THE CAMBRIDGE ANNEX: THE TRILOGY

by Peter Damon

  Paddy shook his head and smiled as more people came forward, and then he was suddenly busy, thirty people all eager to get on board, their faces alight with excitement, some of them openly revealing their skin tight suits under their outer clothing.

  “Peter. Peter Bridge,” said a red haired young man. “I’ll need a hand with my equipment,” he told Paddy, pointing to some large and heavy looking crates sitting in the back of a commercial van.

  “I can do that,” said a new voice. “I’m Martin Giles by the way,” the newcomer said, brightly smiling. “Reverend Martin Giles.”

  Further down the street and un-noticed by all but Paddy, a plain-clothed policeman picked up his mike to make his report.

  +++++++++

  Had it been a normal ship, reaching the Philippine Sea would have taken the best part of the rest of the day. Thankfully, as soon as they were out of range of the vigilance of the shipping lanes close to Japan and South Korea, they were able to lift to just above the water line and allow the huge but modified container ship to travel faster. It was one more system that they were able to test before a full launch, and within 2 hours of having left the port in South Korea, the ship was safely free of Chinese, Japanese and Korean intervention and in international waters.

  Sensing the time was right, the whole crew had gathered in the control room; standing around the perimeter, seated on available seats, watching Thomas, David, Leanne, Allan and Gary as they checked and re-checked their systems.

  “We OK to go?” Thomas asked.

  “I’m good,” David agreed from his seat.

  “All Apps functioning,” Allan agreed.

  “I’m good,” Gary agreed with a nod.

  “I’m good,” Leanne said with an excited grin.

  Thomas pressed the App on his large table-top screen and the icon turned a lurid yellow to indicate that the prepared lift was in progress. They felt no change in movement, but the main screen showed the sea falling away beneath them as they rose, heading east, south east. The new gravitational field induced by the current flowing into the chemical placed on the inside of the hull made them feel motionless.

  The two islands of Kita-Daito and Minami-Daito appeared on the screen as they reached the 10 kilometres high mark, soon after joined by the trail of islands at the southern tip of Japan. At 70 kilometres in height the Japanese mainland appeared with, at the slight curve of the horizon, the coast-line of China.

  “I’m all green on my board,” David confirmed as he felt the need to end the silence in the room, his eyes alert for anything untoward.

  Their angle of ascent took them towards the south east, away from China and over Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, purposefully remaining north of Papua New Guinea and Australia, and keeping well clear of flight path lanes.

  Gary laughed and shook his head. “We’re lifting 180,000 tonnes! Do you know; that’s more than fifty times the weight of the Saturn V rocket used back in the Apollo missions?” he asked the room.

  “We’re at 100 kilometres,” David confirmed. It was the location of the Karman line and the arbitrary point that separated earth from space. “By the way; that now means we’re all astronauts,” he told them all with a grin.

  The room cheered, and then fell silent once more as their attention was held by the monitors.

  Thomas put some other external cameras onto the multiple screens that covered the front wall of the Control Room. They showed images of a sky as dark as night with the earth’s horizon slightly curved across the lower portions of the screen, the sea a dark blue, the clouds shades of white. Australia was to the south of them with the majesty of the Pacific in front of them, filling their view.

  “150 kilometres,” David murmured, unwilling to break the trance the image of the earth had caused as it began to slowly resolve itself as part of a huge ball above which they were moving rapidly into the approaching night.

  “We’ve been seen,” Leanne acknowledged from her seat. “Mauna Kea Observatories, Hawaii say ‘Aloha Kakou’,” she told them all.

  Thomas and David grinned towards one another. The hull had been painted black, but some of the paint had been made specifically to their instructions. It would react to the gasses in the upper atmosphere as they passed through it, and alter the colour from black to white. Now, out in space, on both sides of the hull, were the large letters, ‘Cambridge University Annex; Rolle College’. It would be seen by anyone with a reasonably good telescope. Mauna Kea would certainly have seen it.

