by Andy Briggs
Mason caught Dev’s eye. “Sorry, mate. We didn’t stand a chance. They knew we were coming, thanks to that traitor.”
Dev followed his glance to the three smouldering Wing-Packs that had been dumped together. The bullet holes, and in one case, missile damage, showed how his friends had been downed. He looked questioningly back at Mason, who was wiggling his eyebrows meaningfully.
“Are you all OK?”
Mason and Aaron nodded. Riya winked at him. “At least we’re alive. Mason’s mouth works, Aaron’s sarcasm is active, and I can still move my fingers.” She held up her hands to show that she was bound at the wrists, leaving her nimble hands free. She wriggled her fingers and winked at Dev.
“Oh, will you guys cut it out!” Lee exclaimed in a huff. “Boo-hoo-hoo. Your little escapade failed. Well you’re not up against some weirdo like the Collector, or an egomaniac like Double Helix. This is my operation, and I’ve got backup plans on my backup plans. You didn’t stand a chance.” He put on a pair of thick shades and gestured towards the sun. “The eclipse is starting, and we will see totality. Completely covered. This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment… Well, it actually happens every year or so, but you lot won’t make it past today. Don’t look directly at it or you’ll blind yourself and miss all the fun.”
As the dark disc of the moon began to creep across the sun, a strange twilight began to cast over them and they could feel the temperature rapidly dip.
Lee retrieved a small briefcase from the edge of the platform, then raised his arms to the sky and danced a little jig. “Come on, Black Knight – do your thing.”
Dev caught Lot looking at him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“For what? This is not your fault.”
Dev thought that if they were going to die in the next few minutes then he wanted to do it with a clear conscience.
“When I touched your phone I accidentally saw some of your texts. I thought… I thought Nathan was using you to spy on us,” he finished guiltily.
Her eyes widened in surprise, which was swiftly followed with a look of disappointment. Dev mentally kicked himself. The deathbed confession failed to make him feel any better. Why didn’t he keep his mouth shut?
Two hundred and forty-nine miles directly above them, Black Knight adjusted its position. The beak-like tip of the structure aligned perfectly to the signal it detected far below. As the cool shadow of the eclipse rolled across the Knight’s hull, it ground into action. From within, clanking vibrations reverberated through its structure as machinery inside cranked to life, powered by the gravity boost from the eclipse.
The downward-pointing nose began to open in petal-like segments, and three tapering, octopus-like tentacles emerged … rapidly trailing towards the earth.
At first nobody could see a thing. Dev was beginning to think Lee’s master plan was a dud, and when the villain began nervously pacing, Dev couldn’t repress a smile.
“What is that?” Stoker suddenly said, squinting at the sky.
There was a black smudge far above. Lee suddenly hooted with pleasure and gave a little skip of delight.
“That is Black Knight! Now you can witness a real feat of engineering.”
“Looks like a bunch of snakes,” said Riya. Dev thought she wasn’t wrong. From their vantage point a solid line was coming straight for them, the tip of which appeared to writhe this way and that.
The eclipse had caused the temperature to plummet further, and the world around them became murkier as it neared totality. Even out of the corner of his eye, Dev could see the sun was almost nothing more than a toenail clipping of fire around the moon’s lower quarter.
His eyes darted back to the discarded Wing-Packs Mason had deliberately indicated to… then he saw movement on the horizon. A chopper was heading towards them, low over the ocean. It was too far away for Dev to make out details, but he had no doubt that it was Wade riding in to rescue them. They just had to be ready.
He turned his attention back to the deck. Everybody was fixated on whatever was descending from Black Knight. Dev thought that anybody watching from the mainland would probably be able to see what appeared to be a thread-thin line lowering from the heavens. Even the hired thugs had lowered their weapons as they gawped upwards. He doubted there would be a more perfect distraction than the scene unfolding before them.
Mustering all the strength he could, Dev jerked his foot backwards and was rewarded with an eye-watering thud as he kicked Wan-Soo between the legs. While Wan-Soo was a proficient martial arts fighter, he recalled Mason’s more brutal fighting techniques and his colourful offhand comment that, no matter what amazing martial arts your opponent knew, there was no more effective a blow than hoofing him in the spuds.
