by Darren Beyer
Casimir Bridge
Darren D. Beyer
Published by Darren D. Beyer.
Copyright 2016 by Darren D. Beyer. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons either living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.
Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written permission is strictly prohibited.
The author greatly appreciates you making the time to read this book. If you enjoy reading it, please let others know by telling your friends, and/or writing a review wherever you bought it.
Casimir Bridge
Book One: Anghazi Series
Darren D. Beyer
Chapter 1
“We’ve lost our way.” The plump man’s heavy-lidded eyes took on a saddened look. “Give me a few minutes before you leave,” he said as he looked to the ground, shaking his head and turning away.
Mandisa Nkosi watched him pass under a crumbling concrete structure covered in rust stains and encroaching tropical greenery. Just over a century before, astronauts were looked upon as heroes and early launch vehicles as science fiction manifested. She sighed. All of that wonderment and awe reduced to this.
At one time, the structure had served as a launch pad for the massive rockets that had carried astronauts into orbit in the earliest years of space travel. Mandi gazed up at the ancient pillars. One of four colossal legs had fallen, and the side of the platform had collapsed. She reached up gently to the nearest support. As she traced her fingers along the ragged edge, her eyes came to a tarnished brass plaque. She rubbed it with her sleeve to make out the last sentences:
They gave their lives in service to their country in the ongoing exploration of humankind’s final frontier. Remember them not for how they died but for those ideals for which they lived.
Mandi shifted her gaze to the slate-gray sea and raised both her hands to her close-cut hair. She breathed deep, taking in the sea breeze that kicked small whitecaps into chaos on the surface of waves rolling in from the open Atlantic. The rumbling surf made a constant roar beyond the scattered trees and low scrub along the dunes. Palm fronds fluttered in the wind, their hiss mixing with the din of water crashing on the beach. Tall and slender, she leaned her athletic body into the humid wind. Her open jacket flapped in the breeze, and her shirt pressed close against her dark skin. As she scanned the scene, her eyes began to water against the unrelenting breeze.
Around the edges of the concrete launch pad, support equipment stood in decay. A pair of ancient metal blast deflectors—once capable of taking everything that massive rocket engines could throw at them—had nearly collapsed with age. The next tropical storm would likely do them in. Behind them, a series of decaying launch towers stood in a line that trailed off in the distance, testaments to a bygone era when rockets, not orbital shuttles, took people, satellites, and cargo to orbit.
Tires crunched on the coral gravel of the cracked and overgrown parking lot. Mandi’s source was leaving. Now it was safe for her to go as well. Suddenly, her somberness was replaced with excitement, her sorrow with growing euphoria. She looked at the diminutive data chip in her hand. If her source was right and his documentation thorough, this small piece of plastic held the key to the news story of the century. And it was hers to tell.
With excitement, she took another deep breath and all but ran to her rented vehicle.
“Take me back to the hyperloop station,” she said aloud as she slid into the front seat.
“Would you like the Orlando or Jacksonville station?” The computer replied automatically.
“Orlando.”
“Please secure your restraint system.”
Mandi strapped herself in, and the auto-driver took her down the ground white-coral access road. Palm fronds and tree branches brushed the rented car, threatening to scratch the paint. Any other time Mandi would have worried about paying for damages, but today she couldn’t care less. As the auto-driver turned onto the paved road outside the abandoned complex, Mandi flicked her eyes to the upper right, triggering her comm to power on. A contact lens in her right eye projected the screen into her retina. The date, September 5, and the time, 3:57 pm, showed while the comm loaded a plethora of waiting messages and news stories. She ignored them and called her office. The busy indicator flashed.
“What else?” Mandi muttered. “Message,” she said aloud. “Boss, you wanted me to work the story? Boy, did I just work the story. Get back to me ASAP. This is big.”
Mandi’s mind raced as the auto-driver passed the derelict spaceport facilities, went out through the chain-link security gate, and rolled onto the causeway heading toward the mainland. The palm trees and tropical brush swayed under menacing skies. Inland the clouds had darkened to nearly black with the onset of the violent thunderstorms common in late summer in this part of the world.
Mandi’s palm began to ache and she realized she’d closed her fist around the data chip in a vise-like grip. Slowly she opened her hand and looked down. A large smile grew on her face, and she raised the chip to her mouth and kissed it, before securing it in her vest pocket. It held a once-in-a-lifetime story.
The car left the island and sped into traffic along the causeway across the Canaveral River. The sea breeze had picked up along the brackish water estuary, pushing waves into the windward seawall flanking the road, sending spray high into the air. On the leeward side, the water rippled into small waves that would grow and roll to make their own splash on the next causeway down the river. As the car started onto the tall bridge spanning the channel, the auto-driver accelerated. At first compensating for the grade, the acceleration continued. Mandi looked up. The car swerved, clipping a slower vehicle and knocking her head into the side window so hard that she saw stars.
