Strange Temple

by John Lilley

  The giant military machine that had spawned Gregory was now in disarray, so central control had been abandoned in favour of regional. The people welcomed it at first; they could get things done quicker without having to wait for command decisions, but they soon realised that there would also be no backup and they were very much on their own with only the resources they had when they were cast adrift. The Siberian border was now heavily under attack, and of all the regions this was the most resource rich and the most heavily defended. However, they’d taken in most of the Soviet people fleeing ahead of the migrants, and their infrastructure was already stretched to its limits. One by one the border garrisons had fallen to increasingly sophisticated attacks. Gregory’s compound was over 1,000 km from the southern Siberian border, only 80 km from the city of Surgut, but despite this, the migrants were already close by.

  His enormous intellect had now turned to the primary need for survival for himself and his supporting team of scientists and their families. The initial plan would be to hide within the base and hope that they were not discovered as the migrating hoards passed by. Winter was only two months away and would usually see off most of the migrants caught without shelter. Plan B was to export himself onto Mother's servers. This would be quite some feat since Gregory and his data filled several million petabytes of data, and the remaining network connections were limited. Still, the sooner they got started, the better. With the right pipe in place, Gregory reckoned that he could make the move in six days. Mother needed two days to set up the storage and hardware required, but some data could come across as soon as the connection was established. It took ten minutes to search the intervening networks for the optimum connection, and the data began to flow immediately while Mother’s technicians worked around the clock to make things happen.

  Most of the base was deep below ground in nuclear-hardened shelters. There were some accommodation blocks on the surface which were the preferred place to live but needs must. After moving themselves down into the bunkers the scientists and the base’s few military personnel destroyed every building above ground. The few remaining entrances were heavily disguised and fortified. The shelters had enough resources to survive indefinitely without help from the surface. Everything that indicated the real purpose of the surface installation was carefully destroyed. Only its long-standing cover of “Agricultural Research Station” was allowed to remain. They wanted it to appear that the station had been destroyed by migrants and they did a good job.

  Gregory had some other plans to bring forward in his last few hours in Siberia. He was worried that the invaders would gain control of the Russian missile defence network. This system was tied into a fleet of 48 geostationary satellites that offered 24/7 surveillance of incredible accuracy, capable of identifying individuals and tracking them. Tied into an arsenal of thousands of ground, sea and space-based missiles, the system could destroy anyone or anything within minutes. He could tell from the news reports that within the migrants were certain factions who were obviously the remnants of government and the military from their originating countries. These were the people who would give him the most problems, and Gregory was determined to put the missile system beyond their reach. He had no intention of allowing them to use the system to knock out Britain’s independent defence systems in preparation for an invasion. There would be little point in extracting himself to one safe haven only to find that it also became overrun.

  All of the missiles contained self-destruct charges and Gregory immediately detonated all of these. The explosions were relatively small but damaged the weapons’ key components and control systems making it impossible for them to be launched. Given the lack of repair facilities since anarchy now ruled, they were effectively scrap. They still contained nuclear warheads, but unless you were an expert in nuclear physics and electronics, it would be impossible to make anything dangerous from them. The space-mounted missiles hidden in the communication satellites took the satellites with them when they self-destructed. Some of their orbits would eventually decay, and the warheads would enter the atmosphere, but not for a few hundred years, and Gregory had great plans for those years. Annoyingly the self-destructs were not entirely successful and three of the missiles in the far northeast were still showing as active. Gregory didn’t know what to make of this. He seemed to have full access to their systems, so the self-destruct command should have worked. However, they were a long way north, and he could deal with them later.

  His main concerns now were the remaining surveillance satellites. They would be impossible to access from his new home, physical and electronic controls were in place to prevent such an eventuality, a system that Gregory had had a hand in developing. The satellites had no self-destruct systems and could not be powered out of orbit to force them to disintegrate in the atmosphere. They had too many autonomous fail-safe systems to ensure their survival. Gregory had considered launching his own missiles against them, but he could not predict what the USA would have made of that manoeuvre. They might have panicked and launched a counter-strike. Gregory knew that the USA was in dire straits, like everywhere else, since the collapse of the international food chain, but he could not risk bringing down a strike on his compound, not just at that moment.

  Above Gregory's compound, the latest group of migrants to arrive seemed to be a well organised military group, just the types that Gregory was dreading. Furthermore, shortly after their arrival, they had been drilling. Their drills had been silent for two hours when a massive explosion rocked the compound down to its lowest levels. Three of the disk farms lost power, their electrical conduits bursting into flames. The few remaining technicians made valiant attempts to put out the fire. Sprinkler systems came on in areas not actually affected by the power failure, and five more disk-farms were shorted out. Water from two ruptured pipes then began to flood the upper levels and trickle down through to the levels below. Since nobody was up at those sealed levels, it remained unnoticed for some time until small cracks in the concrete structure opened up and let the water through. The air in the lower levels was rapidly becoming unbreathable. Time was running out for Gregory, only 2% of his data had been exported. The damaged disk-farms were a major loss, even with the degree of duplication and redundancy built into the system. Fortunately, the explosions had only affected one of the six communication cables. The transfer would consequently be slower, but Gregory was still confident that he would manage to move in time. There were no more explosions for a couple of days, just the time that Gregory needed to implement the next part of his plan.

