by Greg Cox
Thank the Goddess they had stopped Khan before he had a chance to launch his plague missiles . . .!
In the control room outside the isolation chamber, Dhasal had finally succeeded in contacting Khan in Chandigarh. His noble features glared from the screen of her computer, only a slight visual stutter betraying the long-distance nature of the transmission. There was, she knew from long experience, over a fifteen-hour time difference between Muroroa and India, so this hellish night was already late afternoon where Khan was.
“You know what you must do, Doctor,” he told Dhasal. Only the smoldering anger in his eyes and the vibrant timbre of his voice hinted at his reaction to the attack on the island—and by their own kind, no less! With the failure of the pathogen to strike down the intruders, Dhasal had belatedly realized the true nature of the invaders. “There is no other recourse.”
Her face went pale. “Are you quite certain, Lord Khan?” she asked tremulously, daunted by the awesome responsibility suddenly thrust upon her. “The target selections have not been finalized. I wanted to run more projections, take into account seasonal migration patterns and the demographic availability of medical infrastructures—”
“No matter,” Khan interrupted her, before she could babble further. “The warheads are loaded, the missiles are ready, even earlier than we originally planned. Fine-tuning our target list is a luxury that has just been stolen from us.” His image flickered alarmingly, and she feared for their connection. “We must not waste time polishing the cannonball, Doctor, when the enemy is at our very door.”
“But the rockets—the missiles—are more MacPherson’s province than mine,” she protested. To her infinite frustration, the Scottish launch supervisor was away from Muroroa at this time of crisis; in fact, he was with Khan in Chandigarh, presenting a long-term plan for space exploration following Khan’s total conquest of Earth. As she recalled, he had high hopes for salvaging all of NASA’s bases and facilities after the plague destroyed America. . . . How dare he leave me here, she thought bitterly, to cope with this invasion on my own?
“You must be strong, Phoolan,” Khan admonished her. “Our enemies have forced our hand, so we must strike as swiftly and unexpectedly as they.” A burst of static momentarily rendered his words inaudible. “—must launch the missiles immediately.”
His steadfast resolution inspired her. “Yes, my lord. I understand.” His image flickered once more, then disappeared completely; Dhasal guessed that the satellite dish on the Centre’s roof had been destroyed by enemy fire. She tried jitteringly to restore the connection, but to no avail. She was on her own.
Never mind, she told herself. Khan’s orders were clear. She activated the speaker on her intercom. “Dhasal to Mission Control. Prepare to launch missiles.”
REMOTE TESTING CONTROLS said the sign on the metal door. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Slamming her shoulder against the door, Chen smashed her way into the control room. She was the only member of Team Artemis left; concealed lasers, hidden in the ceiling just past the biohazard warning, had taken out Rani before either of them had recognized the danger. Only quick shooting on Chen’s part, even as the surprised cat burglar slumped lifelessly to the floor, had saved the amazon leader from a similar fate.
“Don’t move!” she snarled at Phoolan Dhasal, brandishing the smoking muzzle of her Beretta. The Indian biochemist was instantly recognizable by the opaque streaks across her brown eyes. Wearing a knee-length white lab coat, she was backed up against a blinking wall of computer banks, clutching a soiled fork as her only weapon. The control room smelled of fear and curry.
“Drop the fork,” Chen instructed, her Beretta aimed precisely between the scientist’s scarred eyes. Dhasal complied, and the utensil landed with a clatter onto the floor. “Dr. Phoolan Dhasal,” Chen charged, “you are a traitor to womankind and my prisoner.” She nodded at the gleaming steel cylinders on the other side of the clear glass window. “Is that your witches’ brew?”
“Merely a representative sampling,” Dhasal replied. Her voice had a fatalistic tone, as if it no longer mattered what she did or said. “The bulk of our output has already been loaded into exactly 235 bio-warheads, aimed at every continent except Antarctica.” She raised her chin defiantly, meeting Chen’s scornful gaze with her own bisected stare. “You are too late, amazon.”
What? Chen thought, fear clutching at her heart. “But I thought you were not yet ready!”
