Extinction Level Event (The Consilience War Book 2)

by Ben Sheffield

  He looked tired. Grey-rimmed eyes darted back and forth over the crowd with the lethargic energy of a dying snake. When he pointed out journalists, the hand wavered, and sometimes multiple people asked questions at once.

  “Do you have any comments on the attack on the Solar Arm Ark?” someone asked.

  It had happened only minutes ago. A gunman had massacred four people, and destroyed one of the Solar Arm’s flagship space projects.

  He shook his head. “My thoughts and sympathies rest with the families of the victims. It will be investigated to the full extent of the law.”

  “Can you comment anything more…substantial?”

  “I was briefed on the situation just minutes ago, so no.”

  “What about the rumors about the tower technician? Our sources report that he liked to read seditious literature in college.”

  “We don’t know that it was the tower technician,” Sarkoth said. “We have records that he signed out the truck and left the facility, but truck could have been hijacked en-route to White Sands, with the perpetuator stealing his clothes and protective equipment. In any case, his body was incinerated by the meltdown, and there were no identifiable features. Even his teeth are gone. It is possible that we will never know who committed this crime.”

  “Prime Minister Amnon, in 2130 you and Raya Yithdras co-sponsored Bill SB-2552-80, which imposes limits on the background checks that can be conducted on public contractors. Do you agree that this bill made attacks like this more likely, and do you feel any regret?”

  “From memory, the exact wording of the bill was that…”

  Around and around and around…

  An hour later, he took one final question.

  An almost alarmingly tall woman with a pince-nez raised her hand. “Prime Minister Amnon, why don’t the weights match?”

  He skipped a beat. “Am I supposed to understand that question?”

  “Eight months ago, you returned from your classified military expedition to Proxima Centauri.”

  “Which will stay classified, thank you.”

  “Just so, there is a discrepancy between the declared weight of your ship, and the actual weight.”

  He stared at her intently. “Is that so?”

  “Yes, it is. The reports were published in Interstellar Transport Quarterly. When ships enter docking range, they must slow to a known speed and fly through a series of carbyne nets strung out in space. The nets break, and the time to breakage allows docking engineers to calculate their weight with extreme accuracy. You were flying a Dravidian-class Supercarrier Transport, and your captain declared a gross mass of…” She consulted some holographic notes on her suit… ”92,169,168 kilograms. However, the space net records that the Dravidian weighed 92,169,209kg. Exactly forty-one kilograms off.”

  He sighed. “And I’m supposed to explain this?”

  “If you know anything about this, please do.”

  He scowled at her. “Does anybody care that a ship weighed forty-one kilos more than it was supposed to? Anybody? On a list of boring controversies, this would either be number one, or the number ahead of that.”

  The woman was not shaken. “It is interesting in light of certain conspiracy theories.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Forty-one kilograms is the plausible weight of a human being.”

  “A pretty thin human.”

  “Not if we’re talking about a person dehydrated by Black Shift.”

  “Maybe a few soldiers brought back some stones in their pocket.”

  The reporter looked confused. “But you never landed on the planet. You and your men stayed in the Dravidian while General Sakharov landed on the planet with his detachment…and then the planet disappeared. A cosmic anomaly. That is what happened, isn’t it?”

  “Of course. Of course.” He shook his head, seemingly chastened. “I merely meant as a hypothetical. Perhaps some cargo from Konotouri Space Station was brought on board, adding to the weight.”

  “Any such ingress of cargo would have to be logged in the ship’s computer, and none was recorded.”

  “Then a mistake was made.” He clutched the edge of the lectern, feeling the expensive imported wood bite into the edge of his hands.

  “The nets are never wrong by more than a kilogram or so.”

  “Then my captain wrongly entered the weight.”

  “The Dravidians have a tare-weight of ninety-six million kilograms or so, and everything on top of that must be accounted for item-by-item. It is automatically entered by the computer, unless manually deleted. It cannot be wrong.”

