“I’m Uri,” he said, introducing himself.
“Sheikh Sayyid forwarded me your communiqué. We’re quite relieved you survived your ordeal on the Rhine,” the Arab said as he typed. “This mission has had a high failure rate among the archivists. Lots of aborted deliveries.”
“You’re from the caliphate?”
“Speak softly, archivist,” the Arab said discreetly. “We are not among friends here. No one should be trusted.”
Two Nordic men relieved Uri of his duffel and pulled out Zliva and Pravo. With his engineering console, the Arab checked the nuclear containers’ vitals, then pointed to the pit. On cue, the Norsk-Statoil technicians attached the two devices to a moveable hoist and lowered the gantry into the floor. Uri heard the rush of a Geiger’s hiss. The two containers uncoiled their pneumatic vanes to expose the uranium cores, just as Kaliq had demonstrated in Sayyid’s lab on Al Fadah Madina. Too close to an unseen radiation source, the failsafe re-arranged the containers’ geometry to avoid a chain reaction.
“There’s a reactor down there.”
“Yes. And you’ve delivered its keystone,” the Arab said, pointing to the center’s empty hexagons, the rest of the matrix already populated with nuclear larvae. “Now, Insha’Allah, I can get home and off this rock.”
“But I thought you were archiving nuclear weapons.”
The Arab shrugged slyly.
“No?”
“All these were warheads at one time.” The Arab pointed at the twelve hexagonal slots. “But no more. They’ve been transformed into a millennial power plant, something far more useful. The sheikhdom believes in living archives.”
“But what good is it doing here?”
The Arab ignored him as he turned to fiddle with an intermeshed gear assembly propped on a nearby cart.
Uri tried to make sense of Al Fadah Madina’s curious radiological ark. They’d created a nuclear reactor with no other purpose than to power a fortress. And they’d created a fortress with no other purpose than to guard the nuclear reactor. The concept made little sense. But like most of the sheikhdom’s anachronistic indulgence, it didn’t have to make sense, and Uri wasn’t paid to ask questions, regardless how much the absurdity piqued his interest.
“Do me a favor, archivist, think of a number with eleven or twelve digits, any number; I need a combination,” the Arab asked. Rolled in front of him were the complicated guts of a multi-stage combination lock.
Uri rattled off his old ARIN number.
“Excellent,” the Arab said, dialing in the sequence on the LED display. “Now we can seal this up and get on with the plan.”
“The plan?”
The Arab said nothing.
“My crew’s leaving soon,” Uri said. “I best try to find them.”
“Sayyid’s informed me he planned to increase your gold stipend by twenty-five percent. You do excellent work. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
“Likewise.” Uri realized the Arab had never properly introduced himself.
He headed up to the fortress’s mess. Sitting at a large table was the Halo flight crew, along with another dozen Alkonost eating insta-paks. Beside the Norsk-Statoil contractors on Jan Mayen, Tiraspol’s weapons engineers were busy installing the structure’s auto-cannon defense perimeter. The room fell silent as steely eyes glared at Uri. Starving and undeterred, he grabbed one of the ready-made food packs and sat at an adjoining table. Most of the men went back to their meals with hushed whispers, but a few—including The Vet—continued to stare.
Zelinski had undoubtedly exposed Uri.
Reception was poor inside the superstructure, but Uri managed a signal. No new communiqués except for a confirmation receipt from Sayyid’s agonizingly slow PDP-8 encryptor. He keyed in a message to Miriam, telling her he’d arrived on the atoll and would be leaving soon. With any luck, she’d be close enough to East Anglia to retrieve him.
“Who’s the lucky skeleton crew?” The Vet asked an engineer.
“Sentinel duty? Some Section Twelves, I-and-I’s expendables.”
“Do they know . . . ?”
“That it’s a one-way ticket?”
“Yeah.”
“Of course not.”
“Good riddance,” The Vet sneered, “bunch of would-be renegades anyway, more likely to shoot you in the back than lend you a hand. I say bury them in this mausoleum.”
“I don’t know, it’s as good as place as any to retire,” joked the Halo’s pilot. “It beats knee-deep in the slog, eh? These imperial eggheads have built a downright island vacation spot here, we should all be so lucky.”
“Beats the Alkonost pension plan.”
“What’s that, a satin-lined coffin?”
