by Paul Teague
Chapter Nineteen
Launched
* * *
Viktor’s feeling of achievement didn’t last long. Magnus had got new data on the significance of Lake Karachay in this scenario. It wasn’t good.
At first, they’d managed to scan the area using radar, but nothing showed up. Magnus had had an uneasy feeling about it and decided to persist. In the end, it was a heat map generated via a mapping satellite that confirmed things for him. He could see twenty-eight of them, circular clusters of heat hovering above the water. Something else seemed to be immersed under the water too, he guessed it was another ship, but its heat trace was almost non-existent. They were just waiting there, doing nothing, like a gang of hoodlums up to no good.
As Viktor looked at the surveillance images on his screen, he knew what had to be done. He hesitated as he decided whether or not to share this information with Magnus. He was used to working alone, trusting no one and resolving issues like this in isolation. That day he decided to change his policy. This small army of theirs was a force to be reckoned with – he was proud to be a part of it.
He desperately wanted to save his wife and children. They’d just come so close to death, he was not going to let that happen again. But he was going to have to take the biggest gamble of his life to save them. And he wanted to share that with his friend, Magnus, an American who had shown himself worthy of trust, loyalty even.
So Viktor and Magnus moved unobtrusively to a meeting area off the control room and made the decision that would either hasten the destruction of their planet, or help to save it. They were chasing off a group of predators, gathering like jackals, ready to devour the spoils of war.
Together they programmed in the coordinates.
Together they placed everything on a knife-edge.
Together they launched Viktor’s fifty hidden nukes at a single destination: Lake Karachay, where the Helyion army had gathered, ready to take over the planet.
* * *
Free
* * *
Amy had seen Zadra Nurmeen arriving on the transporter, and she saw him head after Dan. She hesitated, thinking she ought to go and help her son, but she also knew she needed him to buy her some time. They’d come here for Davran and they were sure as heck leaving with her.
She found the Queen almost immediately, the ISOCell was only small. Amy was horrified by what she saw. It was the stuff of nightmares. What she didn’t know was that the experiments carried out on her own daughter had helped to create the monstrosity that was now before her, experiments which had given essential data about Zatheon biology and neurological pathways.
Davran had numerous tubes running in and out of her body. The entry points had been cut into her skin, they were messy and septic. Her head was roughly shaven and there were scars beneath the new hair growth – little attention had been given to her comfort when this happened. Electrodes were attached all over her head. She was showing high levels of distress, sweat covered her hands and face. Worse still, she was lashed to a metal frame, to keep her upright and still.
Henry Pierce and Zadra Nurmeen had committed this obscenity. They had shown no compassion at all in their treatment of Davran. Amy didn’t know what she should do, but she took action anyway. First, she freed Davran from the frame that restrained her, untying the strong bindings that had been used to keep her attached to this place of crucifixion. She looked at the tubes and the wires, sizing them up, trying to figure out what purpose they were serving. Then she did the only thing that she could do.
As gently as she could, she removed the tubes from the incisions in Davran’s flesh. Then she tore off the wires. Finally, she repeated a trick that she’d learned from Simon in the stasis room. She ripped out all of the cables which served the area. As she did so, the power in the ISOCell died, leaving them in the darkness of space.
Amy grabbed Davran, supporting her weight as she rushed towards the transporter, their path illuminated by the dying flashes of power from the severed cables. As she touched the panel on the transporter, she saw the silhouette of Dan coming around the far corner. He’d completed a circuit of the ISOCell without being caught.
She had to trust in him. She took a long final look at her son and hoped it would not be the last time she would see him alive.
* * *
Broken
* * *
Mike felt sure that the SD card must contain some important information. He’d checked out his theory when Xiang alerted him that Nat was back in the Quadrant. Nat had passed on a message through Xiang that she’d retrieved the data from Henry Pierce’s computer wherever it was that they’d been experimenting on her. It seemed his best bet with time running out. He could wade through the Genesis 2 data for months and not find anything, and besides, Magnus’s guys were still working on that.
Finally, after all the interruptions, Mike inserted the SD card into Amy’s laptop. The low tech was a relief to him after working to get up to speed with all the new systems in the bunker, but he was having a problem. The SD card was in and the laptop was charged fully, thanks to the wireless power available throughout the bunker, but there was nothing there. The drive was displaying fine, but it appeared to be empty. Hellfire! Surely not?
Mike tapped the return button, then tried it again. Nothing there still. Nat couldn’t have been wasting her time on this – there must be something on it. Perhaps it was encrypted? Then he thought back to something Dan used to say to Amy whenever she checked her emails.
‘You’re going to wreck that button!’ he would laugh as Amy worked through her inbox, cursing the spam and unwelcome mailshots. Maybe it was the return button that was the problem.
He thumped it so hard that he feared it might damage the laptop. He was right, the data sprang into life on the screen in front of him. He looked in expectation at whatever essential data this SD card had concealed. It was just a list of four codes. They were absolutely meaningless to him.
