The Secret Bunker 3

by Paul Teague

  Simon and Kate had stayed behind to wait for Dan. Between them they loaded him into the main transporter and sent him back to Quadrant 3. By one minute he was wired up in the med lab and the healing blood from his unconscious birth mother helped to save the son and daughter that she had not seen for over fifteen years.

  As Simon had gone to activate the transporter, he’d shouted to Harold, ‘What about you two?’

  The brothers were the only two humans on board the Nexus. The troopers were either heading back to Earth in one of the four Quadrants or they’d been evacuated by Simon and Kate.

  ‘We’ll follow you!’ Harold replied. Simon nodded and took the last party back to Quadrant 3 in the transporter.

  As the transporter door closed, Harold heard the thud of Helyion boots stomping along the corridor. It was too late, he didn’t have time to reverse the self-destruction sequence. If they caught him now, they could change everything and regain the initiative. That wasn’t going to happen.

  The nukes were disabled, the terraforming was back on track, Dan had escaped the ISOCell, the four Quadrants were heading back to Earth, and he’d just heard from Viktor that the Helyions were leaving the planet’s surface.

  Two minutes left. They were dead anyway unless he got back to Quadrant 3, along with his brother. He’d let his brother go once before, given him the benefit of the doubt. He was too dangerous to be locked up in a prison or incarcerated somewhere humane. The Helyions would only get to him again. Henry was unable to stop himself.

  Spurred on by the approaching Helyions, Harold Pierce picked up his E-Pad and walked towards the airlock. He typed in a series of three codes that only he knew, and then smashed the E-Pad against the wall.

  He walked up to his brother and kissed him on the top of his head. His eyes moistened as he walked up to the airlock door and keyed in the activation code. The airlock doors opened and the two Pierce brothers were flushed out into space, dying almost instantly. As they drew their last breaths, the Helyion boarding team reached the ops area, where all was quiet. The holographic images of two hundred of the world’s leaders watched as the alien life forms looked around, bewildered by the scene that greeted them. Then the self-destruct sequence reached zero seconds and the Nexus and docked Helyion ship were blown into tiny pieces, joining the two Pierce brothers in their cold dark grave in space.

  As the massive explosion ripped apart the two space craft and several of the surrounding satellites, an armada of Zatheon warships appeared just outside the bright lights of the matrix. They’d received the three codes sent by Harold Pierce only moments before. They’d finally come to help their friends from Earth. They were going to escort the twenty-nine Helyion ships back to their own planet and far away from this solar system. And they were going to make very sure that they never came back.

  * * *

  Reborn

  * * *

  The Earth was reborn, though fewer than three thousand people would ever know it. Officially, it was solar flares which had incapacitated the world for the past seventeen days. Hurriedly, the world’s leaders, relieved to have survived these events, agreed on a containment and misinformation plan. They’d just escaped the tragic consequences of their own scheming, yet here they were again, covering up, fabricating untruths, changing reality to appease the population of the planet.

  Fewer than one million people perished in all. It was a terrible loss, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been. The world had been minutes away from total extinction – now it had been reborn, billions of human lives were saved. Nobody felt a sense of victory, though. This battle had been won at a terrible cost.

  And if it wasn’t for a group of civilians who’d been thrown together in the heat of crisis and created such a remarkable fighting force, this would have become a dead planet. Home for an aggressive Helyion race intent on mining its rich mineral deposits and allowing the human inhabitants to perish in a sabotaged environment, their dying screams unheard.

  The four Quadrants had returned to their hiding places below the bunkers, complete with their cargo of embryos, weaponry and troopers. The ethics of that programme would be argued about in private for many years to come, but it remained intact, a subterranean ark, hidden out of sight should mankind ever need it again.

  The terraforming process was successfully completed, thanks to the fast thinking of Harold Pierce. He perished on the Nexus, alongside his twin brother, but his final gift to the planet was the one that he’d intended to bestow all along, ever since he’d become involved in the Global Consortium – that of sustaining life on Earth.

  The rebirth of the Earth would continue, undetected by humans, and using nanotechnology borrowed from the Zatheons. This technology was developed by an expert mineralogist called Davran Saloor, a much respected citizen of Zatheon who’d once been ostracized for crimes against the Off World Federation, but who was now fully pardoned in recognition of the terrible suffering she’d endured in the battle for Earth.

  * * *

  Afterwards

  * * *

  I couldn’t believe that we’d returned to this place a year on, but I guessed it was only fitting really – where else could we go to remember the people we’d lost and the events we were caught up in?

  I was walking with Nat across the car park and towards the cottage. We all travelled here by traditional means – there were no transporters involved in this gathering, just cars, taxis and aeroplanes. And there was also the occasional helicopter, laid on by Magnus, of course.

  My leg still twinged occasionally, usually when I swung out of the car, but most of the time I wasn’t really aware of it. I noticed that the mast James blew up across the fields was back now. After a year to recover, there wasn’t much evidence of what had gone on across this landscape – just a few grassy mounds and rocks deposited where they weren’t previously.

