Return to Wardate

by Bill Cornwell

  However these few problems would soon pale into insignificance.

  The staff in the situation room tracked the aircraft on the many wall monitors as it hurtled across the edge of the atmosphere. Just over two hours into the flight it was time.

  ‘Ready for ejection in one minute,’ said the pilot.

  ‘One minute! Well, slow down a bit then!’ shouted Madeline through the intercom.

  The pilot didn’t answer. For two reasons, he couldn’t slow down. Firstly, because of the thinness of the atmosphere, he had to maintain velocity and secondly, once he’d evicted Madeline from his precious aircraft, he wanted to get the hell out of there. Madeline just had enough time to secure her helmet and disconnect her charging lead before the canopy opened and she was catapulted out. This brutal manoeuvre pulled over 100 G for a second or two and most probably would have killed many humans. Madeline quite enjoyed it, she didn’t enjoy the four minutes of freefall though. Four minutes is a long time to hurtle through the air, tumbling, twisting and spinning.

  For the first time ever, Poppy was sick. She was well aware that spewing up in her tank would have dire consequences with the delicate and exposed interfaces around her so this time Poppy, not Madeline, did something truly remarkable – she kept it in her mouth and swallowed it.

  It was quite possibly the worst and most disgusting thing she had ever done and totally took her mind off possible chute failure. The chute did automatically open just under 1200 feet and very soon she found herself on the soft cold snow of Antarctica.

  It was twilight at ground level but the whiteness of the snow and ice made most use of the available light. She took off her helmet and pressure suit to reveal the pink, skin tight, thermal suit. It was specially made for her – it had to be. They didn’t do off-the-peg thermal suits in ‘erotic’ style. She unfolded a small rucksack from a compartment in the pressure suit and loaded it with four things: two high explosive packs, her little jamming device and an android charging lead.

  She was fully charged, explosive motion was set to level three, she donned her snow shoes and off she set. Slowly at first and steadily built up speed to a steady 30 mph. It was hard going, with each ten metre stride, her snow shoes sank deeply into the soft snow. She selected her energy reserve indicator. Normally a full charge would last a month but at the rate the gauge was now falling, it would barely last her an hour. Apart from this, the run was quite pleasant. She was comfortable and enjoying the experience of running across the inhospitable, deserted terrain. It was something humans just didn’t do, wouldn’t want to do and definitely couldn’t do. It was also peacefully quiet for a while, too.

  ‘Madeline… there you are - told them to try a higher band - seems your jamming device is a bit crude.’

  ‘Nuttall, what do you want?’

  ‘Nothing much really, just want you to abort you mission. Surely not too much to ask?’

  ‘Get stuffed!’

  ‘Now, now Madeline, remember the obedience training?’

  ‘Nuttall what the hell are you playing at? In an irrational sort of way I thought you were one of the good guys. That’s why I went along with all your… games. I certainly have never been your puppet.’

  ‘Oh but I think you are. You see I have someone here who would like to say hello to you… say hello.’

  No ‘hello’ came forth but a gunshot did and then a scream. It could have been anyone’s scream but Madeline made a calculated assumption – it was her Adam screaming in pain.

  ‘You bastard! I swear I’ll kill you, Nuttall!’

  Another gun shot was heard.

  ‘Arms next and then I’ll start on some important bits. Just abort the mission and we’ll say no more about the matter.’

  Madeline stopped running; she didn’t know what to do. It was the World or Adam. Really there was no contest, it was Adam every time.

  ‘Madeline… please… save the world... I love you… and… always will… my darling,’ Adam faltered, obviously because of the pain.

  Madeline thought deeply about the matter, wiped the frozen tears from her face and began to run again.

  ‘Nuttall, go to hell!’

  For the next five miles or ten minutes she heard the screams, the gun shots, more screams, more shots and then silence. She sobbed, she wailed out loud and she ran faster and faster. Her footprints became deeper and deeper in the soft snow with the impact of explosive motion propelling her along. And then the ground opened up beneath her.

  By traversing the snow and ice in such an ungentle and aggressive way, it was inevitable that the ground would eventually give way. She tumbled some forty feet down inside a crevasse and landed with a thud on a ledge of ice. She lay there for several minutes utterly still and utterly pissed off. It was not the best of days and then… for some unknown reason, the word ‘darling’ came into her mind.

  Darling? Hang on, he never calls me darling! She said to herself.

  Madeline thought back. Sometime ago she had done the very same thing herself - pieced together sound bytes to make an entirely new sentence. The only time Adam had called her ‘darling’ was when they were acting silly in Nuttall’s Aston Martin. He must have recorded everything both of them said and used parts of the sound track to make an entirely new sentence. Clearly he wasn’t very good at it because of the several pauses. At first she thought the reason for the pauses was because Adam couldn’t speak flowingly due to the intense pain. Now it was clearly because of bad editing. Her mood lifted, Adam was hopefully still alive - she would put her theory to the test.

  ‘Nuttall? Are you there? Nuttall!’

