The Secret Bunker 3

by Paul Teague

  The transporter lights activated and Amy sank to the ground, finally beaten by the ferocity of the trooper’s blows.

  Chapter Eleven

  The First Trooper

  * * *

  Davran Saloor didn’t know what had happened to the father of her children. The last she saw of him was at the end of their trial. There was never any question about their guilt, only the nature of the punishment that would be applied.

  The proceedings were held within the confines of an O-Fed court hearing, with one representative from each planet presiding over their fate. The Helyions had intimidated the nine remaining parties – with the exception of Earth and Zatheon – into voting with them. The representatives from Earth and Zatheon felt as if they were presiding over a terrible injustice, but were powerless to intervene. Davran Saloor was ostracized with immediate effect.

  Scattered throughout their respective universes were pods – ironically, created with Zatheon technology – in which criminals were placed in isolation. This had been agreed in the early days, when there had only been three members of the Off World Federation. There was no reprieve, this is where you spent the remainder of your days. For Zatheons, that was a very long time. Their lifespan was twice that of human beings. The oldest Zatheon had been known to live for 207 Earth years in almost perfect health.

  Davran was immediately shipped away to an ISOCell, destined never to see the father of her children – or the twins – ever again. She was sentenced first, and she never knew what had happened to Jeff. According to the rules of the Covenant, he should have spent the rest of his life ostracized as well, the same fate that had been deemed suitable for Davran. But there was further Helyion interference here, an unprecedented departure from the Covenant and an agreement made between certain allies – and those too scared to resist. At the O-Fed meeting, as far as the Zatheons were concerned, Jeff had been ostracized. He would be allocated a random ISOCell and no one would ever know where he’d been abandoned in space. It could be anywhere in the eight known universes.

  But as he was being escorted for transportation, there was some sleight of hand. O-Fed documentation certainly showed that he’d been ostracized, but the truth was a different story. Jeff had been procured for research purposes. This was instigated by a Helyion known as Zadra Nurmeen, who would himself be alienated along with his friend Henry Pierce in the years that followed.

  They’d be removed from the Genesis 2 project on moral and ethical grounds. That could mean a number of things. In their case it related to crimes against humanity. To be specific, experimentation on live human beings, using exoskeleton technology procured from an innovative young entrepreneur whose company was known as Magnum Enterprises.

  * * *

  Control

  * * *

  Henry Pierce felt that he’d been born for this moment. His useless brother was incarcerated and soon he’d be dead or shackled in a laboratory somewhere, helping Henry to achieve supremacy among the remaining O-Fed planets. Either way, he’d kill Harold eventually. And now he was surrounded by the faces of the world’s leaders. They’d been forced to watch the scenes that had just been played out on the main deck of the Nexus. Paralysed by the darkness on Earth, only able to communicate via subconsciousness and holographic representations, they were powerless to do anything.

  They could debate and vote all they wanted to. There was only one vote that counted now, and that was his own. How good it felt to be able to force these treacherous wretches to watch as he destroyed their planet. Many of the faces on these screens had been behind his ejection from the Genesis 2 project all those years earlier. These members of the Global Consortium had turned their backs on him and now they’d pay for it.

  They protested at him via their screens, but as the voices grew too loud, he simply muted them. The power was all his and it felt good. But there was one voice left. He didn’t hear it at first, and one by one he silenced the protestations of the world’s leaders, helplessly pleading with him and offering to make deals to save the planet. This was a familiar voice. It was the voice of his brother, creeping back into his head after all those years apart. At one time, as they’d worked on the Genesis 2 project together, it had been a constant, a welcome source of information, theory and learning which had hastened their progress. It had even been companionable and he’d felt calmer as a result. However, the voice was long since lost after Henry had been so forcibly ejected from Genesis 2. Now it was back, but soon his brother’s voice would be silenced for good. Either Harold would agree to work with him on the destruction of Zatheon or he’d be ejected into space via the airlocks.

  In fact, whatever happened, his brother was eventually leaving via the airlocks … it was simply a matter of the timing.

  * * *

  Manipulation

  * * *

  Mike was horrified and intrigued at what he’d just read in the document. He tried to stop himself getting immersed in the details, there was so much information within those files. He had to focus on the priorities, finding information to help Dan and Nat. This file blew his mind – he’d grown up with conspiracy theories and rumours of Area 51, but this was the real thing. It dated back to 1967, to the birth of twins. To an alien mother. Like Dan and Nat perhaps. But it was the name that captured his attention most.

  He nearly missed it at first, because initially they’d just used the alien names of the children. Ajnur 1 and Ajnur 2. That had changed over time – the doctor in charge of the twins had obviously grown attached to them. After a while they were referred to as Henry and Harold.

