A lone candle burned on a table nearby.
‘Morning folks,’ he said as he walked in. ‘Any news about how far south the aurora got last night, and what’s happened to the heating?’
Jake dialled a frequency into the radio banks. ‘Any station, this is Alert Five, please respond, over?’
Cody blinked, patted his own chest with one hand. ‘Have I passed away? Can anybody hear me?’
Charlotte turned to him, her features stricken. ‘We’ve got a problem, Cody.’
Jake turned in his seat as if realising for the first time that Cody had joined them.
‘I can’t raise anybody on the radio, on any frequency,’ he said.
Cody stared at Jake for a long moment. ‘Communications antenna is probably iced up, I’ll take a look.’
‘I already did that,’ Bethany said. ‘It’s fine.’
Cody looked at the computer monitor. The screen was dead.
‘It’s down,’ Jake confirmed as he saw the direction of Cody’s gaze. ‘Everything’s down.’
Cody struggled to digest what Jake was telling him.
‘Our signals must be disrupted or something,’ he said. ‘Maybe we can use the satellite phone to… ’
‘Dead,’ Charlotte cut him off. ‘So are the cell signals.’
‘It must be our equipment then,’ Cody replied.
‘I checked out our own radios using our static detectors, to see if they picked up the signals. Everything’s dead.’
Cody stared at the computer monitor as if willing it to suddenly spring back into life.
‘You try calling Boston?’ he asked Jake.
‘Repeatedly,’ Jake nodded. ‘We’ve got nothing, no phones and no power.’
Cody forced his mind into action, drove the confusion away.
‘Maybe the power lines got hit,’ he suggested and turned to Charlotte. ‘That aurora from last night. They’ve been known to trip satellites and transformers out, right, overload circuitry and such like?’
She nodded.
‘Sure, but they shut the satellites down when solar storms hit to protect them, then turn them back on afterward. Same for the lines, except that the forces station cleared out yesterday so there was nobody to shut them down.’
‘So we start up the oil-burners and hunker down until they come back,’ Cody suggested. ‘Most of our communications go through a satellite so it explains everything.’
‘Not everything,’ Bobby said. ‘I’ve tried every radio frequency we’ve got on a standard analogue dish, from short to long wave, ultra, you name it. There’s not a sound coming in from anywhere.’
Cody felt a new chill shudder up his spine. ‘Nothing at all?’
‘Nobody is broadcasting on any wavelength that I can detect. No music, no forecasts, no news channels. Nothing.’
Cody looked at Jake. ‘You ever had this happen before?’
Jake shook his head. ‘Never, and if any station up here ever did lose contact with the outside world a rescue package would be dispatched within hours.’
‘And the weather’s been okay the last twelve hours,’ Bobby said. ‘They could have sent an airplane to pull us out at any time.’
Cody watched as Jake wracked his brains.
‘We’ve got to assume the fault’s at our end,’ Jake said finally. ‘Maybe we just need the power back to gain a signal. Even the dishes down at Eureka have to be positioned horizontally to detect a satellite. Up here, we can’t even see them.’
‘What do you have in mind?’ Bethany asked.
Jake rubbed his head for a long moment. ‘Nothing. I don’t know how best to deal with this. Our main concern should be survival first, then re-establishing contact.’
Cody looked at the other members of the team, finally sensing the unease infecting the cold air in the room.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ Bradley said. ‘I think we should try the base. If anywhere is going to have equipment tough enough to still work, it’ll be there.’
‘They said they’d shoot to kill if anybody trespassed,’ Bethany pointed out.
‘Hard to do that if there’s nobody there,’ Jake said in Bradley’s defence as he got out of his seat. ‘And besides, I’d define this as a goddamned emergency.’
‘But if we’ve got no power what makes you think the base does?’ Charlotte asked the soldier.
