“You’re dead,” laughed Tojo. “And you look like you’ve shat yourself.”
“Very funny,” he said as he tried to regain his composure.
“It was a fatal mistake to get off your scooter,” said a familiar voice.
“Torv?” he asked as his eyes came into focus.
She was standing in front of him, sword drawn and dressed in some form of black armour: a breast plate, lower arm guards, lower leg guards with boots and a helmet with a visor to protect the eyes. The rest of her body was naked. He thought she looked fierce and ridiculous at the same time.
“If you were an enemy, I’m rather afraid your head would have been quickly removed from your body,” said Tojo, delighting in his friend’s obvious discomfort.
“The flash of light was effective,” he said.
“It gives us the ability to blind the enemy just before we strike,” said Torv. “Provided the enemy is foolish enough to look directly at us.”
“Which I did, clearly I am untrained.”
“I’ll soon fix that,” said Torv.
“You? But you’re…”
“Young?” asked Torv, slightly offended.
“It’s what I was telling you before Prax. Torv is one of our best. Her enhancements make her a superb warrior and she’s made a particular study of the various martial arts, all of which she has absorbed at a remarkable pace.”
He didn’t know what to say. He considered her again and he could see her smile faintly before she lifted her visor, revealing her piercing bird-eyes.
“There’s exposed flesh, doesn’t that make you vulnerable?” he asked to deflect his embarrassment.
“It’s a compromise,” said Torv, “between flexibility and protection. The breastplate and helmet protect the vital organs. The armour is made of a new grapheme fibre. We leave the joints free so we have full manoeuverability. We use the arm and leg guards to block attacks to our flesh, although more components can be added to suit the combat conditions.” She demonstrated this by quickly doing a back flip and a series of blocking moves.
“Such flexibility is vital in defending against a sudden stealth attack like that on Pangaea,” added Tojo. “In that situation the aim would be to dodge their first blows and draw a sword or knife to slice at their tendons, throat, eyes, whatever would halt their attack. Show him Torv,” he said and she immediately went into a series of fluid moves using her sword to indicate cutting and thrusting movements. Then she dropped the sword and drew two knives sheathed in her leg guards, again going through a number of complex defensive moves. “The sword and knives are made from a new ceramic material, extremely strong and sharp.”
Torv stopped and handed him a knife. He didn’t dare test it for sharpness. “It’s heavier than I expected,” he said.
“For a reason,” said Torv tossing her other knife across the field and into the trunk of a tree. “Too light and the wind catches them.”
“Wouldn’t a gun be more effective?” he asked naively.
“In certain circumstances,” she said reaching over her left shoulder and pulling out an automatic high calibre pistol and firing a number of rounds into the tree, shredding bark and leaves. “We have a range of bullet types to stop almost any hostile.”
“But that’s not all,” crowed Tojo. “The guard on her right arm contains a taser that delivers a nasty shock and the guard in her left contains a powerful neurotoxin which releases as either a liquid or a vapour, and which,” he added quickly, “the defenders have been inoculated against. And the heels and toes of her boots also contain blades that she can use with specific kicking movements.”
“In other words I’d be dead many, many ways.”
“Yes, my friend, and as a last resort she can use her bare hands.”
“Impressive. I had no idea,” he exclaimed, truly impressed.
“Oh, the show is not over my friend,” said Tojo gleefully.
“Veni huc.” Torv yelled.
“Latin?” he asked aloud, confused. And then to his utter amazement Torv bent down and with the force of her legs jumped high into the sky, bringing herself to a full stop as a needle-like drone hovered into place just below her.
“What the fuck,” said Prax as he watched her lower herself to straddle the drone, lean forward to grasp what must have controls of some kind and then shoot off at high speed into the sky. “Did she just fly?”
Tojo was laughing. “The look on your face: this has been a wonderful day, just to see your expression.”
Prax turned and glowered at him, begging for an explanation.
