The elevator dinged, and they stepped out into the hallway. It stretched the full length of the ship, and was strictly a two person wide corridor. The crew rooms lined the hallway. Curtis walked them down to their rooms.
"How long is it to Mars?" asked Haur, yawning.
"Twenty four hours, if there are no complications. Plenty of time for you to get some shuteye."
"Night then," mumbled Haur, before disappearing into his room.
"Kepp," said Curtis, after Haur's door had closed, "I have something for you from Saro."
He was handed a datapad and a metal cylinder, the size of a fist.
"We'll notify you when we're close."
Curtis turned and left.
Jess came to, covered in dust and lying in the most uncomfortable position imaginable. As her senses slowly rebooted, she gingerly moved her extremities.
Yup, all working.
She tried to cast her mind back to what had happened; an explosion.
Ah, the bombs.
Rolling onto her back slowly, she sat up. It was like every muscle in her body had been bruised. Her head throbbed relentlessly, denying her the ability to think straight.
A groan to her right caught her attention.
"James?" she peered into the gloom of the escape tunnel, lit dimly by sparsely spaced lights. She could barely make out the figure of a man.
Another groan, and some coughs.
She urged herself to stand, and did so, shakily.
"Jess," the voice that called her name was raspy and hoarse, "Come here."
She obeyed, stumbling, one hand placed on the wall for support. As she got closer to where James lay, she couldn't help but let out a gasp. He was sat against the wall, one hand pressed against his side. Even in the dimness, Jess could see the bloodstains on his white shirt. His flak jacket lay on the floor nearby, as well as bloodied piece of wood.
"Oh no..." her voice was barely a whisper.
"Jess, come here, this is important," James Danuwa was a man who commanded respect, and that ability hadn't disappeared, despite his wound.
Jess knelt by him, tears had formed in her eyes.
"What can I do?" she asked, "Can you walk? I can help you get out of here."
"Jess. My left jacket pocket, in there is my datapad. It contains a backup of my biometric data. You can use it to get out of here."
She tried to talk, but a stern look froze the words on her lips. James continued talking, amidst bouts of coughing. His breath came in fits and starts.
"My hip holster. Take a pistol, and an extra magazine from my outside jacket pocket."
Jess did as complied, wordless.
"You have to get out of here, otherwise nobody will know what has happened," the words came with great difficulty now.
"I'll come back for you, I promise," she said, the tears rolling down her cheek.
James smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "You're a good girl."
He looked down at his wound, and coughed again, and leaned his head against the wall, closing his eyes. He gasped for breath, and finally spoke again.
"Can you do one more thing? In my right jacket pocket is my wallet. There are some pictures."
Jess took out the leather wallet. Was it brown or black? She couldn't tell. Why did it matter?
She flipped it open, and found amongst the various cards a small passport sized photo. Taking it out, she held it up to him.
He sighed and smiled; this time a genuine smile. He raised up a bloodied hand, and took it from her. Tears formed in his eyes as he gazed at the photo. He turned it so that she could see.
"My wife and son," he said, voice barely above a whisper. It was like he was drowning and was gasping for air.
Jess peered at the photo, now smeared with blood. She didn't know what to say.
"He's beautiful. They're both beautiful," she whispered.
James tried to laugh, but it turned into a series of wracking coughs. Jess stood by helplessly.
"Go. Walk forwards. Don't look back."
"Please, Mr. Danuwa, hold on. I'll come back with help." Jess pleaded, desperately.
"Ok, I'll be here. Go." James stared at the picture, he seemed to be calmer.
The picture slipped from his hand, falling like a leaf onto the dust covered concrete floor. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, a single tear rolled down his cheek.
"I'll be here," he whispered, exhaling his last breath.
"Mr. Danuwa? Sir? James, James!" Jess cried in alarm, shaking the limp body of the man slumped before her.
Eventually, it came to her mind to check his pulse; she pressed two shaking fingers to his wrist.
He was gone.
Chapter 12 – The Chase II
Kepp sat in the room with the datapad in his lap.
The diffuse light emanating from the desk lamp cast a warm glow across the tiny quarters - barely enough space for a bed, a wardrobe set into the wall and a nightstand.
He booted the datapad up, and was surprised - or perhaps not, he couldn't figure out how he felt - to find only a single text file.
For a Paragon like him who had been through countless life and death situations, the nerves don't really jangle when opening up a document on a datapad, but he definitely felt some sense of unease.
Kepp.
It is my deepest regret that I have not been able to tell you this in person. I am needed to coordinate what meager space defenses the Earth has available to it. However, after all that you have been through, I feel it is time that I owe you an explanation for everything.
