by James Axler
There would be plenty of time to grieve later.
The doors opened and Yates was surprised to see Chief Engineer Rolf Kasperic waiting for him. A short man, he had curly red hair and a smattering of freckles across his cheeks, making him look younger than his thirty-four years. The man was a computer engineer without peer. Yates had never seen the look on his face before—one of puzzlement. Regardless, the other man came to attention and saluted him as Yates stepped out of the elevator.
“Status report, Chief?”
“AIDAN came back online at 0729, and...it’s doing something I’ve never seen before.”
“Any intel on the burst packet it received?” Yates asked.
Kasperic shook his head. “Negative. Whatever was contained in that transmission, it’s not telling.”
“This just gets better and better.” Yates’s stomach clenched a little tighter. He’d never been comfortable with entrusting so much of Poseidon Base’s systems to AIDAN, and now that it seemed there might be a problem his comfort level was dropping even further.
“I thought that maybe with your clearance, you might be able to get farther with it, sir,” Kasperic continued.
“Only one way to find out.” He gestured for the stocky engineer to proceed. “Lead on.”
Along the way, he filled Kasperic in on what they knew. The engineer shook his head philosophically. Along with the majority of the crew, he had no immediate family topside. “That’s a damn shame. Bet it has something to do with AIDAN’s weird behavior, though.”
“No bet, Chief—I’m already in too deep to you as it is.” With his steel-trap mind, Kasperic played a vicious game of Texas Hold’em and had fleeced the other officers out of thousands of dollars.
They reached the door simply marked AIDAN. Yates slid his ID into the slot next to it, then supplied a voice sample and thumbprint identification. The door slid open, revealing a shadowed room with a plain desk, a monitor and a microphone.
Yates walked inside the antiseptically clean space and took a seat in the chair. Pulling the microphone close to his mouth, he spoke into it. “AIDAN, this is Lieutenant Commander Yates.”
“Good morning, Lieutenant Commander.”
The calm, synthesized reply came from speakers mounted on the walls. Yates repressed his constant shudder at hearing the voice—he’d seen 2001: A Space Odyssey enough times to be leery of communicating with any AI program.
“Good morning. I want to know the contents of the data burst transmission you received earlier this morning.”
“I have received several such transmissions so far this morning, Commander. I am afraid that you will have to be more specific.”
Yates leaned back to Kasperic. “What time did you log that one as received?”
“At 0718, sir.”
“The transmission received at 0718 hours.”
“I am afraid that I cannot disclose the contents of said transmission, Commander.”
“AIDAN, this is an executive command level order. I, Executive Officer Martin Yates, ID number 55625533461, authorize you to disclose all material pertinent to my command immediately.”
There was a pause of about a second. “Under the new regulations and protocols I have received from the Totality Concept, I am afraid that your clearance is not high enough to order the release of that information, Commander. May I suggest that you confer with Captain Lucas? He may be of some assistance regarding this situation.”
AIDAN had never refused a direct order before. Cold sweat broke out on the back of Yates’s neck as he looked up at Kasperic. “What the fuck is going on?”
Lips pursed, the engineer gave the answer both men hated most. “I don’t know, sir. Should I try a controlled shutdown?”
“Not yet—there’s no telling what new instructions AIDAN has received. Who knows what sort of response a perceived aggressive move could provoke? Do you know anything about whatever this Totality Concept is?” At Kasperic’s slow headshake, Yates stood and nodded at the door. “Let me talk to the Old Man first.”
Once they were both outside, and the door was securely closed, Yates put his mouth close to the other man’s ear. “Do you have any back doors into AIDAN’s programming?”
“Off the record, sir, I’ve tried exploring its architecture, but haven’t had much luck,” Kasperic replied. “Whoever constructed it protected it six ways from Sunday. Truth be told, I’m not really sure what a lot of its programming is.”