  “Well, you seem to be the expert here,” Amnon said. “So why don’t you tell me what you think?”

  “That there was another person brought back to Terrus, other than yourself and your men. One that you chose not to enter on the books.”

  He chuckled humorlessly. “This is my inauguration. And we have just suffered a tragedy that has killed five people. If you consider sniffing down infinitesimal weight differences on ships to be a good use of your journalism skills, do it! But you will sniff alone, without my help.”

  The tall woman raised her hand again, but he cut her off. His voice settled into a familiar speech-making timbre. Impressive. Vacuous.

  “Citizens of the Solar Arm, I am honored to receive this office. May I prove myself worthy of it. Let us unite, and rise together into an elysium of dreams and possibilities. The men of times past let the future crash down upon them, and had no choice but to accept it. We are not them. We will make our own future. Thank you, and have a good day.”

  The feeble smattering of actual clapping was drowned by the decibels of fake pre-recorded applause that he pumped into his every rally and public event. He left the podium as the noise roared behind him, like an ocean he’d grown weary of commanding.

  He noticed Raya Yithdras, one of his strongest supporters, and the new Second Minister of the Solar Arm. She had an insolent smirk on her face, and she wasn’t clapping. Her eyes followed him as he left.

  Sarkoth’s first action when he was out of view was to grab his press secretary by the shoulder.

  “That tall woman…who was she? And who does she work for?”

  “Uh…” the girl thumbed her notes. “Linka Rozenkrantz of Paragon Media.”

  “Cancel their media passes. I don’t want to see them again, I don’t want to hear from them again. Got it?”

  “That might be a bad idea. I mean, if word got out that…”

  He seized her shoulder, and hissed into her face. “Just fucking cancel them.”

  Hours later, when he was finally alone, he sagged into a chair. Just let himself collapse.

  The artificial atmosphere on Selene was 30% oxygen, a considerable increase over Terrus’s 21%. The added oxygen increased your energy and your mental cognition, but it left you feeling exhausted. Worn out, like an overloaded circuit.

  His schedule was booked out for six months. Here and there throughout his calendar there were precious six or seven hour stretches where he would apparently sleep, and even a handful of fleeting moments of unallocated time.

  But that time was allocated. It was time for him to dread.

  A palpable sense of doom hung over him, weighing him down. It had started almost the day of his return, and the patches of malaise were growing worse, gathering like thunderclouds until they were blacker than black.

  Thunderclouds were one thing.

  He knew there would be rain, knew that there might even be lightning.

  I’m supposed to care about some dirtbag firing a gun at some scientists, he thought, visions of Andrei Kazmer in his head. If only they knew what’s out there. If only they knew what the future holds.

  A few months ago, he’d struggled out of the Black Shift pod. No memories of his past, and that had been a good thing.

  They’d put a headset over his head, restoring his memories, and he now wished that someone had torn the headset from his head and broken it.

&
nbsp; I’ve failed. Worse than that, I don’t even know if I should have succeeded.

  Emil Gokla had sent him out to Caitanya-9, which finally seemed on the verge of coughing up its secrets.

  It had been a fiasco. Hundreds had died, both from the land tides of the black moons and a handful of human defenders who were something worse than savages. He’d failed to penetrate the surface of the planet. One man had, Andrei Kazmer, and he was no longer a man.

  “I am coming, Sarkoth Amnon. And your world will burn with the fury of my gaze.”

  The carnage he’d witnessed had broken something in him, something he’d always thought was unbreakable. He’d always had a sense of certainty, an idea that life was supposed to proceed to nullity and he should force the blind hand of chance in that direction, but no more.

  Now, he wanted to avoid doom.

  Unfortunately, neither Emil Gokla or Andrei Kazmer shared that view.

  The planet had vanished just a few seconds before the Wipe was supposed to occur. The disaster that would overtake humanity, planned in advance by a species utterly beyond man’s understanding, had been averted. Amnon did not interpret that as mercy, not even for a second.

  Kazmer was slow-playing with his food.

