Sam walked over to the holodesk and I quickly joined him as he transferred the call into the privacy of the glass table.
“Thank you for returning these ships to me.” Frank said, smirking back through the camera from his plane seat. “But as you can see, we don’t need them anymore, so we’ll dispose of them.”
I couldn’t speak, I was stuck in amazement at this feet of strength Lara had pulled off. Sam pushed me aside and pressed the button to reply.
“Move out of the way Frank! No-body needs to get hurt, just let us take what we came for.” Sam replied in a cool and calm tone.
I felt my jaw drop open. I knew his previous job was negotiating with powerful and dangerous people but how could he stay calm in this situation, with over two-thousand guns focused on us.
“Just come a little bit closer and say that again.” Frank replied. “I’ve always wanted to play with these lasers, I guess today is my lucky day.”
“We are out of laser range.” Derek confirmed.
“I am in range.” Ava said to Sam.
“Put the fleet in reverse! We can still outrun them!” I screamed.
“Should I do it?” Ava asked Sam for confirmation.
“Do it!” Sam replied.
Ava tapped a few buttons on the screen in front of her.
“We aren’t moving!” I yelled, looking out the window and noticing that everything was staying the same, the building, the huge tree, the giant fleet with their guns pointing at us. I couldn’t face it, I turned away from the window and back to Ava for some support.
“Dom look!” She said, gesturing behind me and at the facility where two thousand little aircraft were just about visible in the dim light.
Then they became very visible as little explosions started to light up the facility and the fleet floating above.
I looked around and saw that every plane was falling out of the sky. Not in a controlled way, but falling, like their gravity drives had been switched off.
I turned back to Ava with a puzzled look on my face.
“Did I forget to mention my backup plan?” Ava started, grinning mischievously. “You know that night when we broke in and I stole the plans from their supercomputer. I also happened to leave a little program behind, it has been sitting there, waiting for my command, waiting to turn off their gravity drives.”
“HOW!” I yelled across the room.
“The gravity drive files were just sitting there, open on someone’s computer, so I changed a few lines of code to give me a remote switch and boom, now I can turn them off, permanently.”
“That’s incredible!” I blurted out, continuing to stare out of the window at the explosions that littered the countryside surrounding the facility.”
“What’s going on up there?” A voice on the intercom said. It was Hanks and I could tell that he was watching events out of the hanger door and couldn’t make sense of them either.
“Prepare the harpoons, we are getting what we came for and getting out of here.” Sam replied.
“That was amazing.” I said as I walked over to Ava. “Now Lara can’t attack us. We are safe!”
“Well, we don’t know if she has other planes around the world.” Sam interrupted.
“Also, as soon as she realises what has happened she will kill my remote control script” Ava added.
“This was a onetime shot?” I asked.
“Yep, so we better make the most of it before re-enforcements arrive.” Sam said. “Derek! Get to your feet and lower the ship into harpoon range.”
Derek was hiding underneath his desk. Clearly he couldn’t handle the stress of the situation either.
“You could have told us you had something like that up your sleeves!” Derek moaned, climbing back into his seat.
“Then we wouldn’t have seen you hiding under your desk like that!” Ava said. “Just wait until we tell Hank about how brave you are!”
“Don’t you dare!” Derek snarled.
“Then hurry up and move the ship into position.” Sam added.
After the explosions had finished, Derek moved the Armillary over the huge tree and Hank fired the harpoons. Luckily this part of the plan worked well and we could hear the thick boat chains rattling out of the hanger bay door, being carried by the gravity drives to avoid any damage to the ship.
There were a few tense moments when we hoped the bolts that held the harpoons were correctly fitted and weren’t about to rip themselves free. They held and the gravity drives easily started to lift the tree and the replicator tangled within its roots, out of the ground.
Small explosions could be heard as we dragged the large concrete box out of the soil. I could see water and electricity cables meeting and causing all kinds of problems for the clean-up crew, but it wasn’t our problem, we had what we had come for.
As we started to ascend back into the clouds, I noticed we also had most of the atrium wrapped up in the tree. Large, girders and cables intertwined the branches and snaked their way back into the ground. A bit of tugging with ship and we pulled the whole thing loose.
“It’s come out in a better condition than I could have possibly hoped for.” I said happily.
“I know, I thought it would at least break into two pieces, or the tree would start to fight back.” Sam said.
“The tree fighting back?” I asked quizzically.
“At this point would anything shock you?” Sam explained.
“I guess not.”
Derek controlled one of the planes underneath the tree to inspect the concrete box that contained the replicator. We watched on the monitors to see if there was any damage but nothing was obvious. The floor, walls and roof had come out as one big unit. Even the airlock contamination chamber was intact.
“Hold on one minute.” Derek said as the ship tugged on an electrical cable that was still hanging out of the base of the tree, tethering us to the ground. “I’m just going to shoot at it.”
He started the machine gun on the side of the plane and emptied the barrel. Every bullet missed the swinging wire but startled a flock of sheep in the neighbouring field.
“Leave it to me.” I said assertively.
Taking control of the aircraft I adjusted the settings on the laser to copper. With one shot it left a molten wire dripping below and the tree, the rest of the wire fell to the ground and landed in a nearby pond creating a huge electrical ark followed by a small explosion making the pond much bigger in the process.
That’s when the screen went dark. The message ‘Connection Lost’ displayed on the monitor.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“We have lost connection with the aircraft.” Derek informed the room.
“I am swinging another plane around to take a look.” Ava said.
Quickly I leapt over the desk and ran to the window. We were hovering a few hundred metres above the ground and clouds were starting to wisp by but I could easily make out the figure stood in the carpark. It was a huge man who appeared to be missing an arm. It was Frank.
