Rubicon

by Gareth Worthington

  Koa jumped back. “Oh hey, Melissa. Um , yeah, I’m good. Just looking.”

  “Don’t mind him. He always gets flustered around women he likes,” Allison said, then pushed past and marched across the courtyard to the stone tower in the center.

  Koa felt his face flush. Melissa was Alpha Base’s assigned xenobiologist. She was young, pretty, and damn smart.

  “So,” Melissa said seemingly ignoring the jibe. “Do the inscriptions say anything about how we connect this puppy up?”

  Koa tried not to stare into the big brown eyes for too long, before managing to say, “from what I’ve been able to decipher so far, the orb sits in the crucible. This whole place is constructed with calaverite in the stones, which is a great conductor. We think it may act like a transmission station.”

  “Wouldn’t that require a power source?” Melissa said, brushing an extra curly lock of dark hair behind her ear.

  “Well it all could be chemical power of some kind,” Koa replied, helping her to lift the heavy container. “The structure here comprises calaverite for sure, but a lot of pyrite and other things we haven’t identified yet. If perhaps there is something in that crucible that interacts with the orb, maybe it acts like a battery of some kind—self-perpetuating?”

  Melissa glanced around the structure as they shuffled toward the heart of the concourse. “You know, with all this pyrite and calaverite, this place looks like it’s made of gold. See how it shimmers in the spotlight? It’s like the lost city of gold.”

  “El Dorado?” Koa laughed, then stopped and nearly tripped over his own feet. He shot a glance at Allison.

  Allison looked back from the pillar with one eyebrow raised. “She could be on to something.”

  Koa began trundling again, adjusting his fingers to maintain a hold on the tank. “El Dorado was originally a story about a chieftain in what we now think of as Colombia. He covered himself in gold dust as part of a ritual. El Hombre Dorado. The story became blended with others until it developed into a tale about a city, not a man. It’s possible the stories were based in truth, referring to this temple.”

  “No wonder the conquistadors couldn’t find it. They were looking in the wrong places,” Allison said, a big grin on her face.

  Koa and Melissa lowered the tank with a thunk. The water sloshed around, the orb swirling within.

  “So, what, we think we plop it in the crucible?” Koa asked.

  “Well, there are no external limbs, flagellae, pili—anything that would indicate that it could attach to something,” Melissa said. “It seems perfectly smooth. For now. Could be microscopic I suppose. Or become externalized by a trigger. But, without the time or equipment to examine it, it’s a guessing game.”

  “So, we plop,” Allison said, her tone flat.

  “Sure, if you want it to desiccate damn quickly,” came a voice from behind him.

  Koa turned to see Freya Teller, clad in a massive down-filled jacket being lowered by two large soldiers into her wheelchair. His gaze moved between her and the armed men. “Miss Nilsson, glad you could make it. How did you ...?”

  “Ungracefully,” Freya interrupted.

  “Are your friends staying?” Koa asked, nodding to the soldiers.

  “We don’t know what activating the orb will do. Best to be prepared,” she replied.

  Koa noted her shaking limbs. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? It is very cold down here.”

  Freya clamped her hands together until the knuckles were white. “As I was saying, if you leave that thing in the open too long, especially in an environment like this, it will dehydrate and shrivel up like a raisin.”

  “I would agree,” Melissa said. “We’d need to find a way to keep it hydrated.”

  “We could run a line from outside,” Koa said. “Pump water from ...” He trailed off, thinking. “But if it’s chemical power, what salts are in the water may be important. New Berlin was supposed to be built on a geothermal lake. There must be one around, maybe... maybe beneath us?”

  The echoed padding of webbed feet filled the underground cavern as Dacey came bounding out from the dark and into the spotlights. The excited Huahuqui sniffed and waddled around the tank, her big blue gills ruffling. She made the occasional warble and nudged the Perspex with her nose. The orb seemed to pulsate and glow with greater intensity in the presence of the creature.

  “Dacey, come back here please,” Freya said.

