Jessica still couldn’t help but wonder, cosmically speaking, how so many asteroids had found their way into the same narrow trajectory. It was a question she’d asked herself many times. It seemed crazy, unbelievable, almost, but greater minds than hers accepted it as truth, so if it was good enough for them, then it was good enough for her. But the nagging doubt remained. What if they don’t know what they’re doing? What if the powers-that-be are so caught up in lying to each other and hiding their secrets and battling their own personal demons that they missed something obvious? ‘Which is what?’ she murmured to herself.
‘What’s what?’ a voice said from above her.
‘I was wondering how so many asteroids ended up on a collision course with Earth,’ Jessica said.
‘Not that again.’ Eric’s youthful features appeared over the edge of the bunk bed above her.
‘It is odd, though, don’t you think? Seven asteroids, arriving in six years.’
Eric screwed up his face. ‘It’s as I said before, they were funnelled into our orbit. Bic explained it to me, or maybe it was the professor. Either way, I think it’s to do with the Earth’s gravitational pull, drawing them in to us like a magnet. Something like that, anyway.’
Jessica grunted. Both Bic and the professor had told her something similar. The theory made sense for one or two objects, maybe even three, but seven? And if Bic was behind the explanation, she doubted it could be trusted, nor for that matter could the professor’s, especially considering his penchant for secrets. It was the reporter in her. She needed the facts. She needed answers. Which was why she’d never been happy as a newsreader. It had lacked autonomy. It was almost as if freedom of speech no longer existed in a job which supposedly championed it. If you couldn’t speak the truth, then what was left? As she wrestled with the fact that something didn’t ring true, Eric disappeared, as he lay back down.
Of course, her musings were just a distraction from the dread she now found herself confronting head on. With Bic having turned on them, she was left with the stark possibility that her family was in grave danger. The professor had said he’d do his best to keep them safe, but he was one man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. So, it was left up to Jessica to find a way back to England to do what she should have done in the beginning: keep her family close.
A sound from the bunk bed above made her pause. She could hear Eric speaking and he didn’t sound pleased. Another voice made itself heard; Jessica’s eyes narrowed and she jumped up, grabbed a handrail and hauled herself up to Eric’s bunk.
The young German looked at her, his expression distraught.
‘Eric, what is it?’
‘He says he’s destroyed Washington. He says he’s killed the professor.’
Jessica looked at the transparent tablet in Eric’s hand and snatched it from him.
‘Ah, Jessica Klein,’ Bic said. ‘I was hoping you would be there.’
‘Is it true?’ she said, fearing the worst.
‘See for yourself.’ Bic’s image vanished and a scene of devastation appeared in its place.
‘You murdered all those people.’ Jessica felt sick and then recalled something. ‘The GMRC HQ was protected from a nuclear blast. You’re lying.’
‘Am I, Jessica Klein? The professor was en route to your ship aboard a Chinook helicopter when the shockwave hit. He will not have survived. His time had come,’ – Bic paused – ‘as had your family’s.’
‘What?’ Jessica said. ‘What did you say?’
Video footage appeared on screen and Jessica’s eyes grew wide. Her hands shook as her whole world shrunk to a single moment in time, a single image.
The video panned round over the bodies of two dead children, which lay on the floor beside the figure of a man, who sprawled protectively over them. Jessica let out a whimper and then she dropped the screen and screamed, shrieked and howled with despair.
♦
‘Jessica?’ Eric said, as her hysterical shrieks continued. He picked up the screen and his eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Why, Da Muss Ich? Why have you done this?’
‘Because I must, Eric.’ Bic’s face reappeared and he gave Eric a sad look. ‘It had to be. As did the professor’s death. However, there is one other thing you should know.’
A siren wailed in the room, drowning out Jessica’s heartrending sobs.
Eric looked up and then back down at the screen. ‘Bic, what have you done?!’
‘I’m sorry, Eric, but everything has to end, and for you – as for Jessica Klein and John Henry – that time is now.’
Eric threw the tablet aside and leapt from the bed. Yanking open the hatch, he emerged into chaos. Sailors ran this way and that, shouting orders. Sirens sounded throughout the giant ship and Eric grabbed a passing officer. ‘What’s going on?!’
‘I don’t know!’ The man shrugged off Eric’s hand and hurried away to disappear into the melee.
Eric swore. He rushed back into his quarters and grabbed the hysterical newsreader. ‘Jessica, something’s wrong. We have to leave!’
‘My children, oh, my God, my darlings, my Evan.’ Jessica collapsed to the floor. Eric tried to haul her back to her feet, but she wasn’t for moving, and the young German felt his terror rise.
‘Eric!’
Eric whirled round to see a man framed in the doorway.
‘Mr President?’ Eric said, in a state of shock.
♦
In an instant, John Henry took in the scene before him. He rushed forward, picked up the diminutive figure of the sobbing newsreader, and moved back into the corridor. Eric followed him out, and said over the tumult, ‘What’s happening?!’