“Yup, better and better by the minute,” Yates grumbled. “All right. Just monitor it until I talk to Lucas. Call me if there’s any change, no matter how small.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Yates didn’t wait for the salute, but took off running down the hallway toward the captain’s quarters. As he did, he felt a tremor shake the corridor, hard enough to jolt him off his stride. The engineers had built the complex to survive a 9.0 earthquake, but Yates had hoped he would never be in here if one hit.
He reached the captain’s quarters and pressed the button to hail the occupant. “Captain, it’s Lieutenant Commander Yates.”
“Enter,” a haggard voice replied over the speaker.
Yates stepped inside, wrinkling his nose at the smell of unwashed clothes and body odor in the darkened sleeping quarters. “Sir?”
“Office.”
The captain’s quarters consisted of a small, two-room suite, with a tiny office barely big enough for two people off the main room. Yates walked over, stepping over a wrinkled dress uniform as he did. When he reached the doorway, his eyes widened. “Captain?”
Captain Roger Lucas, U.S. Navy, looked like a pile of wet shit that had been poured into his jumpsuit. His eyes were bloodshot, salt-and-pepper stubble dotted his chin, and his short hair stood up in odd clumps, as if he hadn’t washed in days. Wrinkles seamed his cheeks and forehead, making him look as if he’d aged a decade in a day.
The office around him was just as messy, with papers and other debris strewed everywhere.
“Sit down, Commander.” Lucas reached down to the floor next to him and came back up with a bottle. “Drink?”
“I’m on duty, sir.” As he took the other small chair, Yates noticed that the small safe to the right of the captain’s chair was open and frowned. Lucas shouldn’t have both keys. Military protocol dictated that the top two commanding officers each have one of the two keys that would open the safe containing any classified or top secret orders.
“Relax, it’s just you and me here.” He waved dismissively at the back wall. Yates turned to it to see the captain’s dress uniform hat hanging over where an electronic eye would normally survey the room. But AIDAN hadn’t notified anyone of this breach in protocol. The fear in Yates’s stomach coalesced into a cold, hard knot of terror.
“All right, pour me two fingers.” Hoping the acceptance would relax his superior officer, Yates took the plastic cup and knocked back a healthy swallow. He remained silent for a moment, feeling the whiskey burn down his throat and bloom into warm fire in his belly.
“Thank you, sir.” He waved at the safe and the papers on the desk. “I assume you’ve received the message from headquarters.”
“Of course. Don’t look so shocked—a good captain always has ways of circumventing his officers.”
“Yes, sir—”
“Jesus Christ, Marty, didn’t I tell you not to take this post?” Lucas interrupted.
“Yes, sir, you did—but it was the right choice for me. There was no way of knowing what was going to happen up there...was there?”
The captain shook his head. “There are always ways...nothing concrete, mind you, but...there are ways. Putting the right intel together...even gut feelings count.” Lucas picked up his cup and swirled the liquid inside around. “Me, I just had a fucking feeling about this. I went in with my eyes open, but you—” He picked up his cup and drained it, then poured more whiskey. “You shoulda been on the surface, with your family, instead of down here.”
“With respect, sir
, if I had been, then I would be dead, as well, instead of here, able to assist with rescue efforts and the rebuilding of our country—”
Lucas barked out a short, harsh laugh. “‘Assist with rescue and rebuild’? That’s what you think you’re gonna do once the shit storm stops raining down?” He tossed the slim packet of information at his XO. “Take a look at what’s in store for you, me, and everyone else in this godforsaken place.” He tipped his cup back, draining it.
Yates read the top secret documents, his mouth dropping open at their contents. When he was finished, he looked back up at his commanding officer. “They can’t be serious—”
“Bet yer ass they are,” Lucas replied, his voice slurring. “Protocols’re already in place. That goddamned computer will prevent any attempt to evacuate the facilities. I guess they’re supposed to bring new blood in through Pod Seven or some such bullshit. Now do you see why I told you to turn this post down?”
“But...” Yates waved the sheaf of papers around. “This—this is monstrous. They cannot possibly expect us to follow this—”
“Oh, but they do, my dear lieutenant commander.” Shaking his head, Lucas rummaged among the papers on his desk. “Fortunately, I will not be around to see that happen...”
