Earth Cry

by Nick Cook

  ‘OK, Lauren, are you ready to raise your game to the next level?’ Niki asked. Tom had been busy investigating further sightings of Astras, so Niki had taken over some of our training.

  ‘You mean being able to shoot a bullseye at fifty metres isn’t good enough for you?’

  ‘A static target on a range is one thing, but moving targets are a whole other level. Beyond this door are kinetic targets that will stretch your skills to their limits. Just like an enemy soldier, they won’t wait around for you to target them.’

  ‘Don’t I know that.’

  ‘Then you’ll also know that it’s important we’re realistic – there are some civilians in there too. Hit any of them and that will be the end of the round.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Good. You should know that Jack managed the course in three minutes with a score of five hundred and fifty. He’s quite a skilled shot.’ Niki smiled.

  ‘And so am I, thanks to all the recent weapon training.’

  ‘So let’s see these skills of yours in action.’ He opened the door and I found myself standing in a long rectangular room about a hundred metres long. The area was mostly featureless, with padded grey walls and ceiling. Spotlights illuminated a polished black floor criss-crossed with slots, some straight, some curved. An observation room with a thick glass window was built into the room behind us, beside a matrix display leader board. Jack was in third place with a score of 650, Niki second with 880. At the very top was someone called Ruby Jones with 1,560.

  ‘So this Ruby is the woman to beat,’ I said.

  ‘That will be near impossible, but if you do there’s a beer on me at the Rock Garden tonight.’

  ‘Make it a margarita and I’m in.’

  ‘A margarita it is.’

  ‘One small detail. Where are all the targets?’

  ‘Oh, trust me, you’ll have more than enough to shoot at in a moment.’ Niki headed into the observation room, flipped a switch and his voice came over a speaker. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Born that way apparently.’

  He chuckled. ‘Then good hunting, Lauren.’

  I slid the .22 LRS pistol out of its holster.

  Niki had tried to persuade me to try out something heavier with ‘better stopping power’. But I felt comfortable with the weight of the LRS in my hand. It might not have brought down a charging rhino, but it felt like an extension of me. I figured that probably counted for a lot in a combat situation when I had to move fast. At least that what I kept telling myself. My theory was about to be put to the test.

  I flicked off the safety and extended my arms forward, gripping the LRS with both hands.

  Keep it smooth, Lauren…

  I stalked into the centre of the room, senses needle-sharp and ready for anything. One step, two steps and then something at eleven o’clock shot up through one of the slots. The silhouette of a guy wearing a balaclava and holding a Kalashnikov rifle. I pivoted a fraction and squeezed the trigger. The crack of a round being discharged was followed by a perfect hole in the target’s head as it slid back into the ground.

  I allowed myself a quick glance at the leader board – there was my name with a score of fifty next to it. Oh, this was going to be easy.

  You’re going down, Jack Harper…

  I took another step forward and this time a target raced out from a slot in the wall and curved along its track towards me.

  I shifted my weight to my left foot, swinging the LRS round, anticipating the target’s movement. I squeezed the trigger and sent the bullet straight through the heart of my would-be assassin. The target continued along its track and disappeared into a slot in the opposite wall.

  My total ticked up to 250. A fast-moving target had to be worth more points.

  Maybe I could even overtake this legendary Ruby…

  I headed further into the room and more targets jumped up. I dispatched them quickly and my score crept up to 500.

  I was getting into the rhythm of it, sure I’d beat at least Jack, when three targets shot up from the floor simultaneously at my ten, twelve and three o’clock positions. I dropped into a squat, firing, turning, firing and firing again, swinging my gun in an arc. I went for chest shots to make sure I didn’t miss and a hole appeared in each of the targets as they disappeared back to the floor. I glanced back once more and saw my total was at 750.

  Read it and weep, Jack Harper. Now to beat your score, Tom.

  I caught a blur of movement just behind me at seven o’clock. I spun round and fired instinctively…

  And froze as a klaxon sounded and the room’s lights were turned up to full strength. I stared at the target – a woman pushing a pushchair. She had a bullet hole straight through her chest.