For that, we must start from the start.
The Life Enjoyment Centers were implemented as a social experiment, an answer to a what-if question. What if we freed humans from the shackles of work, of chasing for the promotion, of slaving away for years for a degree and skipped them straight to the prize? You have to realize that seventy years ago, suicides due to work and study-related stress was the biggest cause of death amongst the 18 to 25 year old population. Globalization was complete, and competition was unbelievably intense, even for the worst jobs. To climb the corporate ladder, you left behind a trail of dead bodies without knowing, literally. You might even have killed a person or two to get onto the bottom rung.
The Council of Three, the executive directors of humankind, if you will, decided that a change was needed, but they were wise enough to set up a safeguard to be used if things got out of hand.
This safeguard, founded with the aid of the Russell Group; an affiliation of the world’s top academic institutions, was called Paradigm.
For the last half a century, we have safeguarded the implementation of these LECs. The protestors were silenced, or recruited to join an underground anti-LEC movement we had set up. Paradigm needed to have both options covered. So yes, I and the other "old men" whom Morian has referred to are close allies, we are after the same goal.
Gradually, we saw a move away from the rat-race, as the Council of Three began to impose stricter and stricter regulations on privatized companies and educational institutions.
Do you ever wonder why Alpha Cybernetics is so large? It wasn't because of happenstance. We let them be that way.
But inevitably, it went too far, and when I succeeded as head of Paradigm, the edict was that we needed to reverse the swing of the pendulum. So, for the last twenty years, this is what I, along with others in the anti-LEC movement, have been trying to do. The intricacies of the plan are not important however, save where they concern you.
Humanity operates best under adversity - we as a race have demonstrated this in multiple historical incidents, and we demonstrated it once again in the Mars initiative with Alpha Cybernetics, as well as on the Moon - they are both vibrant, thriving colonies and a splendid showcase for human ingenuity and productivity, despite the Moon being originally a criminal colony, and us manufacturing crime on Mars to provide adversity for the colonists to deal with so we could observe.
Yes. We employed Morian to run drug
s. I am so sorry Kepp; that was our mistake. We kept him on after the Mars incident because we believed he was the right person to tackle the unenviable task of being the adversary that humans needed.
He was our error in judgment, borne through the arrogance of knowledge, and now due to his lust for power he is betraying us and costing us the chance to reverse the changes we have wrought on humanity. The battleships were designed to provide adversity, adversity which the people of Earth would overcome. We had other Paragons ready and waiting in the wings to lead a new human renaissance.
Unfortunately, those ships can now become, in the hands of Morian, the instruments of Earth's destruction. I have tried to send out warning messages, but the frequencies are blocked - Morian's doing, no doubt.
I, Kikuchi Saro, as the Executive Director of Paragon and the Third member of the Council of Three, am imploring you with this message:
Please stop him.
Jess felt her way gingerly along the escape tunnel - the lights were so sparsely spaced that she could barely see where she was going for half the time. The air was musty and dank, and she daren't breathe in too deeply for fear of choking. Her footsteps echoed loudly in the dark, and her own shallow breathing sounded loudly in her ears. The tears had dried now, but she could still taste their salty residue if she licked her lips.
I have to keep going, I have to keep going, she repeated mentally, over and over again, seeing that bloodied photograph.
Kepp would be pissed if he knew what was happening, she suddenly thought, and smiled at the image of her brother raging in a comical fashion.
The tunnel took a sharp left bend; Jess guessed it was probably 90 degrees, not that it mattered. Her ears became attuned to every small noise, and she couldn't help but jump at some of the distant rumblings she heard.
Come on, ghosts and whatnot don't exist; it's probably just shockwaves from structural collapse. Keep it together Jessie.
She kept walking, left hand guiding herself along the wall, until finally, she saw in the distance the tunnel opening up to a well-lit elevator shaft.
Thank fuck for that. She wasn't big on swearing, but that seemed appropriate.
Upon reaching the bottom of the shaft, she was bathed with the bright glow of a fully functional floodlight. The shaft was basically just a hole in the ground, although when she looked up, she couldn't see sky. Four triangulated girders ran the full depth of the shaft, and she could see the actual elevator itself suspended halfway down them. A blinking terminal next to the metal elevator doors attracted her attention next; she walked over to inspect it. The datapad in her pocket vibrated, and the terminal seemed to recognize it.
Access granted.
A metallic clang echoed from far above her as the elevator jolted into motion. The hum of an electric motor could also be heard as it descended.
