”

  The room was silent as the people gathered in it paid rapt attention to Wakefield. Kendricks could feel a sense of dread in the base of his stomach. He knew that Wakefield had a point he was meandering to, but the only resolution that seemed logical, was also unthinkable in its implications.

  “In 2012, the Siding Spring Observatory was the only program dedicated to tracking killer comets and asteroids. They had tracked something coming in, a beast of a comet called C/2012 E2,” Wakefield gave a wave of his hand. “Those numbers mean something. C says it’s a non-periodic comet, 2012 that it was discovered in 2012, E that it was found in the first half of March and 2 that it was the second to be found in that time period. The catchier name for C/2012 E2 was Perses, the Titan god of destruction, no relation to your little tub out there. It was called that as it was heading right for us.”

  “How...” Kendricks started, then rallied himself. “How could they keep that quiet? How long do we have?”
/>
  “This worried people... people in high-up places.” Wakefield ignored him. “So they devoted a lot of time and effort into figuring out what was going to happen, and how to stop it. The problem was, there is no stopping a twenty-mile-wide ball of rock and ice coming at high speed. What they did find though was worse, far worse. The location of where it was going to come down. The Pacific Ocean, just to the west of mainland America. Only that created whole new problems. By the scientists’ best estimates, it would set off the Yellowstone Caldera. So get this, much like the P-Tr event, we would have not one, but two extinction-level events to face. Humanity might have staved off one of them, though we likely would have been blasted back to the Stone Age. Without a doubt, America would be gone, it would simply cease to be, but other redoubts of humanity might have survived. But two? Not a chance. By the best estimates, we were looking at a ninety percent extinction level.”

  “Ninety percent? Only one in ten people would survive?” Kendricks said in disbelief.

  “No,” Laurie said quietly. “He’s saying ninety percent of everything living would die.”

  “That’s right, little lady.” Wakefield nodded. “And humanity, being a higher lifeform, would have been pretty much on the top of the list to go first.”

  “So how do we stop it?” Slater said.

  Jesus, Kendricks thought in admiration. She’s heard that and all she can think of is defeating the problem. So that’s how someone gets to be commander of a warship.

  “I told you. There is no stopping it,” Wakefield said. “Don’t get me wrong, a number of programs were instituted and discarded. In top secrecy, NASA tried to come out with a solution—and came up blank. So then it becomes a matter of survival, and let me tell you, there were some pretty hair-brained schemes. Assuming that elements survived the initial impact and eruption, the surface of the Earth would be uninhabitable for dozens of years until the dust and crap settled out of the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the world would be thrust into subzero temperatures as all sunlight would be blocked out, killing most of the surface animals and life. Sea life would take a massive hit.”

  “So what are these hair-brained schemes you refer to?” Vaughan said, before giving a sharp, pain-laced intake of breath.

  “The American government had given up. No one else knew, but a... collective managed to get wind of what was going on through their own confidential sources. A number of projects were instituted. The most glamourous? A scheme to colonize Mars under the guise of a competition. Actually the competition was a little less random than it seemed. One hundred people were selected who would have the genetic diversity and frankly skills to start again on Mars. Problem is, no one had the technology to do it. Nevertheless, the last time I checked in, they were still tinkering away, trying to get the first load up by 2035. Seemed like a dead end to me though, quite literally. One hundred people on a barren world with no support from Earth? Hell, even if they did survive the journey, they’d be dead within a couple of years. There were a few other schemes. Desperately creating shelters, which would mean humans would spend decades underground, hibernation crèches where people could somehow be preserved. None of them were viable for the time we were talking.”

  “You had a plan though, didn’t you?” Kendricks said.

  “I did, with the help of some people far brainier than I. The Large Hadron Collider beneath France and Switzerland discovered something very interesting. The Higgs Boson. The so-called ‘God Particle’. That thing was fantastic, had all kinds of interesting properties, but that’s not what was truly exciting. When a Higgs Boson is created, something called a ‘Higgs Singlet’ pops into existence as well. These things are temporally unbound, in other words, they can travel in time. With some modification, we figured we could stream these as a beam capable of passing through the Earth itself. When that beam hits a suitable receiver, one of which I happen to have in the back,” Wakefield gestured over his shoulder with his thumb, “then it would shift the surrounding area forward in time. And there came our plan, to sidestep the extinction event by passing it and coming through on the other end, when the Earth had repaired itself.

  “I don’t understand though. Surely if something travels around in time, we will just end up floating in space,” Laurie said, a confused expression on her face. “I mean, while the object travels in time, the Earth would still carry on spinning around the sun.”

  “You are a smart cookie.” Wakefield seemed genuinely pleased with her. “Can I hire you?”

  “We’ll see,” Laurie retorted.