  There was nothing, no static, no sound; down in the crevasse the satellite phone built into her head had lost contact.

  ‘He’s lost contact with you,’ said the friendly voice of Barton.

  ‘Hi Barton… not a good day again. Don’t suppose you’ve heard from Adam?’

  ‘No, I had a feeling it was an edited message but I couldn’t tell you without shutting you down. I’m sure he’s alright though… in some pub somewhere no doubt. I’ll get a message to you if I hear from him.’

  ‘Thanks… any ideas how I’m going to get out of here?’

  ‘In level five, you should be able to jump out. You’re tibias are apparently made of chloro bromine, shouldn’t think they’ll break. You’ll need a hard surface to jump off though.’

  ‘I’m standing on an ice shelf – seems solid enough.’

  ‘Go for it then. By the way, there’s a sweep setting on the jamming device – might be more effective at blocking Nuttall’s transmissions.’

  ‘Okay, yes got it. I’ll leave it off for now though, thanks for everything.’

  The reality was always the same. Barton was more often than not, only a few feet from Poppy who, as we know, is the essence of Madeline. But Madeline was eight thousand miles away. Confusing and complicated, yes and sometimes Madeline seemed to disregard or possibly forget this basic fact. She now considered herself to be completely alone, miles from the nearest friendly human and hidden deep down in a crevasse. Adding to this fairly serious predicament, the world was about to face Armageddon and she was unsure of where Adam was. All in all, the situation was dire but somehow she experienced a wave of euphoria. Her confidence had recharged. She would complete this mission, she would save the world - if she could, and then she would track down Nuttall and then she would do what she did best.

  She scraped any loose snow off the ice shelf and kicked off her snow shoes – she was as ready as she ever would be. She selected level 5 explosive motion, crouched right down until her bottom was almost touching her feet and did the grasshopper jump of her life.

  Meanwhile all the officers and Generals in the Situation room had seen Madeline fall into the crevasse. Previously the spy satellite had allowed them to see her bounding across the frozen terrain. It was an amazing sight – almost surreal. They were limited as to how far they could zoom in but it certainly was an unnatural, Olympiad sight. They now all h
eld their breaths in complete silence. Telephone weren’t answered and coffee went cold. Absolutely nothing could they do but wait, hope she hadn’t fallen down too far and was able to crawl out. The words, DEFCON ONE were almost forming on the Defence secretary’s lips but suddenly and amazingly, from the opening in the ground, they watched her fly out as though she was fired out of a cannon. She landed rather ungainly several feet away from the crevasse, immediately got to her feet, put her snow shoes back on and began to run like the wind again. They all cheered then answered the telephones that were still ringing and slurped deeply into their cold coffees.

  It wasn’t long before she could just about make out the array of huge horn devices in the far distance. Things were going well apart from being behind schedule and her power reserves being worryingly low - she desperately needed a thirteen amp socket.

  As she got closer to the horns, their enormous size was realised. All gleaming white, some twenty metres long with the opening bell ends some two metres in diameter. Each one was supported on four hydraulic arms which were rooted in the compacted ice beneath. From the satellite view in the situation room, she remembered there were at least forty horns but due to the size and spacing, she could barely see four in the poor visibility of the snow storm. For some reason, each one had a slightly different angle of elevation. It truly was a feat of engineering especially being constructed on such hostile terrain. Presumably the ultrasound sound was all about her but she couldn’t hear a thing – not a thing, just the howling of the icy cold wind.

  Contrary to belief, Madeline had no desire to be violent, to kill, to maim or even to be nasty but it was regrettably in her job description. She was there principally to explode the fuel tanks but without fuel, the generators wouldn’t work. Without the generators running there would be no power to give her a recharge and this was something she desperately needed. She had to get into the living quarters first with as few casualties as possible and find a mains socket.

  She selected infrared vision in an attempt to cut through the poor visibility caused by the snowstorm. No trace of a greeting party could be seen which could only mean one thing - Nuttall hadn’t as yet alerted the base staff to an imminent visitor. If he had they would no doubt be ready waiting with the most effective fire power they had. She had an idea, she had to be quick. It appeared that the base communicated by way of a single satellite dish on top of the base building. It was a good way off but if she could keep steady, with her laser on full, she could melt and destroy the arm sticking out at the front of the dish. She lowered herself into a box split on the ground to act as a ‘di’ pod to steady herself, held her breath, raised her arm and fired her finger laser. It was a perfect shot - the dish was permanently out of action.

  ‘Try warning them now Nuttall!’

  ‘Your precious boyfriend will die horribly for that,’ said Nuttall.

  ‘That’s funny, I thought he was dead already.’

  She turned her little jamming device on, set it on sweep and gave it a test.

  ‘Let me hear Adam’s voice and I might reconsider.’