‘The GMRC has found us.’ John adjusted his grip on Jessica, who clung to him like a child. ‘We’re under attack.’
‘No,’ Eric said. ‘It’s Bic!’
John hurried down the corridor, with Eric and four armed marines at his heels.
‘Bic?’ John said, making a sharp left turn and moving up a flight of stairs.
‘He’s destroyed Washington, the professor’s dead and we’re next!’
John glanced at Eric in shock. ‘Destroyed Washington?’
Eric nodded.
‘Professor Steiner’s dead?’
Eric’s eyes filled with tears again and he gave another nod.
John’s expression hardened and a marine said, ‘Sir, we need to keep moving. The admiral wants you airborne.’
It was John’s turn to nod. Just as he was about to head for the flight deck, a thunderous rumble made the floor beneath their feet vibrate. Everyone paused. The sensation ceased and silence fell, and John said, ‘What was that?’
The ship’s hull creaked and groaned, and the awful shrieking screech of tearing metal filled the air.
‘Move!’ a marine said.
Water exploded into the corridor from all around them.
A marine grabbed Jessica from John and another pushed him up another flight of stairs. ‘Go! GO! GO!!’
The ship lurched and John found himself running upwards, chased by a flood of water which rushed up from below.
Sirens continued to wail. The lights flickered and died. Darkness descended and John tripped and fell. Red emergency lighting switched on and John found himself struggling to his feet as salt water washed up at terrifying speed around his ankles, knees and then to his waist.
‘Keep moving!’ a marine said, pushing them onwards.
They waded through freezing water, then climbed up another steep staircase and entered a dry area, which led up to yet more steps.
Frantic moments passed in a blur and John emerged out onto the aircraft carrier’s flight deck, with Eric, and the four marines – one of whom still carried Jessica – close behind.
The sight that greeted them shocked John to his core. High-powered weapons systems attacked the skies above them, the expulsion of thousands of bullets a rapid whir of sound. Wave after wave of missiles descended from above and the ship’s laser defences lit up the
day with green beams of light.
All around the USS Enterprise, other ships in the already crippled fleet were burning. Flames and smoke poured out of windows and superstructures, hulls and lifeboats alike. Men and women, some alight, threw themselves into broiling seas.
A huge explosion rocked the ship and a great rent appeared in the deck. Metal shrieked, and John watched in horror as the ship tore itself in two.
Marine One teetered on the edge of the widening fissure and then toppled into the sea, which now flooded in between the ship’s separate halves.
A figure moved past him. It was Jessica Klein. The English newsreader gazed out at the nightmarish vision, her tear-streaked face as dismayed as everyone else’s.
‘Mr President,’ said one of the marines, ‘we need to get you to a lifeboat.’
John touched Jessica’s shoulder. She looked at him with haunted eyes and said, ‘This is our fault. This is all our fault.’
‘We have to go,’ he said.
John took her hand and she allowed him to lead her away to the edge of the deck, but as they searched for a lifeboat, a distant sound made John turn.
On the far horizon, where many of the fleet’s slower ships laboured in their wake, a blinding light filled the sky.
‘Avert your eyes!’ someone shouted.
John did so, as Jessica turned into him, neither of them looking at the terrible radiance.
A massive cloud rose up from the ocean’s surface and, what seemed like moments later, the blast wave hit with a great rush of air. John was thrown from the deck.
Disorientated, he staggered to his feet and realised he’d fallen onto a gangway below, along with Jessica, Eric and the marines, but one of the soldiers wasn’t so lucky; he disappeared into rolling waves.
‘Unhook the clamps!’
John turned to see a second marine struggling to get an inflatable lifeboat free.
John found himself helping and no sooner had the boat been released than they threw it overboard, the craft inflating as it touched the water below. Jessica, Eric, and then John himself, leapt out into mid-air, before plunging into icy waters.
Bursting to the surface, John swam to the life raft and hauled himself into it, just as a marine helped Jessica and a floundering Eric in beside them.
Half of the aircraft carrier sank beneath the waves, the frightening speed of its descent matched by that of other ships around them. The sea was thick with bodies, alive and dead.
‘What’s that?’ Jessica said, pointing.
John squinted. ‘It looks like, it looks like ...’
‘Tsunami,’ Eric said, his voice trembling.
The marine next to him swore and as the wave reared above them, John’s eyes grew wide and his silent scream arrowed into the heavens, a scream that begged for divine help he knew wouldn’t come. The marine zipped up the dinghy’s opening, just as the wave hit them in a roar. The world spun and the tiny lifeboat vanished from view. The President of the United States, along with the remainder of his naval power, drifted down into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. Their end had come, but for those left on the surface, their journey was about to begin. An invisible enemy approached from the skies above and few on the surface even knew it could be stopped, let alone how. Humanity had torn itself apart from the inside out, the lies of the few had spread to the many, creating a denial that would end them all. If only they had awoken and seen the truth of their leaders’ actions before it was too late.
If only fiction were fiction, and not reality.
And if ifs and buts were honesty and truth, there’d be no one left to con, no one that is ... but ourselves.
