The URANUS Code (Citadel World Book #1)

by Kir Lukovkin

  Yes!

  Rick got out of the cabin and rushed forward to push the glider towards the new aperture. Only one thought kept running through his head—he was hoping against hope that the hole would be wide enough.

  Please let it be wide enough!

  When there were ten paces left to the edge of the deck, he jumped into the pilot's seat, slammed the cockpit shut and grabbed the glider control joystick.

  The flying machine silently rolled out of the breach and fell downwards, nose first.

  Rick's heart skipped a beat.

  His eyes went wide when he noticed how quickly the glider was falling as it slid along the sheer surface of Thermopolis. For a moment, it seemed to him that the glider was about to catch the wall with its belly, and he instinctively pressed his hand into the instrument panel in front of him, sinking back into the seat. He pulled the joystick towards himself and the nose of the glider tilted upwards...

  He was gaining height! Rick shouted in ecstasy, craning his neck to stare at the plain floating by below him, so endless and grand.

  He did it. He managed to get out and he was flying! And he had completely lost his fear of heights!

  Rick smiled. He would launch the program for his sister, for Maya and Ahmed, for Cornelius and Tommo and for the future of the humans that were left in the freezing aeons.

  He soon noticed that he had flown some far away from the tower. He carefully moved the joystick to the side, changing the angle of the ailerons so that the glider smoothly leaned to one side, banking into a turn.

  Thermopolis lay before him—a titanic tower that propped up the sky. Rick almost centered and moved the joystick forward, so that the glider started to circle as it smoothly descended. The sunny side of the tower came around and the glass of the cabin dimmed to compensate for the unbearably bright light. Wave upon wave of snowfalls came down the side of Thermopolis, as whole sections and their shell layers moved into gaps which appeared between the segments and arrow shaped fins extended outwards, as elevator platforms filled with cargo containers rapidly moved up and down. Thermopolis was adapting itself for the launch of the Uranus program. Rick craned his neck again—a structure which was far out from the base of the tower could be seen below, with jagged rays leading from it to the barrier ring which circled the territory around the tower.

  Rick did not immediately understand that he was descending faster than he had supposed. Only when the structures below started to swiftly come towards him and he started to make out the details of the squat buildings and the little houses with antennae spearing out from their roofs did he pull the joystick sharply towards him. However, the glider maintained its previous course. Something had jammed the ailerons—it could have been ice forming on the wings or it could have been a technical fault. Rick stopped trying to guess at the cause and prepared for a collision with the ground, carefully looking ahead.

  He soon saw that the jagged rays were actually high walls that divided the square around the tower in to four segments. There were pyramids towering over the centers of these segments, with easily readable glyphs on their sides.

  Rick considered the size of the walls and concluded that if he crashed into one as he swooped down he could easily be killed and that it all depended on the speed of the collision and the distance to the ground.

  A moment later, the glider flew over the pyramid with a Delta glyph, then one with the “O” glyph, then the one with the eight lying on its side and finally one marked with a circle that had arrows going outwards from it. The glider passed over the wall that separated the sectors, and yet another pyramid appeared below, although it was much closer now. He would land in a minute or two, and he had to somehow even out and slow down his flight beforehand.

  The remains of a flying machine flashed below him, strewn around a crater which was covered in a layer of snow. Rick gathered himself together and pulled on the joystick with all his strength, but the glider continued descending. He took it over another wall and found himself over the “O” segment. Considering the direction of the flight, a collision with another wall was unavoidable now. The only thought that was pulsing through his head was that he had to slow down and even out the glider. He had to change the angle of the ailerons!

  Rick looked up—there was the hood of the cockpit! It would do fine as an aileron. He sighed, clicked open the locking mechanisms on the sides and pushed the hood back.

  The cold wind stormed into the cabin, burning his lungs. The nose of the glider pulled sharply upwards, the level of the flight evened out for a while, coupled with a decrease in speed, but then the glider shuddered, made a sharp turn and got thrown into a side turn, quickly and relentlessly. Rick only had the time to brace himself when he heard a rasping sound and then a loud impact.

  His body was thrown forward, and if it wasn't for the open cockpit, he would have broken his neck on the control panel. However, the inertia carried him forwards and he flew out of the cabin, crashing into a snowdrift a moment later and feeling the scalding cold of the snow that had got under his clothes.

  But he was alive! Mother Darkness, he survived!

  As he tried to get up, Rick grunted and fell on one knee. It seemed to have been dislocated. But this was nothing, he had managed to land in the correct sector and all he needed to do was get inside the bunker and find the terminal to put his key into.

  Once he limped to the nearest gate at the base of the structure, he stopped and raised his head for a moment. Thermopolis was emitting a loud hum as it majestically towered over him, its walls stretching upwards and its summit lost in the clouds.

  Without waiting for another second, Rick brushed the snow from the control panel by the gates and pressed his palm onto it. There was a moment when nothing happened, but then the panel beeped and a line ran down the screen. His palm got burned, but Rick did not take his hand away, letting the scanner complete the operation. Another beep and the “Enter Password” prompt appeared on the screen.

