Hold On! - Tomorrow (A Sci-Fi Thriller)

by Peter Darley

  “Uncle Jed?”

  Jed heard a female voice cry “No!” and the picture became a blur. He then heard B.J. shout “What have you done?” followed by another familiar voice saying, “It’s started.”

  “B.J., where are you? Talk to me,” Jed said frantically.

  The president came to his side, and a prolonged pause ensued.

  Finally, Myers appeared. “Director Crane. Jennifer.”

  “Talk to me, Gabriel,” the president said. “What are you doing?”

  “At this moment, a countdown has begun.”

  “What countdown?”

  “The release of a missile set to detonate at a location known only to me. It’s called the Witness virus, designed to fulfil the prophecy in Revelation. Scripture prophesized that the witnesses would throw down every plague known to man at a mere whim, and that is precisely what this missile is. As foretold, the witnesses are two people who were discarded by society, only to rise again in vengeance. They are operating the launch.”

  “What is the Witness virus, Gabriel?”

  “A genetically-engineered, microbiological organism designed to destroy all life on earth. It can thrive in any terrain. Deserts, the arctic, ocean, and land. If you try to shoot it down, the virus will be released automatically. Its rate of reproduction is unprecedented. A global pandemic will occur within twenty-four hours.”

  A hint of panic showed in her eyes. “Gabriel, please. Let’s talk about this, you can’t—”

  “There is no escape, Jennifer. Your diseased, sinful world is about to come to an end. All life on earth will pay the price for man’s heresies and faithlessness, as you writhe and twitch in agony on your journey to Hell. I have done my part. Only God can save you now.”

  A flash of armor swept across the hologram, knocking Myers out of shot. B.J. replaced him within a second. “Uncle Jed, Madam President. I’m so sorry. I did everything I could. Myers is insane.” His voice became choked with emotion. “Mom. Uncle Ty. Aunt Emily. Uncle Jake. Dave . . . I love you with all my heart. Uncle Jed?”

  “I’m here, B.J.”

  “I love you.”

  Jed tried to speak but was unable to get any words past the lump in his throat.

  “Madam President?” B.J. said.

  “I’m here, Brandon.”

  “I can’t stop this. I only just found out about it like you did. I have no idea where the launch site on the station is. I honestly did everything I could. Please believe that.”

  Fighting back tears, she said, “I know you did. Don’t ever forget, you are the world’s finest, Brandon.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” The transmission ended.

  Jed noticed the president trembling, contrary to her notorious strength of character. “Oh, Jed. What are we going to do?”

  “I . . . I have no idea.”

  The Oval Office door burst open. The president collected herself in a heartbeat. Charles, her aide, rushed toward them urgently without announcement, his expression filled with fear.

  “What is it, Charles?”

  “We just saw the conversation with Vice President Myers, Madam President.”

  “What do you mean, you just saw it?”

  “It was all over the TV. It interrupted every broadcast.”

  Jed felt his knees buckling under a debilitating attack of hopelessness. “He must’ve hijacked the airwaves from the space station.”

  “Pandemonium has already begun in the streets,” Charles said.

  The president shivered. “In Washington D.C.?”

  “No, ma’am. All over the world. It was broadcast across the earth. We’ve just entered a climate of global terror.”

  The president collapsed into a chair beside her and put her head in her hands. “Oh, my God.”

  ***

  “So, you were saying, Brandon,” Myers said. “This was going to be the day you redeemed your father.”

  B.J. held Myers’ gaze with hatred in his heart. “How can you do this? Where is your conscience?”

  “I merely followed the directions of the Lord. Each passing minute is a new revelation for me. Only He knows the final outcome. If He chooses to spare the earth, he will, but I doubt it. He spared only Noah’s family and a selection of beasts. Everyone else perished.”

  “You’re hysterical. Is that what you think this space station is? The new ark? How the hell are you going to survive without livestock and crops?”