“A small levitator imbedded in her breast armour…”
“But the void field, it can damage cells, it’s why…”
“It needs to be shielded. So obviously that is another recent development. Oh, don’t get me wrong. It has its limitations: the wearer doesn’t have the ability to actually fly, just levitate, like being in zero gravity. We haven’t developed a propulsion system as yet. It gives them the ability to leap very high and scale trees and cliff faces very rapidly. It takes a lot of skill to get used to but Torv is testing it for us. Apparently the trick is timing. At the moment it’s a prototype.”
“And the drone?”
“Another prototype… We call it the dart.”
And as Tojo spoke the drone flew in low from behind him at a high speed, releasing a small missile that destroyed a copse of trees in a ball of flame, followed by a rapid burst of machinegun fire that shredded the ground, before it lifted and banked to the left.
“Shock and awe my friend, shock and awe.”
34
Akash
This time they decided to send a larger team for a month. They had fitted two jumpers for a crew of four each and a third jumper filled with extra equipment and supplies. Selecting the second team proved to be far more difficult. Whilst he had confidence in the selection process they were in fact selecting two distinct teams, each with their own agenda and responsibilities. He would not allow a repeat of Pangaea so he had wanted a heavily armed team, which meant people with military experience. Others cautioned him that he was seeking to hire mercenaries and they weren’t known for tolerating the painstaking process of science. Aviva effectively forbade it, arguing succinctly that mercenaries were far less trustworthy than naïve scientists and far better able to disappear into the underworld on their return, should they decide to profit from what they knew. They seemed to be at impasse until one of the logistics team suggested that park rangers might be a better option, especially if they had worked in game parks. Not only would they be experienced with predators, most of their work involved conservation and animal rescue. This meant they often worked closely with zoologists and environmental scientists. It was so obvious he was embarrassed that he had not thought of it immediately.
Once it had been decided, HR provided him with a first list, which he narrowed down to four. Prosperous Onyango, twenty-seven, had been a clear choice: a Kenyan park ranger who had worked extensively with wild life rescue and tracking poachers. He had also survived the bush alone for two weeks after surviving an ambush.
His second choice was Anne Little Wolf, twenty-three, a full blood Shoshone/Crow woman who had worked in Yellowstone as a ranger and outside as a wolf whisperer and champion rodeo rider.
Next was David Jalpirri, twenty-two, an Aboriginal tracker and tourist guide from Arnhem Land. Although he had some experience wrangling crocodiles his real skill lay with the smaller predators, snakes and arachnids, some of which could be more dangerous than the bigger animals. He was also an expert in bush tucker and traditional hunting practices.
His final choice was perhaps the most controversial: Akoi Kuhn-Nacht, twenty-five, a Sudanese (Nuba) woman who had been adopted by a German family. Her adoptive father was a wildlife photographer and conservationist and in her early years she travelled through Africa as he photographed the wildlife. When they moved back to Germany she struggled to fit in and became rebellious. Her aptitudes were discovere
d when she did her compulsory year of service with the German army. Her commanding officer took an interest and recommended her for a job with the UN Peacekeeping force in the new state of South Sudan, especially in liaising with her own tribe from the rugged Nuban mountains. She too had seen action, helping to defeat an incursion by north Sudanese rebels. She was the only person on the team to have killed a human.
None of them had any formal academic qualifications but they had all passed the various aptitude tests, all of them of above average intelligence, especially David Jalpirri, who had surprised everyone with a score of 130, despite never having finished high school.
The scientific team had been much more difficult to pick. The particular skill sets they required meant the best candidates were often unconventional, even eccentric. The more mediocre scientists had found comfortable research positions with corporations or the military: hacks, lab rats who dared not question the source of their research funding. The more brilliant the scientist, the more they were likely to be complex and hard to manage, something he understood all too well.