  I turned round slowly and saw my score had dropped to 450. Fourth position. The observation-room door swung open and Niki came towards me. ‘You can’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘But that wasn’t fair – she popped up behind me and I shot before I realised who she was.’

  ‘Exactly, Lauren. And that’s the lesson. You have to be certain of your target before discharging your weapon.’

  I stared at him, then nodded. ‘Shit, you’re absolutely right. Just as well this isn’t the real thing. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I’d done that for real.’

  ‘Which is why you need this intensive training. But don’t beat yourself up too much. You did really well. You certainly seem to be a natural with a weapon.’

  ‘Probably something to do with all those hours playing combat games with old boyfriends back at uni.’

  ‘Well, it obviously honed your marksmanship skills. They are exceptional.’

  ‘But that alone isn’t good enough, right?’

  ‘Yeah. And unfortunately the greatest lessons of all are the ones learnt during actual combat.’

  I pictured the cardboard targets replaced with real people. They wouldn’t neatly disappear into slots in the floor after being shot. Real life would involve blood and guts – and an emotional aftermath.

  Niki patted me on the shoulder. ‘I can guess what you’re thinking right now. It’s a personal choice to carry a weapon into the field and there’s always the option of a tranquilliser gun instead, as Mike and Tom have chosen.’

  But I knew it was far less effective. I nodded at the leader board. ‘I wouldn’t mind another attempt to raise my score.’

  Niki smiled. ‘I’m sure you would, but you’re needed elsewhere. There is the usual Friday-afternoon meeting in Alice’s lab, and she has something important to brief you about.’

  I slid my LRS back into its holster. ‘Then I’d better get my arse down there and face Jack’s ridicule at not beating his score.’

  Chapter Seven

  I took the small secondary lift down to Alice’s lab and found Jack and Mike gathered round a bench with Jodie, Alice and Tom, all eating pizza slices from several large boxes and sipping beer. Alice had held informal Friday-afternoon show-and-tell meetings like this every week over the last month and she always brought food and beer.

  I saw my Empyrean Key orb suspended on two cables strung between two metal pillars. Jodie was adjusting a camera on a tripod pointed towards it.

  ‘You just missed a fantastic demonstration of your Empyrean Key, thanks to Jodie doing a test run before she presented her results to you,’ Alice said.

  Jodie shrugged. ‘I can’t take all the credit. Mike’s been helping me out.’

  He reached out and squeezed her arm. ‘Hey, this is all you – I just helped with the brainstorming.’

  ‘So have you had that breakthrough you told me you were edging towards?’ I asked.

  Alice nodded. ‘In a way, or to be more accurate, the beginning of a breakthrough. ‘

  ‘But it’s still damned impressive,’ Jack said, holding one of the pizza boxes out to me.

  I helped myself to a beer and a slice of margarita pizza – with added black olives and anchovies, Jack’s favourite. The pizza from Eden
’s kitchens were almost as good as Mario’s – my food obsession when working at Jodrell Bank.

  ‘Any chance of you running the demonstration again, Jodie?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course, Lauren. You’re the star guest.’ She bounced over to a console and spun a knob to the right. The lab speakers emitted a familiar low-pitched hum.

  ‘As I’m sure you recognise, that’s the trigger frequency for your synaesthesia ability with the orb,’ Mike said.

  I nodded. ‘That sound is etched into my brain.’

  ‘We thought it was as good a place to start as any with our acoustic analysis of the Empyrean Key,’ Jodie said.

  I gazed at the stone, but wasn’t surprised to see no signs of lights dancing over it – there wasn’t an Angelus micro mind nearby. It was something I could see and others couldn’t, because I’d been born with a unique synaesthesia gift, which meant certain tones triggered a light show in my eyes. This was also the basis of the visual language of the Angelus, which I’d first discovered when Sentinel had tapped into it to communicate with me. And it had enabled me to use the Empyrean Key to make contact with Lucy – and learn of the Kimprak threat.