  They continued to climb, their speed increasing as the earth’s atmosphere became less and less of an obstacle, and by the time they had reached an altitude of 400 kilometres, they were over the Atlantic, the British Isles appearing beyond the body of western Europe.

  “We’re being hailed,” Leanne told the twins. She grinned. “It’s Jack Brendan from the CUWS,” she told the room, and started answering the senior year student.

  “It’s like being in the cinema,” one of the gypsies’ murmured.

  “I still can’t believe it,” said another.

  “We’re at 500 kilometres,” Thomas told the room.

  “Gary, any sign of Matt, Jake and Cheryl yet?”Thomas asked.

  Gary began to look while Leanne finished talking to Jack Brendan and started broadcasting their telemetry. In moments Leanne was grinning as Matt’s voice was heard over the communications system complaining about how long it had taken them. They had been waiting for them, sitting in the van enjoying the view, their suddenly changing telemetry verifying that the ship was rising to meet them.

  “You better know how to park,” David told Matt. “You put a scrape on the hull and you can bloody well pay for it!” he challenged the other.

  “Ok. We’re coming in!” Matt called back.

  Thomas grinned and began a short text message to Michael. “Lovely weather. Wish u were here,” it read. It would be routed through CUWS to the earth side communications network.

  Over the radio link from the van came the strands of ‘Sunrise’ by Richard Strauss. As the music played, the van smoothly entered the ship and settled on its wheels.

  “The Tweedy Bird has landed” Matt chuckled.

  +++++++++

  “A fucking what? A fucking container ship?” General Pat Mears bellowed, deep in the basement of the White House. “You taking the piss, sergeant?” he asked sharply. He had risen to his feet to glare across the table as further bad news came into the Situation Room.

  Glen Schroder blinked behind his round glasses and stared at the pictures coming in from Hawaii as the vessel passed over their observatory. Flicking the image onto the large screen at the end of the table, the men around the room stopped working to gaze dumbfounded at the sight of a container ship, with every appearance of being fully laden with containers, travelling through space. On its side and clearly visible had been painted its name. For minutes no one spoke. They just stared.

  “Sir? We’re getting some low frequency radio signals from the, er, craft,” said one of the assistants as the image changed, now fed from the Roque de los Muchachos observatories on La Palma, the Canary Islands.

  “Put it on speaker,” Glen agreed.

  “You better know how to park. You put a scrape on the hull and you can bloody well pay for it!” came the crackly voice from within the ship.

  “Now, how do we do this?” those in the Situation Room heard followed by good natured laughter.

  “Another craft?” General Mears asked.

  “We think so, but the observatory’s not picking it up; either too small or it’s camouflaged.”

  “Fuck. Who are these people, and who the fuck do they think they are! They can’t just go out and put stuff into space; not this big!”

  “I think the wording on the side of the ship is straightforward,” Glen pointed out. Cambridge University certainly knew how to make an entrance.

  “Sir, the rear doors on the, er, big craft, are opening. We think the small craft is about to dock.”
>
  General Mears ground his teeth as he watched a small and dark craft slide smoothly into the cavernous mouth of the larger vessel. The doors then closed and it felt like a personal statement.

  “Isn’t that incredible!” Glen murmured, spellbound.

  +++++++++

  Frank Hill felt his mobile vibrate in his pocket and nodded to the crew. They were seated in the empty office area of the dismantled hydroponic farm, sipping strong tea taken from four flasks. The professor wasn’t drinking hers, but just standing to one side watching them with folded arms, her expression telling him she still didn’t know what to make of them. He checked his messages and nodded to himself.

  “Ok lads. We’re off. Professor; you’ll come with me,” he told her. “You’ve got your suit?”

  She nodded and licked her lips. “Under my clothes,” she told him.

  “Good enough. Let’s be going,” he called to the others. “Lenny; what are you doing?” he asked of the pale little man who was wiping the work surface.