  He entered just one symbol—the symbol of infinity.

  He heard the grinding of gears inside the walls, and the iron gates creaked and slid open in front of him. The dark opening let out a dry breath of dust.

  Rick stepped into the darkness.

  20

  THE DARKNESS PALED and unwillingly gave way to a gray twilight. Rick was at the edge of a huge shaft going under the ground. He came up to a panel and turned the dial. Lamps switched on to light up the space around him—corrugated walls covered with various signs, utility lines, pipes and doors which had been locked for hundreds of years. Rick took one of the signs from the wall and brushed the dust from it. Just what he needed—a plan of the building. And there was the way to the control post. An elevator came when he called it. It was not as fast as the ones in the tower, but it looked robust and reliable.

  Rick stood on the platform and observed the floors that sped sway above. Tonnes of steel, plastic, concrete and glass. Kilometers of wires. And all of it was assembled together and created for a single purpose.

  He exited on the last floor at the bottom. Signs of destruction could be seen everywhere here. The wall plates were bulging, as if they had suffered a series of heavy impacts and earth had fallen through the cracks. Such tears had appeared all over the walls and Rick noticed two places where there were terrible breaches that a glider could easily fly through. He carefully stepped across the filthy floor, listening to the silence. He could feel someone's presence here.

  Rick walked to the end of a short corridor and stopped by a door that had sign saying “Command Post” and which stood slightly ajar, with a dim light shining through the gap. He tried to push the door and enter, but it was stuck. Then, he took a pry bar from a fire rack and pried the door open, with a creak of rusted hinges, finding himself in a low-ceiling hall a moment later. The floor inclined towards the opposite wall, which was dominated by a wide screen with a long table that had a built-in control panel below. It was obvious that the post was designed for a team of trained
specialists. Rick slowly approached the table, looking at the empty seats equipped with personal terminals.

  Another weak, tangy smell that made Rick's nostrils tingle snaked its way among the smell of dust and plastic. A familiar smell, which could have come from a creature that had once been alive. Rick tightened his grip on the pry bar—anything could happen and he could never know what sort of creature might have made its nest here. He walked around the command post and found the body of a man in the far corner.

  It was mummified. A desiccated face with sunken cheeks and sunken pits instead of eyes. A blackened tongue lolled out of an open mouth with yellowed teeth, framed with clumped patches of beard. The fingers of the dead man curled inwards. Rick did not see anything familiar in the rags that had served as the man's clothing. He stood still, looking at the remains and trying to listen to his inner voice. No, he did not feel anything deep down in his soul. This was just a skeleton in a shell of dried flesh. This was obviously not his father.

  And then, Rick noticed the writing on the wall. Several words were crudely scrawled in black: “Alea iacta est”[1].

  Rick returned to the control panel and activated it. The screens came alive and lights started to blink. He took off his raincoat and started to wait for the local computer to establish communication with the Thermopolis system. The machinery worked perfectly—no one could equal the ancient masters in this regard. Before Rick could enter the system and connect to the Control Center, a notice appeared on the screen: “Video Message”.

  Rick played the message.

  A man with a ratty beard, thinning hair and a sickly looking face appeared on the screen—he had dark circles under his eyes, a thin neck and narrow shoulders. The stranger started to speak.

  “Infinity Sector Head Controller Jean Molyneaux speaking. They have all gone insane. All of them. I have barricaded myself here in the command post and they have left three days ago. I know that they will return and I hope that I will leave this world by that time. This is why you must listen to me. The epidemic engulfed us half a year ago. At first, we thought that it was rabies, but the vaccine had no effect and there were more and more people getting infected. No one could understand what was going on. The Government introduced a quarantine, but even that did not help. We were injected with a series of newly developed antiviral serums, but even they were powerless. The infected appeared everywhere. The symptoms of the disease are as follows: it begins with slight dizziness and nausea that last for a couple of days and then sleep disturbances set in, as well as a strong headache and memory loss. The infected person starts to forget names, mixes up times and dates, becomes unable to read or count and the pain in their head get stronger...”

  Jean licked his dry lips and got his heavy breathing under control.

  “This is a punishment from god. Humanity is being punished for daring to desecrate His glory. Please, God, forgive our sinful ways... Pain. It tortures the infected all the time, sometimes less, sometimes more, but it never recedes. This last for a week or two. And then, the infected goes insane. The diseased man mixes dreams up with reality, their speech becomes incoherent, the infected does not understand what is going on around them and loses control of his mind, because his brains turn to mush! The infected is unable to think and becomes an animal that want to consume everything all the time. Oh god... Oh my god!”

  Jean sobbed, and tears streamed from his bright eyes. He still managed to find the strength to continue.

