by Hammond, Ray
Jesus! Jenni said to Bruce privately. We’re not giving in to them that easily, are we?
No way, Bruce reassured her. It’s just a way to buy time.
Twenty-seven
‘Wait, wait!’ called Nicole from the stairwell below. ‘I’ve got to catch my breath.’
Floyd pulled up. He too was panting like an exhausted race horse. He lent against the steel hand rail on a landing and gulped down huge lungfulls of cold damp air, cursing the fact that he had none of his usual muscle boosting implants. The American agent was also leaning against the rail, gasping for breath. They had run up twenty or more flights of steps – both of them carrying weapons and ammunition.
As the pounding of his heart began to lessen Floyd craned his neck out into the stairwell which ran around the lift shaft and glanced up into the void. Low wattage safety lights lit the staircase at every other landing but the steps above seemed to go on forever, disappearing into the gloom. There were still at least forty more flights to go
Nicole lent beside him, her shoulders heaving as she drew deep breaths. Then her head shot up.
‘I hear gunfire,’ she said.
They both craned their necks and listened for the sounds coming from the surface far above them.
Then the staccato rattle of faint gunfire also reached Floyd. ‘Come on!’ he shouted, springing forward again, once more taking the steps two at a time. Nicole followed, close behind.
They ran up three flights, four, five, then Floyd stopped again and stuck his head out into the space between the staircase and the concrete lift-shaft. The sound of gunfire was more distinct now.
Once more they ran upwards, grabbing at the hand-rail to haul themselves upwards as their aching legs began to fail them.
Then bullets ricocheted off the steel hand-rail, just ahead of Floyd’s hand.
‘Down,’ Floyd screamed at Nicole and he crouched back and swung his automatic rifle ready for action.
Another volley of bullets hit the concrete steps, then Floyd darted his head out into the void. A group of HFDA soldiers were two flights up, their guns pointed down over the handrail. Floyd fired a long volley upwards and ducked back again.
‘They’re trying to escape down these stairs,’ Floyd yelled to Nicole who now had her gun unslung and ready to fire up over the hand-rail. She nodded, leaned out and fired a long volley, sweeping all around the stairwell.
Suddenly there was a blinding flash from high overhead and almost immediately they were overwhelmed by a roar and a blast of air which knocked them off their feet. All of the lights went out. Then bodies and huge chunks of concrete were falling down the stairwell, bouncing off the lift shaft enclosure, colliding with the edges of the concrete steps and tumbling further down.
A cloud of choking dust – particles of concrete, cement, brick and small body parts – filled the stairwell and Floyd turned his body to shield Nicole as debris continued to fall from above.
‘They’ve blown the shaft,’ Floyd shouted, his ears still ringing from the blast.
After what seemed like a long time – perhaps many seconds, maybe even minutes – there was no more falling debris. Floyd struggled to his feet and helped Nicole up.
One single emergency light had survived several flights above and Floyd peered upwards through the swirling dust and smoke. In the dim light he saw that further up the stairwell whole sections of steps were missing, including the section where the HFDA men had been standing as he and the American agent had blocked their escape route
Glancing down into the stairwell Floyd noticed that more emergency lights had survived further down.
‘We must get back down,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to kill that fail-safe device before the SAS attacks another shaft.’
*
Alexander Makowski had established his headquarters in a spacious, brightly lit room a few minutes’ walk from the main Accelerator Hall. It had previously been a seminar room in which visiting scientists could exchange information about the experiments they were running, or planning to run, in the collider.
Not only had HFDA’s communications technicians provided the leader of the Humans First Party with the ability to broadcast live to the outside world, they had also provided his command post with a dozen screens to which the world’s major television news channels had been piped. Now Alexander Makowski – the man whose certain destiny it was to save the world from a post-human, machine-controlled future – was sitting in a high-backed executive chair, caressing a smooth silver pen in his fingers as he flicked between various TV stations.
The shots of President Brabazon introducing Benjamin Pace to the media inside the White House were gratifying but Makowski knew full well that the Americans were only playing for time. He understood with a passionate hatred that whole teams of machine advisors would be at work trying to establish the true nature of the threat posed by the HFDA’s take-over of CERN and the giant particle accelerator. But eventually they would be forced to advise the President that the threat was real, inescapable and immediate. After all, that had been the purpose of demonstrating the particle weapon in London. It would only be a matter of time before the cyborg leaders capitulated fully – they were nothing if not logical.
Makowski sucked the end of his pen and then touched the remote to return to the live web cast being made by Henry Lampton as he prepared to upload his mind to computer memory. But the image wasn’t there. In place of the normal video feed was a one sentence statement: The Mondo Corporation Has Halted This Experiment.
‘YES!’ yelled the slender Humans First leader excitedly as he leapt out of his seat with balled fists. ‘YES!’