“Driver!” Mandi gave a dazed yell. “Emergency stop!”
The automated controls didn’t respond. The auto-driver dodged and weaved between other vehicles, as each fought to evade the malfunctioning car. Mandi braced herself with the door handle and lunged for the manual emergency stop, smacking the button on the console with her palm. The car sped on. Again and again, she pounded the button with no effect. At the top of the bridge, the car hit the left guardrail and bounced off violently. Mandi’s head hit the window even harder than before, stunning her. The car swerved again, and with a sickening crunch she was thrown forward.
In the second and a half of free-fall that followed, she had just enough time to gather her senses enough to see the murky, green waters of the Canaveral River come crashing through the windshield.
I
One Week Earlier
Earthdate: August 27, 2108
Chapter 2
Earth
“The town of Wukari is no stranger to violence.” The news correspondent spoke over the scene on Mandi’s portable holovid. Wrecked, burning vehicles and decimated buildings dominated the shot among the few bodies littering the street. “A fresh atrocity at the hands of contract soldiers in the Euramerican Coalition military is stirring outrage in this Nigerian border town. The 353rd Tech Standard Incorporated, or TSI, Air Infantry Battalion of the Coalition descended on Wukari in the early dawn hours of August 27, according to officials. Residents were awakened to small firefight between TSI troops and soldiers that TSI claims were high-ranking members of the Nashira Brigade, an Outer Sphere splinter group. Local militia returned fire against TSI, say officials.”
The visuals shifted to shaky amateur footage of an armored troop carrier as it roared in over the town, its four massive thrusters gimbaling to bring it to a hover above the battle. Two doors on its underside slid open, and its ventral twin auto-cannon turret emerged, spraying forty-millimeter high-explosive shells indiscriminately into surrounding buildings. Small autonomous drones buzzed overhead, the noise of the machines muffled through the holovid.
“According to eyewitnesses, the battle raged for more than five hours with Coalition drones providing aerial support to armored walkers and heavy infantry on the ground.”
Footage showed a soldier in large, heavily armed mechanical armor firing missiles from an integrated backpack.
“As many as four hundred are dead, according to local authorities. Much of the town of Wukari lies in ruin.”
Mandi shuddered as the news segment ended. No matter how many times she watched it, she never ceased to be awed by the destruction.
“Is that a news story about the business in Wukari?” The man in the airplane seat next to Mandi had shifted his attention from the window to take a peek over her shoulder. His weathered face and salt-and-pepper hair gave away his age, and his accent hinted that South Africa was his home. The distant look in his eyes betrayed that he’d seen something like the war footage before, likely in person.
“It will be.” She closed her screen quickly and stowed the holovid in her carry-on. “It’s scheduled to run tonight on GNN.”
“Are you a reporter?”
“Production assistant. Well, associate producer on this trip. I got sort of a field promotion.”
“So you were in the thick of it,” he said as his face saddened.
“Not during, but after—” Mandi paused. There had been so many interviews with the residents of Wukari, such overwhelming loss. “We got there in time to show the aftermath. This piece is as much about the people as the battle. It’s important to get their story out.”
The man’s face softened into a slight smile.
“You have an American accent. So you are not native to our country.”
“I’ve never even been to Africa before,” Mandi said, shaking her head, “at least that I can remember.”
“Are you chasing another story in Joburg?”
“This trip is personal. My mother was from Khula.” She frowned at the thought. “I haven’t seen her in a long time.” Decades, she thought.
“Zulu?”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” He smiled. “Lucky you. Perhaps you will learn about her.”
“No,” she said shortly.
Mandi wanted nothing to do with her mother. It was the unexpected connection with the people of Wukari that had led her onto a plane to carry her to the land her family had, at one time, called home.
“I don’t know my mother. She left me with my uncle in America when I was very young. I am here to learn about my roots and the country my ancestors came from, not her.”
“I see,” he said as his face saddened. “What will you do while you are here?”
“I’m going to see Kruger. I’ve never seen animals in the wild. I can’t miss one of the world’s last great bastions of wilderness.”
“Yes, I have been there many times. Yet there is another wonderful game preserve in the south. Hlueluwe-Imfolozi is a little-known gem. And if you hurry, a traditional Zulu ceremony is held nearby—the Reed Dance. It is an event to behold, and it starts in just a few days. Of course, Khula is nearby.”
Mandi looked down. Her mother’s hometown.
***
“Holoscreen, GNN.”
A holographic projection appeared opposite the bed in Mandi’s Johannesburg hotel, with a spinning logo to indicate its warm-up cycle. She fidgeted. The late hour made her edgy. She had forced herself to stay awake to see her story run.
The projection tuned to the news channel, where a man with disheveled hair, rolling eyes, and an aging tweed coat dominated the screen.
“Space aliens? Or not? I find it odd that no trace of hyperium has been discovered anywhere in our system but on Hyperion.”