  Then some kind of experimental trial had begun and the references had changed again. But it seemed that whoever had handwritten those original notes in the sixties, before they were scanned into the records, had needed to disassociate himself from whatever was happening to one of the children. Henry Pierce was simply referred to as ‘Child 002’ until the adoption was completed. But it was quite clear that his behaviour had deteriorated rapidly after the drug trials began. You could almost sense the relief from whoever was caring for these children when the final adoption update on the twins was entered into the official records.

  * * *

  Adoption date: 3rd May 1969

  Parents: Andrew and Jean Pierce

  Observations: Child 002 behaviour suppressed c/o maximum dosage of Tantrazinol/078-Y, prior behaviours violent and erratic. Parents delighted to adopt twins, desperate to start family.

  Recommendations: No further trials, severe adverse effects. Destroy adoption paperwork, recommend no trackbacks at O-Fed level.

  File closed: 5th May 1969

  * * *

  Revelations

  * * *

  Harold Pierce was exhausted. He may have been bruised and weary, but he was determined to share as much as he could with us.

  ‘Who is our real mum?’ asked Nat. We were both desperate to learn more about her. I couldn’t even remember her name.

  ‘I never knew what happened to her,’ Doctor Pierce began. ‘There was a lot of trouble with O-Fed at that time.’

  We looked at him, and Nat had to spell it out.

  ‘Off World Federation?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Remember, I told you in my video feed that the darkness is connected to the terraforming of Earth, Dan?’ I nodded and he carried on talking. ‘Well, it’s not Earth technology that we’re using. Very little of what you’ve seen in the bunkers is human technology.’

  I knew it! There was no way you could buy this stuff from your local PC store – if you could, the Tracy family would have spotted it long ago. And bought all of it.

  ‘The Off World Federation is made up of twelve planets, Earth being one of them. The terraforming has to take place now, or there won’t be a world capable of sustaining human life when you two grow up. It’s my guess that Henry is planning to sabotage it. If Zadra Nurmeen is here, they’re looking after the interests of Helyios 4, they certainly won’t be concerned about Earth.’

&nb
sp; This was too much to take in, all this talk of planets and weird names that meant nothing to me. Nat was more on the ball.

  ‘I know that strange guy already. I saw him on the PC screen in the lab – I only got a glimpse, but it was definitely him.’

  Doctor Pierce looked full of shame, and he began to apologize to Nat.

  ‘Nat, I’m so sorry I didn’t see what happened to you afterwards. I thought it was a genuine accident – I was sure you were dead …’

  He was choked and having difficulty talking about this. He seemed to know what Nat had been put through over the past three years.

  ‘I honestly didn’t know you were alive until I saw you on the screens … until your mum went to see you in the car park outside the bunker, and even then I couldn’t be sure it was you. It came together for me then – it began to make sense to me when we had the delays with the lighting. It had to be my brother. He was the only one capable of sabotaging this project. He played it well, though. Goodness knows how he kept it hidden all these years. I would never have known they were planning this.’

  As if on cue, three troopers burst into the room. They escorted us roughly back to the ops area where Henry Pierce was addressing the worried faces on the screens surrounding him. I scarcely recognized any of them. Only two looked familiar. I was sure one of them was the president of the United States, and the other was our prime minister. Neither seemed real, they were like digital animations of some kind.

  Henry Pierce’s chum – Zadra Nurmeen or whatever he was called – just sat there, smiling to himself. He had a horrible, self-satisfied look on his face. He didn’t say or do anything, he was watching Pierce’s every move. Henry was gesticulating wildly as he goaded the people on the screens. As we were thrown to the ground a couple of metres away from him, he cut himself short.

  ‘Ah, decision time!’ he announced, clapping his hands together as if this were some family quiz show.

  ‘We’ll do it,’ I said straight away. ‘We’ll help you.’

  Nat thought that came a bit too easy, so she chipped in a ‘Like hell we will!’ for good measure. Pierce didn’t know which of us to listen to and immediately became impatient. Talk about a sudden change of character. He walked over to Harold and struck him across the face. No warning, no provocation, he just seemed to feel like doing it. I flinched, but Nat seemed to be familiar with this erratic behaviour.

  ‘Take him to the airlock,’ he shouted at one of the troopers. ‘See if that’ll help my brother make his mind up.’

  As the trooper grabbed Harold by the shoulder and manhandled him out of the ops area, I could see that look on Nat’s face again. I was beginning to be able to speak to her directly now – we were both getting better at it. I tried to use telepathy to tell her to calm down, to wait things out, but she wasn’t having any of it. She couldn’t help herself, she hated this man. She waited for him to pass close to her, and she leaped up and started to beat his face with her fists. Crazy he might have been, but he wasn’t physically strong, so he had to take this beating for the few moments that it took the troopers to realize what was going on and to react to it.

  Their response was violent and ruthless. They pulled Nat off Henry Pierce and threw her across the room, hitting her head against one of the consoles. I thought she was going to move, but then she passed out, unconscious. Blood trickled down her forehead.

  Pierce went over to her, wiped some of the blood onto his finger and then walked up to me threateningly.