  Myers smiled gloatingly. “We have livestock and crops. The cages, pens, and greenhouses are down in the lower levels. There was enough room to accommodate five-hundred-seventy-nine species.”

  “Being Vice President wasn’t enough, was it? This has nothing to do with any god. It’s all about you and your lust for ultimate power. You’ll become the absolute ruler of the remnants of mankind.”

  The station shook again, knocking B.J., Amy, and Myers to the floor.

  The door opened. Pastor Kade held on to the door frame in order to keep himself steady. “Prophet, I beg your forgiveness for entering. The technicians were unable to arrest the effects of The Censer’s energy. The main engines absorbed an enormous amount when it was destroyed.”

  Myers struggled to get back on his feet. “What are you saying, Kade?”

  “It set off a chain reaction. The station is shearing itself apart.”

  Amy leaped up and grasped B.J.’s face. “Come on, hurry. I can get us out of here.”

  “It’s pointless, Brandon,” Myers said. “Where would you go? If you return to the earth, you will die as surely as they will.”

  “I’d rather die down there with my family than up here with you. Now, you’ll suffer the same fate as your victims. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Nothing is ironic, Brandon. Everything is the will of the Lord.”

  “In that case, how about this? You reap what you sow?”

  “B.J., come on,” Amy urged.

  He put his helmet on. “OK, where are we going?”

  “Out the door and down the corridor to the end.”

  Holding onto his hand, Amy led him along through bouts of them being bounced from wall to wall. They came to the end of the first corridor, and then turned left into another.

  “How far is it, Amy?”

  “Not far.”

  After another arduous trek, they arrived at a parapet with only a railing on either side of a catwalk.

  B.J. looked down at a circular holding bay surrounded by windows, fifty feet below. Three shining, silver craft, the type he’d seen on the rooftop in L.A., seemed to be positioned half inside three launch tunnels.

  Another tremor took hold, tilting the station. Amy fell over the railing, but B.J. caught her. She held onto his metallic hand for dear life with a fifty foot drop beneath her. The terror in her eyes was livid. On the other side of the chasm, two men fell through a broken railing, their screams silenced upon impact.

  “Easy, Amy. I’ve got you.” B.J. curled his arm upward, bringing her back up over the railing. She hugged him tightly, and he could almost feel her trembling body through the armor. “Lucky for us, you’re really skinny,” he quipped, knowing she was weightless under the assistance of the armor’s motors.

  She composed herself and gestured to an elevator at the end of the catwalk. “We have to get down there. That elevator is the only way.”

  “Not a chance,” he said. “With the station shaking apart, that’d be like playing Russian roulette. In any case, the elevator isn’t the only way down there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Put your arms around my neck, and hold on.”

  She did as he asked, and he held her around the waist. With one touch of his wrist sensor, the jets were activated. They rose in a vacuum, hovering amidst the carnage. Steadily, he brought them down into the arrival bay a few feet away from one of the shuttle craft.

  “That’s our way out.” Amy ran to the shuttle and B.J. followed.

  He caught something out of the corner of his eye. To his le
ft, he noticed a projectile with a red glare in its tail shooting away from the station. “Oh, my God. The Witness thing has just been launched.”

  “Hurry. We’ve gotta get away from here.”

  The shuttle’s boarding slope was already open. Amy was halfway up by the time he arrived.

  Once he was inside, she hit the controls on the side wall. The ramp contracted in sync with the doors closing.

  B.J. followed her through five rows of seats and into the cockpit.

  She pointed to the co-pilot’s seat. “Strap yourself in.”

  He sat down and pulled down a hollow brace that reminded him of the security harness on a roller coaster carriage. “Hurry, Amy. We might be able to stop it.”

  Without a word, she fired up the engines. B.J. looked ahead along the tunnel before them. A sequence of lights at the end came closer. More of them appeared until the final set reached the tip of the shuttle.

