David frowned. “Oh. So, why this huge air gap, between its outer wall and this one?”
Magana shrugged. “Don’t quite know. It was all built over eighty years ago. Someone must have thought it necessary.”
“What’s at the bottom?” Antonio asked.
“Trash,” she said. “Meters deep. That’s why it smells so rank. Nobody notices the odor after a while. Everyone just threw garbage over the side for decades. Then there was a lethal methane gas explosion twenty years ago. Levels one through five were damaged so badly in the blast that they’re uninhabitable. There’s an ongoing effort to cart it out before the gas builds up again.”
“JC said there were bodies down there,” Kassandra said, almost in a whisper. “Is it true?”
Magana nodded. “Some were executions, some were accidental falls, and some were suicides. They just left them there.”
The friends stared at Magana, wide-eyed. “Executions?” Kassandra said.
Magana sighed. “Mostly in the early days. There hasn’t been one in years. If it’s as bad as you say outside, though, martial law may be imposed in here. The severest penalty then would be death.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kassandra's Calling
After lunch, Annabelle caught Kassandra’s eye. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Okay,” Kassandra said, a little uncertainly. They strolled slowly across the walkway. The mournful sound of somebody playing a trumpet echoed from somewhere below. At the halfway point, Annabelle cautiously approached the railing. She looked up, squinting. “I can’t even see the roof. Can you?”
“No.”
Annabelle’s eyes traced down the side of the inner silo, with its vertical pattern of lights, which illuminated the rings around. The walkways of the other levels, identically positioned to their own, looked almost like a wall, one sixth of the way around the circumference. The girls looked down. “I can’t get over the scale of this place,” Kassandra said.
Annabelle shook her head. “Me neither.” She turned to Kassandra. “I just wanted to see how you’re holding up.”
Kassandra’s face fell. “I’m scared to death. Yeah, we may be safe down here for now. But, if the Extinction Switch is ever used, a special kind of hell will be unleashed. There’ll be nothing left above ground. This place survives on the crumbs that fall from their tables as far as I can tell. If they go, so do we. And that’s assuming nobody invades down here.” Annabelle nodded, and pushed her blonde hair back to the right, out of her face. “I suppose my parents will be okay, since they’re in space,” Kassandra added.
“I miss my mom and sister so much,” Annabelle said, with a deep sigh. “I’d give anything just to know they’re okay. They live above ground in Paris. If the Extinction Switch were used, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Kassandra clasped Annabelle in a bear hug. Their embrace was long and quiet, hundreds of meters up on the catwalk. Annabelle began to cry softly.
At length, Kassandra pulled away. Grinning, she said: “Just had a thought. We’re supposed to be assigned duties. I wonder what they’ll get Antonio to do. I don’t think there are many modeling gigs to be had down here.”
Annabelle chuckled. “His physical fitness is non-existent, and he has almost no clue how to relate to people.” She shook her head. “He’s not gonna last. I don’t know what they do with people who can’t or won’t work.”
“He’s gonna have to give up his pretty boy ways pretty damn quickly,” Kassandra said. Annabelle nodded, sniffing and wiping tears away with the back of her right hand. “I’m sorry,” Kassandra said.
“For what?”
“For ever introducing him to you. He’s got the hots for you so bad.”
“Oh, I know he does.”
“He started hanging out with me for me,” Kassandra said, pointing to herself, and giving Annabelle an eyebrow-raised mock look that said keep your hands off my man. Annabelle chuckled. “But then when you came along,” Kassandra continued, “I was cast aside.” She threw her hands up in mock indignation. “Cast aside!” Both girls laughed. “Just think, you could have been his girlfriend!”
“I’d have taken a bullet for you,” Annabelle said. “Taken one for the team!”
The lights from the central silo, dimmed by the distance, reflected from Kassandra’s twinkling eyes and cast shadows in her grin-induced dimples as she looked out into the near-darkness. “This is the happiest I’ve seen you since this whole thing started,” Annabelle said. Kassandra nodded. “We’ll make it through this. You and me, kiddo,” Annabelle said, after a short pause.