  ‘I’m not seeing any activity round the orb, but then I didn’t expect to,’ I said.

  ‘Try looking behind you,’ Jack told me.

  I turned round to a large monitor on the wall, which displayed the live feed from the video camera pointed at the stone orb. The camera view showed complex geometrical lines radiating around the Empyrean Key like the magnetic field of a planet.

  ‘Very pretty, but what am I looking at here exactly?’

  ‘It’s the acoustic fingerprint of the Empyrean Key,’ Alice said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jack said. ‘I know you already explained it, but I still don’t really get what it means.’

  ‘I’m with you on that,’ Tom said.

  ‘I’ll walk you through it with a second demonstration,’ Jodie replied. ‘To start with, it shows how this specific tone triggers your synaesthesia ability, Lauren. The sound seems to act as some sort of acoustic carrier wave to bring what is otherwise a piece of inert stone to life and provides an interface for Lucy’s computer systems. Just watch what happens when we slightly change the frequency.’

  Jodie moved the knob a fraction further and the pitch of the note started to rise and modulate.

  The patterns of energy shifted on the screen as the pitch changed, transforming from petal shapes to spikes around the orb.

  ‘So the acoustic reflection from the Empyrean Key changes according to the pitch that’s it’s been hit with, is that right?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s certainly looks that way to us,’ Alice replied.

  ‘And how is this significant?’

  ‘We know this three-dimensional stone orb is somehow directly linked to E8, where Lucy exists,’ Jodie replied. ‘My hunch is that we’re looking at some sort of visual mathematical language that the Empyrean Key generates according to the frequency it’s hit with. Get it to radiate the right acoustic pattern and it unlocks the functions of the device that can bridge our reality to E8.’

  Alice sat forward in her wheelchair. ‘Basically we think it’s acting like a transmitter.’

  ‘But without a micro mind in close proximity, it obviously can’t do anything else,’ I said.

  Mike nodded. ‘That’s true. But the other reason for pursuing these tests is you, Lauren. We believe your brain is acting like an organic interface to process the information being acoustically projected by the Empyrean Key. And that’s something we’d love to build a greater understanding of.’

  ‘With that in mind, I have a present for you, Lauren.’ Jodie took a blue box from beneath the bench and handed it to me.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘A reliable way for you to always be able to generate the key frequency to unlock the Empyrean Key.’

  I pulled open the box. It contained a tuning fork that looked similar to one that I’d seen Aunt Lucy’s piano tuner use. I took it out carefully and turned it over. It was beautifully engineered from a single piece of polished steel.

  ‘Nice,’ Jack said. ‘No need to worry about running out of batteries.’

  I smiled. ‘Do you mind if I give it a whirl, Jodie?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  I tapped the tuning fork gently on the edge of the lab bench. At once a low note that perfectly matched the one from the speakers hummed out. Just when I thought it would go on for ever, it eventually died away.

  ‘It’s certainly easier than trying to hum the right frequency.’ I hugged Jodie. ‘This is a perfect gift – thank you so much.’

  She smiled at me. ‘I’m glad you like it.’

  Alice wiped her hands on a napkin. ‘So now on to other business – before I get to some major news. What about our own neutrino-detector network? How is work progressing there?’

  ‘The initial designs for the CubeSat photon detectors are almost finished and we’re about to enter a rapid prototyping stage,’ Mike said.

  ‘With any luck we’ll have the first batch ready for deployment within five months,’ Jodie added.

  ‘That’s great news,’ Alice said.

  ‘Yet the clock is ticking,’ Tom sighed. ‘Every day we don’t detect the next micro mind, the more nervous I get. Six years until the Kimprak arrive on our doorstep isn’t exactly a lot of time. I wish we could get them up there quicker.’

  ‘I know, but it’s still good progress. We’ll get there,’ Alice reassured him. ‘Jack, how about your ongoing research? Anything to report?’

  ‘I’ve managed to trim down a list of Neolithic sites to about a thousand candidates.’

  ‘That sounds manageable,’ I said.