“Only if you’ve had your ass blown off. It’s cheaper to pack mercs in double.”
The men laughed.
Alkonost was selling out its own men for a profit, abandoning them to Jan Mayen for a payout. A form of cannibalism, Tiraspol was selling off its own to keep the beast fed, no different than the anthropophagites on Nova Byzantium’s frontier. Uri finished his meal, disgusted.
“All right, mystery man,” The Vet said, looking at Uri. “Time to leave.”
Outside the fortress’s sally port, they headed down the sea stack’s rocky trail for the airfield. A drizzle picked up, blowing dirty rain over the withered moorlands, the wind filled with the rotting reek of tidal algae. Jan Mayen was a dreary purgatory, a wretched and undignified fate.
“So they’re just going to leave them here to die, your comrades. And you’re all right with it?” Uri protested.
The flight crew, walking ahead, ignored him.
“It’s a fucking disgrace.”
The Vet stopped and turned around, grabbed Uri by the neck, and threw him into a tuft of withered sea grass. “Lieutenant Uri Vitko, formerly of mission intelligence: who are you to talk, you fucking deserter?”
The Vet pinned his neck to the ground with his knee, bringing his full weight to bear. Uri gagged and chocked as he struggled to throw off the hulking mercenary. The other crewmen pulled their rifles and aimed at Uri’s head. Eyes dimming, his brain begged for oxygen.
“We didn’t want to have to make a scene, but I guess now is as good as time as any,” The Vet snarled. “You’re going back to Tiraspol. They’re going to make an example out of you.”
Uri gasped, clawing at The Vet’s face.
“First, you’ll be scourged, lashed until your back drips raw. A nice dose of amphetamine will keep you from passing out. If that doesn’t work, a bucket of saltwater.”
“You’re nothing but—” Uri huffed.
“And then you’ll be put to the Shashka—long, sharp—wielded by the executioner. They’ll stick that fat head of yours on a pike in Cossack Point. You’ll have that stupid look on your face, droopy sad eyes, tongue hanging out. If you’re lucky, the crows will pick your skull clean and save you further humiliation.”
“You’re a—”
“I’m what, traitor?” The Vet mocked, slapping Uri’s face. “What am I?”
Uri breathed deep and grabbed at his throat as The Vet lifted his knee.
“What am I, educate me?”
“You’re nothing but a gang of fucking barbarian garbage. Cro-Magnon trash, all of you!”
One of the pilots cracked him with the rifle butt, knocking him numb. The Vet pulled a webbing strap from his kit and cinched Uri’s wrists in front of him. Struggling to sit up, the navigator kicked him over, causing him to slide down a slope of basalt scree.
“Get up, traitor!”
The Vet grabbed his shirt collar and dragged him up over the rocks. The muzzle of a Vepr pushed into his spine as he rose to his feet. With a shove, they marched the last kilometer to the Halo. More taunts, cigarette smoke blown in his face, kicks and spit, a gauntlet of vitriol.
“Move that jump seat up and lock it down. We’re strapping him in,” The Vet ordered the navigator.
Using a wireless locking harness, they
cinched him into the seat, emptying his bruised chest of air. As he struggled for relief, The Vet smacked him in the jaw. Like grinning ghouls, they lorded over him, laughing and slicing at their necks with forefingers. He felt his console push into his ribs; there was no way to reach it, no way to send a distress call.
The Vet sat next to him and buckled in, his pistol lying across his lap. With the roar of the turboshafts the Halo tore free from the Earth in a tornado of rotor wash.
Uri eyed the cabin desperately.
Close to the navigator seat, he spotted an extinguisher just in range of his right foot. He muscled against the straps and lurched to kick its plastic handle, setting the halon off. An elbow smashed into his chest as The Vet fell on top of him, grabbing for Uri’s offending leg. The cockpit exploded in dense white fog. Blind, the crew fought the Mi-26 yoke to gain stability. The helicopter listed as the massive blades teetered with centrifugal inertia.
The Halo slammed sideways into the airfield, its blades exploding into a haze of carbon fragments. The navigator collapsed into his starboard radar display. The impact ruined him, his crushed body fused with the shattered instrument glass. The Vet flew over him, headfirst into the fuselage, snapping his neck. A burst of orange roared to life through the ozone-filled haze as the avionics sparked.