As it arrived, Jess couldn't help but notice it was just an open platform suspended from a series of cables. Not one who was explicitly afraid of heights, she nevertheless gulped as she stepped onto it, and pressed the button labeled with an upwards arrow.
A set of stairs greeted her at the top of the elevator shaft. She jogged up them and pushed open the heavy steel door at the top.
She stepped out into the afternoon sun, and a world of pandemonium.
Around her, sirens wailed, vehicles screeched across the tarmac and people shouted and cursed. A steady wind had picked up too, picking up all the dust and swirling it around the plaza, giving it a surreal air.
Two men who had heard the door open gaped at her, their wide eyed, open mouthed stares mirrored each other perfectly.
Jess froze, unsure of what to do.
Finally, one of them found the words to speak.
"Who are you? What the hell? You just walked out the side of a building."
"I...I'm Jessica Carver. I...I started work at Paradigm," her reply came out in a stutter, this annoyed her immensely. Then she remembered why she was here, "James Danuwa is down there, he...he died."
"What? The Mission Director?" the open mouthed stare returned.
"Look, I have his datapad here!" Jess held it out to them, "Please trust me, can you send help?"
The two men exchanged glances; one of them began to talk into his comm unit. The other one approached her and took the datapad for confirmation. Jess glanced around the plaza surrounding them. The place was a hive of panicked activity, like a swarm of ants whose mound had just been disturbed.
"Okay, this checks out, we're sending people down right now," the man suddenly stared at her, "Are you okay? You seem to have been bleeding."
What?
Jess touched her temple, and felt something like trickle. She looked at her fingers; it was blood. Her head felt suddenly very light, and she swayed a little. She looked around at the frenzy of chaos around her. She seemed to be moving in slow motion, hardly comprehending anything that was going on around her.
"I'll get you to the medical center," he said as he went to help her.
Jess nodded without resisting; she could barely stand.
Despite the tiredness, Kepp couldn't sleep.
He lay on his bunk, turning thoughts in his head as he turned the metal cylinder which Saro had given him in his hands. It was a portable EMP device, designed to render all forms of electronic equipment ineffective. This included neural implants. Kepp then checked the state of his own implants - 25% fuel left. There was no time to purge; he would have to make do.
There was a knock on his door.
"It's open."
Haur opened the door and stepped in.
"Jeez, close the door, will you? It's gonna fucking blind me." Kepp growled and squinted as the corridor light landed squarely on his face.
Haur shut the door with a click and sat on the end of the bed. He didn't say anything, but his body language didn't look good to Kepp - slumped shoulders and a pensive expression.
"So, what's up?" he asked.
"Shit, this is so fucked up," he exhaled, "I never signed up for this shit."
"I don't think any of us read the clause where it said: "In the event of madman with a battleship trying to destroy the Earth, you must stop him" on the contract mate," replied Kepp, trying to lighten the mood.
"I checked the calculations with Curtis. We're gaining on them, but our ETA to Mars is still 15 minutes behind them. Don't you see? When we arrive, he'll have that battleship primed and pointed at us. This is a fucking suicide mission."
Kepp spun the EMP device in his hands.
"So?"
Haur shook his head, incredulous.
"You're just one insane motherfucker aren't you?" Haur paused, "I guess you don't have family or anything like that."
Round and round the cylinder went in Kepp's palm.
"What do you want, Haur?"
Haur took a deep breath.
"I'm over forty, Kepp. I got a family. I got a responsibility to them. Saro never gave us a chance to say no though, did he? The fucker."
"So what? I got a little sister. Not related by blood, but I care for her the same way."
"So you never thought what if one of your missions got you killed, what would happen to her then?"
He spun the EMP device again. The silvered surface glinted in the light.
"The only ‘What if’ I think about, is what if this world goes to shit, and I didn't give it my all to stop that happening," said Kepp, eyes boring into the cylinder held above his head. "You know the deal Haur, humanity before self and all that. Weren't you the one who was having a go at me for that?"
Haur sighed again.
"This wait is fucking killing me," he said at last.
Kepp spun the cylinder.
"You and me both."
Haur stood up and left.
Kepp put the cylinder down on the nightstand.
Go on then, admit it. You're just as scared as he is. You've always been scared.
Ah, shut up, he reprimanded himself. You can't have doubts now. People are relying on you,
and you can't let them down. Not this time.
"You've received a mild concussion, you just need rest and everything will be fine," said the nurse, a young woman with curly brown hair, "so long as you don't hit your head again."
Jess stood up from the bed, and thanked her.
Well, what do I do now?
Paragon Page 12