Authors: Robert Storey
♦
Professor Steiner sat looking at the open door. He’d been a prisoner since the Command Centre had been overrun by the military, acting on Joiner’s orders. He’d been fed and allowed out for the occasional walk, but he’d been denied access to any communication devices and he had no idea what the status of the base was or how the impact had affected the planet. Since he had been preparing for the impact for the last twenty-nine years, it was extremely frustrating, to say the least, that he’d missed the event and also been unable to help the GMRC respond to it. Still, the bulk of his work had long since been finalised, so he felt confident that the global community would have reacted appropriately.
What concerned him was Goodwin and his evacuees, and the hundreds of thousands of people left behind in Steadfast. He was also confused about being let out. What was Joiner up to now? Why lock him up for days on end and then suddenly let him go? It made no sense.
If you stay sitting here, you old fool
, he thought to himself,
you’ll never find out
. He finished off his meal and drank the rest of his water, then got up and walked out into freedom; his first port of call the Control Centre. He was soon walking through the doors to find Nathan overseeing a chaotic scene. Warning lights flashed on displays all over the room and telephones rang off the hook. A full contingent of staff occupied the workstations, but apparently none of them knew what they were doing.
‘Where is that air system failing?!’ Nathan shouted to a man over the far side of the room.
‘I don’t know, the power grid sensors for that section are down!’
Nathan threw his hands up in disgust.
‘Problems?’ Steiner said mildly.
Nathan looked round to see his friend standing behind him. ‘Professor!’ He strode over and embraced him. ‘Am I glad to see you! Samson let you out, then?’
‘He did. I take it this mess is the reason why?’
‘Yes, it seems we’re suffering power failures all over the base and critical systems are beginning to switch to backups. I don’t know why it’s all happening, but it started getting bad in the last twelve hours or so.’
‘You haven’t been able to rectify any of it?’
‘With this lot and me in charge? Not a chance. Most of the people here have been brought in from other divisions; they don’t have the expertise. Perhaps if the system was stable, we’d be just about okay, but time is not on our side right now.’
Steiner took off his jacket and hung it on the back of a nearby chair. He rolled up his sleeves, interlaced his fingers and stretched them out with the satisfying sound of cracking joints. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’
Nathan moved to one side, enabling Steiner to access the main command console. He tapped away at the keys. Windows and data sprang onto the screen at dizzying speed as he discarded the graphical user interface and drilled down into the code itself.
It seemed to Steiner that the elevators and exits had been deliberately tampered with. Chunks of data were missing and command lines erased from the system. Shaking his head, he put on a finger circlet and moved to the Control Centre’s large wall display. He grabbed a virtual schematics folder and opened an elevator shaft diagram, which he then merged with a live electrical field map. As the two came together, he saw that power supply trunk lines had been cut. He checked the other elevator mechanisms, which showed the same problem.
‘It seems when they disabled the elevators they also cut into power lines, quite a few of them.’
‘Can’t we switch to internal power? The reactors should easily be able to provide us with what we need.’
‘Usually, yes, but whoever did this has executed system overrides and massive amounts of computer command structure is just gone. Backups are online, but it’s only a matter of time before they start to fail, too.’
‘So they’ve not just trapped us down here, they’re trying to slowly kill us by catastrophic system failure?’
‘Perhaps,’ Steiner said.
‘Joiner?’ Nathan asked him.
‘Who else?’
‘He’s a piece of work,’ someone said from nearby.
Steiner and Nathan looked round to see Colonel Samson standing behind them. The fearsome officer moved past them to look around at the room’s array of screens, and said nothing more.
Steiner and Nathan looked at one another, Nathan’s eyebrows raised in mock shock that Samson had deigned to join them.
‘Did you want something, Colonel?’ Steiner said.
‘Just trying to find out what’s going on and when we can expect normal service to resume.’
‘Not yet, awhile, but your presence is actually quite timely.’
Samson turned to face him. ‘How so?’
‘We need to physically redirect power from non-critical systems. We’ll need some technicians, electricians and engineers. I need them rounded up and in a meeting room in less than half hour, can you do that?’
Samson nodded. ‘I’ll need a list and location for these people.’
‘Nathan will help you with that,’ Steiner said.