He came up with what he was looking for—a black, snub-nosed revolver.
Yates gaped at it—firearms were strictly prohibited, due to Poseidon Base’s very nature. “Sir, what are you—”
“The bad news, XO, is that you will be. I hereby relieve myself of command.”
With that, Captain Lucas put the barrel of the pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Chapter One
Apex predators had an instinctual knowledge of their general surroundings at all times. Simply put, they just knew whether they were safe or in danger. If they sensed a threat nearby, they might not know exactly what hazard they were facing, but forewarned was still forearmed.
Such was the case when Ryan Cawdor opened his single blue eye and saw the ceiling of the mat-trans chamber above him. Blinking a few times while he took stock of himself, he realized that he felt as if he’d just run twenty miles through stickie country. His lungs labored every time he drew a breath, as if they weren’t able to draw enough oxygen.
He moved his head enough to take in the rest of the group, mainly to make sure everyone had come through in one piece. While Ryan had lost count of the mat-trans jumps he’d made, he still didn’t trust the predark technology. Like much of life in the Deathlands, it was a necessary evil as far as he was concerned.
He looked down to find his fingers already curled around the grip of his SIG Sauer P226. Sometimes Ryan thought he’d spent more time alive with a blaster or other weapon in his hand than not. This, however, definitely felt like one of those times he needed to have a blaster ready to fire.
To his right was the beautiful, flame-haired Krysty Wroth, his longtime lover. Apparently her own keen senses were also alerted to danger. He had never seen her hair, which often moved of its own accord, depending on her mood, curled so tightly into a ball at the back of her head and neck.
Gratified, but not surprised that his instincts were correct, Ryan turned his head to the left, where his oldest friend and comrade-in-arms, J. B. Dix, lay. Short and sallow, the man known as the Armorer looked as if he had just set his beloved, battered fedora beside him, folded his hands on his chest and lain down for a short nap. Between them, the two men had raised more hell, found more trouble, and chilled more bastards, stupes, evil men and other creatures throughout the Deathlands over the years than either could count.
As if sensing Ryan’s stare, J.B.’s eyes popped open. The first thing he did was to check that his Mini-Uzi submachine gun was right next to him. Then he removed his wire-rimmed glasses from a pocket and hooked them over his ears.
“Trouble?” he asked, just loud enough to be heard.
“Mebbe.” Ryan sat up, wincing as the aftereffects of the jump strobed flashes of light behind his eye, accompanied by sharp stabs of pain in his temples. Still, his gaze roved the mat-trans unit, checking the rest of his companions.
Next to J.B. was a stocky black woman, her hair plaited into short, beaded braids. She moaned as well after their jump across thousands of miles in a blink of an eye. “Just when I think I’m getting used to these damn jumps, they find a new way to turn my head inside out.”
Dr. Mildred Wyeth had been thawed back to life in the dark jungles of the long-ago state of Minnesota, and had accompanied the companions ever since. A skilled medical doctor and crack pistol shot, she was a walking repository of information about the twentieth century—a time so different that it might as well have been prehistoric for Ryan and the rest of the group.
Lying on his side a few feet away and curled into a tight ball was Jak Lauren. A true albino, his stark-white hair was oddly muted in the light of the chamber, and his red eyes were squeezed tightly shut.
“You all right, Jak?” Ryan asked.
A low groan was the teenager’s only reply. Slowly, he uncurled his skinny body, clad in a camouflage-pattern jacket with shards of glass and metal sewn into it, black fatigue pants, and well-worn combat boots that matched those on J.B.’s and Ryan’s feet. Even unwell, Ryan saw the young man check the massive .357 Colt Python tucked into his belt. “Feels...wrong here—”
A snort then a gasp interrupted him. Those noises were followed by a shout from the tall, skinny man with a lined face who was lying next to Jak. Dressed in cracked knee boots, stained black pants and a frock coat, his shoulder-length, silver-white hair splayed around his head as he shook it back and forth.
“No, Emily...dear Emily, do not...do not follow me!”