  He’d come back to Terrus, back to blue skies and running water and gravity that was almost apocalyptically heavy, like walking with lead weights around your ankles. But he’d left a part of himself on Caitanya-9.

  Nearly every day he thought about what had transpired there, and wondered at the fate of those who had been sucked into the wormhole.

  A few hundred surviving soldiers.

  About ten or fifteen Defiant, the rebels who had defended the Wipe with their dying breaths and even beyond.

  Maybe a hundred or so people on board the Konotouri…if that still existed.

  So many ifs. And at the end of each if, a human life dangled, as if by a thread.

  He knew nothing except that the fact that if Kazmer could truly control wormholes, the planet’s might would make him unstoppable.

  Very well, he thought, his sentiments as harsh and unforgiving as cheap alcohol. If I am Prime Minister, let my only legacy be to change that.

  He drifted off into a brief micro-sleep, his eyes rolling beneath heavy lids, until he was woken by a blue glow on the edge of his nanomesh suit.

  Somebody wanted to talk to him. The second last person in the universe he wanted to talk to.

  He sighed, and he touched the edge of his cuff. Connection.

  “You cannot keep avoiding me, Sarkoth.” The commlink interfaced with his in-ear monitor that he now wore at all hours of the day. He had no privacy, and politics was a gilded chain.

  “Damn it, where are you? I thought you were on Titan.”

  “Black Shift’s transports now offer same day traffic within the solar system. I am on Terrus, at present, and would like to meet with you.” Emil Gokla’s voice was thin and papery, but clear. And there was a delay of only a second or so.

  “We’re meeting now. What do you want?”

  “You waste a lot of breath asking questions you know the answer to. It took me a while to bribe the border control to obtain measurements of your ship, but now that I have them, they’re all over the world. This could be a political scandal. One you cannot afford.”

  “You leaked this to the press?” Sarkoth Amnon struggled to keep his voice under control. You never knew when recording devices were listening.

  “Of course I did.”

  “To what end? Nobody cares. It’s a non-story. Something for conspiracy theorists.”

  “It’s not a non-story to me. That’s exactly the weight of a dehydrated man. You think I don’t know my own technology? You brought back someone from the planet, didn’t you? Who, and why?”

  “I didn’t bring back anyone.” Amnon kept his expedition close to his chest. He knew that if he gave up one thing, he’d give up everything.

  His last meeting with the Sons of the Vanitar had been strained. Meetings where your host threatens to kill you typically are.

  Emil had not accepted Sarkoth Amnon’s resignation from the cult. And he was relentlessly pressuring him for the true story.

  “There you go again, Sarkoth. Lying. I can pour water into your story, and watch it spurt from fifty different holes. Just tell me the truth. I am beginning to lose patience with your intransigence.”

  “Only beginning? I must work on that.”

  “Don’t think that this secret can stay safely in your head – as you’ve seen, people will scrutinize the tiniest gaps in your account. Already I am putting out feelers throughout military mental health clinics – the edited memories you prepared for the soldiers are bound to have some flaws, and perhaps there’s a veteran somewhere who can shed some light on what happened to the planet. If this happens, don’t you think it would be best if you gave us the full story?”

  Sarkoth rubbed his eyelids against the migraine forming behind them. “Let’s put it this way, Gokla. Even if there was more here than meets the eye – and there isn’t - I would never, ever tell you. My priorities have changed, and I no longer wish to help you. Let it go, and take no for an answer.”

  A bite of steel appeared in Gokla’s fragile voice. “Beware, Prime Minster. I can end your life with the push of a button. I can do it now. Shall I? You’ll miss your next appointment, someone will go looking for you, and they’ll find you sprawled out on the floor. Lights out. Shortest term of Prime Minister ever. And contrary to what we tell people when we put it in, the device is not painless. Some additional trivia for your day.”