Nathan didn’t look too enamoured at the thought of working with the colonel,
but then who would?
Steiner reflected.
With the decision made, the two men left the room while Steiner worked on at the job in hand.
Ten minutes later, Nathan returned to the Control Centre. ‘All done?’ Steiner asked him.
‘Samson’s on it,’ Nathan said. ‘I don’t get that man, he’s seething with anger one minute and acting like nothing has happened the next.’
‘He’s a conflicted soul, of that there’s no doubt.’ Steiner continued to work on Steadfast’s systems for a moment before he glanced in Nathan’s direction. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s been happening during my confinement?’
‘Goodwin got out with the majority of the Darklight forces.’
‘How many civilians did he take with him?’ Steiner said, already knowing the answer.
‘We’re thinking around thirty thousand, but that’s a guesstimate, really.’
‘Joiner must have acted swiftly to head off my evacuation command.’
Nathan nodded. ‘AG5 hit as scheduled,’ he continued, ‘but there have been some complications.’
Steiner raised a quizzical eyebrow and Nathan went on tell him about AG5 Minor and its impact in India, along with the dust cloud’s rapid spread across the upper atmosphere.
‘The incident in India is tragic,’ Steiner said, ‘although there was always a risk that break up might occur during its final transition towards Earth. To be honest, it could have been a lot worse; some had predicted mass impacts, so just one is almost a good result. I can say, though, that the speed of the dust cloud’s expansion is extremely unexpected. We had protocols in place to cover such an occurrence, but even so, the GMRC and governments would have been unprepared for it. There must have been some unrest as a consequence?’
‘You’re not wrong,’ Nathan replied, ‘some governments didn’t show much restraint when it came to enforcing curfews and populations were in turmoil in many countries. To be honest, though, that transition wasn’t the biggest problem. The Chinese, in their infinite wisdom, decided the asteroid’s arrival was an opportune time to launch a full scale nuclear assault on South Korea and Japan.’
Steiner felt stunned. He knew the Chinese always had a hidden agenda; what government didn’t, these days? But to launch an attack when the world was at its most vulnerable was insane. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘Are they out of their minds?’
‘You’d think, but on reflection it was perhaps a predictable move on their part. When better to strike than when everyone else is looking elsewhere? The Chinese have got the biggest budgets and manpower, so they could afford to prepare for both preservation from the meteor, and offensive planning and manoeuvring, at the same time. Given our government’s response, I think the Chinese, in their view, made the right choice.’
‘We haven’t retaliated, then?’ Steiner said.
‘No, some wishy washy statement was aired, but that was about it. We’re at DEFCON 1, mind you.’
‘Didn’t Japan and South Korea fight back?’
‘They did, but the effectiveness of China’s missile shield left them virtually unscathed.’
‘My God, what’s happening now?’
‘The last we heard China had moved in ground forces to secure the two countries. What’s left of them, anyway. Most of the major cities have been destroyed. Apparently some of the bombs weren’t nuclear; they were some kind of new device with mass destruction and zero residual fallout in the form of radiation. The People’s Republic of China has expanded into an empire almost overnight.’
Steiner processed all the information he’d just received and then put it to one side to digest later. More pressing matters had to be addressed, like getting out of Steadfast. ‘We have another problem,’ Steiner told Nathan.
‘What now?’
‘Communications have been disrupted: cut and jammed.’
‘He certainly doesn’t want anyone else getting out of here, does he?’
‘The man’s paranoia is working overtime,’ Steiner said. ‘Add to this fact that he cares nothing for the lives of those around him and you’ve got a very dangerous mix, especially when it’s someone with his resources.’
‘Professor, I don’t want to state the obvious,’ Nathan said, keeping his voice low to ensure he wasn’t overheard, ‘but we really can’t afford to be down here if what you found is accurate.’
‘We have some time on our side,’ Steiner told him.
‘Will it be enough?’
‘We shall see.’
‘Should we inform the rest of the base?’ Nathan said. ‘They all have a right to know.’
Steiner pondered the question, and then shook his head. ‘It would be unwise to cause further panic. It would push people over the edge. We must galvanise the workforce and military, not divide them. No, what we know must stay between us.’