  No reply came back. At that moment, two people emerged from the building. Madeline had somehow forgotten that is was an intolerable seventy below zero. A high tech skin tight thermal suit and almost depleted power reserves were keeping her body reasonably warm but the men didn’t benefit from fuel cells. Their bulbous clothing, furry hoods and cumbersome gloves were all they had to keep the incessant bitter weather from their bones. They had guns and fired several shots but in the awful conditions, who knows where the bullets went; Madeline’s laser finger was far more effective. Two short blasts of green light flashed across the icy compound and rendered them unconscious…

  And then Madeline collapsed where she stood. The over use of the laser gun had used up every last drop of energy, there was absolutely nothing left. To say the least, this was very inconvenient and very annoying. All kinds of warning lights were now flashing away in her vision to notify her of this critical failure. This was very irritating and unnecessary as she couldn’t move – she couldn’t even put her thumb and forefinger together to cancel the warning lights and bleeps.

  Predictably it wasn’t long before two more men emerged from the building. They dragged the two stunned men inside, out of the cold and then walked over to Madeline. She couldn’t move, couldn’t fire her weapon and couldn’t speak but she could listen. They kicked her several times and satisfied themselves that she was unconscious or dead, if she wasn’t dead, she soon would be. They looked for the fancy laser gun but for some reason, couldn’t find it.

  The two men she lasered came round within a few minutes with nothing more than a slight headache. They wrongly assumed that one of the many bullets they had fired at the female intruder had done the job.

  Madeline was, to put it mildly, in a predicament. There was no one, not even Adam to save her this time. All her energy reserves were depleted and her core temperature was already below zero. How the hell was she going to get out of this? There was only one thing for it, she switched on her entertainment system and watched a film – Mission Impossible would have to do.

  Back in the Situation room there was deep gloom. They could vaguely see their only chance of resolution lying ‘dead’ on the frozen ground. They had less than four days before the naval fleets reached the east coast of the USA. They now had a decision to make: Whether to target their entire nuclear arsenal at the rest of the world or just fire one at the South Pole. Naturally, the most logical and considerate direction was at Antarctica. An intercontinental ballistic missile would do the job but there had to be no failure this time. One nuclear warhead would be certain to blow up the base - and most of Antarctica in the process. Yes, there would be a few minor problems: raised sea levels, tsunamis and global warming but, as history goes, when war is at stake, minor consequences such as these are never taken into consideration.

  There were a few generals who preferred the rest of the world option instead for no reason other than just to be belligerent. It was up to the President to make the decision.

  The President and the Secretary of State took it in turns to make several phone calls to the rest of the world’s leaders. Sadly all the conversations roughly went the same way:

  ‘Good evening Chancellor, hope you are keeping well. I trust our long standing friendship remains intact and ask you to recall your navy as a gesture of goodwill…’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  Perhaps not exactly the same reply from all the other country leaders but generally it meant the same thing…

  DEFCON 2 was now in force.

  Chapter 31: Two at a time

  There were grounds to celebrate. It was in the bag, the population of the world had been fully cerebrally conditioned. World wide hatred ensued and it was all down to the effects of the ultrasound, transmitted from the horns on their base. They had also defeated the infamous British agent Madeline Bull – she lay dead, outside in the insufferably cold and hostile conditions.

  Many cans of larger were steadily emptied and the team of four men predictably became louder, high spirited and sozzled. They were promised everything they ever wanted when the project had run its course: money, land, power and so on. Right now though, they wanted something else – they wanted their animal urges satisfying. They wanted female company. The fact that there was a sex goddess within the grounds of the base didn’t go unforgotten. Yes, she was outside, frozen and dead – apparently… but for these four men, tanked and frustrated, these minor details didn’t matter. They all decided that they could cope with the dead bit but frozen was definitely a turn off. She would have to be defrosted.

  All four of the team quickly donned their cumbersome suits and began the search. Eventually they found her buried in the drifting snow. They dragged her back inside and threw her in the boiler room - this was an excellent place to warm up. The two side by side boilers ran constantly and diligently, warming the room up to a nice 50 degrees.

  The four m
en worked out that after another four cans of Speckled Hen each, she would be sufficiently defrosted and warmed up for a very pleasurable experience… Then popular opinion decided that actually four cans was too generous, three cans would be much more realistic. So after a further one can each they decided to return to take her thermal suit off - she would defrost quicker.

  All four went back into the boiler room and this time had a closer look at their prey. Colour was coming back to her cheeks, not that it ever really left, she was an android. The ice had melted from her hair – she was absolutely gorgeous. They had a little fight to decide who was to unzip her thermal suit and take it off. This matter couldn’t be resolved so they all had a hand in the undressing. Her incredible body revealed itself bit by bit, they had never seen such an erotic sight in their sad pitiful lives. They decided that they would drink the next two cans very quickly.

  Removing Madeline’s thermal suit was, in the scheme of things, the best thing that could have happened. She thawed out very quickly. The heat from the boilers rapidly penetrated her artificial construction.

  Mission impossible had no more than ten minutes to go when she noticed her eyelids opening and her arms twitching. This was slightly inconvenient because she would have to put the movie on pause. Madeline hadn’t worked out what was happening but Barton had.