“Kiddo? You’re only a year older than me,” Kassandra said, still gazing out from the bridge.
Annabelle shrugged. “Yeah. But, I guess I’ve always thought of you like the little sister I always wanted.”
Kassandra smiled. They were quiet and contemplative for a while, as they leaned over the handrail. “You know,” she said at length, “I kind of want to be a Raider.”
Annabelle looked quizzical, as she turned to Kassandra. “Why? It sounds super dangerous.”
Kassandra’s smile had changed to a mischievous grin, as she turned to face Annabelle. “That’s why I want to do it.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. I’ve lived my entire life in this cocoon of riches.” Kassandra’s voice now had an edge of anger. “Anything I ever wanted, it’s mine. I have my own warp spaceship for Christ’s sake. But, I’ve never had to work for anything. Never had to sacrifice. Climbing down successively lower rungs of society like this is showing me a side of life I never knew existed.” Her eyes were now narrow slits. “I don’t want to be this way anymore, ‘Belle. There’s so much more to me than being a rich party girl.”
Annabelle nodded. “Well, if that’s what my kid sister wants, I’ll support you in it.” She smiled. “I think the biggest danger sometimes isn’t what we face on the outside, but in never finding out who we really are.”
----
“You want to do what?” JC said. He still wore his white t-shirt, and now also sported a camouflage ball cap. He then began to laugh, and laugh, until he was almost beside himself. Kassandra withered as she stood before him on level thirty. “I almost thought you said you wanted to be Raider for a minute there!”
Kassandra lifted her gaze from the floor, and stuck out her chin. “I do, sir. I’ll do anything required of me. Please at least consider me.”
“My, oh my,” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “You haven’t even been here forty-eight hours, and you want to join the most elite rank of the Defenders.”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked Kassandra up and down. Her build was slender yet womanly, and her height average. Her eyes spat defiance. His gaze met hers. She didn’t flinch. “You know,” he said, “being a Raider was easy, or should I say easier, even a week ago. Gathering food for this place is now damn near impossible, with rebel forces having locked down much of the city now. You’ll have to fight. You will be chased and hunted down like a rat, with a fifty-kilogram pack on your back. They’re taking no prisoners up there. I’ll be surprised if we don’t lose half our Raiders in the next couple of months.
“Well, you’re the least bad of the sorry crew you came in with. The standard of physical fitness required is extremely rigorous. Show me you can climb sixty meters of knotted rope in one hundred and twenty seconds and we’ll talk.”
“Yes, sir. I won’t let you down.”
“I don’t want to see you again until you can prove yourself.”
“Yes sir.” Kassandra spun on her heel, and headed for the stairs. Once she was on the way down to level twenty-nine, she broke out into a broad grin.
----
Kassandra looked down over the edge of the walkway of level eighteen, segment F, into the depths below. She grasped a knotted rope, one of several that dangled from somewhere far above. Taking a deep breath, Kassandra climbed up the handrail, until she was balanced precipitously above the drop. The
rope already bore some of her weight. She moved her hands down slightly until they found a knot, and then pulled her whole body out, finding another knot with her feet. The rope swung out from the bridge, suspending Kassandra over the void. She looked up, and was preparing to climb, when two girls seemingly flew in out of the darkness, one either side of her, landing nimbly on their feet on the walkway.
“Whoa! What?” Kassandra stammered. The girls were identical, aged around twenty, with short, glossy brown hair, and dark green uniforms. They unclipped their harnesses and let go the ropes they had swung in on, which fell straight again.
“Oh, hi newbie,” the one on the left said between deep breaths. “Didn’t mean to scare ya. I’m Taygete, and this is Asterope. We were just rappelling. Defender training.”
“Oh. I’m going to try and become a Defender,” Kassandra said, clinging onto the rope for dear life.
“Your sixty-meter qualification?” Asterope asked.
“Yeah.”
“Here, come back on the walkway for a minute,” Taygete said, grabbing Kassandra’s rope and pulling it in towards the handrail.