  The Huahuqui duly trotted back to Freya and plonked herself beside the wheelchair, seemingly unaffected by the cold stone floor.

  “I don’t know what New Berlin is. But the Huahuqui were always associated with water and the temples were considered to have pools or lakes or rivers near, or even in, them,” Freya said. “If this site is truly made for them, it makes sense that there would be a body of water nearby.”

  “Maybe this is of interest,” Allison said. “Koa did you see these?”

  Koa meandered over to the stone pillar to investigate.

  “Look,” Allison said, running her fingers along very thin grooves in the rock. “They transverse the length from the top where the crucible is, right down to the bottom.”

  “Uh-huh,” Koa said, then winked at Melissa.

  Allison punched him in the arm. “Stop thinking with your dick and use your brain. The grooves don’t stop at the bottom, they disappear beneath the surface—underneath where we are.”

  Koa rubbed his shoulder, thinking. “Capillary action? Water was drawn up from underneath. But now it’s dry, or there’s a blockage?”

  “Right,” Allison said, nodding. “Let’s get our equipment down here and see if we can penetrate the structure and see what’s below us.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Freya said.

  Allison ran off toward two scientists at the edge of the plaza unpacking telemetry equipment and waved for them to follow her to the surface.

  Koa turned back to the pillar. The problem was, even if a lake sat right beneath them how would they access it? Drilling through the rocks would take too long. And calaverite was quite brittle. Impacting the colossal stones on which they stood could bring the whole place down. He had to hope that there was a body of water below them, and that a frozen section was preventing any water from rising to the surface. If it was anything else, they had a much bigger problem on their hands.

  Location: TAO headquarters, Texas, USA

  Lucy sat nervously in a private room just off the control center. Never in her life had she felt so helpless. Frustrated at being the most powerful person in America yet waiting for a thousand other people to do their job so she had enough information to do hers. For now, all she could do was sit. She took another sip of cold coffee and managed to swallow, though it hit her knotted stomach like a brick.

  “Madam President?”

  “Yes!” Lucy practically leapt from her seat. “What news do we have?”

  “I have an update on this Sagane character,” Jim said.

  “Oh?”

  Jim took a seat. “We brought him in with the help of the Japanese government. Turns out the little weasel really did have a back door built into the Swiss Mountain protocols.”

  “But you have him, so he can tell you how he did it and reverse it, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Sagane isn’t a programmer, but we did some digging and it seems he linked up with some pretty high-profile hackers across the globe. This wasn’t a one-man operation.” He slipped an open folder with photos from surveillance cameras across the table. “Constantine Popescu from Romania, Lala Grimshaw out of Alaska, Jonas Soul from the USA, and Liana Gärtner from Austria. None of them have met each other, they’re rivals for clients, but they have all met with Sagane. Since they never met, and compete for business, individual countries had no reason to share info on who these guys were talking to. Throw the fact that Sagane wasn’t on anyone’s wanted list, facial recognition software wouldn’t even make the connection.”

  �
��The dates on these photos span years,” Lucy said, pawing through them.

  Waltham nodded. “Another reason nothing was spotted. This was done over two decades. Methodically and slowly as to not rouse suspicion. And since nothing was activated until now, there was no threat. The fact it was done this way probably means each hacker was used for a different country, or maybe different power plant sites across countries.”

  “Does all this info on hackers help us?” Lucy asked, still glancing through the photos.

  “Each one has their own methodology and if they are feeling brash, a calling card to let the world know it was them. Working with our allies we are determining which hack is likely to have penetrated which powerplant systems.”

  “I see.” Lucy knew she should have been focusing on the answer, but one photo had caught her eye. Sagane meeting with a blonde woman. The image was grainy, but the angular features, her straight posture. It looked like—

  “Yeah we don’t know her,” the admiral interrupted. “We’re trying to work on enhancing the image, but it’s very blurred and quite old. Besides there’s a bigger problem.”