Chapter Two Hundred Ninety-Four
A Sabre jet aircraft cruised through Earth’s upper atmosphere, the scenes far below a distant tapestry of ocean, land and sky. Sunlight glinted off the plane’s dark exterior, its sweptback wings giving the craft the look of a missile. Within the cockpit, Ophion Nexus stretched out his neck until its tension was released with a satisfying crack. Resting back in his seat, S.I.L.V.E.R.’s recently dethroned leader pressed a button and the craft’s glowing afterburners dimmed to blackness. Silence filled the interior, and ice-blue light from the dials and head-up-display reflected off Ophion’s chrome armour, and off his helmet, which rested beside him on the empty co-pilot’s seat.
It had been many hours since he’d left Washington D.C., chased away by the threat of a host of S.I.L.V.E.R. operatives he’d once led, operatives sent to rid the world not just of John Henry and Professor Steiner, but of Ophion himself. The Committee had finally turned on him, after all these years. Selene had made it quite clear he was to be eliminated, although, if he was being honest with himself, he’d expected it to happen sooner. He’d always known he was too good at his job to be allowed to live. He knew too much and he possessed something which was always dangerous for any assassin. He possessed the ability to think for himself, an ability that had become a liability, at least to those who sought to control him. Ophion smiled, as the notion amused him. No one could control him, no one, not ever. They might have thought they were using him as a means to an end, but Ophion knew it had always been the other way around. He’d been willing to accept the work provided by the Committee, work that challenged his skill. He thought back with fondness to his time in Sanctuary Proper and the beasts that stalked its abandoned halls. It had been the first time he’d ever been tested to his limits and it had felt good, very good, verging on blissful. Time had slowed to such sweet motion he’d felt each movement of his powerful physique in exquisite detail, down to the smallest muscle group. And yet now he was a lone operative with no direction except his own. In reality, that was how it had always been, it was just that no one else had known it except him. And when it came down to it, he was the only one that mattered.
Ophion did have one problem, however. And it was one that intrigued him. What did he do next? He knew the hacker’s location. Did he seek out the man who’d caused so many so much trouble the world over, or did he seek shelter from the coming storm in an underground base of his choosing, for – unlike everyone else left on the surface – he had the ability to penetrate any facility, anywhere, at any time. He could, of course, choose both options, and yet he felt the tug of intuition leading him to the latter of the two. Why chase down the hacker? he thought. Why waste my time?
Because you want to know if he is where you think he is, he told himself.
Ophion considered the dark of space above him. Why do I care where he is? he thought.
I don’t, was his answer.
Ophion made a decision, plotted a course on the aircraft’s nav system, and prepared to head back to the surface. He pressed a button to initialise the descent, but nothing happened. He pressed it again, reworked the command, but still nothing happened, until at the third time of asking the craft’s jets fired up with a rumbling purr.
Ophion grasped the joystick, but instead of the vehicle obeying his input, it headed upwards instead of down, the speed of ascent increasing exponentially.
Ophion tried to disconnect the system, but nothing worked.
‘I took the liberty of changing your destination, Ophion Nexus,’ said a familiar voice.
Ophion almost tensed, but his training ensured his surprise was minuscule, his slow, steady heartbeat as calm as when he was in the height of battle.
‘I wondered if I’d hear from you,’ Ophion said, gazing out of the cockpit window as the distance from the surface increased.
‘I thought you were on your way to find me,’ Bic said. ‘I was disappointed you decided otherwise. Aren’t you at least curious to see if I am where you think I am?’
‘Curiosity is for the distracted mind,’ Ophion said, his deep voice unwavering.
‘Meaning yours is as sharp as your blades. I understand.’
‘This craft is not built for space flight,’ Ophion said, knowing it was so. ‘If you seek to kill me, why not fly me into the ground, or a building?’
‘
I have made some upgrades to the craft,’ Bic said. ‘Or rather, the mechanics did, at my request. It’s amazing what computer printouts can accomplish if they originate from the right source, don’t you agree?’
Ophion noticed a message appear on the screen:
SABRE ENGINE ACTIVATION IMMINENT
‘You might want to strap yourself in,’ Bic said. ‘You’re going on a little ride.’
Ophion donned his helmet and secured his harness, just as a second message revealed itself:
SABRE ENGINE ... ENGAGED
The aircraft shot forward in a blaze of light, its yaw twisting its trajectory around the curve of the Earth at lightning speed. Far below him, Ophion glimpsed the surface receding further as he entered deep Earth orbit.
Soon after, the engine’s propulsion ended, leaving the Sabre jet scything through space like an extraterrestrial wayfarer.
Sunlight glinted past the planet’s circular horizon and Ophion took in the majesty of his home world and realised it was quite beautiful, quite perfect. He suddenly experienced a deep sense of peace, far beyond that which he normally experienced, a peace which emanated from within like a fire in a long-cold hearth.
Ancient Origins: Books 4 - 6 (Ancient Origins Boxset Book 2) Page 145