After procrastinating he finally decided on Dr Constance Cambridge, twenty-six, a biologist from Yale, something of a punk feminist with tattoos and a pierced nose. Next was Dr Junji Sato, twenty-eight, a marine biologist from Tokyo who had spent time on the Sea Shepard trying to stop the Japanese whaling program and was a surfer in his spare time. Then there was Dr Archimedes Smith, twenty-seven, a zoologist from Oxford who could best be described as an anti-elitist, bohemian member of the British upper-class, the son of a famous artist and knight of the realm, Sir Plotinus Smith, and grandson of a honorary baronet, the brilliant Oxford philosopher Professor Baron Julius Augustus Socrates Smith (who started the family tradition of classical Greek names).
He was however, stuck on deciding the fourth. It was a choice between three candidates: Dr Dora De Waal, a plant microbiologist from Johannesburg, Dr Guilliana Lopez from Sao Paulo, a specialist in Amazonian flora, and Dr Zhang Li Li, a marine biologist and geneticist from the Sorbonne.
Zhang Li Li was perhaps the most qualified and the most problematic. She was a child prodigy accepted into a special program for the gifted at the Sorbonne when she was just eleven - completing marine fieldwork in French Polynesia when she was thirteen. The problem was that she was now only sixteen and that presented him with a legal problem. She was a minor and couldn’t sign any contracts. In all other ways she was ideal. Her IQ was 165 but she was also a gifted in a number of other disciplines, including mathematics, music, and she had trained as a gymnast until she moved across to wushu, winning a French junior championship. She was the daughter of a Chinese dissident intellectual who had been imprisoned and executed by the Chinese government. She had fled to Paris with her mother (a famous dancer) when she was five and had become fluent in French by the time she was six. Her mother died of cancer when she was eight and a well-to-do bourgeois family adopted her.
There was something about her that suggested she would play an important role, and after all, hadn’t he achieved a great deal by the time he was her age? In fact he had a gut feeling that of all of the expeditionary team, she would be the most adaptable. So it was decided. He wanted Zhang Li Li, despite her age. Besides, they were going to establish their own society and their own laws and he had already broken the laws of many nations – so they were already outlaws.
It took a further two weeks for the team to gather (and be presented with confidentiality agreements). They were flown to Mumbai from different parts of the globe, where some of the team waited at various luxury hotels until the last arrived. The first time they had a chance to meet was as they were driven in an armed convoy to Juhu aerodrome where a private jet waited to fly them to Paro airport. Upon arrival they were again driven in a convoy to Akash’s converted hotel in Thimpu.
He could see no point in waiting, so after they were given a short time to place their luggage in their rooms and freshen up, they were summoned to the control centre meeting room in the basement.
He was nervous as they filed in. This was the moment he would know if he had made the right decision.
Their faces betrayed varying degrees of confusion, disorientation and false bravado. Constance was the first to enter the room; a confidant, buxom brunette who looked as if she could have been a cheerleader and head of an Ivy League sorority, except for the tattoos on her arm and protest t-shirt. Archimedes was next, a tall, lanky Englishman with long blond hair tied into a ragged ponytail, his clothing reminiscent of an ageing rocker. He seemed almost apologetic as he politely allowed Anne to walk in front of him. She was dressed in jeans and a gridiron t-shirt, her full-blood Shoshone heritage unmistakable with her high cheekbones and ruddy cheeks. Junji shuffled in and gave an automatic formal bow. He was a rather feminine looking Japanese pretty-boy with dyed blonde hair wearing the latest hipster surf gear from California. Prosperous swaggered in with false confidence, his eyes darting quickly about: a tall, handsome man, his face suggesting Masaii heritage. Akoi marched in looking fierce, her striking face a dark black-blue, her hair bound in tight curls and her broad nose pierced in the traditional tribal manner. In complete contrast David ambled in wearing shorts, flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt, his skin also a dark blue/black. Li Li came in last: tiny, almost invisible, gliding with the grace of a gymnast, her golden brown skin flushed with excitement, dressed casually like any University student.