  “The disease has struck us all. It is just a question of time now—some will go first, some later. The upper sectors have already isolated themselves and they are refusing to accept refugees. People are jumping down the central shaft in a frenzy. The cleaning robots scrub away all that is left of the bodies from the floor every day. The bottom of the shaft is swimming in blood. One of my subordinates attacked me a week ago. Some citizens are trying to get outside, but the doors are blocked. They go insane and attack the healthy. They scream. They scream without stopping and there are even children among them. We are suffering from water shortages and our stores of food are running out. There's nowhere to run. The workers from the perimeter demanded that we let them out, but we told them that we couldn't. Then, they attacked is. They beat two of my employees to death. We barely managed to fight back and blocked the doors. The last days were especially terrible. My employees sad on the floor with glassy eyes and I did not know whether they were still human or whether sanity had abandoned them. The food ran out four days ago. Then they tried to grab me. I barely got away and locked myself in here.”

  Jean wiped his face with his sleeve. He stayed silent for a moment, and then concluded, “Those that watch this message should know. We did our duty until the very end.”

  The recording came to a stop. Rick now understood whose body it was lying in the corner. The computer beeped as it connected to the system. Rick entered several commands and connected to the Control Center. He sent the image to the wide screen and saw the same rows of seats and people sitting in them behind a long table. Bodies could be seen strewn around on the floor by the entrance—several of the operators, lay prone on the floor. Croesus was sitting behind the main control panel, his legs resting on the table. When he saw Rick, he sat up straight, and an expression of fear passed over his face.

  Croesus got himself together and asked, “Rick?”

  Rick needed no explanations to understand what happened. The dead bodies spoke for themselves. Croesus quickly glanced to the side and back at Rick.

  “Is it you, or not?”

  “It's me.”

  “Hah! Oh my! Then who is this?”

  Tommo was brought next to Croesus.

  “My double, created by machines.”

  “Oh, I see...” Croesus drawled, visibly impressed. “Fascinating.”

  Rick waited.

  “Why are you so quiet? How are you doing?”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “Great!” Croesus cheered up and nodded at him. “And we decided to impose some order here. Remember when I told you about the expedition beyond the barrier? Well, we did it and we were rather successful. I actually wanted to tell you the whole truth, but things turned out differently. You ran off with these barbarians.”

  Rick stared at the screen tensely.

  “I even thought that I had caught you, but then I saw that there was something wrong about you. This guy doesn't want to talk, no matter how much we ask him.” Croesus nodded in the direction of Tommo, whose face was covered in bruises and grazes. “Maybe you'll explain what's going on?”

  “Maybe,” Rick slowly replied.

  Croesus showed him half of the key.

  “What's this?”

  “The key for the Uranus program.”

  “What's the Uranus program?”

  “Our salvation.”

  “Don't lie to me.”

  “I have no reason to lie to you, Warden.”

  Croesus was looking at the screen, trying to work out if he was being lied to, and this helplessness amused Rick.

  “What're you grinning at?” Croesus exclaimed.

  “Listen,” Rick leaned forward, and Croesus could not help flinching, “I have no idea what you did to Paris and I am not even interested, but can you tell me, what's the point of those deaths?”

  Croesus smirked, and went into a pompous speech about freeing the Commune from the cold and resettling it up above. This was a task of primary importance, he assured. The next stage would be to take control of Thermopolis and impose order on all inhabited space, from top to bottom, to destroy the mutants and other degenerates, turn on the heat generators, clean out the levels and live like humans, governed by unified and open principles. The parasitism of Epsilon had come to an end. Croesus had long planned his grand revolution and ordered the attack when the Chorda came to life. They killed the priest advisers and used the occasion of Paris' meeting to take the Chairman of the Council hostage together with Arcadius, forcing him to switch off the security prote
cting the aeon.

  While the Warden described the details of his daring coup, Rick surreptitiously entered several commands on the keyboard and brought up a separate dialog window with the Uranus program activation system.

  A message saying “Use key to start” blinked on the screen.

  “What is this?” Croesus had also noticed the window open up on the screen where he was sitting.

  “This is the key to the future,” Rick calmly replied.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Haven't you worked it out yet?”

  Croesus clicked his fingers and the brought Maya to him. He unceremoniously pulled her down by her arm, making her bend down and putting a hand blaster to her head.

  “Don't you dare, you whelp. Otherwise, I'll blow her brains out! And then I will shoot your sister!”

  Rick froze in front of the controls, his hands hovering above the keyboard.

  “You will do what I say,” Croesus emitted a twisted chuckle. “Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What's going to happen once the program is launched?”

  “The generators get turned on,” Rick lied. “Thermopolis will warm up from the energy it receives.”

  Croesus eyes darted around the room—their conversation could be heard by those surrounding him.

  “No. There will be no launch. All we need is the energy in the first aeon and we will leave the keys as a backup option. Come back to the Commune before it's too late. We will forgive all of your misdemeanors. Rick, I will make you my deputy. The second in command. The Commune will spread throughout Thermopolis! We can rule it however we like. We have it all, do you understand?”

  “Not entirely...”

  “We will impose our own order! Everything will be done fairly and according to the law.”

  As Croesus said these words, Tommo tore the key out of his hand and stuck it into the slot on the panel.