* * *
Cornered
* * *
Simon remembered the sequence exactly. He was surprised at how much of the detail he’d retained, even though it was now almost twenty years ago. The frazzled rat right at the beginning had been genius, it helped to build up the tension and jeopardy before the entire mission went awry. This simulation area was just one big psychological puzzler and it all made perfect sense once you knew how the tramlines worked.
They would wait outside the door to the office block until the troopers had followed them in deep enough to be spotted, then they would finish it all off inside the main complex, after the rooms were mixed up – the twist that had disorientated them twenty years ago. All Kate and Simon had to do was to follow the tramlines – if you stuck to them, nothing hit you.
It was disconcerting for both of them, however. It took a real leap of faith to hold steady amid the weapon fire, the alarms sounding and the clumping boots of the approaching security teams. It might have been a simulation, but it was completely immersive and Simon now understood how they’d been herded into that final, terrible decision-making situation right at the end. By the time you got to that stage your adrenalin was pumping and you’d jump out of a window if they asked you to.
It wasn’t long until the troopers entered the simulation area. There must have been at least thirty of them. The Nexus had been breached and the Queen was issuing instructions to save the nest. Simon and Kate’s distraction had worked well. The Queen must have thought that her adversaries were still trapped on this ship. That would give Nat and Doctor Pierce the cover they needed to get away, and Dan too might be able to move around unobstructed, wherever he was, whatever he was planning.
Kate jumped as a laser struck the door to her side, a little too close for comfort. It was simulated fire – not from the troopers – but how would they tell the difference? Sticking to the tramlines would not save them from the troopers’ shots. Maybe they should have thought that one through a little more.
‘Keep to the tra
mlines!’ shouted Simon. It was difficult to hear him over all the noise.
They just had to create some leeway, come up with a diversion, give Nat, Amy, Dan and anybody else who could make it out alive time to get back to Quadrant 3.
The troopers would focus on him and Kate. They’d left a strong enough trail of destruction, after all. They’d lure them to the centre, then, at the final moment, blow up the entire hangar. Take everybody out, themselves included, if they had to.
Kate and Simon walked through the office block door, having scrambled the rooms, as before. Both fought to concentrate on the tramlines – the distractions were enormous, everything was created to produce an affront to their senses, emotions, fears and doubts. The troopers were close behind them. Real weapon fire had now been added to the mix. It was difficult to keep calm and level-headed, even though they had a pathway through this nightmare.
There was an explosion to the left. No worries, it was a simulation, not the troopers. A laser beam hit the woodwork to Kate’s side. It began to burn. Not a simulation, a real weapon. Hell, how could she tell which was which?
Something was thrown over their heads. Simon couldn’t work out what it was, but he was certain it wasn’t part of the simulation. There was an explosion, it pushed them both off their feet and hurled Kate violently against the wall. The simulation pixelated and vanished in front of them. Only the green grid was left, marking out the areas where the simulations would take place. In the corner, the main control console was in flames.
Of course, the Queen knew everything about the Nexus. It didn’t take her long to issue new instructions to her troopers. Disable the simulation. Destroy the controls. Eliminate the intruders.
Simon looked up to see thirty weapons trained directly on him and Kate. When those things fired it would be no simulation. He steeled himself for the end. And then the troopers just stopped.
* * *
Docking
* * *
Harold Pierce looked out of the windows of the airlock towards the approaching Helyion ship. It had come to collect Zadra Nurmeen and complete their deadly mission.
The entire Nexus was in a state of confusion. There didn’t appear to be anybody in command. The troopers seemed to be lost and disorientated, as if they had no orders. He needed to do what he could before they were spotted.
‘Your brother, he went with Nat in the transporter,’ said Dae-Ho, an urgent look in his eyes. He didn’t know how to react. He’d craved freedom for many years now, but when he’d glimpsed it, he discovered he’d been a slave too long – he needed someone to tell him what to do.
Maybe this situation could be to their advantage. Henry and Harold Pierce still looked very similar. In the confusion after the smoke bomb ambush, Harold thought he might be able to gain access to the ops area. From there he could reverse the terraforming sequence … but he’d need the hijack codes, he couldn’t do it without them. He’d need his brother for those – or Zadra Nurmeen – and he didn’t think that help would be coming soon.
And the Nexus, it was going to be destroyed, he didn’t know how long they had, but he’d need his brother – or the twins – to help with that too. Everything used Zatheon technology, all the systems in the bunkers and the Nexus were protected by the Zatheon failsafe after Genesis 2 had begun. They’d agreed it from the start – if Earth got into any difficulties, the Zatheons would help to put it right.
Zatheon government worked on a pairing basis. Sibling pairs would have to endorse decisions and that meant no single person could do anything to harm the species. If it was needed, the Zatheons would have full access to the lower levels of the bunkers, they’d be able to initiate Unification. They were the Plan B backup, if it ever got that far.
Harold had the alert codes for the Zatheons. He hadn’t had a chance to use them before his brother boarded the Nexus and began his brutal assault. He’d thought they could handle it on Earth without the help of the Zatheons. Besides, they were reluctant to get involved, they would only initiate Unification if the terraforming process had failed. In that eventuality, it would be just him on the Nexus, surrounded by the virtual forms of the world’s leaders, as the Earth began to burn below. By that stage it would have been a situation of terrible gravity. The Zatheons would extract the physical forms of the Global Consortium leaders, bring them to the Nexus, and Unification would have begun. A new start for Earth and an ambitious project gone terribly wrong.
