Protocol 7 at-1

by Armen Gharabegian

  “For god’s sake,” Samantha said through clenched teeth. “Why did it stop?”

  “It has no choice.” Max responded, measuring the essential distances with his expert eye. “It’s too big for the passageway.” He glanced down at the readouts from their sensor array and allowed himself a small smile. He was right; the mechanical creatures were about ten percent too big to make it more than a few feet inside, and it would never reach as deep inside as the Spector already was. But the smile died as he looked up again. The damnable thing was huge, almost as tall as the alcove itself, and now two more of the massive creatures were joining it, their spotlights bobbing and swaying as if they were unconnected to the bodies, casting shadows and glittering points of light all along the icy walls.

  The beams of light were like physical things, he realized-like endlessly long shafts of glowing force, piercing the translucent walls, cutting through the freezing air, reaching for them-pinning them-holding them in place.

  And as he watched, the huge claws at the end of the robot’s flexing arms opened and closed, as if testing their strength, then gripped a chunk of ice at the edge of the opening and broke it off with a single jerk.

  They weren’t giving up. They were just making the tunnel bigger. Simon had never felt more trapped in his entire life.

  DOME AT FISSURE 9

  Inside the DITV, Roland was seething. He watched helplessly as the Spiders clambered into the downsloping tunnel, pursuing the target-whatever the hell it was-their mechanical legs flexing and stretching to such an extreme degree they could fit almost comfortably into the shaft.

  “We’ve lost them, sir,” his pilot said.

  “I know,” he snapped. “I can see that. Any suggestions?”

  “Sir, the only things that can go into these old tunnels are the MagCycles, but we have no way of bringing them up here.”

  “How far does it go in?”

  “To be honest, sir, the tunnel is no longer registered in our system. We’ve abandoned the old utility tunnels like this one over ten years ago.”

  “Then use your fucking scanners, but get me an answer asap!”

  The officer almost popped out of his seat to respond. “We have, sir! We have! But-but the tunnel slopes down toward Shelf 2, and we lose the visual from ice density.”

  “Then I’ll alert Central Command and dispatch drones to Shelf 2.”

  “But they already have their CS-”

  “They can’t do it! It’s not their mission!” Roland’s head was pounding with the tension; he would not put up with bullshit from his own soldiers! “We have to stop this vessel,” he said, forcing himself to calm down. “Even if it means we go in on foot!”

  The officer looked as if he had told him to shoot himself in the head. They hate the ice, Roland reminded himself. That’s why they got into Transport amp; Ordinance. They hate the cold.

  He slammed the armrest on his seat, concerned and frustrated about his personal safety and the safety of the whole operation. Vector5 had a zero tolerance for intruders or leakage of information. No one knew what the consequence would be if this secret operation blew open, but Roland knew he wouldn’t be around to find out. Central Command did not tolerate failure, and they didn’t pay death benefits to widows, either. Thinking for a moment, he turned to the driver of the ice transport vehicle.

  “Re-route toward Shelf 2,” he grated. “I’m sure I’ll need to have an unfortunate meeting with Central Command about this mess.” He started to turn away and then checked himself. “And make sure the Scrambling Drones are operational throughout the continent. I don’t want any information going out or coming in. Who knows how many more of these damn bogeys there might be?”

  The officers jumped to fulfill the orders; the DITV turned and headed back to the lifts that would take him a thousand feet lower to Central Command-whether he liked it or not.

  The intruders won’t survive, he told himself, trying to sound reassuring at least to himself. They can’t possibly-not in this frozen hell.

  CENTRAL COMMAND

  A few thousand feet below, in the Ops Room of Central Command, Blackburn was watching it all. His body was little more than a silhouette against a vast wall that was covered, top to bottom and side to side with holo-screens and projections; he watched every one of them with a tight intensity, closely studying the intruders. Ops gave him a 360-degree view of virtually any part of the ice world. All around him, the walls displayed everything he needed to know about the covert operation of Vector5.