  ‘You want more of this on your hands?’ he hissed. He was furious at his humiliation in front of the faces on the screens.

  ‘No,’ I answered sheepishly. I didn’t want to provoke him. I was furious with Nat – we couldn’t afford all these temper tantrums and distractions, they were wasting time.

  Pierce wiped away the blood on his face with the hand he’d been waving at me threateningly.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he suddenly declared. ‘Make up your mind – you’re either with me or you take a trip into space with them.’

  And to illustrate what he meant, he dished out his punishment to Nat.

  ‘Take her to the airlock!’ he screamed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Defence

  * * *

  It was on 23 March 1983 – eight months before the formal Global Consortium agreement was made in November of that year – that President Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defence Initiative. The aim was to develop the technology to intercept enemy nuclear missiles.

  At the time it had seemed wildly ambitious in its scale, the stuff of science fiction, but it was only a cover for the work that would need to be done for the Genesis 2 project. Although the Star Wars initiative – as it was known – changed its name over the years, the integrity of the project remained intact, and it became fully integrated into the mission to save Earth from its rapidly approaching fate.

  As cold war relationships evolved, mainly due to global governmental focus on the impending environmental catastrophe, the SDI became less about defence and more about creating a delivery system for the shards. It was these terraforming shards which would eventually be released via the satellite matrix surrounding the planet, using off-planet technology and processes which had been inspired by the early work of Davran Saloor. However, their defensive capability remained intact.

  President Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative had become a reality many years ago. Renamed by President Clinton ten years later as BMDO – or Ballistic Missile Defence Organization – it had in fact evolved way beyond its original scope. Unknown to the world’s press – and largely a secret within Global Consortium circles – nuclear weaponry was, for all intents and purposes, a redundant technology. Ironically, the devices which we had built to destroy each other had become the vehicle of our salvation.

  Now called the Global Defence Matrix, it was capable of detecting the signature of any nuclear missile anywhere in the world. The next generation of warfare would involve nanotechnology and genetic combat, but that was for a future which did not yet exist. The system of defence which had been built to protect us from each other would still have its part to play. When President Reagan announced the initiative decades ago, he could barely have imagined that it would eventually be used in the final battle for Earth.

  * * *

  Lake Karachay

  * * *

  The Helyion ship lay fully immersed below the waters of Lake Karachay, waiting patiently for the final terraforming process to begin. This had been planned long ago by the government on Helyios 4. The unique access to Earth afforded to their emissary Zadra Nurmeen and his strategic partnership with the Earth scientist Doctor Henry Pierce had been most advantageous to them. With only fifty-three Helyion years – or thirty Earth years – to go until the destruction of their planet, they couldn’t take the risk of Earth’s terraforming project not working.

  It was experimental, even for the Zatheons, and in spite of the early assurances of Davran Saloor – and her successor after she was removed from the project – the Helyions were not going to leave anything to chance. Already Henry Pierce and Zadra Nurmeen had a plan in motion to sabotage the terraforming process and deliver the Earth to the Helyions as a dead, but still mineral rich, planet.

  That was good, but unknown to Henry Pierce they’d also hatched a plan of their own. Call it a backup plan, in case Pierce was unable to deliver. Under cover of the terraforming darkness, they would land a craft in the most hospitable area they could locate on the planet. With the entire planet asleep, defence systems down, and nobody to monitor what they were doing, they would be able to slip through the matrix using the cloaking mechanism which nobody in the Global Consortium believed them to be capable of building. They’d all despised the Helyions, with their dark, industrial practices and rough physicality, but appearances had deceived, and they were capable of advanced scientific developments.

  The Helyion ship would lurk within the contaminated waters of Lake Karachay while t
he terraforming process worked through to completion of Terra Level 3 on the surface above them. While it did so they would begin a detailed analysis of their own. They would sample the planet’s mineral deposits and confirm the options for sustainability for their own species. If the Earth scientist and Zadra Nurmeen were successful, they would sabotage the terraforming and deliver a dead planet, one which they would have full rights under the O-Fed Covenant to plunder.

  And if Pierce and Zadra Nurmeen failed? Well, they’d just take the planet anyway, thus causing the first interplanetary war since the Off World Federation had come into existence.

  * * *

  The Captive

  * * *

  Amy was not fully aware of what happened next, but when she thought back to it, she had noticed the moment at which the trooper had paused – only for a few seconds. Later she would understand that this was because the data stream from his helmet had been broken and he’d been disorientated, but it was this that eventually saved her life.

  As the transporter lights activated, she lost consciousness, finally giving in to the power of the blows she’d received from him. She was half aware of what was going on around her as the transporter rematerialized on Quadrant 3. The doors to the elevator opened. As she drifted in and out of awareness, she clocked the explosives that had been packed around this area in case of attack. The minute the doors opened, several laser beams immediately lit up the area, all targeted on the trooper.