Kassandra awkwardly got her feet back on the rail, twisted around so that her weight was balanced on it, and then hopped down next to the girls. “Kassandra,” she said, offering her hand. Both girls shook with her. Kassandra squinted. “Aren’t your names like…”
“The stars of the Pleiades?” Asterope said.
“Yeah.”
“Yep. The Seven Sisters. Except there are only two of us.”
“So… you survived an encounter with JC?” Taygete said.
“Only just. He was about to throw us off the railing our first night here.”
“Oh yeah, I heard about that,” Asterope said, half-chuckling. “Like five days ago now.”
“It’s not funny! He was really going to do it!” Kassandra said, indignantly.
“He wouldn’t have,” Taygete said. “Although I do sometimes wonder if he has a screw loose. Why do you want to be a Defender?”
“I want to be a Raider.”
Taygete raised her eyebrows. “Wow… okay. Your sixty-meter is only to get you into training. It only gets tougher after that.” Kassandra nodded. “And once you’ve been put through the mill, you have to do your AVA to become a Defender,” Taygete continued.
“AVA?”
“Think about what the letters look like,” Asterope said. “An up arrow, a down arrow, and then another up arrow. You go up two hundred meters of stairs, ten levels in all, rappel back down the same distance, and then climb back up it by rope. All in under thirty-five minutes.”
Kassandra’s eyes widened. “Oh…”
Taygete nodded. “Yep. Welcome to the jungle, newbie. See you around.” The sisters walked off, laughing, towards the center ring.
Asterope looked back over her shoulder. “If you want to look us up, we’re in 32E.”
“Okay,” Kassandra said, uncertainly. “Ugh,” she muttered, when they were out of earshot. She climbed back up the railing, grabbed the rope again, and began to climb.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Desperately Seeking...
“We’re out of here in thirty minutes, Dad,” Zara said, having met Kato in the hallway of the first class section of Revenant. “We finally got a docking slot at the ETI, for just long enough to disembark.”
Kato twisted his mouth to one side, and thought for a few moments. “Well, okay, honey. Just be careful.” He shook his head. “Everything’s coming undone very rapidly.”
“I—we—have to find her,” Zara said, defiantly. Akio, standing to her right, nodded. Kato sighed, and hugged Zara. He then turned to Akio, and awkwardly made a move to hug him. Akio reciprocated, and they embraced.
After he released Akio, he said to Zara: “How are you going to land at Lyon? Do the anti-government forces have control of the spaceport?”
“No. But, let’s try and find out the latest news before we set off,” Zara said. They headed back into their cabin. They had one small tote bag each. Zara turned on the wall display with her neural implants.
“In the thirteen days since humanity was thrown into grave chaos, one million people have now been evicted from Mars,” the news anchor said. “Meanwhile, US and allied troops have been traveling to Mars in order to root out and arrest those calling themselves the Martian Defense Force, before the movement gathers more followers. That rebel force has occupied the mines around the city of Lowland, as well as underground parts of Marineris. This could make them very difficult to root out…”
Zara sighed. “We have to get her off Earth. The conflict on Mars doesn’t look like it’s going to end quickly.”
“If it doesn’t, all else will be for naught,” Akio said. “Seung Yi’s not going to care why Mars wasn’t completely evacuated. If what you’ve told me about him—as someone who’s encountered him before—is even half-true, he’ll throw the Extinction Switch without a second thought.”
Zara’s jaw was set. She turned from the display to face Akio. “If Kassie’s got to face it, then I will too. I don’t really see how I could continue without her.”
Akio nodded. “Me too. Now, let’s get to the transfer shuttle.”
They made their way up to the center of the centrifuge section of Revenant. They were, of course, now in zero gravity. Akio and Zara glided through a short docking tunnel into the small craft. There were four such shuttles parked in the airlock. They were cylindrical and not much larger than a motor coach. They were intended only to transfer people to and from other points near the Revenant, so there was no need for large engines and fuel tanks. Having stowed their bags and strapped themselves in, Zara commanded the craft to make the eighty-kilometer trip to the ETI. The shuttle’s internal hatch clunked shut and sealed itself. The ingress tunnel retracted. A large iris door opened, exposing the small docking port to the vacuum of space. The craft glided out. Once it was well clear of the Revenant, its engines began a continuous burn for half a minute to lower their orbit. Forty minutes later, they would intercept the massive orbital station, for the last leg of their journey to Earth.