Dev followed through by shoving his entire body weight into Wan-Soo. The traitor staggered and fell backwards. It was enough movement to attract the attention of the mercenaries, one of whom began to raise his gun.
But Riya was there first. She moved her arms, which slid out of her cuffs. Dev had understood her fingers comment to mean she had pickpocketed the handcuff keys from the guard next to her and had unfastened them while everybody was distracted.
In a super-quick move, she snapped the handcuff around the man’s free hand, twisted the cuffs around his neck and snapped the other cuff around his gun hand. He dropped to his knees, effectively putting himself in a stranglehold and unable to drop or use his weapon.
Lee turned to see the scuffle unfolding behind. He hesitated from giving orders because the three snaking tentacles from Black Knight were suddenly upon them. They stopped lowering the moment they reached the deck.
Lee hurried to the nearest one, pulling his helmet on and securing it with a hiss of air. He opened the case he’d retrieved and unfolded it as he ran. Like a piece of origami, the case transformed into a large clamp, like a paper bulldog clip with miniature tracks running on the inside.
He secured the clamp around the cable, attached a safety line from his suit to the device, then activated it. The clamp tightened with a hiss and the tracks whirled to life, pulling Lee upwards along the cable!
Dev threw himself forward towards the Wing-Packs. While two of them were badly damaged, the third, although peppered with bullet holes, looked functional. He guessed Mason had, rather selflessly, indicated that at least one of them could escape. But Dev had no intention of fleeing.
He shoved his fingers into the exposed wiring of the least damaged pack and used his gift to communicate with the flight system. It was a conversation that was as quick as a thought.
Dev yanked his hand away and rolled aside as the Wing-Packs roared to life – shooting across the deck in a trail of sparks.
Lot and Mason just had enough presence of mind to throw themselves flat as the Wing-Packs jounced into the air at the last moment – slamming into the two mercenaries behind them, dragging them across the deck – and off the side of the rig.
The remaining two mercs had hesitated, but now their combat training kicked in. They raised their weapons, both aiming at the most dangerous target: Dev.
Dev froze. He had nowhere to go.
And at that moment the chopper he had seen rapidly approaching now rose from under the oil rig, the rotors making nothing more than heavy dull thumps as they cut through the air on stealth mode. Dev felt a moment of smug elation … then realized the machine was a Sky-Scorpion with the familiar Helix logo on the hull.
And the pilot didn’t waste a moment in opening fire.
Everybody ran in different directions for cover as huge chunks of platform were demolished under the Sky-Scorpion’s onslaught.
Dev found refuge behind the gantry of a satellite tower, and Aaron joined him. The Sky-Scorpion banked away from them – its gunfire strafing the deck behind the remaining two mercenaries, who ran desperately towards the edge. They didn’t hesitate to leap off, favouring their fate diving into the waters far below rather than face the rain of bullets from the combat aircraft.
Across the platform, Riya
and Mason took cover in a stairwell, dragging the bewildered Eryl Stoker with them.
Lot had dashed to the remaining Wing-Pack, hoping it would be of some use. She hadn’t bargained on Wan-Soo doing the same, and now the two of them fought in a whirling display of punches and kicks. Lot was accomplished in Judo, but Wan-Soo’s Kuk Sool technique was designed for more aggressive attacks. Lot desperately blocked blow after blow, a difficult enough task considering her hands were still cuffed.
Dev readied himself to help her, but Aaron pulled him back. “You want to get yourself killed?” He indicated to the Sky-Scorpion which was orbiting the platform, before it peeled into a sharp spiralling climb to pursue Lee.
“That’s got to be Helix,” said Dev. “They finally tracked Lee down. But how?”
As he tried to work out what had led Helix to them, he looked back at Lot in time to see Wan-Soo hook his leg behind her and send her sprawling on her back. She rolled in pain, unable to get back up.
Dev stood up and screamed. “LOT!”
