The Lazarus Protocol: A Sci-Fi Corporate Technothriller (The SynCorp Saga Book 1)

by Pourteau, Chris

  Staring out the window of the Walmart store he’d converted into a command post, Graves watched the baking heat of summertime Phoenix ripple off the pavement in waves. He’d been ordered here to yet another crisis point to manage yet another weather catastrophe. And while the Joint Chiefs rarely denied a request for resources or men, he just as rarely ever felt like he had enough to meet the threat. On days like this, his job seemed like a never-ending problem he couldn’t ever solve.

  How do you defend against the wrath of Mother Nature? His job had become less a determined dedication to helping his fellow citizens and more a low-grade ache of helplessness. Of feeling, sometimes literally, like he was spitting into a gale-force wind.

  No, he decided, hurricanes ended, but droughts just went on and on. He’d take a hurricane any day of the week.

  Phoenix was dying. He knew it, his people knew it, and the refugees he’d pulled from the suburbs to the camps knew it too. The only question was how long it would take.

  A preventable tragedy. A hundred years of piss-poor water management and stupid, unregulated growth in the middle of the fucking desert had sealed the city’s fate.

  “Sir?” A young captain appeared at his elbow. Hannah Jansen was a recent West Point grad and one of his most promising recruits. She wore her kinky dark hair cropped close to her scalp, which gave her a tough look. She’d told him her great-great-grandmother had died in Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and her grandmother, a child then, had been saved by the Army; that’s why she wanted to serve in the Disaster Mitigation Corps. Graves wished he had a hundred young officers like her. Dedicated, educated, and above all, motivated.

  “We’ve got word from Tucson, sir.” She stood at attention, her jaw tight. Jansen didn’t rattle easily.

  “How bad is it?”

  “The mayor ordered a mandatory evacuation over the YourVoice network. ”

  Graves bit back a curse. Second only to the weather enemy were these shortsighted politicians and their social-media habits.

  “Get me the Tucson mayor on the line ASAP.”

  No matter how much he pleaded with them to think their decisions through before making them public, the goddamned politicians always made the expedient choice, whether it was the right one or not. Millions of people displaced by disaster, and all they could think about was losing their job in the next election.

  “I have the mayor for you, sir,” Jansen said.

  A Hispanic man in his mid-thirties appeared on the vidscreen. The mayor’s lips were set in a firm line. “Julio—”

  “Don’t start with me, Colonel,” the young man snapped. “We have no water here. Zero . The trucks you promised would arrive this morning are still not here.” One flick of Graves’s eyes, and Jansen darted away to investigate. “These people are scared and they need answers—and water . We need water .”

  Jansen was back. She scribbled a note on his blotter: hijacked .

  “We’ll send another convoy, Mr. Mayor,” Graves said. “This afternoon, under armed guard. It’ll be there by nightfall.”

  “Too late, Colonel. I’ve already put out the word on YourVoice and I’m not going to flip-flop on this again. Fool me once.”

  Graves had talked him into reversing his evac order once before, and Julio Martinez had been crucified for it by the WorldNet trolls.

  “At least let me send buses up to move people to Phoenix in an orderly fashion.” When Martinez started to protest, Graves cut him off. “If everyone drives their own car, we’ll just make the problem worse. ”

  In the sunniest place in the country, where people were literally dying from too much solar energy, there was still a high concentration of gas-powered cars. The very rich and the very poor, operating internal combustion engines for very different reasons.

  “You don’t get it, Colonel. These people are leaving Tucson. For good. They’re loading up cars and trailers with all their stuff because they are not coming back. They’re taking everything, their boats—”

  “Did you say boats?” Graves resisted the urge to laugh out loud. He was fighting a losing war against a mega-drought and these people were towing boats to Phoenix?

  “I don’t expect you to understand, Colonel, sitting in your cushy office in Phoenix, but these people’s lives are being upended—”

  “Thank you, Julio. We’ll do our best to accommodate these new refugees. If you’ll excuse me, I have preparations to make.” He ended the call as Tucson’s mayor opened his mouth to reply.