  The bunker staff greeted us as we arrived. Troywood was closed to tourists – it was only open for people who were here for Genesis 2 today. We’d all shared a unique experience. I was changing my mind about this gathering now I was here. It was a good thing to do.

  We all moved through the bunker entrance and gathered outside the bunker’s blast doors. Everything was as it was when we first came here on that family day trip, completely oblivious as to what was about to happen.

  So much had changed in the past year. It had been an amazing time for me and Nat. We finally met our birth parents – Davran and Jeff – and now we felt like we were part of a big, happy, extended family. It made no difference to either of us that we had two mums and two dads, we treated them all the same, although we were still getting to know our natural parents.

  It took a long time for the Zatheons to put Davran right. She was a wreck after Mum rescued her from the ISOCell, but things were now coming good for her. Jeff too had had a tough time of it. They were both pulling through. It seemed to really help when they were around everybody else in the family. They were struggling to know what was real and what was implanted by the neuronic devices, but being rooted firmly in reality only helped that process.

  What a change there had been in a year.

  Dad now worked for Magnus at the recently expanded Magnum Enterprises. He was a chief coder there, managing multiple teams. He still did most of it via the kitchen table, mind you, and always had time for an online cat video, but working remotely he was doing some great things these days. He’d updated and refreshed his tech skills. His new role had given him a new lease of life.

  Magnus looked like a different person too. He rediscovered his passion for helping humanity through tech innovation and was adapting his sabotaged exoskeletons to help people with mobility problems and paralysis. He was determined that something good would come from what we’d been through.

  He’d brought in Xiang too. He thought they’d be able to make the leap to bioskeletons fairly soon, as well as developing a way to bridge spinal damage using nanotechnology. Xiang seemed to have found her natural place as
well. She was looking really happy that her work was being used for only good projects now, her conscience was at peace.

  In fact, Magnum Enterprises was expanding in some very interesting ways. Viktor now headed the newly created agri section, developing his own research to adapt it for areas where crops struggled to survive. Magnus reckoned that within three years they’d be able to feed starving populations in regions hit by drought and floods, adapting the processes that Viktor developed to grow crops in seawater and in darkness.

  It was all really cool tech, the stuff of sci-fi, but that was my world now. It went with the territory – I had an alien mum after all. My two mums got on really well, and we called them by their first names so we didn’t get confused. Even though they’re both still ‘Mum’ to me and Nat.

  Amy and Davran had become political activists – it was great to see Amy using some of that kick-ass attitude again. Without a weapon in her hand, of course. They gave the Global Consortium a hard time after Genesis 2, and with the blessing of the Off World Federation, they’d won approval for increased ties between Earth and Zatheon.

  There was even agreement that everybody on Earth would know about off-world life forms within the next ten years. It would be a staged process, which my mums would oversee. That was an amazing prospect – by the time I was 27 there could be Zatheons on Earth and out in the open. That would bring some big changes for me and Nat. We’d have to decide whether or not to keep our alien heritage secret, but that decision was a long way off. We needed to see how the world reacted to news of alien life forms first.

  Amy and Davran also forced the Helyions into submission via the Off World Federation courts. They were completely neutered now – my mums proposed a new process of ‘recalibration’, where planets using technology for aggressive purposes had their expansion limits curtailed and strictly monitored. Put simply, their entire planet had been clamped. Everybody agreed – what the Helyions had tried to do could never be allowed to happen again. It was humane, but decisive, just the sort of thing I’d expect from Mum – Amy. They’d helped to re-write the Covenant.

  Simon and Kate were here too. They now led the work of the Global Consortium, jointly replacing Harold Pierce as its head. The world’s leaders owed everybody such a debt of gratitude, it all made perfect sense. Besides, the key task of the Global Consortium had been accomplished and they could move on to new projects now. Simon and Kate were determined that those projects would be about creation, growth and sustainable development. They’d vowed to change the ethos of the Consortium and to be more open about their work.

  Even Dae-Ho was there, with his family. Nat rushed straight up to him and wrapped her arms around him. Those two had shared some horrible history that I was never a part of. I’d heard Nat’s story now. It was difficult listening, but I was sure she was putting it behind her. She was just pleased to be back with the family. A wonderful extended family, which included lots of new friends.

  We were missing Harold Pierce and James. They should have been with us, but they’d sacrificed their lives for this, they’d helped us save the world. They weren’t forgotten. James’s family was there, it was good to meet them at last. Amy visited regularly and kept in touch. She still felt guilty about James, I’m not sure why.

  The bunker had been restored to its original state, the incredible transmogrification enabled by Zatheon technology now reversed and concealed once again. Hopefully, the bunkers would never be needed again and they’d remain tourist attractions.

  Magnus unveiled a plaque in memory of James and Harold and there was a spontaneous round of applause. The plaque couldn’t say what they did – the wording said, ‘They cared deeply about this planet’ but we all knew, we remembered what they’d done.

  I looked around this gathering of family and friends, standing on the edge, needing a few moments alone to sort this all out in my head. I’d spent twenty-four hours trapped by those doors in complete darkness, petrified that I was about to lose my mum and the rest of my family. I couldn’t exit until I’d done what was expected of me. Well, we did it, together, and it was worth it, I think.