“You were misinformed,” Dhasal said coolly. “Safe in their silos, the missiles are being fueled as we speak.” Her gaze drifted to the monitor of a nearby computer, where Chen now saw that a digital countdown was rapidly ticking down to completion. 00:09:38 read the flashing red numerals on the screen. Less than ten minutes to go . . .
“You may kill me if you wish,” Dhasal gloated, tempting Chen mightily,“but the will of the Great Khan cannot be thwarted. You will live to see the common herd of humanity perish, in approximately three days by my calculations.”
Goddess, no! Chen reacted in horror. She knew there was no way her warriors could seize control of the missile silos in under ten minutes. That left her with only one option available.
“Good-bye, sister.” With only the barest twinge of regret, she shot Dhasal twice in the head. She had never killed a woman before, least of all in cold blood, but these were extraordinary circumstances; she could not keep an eye on Dhasal and still do what needed to be done.
Kicking the door shut behind her, then jamming a rolling office chair up against the door to further ensure that she was not disturbed, she hastily shed her bulging backpack and removed its fearsome contents: a portable nuclear device of Chen’s own invention. Utilizing top-secret cold fusion technology, the suitcase nuke would produce a ten kiloton explosion, more than enough to destroy the missiles before they launched—and sterilize the entire island.
Pressing a single button, she started the high-speed arming sequence, then glanced up at the digital display on Dhasal’s computer. 00:08:52.
It was going to be close. . . .
Twenty-one years ago, she recalled, somewhere beneath the sands of India’s great Thar Desert, the first Chrysalis Project had been consumed by a purifying thermonuclear conflagration. Now, it seemed, history was about to repeat itself.
She thought of Shirin, possibly still alive in the tangled jungle outside, as well as all the other amazons fighting valiantly all over the island. With the fate of mortal womankind at stake, Chen had thrown her entire army into the fray; after tonight, only a handful of amazons would survive to remember those lost on Chrysalis Island.
The suitcase bomb hummed to life, a subatomic chain reaction racing the countdown to the release of the plague missiles. Exhausted, Chen Tiejun rested her weight against a white concrete wall, not far from the body of Phoolan Dhasal, whose disaster-streaked eyes now stared glassily into the void. Chen’s greatest regret was that Khan himself was not present to be incinerated with the rest of them.
Let us hope, she thought, that our American partner deals with him.
The nuke beat the missiles with three minutes to spare.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ISLE OF ARRAN
SEPTEMBER 7, 1995
CALIFORNIAN TOMATO PUREE—MADE WITH GENETICALLY MODIFIED TOMATOES! Gary Seven contemplated the label on the can with bittersweet amusement. According to Roberta, who had acquired the canned vegetables on one of her transporter-assisted jaunts around the globe, these new “Flavr Savr™” tomatoes had already gone on sale in the United States and England. A revolutionary new technology reduced to hucksterism in less than a generation, he reflected, amazed at how commonplace genetic engineering was becoming, in marked contrast to the days when the Chrysalis Project performed their recklessly ambitious experiments in darkest secrecy. Plump, extravagantly red tomatoes posed like a still-life painting on the aluminum can’s brightly colored packaging, beneath a garish yellow banner proudly proclaiming their unnatural pedigree. Would that all product
s of genetic resequencing could be so reassuringly banal!
Sighing, he placed the brightly packed aluminum upon his desktop and glanced out the window of the farmhouse. It was a cold and foggy day outside; a good day, in other words, for staying indoors and getting some thinking done. He was worried about the situation in Chechnya, not to mention the faltering Mideast peace process. . . .
Roberta entered his office bearing printouts of today’s newspapers. “Extray! Extray!” she hawked with an exaggerated Bronx accent. “Get your red-hot headlines here!”
“Any more fallout,” he asked, “from the nuclear blast at Muroroa?”
“No pun intended?” she replied, quickly rifling through the thick stack of printouts. Blue-green eyes scanned the headlines. “Seriously, French President Chirac is still taking plenty of flak for, quote, ‘resuming nuclear testing in the South Pacific,’ end quote.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I’m still amazed that we managed to get the French government to go along with that cover story.”