  Graves closed his eyes. One one-thousand. Two one-thousand ….

  “You okay, sir?” Jansen asked.

  “Yeah.” Graves surveyed the busy floor of his command center as he counted his frustration away.

  The clothing racks and shelving had been cleared, the contents confiscated and stockpiled for distribution to refugees—the Consumer Goods Confiscation and Disaster Relief Act in action. All those refugees needed tents to live in and at least two square meals a day.

  The resulting large, open space of the Walmart floor had been sectioned off into grids, giving the impression of order. The Red Cross Section was a beehive of activity. The refugee influx had doubled since he’d ordered all the water for agriculture across the state diverted to Phoenix. The Power Section was calm. The power grid, heavily fed by solar, was the least of their worries. The colonel’s eyes landed on the nearly empty Security Section. The Arizona National Guard was heavily supplemented by regular Army. The combined forces had their hands full keeping looters out of the empty suburbs and securing the few ground wells still yielding water.

  Graves sighed. Now they had to provide armed escorts for water trucks as well. What kind of douchebag would hijack a water truck in the middle of a thousand-year drought?

  Jansen cleared her throat. She was wearing her data glasses, her right eye hidden behind the glare of data streaming across the lens.

  “We found the trucks, sir, in west Phoenix, in a warehouse owned by a black market gang. Do you want us to send in a team?”

  Graves counted to five before he answered in a measured tone. Black marketeers were everywhere, scoring profit off misery. And they were no doubt well-armed. “Tell Major Okunye I want that water back in our custody ASAP. Full tactical gear, deadly force is authorized.”

  “Yes, sir.” Her lens flashed as she subvocalized a command.

  Graves felt the sudden need to move, to burn some energy. “With me, Lieutenant.”

  He strode across the white linoleum to the Water Section. Captain Margaret Chou looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Her uniform was rumpled, her complexion ashen under her light-brown skin. She set aside a cup of coffee and stood when she saw Graves coming.

  “Colonel,” she said in a voice as fatigued as she looked. “You’ve heard about the hijacking?”

  Graves nodded. “Okunye’s got a team on it, but it’s only one convoy. Tucson has fallen, so we’re anticipating another wave of refugees in the next few hours.”

  Chou’s face contracted. She led Grave and Jansen to the city map. Green dots showed active water wells, red x’s dry ones. The red far outweighed the green. The Phoenix suburbs were color-coded as well: red shading for mandatory evacuation zones, yellow for recommended. Graves’s eyes scanned the familiar names: Buckeye, Chandler, Mesa, and the rest.

  “We’re bringing as much water as we can by tanker,” Chou was saying, “but we’re not even close to keeping up with the pace of usage. The groundwater situation is bad, but at least it’s stable. The Red Cross is running distribution at the active wells, with the Guard providing security. Like I said, not good but stable.”

  She changed screens. “This is what I need you to see, sir.”

  Graves studied the image. The bright blue line cutting across the map was the Central Arizona Project, Phoenix’s lifeline in the desert. The CAP provided nearly three million acre-feet of water a year, straight from the Colorado River to supply the entire region, including agriculture and water for Phoenix proper. The adjoining gra
ph of water availability showed a bump when the Disaster Mitigation Corps had shut down the water supply to agriculture over two months ago. There were smaller bumps as Graves had isolated suburbs around the city, and then a final surge when Tucson went offline two weeks ago.

  But the CAP’s supply also trended lower. Small, but noticeable over the span of weeks.

  “I know there’s a drought going on, but why does it keep going down?” Graves asked.

  “Exactly, sir.” Chou pulled up another graph and laid it over the CAP supply line. “The story we’re getting from the engineers up in Lake Havasu is that our supply is being reduced proportionally to reservoir levels, in accordance with the city’s water rights. And that’s been true—until ten days ago.” She pointed to the slope of the line over the past two weeks. The drop-off for the CAP was much steeper than the reservoir supply’s decline.

  “They’re cheating us,” Graves said.

  “That’s what the data’s telling me, sir.”