‘Alert is protected against pretty much everything,’ Bradley replied, ‘even things like electromagnetic pulses produced by nuclear attacks, and its power transformers and lines have extra shielding. They might be holding up.’
Jake stood up and began buttoning his thick jacket. ‘That’s good enough for me. We pack up and move north, because if we stay here we’ll be frozen solid by this afternoon.’
Jake pushed his way out of the communications room and past Cody, then tugged at his arm.
‘Cody, you give me a hand with something?’
Cody nodded and followed Jake out of the block. The darkness was complete but for a row of emergency glow-sticks that Bradley was cracking to illuminate the corridors with a chemical glow. Cody followed Jake through the pools of light and outside, zipping up his jacket as he did so. The air outside seemed frozen solid in the darkness, the glittering stars across the heaves above even brighter now without the station’s external lamps on.
Jake walked across to the parked snowmobiles and then turned to face Cody.
‘Have you done this?’
Cody stared at Jake in surprise. ‘Come again?’
‘Have you shut the station down, sabotaged it in some way?’
Cody gaped in disbelief. ‘Why the hell would I do that?’
Jake yanked a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Cody. Printed upon it was a screen grab taken from the computer in the communications room, the cover of the newspaper and the hunt for a killer.
‘I went through the search history last night,’ Jake said, ‘after that phone call I got from Boston.’
Cody shook his head. ‘I looked at the Boston Globe’s main page when I called home yesterday. What’s this got to do with me?’
‘Nothing,’ Jake replied, ‘except that the call I got was from a police detective in Boston.’
The air around Cody seemed to get suddenly colder as he stood and stared at Jake. ‘What did they want?’
Jake took a pace closer. ‘You tell me?’
Cody struggled to keep his features even as he spoke. ‘You think I’m responsible for all of this? Jesus, the Canadians cleared out Jake. What the hell could I have to do with that?’
‘Any of the others know about this, Cody?’ Jake asked, then pointed at the print out.
‘Not that I know of,’ Cody replied. He took a deep breath as he looked at the image in his gloved hand.
Jake watched him for a moment. ‘Somebody here is wanted for something serious in Boston, and I can only assume that means either large scale fraud or homicide.’
Cody was about to reply when the door beside them banged open and Bradley Trent stormed down the metal steps, pulling his hood up against the frigid air.
‘Maybe we should send a message ahead of some kind, to warn anybody who might still be at the base?’ Charlotte said as she followed Bradley out into the darkness.
‘They didn’t inform us of why they cleared out,’ Jake replied for the soldier. ‘Why the hell should we inform them that we’re going in?’
‘Maybe they left guards behind?’ Charlotte suggested.
‘Doubt it,’ Jake said, gesturing to Bradley Trent. ‘They wouldn’t have bothered to come looking for this loser if they were leaving people behind.’
‘Up yours,’ Bradley muttered. ‘I’ve got the lead out there. You don’t pass me unless I tell you to, understood?’
‘Fine by me,’ Jake replied. ‘If there are any guards remaining, they’ll probably shoot you first.’
Jake shot Cody a concerned look as he turned for his snowmobile. Bradley mounted his and tried to start it. Nothing happened.
‘Damn, battery’s gone,’ he uttered.
Cody tried his key, turned it in the ignition, but nothing happened.
‘Christ, even the snowmobiles are dead!’ Jake said in disbelief.
‘We’ll have to walk,’ Bradley said. ‘If I’m right, we can use the snowmobiles from Alert instead.’
‘It’s five kilometres,’ Cody pointed out.
‘Then the exercise will do you good,’ Bradley snapped. ‘Got a problem with that?’
‘Start packing up some of our gear,’ Jake called back to Charlotte. ‘We might need to move into the base.’
Cody followed Bradley out into the bitter darkness, the soldier leading the way along the twisting road that led to the airbase. The darkness seemed to close around him as though he himself was being pursued. He tried to shrug off the sense that thousands of miles away his life was falling apart and there was nothing that he could do to prevent it.