  I wandered off towards the café – they were serving food and drinks so it was on my list of essential stop-offs. There was a newspaper on one of the tables and I leafed through it casually, thinking about Magnus’s offer to me and Nat. Neither of us had gone back to school, it seemed a bit superfluous after what we’d been through. It’s a bit difficult to think about anything nine to five after you’ve lived through the final battle for Earth.

  Magnus wanted us all to move over to the States and work for him out there. He said Amy and Davran could base their political work in his offices so we could all be together. It was just what we all needed, a big change to help us all to settle again. He wanted Nat and me to work in the company, eventually to run it with him, he hoped. I knew we’d say yes to him. I could feel Nat jump with excitement as soon as he mentioned it to us on the web chat.

  So this was probably the last time we’d gather in Troywood. I wasn’t sure I’d want to mark the anniversary every year. It was right to do it on that day, but we all needed to move on. Yes, I had decided. I was going to join Magnus. I’d liked him from the minute I met him and I wanted to get involved in his projects, and work alongside the team on the exoskeleton project. With that decided, I grabbed a cup of coffee and skimmed the paper, not yet ready to do the socializing thing.

  It was amazing how fast the world returned to normal. The headlines were dominated by reports of the aftermath for about three months, then bit by bit the celebrity stories returned and before you knew it, it was like nothing had ever happened. Humans have an amazing capacity to fill the voids that are left behind by tragedy – I guess that’s why we’ve done so well as a species. We just get on with it, however bad things get.

  So it was no surprise to see the latest celebrity gossip on the front page. I had to move a few pages in until I got to the story that really caught my attention. It was only a few column inches, a fraction of the size of the celebrity story, as if it didn’t really matter. It was a simple headline, and I nearly missed it. I thought it was all over, but I realized at that moment that it never really ended.

  The headline was there for all to see, a warning if they only chose to heed it, and it suddenly felt like we’d learned nothing from all of this:

  New Subterranean Gas Source Discovered

  Power Supplies Secured ‘For Centuries’ Scientists Reveal.

  Author Notes

  Author Notes

  * * *

  You made it!

  * * *

  Congratulations, you now know the answers to all the secrets, who’s a goodie, who’s a baddie and what was going on with Doctor Pierce. That’s all the loose ends tied up - but if you’ve got any unanswered questions, just get signed up at https://thesecretbunker.net/mail and shoot me a reply to the welcome email, I’ll be delighted to answer any queries that you have..

  * * *

  I really enjoyed writing that book, I was so excited at the end I couldn’t type the words fast enough. It would look great in a film, wouldn’t it? It was all imagined cinematically, I’ve obviously spent too much time at the cinema watching Star Trek and Star Wars films. So, who were you gunning for in the book - and did you get any nasty surprises?

  * * *

  And what about those aliens? If you pushed me, I guess I’d have to say that the Helyions are probably a mix of the Klingons and the Ferengi - more in attitude than appearance. The Zatheons are calmer and more cerebral, like the Vulcans (but with more emotion) and Star Trek’s Dax, who’s a Trill. I liked the idea of symbiosis, but I handled it in a completely different way with Dan and Nat and the Zatheons.

  * * *

  So, the big question is, will there be any more? I’ve already told you that Magnus appears elsewhere in my sci-fi, as does Harriet (but blink and you’ll miss her!). I love time travel stories and I do have a plot outlined which picks up right where we leave Dan a
t the end of Regeneration, on his own, sitting in the cafeteria.

  * * *

  Remember the scene in Terminator where Arnie says ‘Come with me if you want to live’? And in Back to the Future where Doc says ‘Marty, you’ve got to come back with me …’? Well, it’s based on that premise, where a key character comes back from the future to take Dan away from the Bunker’s cafeteria into a brand new adventure that will push him to his limits.

  * * *

  There are clues in Phase 6 - check out what happens to Magnus in that book. Oh, I’ve also got a space opera sketched out too - featuring a half-completed spaceship and a dying captain who get caught out when the planet goes dark in Book 1.

  * * *

  So many ideas, so little time to get them written!

  * * *

  Are you now desperate to check out Scotland’s Secret Bunker? If you do get a chance to go, don’t miss out on it, it’s one of the best visitor attractions I’ve ever been to. Let’s face it, it must be good if it inspired me to write three books about it.

  * * *

  By the way, I should mention that the whole concept of The Grid Trilogy was inspired by the simulations area in The Secret Bunker. It’s the same universe, same tech but with much more sinister uses.

  * * *

  Did you shed any tears in the book? I hope so, but only in a nice way.

  * * *

  I always remember the episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation when Tasha Yar died. It was before the end of Season 1 in the episode titled ‘Skin of Evil’. At the time, nobody ever killed off main characters in TV series, it was unprecedented when it first aired. I like to kill off main characters in my stories, as a reader, I like to feel that anything could happen. I was genuinely shocked when Tasha Yar died and I like to try and write in a few of those scenes in every book, whether I’m writing a thriller or sci-fi.