Mandi caught her breath. Quickly, she activated her comm, accessing the network’s schedule. Projected onto her retina from her contact lens, the latest GNN network lineup showed her Wukari story supposedly airing right now.
“You just have to look around our planet,” countered the GNN news anchor, “to find concentrations of rare elements virtually non-existent elsewhere.”
“‘Virtually.’ Did you know that I could go to any number of beaches on Earth, dig up a few shovels of sand, and find trace amounts of gold, platinum, and titanium? Only a few hundredths of a bit’s worth, but it’s there. However, if I sifted every single cubic meter of dirt and sand on this planet, I wouldn’t find a single speck of hyperium. Not one. If we did the same on every planet, every moon in our solar system, we still wouldn’t find hyperium. Nowhere but on Saturn’s moon of Hyperion. The very thing that enables us to travel the galaxy has never been seen anywhere else. The question is, how did it get there—”
Mandi snatched up her remote to turn off the holovid and blank the projection. Her chest heaved. Until her story on Wukari, she had always worked on other journalists’ pieces, doing their research, producing their news. This story was her first. And it had been bumped for a conspiracy theorist. She barked into her comm to call her producer at GNN. There was no answer. She left a brief message in a voice shaking with fury.
Hours later, her phone woke her from a restless sleep. It was her producer.
“Space aliens?” Mandi was suddenly alert and awake and still angry.
“I don’t have time to go into it right now, Mandi. Have you not been watching our feed?”
“It’s five in the morning. Some people sleep.”
“A nuclear terror plot at Alexandria was just thwarted not five kilometers from downtown DC. This wasn’t another dirty bomb, Mandi. This was the real thing. If it had gone off—we’re talking Hiroshima here.”
“Is that why my piece on Wukari was pulled? Because of a nuclear terror plot that we didn’t know was going to occur six hours later?”
“Look, I’m sorry.” He sighed. “I got word from upstairs. No Wukari segment.”
“You couldn’t have called me?” Mandi flattened her lips.
“It was last minute. Then all this hit. I know your piece was sound, and I tried to push it, but they shut me down.” He paused. “I’ll try to find out why. Right now, I could use you back here on this terror attack.”
“Are you kidding?” Mandi’s eyes snapped open. “You kill my story, and now you want me to cancel my vacation and fly halfway around the world just to do you a favor?”
“I’ll make it up to you—”
“Will you?” Mandi interrupted. “I’ll let you know.” She cut off her comm, crossed her arms, and sat back hard against the wall by the bed.
The incoming-call indicator flashed in the upper left of her comm. It was GNN’s Washington office. A moment later, it flashed again.
The third time it flashed, she answered. “I told you I’d let you know!”
“You’d let me know what?” A young woman’s voice came across the comm. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Who is this?”
“I’m the new intern—”
“Did our illustrious producer put you up to this?”
“What?” She was clearly flustered. “No. Some guy has been trying to reach you on text chat. Text—can you believe it? He just pinged me again, and I overheard you on speaker, so I gave you a try.”
“Who is he?”
“He won’t say. Some sort of engineer.”
“Can he engineer a way to get my Wukari story on the air?”
“What?”
“Forget it. I’m awake now. Throw him over to me.”
MNkosi: This is Mandi.
Anonymous: Are you watching the news?
“Oh come on,” Mandi said aloud. Someone in the office was messing with her.
>
MNkosi: Whoever this is, I’m not in the mood. It’s not funny.
Anonymous: I’m not trying to be funny.
Mandi signaled to her comm to close the message interface.
Anonymous: Just remember 85.6 Eu.
Mandi paused and pulled back her hand.
MNkosi: What the hell does that mean?
Anonymous: I’ll contact you in a couple of days.
Connection terminated.
Chapter 3
Earth
An old man with sharp features and commanding presence leaned on his cane at the back of the old NASA hangar. He squinted against the glare that reflected off the meticulously polished concrete floor, where a new F-44-B orbital combat fighter stood silhouetted against the Florida sunlight streaming through massive open doors. Gregory Andrews gave a strained smile. In his previous life as a corporate CEO at TSI, he had spurred its development. Now it was one of the premier fighting vehicles in the Coalition’s arsenal. He liked seeing it on display, but not here, not now.
In front of the hybrid air-spacecraft stood an assembled crowd of service personnel, reporters, politicians, and dignitaries. A man in an impeccably pressed suit stood at a podium flanked by Security Service personnel in black. From where Andrews stood, the speaker’s voice boomed through the PA system, difficult to understand, echoing off the flat steel walls and painted concrete floor. Andrews leaned against the wall, tapping his cane on the floor. The Florida humidity had him sweating in his expensive jacket.
From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a tall, blond man approaching. Erik Hallerson, the Swede, moved like a serpent—death with a touch of grace. Loyal to a fault, highly effective, and willing to take on any task, no-questions-asked. Erik was Andrews’ most valuable asset.