“Fireblast, he’s having a nightmare again,” Ryan said. “Mildred, would you check him?”
She was already at his side, nudging him gently. “Doc...wake up, Doc!”
“Wh-what?” With a stutter and a shake, Doc Tanner’s pale blue eyes fluttered open. He looked around wildly for a moment, then his gaze fell upon Mildred and he calmed. “Ah, young lady, you must be here to take my breakfast order. Two eggs poached, several slices of bacon, well-done, sourdough toast, and the hottest pot of Earl Grey you can find. Hurry along, now.”
Mildred’s brown eyes narrowed as she stood. “I don’t know where you think you are, Doc, but I’m the last person you should be asking to fetch your breakfast.” She turned and walked back to J.B. without another word.
Meanwhile, Doc stared at the rest of the group with a bewildered expression on his lined face. “Dear me, this is not the Paxton Hotel. And you are most certainly not the ladies and gentlemen I enjoyed a most excellent repast with last night...I beg you all, kindly inform me as to where I am and how I came to be here among you?”
“Shit,” Jak said before turning and spitting at a corner of the room. “Doc’s off rocker again.”
“Got a few hours, Doc?” J.B. asked before heading over to take a look at the door.
“Mierda! Is he...all right?” Ricky Morales, the most recent addition to their group, asked while cradling his stocky, thick-barreled De Lisle carbine in his arms. About the same age as Jak, he’d joined their group after a perilous adventure in what had once been the island nation of Puerto Rico. A tinkerer by nature and an avid gunsmith, he fit in well with the rest of the group, particularly J.B. Ricky was traveling with them hoping to find his sister, who’d been captured by slavers and taken to the mainland. Although he’d been with the group for several weeks, he had mostly seen Doc at his best.
“Yeah, he’ll snap out of it in time,” Ryan replied, striding over to the old man, who had drawn his knees up to his chest and was looking around fearfully. “Some jumps’re worse than others, that’s all.”
The truth, of course, was frightfully more complicated. Like Mildred, the man known as Doc had arrived in the Deathlands out of the past. How he had gotten here, however, was the very stuff nightmares were made of. The only survivor of the time-traveling experiments d
one by government whitecoats in the late twentieth century, Doc had been trawled forward from 1896 to the 1990s. When his behavior had become too difficult to handle, the scientists had cruelly sent him forward in time—into the Deathlands. The chron jumps, not to mention the trauma of losing his family, had scrambled his mind. Most days Doc Tanner was a lucid and valuable companion; some days, after a jump, he would be in a daze, stuck in the past.
Ryan knelt beside the old man, taking his face by the chin and moving it over until he was staring into the other man’s lost gaze. “Doc, you know me, and you know the others. We’re in a mat-trans chamber, like we’ve been many times before.” Where his tone had been relatively gentle before, now Ryan put steel-hard command into his voice. “Now you’ve got exactly one minute to get together, ’cause we’re moving out!”
Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner blinked once, then again, then twisted his face out of Ryan’s grip. “A simple ‘we’re leaving,’ would suffice, my dear Ryan. There’s no need to coddle me like a wayward child.”
“Glad that’s settled, then.” Ryan rose and looked at the rest of the group. “Time to go.”
Pushing himself to his feet with the sound of his old knees popping, Doc looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. “By the Three Kennedys, this does not look like a well-maintained facility. Is it just me, or is it hot in here?”
“Not you, Doc,” Jak replied. “Air’s...different. Not bad, not good.”
“Tastes like home,” Ricky said. “Got salt in it.”
“Yeah, and what’s with these walls?” Mildred asked, waving at the armaglass slabs that ringed the mat-trans chamber. Usually they were some uniform color, from bright yellow to deep red and all colors in between.
These walls might have been a bright green at one time, but looked altogether different now. Dull and cloudy, each one was edged in black, as if they had been scorched by something on the other side. All in all, they didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in Ryan about what they were going to find in the anteroom.
He eyed the door, which J.B. was already standing next to. “Only one way to find out. Fingers on triggers, people, we’re going out on triple red.”