  “I know who it is,” Lucy said without looking up. “That’s Victoria McKenzie.” Lucy’s throat went dry. “She was part of the original Huahuqui programs. Well, when I say part, I mean she was caught in the cross fire. Some bad things happened to her. No one has seen her in years. We... lost track.” Victoria was involved in this? Was it retribution for what had been done to her? Had the US government failed her so badly after Teotihuacan? Need to tell Jonathan, Lucy thought. Then suddenly, Jim’s full answer dawned on Lucy. “What bigger problem?”

  His face became pallid.

  “What is it Jim?”

  He swallowed hard before opening his mouth. “We ran a few algorithms based on the known techniques of these hackers, to see what other systems may be affected.”

  “Did you find something?”

  Jim licked his lips. “Project Rubicon.”

  Lucy sat back in her chair, eyes screwed together. There were so many projects, so many code names. It was difficult to remember them all. Swiss Mountain had been such a mammoth task that it was permanently lodged in her brain. But Rubicon? What the hell was that? A vague something crawled its way to the front of her mind. “Isn’t that a NASA thing?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  The vague memory began to crystalize. It was something set up along with Sentry. Something to do with deflection strategies. “They’ve hacked a NASA asteroid deflection program?”

  “Madam President, I’m not the best to explain. Lena Bowski, NASA Administrator, and Janette the Head of FEMA will be here shortly.”

  Lucy wrinkled up her nose in frustration. “You can friggin try, Jim. What the hell is going on?”

  The admiral exhaled purposefully. “This wouldn’t have hit your radar, it was before your time as President and considered dealt with.”

  “What was dealt with?” Lucy pressed, clamping her sweaty hands together.

  “In 2004, a couple of astronomers identified an asteroid, on a possible impact course with Earth. At the time, it was suggested there was a 1 in 300 chance of hitting us in 2029. It was all over the news.”

  “I remember that I think,” Lucy said. “There was a big hype, and then literally on the same day, NASA admitted they’d got it wrong and the threat was eliminated.”

  “That’s half right,” a woman said upon entering. “I’m Doctor Bowski.”

  There was a brief shake of hands before the doctor took a seat.

  Lucy opened her mouth to ask her question again, when her entire cabinet entered the room.

  “Madam President, what’s going on?” Vice President Charles asked.

  “I was about to find that out myself,” Lucy said. “It seems Doctor Bowski here has the answers.”

  Charles looked at Jim. “You look white as a sheet, is it the reactors?”

  Jim shook his head. “Just listen to Doctor Bowski.”

  The doctor, a woman in her fifties with bobbed auburn hair and thick-framed glasses perched on the end of her nose, cleared her throat and slid a large tablet into the center of the table. She initiated the 3D holographic module which brought up a perfect rendering of the Earth that floated two feet above the screen.

  “The American people were lied to,” the doctor began. “An asteroid, colloquially named Apophis after a character on a damned TV show, was flagged by two astronomers and verified by Sentry in 2004.” The hologram Earth shrank to allow the orbit of an asteroid to be shown, an orange-lined elliptic. “Initial calculations suggested that Apophis would pass through a gravitational keyhole that would mean its trajectory would be altered so it would impact with Earth in 2029. Within hours that calculation was reworked with new data, and a 2029 impact was ruled out.”

  Lucy nodded, but said nothing.

  “Because the asteroid has an orbit, it keeps passing Earth over and over,” the doctor continued, manipulating the tablet to show a luminous brick-shaped asteroid flying by the Earth. At that scale, it looked dangerously close. “In fact, in 2029 it actually passed Earth closer than some of our geosynchronous satellites.”

  “Okay, so it didn’t hit us and we watched it go by. What’s your point?” the Vice President asked.

  “As I mentioned, Aphosis’ orbit means it continually circles, and every large heavenly body it comes close to adjusts its orbit slightly. There were also predictions it would hit Earth in 2036, or 2069. Both were shown to be unlikely, but eventually it would happen even if far in the future.”

  “What does this have to do with what we’re dealing with right now?” asked the Secretary of Homeland security, a burly man with a bald head and thick grey beard.

