The Black Hole

by Hammond, Ray

  ‘Quite right,’ said Brabazon. ‘Get them into the air. Arm them with the nuclear bunker busters, but there is to be no attack of any sort without my personal order. Is that clear?’

  ‘What are we going to tell the French, sir?’ asked the Secretary of State. ‘We can’t just invade French airspace without their permission.’

  ‘I’ll talk to President Albeau myself,’ said Brabazon. ‘Then to NATO.’

  *

  Inside the main Accelerator Hall of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Dr Sergey Larov had now loaded 40,000 attograms of real-matter Zilerium 336 into the collider’s main tractor beam. At each step Professor Bo Lundgren had shown Larov and his technical team how to access the computer systems that controlled the collider and how to mount the cylinders containing the real-matter isotope onto the access ports of the accelerator bore.

  Now the real-matter nuclei were completing their twenty-six kilometer loops around the collider 11,000 times per second.

  Larov glanced questioningly over his shoulder to Lundgren as he and an assistant lifted a high-pressure induction container onto one of the three induction access points of the Large Hadron Collider.

  The CERN Director nodded. ‘Just clamp it tight and the induction door will then automatically come under software control,’ he confirmed as the HFDA technical team tightened the bolts.

  The pressurized induction container was filled with Xenon gas in which thin glass canisters of Zilerium 336 anti-matter was stored. In total, 1,400 attograms of anti-matter nuclei would injected under high pressure into the path of 40,000 attograms of their real-matter counterparts – at a collision speed well in excess of the speed of light.

  ‘Now Professor,’ said Larov to the wholly coerced and compromised director of CERN. ‘Show me how to load my software patch to put the induction door into fail-safe mode. It must open instantly if there is any unprogramed or unanticipated alteration to the collider’s performance.’

  *

  Floyd and his unit ran through a white-tiled tunnel which curved away from the main Accelerator Hall. Even before they arrived at their destination, they could hear a powerful, throbbing, whining sound.

  As they ran into the complex’s underground power station, they saw two huge generating turbines. From the sound level and the pitch they appeared to be running at close to full power.

  Although the power station room was much smaller than the main Accelerator Hall, it was still large enough to dwarf the group of people standing at the central controls. The console stood on a low dais between the pair of giant turbine generators.

  Floyd saw two of Sergy Larov’s technicians conferring with several white-suited CERN scientists. Larov’s men were gesturing angrily towards the control console, as if demanding adjustments to the set-up.

  Overseeing this group was a single FARC mercenary, his automatic rifle trained on the captured CERN staff.

  ‘Secure all exits and entrances,’ Floyd told his men, waving his arm to indicate the entirety of the power station hall.

  The five men nodded and ran around to the back of the giant generators. Floyd approached the main control area.

  A female CERN scientist was now arguing angrily with Sergy Larov’s technical assistants. She banged her fist hard down on the control console, shook her head and, despite the guard’s rifle being pointed directly at her, she stepped down from the platform on which the control panel stood, clearly unwilling to co-operate any further.

  The FARC guard yelled something at her, pointing his automatic rifle threateningly at the white-clad female researcher.

  The young woman simply ignored him and continued to walk away from the control area.

  As she walked, the FARC soldier ran towards her, swung his weapon high then smashed its stock hard into the back of her neck. The woman went down immediately and the soldier swung his rifle over his back and stepped astride the fallen scientist.

  With a glance towards the group of terrified CERN researchers at the control console, the mercenary grabbed the fallen woman’s long blonde hair and viciously yanked her head up from the floor, so that her terrified face could be seen by her colleagues.

  Floyd saw the man draw his combat knife and he knew immediately what he was about to do. The rebel fighter was going to make an example of the woman that would encourage the others to cooperate.

  Even as the knife flashed downwards towards the fallen woman’s neck, Floyd fired.

  A dozen rounds from Floyd’s automatic rifle tore into the soldier’s back and blew him forward off his victim, his knife clattering away across the polished floor.

  Floyd was now without any sort of plan. All during the incursion into CERN his only thought had been to either find a phone or to kill Makowski.

  Running towards the pair on the floor, Floyd hauled the woman roughly to her feet. Larov’s technicians and the remaining CERN staff were still on the console platform, staring open mounted at this unexpected turn of events. All sounds of the gunfire had been drowned out by the whining of the giant generators.

  Then one of Floyd’s own unit appeared round the far end of a turbine generator. The man paused, unsure what was happening. Then, over the noise of the generators, Sergy Larov’s technicians started to gesture frantically towards Floyd, the woman and the fallen guard.

  With a rifle burst that lasted less then half a second, Floyd killed the HFDA terrorist even as the man was raising his weapon. Suddenly everything seemed to be going in slow motion as Floyd’s brain went into overdrive. It was working in the peculiarly rapid, clear and exhilarating way it always did when he was in action.