  Two hundred kilometres north of his compound, a large launch vehicle was being transported to its designated launch pad. At one kilometre per hour, the enormous tractor carrying the vehicle would reach the pad within four hours. Once there, it would take another ten hours to raise the launch vehicle to the vertical position, then a further twelve hours to fuel and prepare it for launch. To the army of technicians at the Cosmodrome, this was just another military satellite launch. The payload had arrived in a sealed container three months earlier. It was a simple mechanical process from its arrival to launch. Once prepped and fuelled the launch was usually handled by the Cosmodrome, but Gregory had some deep links into their systems. This payload was significantly different from anything that had gone into space before. It contained several fleets of micro-satellites. They were part of an abandoned doomsday defence system that Gregory had recently discovered. Originally they were to provide a final stab at the enemy by disabling any satellites they came into contact with. Deployed over a wide area across the most frequently used satellite orbits, the tiny devices were solar powered and driven by ion motors. They could stay drifting in space almost indefinitely. Taking their time, they could detect and intercept any communication satellites. Once they had powered themselves to a selected satellite they would latch on and slowly burrow in, cutting through whatever they came across: power supplies, circuits, pressure systems, nothing could resist them. Once infested a satellite would r
apidly become inoperative. The idea was to deny the enemy the advantage of satellite communication for a considerable time even after the attacked had long since lost any strategic counter-offensive capabilities.

  The heavy launch vehicle was now in position and fuelled. The launch crews had retreated to their bunkers, and the countdown had begun. Back in his bunker, Gregory was struggling to keep his act together. The flooding was becoming a big problem. Drastic situations required drastic solutions, Gregory opened up some of the lower-level passages on the outer extremes of the bunker to provide a sump for the water. The drilling from above had resumed for several hours but had stopped four hours ago. Gregory wondered what they were really up to, but unfortunately thirty minutes later his thoughts were answered as the top five metres of rock and earth was blown away from above the bunker. Gregory and his technicians prepared for the worst as electrical systems exploded, pipes fractured and acrid smoke filled the installation. It looked like the flooding would finally defeat them. Only 26% of his data had been transferred, but then miraculously the water began to subside. Either the explosion had fractured the supply outside the bunker, or it had opened up a deep fissure in the surrounding rock. Everyone in the bunker had been preparing to leave the bunker and surrender to the mercy of their attackers, but they all now breathed a sigh of relief.

  It was only ten minutes from blast-off for the satellite-killer mission. Gregory had stealthily removed the abort capabilities of the launch crews. The remaining automatic abort systems were hard-wired into the various auxiliary systems. If they failed then the launch was probably non-viable anyway.

  The drilling had started again, and Gregory knew that losing another five metres of cover would be the end of the installation. Why in hell did these people want to get to him so badly, and what did they possibly think they could gain from his destruction? And it was definitely destruction that they seemed bent on. Anyone wanting to make use of the facility would have been more careful about how they gained access, perhaps tunnelling in, but the invaders were going at it like a hungry bear at a bees’ nest, using strip-mining methods to remove the overburden. Gregory knew that once the concrete and steel structure was exposed, it would not be long before they gained access. The external emergency communication lines were encased in several layers of armour and sunk in a reinforced concrete conduit. This pipe went straight to the relay network stations scattered across the northern parts of Siberia, and those areas were not yet overrun by migrants. Near to Gregory's compound, the conduit was buried very deep, however, three kilometres from the compound it was only three metres below the surface. There was little to indicate the route of the conduit from the surface since it had been there now for many years and the vegetation above had grown back. Despite this, Gregory hoped that the invaders didn’t have the technology to detect the conduit. His data was currently streaming down the fibre-optic cables within the conduit to the relay station and then via geostationary satellite into its new home within Mother’s installation. They were now only a couple of hours away from completing the transfer.

  Blast-off. The heavy transport Soyuz rocket accelerated quickly and noisily off its launch-pad. All its systems were running well. If all went to plan, then it would be ready to deploy its payload within the hour. In the control tower, all eyes were on the ascending rocket.

  It was a bad call to have to make, but Gregory had no choice now. An airburst about the compound would clear away any menace left on the surface, but he was unsure if the remaining ground cover would protect the people in his bunker. Also, he would be effectively imprisoning them for several months until the radiation subsided. Was that fate worse than letting the migrants destroy them all? He would just have to take a gamble on the nut-cases in the USA not launching a retaliatory strike. Surely they would see that the missiles were not aimed at them? He prepped the three intact missiles in the north. New missions were squirted into their eproms, and count-downs began. Their silos were all unmanned and buried beneath a deep blanket of snow, still a frequent phenomenon in that latitude. Only two of the missiles launched successfully, but one destroyed itself after ten seconds. Gregory’s telemetry contact with the remaining missile was limited. If it went to plan three of its four warheads would explode in the main local centres that Gregory knew the migrants held nearby and the fourth would detonate 10 km to the south of his bunker. The blast radius would easily include the bunker. Anything that was not blown apart would be burnt to a crisp by the heat and radiation. Overhead the drilling had been stopped for thirty minutes now.