Then the door opened and Colonel Andreas Poliza entered, his countenance grave. Makowski calmed himself and turned to face his military leader.
‘A group of special forces attacked our men at Access Shaft Three,’ Poliza began. ‘But we’ve blown the shaft. They won’t be able to gain any access from there.’
‘THE FOOLS. THE INHUMAN FOOLS!’ screamed Alexander clenching his fists again. ‘YOU MUST STOP THEM!’
‘I’ll reinforce the men at all of the other access shafts to the tunnel,’ said Poliza, turning away quickly.
A few minutes later Sergy Larov opened the door. Makowski had now regained control of his temper and was again seated in his chair sampling the world’s TV news channels. He put down the remote control as the HFDA scientist entered the room.
‘How soon will you be ready?’ asked the leader of the Humans First Party.
‘The main beam is at ninety-nine per cent power now,’ said Larov. ‘The Zilerium anti-matter had been loaded for some time We’re ready for introduction at any time.’
Makowski rose from his chair, put his pen on the desk and walked to stand directly in front of the man who had helped to adapt the lethal American technology for the HFDA’s use.
‘Then we must make sure that the cyborgs understand we are ready to use it,’ said Makowski. ‘No world will be better than a world run by machines.’
‘No world will be better than a world run by machines,’ agreed Larov firmly, as if repeating a mantra. He glanced at his leader and held his unblinking gaze.
‘Very well,’ said Makowski. ‘The Americans have started to attack us. I am going to bring forward their deadline for compliance. Come along, we must make a broadcast together.’
*
Floyd was driving as fast as he could back towards the Accelerator Hall and the main administration area. Nicole stood in the rear of the buggy, resting her rifle on the vehicle’s roll bar and shooting out any remaining CCTV cameras as they flashed into view. She knew that the series of camera outages would themselves betray their approximate position, but she wanted to deny the terrorists information which would give them a precise visual fix.
She and Floyd had scrambled their way down dozens of flights of dark, debris-strewn steps until they had arrived back at the main tunnel level. Here they found Steff unharmed but the blast had travelled down the e
levator shaft to blow the metal doors outwards. Inside the shaft was a crushed car but from the blood that was oozing from the rubble it was clear that one or more HFDA soldiers had been caught in the elevator when the explosion occurred.
‘What are you going to do now?’ shouted Steff.
‘We’ll attack them in the accelerator hall,’ he told her. ‘We’ve got to put that fail-safe device out of action, then destroy the collider.’
Steff glanced at Floyd as if he were mad, then up at the determined-looking American agent. But the French scientist said nothing as they sped out of the dark section of the tunnel and into the lights again.
Four or five minutes later they saw the sign and the turning for the main motor pool. The body of the FARC soldier Floyd had killed earlier still lay on the ground.
‘I’ll pull into that tunnel,’ said Floyd. ‘We’ll leave this buggy inside and go in on foot.’
As Floyd slowed the vehicle, headlights appeared up ahead in the main tunnel coming towards them at high speed. Then a spray of bullets hit the vehicle, one of them shattering the windshield and spraying the occupants with shards of broken safety glass.
‘DRIVE!’ shouted Nicole.
Swinging the wheel hard over, Floyd turned off from the main tunnel and floored the accelerator. They were now in a much smaller tunnel and he gunned the electric motor.
The other vehicle – a petrol powered open-topped Jeep – swung into the tunnel behind them and Nicole immediately fired a long raking burst across the front of the pursuing car. It swerved violently and then a hail of bullets was thudding into the back of the buggy.
Floyd ducked his head down and turned to look at his rear seat passenger. Nicole was crouching down as low as possible. More bullets hit the buggy, others ricocheted off the walls of the tunnel all around.
‘I’ll pull into the motor pool,’ yelled Floyd. ‘We’ll have to make a run for it.’
He spun the wheel hard and the buggy skidded into the main CERN garage, inches from the tunnel wall. Nicole stood again and raised her weapon.
Floyd saw the large brilliantly-lit space of the vehicle pool open up before them and then he saw the two HFDA soldiers guarding the vehicles. Both men were reaching for their rifles.
Nicole fired a long sweeping burst and the two men went down.
‘Hold on,’ shouted Floyd and he swung the buggy round in a tight circle, almost lifting its wheels off the ground.
Nicole braced herself as she stood in the rear seat well.
Floyd accelerated forward but, as he did so, the pursing Jeep raced into the vehicle pool. Nicole started to squeeze off a burst but the pursuers came straight for their quarry. The two vehicles collided at high speed. Nicole rolled backwards out of the buggy. Floyd’s head hit concrete and there was only blackness.
A few minutes later the British agent regained consciousness as hands pulled him roughly to his feet. Another vehicle, yet another Jeep, was pulling into the vehicle pool. There was no sign of Nicole or Steffanie.