  “Ah, a threat!” Amnon said. “Let me make one of my own. I have written down everything I know about your organization. Little bullet-pointed letters. I know about your organized crime background. I know where the money that financed Black Shift came from. I can connect you to scores of terrorist attacks including the one that happened today – I know it was you, don’t deny it! I can take the Sons of the Vanitar and expose them to the world. You’ll be arrested, as will Raya Yithdras, as will Orzo Feroce, as will all of you. You won’t be the teeth between the stars, you’ll be the teeth between the bars. What a scandal it will be! A doomsday cult infiltrating the highest levels of government. There will be no bonfire big enough to burn you on.”

  “A comfort to your rotting corpse, I’m sure.”

  “Only one thing prevents these letters from reaching the hands of the press. My continued life. I am happy for the status to stay quo, at least for now. But press that button and it all comes undone for you. That is my promise.”

  “You are a disappointment to us, Amnon.”

  “I am trying very hard to be exactly that, and I’m pleased that my effort is bearing fruit.”

  “You had such potential. When I helped you as a child I thought that –“

  Amnon killed the call with great glee. When Gokla’s whine of a voice got cut off, he imagined a guillotine falling on the old man’s wattled neck.

  Worthless fucker.

  No point in worrying about Gokla. He was old, his fantastic health now showing signs of failure. He was trash that would throw himself out, soon enough.

  Sarkoth Amnon couldn’t wait to get the call. “Hello? Prime Minister? I’m sure this will be a shock to you, but your old schoolmaster Emil Gokla just had a fall and…”

  The Sons of the Vanitar would continue on, but none of them possessed Gokla’s rarified strain of insanity. The next in line would be more tractable, more amenable to reason.

  Or more bribeable. More killable, if it came to that.

  But now they knew, and so did the world. There was a man that had come back from Caitanya-9.

  Black Shift users could be kept in airtight storage almost indefinitely, awaiting water. Sarkoth Amnon had taken advantage of this. Hadn’t thought himself capable of facing that man, and the things he might have to say.

  It was a delicate situation, to say the least.

  He called his press secretary.

/>   “Cancel all of my appointments today.”

  He heard her take a sharp intake of breath. “What? That’s impossible.”

  “Make it possible.”

  “You have Raya Yithdras at two. She wants to discuss the disputed borders in the asteroid belt. And after that…”

  “Cancel all of them, damn you. Why do I need to give you every instruction twice? Do you need to hire an interpreter for you?”

  She left, chastened.

  He was glad to be rid of them, glad to assert some authority. Only the important and powerful can blow off appointments.

  Besides, Yithdras was one of the Sons. One of the very worst. No doubt the meeting would be full of veiled questions at the behest of Emil Gokla.

  Let them all go hang.

  He strode back into the conference hall in Atrium, shaking a few hands and accepting warm compliments. They fell like stones on ice against his heart.

  There was much to do, and few allies that could be trusted.

  He’d almost been tempted to resign, along with Prime Minister Sumitar. At least then he’d be free of responsibility. If Andrei Kazmer returned and exacted his annihilatory vengeance, at least he’d be able to say “it wasn’t my fault”.

  But now the weight of the world and many more beside sat on his shoulders. He had to make this work. Just had to.

  He booked a shuttle from the Mare Luna to Neo Mumbai, where Black Shift kept a clandestine research facility.

  First, he made a call, confirming that it alright to pay a visit. Of course it was. He was Prime Minister, and he could do anything.

  Which meant that at the end of the day, when fire blazed down from the heavens, he could still do nothing.

  Where are you now, Kazmer? He wondered, thinking of the purple planet that had disappeared. And what happened to all the people I left behind with you?

  The Horsehead Nebula – time and date unknown

  Space stretched out endlessly, every horizon a chasm.

  There were no signposts in the nothingness, no markers of distance passed, not even a rock you could scratch your name on. Travelling at the speed of light, it took hundreds of human lifetimes to cross the galaxies. You could be born, grow to adulthood, and die, thousands and thousands of generations forming and evaporating like froth, and having no way of marking the graves. No breathable air. No life. Just a limitless ocean, so huge that gods drowned in it.