  The craft shot forward at extraordinary speed. B.J. felt the g-forces pressing him back into the seat. The lights sped by along the sides of the tunnel in a dazzling blur.

  Within ten seconds, they were out of the station and into the stars.

  B.J. glanced out of the side window and noticed the missile was about to enter the earth’s atmosphere. “Amy, how fast does this thing go?”

  “Mach Two is its maximum speed.”

  He pointed to his left. “There’s the missile. I need you to fly in its direction.”

  “OK. What are you gonna do?”

  “Everything I possibly can.”

  He sat, wracked with tension the likes of which no man before him could’ve possibly empathized. Failure was not an option.

  His father’s voice echoed in his mind: The world will owe you the greatest of debts.

  But if his father was simply a projection of his own psyche, how could he have known that?

  He bit into his lower lip and braced himself for his life’s ultimate purpose.

  The world would be his witness.

  Forty-Eight

  The Greatest

  Gabriel Myers scrambled to his feet. Blood clouded his vision and he felt the swellings on his face from being battered across the room. A cacophony of screams echoed throughout the complex outside.

  He crawled out of his office and fought his way along the passageway. Despite being thrown mercilessly from wall to wall, he reached an alcove with a window. He grasped the ridge of the window frame and pulled himself up. In the distance, he could see the shuttle craft in pursuit of the missile.

  Understanding came over him, accompanied by a flood of tears. Revelation occurs with each passing minute. He saw the realization of his mission in the shuttle craft entering the earth’s atmosphere. Annihilation was never the divine plan. The fear of it was. “Oh, Lord. You have appointed your angel to serve your will. In your wisdom, you have guided me to give the world the gift of terror, and now you are sending your interceptor to preserve your earth.”

  He sensed the station was about to implode, but managed one final utterance—“Peace on earth.”

  Then, in a brilliant flash of light, the Cronus Space Station was no longer.

  ***

  B.J. gazed through the window of the shuttle craft with intense focus. Then, a flash filled the cockpit. “What the hell was that?”

  Amy looked at him sadly. “The station. They’re gone. All of them.”

  He considered her feelings for a moment. Regardless of their crimes, C.O.T. had been the nearest thing to a family she’d known for two years.

  They cut through the stratosphere. The missile was still a speck in the distance. “All right, Amy. We still have it in sight. Don’t lose it.”

  “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “I know. Where are we?”

  “We’re just coming in over India.”

  “I have to contact my handler,” he said. “I need advice.”

  “Just hang in there. We’ll be in signal range in just a few seconds.”

  He lost sight of the missile for a brief moment due to the fog of the clouds. Nevertheless, the ocean came into view just as quickly. “How fast are we going?”

  Amy checked the speed readout. “Point two past Mach-One.”

  “All right. I need you to get as close to that thing as you can without crashing into it.”

  Their speed increased, and then he opened the communications option on his wrist controls. Seven options appeared. He angled a metallic finger to a fine edge and touched the lab option. The dial-out beep filled the miniature speakers in the helmet for a few seconds.

  “Agent Drake? B.J.?” Rosie’s voice came through with a screech of panic.

  “I’m here, Rosie.”

  “Where are you?”

  He glanced at Amy. “Where are we?”

  “Chinese airspace, just over Bhutan.”

  We were over India a second ago. The missile is taking us east. “Rosie, we’re over China, heading east toward the Pacific.”

  “All right. I’m going to connect to your visual.”

  He waited for a few moments, and then she came back to him. “What are you flying in? And what are its speed capabilities? I see the missile ahead of you.”

  “Amy, what is this craft,” he said.

  “It’s a modified STS four-thousand series.”

  “Rosie, it’s a modified STS four-thousand. Peak speed is Mach Two.”

  “B.J., tell your pilot to accelerate to Mach One point-nine, and I’ll direct you from there.”

  He glanced at Amy again. “Just below Mach Two, Amy.”

