The most striking differences with upgraded suits were the glass shoulder pads and curved plate that protected the neck and upper spine. Upon holding your hand to a chest mounted pressure switch for a few seconds, the sections slid upwards and transformed into a bullet proof helmet. A valve on the back of the helmet and two more located below each collar bone allowed breathable air to circulate, so the wearer wouldn’t suffocate.
The valves apparently also sealed on contact with water, and could be hooked to an air hose for underwater utility. There were also a couple of miniature five minute air canisters located on the hip opposite the javelin pistol, for emergency use. To avoid everyone’s eyes, Reece spent much of the three hour tutorial with his helmet closed. There were fans inside for cooling, but over the duration he must have sweated a whole two liters.
Commander Blake had made a point of highlighting Reece’s sickly pale complexion as he was taking his suit off, but Reece didn’t react. He probably deserved the insults, particularly the one about resembling a tinned turd in a high-tech prom dress. After exiting the shell hangar and rehydrating, Reece returned to the deck to run laps. Po Fang, Scarlet Findl, Molotov, Aroon Onruang, Etienne Fox, Hadley Greendale, Razak Akhtar and Patritzia Schweighofer caught up with him soon after. They ran beside him and offered encouragement.
“Looking good, my man, better than when you got off that chopper a few days back,” Molotov said. “I would’ve put money on you chucking your guts all over the deck. Keep this up and soon you’ll be large and in charge like me. Not as wickedly handsome, but luckily for you, some people settle.”
“You really do love yourself, don’t you?” Schweighofer said, huffing laughter as she jogged. “Just one big pretty boy. Tell me one thing you’d change about yourself? Just give me one. Let me just hear one iota of humility behind that ego.”
“You can’t improve a masterpiece,” Molotov replied, turning and jogging backwards. “You wouldn’t alter the Sistine Chapel. Some things are perfect just the way they are. It’s not my fault I outshine the Hope diamond. Nature’s a lottery and I hit the jackpot, what can I say? Not everything is fair.”
“I can name something you could change to make an improvement,” Fang said.
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“The front,” she said, causing everyone to burst into laughter, so much so their jog staggered to a stop.
“Funny, a laugh a month,” Molotov said, playing wounded. “The front’s where all my best bits are at.”
“He’s not wrong,” Aroon said. “I’ve been jogging behind him and man, I feel like I need a safe-space.”
“Oh, you want some too, do you,” Molotov said, grinning. He jumped up and grabbed the railings on the deck above and began doing pull-ups, launching himself into the air and clapping between each launch. “Get some… huh… large and in charge. Get it, get it, shake it…”
“Pfffft, easy,” Aroon replied, jumping up and mimicking the manoeuvre. “No one said anything about it being beginner’s day.”
“And so it goes on,” Schweighofer said, looking on fondly. “The child inside is alive and well. Don’t you ever let it die, Molo.”
Yōgan Koumori
T he call to action came at around nine-thirty, two days later, whilst Reece was in the shower and half way through shaving after a spirited morning jog. An alarm was blaring in the corridor outside his cabin, informing him the Ebisu had reached her destination and the details of the stargo-jet heist were about to be revealed. He hastily finished up, threw on some clothes and hurried towards the shell hangar, his legs decidedly stronger and less shaky than five days ago. He seemed to be sweating less too, and his mind was clearer. He could definitely feel his old self re-surfacing.
Six warhorses, standing tall like gladiators ready to enter the arena, and a team of nine men and women, including Commander Blake, stood to attention. Schweighofer and Molotov nodded to Reece as he trotted over and fell in beside Aroon.
“Last to arrive,” Commander Blake noted with derisory scorn. “Why am I not surprised? Our weak link deigns to grace us with his presence. Oh, how honored we are. A bit longer and that red carpet I ordered from Amazon would’ve arrived.”
Reece suppressed a brewing comeback and took the hit without complaint. Tim stepped out from behind one of the warhorses, slapping a panel shut as he did so.