  “We used the 2029 pass as an opportunity,” Dr Bowski said in an even tone that belied the fear in her eyes. “Working with the Chinese, we attached a device to the asteroid, something that would help to push it far off course so that it would never hit us. That was Project Rubicon.”

  “So, they hacked our deflection program,” Lucy stated.

  “Yes,” Doctor Bowski confirmed.

  “To what end?” the Secretary of State asked.

  “We don’t know for sure. Now the hack has been exposed, we can’t rely on the last seven years of telemetry. And since we were using project Rubicon to track, we haven’t pointed any of our other telescopes at Apophis since. But if we were to guess ...”

  A deep murmur filled the room, side conversations being had beside and across the table.

  “They hacked our system, pushed the asteroid into a different orbit and fed false info for seven years,” the Secretary of Defense recapped aloud. “Presumably to put it on a collision path with Earth. So, in what year will it hit us now?”

  The doctor rubbed nervously at her neck. “Unclear. We’re currently searching the skies to find it again based on predictions of where it could be.”

  “Given that the Nine Veils have come out of hiding now, and an impact was predicted in 2036—this year—we can assume we don’t have long,” Lucy said.

  More murmuring

  “How big is the asteroid?” Lucy managed, after pulling her mind from the fog.

  Doctor Bowski cleared her throat again. “To the public we reported it to be around 450 meters, with an impact force of around 750 megatons. To give perspective, the 1883 Krakatoa eruption released around 200 megatons.”

  Gasps filled the room and seemed to hang in the air.

  “I didn’t ask for what you told the public,” Lucy pressed.

  Doctor Bowski was sweating, her skin pallid. “We lied,” she said, her voice shaky. “2029 wasn’t far away, and we didn’t want a world-wide panic.”

  “How. Big?” Lucy demanded.

  “It’s much bigger. With an impact force of twenty-five teratons.”

  “Teratons?” the Secretary of Homeland Security said, nearly choking on a mouthful of vendor machine coffee. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Doctor B
owski coughed into her hand, then pressed a button on the tablet. The brick-shaped orb struck the holographic Earth impacting in Bolivia. It threw a ring of debris up into the atmosphere and created a shockwave that pushed out from the impact site, crumpling the mainland and into the oceans, forcing a tidal wave to fan out in all directions, just as when a stone is dropped into a pond. The wave smashed into the coasts of the other continents, flooding hundreds if not thousands of miles inland.

  “It’s an extinction level event. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs released 100 teratons of kinetic energy. Based on our calculations, we’re looking at an immediate loss of 70 percent of life in the lowlands. If it strikes the ocean, it may be slightly less, and have fewer after effects in terms of dust in the atmosphere blocking the sun. Either way ...” the doctor couldn’t seem to finish her sentence.

  The room fell silent.

  Lucy’s mind spun and spun. But not with thoughts of the Earth, it’s inhabitants, or even the now dim future of humanity. Instead, she filled with memories of her brother and his goofy smile, a birthday party when she was five and had a unicorn cake, her first kiss with Robert Gough. Her last kiss with her ex-husband Jeremy. Every conceivable regret over the span of her life burst from the crevices in her heart, revealing themselves in all their painful glory. All at once they mattered and then didn’t anymore. “Are there contingencies?” Charles asked.

  “It all depends on how far away it is,” Doctor Bowski replied. “Most ideas to throw an arsenal at an asteroid come with many other risks. Blasting it into smaller chunks that rain down on us for one. And that’s assuming our telescopes can find it. Ultimately, the best chance we have is regaining control of Rubicon and praying to the Good Lord that it’s far enough away we can still push it off course.”

  Lucy snapped back to the conversation. “Then you best get on that, Doctor Bowski. Use whatever resources you need. They tried pulling this stunt once before—resetting the world to one that would leave the Huahuqui, and presumably them, in control. By detonating a nuclear weapon in the upper atmosphere. Seems this time they have found a more efficient method.”