----
The shuttle craft was through the plasma-burning, streak-across-the-sky phase of reentry, and was gliding through the stratosphere. The cockpit door was fastened open, so that Zara and Akio, seated in the front row, could hear what was going on.
“Lyon space traffic control, we want to confirm approach and landing on ten-A, at fourteen-seventeen hours,” the pilot said.
Silence. Then, a voice spoke up. “Lyon Air and Space Port is now a military airbase of the New People’s Republic of France. No unauthorized traffic is permitted.”
“What? We already cleared to land here before departing the ETI.”
“We repeat, no landing is permitted. Force will be used if you attempt to land.”
Zara closed her eyes. “Oh, crap. Now what?”
“I need further instructions, Mrs. Nishimura,” came a voice from the cockpit. “We’ll be in the environs of Lyon in eighteen minutes.”
“Think, dammit,” Zara said to herself, rubbing her forehead. She turned to Akio. “Any bright ideas?”
“Land somewhere else?”
“Not going to work. Like the news said, the highways are shut down,” Zara said. “We’d be far from Lyon, and there’s no ground transportation to get there.”
“Wish we’d have taken a VTOL shuttle,” Akio said. “No need for a runway.” Then his eyes grew wide. “You know what? The highways! They’re probably empty! Let’s land on a road!”
Zara stared at him, blinking, for several seconds. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. “That’s both the best and worst idea you’ve ever had.” She turned to face the cockpit door, and relayed the plan to the stunned crew.
“But… it’s too narrow!” the pilot said. “If the wing clips a sign or a light pole, we’ll be dead! Same if there are vehicles on the road!”
“As the owner of
this craft, I am ordering you to land on the highway outside the city. If it’s not possible, you can do a go-round and try somewhere else. But, we have to get to Lyon, and no surface or air transport is available.” There was silence, but for the sound of rushing air outside. This went on for more than five minutes, bar the sound of chatter in hushed tones between the captain and copilot. The shuttle then began to bank steeply to the right, as it came in lower. This was followed by an equally sharp left turn.
Zara pointed out of the left window. “There it is!” The wide cylinder that was Lyon could be seen in the distance.
“We’re going to attempt the highway landing,” the pilot said. Meanwhile, buildings and roads grew larger below. Two more minutes went by, as the pilots reviewed checklists.
“Very good, Fabio,” Akio said. “Keep us posted.”
“Coming in hot!” Fabio said. “Brace position!” Zara and Akio both tucked their heads between their knees. Fields and highway exits flashed past. The road itself was not visible from the passenger cabin. They came in lower little by little. Zara looked at Akio, on her right. She squeezed his hand. The tops of light poles were visible and then… bump! The rumbling of wheels on asphalt could be heard. The craft decelerated. Then, from the cockpit: “Debris on the road! We can’t avoid it! The left wheel’s going to hit it! Brace! Brace! Brace!”
“Oh crap!” Akio said. The rush of air from outside continued, as they gradually slowed.
“Impact in five seconds!” Fabio said. Zara closed her eyes and held her breath. She gripped Akio’s hand hard. Boom! The cabin tipped violently to the right, and then sank slowly back down to level. “The tire’s burst! We’ll skid off the road!” No sooner had Fabio uttered the words than the craft was filled with a terrible screeching and rending of metal. The windows went dark. The shuttle spun to the left, off the road, and bounced violently on its belly as both undercarriage struts were torn off. Zara and Akio were showered with smashed fiberglass panels, lights, and locker doors from above, as the still-speeding shuttle carved a deep gash in a field. The hull bucked and twisted. They were thrown around like rag dolls, though still restrained by their seat belts.
The Extinction Switch: Book three of the Kato's War series Page 10