“Done and done,” he said, dusting his hands. “Right, I know you’ve all been anticipating the mission briefing, and I’m sorry it couldn’t have come sooner. With the risks you’re taking we don’t enjoy keeping you in the dark. Activity and chatter out there is going nuts to say the least. They’re searching hard, but they can’t find us anywhere. You certainly stirred up a hornet’s nest with that Vegas stunt, Reece, which as it turns out wasn’t such a bad thing. The confusion is actually helping. They’re scrambling like headless chickens with no idea, so credit where credit’s due.”
Reece groaned and shook his head, the humiliation regarding his behaviour over the past few months resonating ever more loudly. Even if there were unintended positive consequences to his actions, it was hard to feel good about the wretch he’d become, not that he could remember much of it. There was a two month black hole in his mind, interspersed with shameful memories that made him flush hot with embarrassment.
“And there we have it, proof that even a chimp flinging its own shit can randomly hit a target,” Commander Blake said, walking up beside Tim and facing the squad. “The age old question has finally been answered. Bravo, Reece,” he said, clapping slowly and patronizingly. “Bravo.”
Aroon held a hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh, which was cut dead under Blake’s slicing stare.
“I need to say, before we go any further,” Tim said, his face becoming uncharacteristically solemn, “despite our target, the stargo-jet at Area 51, this is not an attack on the U.S. military. You are not authorised to use lethal force. Set your javelins to stun. We only want the stargo-jet, not a war, this is not an act of aggression, are we clear?”
“Answer the man, people!” Blake barked, barely a microsecond after Tim had finished the sentence.
“Clear,” everyone responded loudly.
“If you’re captured or cornered,” Blake growled, “and lethality is your only way out, you surrender, you down arms. We’re infiltrating the most secure, heavily defended military base on the planet. Even with Dr Bashar’s supporting ops, resistance will be heavy. You will not extinguish a single life on that base. These are my people, my brothers and sisters. This is non-negotiable. If you have a problem with that, please step out of the room. You’ll be paid in full and transported to the nearest island with an airport, thirty-six hours after we depart. I will not hold it against you.”
“Good,” Tim said after a few moments, in which the only movement was the squad straightening like boards, chins lifting and arms pinning to sides. “Then let’s get to the meat of it.”
He pulled a remote from his pocket and aimed it at the warhorse he’d been tinkering with. The machine’s chest-plate burst open and wasp drones buzzed forth, projecting a giant aerial map of the Nevada desert high in the air. Within the projected map, Reece could see the runways of Area 51, the city of Las Vegas below it and the Colorado River snaking through canyons to the right.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, this is Area 51,” Tim continued, a red dot blinking on the map above the infamous base. A red line began tracing a circle around the base. “This circle designates Area 51’s no fly zone, which I’m sure you’re also aware, is ruthlessly guarded. Intruders that breach this zone will be blasted from the sky. You’ll be given one warning on approach and one warning only. The next indication you’ve entered protected airspace will be the flames and shrapnel tearing through your aircraft. There are also sensors in all roads leading to the base, which when triggered, alert hundreds of spotters and snipers in the hills who are ready and willing to engage. Even if you had an army of a thousand people, you wouldn’t get within five hund
red meters of the hangars or runway inside the perimeter. Incursion is impossible.”
“No only that,” Commander Blake added. “The compound is surrounded by airbases equipped with unmanned F-217 Nightwraiths. They can be scrambled and in the air in under a minute. Their G5 wedge wings and X-78D scramjets allow them to hit upwards of five-thousand miles per hour. Make no mistake, they fly quicker than a whippet with a thumb up its ass and can manoeuvre on a dime. We will not last long with these things sniffing our tail.”
“Sounds like a boyfriend I once had,” Fang said, chuckling.
“Silence that colostomy bag of a mouth, Fang. This is not sexism hour!” Blake sniped. “Eyes and ears, people, heads in the game. To the south, Nellis and Edwards Air Force Bases, and the more recently constructed Areas Five and Six.” More red dots appeared on the hovering map. “To the east, Creech and to the north, Tonopah and Areas One through Four. That’s a total of nine military bases in a constant state of high alert, protecting a few hangars and a patch of dirt in the desert. This mission is way beyond high risk. High risk has rocketed through crazy town, bounced off the forehead of insanity, and is presently somewhere out past Pluto. God, I love my job,” he said, pausing, a delighted smile lighting his face. “This will be one hell of a ride, people, but I won’t hold it against you if you decide the stakes are too high. If you do this, you’ll be some of the world’s most wanted men and women, fugitives from the law.”