“Better than admitting that they leased their facilities to a genetically engineered terrorist who almost destroyed the world.” A somber tone entered Seven’s voice as he recalled the enormous sacrifice made by Chen Tiejun and her amazons. “We should have never let matters get that far.”
“It’s not like we had a lot of choice,” Roberta reminded him. “Khan is a tough customer, with plenty of smarts and manpower on his side. He wasn’t going to let us just waltz in and shut down his precious germ warfare program.” She sat down in an upholstered wooden chair opposite Seven’s desk. “Look at it this way. This is twice now we’ve stopped someone from spreading that nasty flesh-eating bacteria. Not a bad track record.”
“And all it’s taken is two nuclear explosions,” he pointed out dryly.
Roberta shrugged, determined to lift Seven’s spirits. “What’s a couple of nukes between friends, especially considering all the times we’ve prevented World War Three? I figure history owes us a mushroom cloud or two.”
“Let’s hope the Aegis agrees,” Seven said. He appreciated Roberta’s sunny attitude more than ever these days. “The more worrisome part, of course, is that Khan is still out there. We won a costly battle at Muroroa, but not the war.”
“True, but look at all the other power-hungry supermen who have bit the dust.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Hunyadi, Amin, Gomez, Morrison, Arcturus. Unless I’ve forgotten somebody, Khan is the only one left with any real following.”
“And Morning Star,” he reminded her. “Don’t forget that.” Although he had contingencies in place should Khan ever attempt to carry out his ultimate doomsday scenario, Seven was all too aware that even the best of plans could go awry. As long as Morning Star remained in orbit, carefully watched and guarded by Khan’s fanatical underlings, Earth’s entire ozone layer remained at risk.
Until now, the world’s superpowers had kept their hands off Chandigarh, for fear of provoking Khan’s wrath, but, as news of the close call at Muroroa inevitably made its way through the intelligence networks of the United States, Russia, China, and their various allies, how much longer would it be before someone took the risky step of calling Khan’s bluff?
Seven sensed time running out, all the more so because he knew one thing that he feared the rest of the world didn’t.
Khan wasn’t bluffing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AREA 51
NEVADA
UNITED STATES
JANUARY 5, 1996
“CONGRATULATIONS ON A JOB WELL DONE!” Shannon O’Donnell applauded enthusiastically as Dr. Carlson uncorked a bottle of Château Picard and began filling everyone’s glasses, slopping a bit over the rim in his eagerness to make sure everyone got a drink. The rich bouquet of the expensive French wine teased her nostrils, tempting her lips.
The entire team—O’Donnell, Doc Carlson, Walter Nichols, Jackson Roykirk, and Shaun Christopher—had gathered in the conference room for an informal celebration. Brightly colored streamers brightened up the dull wood paneling of the room, while helium-filled balloons, bearing the images of stars, comets, and nebulae, bobbed against the ceiling. A frosted white cake in the shape of the DY-100 occupied a place of honor upon the oblong table, prompting Shannon to wonder where Carlson found a baker with that high a security clearance.
“Toast! Toast!”
Blushing slightly, Carlson cleared his throat. “Our esteemed president talks a lot about a bridge to the twenty-first century, but it took everyone in this room to actually build that bridge—and with five years to spare! At the beginning of this decade, an impulse-powered sleeper ship was just a dream, but you have all helped to make that fantasy a reality. Lady and gentlemen,” he said proudly, raising his glass, “I give you the DY-100, the first true interstellar spacecraft—and the prototype for many more to come!”
“Hear! Hear!” Shannon and the others chorused enthusiastically. Even Jackson seemed to be caught up in the spirit of the occasion, the usually dour and antisocial cyberneticist grinning just as giddily at the rest of them. Shannon sipped her wine, feeling a warm glow of accomplishment and camaraderie. To think, after all these years, slaving away in secret, the ship was finally ready!
