Seung Yi’s eyes narrowed. It was all gone. Forever. Obliterated in a vast explosion. Seung Yi had lived there, but only in hibernation. He had never seen all this with his own eyes. The simulation was his only guide to what life had been like there. A perfect copy of him had been made and hibernated in a backup colony before the explosion. This was the only reason he was alive now, and also explained why he knew so little of something that had been built by his descendants. Let’s get back above the surface and rotate counterclockwise. Zoom. There it was! His pyramid. Two hundred meters high and built from rock. He went inside. The floors here had plush red carpeting. A level of workers, then doctors, then living quarters, meeting rooms, a control room, a hospital. And now… a boardroom! It was the headquarters of MX9, the corporation that handled the transactions between Entara and the rest of humanity. There was wealth beyond counting, as the mined fruits of Entara and other asteroids were sold to the greedy planets that demanded them in ever larger quantities. Now… up. Near the top was a large, plush chamber, with interior stone walls carved as smooth as glass. Not the corporation this time, but the home of the High Council who had run Entara during Seung Yi’s long sleep. They were sitting around the table. Their lips were moving, but no words coming out. And… there were Zan Tang and Tai Zu! The only two who had survived the explosion. Yes, it was definitely them. Seung Yi didn’t recognize the other ten Councilors. Above that was a private medical facility. Now, the very top. Dare he enter? He had to see what it actually looked like. Seung Yi went through the floor into a large, bare stone room, whose ceiling was a pyramid. In the center was a machine the size of a large chest freezer, with a glass lid that opened upwards. Inside: Seung Yi. He looked just like he was asleep. He bent over, and looked into the tranquil face of the original of himself.
Seung Yi zoomed out until he was back outside the pyramid, and looked at its stepped exterior, lit on one side by a weak, faraway Sun. Dots that were distant spacecraft moved slowly by in the background. “Call Zan Tang,” he said.
“Yes, Master?”
“Come here.”
Moments later, the gilded door of Seung Yi’s private quarters opened, and in came one of his trusted Councilors. Seung Yi turned to him. “It’s hard to believe, it is not, that this entire, thriving world existed?”
“Yes it is.”
“An entire civilization, spanning hundreds of years, and I was there in the middle of it, asleep. Yet it was destroyed, by those who wanted to steal the wealth that we earned from mining. The only reason you and I exist today is because copies of us were made in another location, since our original selves were lost with the rest of Entara. It is almost as though we are ghosts.”
“You are a copy, Master, but I am the original Zan Tang. I volunteered to be hibernated and placed in the backup colony in case it was ever needed. I never for one second expected to be revived again. It seemed inconceivable that anything could wipe out the original Entara.”
Seung Yi nodded, and turned to Tang. “And yet… it happened. Wise indeed was the one who foresaw this possibility. So, while we are now reduced to living inside a rock, we will soon have the entire planet Mars to ourselves. The strong, industrious society I envision will be able to take root again. Once we are re-established, we can build interstellar warp ships and expand without limits.”
CHAPTER THREE
Breakdown
“Boulevards des Moulins,” Annabelle said, once Antonio re-joined them at the hotel. “Take it right, and the hyperloop’s about fifteen minutes’ walk. Next quickest way to Nice besides flying.” The hyperloop was a levitating train that operated in a vacuum tunnel. It could reach immense speeds in the absence of friction.
“Let’s go,” Kassandra said. They headed off down the lush, palm-lined street. Normally quiet at that time of the evening, it was packed with people and vehicles. While they were still a few hundred meters up the hill from the station, they could see a crowd around it.
Some dejected-looking people were walking back up the street, in their direction. “Broken! How can it be broken? At a time like this!” came the tirade from a Frenchman with bushy eyebrows, walking towards them. His wife nodded passively.
“Oh crap! Don’t say this thing isn’t working either!” Annabelle said. A quick inquiry once they reached the edge of the agitated crowd confirmed it.
Kassandra’s jaw clenched, and her eyes narrowed. “Dammit! Now what?” Antonio shrugged. The three stood in silence for half a minute.