Nathan didn’t look convinced at this course of action, but Steiner knew it was the right decision to make. He considered their options for a moment. ‘Nathan, I think it would be an idea for you to arrange the relocation of all personnel to the lower chambers.’
‘Won’t that arouse suspicion?’
‘Not if there is something to validate the move.’
‘Such as?’ Nathan said.
‘Critical systems failure in upper level chambers. I’ll issue a base-wide alert.’
‘That should work,’ Nathan agreed, and then paused for a moment, clearly torn as to what to say next. ‘Professor?’ he said at last.
Steiner arched a brow.
‘Professor, I betrayed your trust. I’m so sorry.’
Steiner looked at Nathan with sympathy. ‘The Director can be a persuasive man.’
‘You knew?’ Nathan said in shock.
Steiner nodded. ‘I was cooped up for days with little to occupy my mind. I realised someone close to me must have informed Joiner of my plans and you were the only one I’d confided in. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.’
‘I am so very sorry, Professor. I only told him about your plans for Darklight, nothing else, I swear. I don’t know what else to say.’
‘You’ve already said it and I accept.’
‘Don’t you want to know why?’ Nathan said, full of sorrow.
‘I don’t need to know the reasons, Nathan. You’re a good man, but a good man can be corrupted, like any other.’
‘You wouldn’t be,’ Nathan said.
Steiner shook his head. ‘None of us can know what we would do if extenuating circumstances were arrayed against us. I am no different. Whatever Joiner’s hold on you was, or is, I don’t need to know right now. Perhaps in future when things are less—’
‘Fubared?’ Nathan suggested.
Steiner smiled. ‘Yes, I think that turn of phrase describes our position quite succinctly,’ he said, patting Nathan on the shoulder as they turned back to the screens and chaos that was U.S.S.B. Steadfast.
Chapter Nineteen
The small tropical Central American country of El Salvador lies on the western rim of the Pacific Basin, sandwiched between the rolling waves of Earth’s greatest ocean, with Guatemala to the north and Honduras to the east and south. Known as a surfer’s paradise, the hot and humid Spanish speaking nation consisted of small towns and cities with their fair share of squalid deprivation and corrupt bureaucratic oversight. Outside these urban oases the pristine beaches and rolling landscapes reasserted the natural untouched beauty that drew in travellers from the world over.
Dotted with volcanic craters, often doubling as great lakes, a high central plateau dominated El Salvador’s interior, framed by parallel mountain ranges and separated from the seas by a narrow coastal plain. Located on this strip of lowland, and south of the capital city of San Salvador, sprawled the runways of Comalapa International Airport, where an hour before Sarah, Trish and Jason had safely arrived, fleeing the imminent arrival of the long awaited asteroid. Transported alongside them were Sarah’s crates containing the bones and red canister they’d unearthed in South Africa, the same bulky loads that had been testing Jason’s resolve ever since they’d collected them from the revolving baggage carousel.
‘We can’t lug this lot around with us all the time,’ Jason said to Sarah, stopping to rest the heaviest container on the floor. ‘Why can’t we leave it all at airport storage?’
‘Seriously,’ Sarah said, ‘you expect me to trust airport security in El Salvador? My previous finds have been swiped from a secure vault, so some tinpot storage facility isn’t going to protect it very well. No, the finds stay with us at all times.’
‘We’re going to have to repack them in smaller containers, then,’ Jason told her, ‘otherwise they’ll slow us down big time.’
‘Fine, get some strong plastic postal tubes. Most of the bones will fit inside and we can wrap them, too. That should make them light enough to carry about between the three of us, attached to our backpacks. The canister can go in with the scanner and our other equipment, but there’s no getting away from it. They go where we go.’
With their course set, they caught a bus to the city of San Salvador, where they arrived a few hours later. Once they’d disembarked, Jason went off to source the tubing while Trish, left at a cafe with all the luggage, was tasked with organising passage into Honduras by computer phone. Sarah, in the meantime, was out looking for an ultrasonic vibration unit like the one they’d abandoned back at the cave site. Some time later she had found her way back to Trish, who’d been joined by Jason. The hustle and bustle of the city flowed past them as they sat in the shade with a couple of iced drinks. Sarah flumped down into an empty chair and called over a waitress to order her own beverage.