How laughable those plans now seemed. Nobody had factored in the hybrid element. His brother was thought to be long out of the picture, but he’d sabotaged the entire process.
Harold had had a last minute hunch before they’d set the final process in motion – he’d realized their exposure a little too late. It was why he’d decided to get Dan involved in this whole thing at the last moment. It was why he had lured the Tracy family with that spoof competition, taken Amy away under yet another deception, injected the neuronic device into her neck just days before the darkness fell, did the same to her old friend James, creating allies and possibilities within the bunker. Just in case he needed them. And he had needed them, as it turned out.
It made sense to have a hybrid like himself involved. Hybrids were the only ones who’d be able to access everything in the bunkers. He cursed himself again for getting it so wrong. He knew what Henry and Zadra were capable of. Yet they’d kept their deception so well hidden, he’d never suspected this sabotage.
Now he needed his brother, he was not going to use the twins for this, the risk was too great. Dae-Ho had said that Henry was back in Quadrant 3 with Nat. He had to fix that.
‘Come with me,’ he said to Dae-Ho, taking charge now. ‘Pretend to be working with me.’
He returned to the ops area. It was mainly quiet, there were some troopers, but they seemed dazed, they weren’t putting up a fight in any way. Nobody looked at him as if he were out of place. There was no sign of Zadra Nurmeen either – that wasn’t good. Harold got straight to work, he had no idea how long he had left to put this right. But he knew exactly what had to be done.
‘What happened to Dan?’ he asked.
Dae-Ho pointed at the transporter. ‘Zadra Nurmeen went too, so did the lady.’
Harold wondered who Dae-Ho meant by ‘the lady’. He guessed it might be Kate, surely not Amy? He got his answer seconds afterwards, as the makeshift transporter began to light up and two figures materialized in front of them.
He saw straight away why the troopers seemed so dazed. It was Amy with Davran. Davran was alive, they’d saved her. He rushed over to them.
‘What’s happened?’
She eyed him warily, wanting to be certain that this was the right Doctor Pierce to be speaking to. He seemed to be fine.
‘Dan’s still there, Zadra is with him. I need to go back!’
‘No, go with this man. Take Davran back to Quadrant 3. She can save the twins.’
‘There won’t be anybody to save!’ shouted Amy.
‘Take her!’ said Harold. ‘Get her to Xiang, let Dan take care of himself. We don’t have the time for this. The troopers are disconnected now Davran is offline, they’re no threat to us. The Helyions are about to dock, you’ve got to get her off the Nexus!’
Amy saw he was right. She needed to get Davran in the transporter and back to Xiang. She had to trust Dan, she had to believe that he could outwit that monster on the ISOCell. Only one of them was getting off that ship alive. It had better be Dan.
‘I’ll take her,’ she said. ‘You just make sure that if Dan is the next person to appear on this platform that you get him in that transporter and back to Quadrant 3. I’ll have a medical team waiting if … when he gets to Quadrant 3.’
Dae-Ho helped her to support Davran who was limp, confused and bloody from being torn off the machines and tubes. They made it to the transporter and Dae-Ho stood aside as the doors closed and Amy returned to Quadrant 3.
In the ops area, Harold took control once again. He put the Global Consort
ium leaders back online, their holographic images surrounding him as he orchestrated events on the Nexus. At first they were unsure which Pierce brother they were looking at, but relief showed in their faces as they realized that it was the right one.
He opened up a comms channel to Quadrant 3 – this was going bunker-wide – and he patched in the Helyion ship via the docking area too.
‘This is Harold Pierce on board the Nexus. The Nexus is counting down to self-destruction, it will explode in eleven minutes. I will need authorization to initiate de-Unification. Do I have it?’
All the world’s leaders sanctioned his request and Harold pressed some buttons on his console. There was a deep rumble throughout the Nexus. The Quadrants were disengaging.
‘Magnus, I need my brother back. Only he and I together can now reverse the self-destruct process on this ship. I also need the code sequence that Henry and Zadra used to hijack the terraforming. Does anybody have any leads on that? Does Henry have any documentation on him?’
There was silence from Quadrant 3.
‘Doctor Pierce, this is Magnus speaking. Is this on all channels?’
‘Yes, everybody can hear you, Magnus.’
‘We’re sending your brother over now. He’s in a bad way. We wiped out the nukes, but we’ve launched fifty of our own.’
Faces dropped on the holographic screens – there were visible signs of concern. World leaders were not used to having their power usurped, particularly not by civilians.
‘We’ve targeted Lake Karachay. There’s a force of some sort gathered there. They can either get off our planet or we’ll take them with us!’
Harold Pierce smiled to himself. Magnus had a plan, he could hear it in his voice. He was sending a firm message without giving the game away to anybody else who might be listening. The Helyions would be monitoring this message, that’s just the sort of thing he wanted them to hear.