  He had arrived from the surface barely three hours earlier and instantly relieved Mathias of duty. Wherever he went, wherever he landed, he was boss; he didn’t need challenges to his authority. He would handle it; they would follow his orders. Woe to the first man who looked to somebody else for permission or advice.

  Twenty-five years, he told himself as he watched the strange, iridescent vehicle scuttle into the narrow passage and evade the Crevasse Spiders. Twenty-five years of building, planning, and operation, and never so much as a temporary breach. Now, two serious leaks in the last month.

  He hadn’t thought of that before. Two of them-so close together. It made him wonder if there was some connection between Jonathan Weiss’ betrayal and this bizarre machine from…somewhere.

  He was standing on a black carbon fiber catwalk that protruded into the huge, circular Ops Room. Fifteen technicians sat below him, monitoring the mega-computers, controlling the entire Vector5 operation deep within the Antarctic ice. He knew exactly what was happening. And he knew who was going to pay.

  “Status of the Black Ops team assigned to Roland?” he asked. That decision had been made long ago. The commander had failed to stop the intruders and Blackburn simply wouldn’t tolerate that-if this was his last chance, it’d be everyone else’s, as well. And as with any officer-related ‘disciplinary action,’ he knew it had to happen quickly; there was always the concern that a Vector5 officer might defect to save his life, and Roland was no different. But he knew as well as Blackburn did: he had nowhere to go. Even if he somehow miraculously managed to escape the continent, Vector5’s reach extended to the far corners of the globe, controlling and manipulating information at all levels of society.

  Forever secret, Blackburn thought, and smiled.

  As he walked back toward the adjacent building to meet with his advisors, he wondered how he could have missed the possibility of a connection between Weiss and the intruder. In fact, he realized, it was quite possible that Simon Fitzpatrick himself, and maybe some or all of the scientists recently reported missing from Oxford, could be part of this-even on board the mysterious vessel. Certainly their whereabouts were unknown; Ryan’s fiancee had been interrogated until they had killed her and knew nothing-or gave them nothing-concerning his whereabouts.

  Deep down, something told Blackburn that he had hit on something. This intruder was the team he had been looking for. “It’s them,” he said to himself.

  One of his assistants looked up quizzically. “Sir?” he said.

  “Never mind,” Blackburn said. His complement of eight officers and advisors followed him to the meeting room to start the debrief.

  * * *

  It was a long-standing custom: when Blackburn returned to Antarctica, his commanders met with him immediately and brought him up to date. Nothing was ignored, nothing was held back, or that would be the commander’s last meeting. In fact, the debrief itself was more of a checksum for Blackburn than a necessity. He could access any information he needed wherever he was on the planet, any time he chose; he prided himself on knowing every important detail of the vast covert operation at any given moment. But the debriefing did give him valuable insight into just how well-informed and in control his commanders were-and how forthcoming.

  At home back in North America, Blackburn led a very deceptive life. He played at being an average mid-level Pentagon official, currently assigned to UNED. No one at either organization knew exactly what his roles and responsibilities were, and
no one was privy to his existance in Antarctica. Nobody needed to know. It was Blackburn’s operation-his, and the Committee he answered to, the men he had actually never met.

  He leaned back in his well-padded leather chair and studied his command team with deep, piercing eyes. Very little affected Blackburn. He believed in himself with a strength, a ferocity that was intimidating to most. He was rarely questioned, and always, always deferred to.

  But today was different. This was the first breach of Antarctica’s security in over twenty years. Someone somehow had managed to enter the ice continent and penetrate the network-his network. And his job-his life-depended on getting to the bottom of it.

  Vector5 called a security breach an “incision” for a reason: it was a violation of the body; it was a threat to the operation’s continued health. It was dangerous, and it was expected to cause some pain-to someone.

  Just not to Blackburn.