  “You got it.”

  Rosie said, “I’m going to patch this transmission through to the White House. Director Crane is with the president. It has to be her decision what to do with this.”

  “What are you talking about?” he said. “And how do you know about the missile?”

  There was a pause on the line. Then Rosie said, “Your transmission to Director Crane from the space station hijacked all global airwaves. Everyone on earth knows everything, and there is chaos across the world.”

  “Oh, my God.” He shivered at the thought of the entire planet going into emotional meltdown. The consequences were surely catastrophic. “Amy, where are we now?”

  “Over South Korea.”

  He waited with intense anxiety for a response from Rosie. Minutes passed and the tension became unbearable. “Come on, come on, come on.” His feet tapped on the cockpit floor uncontrollably. “If we pull this off, what’s the first thing you’re going to do, Amy?”

  “Go for a cheeseburger. I haven’t tasted one in two years.”

  A familiar voice came through the helmet with an anxious tone. “B.J.?”

  “Uncle Jed?”

  “Brandon, I’m here too.”

  “Madam President?”

  “B.J.” Crane said, “We’re all with you. Rosie is going to instruct you. You can do this, so don’t doubt yourself even for a moment. This will be our last chance to save the world.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Jed. Nothin’ like a little pressure.”

  “B.J.,” Rosie said, “You need to tell your pilot to get as close to the missile as possible, but to fly adjacent to it. It’s imperative that you avoid the tail flare.”

  He relayed the message to Amy.

  Rosie continued. “All right. The INT-Nine may be capable of reaching Mach-Two, but it’s not a certainty. There is also the risk of burn out, so only attempt it as a last resort.”

  B.J. felt his throat tighten.

  “We’re parallel with the missile,” Amy said. “It’s approximately two miles to the south.”

  They continued flying beside the missile for another hour. Night had fallen by the time Rosie came back to him. “Now is the time, B.J.”

  He turned to Amy, wracked with fear. “I need to get out. How do I do it?”

  “Leave the cockpit and go over to the door. The code to open it is seven-seven-seven-zero-one-seven. The cabin pressure will pull you out.”r />
  He unlocked his seat brace and stood. “Seal the cockpit once I’m in the back.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice. Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  He exited the cockpit and headed for the door, glancing back to ensure the cockpit was sealed. With shaking hands, he tapped the code into the pad.

  The door retracted in the blink of an eye, sucking him out into the air over the Pacific Ocean before he’d realized what had happened.

  “Activate the jets now,” Rosie said.

  The glare appeared beneath his feet propelling him forward through a sonic boom.

  ***

  The world watched spellbound. In a frantic, unprecedented move, President Jennifer Braithwaite summoned the Heads of State and every world leader via satellite, with a desperate proposal—an international broadcast of The Interceptor’s plight. In every city across the earth, the people had been running aimlessly through the streets in terror, as though trying to outrace their own destiny. An amalgam of unbridled horror, shock, and mournful wailing had filled the planet with suddenness. It had been impossible to contain.

  And yet, as quickly as the panic had begun, it was stilled. For the first time in history, the world saw through the eyes of one man. The entire planet was inside B.J.’s helmet with him. In every home, electrical store window, and open air public screen; each man, woman, and child stopped in their tracks, transfixed by their only remaining hope. Commentators in TV news stations all over the world offered their commentaries on the status of The Interceptor as it became known to them.

  “The Interceptor is now in pursuit of the Witness missile over the Pacific ocean. We have just received word that the Air Force has deployed jets to accompany him. It is vital that no attempt to blow the missile out of the sky is employed. We believe The Interceptor is attempting to deactivate it from the air. This is Marilyn Looms for NBC News.”

  ***

  Rosie’s voice came through the helmet. “B.J., I see your readout. The missile is still less than two miles ahead of you, maintaining a constant speed of point-two past Mach Two. The projected destination appears to be the US. That gives us time, but not much.”