  ‘If only it were that easy,’ Jack replied. ‘We’re only looking at a thousand sites if the Angelus visited Earth only once during the same time frame as Skara Brae. If they visited our world on multiple occasions, we could be looking at a much wider time frame.’

  ‘So you need to cast your net wider?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, which could easily increase the current list tenfold, if not more.’

  ‘But at least it’s a start,’ Alice said.

  ‘That it is.’

  I looked at my friends with something approaching envy. I hadn’t been able to help in the same way – apart from the odd times when Jodie had wired me up to see my brain activity when a sound sparked off my synaesthesia. Without a micro mind to interface with, I couldn’t contribute much. So instead I’d thrown myself into the intensive training.

  Alice’s gaze tightened on me, and I wondered if she was a mind reader in addition to her other talents. ‘Niki tells me you’ve been excelling in your training, Lauren.’

  ‘He’s a great teacher.’

  ‘He said you’ve showed real prowess in all areas,’ Tom added. ‘Apparently, you’re also quite the marksman now.’

  ‘I actually surprised myself there. Must be all those old computer games. I couldn’t beat Jack’s high score, though,’ I added. ‘At least, not yet.’ I grinned at him.

  Alice switched her attention to Mike. ‘And I hear you’ve been blowing things up?’

  Mike gave her a crooked smile. ‘Who knew it would be so much fun! If we need a demolition expert, it seems I’m your guy – as long as I don’t have to hurt anyone.’

  ‘And how’s the hand-to-hand combat training been going?’

  We let out a collective groan and gazed at Tom.

  ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about,’ Tom said. ‘You’ve all acquitted yourselves very well, especially when you consider you’re learning multiple martial arts from judo to jujitsu.’

  ‘So, Tom, any more news about your team investigation?’ Alice asked.

  He nodded. ‘Right now, we have a lot of intelligence about a major increase of sightings of TR-3Bs over Illinois. If that wasn’t interesting enough, we’ve also been receiving reports about Tic Tac UFOs in the same region.’

  ‘Tic Tacs?’ J
ack asked.

  I already knew the answer. ‘Tic Tacs were mentioned in the USS Nimitz encounter. They moved at incredible speed, running rings round the F15 pilots trying to track them. The footage of them defying all the usual rules of flight was even released by the Pentagon, before you write that off as fantasy from the UFO community.’

  Tom nodded. ‘The same craft have been buzzing all over Illinois. Whether it’s connected to the other Astra activity, we’re not sure, but we certainly want to find out. We’re about to launch a major fact-finding mission to the area of highest activity to see what we can discover. That’s part of the reason I’ve accelerated your training programmes.’

  Mike’s eyes widened. ‘What, you want to send us on a UFO chase?’

  ‘Actually no,’ Alice said. ‘Something else has happened more specifically linked to your own talents.’

  My pulse quickened. Was this what we’d all been waiting for? ‘Is another micro mind waking up?’

  ‘Maybe – we’re not sure, which is why we want your team to go in and investigate. One of Delphi’s automated internet searches turned up a news story about a young woman in Peru with synaesthesia that sounds a lot like yours, Lauren.’

  ‘OK…but it’s not that unusual,’ I replied. ‘One in three hundred people have it.’

  ‘She also reported seeing geometrical patterns floating over the famous archaeological site of Machu Picchu after hearing strange noises. And there have been reports of a weird light in the sky.’

  ‘Bloody hell, this sounds promising,’ I said.

  Jack sat up straighter. ‘Machu Picchu was on my list of possible micro mind sites. If it is, it obviously rules out the Neolithic period being the only time the Angelus visited our world.’

  A thought struck me. ‘If this is anything to do with a micro mind waking up, what about any new neutrino activity?’

  ‘I’ve already taken the liberty of reaching out to Steve at Jodrell Bank,’ Tom replied. ‘His contacts at the IceCube detector confirmed there was a fresh burst of neutrino activity somewhere within the atmosphere just thirty-six hours ago.’

  My shoulders rose to my neck. ‘Why didn’t you think to tell us before now?’