Too bad Helen can’t be here, she thought wistfully. But, aside from Carlson, the rest of the team remained unaware of the help they had received from the mysterious older woman. We couldn’t have done it without her, though.
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Shaun declared, giving Walter a hearty pat on the back, “but I can’t wait to give that baby a test-drive.”
Shannon held up her hand like a traffic cop. “Hold on there, flyboy! We still need to run a few tests on the navigational systems, make sure we’ve gotten all the kinks out.”
“Oh, you just don’t want me to make it into space before you,” he teased her. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave you a few planets to explore . . . maybe.”
“Dibs on Alpha Centauri!” she joked back. The wine was already going to her head, adding to her elation. “Besides, the DY-100 doesn’t need a pilot anyway. We’re all just going to snooze our way to the stars!”
“Ouch!” Shaun winced, clutching his heart as if he didn’t already know that the sleeper ship was capable of flying under full automation, while its crew rested in suspended animation. “Obsolete already!”
Seriously, though, she couldn’t imagine a better test pilot for the DY-100’s initial trials than Shaun Christopher. She looked forward to watching him blast off in just a few short days, then maybe joining him years from now on a manned mission to Saturn and beyond. “Well, if you’re good, we’ll think about letting you land the ship once we get where we’re going.”
“After all our hard work,” Walter interjected with a chuckle, “I could use a thirty-year nap in a hibernation niche!”
Jackson snorted. “I still think manned missions are a waste of time and money.” He pointed to a nearby poster of Viking II, ascending into space atop an expendable Titan-Centaur rocket. “That’s the future of space exploration: unmanned robotic probes.” Cold-blooded and aloof, he sounded a bit like a robot himself. “Sending people into deep space is a sentimental anachronism.”
“Are you kidding?” Shaun asked, appalled. “Where’s the fun, the adventure, in that?” He gesticulated wildly, causing the wine in his glass to slosh precariously.“Do you think Columbus would have been happy sending an empty boat to the New World, with maybe a friendly note from Queen Isabella tacked to its mast?”
Oh God, Shannon thought, rolling her eyes. Not this old argument again. Shaun and Jackson had debated the pros and cons of manned versus unmanned space probes since the day they first met, and she didn’t expect that the pilot and the robotics expert would ever see eye to eye on the issue. At times she wondered why Jackson even deigned to work on the DY-100, given his views, but figured that Area 51’s unlimited budget and resources pretty much answered the question. Where else would Jackson get a chance to examine captured alie
n hardware?
“Boys, boys!” Carlson chided them in an avuncular manner. The elderly scientist approached the ship-shaped cake with a stainless-steel pastry carver in hand. “Stop quarreling and have some of this delicious cake.”
Sounds good to me, Shannon thought, her mouth watering already. She was just stepping forward to help Carlson with the cake when, unexpectedly, the pen in the breast pocket of her lab coat vibrated against her chest. What? she thought in surprise. Now?
The pen vibrated again, with apparent impatience. “Excuse me, guys,” she improvised hastily, “but I have to make a pit stop.” Bent over the cake, Carlson peered at Shannon over the tops of his bifocals, as if suspecting something was up, but the younger men seemed to take her at her word. “Save me some cake!” she told them as she slipped out of the conference room.
She hurried down the hall to the nearest ladies’ room, one of the few places at Area 51 that was not (she hoped) under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Hiding out in a stall, relieved to discover that she had the rest room to herself, Shannon pulled up the vibrating silver pen and held it near her lips. “Helen?”
It was silly question. Who else contacted her via a fountain pen?
The voice of the woman Shannon knew only as “Helen Swanson” emerged from the pen. “I need to see you right away,” she said without preamble, unusual for the typically gregarious mystery woman. This alone worried Shannon, never mind the obvious stress she heard in Helen’s voice. Has something gone wrong? The redheaded astronaut trainee had always been afraid that this cloak-and-dagger business would blow up in her face someday.
“Where?” she asked hesitantly. Now was really not a good time to be leaving the base.
“Not far,” Helen said, with a trace of her usual humor. “Meet me at S-4, Launch Control.”