As he watched Ramon Resigo step out of the passenger seat of the Jeep that had just arrived, Floyd tried to establish how badly he was injured. He could feel blood running down the back of his neck from a gash in his scalp, but his breathing was O.K. and he could feel pain in his arms and legs. Two soldiers gripped his arms firmly on either side.
‘So, Tipton, what the hell are you doing?’ asked Resigo as he walked over to his errant recruit.
As Floyd returned the man’s stare he thought he saw amusement in the Columbian’s eyes. He said nothing.
‘Was it just to save a pretty woman? What is the word? Playing the gallant Englishman. ’
Resigo turned and Floyd followed the man’s gaze.
On the other side of the wreckage of the two open-top Jeeps, Steffanie lay motionless on the concrete floor. Floyd saw that her right leg was twisted outwards at an impossible angle.
Resigo stepped towards her and as he did so, she opened her eyes.
‘Don’t move her,’ yelled Floyd.
‘As you wish,’ said Resigo, drawing his pistol.
Steffanie was staring up at him in pain and fear as he levelled his gun and shot her once between her cornflower blue eyes.
Twenty-eight
‘The allied assault on the CERN access shaft has failed,’ Theodore told the President and the other humans gathered anxiously in the White House Situation Room. ‘HFDA terrorists blew up the entrance to the shaft before our men could get inside.’
‘What are the special forces planning now?’ asked General Diamand.
‘They’re already on the road heading towards the next entrance point, Access Shaft Number Two,’ Theodore told them, highlighting the map of CERN displayed on a wall screen. ‘It will take them an estimated 10.66 minutes more to get there.’
‘What’s to stop the same thing happening again?’ demanded the general.
‘That’s the worry,’ agreed Theo. ‘The British agent inside CERN says that HFDA commanders have also told their own men that they have a fail-safe device down there. If another of the shafts is blocked, instead of shutting down automatically the weapon will be triggered – assuming the fail-safe claim is accurate. However, my opinion remains that it is extremely unlikely that Makowski or the HFDA would risk an involuntary deployment of the black hole weapon. It is illogical.’
There was a silence as the committee members digested the information.
‘So how do you think Makowski will react to the special forces attack?’ asked an exhausted-looking President Brabazon.
‘I am data driven,’ said Theodore. ‘And there is no directly relevant data on how Alexander Makowski reacts to attacks. But if we correlate and extrapolate his behavioural psychology as it has been previously analyzed, we have to accept that his goals are sincere. He’s not going to kill himself unless he’s sure he can’t win – which is why I think we can ignore the threat of a fail-safe device.’
The President’s senior virtual assistant paused in his analysis of the situation, then announced, ‘Makowski’s uploading a new webcast.’
The main wall screen refreshed to show Alexander Makowski standing beside a metal housing attached to a large stainless steel pipe.
‘Within the last half-hour military forces under the command of transhuman political leaders have attempted to attack our positions within the CERN facility,’ Makowski said softly. ‘The attack was repulsed.’
The Humans First leader reached out his left hand and rested it on the metal housing beside him.
‘This is the induction chamber of the Large Hadron Collider,’ he announced. The camera pulled back to reveal a second man standing beside a square control panel. ‘Dr Sergy Larov of the Che Guevara University will now explain the contents of this chamber and the condition of the collider for the benefit of the transhuman American political leaders and the machine entities which are advising them.’
Larov looked less at ease with broadcasting than his leader but the slender scientist cleared his throat and focussed his eyes on the camera.
‘A suspension beam containing Zilerium 336 real matter nuclei is now travelling through this collider at 99.7 per cent of the speed of light,’ he began, pointing towards the large steel bore. Then he returned his fingers to a steel and glass container. ‘In this induction chamber we have loaded fourteen hundred attograms of Zilerium 336 anti-matter nuclei. This is a super-heavy metal isotope originally developed by the United States. It was secretly used to make a prototype weapon of mass destruction over twenty years ago.’
In the Situation Room a number of the watchers exchanged extremely discomforted glances.
‘This induction chamber is fitted with a fail-safe device of my own design,’ continued Larov. ‘When induction is triggered manually, or when it is triggered by software in response to any unexpected variation in the collider’s performance, the result will be the instant creation of a multi-dimensional gravitational singularity – a black hole – which would have the potential t
o destroy not just this region of Europe, but the whole planet. All humans, and all forms of machine intelligence, will be totally destroyed.’
More glances were exchanged. All present knew that the major TV news channels were constantly monitoring video web resources and this new and alarming footage would be playing on global television screens within seconds. Now all of the world’s people would understand the true nature of the threat and the origins of the weapons technology involved.
Makowski nodded at Larov and the camera panned back to the leader’s face.
‘There are to be no more attacks against this facility,’ he warned the world. ‘Now is the time for ordinary humans to rise up and secure their future on the planet. Eject the transhuman cyborgs from their positions of power and recover what is rightly yours. The future of our planet must be wholly human.’