  Only four minutes to impact, thought Gregory, his last thought.

  16 EUROPE

  It was 04:30 on Tuesday morning and the troop carrier New England was making good progress against a heavy Atlantic swell. A full moon dominated the clear night sky allowing Michael to see the silhouettes of all the invasion fleet ships spreading out far towards the horizon. It was an impressive sight, the largest invasion fleet in history and the most powerful by a large margin. Across the fleet, over 500,000 troops were bunked-up below decks. It had taken almost two days to get them on board and many weeks before that to get them assembled at the docks. Most of America seemed to have come to see them off. Michael had taken his place in line on the quarter deck in his dress uniform as they steamed out of the Columbia Harbour. He was very proud to be doing his bit, but by all accounts, the task ahead should not present too many problems. They’d been told that the British fleet consisted of a just a few ageing coastal patrol vessels and some even older subs. Like most seafaring nations the British had long ago retracted their long-range forces to concentrate on anti-migration defences. At the start of the 21st century, Britain was the most overcrowded country in Europe, and its population had more than doubled since then. Vast squatter camps already surrounded all the main British cities and food had been rationed for many years. It had the enviable geographic good fortune to be an island nation and had been disconnected politically from its nearest neighbours since 2020, a move that had saved it from being overrun by the chaos that ensued in mainland Europe. While cities burnt across the continent as hordes of migrants swept in to escape the heat and starvation of the tropics, Britain had closed its borders with an iron fist. Ninety years on and Britain was the only remaining lifeboat of civilisation left in the old world, but a chronically overcrowded one.

  Michael had been sceptical about the invasion. It hardly seemed worthwhile to attack such a small country of such limited resources, but the official briefing had outlined the strategic importance of gaining a stable staging post from which to reclaim much-needed resources from the destroyed and abandoned cities across Europe.

  He’d seen what was happening in the central states of America as the heat rapidly turned them into desert. Electricity for an air-conditioned existence in the interior had become too expensive for most. In any case, since the latest fuel crisis, the power distribution network had not been reliable. In 60oc temperatures, a loss of power meant death in two to three days, especially if you were caught out near the surface.

  The annexation of Canada had of course been the major safety valve for most US people. At those latitudes, there was still viable farmland and reasonable temperatures, even if it meant clearing the vast forests. Who cared if a few Bears, Moose and Native Americans were evicted in the process? Fortunately, Canada had always remained very sparsely populated, leaving plenty of room for everyone. So as one bread basket had dried up, another had come on-stream. There had been some token resistance from the Native Americans, but they’d always been a pain in the ass. Despite the newly available forest areas for many Americans the coast was where it was at with cool sea breezes, no risk of an arrow in your back and all the food and water you wanted, well most of the time anyway.

  Only the American’s had successfully maintained their invasion fleet, but there again they were the only country now doing the invading. For over 20 years the fleet had maintained the link with the US’s Middle Eastern oil fields, which wer
e only now running dry. It had also stopped the invasion from the south by turning the Panama land bridge into a radioactive wasteland and had set fire to the remains of the Amazon rainforest, which had then burnt for five years.

  There was also the newly ice-free Arctic border for the fleet to patrol, but not much came across from what were once their cold-war adversaries. The argument had always been that the resources would be better spent at home, however with the collapse of most major economies and the total shutdown of world trade; the resources that could be plundered from dysfunctional areas more than covered the cost of the fleet.

  People were fickle; they were always in denial about the finite aspects of living on one planet, especially now that the population had dropped by 80% in the past 50 years, surely that meant there was more than enough for everyone? There would be an abundance of resources just waiting in Europe to be picked up and why should the Brit’s have a monopoly on that?

  Most Americans felt that the fleet more than earned its keep, but very few knew just how much resource the fleet really consumed. The American people had got used to a gradually increasing military presence within their lives, and everyone had some family connection with the military. The troops had been desperately needed to suppress the migrants from the south, but very few knew how much of America’s military might was now concentrated in the invasion fleet. The southern border forces had been reduced to a minimum, not a problem since very little happened in that region these days. The automatic guns on the border wall easily dealt with anything coming north. A minimal number of troops remained in the major cities, as a visible presence, a warning, just enough to keep the lid on the violence that had always simmered just beneath the surface in a super-violent society with average gun ownership levels of four per person. All of the air force drones were on board, not much use for them across the US these days and with the satellite blackout, they would not be controllable from back home anyway. Many of the military administrative personnel had also gone along. Their argument was that effectively they would be twiddling their thumbs once virtually everyone else had gone over to Europe and in any case, they would be needed to govern the captured territories. The phrase “all your eggs in one basket” described the fleet perfectly.