Bloodied but conscious, Uri reached out to The Vet’s splayed corpse and pulled a field blade from his webbing. Uri’s hands were still cuffed, but he managed to slice through the restraint’s nylon weave. Free from the harness, he fell on top of The Vet’s crumpled body.
The pilot and copilot, coughing and hacking from the smoke, fumbled to undo their harnesses and escape their seats, Uri grabbed The Vet’s pistol and unleashed a clip into their seatbacks until the bodies fell limp. With a kick, the belly hatch unsealed and dropped to the runway. Pulling at the wrist straps with his teeth, Uri freed himself and clambered through the opening.
Dazed, he heard muffled yells from the seamount. The others had heard the crash. His hips felt tight and awkward as he crawled up a grassy slope. Through the sea fog he saw the shadows of Alkonost running down from the fortress.
Tucked behind a boulder, Uri hid and waited.
Within the hour, the crew had filled two large fuel bladders and pulled the Alkonost bodies free. A brief mention was made of Uri, but not by name. A squad sifted through the wreckage looking for the “deserter,” but their investigation was only cursory. By nightfall, they’d retreated back into their spiny acropolis.
Uri returned to the Halo. The crew had stripped it nearly bare. A frayed enrichment hood, some filters, The Vet’s knife, and the 9mm pistol with three rounds was all. He’d have to scavenge Jan Mayen. Thumbing the console’s authenticator, he pinned in the code and watched the crosshatched LCD pulse the emergency transponder. The battery icon flashed yellow, the console’s juice nearly gone.
Miriam. Ambushed on Jan Mayen. Alone. Mayday. 70º56’22” N 8º39’41” W ::Agent Uri Vitko/Archivist #212-MXQ-9XS:: sent via REMOTE/PDP-8/REMOTE :: encryption clock ‘processing’::
Uri slapped the console. “Hurry, goddamn it!”
Sayyid’s anachronistic processor was delaying his distress call. Minutes passed as the battery faded from yellow to red with no transmission receipt. Helplessly he watched as the screen dimmed to black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
April 2164 C.E.
The bastard Illithium, mysteriously implanted by proxies of Al Fadah Madina, had run rampant inside the men’s bodies. Fawzi, in his communiqué to Uri, hinted at the details. This was the end result, this was what the sheikhdom intended: to create living mummies. The Alkonost sentinels were lied to; the cover story about “anti-virals” and “contagion,” nonsense.
A nuclear reactor, churning out power for no other reason than to bleed toxins into the men like lab-rats, was cruelly absurd. As an archivist, Uri failed to appreciate the caliphate’s esoteric logic. He doubted halting the reactor would stop—or even slow—Illithium’s infusion, but it was worth a shot. From Sava’s description, the Crown’s vault and reactor lay fifty meters underwater, a technical dive requiring stage-bottles for the slow ascent. Once inside the main chamber, the reaction would have to be stopped, the core poisoned, a complicated procedure made more challenging without schematics. Uri—untainted by the Alkonost’s disease—volunteered for the mission.
The marine observatory Uri had used as a shelter offered little salvage, its sunken dungeon long stripped and looted. The lab’s research ship, wrecked a kilometer down the beach, offered a better prospect.
The vessel lay beached a hundred meters from shore. Uri waded into the undulating rollers and headed for a hull breach mid-ship. Streamers of sargasso and seaweed trailed behind him like parachute cord. The rent was rusted through, brittle and sharp as he climbed inside. Using Sava’s torch, Uri panned the darkness and found himself in the sludge-filled bilge works.
Forcing his way through canted gangways and crumpled bulkheads, Uri emerged onto the aft deck and investigated. A deep-sea submersible, its articulated maw crumpled, sat on the decking like a carnelian isopod. Further back, Uri sifted through a wet locker near the hydraulic crane. Tanks, most half-full of breathable gas, sat jumbled near a compressor unit and sea suits. Using a mixer and a bit of valve oil, he managed to fill a full set of tanks.
Like dumb bombs, Uri tossed the steel cylinders off the bow, six tanks in total: three air mixes, two with helium tri-mix to prevent nitrogen narcosis, and a pony-tank of oxygen for decompression. Sava, shaky and weak, pulled the tanks free of the muck and hauled them up onto the sand.