  “Cleaning our prints,” Lenny answered defensively.

  “Not this time, mate. They’ll know it was us, trust me,” Frankie chuckled.

  The others were already filing out of the building, shaking hands and calling crude comments to each other as they prepared to get into the black box vans. It was their way of hiding their nervousness.

  “No fooling now. You do it just the way we’ve been taught, or I’ll have make you wish you never left your mother’s side,” Frankie told them. Then he too was climbing behind the wheel and slamming the door behind him, then lowering the red lever that looked like the bonnet latch, but was in fact the conversion from one set of controls to the other.

  The plain-clothed policemen had given up waiting and were ambling towards them, their car strategically parked to stop any of the vans from leaving the car park. One held a camera and the other his notepad, both clearly having decided an arrest was necessary. Frankie would have loved to find out for what.

  Professor Juliet Rogers watched from the passenger seat, her seatbelt done up, her face pale beneath her light makeup. He smiled to make her feel less nervous and pressed the first button in the sequence.

  “Don’t go worrying, love. I’m worried enough for the two of us,” he chuckled, feeling the pressure of air build for a moment, then ease off as the first green light came on.

  “How often have you done this?” she asked, his smile less reassuring than he thought it was.

  “What, for real?” he asked, pressing the second button and waiting for the light to come on.

  The policemen came to a sudden stop as one of the box vans leapt into the air.

  “My god!” she gasped, her eyes wide as a second box van, right beside them, also rose straight into the air.

  Frankie chuckled as he inched the accelerator downwards and watched the car park fall away below them, the policemen becoming stick figures running desperately towards their car to radio-in their report. The professor gasped, staring morbidly downwards as more and more of the street network and town of Cambridge came into view beneath them.

  “Don’t go too fast; the plants,” she cautioned suddenly, reaching out to grip his arm and jerking it back as she felt solid muscle under his thin shirt and wet-suit.

  Frankie shook his head. “The way those students explained it, we’re in our own little gravity world, so none of us feel any movement; doesn’t matter what speed I go at, or what direction. They did tell me to stay below 1000 kilometres per hour though.”

  The professor nodded and swallowed, her attention turning to the darkening sky above them. “Speed of sound,” she murmured, but Frankie wasn’t sure why.

  +++++++++

  Stan Charway sat in front of Sir Richard Phillips, outwardly complacent and inwardly seething as the man remained resolutely silent.

  “Look, Sir Richard. I’m sure this can be quickly resolved, if you could just tell me what was discussed at your meeting this morning with DI Wilson,” he said.

  The Vice Chancellor gazed past him, his features frozen into immobility.

  “Sir, it is a question of national security,” Stan insisted. He might as well have been talking to a wall for all the reaction he got from the Vice Chancellor.

  “Sir, there are lives at stake, the lives of your students down in Japan!” he said, trying his best to get a response.

  +++++++++

  Brenda Walker sat at her post on the telephone switchboard on the third floor of the Cambridge police station and pulled her headphones off as her relief came to take her place. It was time for her fifteen minute tea break.

  “You think you’ve heard it all after five years of this job, and then another new one comes along. I don’t know!” she laughed, walking beside her friend to the coffee machine at the other end of the office.

  “What’s that then, Bren’?” her friend asked, shopping in her purse for the two Euro coins that would buy her a cup of tea from the vending machine.

  “Well, this man only reckons he’s seen a 40-seat coach take off from the road and begin flying up in the air. Yes, honestly. Have you ever heard of such a daft thing in your life!” she asked, her laugh coming to a stop as curiosity took over. Drinks forgotten, the two ladies stepped closer to the window to watch the military helicopter finish landing on the green in front of the building. A large door on the side slid open and a man in a dark suit jumped down to run towards them, aides quickly following him while others remained by the helicopter and settled down to wait.

  “Who could that be?” Hillary wondered aloud.