  “The LHC itself would act as an anchor, effectively locking us to the mass of the Earth. There was some risk—what if the sea level rose or lowered significantly? Frankly it was a gamble, but better than the alternative. But this was also the reason why we needed to target only craft on the sea, and in areas where continental drift wouldn’t mean that anything that popped through didn’t get trapped in the middle of a mountain range or some equally grim end.”

  “Mister Wakefield,” Slater said coldly. “You haven’t said it explicitly yet. I need you to, and right now. Are you saying you’ve sent us into the past or future?”

  “Yes, Commander. Welcome to the year 10002024 AD,” Wakefield said each number individually, counting the zeros out on his fingers. “Or thereabouts. 10 million years in the future. The nature of the Higgs Singlet didn’t give us a lot of choice in when we would pop back into the world; we couldn’t fine tune it closely enough to actually pick what point in the future. It was to here or nowhen.”

  “My...” Slater’s voice cracked finally, her bottom lip giving the slightest of wobbles. “I have a daughter. How long...? When did Perses hit?”

  Wakefield leaned across the table and grasped the top of her hand. Slater quickly drew it back, as if the billionaire’s touch was burning hot.

  “She would have had years,” Wakefield said quietly. “Twenty of them. And when it happened, they were going to keep it secret. When Perses was visible in the sky, they would have given disinformation that it was going to fly past and harm no one. It would have been over in a blink. No pain. She wouldn’t have suffered.”

  “Send us back,” Slater shouted, causing everyone in the room to jump. “I want to go back to her. I want to be with her.”

  “I can’t,” Wakefield’s cockiness had disappeared in an instant. “This was a one-way trip. Your ships, all of them, were just caught on the outer edges of the Singlet beam. You got pulled through in our wake which, due to the rather bizarre nature of the beam, meant you came through first. That’s all by design, I might add. We wanted to save as many as we could.”

  The room was silent except for the crunching as Wakefield took another bite of his apple.

  “Are there others?” Kendricks asked after a long moment. “Other loci, I mean.”

  “If you mean by loci, the beams?”

  Kendricks nodded.

  “Yes, a few. The LHC was set to target a number of areas around the world. We needed to give ourselves as good a chance as we could that we would save... enclaves of humanity.”

  “So, what is your plan now?” Reynolds finally asked.

  Wakefield looked at Reynolds for a long moment. “I’m sure you can figure that out. We start again.”

  Chapter 65 – Day 24

  Night had fallen. The soft twinkle of stars glistened down on the gathered ships. Wakefield had wisely chosen to withdraw, allowing the two factions to ruminate, and then negotiate.

  “This has to stop,” Reynolds made the first overture. “This conflict. Things have changed now and irreversibly so. If we are to survive, all of us, it is only going to be together.”

  “No,” Slater slammed her fist into the table. She stood and leaned over the table, seeming to grow in stature. “My ship was attacked, your ship was attacked. Our people are dead. There will be no ceasefire. I’m not in the business of negotiating with either terrorists or pirates.”

  “Heather.” Kendricks reached over and gripped her arm
, gently but firmly. “Your business has changed, all of ours has. We lost people, too.”

  “We all did,” Bautista’s voice was soft. “But are we going to carry on losing people? Good people? People who have families, like your passengers, like our community?”

  “They are right, Heather,” Reynolds pressed. “Both sides in this conflict have inflicted losses. We need to broker a truce at the least, an accord at the best.”

  “Then I demand reparations,” Slater said. “Under my authority as the senior officer, I am going to try and convict the leaders of your fleet. At the very least that includes you, Vaughan, Bautista here, and that treacherous piece of shit, Karl Grayson.”

  “I think we can all agree that Grayson needs to be hung by the yardarm,” Kendricks said with uncharacteristic venom. “He killed one of my crew, and sabotaged the Ignatius.”

  Jack nodded in agreement.

  “The way I see it, we have the most significant resource in the region... in the world.” Vaughan smiled condescendingly. “We have a tanker full of oil and the resources to get started again. Now we know there are no more ships coming through, we will leave this area, go somewhere else and never bother you again.”

  “Eric, that is not going to happen,” Bautista said. “Have you heard nothing? Everything’s changed. We must work together. I’ll not let you just leave and continue your empire somewhere else.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Vaughan hissed, wincing in pain and standing. “I’m done here. I will return to the Titan. You can have your people back, but we are leaving.”

  “Vaughan, if you try to leave, I’ll just take your goddamn ship,” Slater growled.

  “And there we have it,” Vaughan smiled. “You’re no better than us. This is over. We will clear outside your radar range and then drop off the hostages.”

  Vaughan stood, and began to walk toward the door. He paused. “Urbano, despite your shitty attitude, you help keep my fleet together. One chance. Come with me.”

  Bautista looked around the room. His eyes settled on Jack. The battered soldier gave a slow nod and an unspoken communication passed between the two. Bautista, remained still for a moment, before saying, “Very well, I’ll come with you.”