“We might have to walk it,” Annabelle said, at last.
“What?” Kassandra said. “I’m not dressed for walking anywhere!”
“There doesn’t seem to be any other way,” Antonio said. “It’s only twelve kilometers or so.”
“Twelve kilometers?!”
“We might just have to suck it up,” Annabelle said. “It will be fine once we get there, though. Once we get to your plane we’ll be in Lyon in an hour. You’ll be off Earth and out of danger soon after that, and we’ll be on our way to where we’re going.”
Kassandra sighed. “Fine. Let’s get on with it. Let’s get a bite to eat first though. God knows how long it will take to get there. Meanwhile, I’d better disguise myself. Last thing I need is people hassling me.” She used her neural implants to command the mask she always wore to activate. Her heart-shaped face became pudgier, and her eyes sported bags underneath them.
Half an hour and a snack later, they were walking east. “My signal’s gone out completely,” Antonio said.
“Mine too,” the others said in unison.
“I feel naked and blind without my implant,” Kassandra said.
“Luckily I already downloaded the map to get there,” Annabelle said. There was a cliff where the road had been cut away from the steep hillside on their right, and a slope down to the sea on their left. It was dotted with expensive homes. There were manicured rows of palm trees between them. Vehicles zoomed past. Many more were heading east, towards France, than west. A steady stream of vee-tols flew by a few hundred meters up. A low hum was heard above. Antonio looked up. Five dark spheres, roughly a meter wide, flew not far above their heads, heading quickly west. “Police drones,” he said. The others remained silent, and kept walking.
They soon reached a large sign. “Goodbye Monaco, hello France,” Annabelle said. The scenery gradually became flatter. The volume of traffic increased with the onset of dusk. Three gunshots in rapid succession cracked in the night somewhere off to their right. Annabelle looked at the others, fear written all over her face.
“I don’t like this at all,” Antonio said. Sirens wailed somewhere behind them. Traffic on both sides pulled over to allow two police cars through, as they sped west towards Nice. The friends plodded on, putting more kilometers behind them. It was 10 PM when they finally reached Nice’s small airport. The normally-quiet facility was busy. People bustled in and out of the terminal. Raised voices were heard at the ticket desks. Some cried softly, looking lost and dazed. Children jumped and ran around the hall, to barks from distracted parents. A conversation was overheard: “Every single flight’s full! Nothing’s available for weeks!”
“Okay, where is it?” Kassandra said, scanning the desks. One, much smaller than the others, was quiet. “There. Ascension Charter.” They made their way over. One dark-skinned woman worked busily at a screen. She looked up. “I have a plane waiting. The name’s Nishimura,” Kassandra said.
“Okay, let me check.” The clerk’s eyes darted across the screen. Her expression changed to concern. “Um… I’m sorry, Miss Nishimura, but all our planes are out. We don’t have a single one here.”
“What?” Kassandra removed her disguise.
“Um… I’m really sorry…”
“Get me your manager.”
The clerk nodded in deference. “Certainly.” She left, through a door at the back, and returned a minute later with a fat, graying man.
“Uh… I’m sorry, Miss Nishimura, we don’t see a record of your char
ter,” he said.
“What? I came here from Lyon in it, and it was supposed to wait here for me!”
“As far as I can tell, ma’am, you have never booked with us.”
“Do you people know who I am?”
“I am aware of your status, ma’am…”
“Did somebody bribe you to give them my plane?” The manager turned red and looked down at the counter. “That’s it, isn’t it? How much did they give you?” Kassandra spat.
“I’m sorry, but no booking was received…”
“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.” She shook her head slowly, while glaring at the man. “Screw you.” Her jaw was clenched, as she stormed away from the counter.
Annabelle followed her. “Don’t cry,” Annabelle said, as she hugged Kassandra. “We’ll figure something out.”
“Buy someone’s tickets from them,” Antonio said. “Money talks.”
Kassandra looked at him through her tears. “Yeah, I think you’re right.” She unclasped herself from Annabelle, wiped her eyes with a small handkerchief from her purse, and started with the nearest group of people. “I’ll offer fifteen million orbs for three tickets to Lyon.”