  “Commander Roland is on his way down,” were the first words out of his mouth. Everyone in the room knew what that meant. The relief they shared-that this time, at least, it wasn’t them-was palpable.

  One of the Ops advisors straightened in his chair. “Sir,” he said, “We believe we can-”

  Blackburn cut him off with a gesture.

  “Don’t. It’s pathetic. You have no solutions; you-all of you-are responsible for this happening in the first place.” He leaned back again and stared at the blank white walls. “This is what we will do. We will wait for the intruder-the intruders, plural, as it happens-to come to us.”

  “But sir,” one of the defense commanders protested, “If they were to somehow penetrate-”

  “They will penetrate nothing. There’s no way they can send any signals beyond the continent, and the farther they run from the Spiders, the deeper they go-and the closer they get to us.” He shook his head briefly and tapped the grey tabletop. “No, we will meet them at Shelf 3…if they manage to survive until then.”

  “But sir, if I may,” said one of the officers. He tried to stand, saw the expression on Blackburn’s face, and gave it up as a bad idea. He cleared his throat nervously as he retook his seat. “Sir,” he said again, “We still have not been able to locate the eighteen scientists that escaped a few weeks ago. What if…?”

  “What if what, Lucas?” he asked the officer very quietly. “Your inability to hold on to operational assets that were in your care is hardly the accomplishment you want to mention at this meeting, is it? It was a failure to begin with…but, I am quite sure, not terribly dangerous. They will run out of rations and freeze to death in the next few days, if they haven’t already.”

  Another advisor-my, they’re feeling bold today, Blackburn thought, almost amused-half-raised his hand in a timid bid for attention. “Sir,” he said, “We have reports that several pieces of our old MCs have been dug out of the ice and are probably in the hands of those scientists. The tracker-bugs on them started to fire-for a while, until someone disabled them. So we know-”

  Blackburn shrugged it off. The intruders are not the only ones who keep digging themselves in deeper, he thought. “Fine,” he said, dismissing it. “I couldn’t care less. Where the hell do they think they’re going to get the hydro-fuel?”

  “They are the scientists who created the machines,” the advisor said. “If anybody can-”

  “But nobody can,” Blackburn said. He looked closely at the advisor, his dark eyes drilling deep. Well, at least this one has some balls, he thought. Throw him a bone.

  “All right,” Blackburn said. “I’ll go out on a limb for you. I’ll authorize the use of special armament to find and deal with the renegades, as long as it doesn’t raise our profile.” He cast a glance at one of the tech officers. “What’s the probability of vibration being picked up above ground by UNED or civilians if we unleash the hounds?”

  “Nil, sir,” replied the specialist. He was sitting across the room, behind some of the officers. “Thanks to your efforts, the continent is clear of significant sensor arrays. UNED is constantly monitoring the total quarantine, but their ears are nothing compared to ours.”

  “Excellent,” Blackburn replied. Then he gave a gentle smile-almost merry. “So let’s not waste the opportunity. Let’s try explosives on the defectors.”

  A sense of panic filled the room as many of the officers cleared their throats. It almost made Blackburn laugh-all the shifting and throat-clearing, all the sudden tiny beads of sweat. The foolish defense officer raised his hand again. Fool, Blackburn told himself. You’re next.

  “Sir, if I may, we have never used explosives in the network before. We have no idea what its impact will be. At this point, it’s all theoretical.”

  Blackburn stood up suddenly and turned his back on his men. He couldn’t stand looking at them anymore. Instead he stared at the silver-blue hologram of the entire Antarctica complex that filled the black well near the end of the room. It was a beautiful thing. Beautiful and strange.

  “So you’re telling me,” he said without turning around, “that after ten full years, millions of man-hours, and billions of dollars spent on investigation and development…we still can’t put this stuff to use?”

  “Not yet, sir,” one of the I amp;D advisors said. “It’s too…unpredictable. Just last week, some of our vehicles started to levitate, and we still cannot understand how this is possible.”