Wan-Soo heard him and turned, a humourless smile etched on his face. He laconically strode over to one of the mercenaries dropped rifles and picked it up. He fired a few shots at Dev, forcing him to duck back down for cover.
There was no way Dev could cover the distance across the platform to intercept him, and Lee had stripped them off all their gadgets. He saw his own sorrow reflected in Aaron’s face.
“Sorry. Unless you can move heaven and earth, there’s nothing we can do.”
Dev peeked again. Wan-Soo was now standing over Lot, the gun aimed right at her. She still lay flat on her back, stunned from the fall.
“Move the earth…” muttered Dev. He looked at Aaron with wide eyes. “Hold on to something.”
Before Aaron could respond, Dev ran to a cable running down the tower they were hiding behind. One end connected to a satellite dish, the other coiled into the bowels of the oil rig, into the command centre.
Dev triggered his synaesthesia, both hands gripping the cable as hard as he could as he forced his gift into the system. He felt himself spread through the rig’s enormous electronic nervous system. He’d once tried using his power on the internet, but had nearly died due to the enormity of the system. He’d recently connected to the Large Hadron Collider, and that had almost wiped him out too. There were thousands of miles of cabling in the rig, but within a second he found the system he needed.
Wan-Soo pushed the stock of the rifle against his shoulder and aimed at Lot…
In that time Dev had bypassed four safety systems and short-circuited the flotation system in the rig’s submerged starboard pontoon, ordering its intake valves to breach.
Wan-Soo’s finger tickled the trigger…
Below the water, the pontoon suddenly sucked in a huge quantity of water. Automatic alarms, usually reserved for storm warnings, squawked as the entire oil rig suddenly tilted sideways.
Wan-Soo pulled the trigger, but his aim had shifted and he slid along the platform as it angled beneath him.
At the same moment, the remaining surface-to-air missile launcher came alive under Dev’s implanted command and fired its remaining complement of missiles at the Sky-Scorpion as it drew towards Lee.
Dev sprinted across the deck towards Lot, his feet slipping on the ever-steepening deck. Lot began to slide towards the edge as the angle increased.
Designed for slow, graceful movements, the rig creaked and wailed as it rapidly shifted position in the water. Dev had intended for a gentle shifting of position but the intake valves in the pontoon must have broken, meaning he’d inadvertently flooded the entire thing.
The floor now reached a sharp forty-five degree angle. Crates, equipment and debris that had been stacked on the periphery of the deck now toppled over and rolled across the deck towards Dev, Lot and Wan-Soo.
There was a huge explosion from above, but Dev was concentrating too hard on his balance to risk looking up. However, the source of the sound became apparent moments later when the flaming wreckage of the Sky-Scorpion – brought down by the surface-to-air missiles – slammed into the deck and rolled towards him.
Dev had no choice. He threw himself forward into a sliding dive to reach Lot as she rolled towards the edge.
Dev was convinced he was going to zip off the side himself. One hand folded around Lot’s jacket collar just as she slipped over the edge – and his other hand flailed for a metal rail post to halt their fall.
Dev howled in pain as he was yanked to a stop. His arms felt ready to pop from their sockets as he held on to the rig with one hand, Lot dangling beneath him as the platform continued tipping.
Wan-Soo wasn’t so lucky as he tumbled past them. He reached out for help, his eyes pleading – then he was pitched over the deck. Dev instinctively stretched out a leg to save him, traitor or not – but Wan-Soo was too far beyond to reach.
If Wan-Soo had survived the fall, he didn’t survive the tsunami of equipment that cascaded over the edge moments later – followed by the flaming hulk of the Sky-Scorpion. It plummeted straight down, impacting the water with a massive splash.
Dev flinched as several boxes and pieces of metal bounced close to his head as they fell over the side.
Then with a dull thump that reverberated through the platform, the oil rig came to a halt, listing a full fifty-degrees in the ocean. The safety systems had caused the second pontoon to take on more water to counterbalance the sinking. It had lowered the platform a few feet in the water, but had saved them for now. But all it would take was a nasty wave and the oil rig would sink without a trace.