  ‘Follow me,’ Floyd shouted to the woman. For a fraction of a second their eyes met and in that moment she made her decision. She nodded, pushed him forward ahead of her, and then they were running.

  They sprinted around the end of one of the giant power generators and Floyd saw another of his men guarding the entrance to a service tunnel. He was wholly unaware of what had taken place in the area between the two turbines.

  As they ran towards him, Floyd saw the man’s eyes narrow in suspicion and he began to raise his automatic weapon

  Aiming as he ran, Floyd fired a short burst into the terrorist’s chest. Then they were beside the fallen man.

  ‘Run’ shouted Floyd pointing into the tunnel. ‘Run!’

  The woman fled into the tunnel as Floyd stopped to pick up the downed man’s rifle. Then he undid the man’s weapons belt complete with spare magazines and threw it over his shoulder.

  With a glance around the noise-filled generating hall, Floyd ran after the young woman he had just rescued.

  *

  All normal civilian traffic movements had been suspended around the CERN campus. The roads outside the main entrances to the complex had been closed and the police had cordoned off the entire area.

  ‘Captain George Walker,’ announced the commanding officer of the British forces as he held out his hand to his French counterpart. ‘Special Air Services, British Army.’

  ‘Captain Gérard Pauli, Commandement des Operations Speciales,’ responded the French officer.

  The side street in which the two men were meeting was filled with military vehicles and groups of heavily armed troops were milling about as they waited to go into action.

  The French COS captain unrolled an electronic map on the bonnet of his 4-wheel drive vehicle. ‘They’ve laid explosives all along the main perimeter fence,’ he explained in excellent English. ‘At least in the area near the main entrance. The explosives are detonated by remote control and at least a dozen, or maybe twenty, well-armed terrorists are still above ground, holding the campus itself. We don’t know how many are now down in the collider.’

  ‘We need to get out to these access shafts in the countryside,’ Walker told him, pointing at the map. ‘Do you agree?’

  ‘Oui,’ said Captain Gérard Pauli with a short nod. ‘We will support whatever plan you have. The nearest access shaft is thirty minutes away, the othe
r two an hour, perhaps more. The roads are not good.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Walker.

  Twenty-three

  Harry Floyd lay panting on the aluminium floor of a walkway suspended a dozen feet below the ceiling of the vast Accelerator Hall. The walkway was so high up that it was concealed in the darkness above the huge, hanging tungsten lamps which lit everything below in a glare so bright it might have been a film set.

  Beside him, also lying on the metal floor gasping for breath, was the young white-suited scientist Floyd had rescued from the blade of a FARC mercenary. Together they had run through a long white-tiled passageway leading from the generator hall until the woman had halted abruptly at a metal door set into the wall. She had swiped her staff identity card, pulled the door open and urged Floyd to follow her.

  Slamming the door behind them, Floyd had followed her as she ran up flight after flight of galvanised steel steps, lit at every landing by an emergency light. He was carrying the additional rifle and weapons belt he had taken from the fallen HFDA guard.

  Eventually the staircase opened out onto the gantry and Floyd had realized at once why she had led him up here. Not only was it an isolated spot, but against the brilliant lights suspended from the ceiling it was impossible to be seen from down below.

  ‘Who are you?’ demanded the woman in a hiss, as she began to recover her breath.

  Floyd had been anticipating this question even as he had bounded up the steel steps two at a time. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do now, but his hand was already revealed – or would soon be revealed – to the men down below.

  He twisted around on the aluminium walkway so that his head was near hers. There were no sides to the open construction, only steel ropes for handrails with vertical wire supports every three or four feet – like an Amazonian rope bridge suspended over a gorge. He glanced up. Set into the concrete ceiling above was a smooth steel pole. He realized that the maintenance crew which used these walkways would normally clip on safety harnesses before venturing out over the vast space down below.

  ‘I’m a British agent,’ he whispered. ‘I work for my government.’

  She stared suspiciously into his eyes. Blood was trickling around her neck and down her white anti-static clothing.

  ‘Who are they?’ she demanded, jabbing her thumb downwards towards the invading hordes below. She had a light French accent.

  ‘Terrorists from Humans First, and some FARC guerrillas – from South America,’ hissed Floyd. ‘Alexander Makowski himself is down there. They’re taking over the Large Hadron Collider. They intend to turn it into a bomb.’

  The French woman stared at him with eyes which appeared to grow wider and wider as she absorbed the information.

  ‘I need a connection to the outside,’ Floyd told her. ‘I have to get a warning out.’

  An internal breeze seemed to come from nowhere and the walkway swayed slightly. Floyd grasped on to one of the steel-rope uprights and glanced down at the activity below.

  Makowski was still standing in front of the television cameras, the additional lights making that area of the hall seem as if it glowed. For a moment the CTU agent wondered whether he could kill the man from here, with a very long distance volley. But even as the idea occurred to him, the TV crew moved in closer to Makowski, obscuring him from view.