Still, no one fell out.
“Sir?” Scarlet enquired. “If we can’t infiltrate from the land or air, then how?”
“How indeed, Findl. Mind like a cobra. You do us proud. Mr Skinner, please enlighten the team.”
“Thanks. Right, Tim said, clicking the remote. The floating map zoomed closer to Area 51, revealing a patch of cracked flat desert above and to the right of three runways. “Area 51 sits beside Groom Lake, a now dry prehistoric lake bed that was once the caldera of an ancient volcano.”
“Ah, nuts, not more volcanoes,” Reece grumbled under his breath. “I hate volcanoes.”
“Don’t worry, I think you’ll like this one,” Tim said. “Over millions of years Groom Lake drained and collected in an expansive subterranean reservoir, in a cave system a few hundred meters below the surface. The body of water is a little over a mile deep. At the bottom of this subterranean lake is an active lava vent, the throat of the ancient Groom volcano. The vent drills thirty miles through the Earth’s crust and exits into the mantle below it. It leads to a planet wide ocean of lava with no borders.”
The schematic rotated to a horizontal image of the Area 51, which was linked by an elevator shaft to the lake, under which a lava vent penetrated the Earth’s crust.
“That’s crazy!” Razak said. “So that vent leads to the Earth’s core?”
“The fluid mantle is above the solid iron core, but essentially, yes,” Tim replied. “Groom Lake’s subterranean lava vent is our entry point. You’ll be breaching from below. Area 51’s aerospace programmes are secondary to its primary function. It’s an underground launching facility for submersible vehicles called submantles, hyper strong versions of submarines, just these subs travel through magma instead of water. They can go anywhere in the world without being tracked by satellite or radar. A few years back, one of the Chinese submantles suffered a catastrophic hull breach and detonated below the Arctic crust, causing tremors that triggered an ice shelf collapse and a minor tsunami. The Russians are trying to get in on the game too, with limited success so far. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the next level. Only a few thousand people in the world know about this technology. Now you see why Area 51 is so heavily guarded. Even most of the people working on the base have no idea about the operations being conducted right beneath their feet.”
“That’s totally crazy!” Razak said again.
“Incredible…” Fox breathed.
“So we need one of these submantles,” Molotov said, “to get in from underneath? You’ve got one don’t you? Oh please, oh please, oh please. This has me all tingles and jingles. Holy moly, tickle your grandma. I haven’t been this excited in forever!”
“Tickle your grandma?” Razak said, frowning at Molotov. “On the scale of exciting things, how does… just how?”
“Grandmas need tickles too.”
“I don’t even know how to respond to that?” Razak said, turning back to Tim and Commander Blake.
Reece threw his arms out as the floor of the hangar suddenly jolted and began to descend.
“Nori’ll explain from here,” Tim said, projecting his voice as the rusted iron red walls grated past. “He’ll be travelling with you in his DENTON unit. He’ll also be your submantle pilot. Reece’ll be taking the stick when you liberate the stargo-jet. That good with you, Reece?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever you need. I’m ready.”
“Just don’t screw us,” Commander Blake growled. “From here on in this gets real, real fast.”
“Trust me, I want this to succeed more than you do.”
“That may be so, but it doesn’t mean your brains aren’t as weak and scrambled as the eggs in the maximum security prison we’ll end up in if you screw up.”
“So long as you shut up and let me fly, I won’t screw up. Back off, man. It’s getting boring.”
“Very good. We have a deal, son.”
The hangar floor dropped into a void that moaned and creaked eerily as the ocean rolled past the Ebisu’s hull. A gantry platform ran alongside a cigar shaped vessel sitting in a pool of dark water. Although substantially smaller, the submantle resembled the nuclear submarines that had escorted the aircraft carriers Reece used to work on in his Navy days. Robo Yamamoto stepped out of a wide hatch at the rear of the submantle and onto the gantry.
“That’s our ride, the Yōgan Koumori,” Commander Blake said as the descending platform shuddered to a halt. “She looks identical to her U.S. counterpart. This is the first non-military owned submantle on the planet.”