The commotion was all over in moments – and perfectly timed as the eclipse passed, and the heat from the sun burned the twilight away.
Dev’s world of pain was relieved when Mason, Riya, Aaron and Eryl Stoker carefully clambered down the incline and pulled him and Lot to safety.
Riya made short work of everybody’s handcuffs. Lot sat to the side, her arms around her legs as she shivered.
Mason was breathing heavily from all the exertion. “Well, I would say that’s kind of mission accomplished.”
Dev shook his head. “No. Lee got away.”
They all turned to look up at the trailing cables that still swung just over the deck, stretching in a graceful arc into the sky where they appeared to vanish together into a point within the atmospheric haze.
“Maybe Helix got him?” ventured Aaron.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“What is that thing?” said Mason, looking to Eryl for answers.
Eryl stared upwards, his eyes alight with wonder. “It’s incredible is what it is.” He pulled himself together and looked at the curious faces around him. “With that we won’t need rockets or anything like them. And as for coming back down, it will be effortless. No more danger of burning up in the atmosphere. That is a space elevator. Think of the Indian rope trick. The magician throws a rope into the air and clambers up it with no apparent support. Now flip that over. Above us in geostationary orbit is this Black Knight. Nothing is needed to hold it up. It drops a cable to the earth, and, like magic, we can climb straight up. Nothing is holding it, either here on earth or up in space.”
“That is awesome,” Mason stated. “So you can literally get a lift into space.”
“Exactly. No rockets. No expensive fuel. It would be as easy as walking into a skyscraper, standing in an elevator, and hitting the button for the penthouse.”
“A space elevator,” Dev echoed. “Leading right up to Black Knight. The only way we’ll know for sure if Lee’s alive is to go up there ourselves.”
“Like Jack and the Beanstalk,” muttered Lot as she carefully stood up.
“Yeah,” said Dev with a note of dread. “And you remember what was lurking at the top of the beanstalk…”
When news of the space elevator circulated back to the Consortium it caused a flurry of urgent messages. The revelation that Wan-Soo had been a mole sent further consternation around the corridors of power.
Dev had patted Aaron on the shoulder and made sure everybody knew that Aaron was the one who first suspected a mole, inwardly relieved that he had misinterpreted Lot’s text message from her boyfriend. That resulted in Mason begrudgingly admitting that he had formed the wrong opinion about the American.
Somebody needed to go up there to search for Lee and stop him from triggering a devastating electromagnetic pulse. Despite Eryl Stoker’s insistence that it should be him, the responsibility fell on Dev’s shoulders.
Since he was headed into the great unknown, he had insisted his uncle send him some much-needed equipment from the Inventory. Charles hastily put the requested package together, and Wade delivered it in person aboard the Avro.
The team found it amusing to watch Eryl Stoker’s stunned expression when he saw the flying saucer hovering alongside the tilting oil rig. The ramp lowered and Wade stepped to the bottom, a safety line around her waist to prevent her from slipping to a watery death below. She helped Eryl and the others board. Only Lot stayed behind to give Dev a hand.
“I have the equipment you requested,” Wade handed Dev a familiar metal gauntlet. “Here’s Iron Fist.” Dev eagerly took it and ran his fingers along the scaly metal. This was one of the most precious artefacts in the Inventory. While it looked like a metal glove, it was in fact an advanced mechanized fighting suit that spread across Dev’s body. He smiled as he felt the weight in his hand. At least protected by this, Dev felt he had a fighting chance of completing the mission.
Aaron and Riya then helped Wade hand over a pair of bulky rocket-packs that Dev had retrieved in Canada. “You know your uncle insisted that these all remain in the Red Zone.”
“He can be stubborn like that,” Dev said with a smile.
“He wants them back. And in one piece too.”
Dev smiled wryly, noting that his uncle was, as ever, more concerned about the state of his tech than his nephew. He then noticed that Tyker was also on-board the Avro. He kept a nervous distance from the edge, but gave a friendly wave to Dev.