  Floyd reached into one of the dozen pouches of his combat vest and pulled out a field dressing kit.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ he whispered, ‘Let me look at your neck.’

  With another questioning glance into his eyes, the French scientist lifted her hair and turned the back of her head towards him. As she did so, Floyd saw her photograph and name on the ID tag she wore on a blue tape around her neck: Dr Steffanie Dubois, CERN Technical Support

  Beneath the woman’s hairline Floyd saw that the blow from the man’s rifle butt had broken the skin on the nape of her neck. It was only a superficial wound, but it was surrounded by an ugly purple bruise.

  ‘You’re going to have a pain in the neck for a few days, Steffanie’ murmured Floyd as he pressed an antiseptic styptic on the wound to stem the bleeding.

  *

  Seventy feet below, the hum of the pulsing accelerator magnets suddenly died away. After a few moments there was almost complete silence in the hall.

  Alexander Makowski stared unblinkingly into the camera lens. The cameraman tightened his focus and the recording light came on.

  ‘With military support by the HFDA, members of Humans First have occupied the CERN research facility near Geneva,’ Makowski began, knowing that the world’s TV channels would be broadcasting recordings of his speech within minutes. ‘Our aim is to save humanity from a machine-dominated future. Super-intelligent computers are now running the world’s developed societies and many political leaders have become transhuman cyborgs – beings who are more machine than human. This insane and immoral trend will stop – here and now!’

  Still staring directly into the camera, the Humans First leader turned and waved in the direction of the stainless steel accelerator bore.

  ‘This is the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.’ As he spoke the second camera turned slowly away and panned along the length of the massive tube. ‘Employing the same technology that we used in our London weapon, my team and I have converted this accelerator to become the most powerful bomb the world has ever seen – a bomb ten thousand times more powerful than even the largest nuclear weapon.’

  The second camera panned slowly to the left and framed a shot of Dr Sergy Larov, Bo Lundgren and a dozen of the captured CERN researchers. Just out of shot two HFDA soldiers kept their weapons trained on the captives in the party.

  Slowly the camera zoomed towards the black injection box and the cylinder of Xenon gas that Larov’s team had fitted to the injection mounting on the side of the Large Hadron Collider.

  ‘I now speak directly to the transhuman cyborgs who run the world’s technocracies,’ said Makowski gravely as the camera remained focussed on the new assembly beside the huge bore which housed the particle accelerator beam. ‘Do not make any attempt to attack this facility or interrupt the smooth running of this collider. It will be running at full speed and it is set in fail-safe mode – I repeat, fail-safe mode. As your scientific advisors will tell you, any interruption to the power supply, or any damage to the collider, will result in the immediate introduction of the anti-matter isotope Zilerium 336 into the path of real-matter Zilerium 336. The resulting black hole implosion will be on a global scale.’

  The camera panned back to Makowski’s grave face. ‘All transhuman political leaders must resign within the next twenty-four hours. We have already published a list of these cyborgs. It includes the president of the United States, the prime minister of the United Kingdom and other transhuman leaders in the European Union and in the Pacific region.

  As if an anticipating that his words would cause consternation as they were received in the outside world, Makowski paused again. The camera closed in still tighter on his expressionless face.

  ‘New human leaders, politicians from the Humans First Party, are waiting to assume control and to immediately ban all forms of technology which threatens the future of the human race.’

  *

  In the gantry high overhead, Makowski’s quiet words arrived as clearly as if Floyd and his female companion had been standing beside the terrorist leader. It was a whispering gallery effect, Floyd realised: Makowski’s words were resonating along the surface of the hall’s smooth walls as if they were sounding boards.

  Steffanie’s wide blue eyes grew even larger as she and Floyd listened to Makowski’s speech.

  ‘That is absolutely mad,’ hissed the CERN scientist. ‘The politicians are never going to agree to such ridiculous demands.’

  Floyd shrugged his own bemusement and then turned his head to catch more of the leader of Humans First’s words.

  ‘Unless these resignations are a
nnounced by midnight GMT tomorrow, HFDA volunteers will create a singularity in the Large Hadron Collider,’ Makowski continued. ‘If this world is to be run by machines for machines, humans will be enslaved. This must not be allowed to happen.’

  ‘Is he prepared to commit suicide, to kill us all?’ Steffanie asked.

  Suddenly sounds of wild shouting were transmitted up to the walkway. Floyd peered over the edge and far below he saw Ramon Resigo and three HFDA soldiers came running out of the tunnel which led from the generator hall.

  The TV lights snapped off and the camera stopped recording. Resigo was saying something into Colonel Andreas Poliza’s ear. The military commander nodded once, waved an arm towards a group of soldiers and ordered them to follow Resigo.

  ‘I must find a phone,’ hissed Floyd urgently.