The walk across the lonely ice road took over an hour, the only sound the crunching of their boots on the ice. Nobody spoke, and Cody guessed that was because nobody really knew what to say.
The first thing that Cody noticed as they approached was that the runway lights were off and the base itself was enshrouded in total darkness. Only a tiny building near the edge of the base showed any signs of life, a single window illuminated from inside that he glimpsed as they walked. The remainder of the base was so inky black that if he hadn’t known it was there he would never have seen it.
The base consisted of a series of large hangar like buildings, surrounded by accommodation blocks all served by eight large fuel silos beside the airfield road on the far side of the base.
Bradley strode alongside the nearest of the hangars as Jake, Cody and Sauri joined him.
Cody looked at the large buildings, most of the accommodation blocks prefabricated out of aluminium and standing on legs that elevated them above the ice. The larger service hangars stood on the ice itself.
‘How come this place is so big?’ he asked Bradley. ‘I thought it was just a listening post?’
‘It is,’ Bradley replied. ‘But normally there are about seventy people based here on rotation, plus vehicles to haul goods, refuelling bowsers, am-tracks, snow clearers, you name it. We need enough gear to keep the place running through the winter for long periods when supply flights can’t get through.’
Jake walked alongside Bradley as they strode between the huge buildings.
‘What about ships?’ he asked. ‘Can’t they run stuff through?’
Bradley shook his head.
‘Not in the winter. The Lincoln Sea is covered in ice thick enough to stop any vessel, although in summer it’s navigable. Most captains don’t venture up here though as the ocean’s still full of icebergs. One wrong move and wham!’
Bradley punched a gloved fist into a palm with a thump that echoed between the buildings. He reached out to doors as they passed them, yanking on them to no avail.
‘Everything’s locked up,’ he said as they searched the complex.
‘Why would they do this?’ Cody asked. ‘Surely they must intend to come back at some point?’
‘You’d think so,’ Bradley muttered. ‘Not like my unit to abandon their own, especially not in a hell hole like this.’
‘There was a light on in one of the buildings,’ Cody said. ‘I saw it on the way in.’
‘Motion sensor,’ Bradley replied. ‘Probably a fox set it off.’
‘Looked like it was an interior light,’ Cody insisted.
‘Where?’
Cody led them in a direction he felt was about right for where he saw the light. They walked out of the complex of large buildings and found a series of smaller blocks, one of which glowed from within.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Bradley said with a bright smile that glowed in the starlight.
Bradley jogged across the ice as Jake, Cody and Sauri followed. He reached the door to the small block and burst in, a bright rectangle of light spilling out into the eternal darkness. Cody climbed the block steps and walked inside to see Bradley holding a piece of paper, his eyes scanning from left to right and his features collapsing as he did so.
‘What is it?’ Jake asked.
Bradley dropped the piece of paper. Cody could see it contained a hand-written note.
‘We’re screwed, is what it is,’ Bradley uttered.
Cody looked down at the paper as Jake read from it out loud.
‘Brad, Sauri. Evacuation order given at one hour notice. No details. Forced to pull out regardless of situation. All personnel accounted for except yourselves and the American team. Asked for time to find you. Denied. Advised that the scientists would need protecting until our return. No date given for this. Sit tight buddy, whatever the hell’s happened I’m sure we’ll be back before long. Keys on the table for Polaris Hall to let us know you’re okay. Light left on so you’d find them. Probably get my ass kicked for it but hell, I don’t like seeing men get left behind. Best of luck, Tyrone and the guys.’
Cody looked at the keys Bradley held. The soldier hefted them thoughtfully for a moment and then shrugged as though he wasn’t bothered.
‘Let’s go and see what we can find.’
Bradley led them across the base to Polaris Hall, the communication centre, a blocky building festooned with satellite dishes and aerials. Bradley unlocked the door and they walked in to find the interior silent but warm: the departing soldiers had left the heating on to protect the computer stations and sensitive devices within.