  “Here, I know him. He’s the Prime Minister!” Brenda cried excitedly.

  +++++++++

  Brian Overton, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, shook hands and smiled politely at the police officers he was presented to. He asked the occasional question and listened respectfully before shaking their hand to move on, congratulating those he met on what an important job they were doing. Finally, he sat down in one of the main conference rooms next to the Chief Constable, Ken Birch.

  “I assume your visit is more than casual?” Ken asked, a young and sharp officer who had obtained his position by hard work and a clever mind.

  “You’re holding a couple of people in connection with a terrorist alert?” the prime minister asked.

  Ken nodded. “We’re under the command of a senior man from British Intelligence, a Mister Stanley Charway. As a result of his investigation, conducted with our support, he’s ordered the arrest of Mister Michael Bennett, a journalist with the Cambridge Chronicle, and Miss Heather Wilson, a DI at this station. We’ve also requested Sir Richard Phillips assist us with our enquiries after Miss Wilson asked to meet Sir Richard, and used an illegal device to circumvent a legally placed listening device in the Vice Chancellor’s office,” Ken explained.

  “You have Sir Richard here, in custody?” Brian asked in shock.

  “Sir, we’re following Mr Charway’s instructions. He firmly believes these people to be putting Britain at risk from terrorists.”

  Brian chuckled. “Sir Richard; put Britain at risk? I hope one day he sees the humour in that remark, Chief Constable,” he said as he took out his phone and pressed the redial key before putting it on the table.

  “Sir?” said the voice of Sir Arthur Coleman.

  “Hello Sir Arthur. I’m in an office with Mr Ken Birch, Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire. Can you confirm your credentials to him, please?” Brian asked.

  “Chief Constable, I am the Head of British Intelligence and report directly to the Prime Minister. Mr Charway is one of my operatives.”

  “Thank you. Can you now empower him to release anyone being held in relation with an apparent terrorist threat please?” the Prime Minister asked.

  “Of course Sir. Chief Constable, despite everything Mr Charway may have said, there is no risk to Britain from these individuals. Mr Charway is mistaken.”

  Ken let his breath slide from him as t
he Prime Minister turned off his phone to return it to his pocket, a wry smile on his face.

  “I hope you understand, Chief Constable, I had to allow the wheels of British administration and intelligence to grind through their course, at least until the real danger to a large number of people had passed,” the Prime Minister explained.

  “A lure,” Ken nodded.

  Brian smiled and nodded. “A light for particular types of moths to gather around, Chief Constable.

  “Come on, I need to be going, and I need to hold a press conference before I do. Can you provide me with a couple of cars?”

  +++++++++

  Mickey listened to the silence of the bus as he brought her round to show the earth below them, off to his right-hand side.

  His passengers had been rowdy at first; shouting out for him to get a move on as they sat in the middle of the private road on their estate, unmoving.

  He was in fact busy. The boys from the university had taken him through the procedure time and time again to ensure he’d do it right, and it was now ingrained in him; press the button and wait for the light to turn green. It would tell him if there were any air leaks.

  He ignored the shouts for him to hurry it up and switched on the gravity. The bus gave a small nudge, as if pushed slightly from underneath, but was otherwise still. He doubted his passengers had even noticed as they became more and more vocal.

  “Why are we waiting,” the passengers began to chant, more and more of them joining in as Mickey waited for the second green light before cautiously putting his foot on the accelerator.

  Having converted to the new controls, the bus didn’t go forward, but upwards. His passengers screamed, women reaching out to their men folk, men who had gone rigid as they saw the land slide away beneath them, and then called to one another in excitement.

  “Here look; I can see the swimming baths!” Vivian sang as the bus rose above the surrounding trees and houses.

  “Is that Colchester? Here, Mickey; is that Colchester?” Ross asked loudly from mid way back in the coach as it continued to accelerate into the sky.

  “Where’s my mum’s place? Can you see my mum’s old place?”