  “And you’ve talked to them?”

  “They’ve been giving me the runaround on releasing this data.” Chou offered a faint smile. “I pulled a few favors with some whitehat hackers I know to get this. I also conducted a drone flyby for some on-the-ground stats. It checks out, sir.” She held her commanding officer’s gaze. “They’re definitely shorting us.”

  Graves ran his knuckles across the stubble of his chin. “What about Department of Interior?”

  Chou shrugged. “I just got off the phone with them. I showed them the data, and they were pretty pissed I even had it. They said they’ll consider launching an investigation. They’ll get back to me next week.”

  Graves chewed his lip as he considered the chart .

  “Sir? If I may?” Chou’s face was pinched but determined.

  “Spit it out, Maggie.”

  “This investigation line is bullshit,” Chou said, her voice heated. “I think someone’s on the take, sir. The water in that dam is being shifted to California and once it’s gone, it’s gone. What we’re dealing with now is bad, but it’s about to get a whole lot worse if we don’t get the CAP back online. I recommend a backup plan if the discussion with Washington doesn’t yield immediate results.”

  Graves regarded her with a wry expression. “You’re a cynic, Captain, but I think you’re right.” His position gave him the authority to commandeer utilities for the public good, but taking over California’s main source of water was a step that would rile Washington. Served them right.

  Graves turned to Jansen. “Tell Major Okunye to draw up a tactical battle plan to take over operation of the Lake Havasu pumping station. He should be ready to brief the captain and myself by 1800 hours.”

  “I think that’s the right call, sir,” Chou said.

  “Let’s hope it’s not needed.”

  Jansen followed him from the Water Section. “Intel needs to see you, sir. Priority one.”

  Graves double-timed it to the Intel Section. A second lieutenant who looked barely out of high school greeted him with a salute. His name badge read Perkins .

  “You new here, Perkins?” Graves asked in a gruff tone.

  “Second day, sir.”

  The kid looked so nervous, Graves thought he might swallow his tongue. The colonel shot a look to Jansen that said: He’s standing in as intel duty officer on his second day?

  “Well?” Graves said instead. “What is it?”

  The lieutenant guided them to a massive wall with multiple vidscreens and nodded to an equally young enlisted woman. The image changed to a drone feed showing a line of six people walking abreast through a desiccated suburb.

  “What am I looking at?” Graves tried to control his impatience.

  “Sorry, sir. One second.” Perkins leaned over another console and zoomed in on the figures. Three men, three women, all dressed in dusty jeans and tank tops. The drone’s viewpoint changed as it arced overhead to hover behind them. “There.” He stepped back as if the answer was obvious.

  “What am I looking at, Perkins? I don’t see the significance of six people walking down a street as a major intel threat.”

  “Their necks, sir,” Jansen interrupted. “Look at the tattoos.”

  “Exactly,” Perkins said, pleased with himself. “New Earthers. Neos.”

  A chill swept up Graves from the base of his spine as he squinted at the enlarged image of a man’s neck showing a tattooed split image of a woman’s face and the planet earth. The New Earth Order, followers of a mysterious WorldNet prophet named Cassandra, who directed her disciples to certain death in climate-related disasters. He’d seen it play out at other extreme weather events—a Corpus Christi hurricane, an Oregon wildfire, a California earthquake.

  All those prior events had one thing in common: when the Neos showed up, things were about to get much worse. His mind ripped through the possibilities —

  “Sir? I think I know what it is,” Jansen said. She pointed at the screen. The drone operator had zoomed out, giving them a wide-angle view of the desert. A wall of clouds blotted out the horizon. It crawled across the desert like a slow, wasting disease.

  “Dust storm?” Perkins asked.

  A fork of lightning ripped through the inky blackness onscreen.

  “Thousands of people,” Graves whispered.

  Alarms began whooping around him as the storm showed up on radar.

  “The refugees from Tucson,” Jansen said. “They’re on the highway. They’ll be buried by the storm.”

  “That’s not a storm.” Graves exhaled, feeling helpless again. “It’s a mass grave, falling from the sky.”