‘Bingo,’ Bradley said as he pointed at a series of computer terminals. ‘We’ve got power here.’
A series of small blinking lights winked at them from what looked to Cody like a bank of supercomputers humming in a room next door. Bradley hit the lights, fluorescent tubes clicking as they flickering into life.
A large map of Russia and Alaska dominated one wall of the room, marked with pins and lines drawn on a protective acrylic sheet covering the map. Clocks above the map tracked time zones across the region.
‘Missile silos in the former Soviet Union,’ Jake guessed as he looked at the map. ‘They must still listen in on them.’
‘All the time,’ Bradley replied as he moved from one computer to another, switching them back on.
The room began to fill with the hum of hard drives as the screens lit up one by one. Cody watched as Bradley finished his sweep of the room and stood back.
‘All of these computers will have access pass codes which I don’t possess,’ he said as he looked at Jake.
‘So what’s the point in starting them up?’
Bradley gestured to a pair of large monitors mounted upon the rear wall of the room.
‘Those two monitors relay electromagnetic signals from the listening station. The signals are crunched by the supercomputers and run through these stations before reaching those screens. Even though we can’t access the stations themselves, the information being detected by the satellite dishes will still automatically pass through and reach the monitors.’
‘Good enough,’ Jake replied as he turned to look at the two screens.
As the computers hummed so the screens both blinked and a graph appeared on each, a time line and a frequency scale a little like a heart monitor in a hospital. Running along the graph was a line that hovered around a mark on the graph calibrated as “zero / background”.
Cody, Jake, Bradley and Sauri waited for the line to pick up as the dishes outside relayed their information.
And waited.
Bradley shook his head. ‘That’s not possible, man.’
‘Where’s the signals?’ Jake asked the soldier.
Bradley shook his head. ‘I’ve been up here on rotation for four months. That screen has always recorded something. There’s always a signal, even if it’s just a bunch of asshole truck-drivers talking over the airwaves. The damned thing’s always alive.’
‘What does background and zero mean?’ Cody asked, already suspect
ing the answer but unwilling to admit it to himself.
For the first time, Sauri spoke in a clear accent touched with a slight Canadian drawl.
‘Background radiation, from natural processes.’
Jake stared at the screen for a few moments longer and then he turned to Cody.
‘You realise what this means?’
Cody tried to think of something to say but no words came forth. He felt a quiver of apprehension as he looked into Jake McDermott’s eyes and saw a glimmer of something he’d never expected to witness there: fear.
‘There’s nobody out there,’ Jake said. ‘The whole world’s gone silent.’
***
7
The team reconvened in the Alert Five building.
Cody had spent the entire journey back from the base in a stupor, unable to grasp the magnitude of what had happened. First and foremost in his mind was Maria, and close beside her, Danielle. He had not yet been able to find in himself the frantic fear for their safety that must surely come upon him soon, and he realised that it was because he simply could not allow himself to believe what the instruments at Alert were telling him.
The world had fallen silent.
The rest of the team took the news in a similar kind of stupefied silence.
Bethany, Charlotte, Reece and Bobby were sat in a row across a bench at the rear of the communal room. Bradley and Sauri leaned against the wall nearby, their rifles slung across their backs. Jake stood in front of the darkened windows as Cody leaned against the closed door and listened to Jake.
‘Okay, it’s now eleven fifty three in the morning. Our connection to the outside world was lost approximately eight hours ago. We’ve lost our transmitters, receivers and electrical power here, but there is nothing wrong with those at Canadian Forces Station Alert. That means that for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom there are no signals being broadcast from anywhere in the world within range of this station.’ He sighed. ‘Given CFS Alert’s sensitivity, that may well mean the world in its entirety. Opinions, people.’
Nobody spoke for a long time. The room felt sombre, filled with an unspoken dread frozen in place by the Arctic chill.
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