“There’s a dry-suit in one of the wet rooms, and I think I spotted a full mask and fins inside the submersible,” Uri yelled down.
“What about a dive computer?”
“Right,” Uri scoffed. “A depth gauge if we’re lucky.”
Using a canvas bag, Uri piled in a heap of corroded regulators and frayed pressure hose—everything he could salvage for a dive rig. If the reactor’s heat didn’t boil him, the kludged gear would most likely drown him. With a heave, he tossed the duffel into the syrupy waves.
“That’s it,” Uri hollered.
Working his way through the ship and back up onto the beach, Uri looked at Sava slumped against a driftwood pile. Gone was the hectoring gladiator, replaced by a holocaust ghost of sinew and vein. Through protein-bleached hair, black eyes gazed absently. Filthy clothes hung from his bony frame. The Illithium blight, fueled by synthetic metabolism, had stolen away Sava’s nutrients.
The sight of his old comrade bothered Uri more than he expected. He hadn’t mentioned the Thuggees’ mask; he didn’t have the heart. Sava’s dark dealings with Morosov’s ghoulish technology had come back to haunt him with karmic vengeance. And Sava, of all people, should have recognized Morosov’s skullduggery. But Sava had saved Uri’s life, and Uri was obliged to repay his debt.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Please,” Sava replied.
Surviving on birds’ eggs and tidal fauna, Uri was famished from his ordeal. The promise of an Alkonost insta-pak and electrolytic punch-mix compelled him. Once inside the Crown, he hoped to resuscitate his orbital console and confirm whether Miriam had received his Mayday. Despite Jan Mayen’s junkyard, scavenging a simple 14-volt rectifier proved impossible.
He shoved the wobbly cart over the moorlands, following Sava’s stagger as they headed south. Sava’s winces and moans stirred Uri’s sympathy. He tried to shoulder his frail friend while dragging the wheelbarrow, but the sludgy peat sapped his strength. They were forced to take frequent rests, desperate to carry on.
To the west, the dead zone’s pale haze pushed closer to the headlands. By Uri’s estimate, they had less than an hour before the suffocating carbon dioxide descended. Near the airfield’s southern lagoon, Uri surveyed the Crown of Thorns.
“What about the perimeter’s interrogator?” Uri asked, remembering his previous run-in with the defense’s auto-cannon battery.
/> “We disabled it after your Morse message. It’s been down for weeks. But you never came back.”
“Didn’t you know it was me?”
“That was your ARIN number in the transmission?”
“There was this Arab installing the lock. He needed a combo, so I gave him my old number. He never thought I’d loiter around. Didn’t you check it with Tiraspol’s database?”
Sava shook his head. “We tried, but it bounced from the network. MIAs and deserters are kept active in the system, but not KIAs . . . like you. Then after we cracked the vault, no one much cared. No offense, comrade. Sorry ‘bout all that.”
“About what?”
“Killing you back in Dagestan.”
“Better a friend than an enemy.” Uri smirked.
Uri noticed the smell when they arrived, the acrid sting of body odor and rotting food. More of the men had died. Sava had warned him, but the manner of their deaths shocked him. They stood rigid in their death throes like the pyroclastic victims of Pompeii, arms held out in a dying plea to nameless gods. Walking the corridors, the shapes loomed, the dead standing vigil over the Crown’s empty chambers.
By their count, four of the twelve Alkonost had perished from ossification. Those still alive barely spoke, catatonic and immobile. Sava’s jaunt to Maria Muschbukta had marginally improved his condition, or at least stabilized it. With the reactor shutdown, there was a hope the affliction would slow.
Tired from the journey, Sava and Uri rested in the Crown’s mess hall. Uri dove into a red cabbage and goulash insta-pak, famished.
“Cigarette?” offered Wilco, wrapped in the reflective foil of a thermal suit.
“Please.” Uri took an unfiltered Thrace. “Does that help?” he said, pointing to the silver Mylar.
“This?” he gestured. “No clue. But I’m still alive, so . . . ”
They heard the Crown’s HVAC system kick to life. Outside, the dead zone’s anoxia imprisoned them, the partial pressure well below critical. Sava leaned against the table, his pain overshadowed by exhaustion and a morphine IV. Wavering in and out like a junkie, he barely opened his eyes.
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