  Chapter 3

  Ming Qinlao • LUNa City, the Moon

  From the Moon, it really did look like a big, blue marble hanging in black space.

  Ming Qinlao studied the subtle white swirl of clouds on distant Earth. If she squinted and was patient, she could see them slowly painting their patterns over the oceans. She remembered gazing up with her father at clouds just like these when she was a little girl. They’d made a game of it, each racing to be the first to find the most exotic animal in their soft designs.

  She blinked away her childhood memories, the woman asserting herself once more over the girl. That had been a long time ago. Clouds, blue sky, open air … Ming didn’t really miss them.

  The view of the planet from this distance was simple, almost heavenly. But on the ground, she knew, it was a different story. She’d read just yesterday how citizens of Arizona were fleeing their homes for lack of drinking water. Floods, fires, droughts. Mother Earth was angry and mankind, like fleas on a dog’s back, scrambled for survival while the planet scratched to get rid of them.

  By comparison, life on the Moon was simple, tranquil even. She worked, she ate, she slept, she loved. And that was really all Ming needed. A simple life of order and purpose.

  “Ma’am,” a voice said with quiet insistence, interrupting her daydreams.

  Ming’s gaze dropped from the stars into the ancient lunar caldera, where the half-finished dome of LUNa City waited. Management didn’t like their precious engineers soaking up radiation on the Moon’s surface, but she justified her afternoon excursions as work inspections. Tiny, pressure-suited men, the yellow safety lights on their backpacks making them look like honeybees from this distance, crawled across the structural skeleton. Flickers of intense, white light flared across its surface as they welded.

  “Just another minute, Ban. Please.” She did her best to keep the irritation out of her voice.

  “Very well, ma’am.”

  Ban never looked at Earth, she noticed. He’d made his choice to stay moonbound long ago. Physically, Earth was no longer an option for him. Not, at least, without a long, painful rehabilitation regimen. Living in space made the human body lazy.

  He’s probably counting out sixty precious seconds right now , Ming thought, imagining the clockwork of her escort’s mind clicking and calculating as he paced behind her.

  Ban was a good man,
but his constant presence wore on her. She understood the company just wanted to protect their investment by providing Ban. With all the competition in the job market from Taulke and the other space development companies, engineers willing to take Moon duty were rare. Engineers willing to sign up for Moon duty on a fixed-cost United Nations contract? Rarer still.

  Ming sighed and pirouetted in the low-g—she’d never been able to do that on Earth—to face her security escort. Gravity—she certainly didn’t miss gravity. Ban made a half-bow and held open the door of the crude lunar buggy they’d taken to the top of the cliff.

  She slid into the passenger seat without another word. As they rolled down the slope, Ming’s eye flicked, unlocking the do-not-disturb setting on her data glasses. She waited for the onslaught of incoming messages.

  Only thirty-two. A slow day. Most were routine inspection requests or change orders to schematics. In the world of government contracts, if something so minor as the thread count on a screw changed, the client demanded accountability in the form of a change order. The United Nations was building LUNa City, the first large-scale multinational civilian habitat on the Moon, so the change orders had to be processed into English, then into whatever language and currency were used by the country paying for that portion of the project, then batched for transmission and processing back to Earth.

  The bureaucracy was annoying and sorely slow, but that was the nature of the job—and Ming was good at it.

  After passing through the airlock, she exchanged her pressure suit for a red engineer’s jumpsuit and prepared to slay the paperwork dragon yet again. She had a reputation for being a ruthless task master, and that’s exactly how she wanted it. If you had a meeting with Ming Qinlao, you took it standing up. That made sure the meeting was short and uncomfortable, which tended to keep people on task. Construction crews who wanted to make progress sought Ming out for that very reason. Those who wished to suckle at the government teat a little longer found other engineers to work with.

  As she walked into her office, the artist’s rendering of LUNa City on the wall caught her eye, as always. It inspired her each time she noticed it. The designer had lavished his attention on the massive, arching dome and underlying high-rise structures, a space that covered an area the size of Minneapolis.