It was David who broke the silence with a nervous joke directed at Akash, who was attempting his best reassuring smile, “I suppose then, that you’re Dr Evil or something, eh?” Most of them understood the reference, except for Prosperous and Akoi. Constance smiled immediately and seemed on the verge of adding her own nervous repost, except that Archimedes was frowning at the impropriety of such a joke.
Akash surprised them with his reply. “No, there’s no mini-me either. I’m not Dr Evil, but frankly, as you shall soon find out, I am part of a worldwide conspiracy. But before we begin, feel free to get some refreshments, coffee, tea,” he said gesturing to the back of the room.
They did so silently, using the refreshments as a familiar source of comfort, something Akash had planned.
“Okay,” he said as they settled. “What I am about to show you will shock you and possibly change everything you thought you knew. I am Dr Akash Jayarama and as you know, founder of Shunyata. What you do not know is that some years back I discovered a way to travel to other planets. We have done so successfully many times, even sending a manned team to a planet we called Pangaea.” He pushed start on his tablet and the large monitor began to show a series of vids from the probes.
He watched the faces of the team carefully and noted expressions ranging from incomprehension to genuine alarm, only Li Li was smiling. They were all too shocked to speak or even formulate the most obvious question: how?
“I assure you this is all very real. As you know astronomers have recently been cataloguing thousands of exoplanetary systems. We have sent probes to some of the most promising. Most are uninhabitable. Some are dangerous.” He showed a vid of the first expeditionary team exploring Pangaea. There were gasps at the sight of the six-legged mammoths. “I will not lie to you. This expeditionary team never made it back. All were killed. I’ll spare you the details for now but you will be fully informed in time. This is because we are asking you to be the second expeditionary team and this is where we want to send you. We call it Eden. Your task will be to find out if that name is warranted.”
The monitor switched to images of multi-coloured tropical rainforests, golden beaches and vivid blue oceans.
Zhang Li Li broke the silence with an exclamation of wonder, “magnifique, extrodinaire.”
David laughed. “I always wanted to be a blackfella Luke Skywalker eh? You think Yoda lives on that planet bro?”
There was nervous laughter because everyone had at least understood that reference.
It was Akoi Kuhn-Nacht who shattered the mood. “How did the other team die?”
>
Akash did not hesitate to answer. It was important that they feel he was being completely honest. “A proto-sentient predator species mounted a surprise attack. They were dismembered and eaten.”
She remained unmoved whilst the others turned various shades of grey. “There should have been no surprises. You were naïve, unprepared.”
“Yes,” he replied immediately. “Very naïve, although part of the reason for sending a manned team was to make just that sort of assessment. Probes have limitations. This is why we have chosen four members who have experience dealing with dangerous wildlife, David, Prosperous, Anne and of course you, Akoi. Your job will be to assess if Eden is dangerous.”
“Was the attack caught on camera?” asked Prosperous.
“Yes. We believe you should all see it even though it is very confronting. We want you to be fully informed before you make your final decision.”
“Best to get it over and done then,” said Archimedes clearing his throat nervously.
“Of course, but I suggest that if anyone doesn’t feel up to it right now you might wish to leave the room.”
No one moved so he called up the sequence. He really did not want to see it again but realised that he had to demonstrate a degree of resolve and bravery. When he finished he noticed that Constance and Li Li had tears in their eyes. Akoi was brutally honest. “Their first mistake was to have the camp in the open with three sixty degree access. They probably smelled you, and you were under-armed.”
The other rangers nodded in sober agreement. Akash noted that Akoi had just taken the leadership role, something her profile had accurately predicted.
“Okay, I think we’ll end this session. We expect all of you will experience degrees of delayed shock so naturally we have counsellors on hand. We are all here to support you and once you digest what you have just seen you will naturally have a thousand questions: all of which we will attempt to answer in full. You may also at this point decide not to continue, in which case you will be flown back to Mumbai. If you decide to leave us the contract will come into full force. You will still receive substantial compensation but we will vigorously enforce the confidentiality agreement.”
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