After a few minutes of nos and head shakes, one man with a woman and a child said: “Thirty million, and you have a deal.”
The woman looked appalled. “Albert!” She tugged on his arm.
“Deal?” he said, still looking at Kassandra.
“Deal.” Kassandra touched her payment ring to his, and then took the three fingernail-sized tokens from him.
“Thirty million orbs!” he said. “We’re rich!”
“But now we don’t have a ticket home!” his lady beseeched. Her tears began to flow. Their young child paid no attention.
Annabelle looked sad. Kassandra reactivated her disguise, and began to move away. “Gotta do what you gotta do,” she said.
“Yes,” Antonio said. “Nobody forced him to sell them.”
Annabelle shook her head. “This whole thing is going to get much, much worse before it gets better.”
----
On board Revenant, Kato sighed. “Why, oh why, did that bastard have to survive? He seems to creep like slime into every era of human existence. Starting with ours, back in the twenty-first century.” He looked down sadly. Zara nodded. “The stakes are a lot higher than some stolen technology this time.”
Zara started to say something, then stopped. Kato looked at her. After a few seconds, she began again: “I almost wish I hadn’t hijacked his ship. It’s possible he only popped up again in the twenty-fourth century to get revenge on me.”
“You don’t know if he did. He could have been alive all along, getting Renewed every twenty years so he wouldn’t die,” Kato said.
“True. He’s still the devil incarnate though. I don’t doubt he’ll kill a lot more people if he’s not bluffing about that virus thing being worldwide.” She gulped and sighed. “Is there anything that can be done to stop him? What about the FSE?”
“The FSE is a damn talking shop,” a nearby short man with thinning hair said angrily. He walked over to them. “Any real power they had is gone. Dissolved by national and regional interests. In some ways, the world’s heading back to how it was before the Tribulation.”
“Academician Korolev!” Kato said. “Didn’t even notice you were here. As for the Tribulation, its main cause was resolved, although with much violence. The ingredients for another Tribulation aren’t there, surely?”
“You mean other than the imminent extinction of mankind?” Korolev said.
“Point taken.”
Another man walked over to join them. He was nearly six feet tall, with a mop of gray hair parted just left of the center, and bushy eyebrows. He was General Peter Phillips, of the US Army. He extended a hand. Kato shook it weakly. “I can’t even call the damn Pentagon!” Phillips said. “All the military channels are busy.” Kato nodded. “I came over because I heard the FSE mentioned,” Phillips continued. “They can’t agree on anything, so I don’t know how much use they’ll be in responding to this disaster. It may be up to America. Again.”
“Yes,” Korolev said.
“Problem is,” Phillips said, “we don’t have a space force to go and take him out. That’s even if we knew where this Seung Yi character is located, which we don’t.” The others nodded. “All the services have a handful of spaceships, but none of them even have weapons. They’re just used for personnel transport. Still, I think the only defense against this maniac is going to be a good offense. Once we find him. I mean, even if we handed Mars over him, what’s to say he won’t hold us all to ransom again, for something else?”
“True,” Kato said. “If I had to guess, I’d say he’s on, or in, a rock in the asteroid belt. It’s the only place in the Solar System he could hide.”
Phillips shook his head. He looked at both the others in turn for a moment. “You’re both smart men. Is there some kind of super weapon we can come up with that would just take the asteroid out?”
“Vesta!” Kato interjected. “I’ll bet he’s there! It’s the largest body in the asteroid belt besides Ceres, which no longer exists, of course. How he hid there for a hundred and five years, I’m not sure, but I’d almost put money on that being his location.”
Korolev sighed. “I don’t know of any weapon, Phillips. An enormous nuke could do quite a bit of damage. But if that’s where they are, they’re probably cocooned right in the center of Vesta. There’d be two hundred and fifty kilometers of rock protecting them. All it would do is shake them up a bit.”
“We no longer have any enormous nukes, anyway,” Phillips said. “The biggest nuke ever detonated is still the one the Russians set off in the 1960s. Our force is down to three thousand warheads, none of which exceed five megatons.” He sighed. “I was thinking of some kind of miracle weapon, like whatever blew up Ceres in 2357.”