“Yorgun… Yoga… you huh?” Hadley said, throwing out a few failed attempts at the craft’s name.
“The Yōgan Koumori,” Robo Yamamoto said, walking down the gantry towards the squad. “It means lava bat in Japanese. She’s the most advanced submantle in existence. Trust me, I know, I’ve been hacking details on all of them for years, future incarnations too. We made sure we bettered the designs on every level. She can go deeper and faster than the rest, is equipped with long range dense matter sonar, and has silent running powered by twin Vulcan dynamic drives. Her outer skin uses the same technology as the stargo-jet, which can withstand the extreme temperatures and pressures required to fly into a star, which as you know is required to fly into the artificially generated star housed in the star portal, which we need to do to travel back in time. This vessel, your home for the next twenty hours or so, can happily swim through lava until kingdom come. You won’t even know it’s hot outside.”
“Remind me how that hull breach happened on that Chinese sub?” Razak said nervously.
“It’s not flat under the mantle,” Robo Yamamoto answered. “It’s like an upside down mountain range that’s constantly melting, shifting and reforming. The Chinese could’ve been using outdated maps, perhaps driven into the side of one of them, or maybe it was struck by a diamond the size of a house travelling at supersonic speeds in one of the many magma jet-streams. We’ll never know.”
“Great, glad we cleared that up. I feel heaps better,” Razak replied. “Supersonic diamonds. Of course there are. Under crust ships and supersonic diamonds. Obviously.”
“Nori’ll steer you around any diamonds,” Tim said. “The dense matter sonar can spot them tens of miles away. Things will only get precarious at the other end when you enter the Groom vent.”
“I’ll get us in,” Robo Yamamoto said, holding up and articulating his robotic fingers. “With the technology on board this DENTON and the tricks up the Yōgan Koumori’s sleeve, we’ll get in easy. Don’t worry about that.”
“So, what are we waiting for?” Molotov said, bouncing excitedly, his heft shaking the platform. “Let’s get on with it. Let’s stage the most insane, daring heist ever dreamt up. I can’t believe we get paid to do this stuff!”
“You heard the man people,” Blake roared. “Time to suit up. We are exfil in twenty. Get ready for the ride of your life, we’re going in on a bat outta hell!”
“Woah! Like, because Yōgan Koumori means lava bat?” Hadley said, suddenly brightening like he’d derived some hidden logic. “Guys, it’s because we’re going through lava in a submersible called…”
“Hadley,” Commander Blake interrupted, his features a mixture of irritation and pained compassion. “What’ve I told you about important moments and your thoughts?”
“To… to sometimes use my inside voice?”
“That’s right, Hadley, your inside voice. You think you can remember that?”
“I’ll try, Commander.”
“Very good, Hadders. Well, what are you waiting for?” Commander Blake said, turning and roaring at the squad. “Let’s suit up. You know the drill, move it, move it!”
Hadley’s Vomit
P articles of plankton snow drifted past a large curved screen above a console of dials, switches and sliders, displaying an image out in front of the submantle as it dropped through the ocean darkness towards the Tonga Ridge subduction zone, south west of the Samoan islands. Reece was strapped into a heavy duty seat beside Razak and Commander Blake, just behind Robo Yamamoto, who was standing and secured at the waist by a pivoting clawed arm that projected from the ceiling. The arm whirred as it repositioned the robot so it could access switches and instruments that would have otherwise been unreachable.
The remainder of the squad were seated behind Reece, with the warhorses behind them, magnetically locked to the floor and secured by clawed arms similar to the one pivoting Robo Yamamoto. Reece was harnessed so tightly he could only move his arms and turn his head inside his helmet, as the valve on the plate that formed the rear portion was locked to his headrest. If anyone was feeling as claustrophobic as he was, they were hiding it well. He found himself constantly raising a hand up to scratch his nose or wipe the sweat from his brow, only for it to bump against the ballistic glass. Fang and Scarlet, sitting behind him, seemed to be finding endless amusement in the futile gesture. He could hear them giggling through his helmet speakers, followed by dull glassy thumps, which he assumed was them mimicking him bashing his gloves on the glass.
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