  Blackburn closed his eyes and tried to will the man away. It didn’t quite work.

  “Our estimate still holds, sir. Eighteen months until we can safely build a prototype.”

  “Safely,” Blackburn said acidly. “Maybe that’s the problem-too goddamn many people concerned with their safety rather than changing history.”

  He gave it up. Maybe it wasn’t the time, but at least he’d made his point: keep moving or get run over. Now, back to the crisis at hand…

  “All right then,” he said as he turned around. “Let’s just blast the fuckers out of their hidey-holes with the biggest conventional weapons we’ve got. How does that sound?”

  The grinning and back-slapping was unseemly, but they were all so relieved Blackburn allowed it. No one wanted to tell him about the other part of the problem, about the oxygen depletion effect that literally sucked the air out of a man’s lungs if he even came near the new fusion tech.

  What they don’t know, Blackburn told himself, is that I’m already aware of it. Have been from the beginning.

  What they fail to understand, he thought as he looked at his craven “team” of advisors and mercenaries, is that I just don’t care.

  TUNNEL 3

  Max pushed on.

  The narrow passageway opened up a little more than a hundred yards from the opening. It was by no means wide enough or straight, but at least they weren’t surrounded by walls on all sides.

  Max had never thought of twenty miles an hour as a dangerous speed. But now, guiding the Spector on its massive, swiveling treads, dodging pieces of ice as big as houses, veering past deep arroyos and avoiding patches of blackness that indicated yet another feeder tunnel, running off in yet another direction…now, twenty miles an hour seemed insanely fast.

  The massive robotic Spiders hadn’t given up. Their arms, it turned out, were not just endlessly flexible; they were as strong as wrecking cranes. The others had watched through the transparent aft section and reported as the robots pulled away key patches of ice and outcroppings, pounding at the accumulated ice of the narrow entrance until, all too soon, it gave away, and they gave chase.

  It was slow going for them, but they were relentless. Max could see that; he watched their progress on the holo-display of the rear scan as they moved forward, paused, pounded or pried another obstacle out of the way, then moved forward again. He could see that they were still a thousand yards behind them, and not gaining-but not falling back, either.

  Focus, damn you, he told himself. There was no room for error here. He could take a wrong path, make a bad choice, and they would crash, fall, turn over, be
crushed; he’d run out of grim alternatives. Only one thing left to do, he told himself. Succeed.

  Simon sat in the co-pilot’s seat next to him, silent and determined. Max had known the man his whole life, and when Simon had said he would leave them behind and go on foot to find his father, Max had believed him completely. It was the kind of man he was-just like Max himself. Now Simon was focused entirely on the task at hand-getting the hell away from the CS23 and finding a place to hide, until they could figure out what to do next.

  The terrain began to slope downward-not the steep fifty-degree grade of the first tunnel, but a relentless fifteen-degree angle of descent that took them deeper and deeper. And the deeper they went, the greater the tension they felt. It was as if they could feel the weight of the ice and stone growing above them, pressing down, worse with every inch they moved forward. Everyone’s eyes were locked on the transparent section behind them, showing every detail of the robots as they followed close on: their flexing arms, the bulbous, roiling central body, the grasping claws and the blinding spears of light that passed back and forth over the Spector, piercing it again and again like swords.

  Without warning Max shouted, “Get down! We’ve got company!”

  As if on cue, the entire crew whirled around to look at the front-facing screen, their window on the world that lay ahead.

  The screen was a flat black shadow, given texture only by the reflected lights from the robots, the Spector’s own shadows, and a thousand tiny points of green light. Like fireflies out of the swamp, like luminous birds no bigger than a sparrow, they were swarming just outside the vehicle-straight in front, off to the left, off to the right.

  They paused. They seemed to focus, to aim.

  Then they streaked through the blackness and smashed against the Spector like gunshots.