“We still don’t know what happened to Ceres,” Kato said. Then his eyes widened. “What about a cluster of nukes, General? Get hundreds, perhaps. Time them all to off within one microsecond of each other!”
“By God, you’re right!” Phillips said.
“All of ISI’s resources are at your disposal, General. Ships, scientists, anything.”
“I appreciate that, Kato. We’ll need all the help we can get. We have six months to come up with, and successfully execute, an attack.”
----
The three friends sat abreast in the needle-shaped aircraft’s long cabin. “I feel bad for that family,” Kassandra said.
“Me too,” Annabelle said.
“No-one forced them to sell their tickets,” Antonio said.
“Call Mom,” Annabelle said. She gazed off into the distance, as the airplane started to taxi. There was no answer.
“You know what pisses me off?” Kassandra said.
“What?”
“That we didn’t think to buy a ride to Nice, instead of walking.” Antonio nodded.
“We were in a panic, just like everyone else,” Annabelle said. “Hindsight, and all that…”
“I guess.”
“We expect to arrive in Lyon at 1 AM,” a voice said over the loudspeaker. “Our flight time is thirty-six minutes.”
“Hope it’s not too cold there,” Annabelle said. “We’re still dressed like we’re going to a club.” The aircraft was soon in the air, swooshing speedily inland. A passenger to Antonio’s left got out a display unit, the size of a cigar tube, and switched it on. The news showed on a midair display about the size of a dinner tray. The trio leaned over to watch. At first, all that could be seen was fire. Then, people were silhouetted in the flames, throwing improvised missiles at the police. “Looting and rioting have broken out in Paris, Lyon, and every major city in France,” the broadcast said. “Store shelves have already been stripped bare, as citizens hoard food, water, and other necessities. Lawlessness is spreading like wildfire. Curfews have been imposed…”
Annabelle’s face turned white.
“I was afraid of something like this,” she said, turning to Kassandra. “People think we’re all going to be wiped out too. There’s nothing left to lose. They will turn to hedonism, crime, or both.”
“Then the fabric of society will unravel quickly,” Antonio said.
“So, what do we do?” Kassandra said.
“In my case, try to get to my place in Paris as quickly as we can,” Annabelle said, “and ride it out.”
“And if the Extinction Switch is used again?” Antonio said.
“Then… shelter will be the least of our worries.”
A short while later, all three friends spaced out for a few seconds, apparently focusing on some message appearing in their minds. Kassandra was the first to speak. “Oh, my God! I don’t believe this! Earth is now quarantined! Nobody can leave!”
“Merde…” Annabelle said. “There goes your survival plan, Kass. You should come to Paris with me, since you can’t get off Earth. And that’s all there is to it.”
“Or you could come to my place…” Antonio said. Kassandra shook her head no. His expression fell from excitement to deep disappointment.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Cull
Entara was the name that Seung Yi’s descendants had given to their former home world, Ceres, on which most of had them lived. They staked a claim to this dwarf planet as their own sovereign territory, despite the Outer Space Treaty explicitly forbidding any such claim. Since the reemergence of the Yi Dynasty, 105 years after the destruction of Ceres, they had now made the same claim on the asteroid Vesta. They now referred to this body as Entara. The small hospital was the only place on Entara, besides the quarters of the High Councilors, which had artificial gravity. Located a little way out from the center, its business was mostly slow—apart from the maternity unit. Seung Yi wore a black robe. Tai Zu and Zan Tang, two of the twelve High Councilors, wore scarlet robes. They exited the elevator onto a sterile corridor some thirty meters long. One wall was clear. It gave a view onto a ward with ten beds, eight of which were occupied. The men walked a few paces down, and entered. The women and three white-uniformed nurses alike looked up in complete surprise. The orderlies bowed low towards him. “You honor us with your presence, Master,” everybody present said in unison. Seung Yi looked around, fixing each person briefly with his eyes, showing no emotion.
The Extinction Switch: Book three of the Kato's War series Page 2