He was holding one of the glass rods that fired lasers and was shooting into the guts of the ship we had been piloting moments earlier.
Then, a flash of white light and the ship fell from the sky.
It spiralled as it fell, leaving a trail of smoke that disappeared underneath the tree.
I saw Frank starting to run in the opposite direction but it was too late. The plane hit the ground directly on top of him, crushing his body. A small explosion set fire to some of the tree roots that hung above and then the smoke was sucked into a vortex created from the gravity drive collapsing in on itself.
Moments later all that remained was a perfectly formed spherical crater of dirt and dust.
“Derek, get us out of here!” Sam exclaimed after witnessing that madman’s latest attempts to kill us.
The Earth quickly grew smaller in the window as our golf ball shaped ship, surrounded by a fleet of odd-looking planes dragged a giant tree with a concrete box
wrapped in its roots, out into space.
Chapter 31
The whole crew worked hard and remarkably, within a day, we had the replicator up and running. It was a fantastic feat that was, in part, thanks to original design of the building.
The whole machine was designed to be easy to transport to different areas of the world, wherever it was needed. It was never created to be buried underneath VisionTechs research lab and only used by scientists. This was once again Lara, keeping technology to herself.
This was why, once we rested it on the moon and the robots had surrounded it with regolith, we only needed to connect the power cable to the ships generator and the machine came online. The only thing left to do was to make it accessible, so we could walk to the control room without setting foot outside.
We had returned to find that the domes Sam had left inflating had finally, fully completed and the steel walkway between them and the ship was complete.
The little robots had moved empty containers, welded them so that they were airtight and then packed moon rock around them, partially burying them to ensure that they remained stable when the likes of Hank pounded through with his huge shoes.
We didn’t have to worry too much about air leaks, but I was always concerned about the moon dust getting inside.
The inflated domes were a few hundred yards from the ship and the robots had cleared and levelled an area next to the container walkway where we landed the replicator.
Sam had then ordered the robots to move a few more containers from the ship, weld them end to end and create a side passage off the main walkway between the domes and the ship. This corridor connected to the airlock and into the replicator’s office. A few spot welds later and the whole area was safe to walk around in.
The replicator was the size of half a football field but it didn’t look odd, lying on the lunar surface with containers linking it to the ship. What really caught your eye was the giant tree that had appeared on the moon.
Julie and Tony were full of ideas about how to use this latest addition to our camp.
“We need to put one of your gravity drives underneath and create an air pocket around the tree!” Julie said as we walked down the new container path into the newly inflated domes.
“I know, it’s scheduled on one of the robot workloads.” I informed her. I had programmed this as soon as had touched down. I didn’t want to see the giant tree die in space; it was already frozen but I knew Julie could nurse it back to health.
Once the replicator and tree were stable and unlikely to fall over, we landed the Armillary on the opposite side of the container walkway and realised we were trapped. We couldn’t leave down the steps without exposing ourselves to moon dust.
Sam’s robots came to the rescue again and surrounded the steps with more containers, welding metal all around the base of the golf ball so that we could walk around it. This connected to the main walkway between the ship, domes and tree.
From above these new developments created a giant cross shape. To the south was the container ship, north were the domes, east was the Armillary and west took you to the replicator, all joined with container walkways.
It looked like we had just raided Disney World and stolen Epcot’s Spaceship Earth and The Tree of Life from Animal Kingdom. Compared to when we left, our base had exploded with living space.
I was heading into the replicator room whilst Julie was heading to the domes.
“Thank you for organising the bubble around the tree!” Julie said. “If you can think of a safe way for me to get out there so I can get samples and do experiments I would love to hear it.”
“Just go out there but put one of those spacesuits on.” I said. “It’s safe, just don’t breathe in any of the dust, it’ll rip your lungs apart.”
“I know, I guess what I’m asking for is a dome big enough to cover the tree, then we wouldn’t have to worry about contamination.” Julie informed me.
I laughed.
“A dome that big? One step at a time.” I informed her as we parted ways, she continued down the corridor to the domes and I turned left, under the tree and into the replicator office where Ava was waiting for me.
“There you are!” Ava said. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”
Ava was sitting in the office, in front of the computer that controlled the replicator.
“Sorry, I’ve been talking to Julie.” I explained. “She is concerned about the tree not getting any air.”
Ava always looked concerned when she saw me talking to Julie. When I explained it was about the tree, I could see the visible frustration on her brow relax.
“Don’t worry.” I said, “I think she is too busy with Tony.”
Thump!
Ava hit me in the ribs.
I should have seen it coming.
I had been spending too much time around Derek recently, planning the heist. He was constantly making jokes about how Ava clung to me and I did the same to her. Often in front of Ava, often receiving the same jab to the chest I had just been given.
“Sorry!” I wheezed. “It’s Derek, he is a bad influence.”
“You should be!” Ava said and then smiled at me, happy that she had got her point across.
“Why were you looking for me anyway?” I asked.
“You know this machine is ready to start spitting out your gravity drives.” She explained.
“Not quite, I still have a few more calculations to do.” I replied.
“Nope, Lovelace did them all. It’s ready to go!” Lovelace, the supercomputer in the bowls of the ship was starting to take on a personality all her own as far as Ava was concerned.
“Then we just need to fill the intake with raw materials.” I continued.
“Nope, again, Lovelace gave the robots that instruction around eight hours ago. The machine has been breaking down the materials and is ready to make something with them!” Ava smiled.
She really had thought of everything, and I could tell that she was as eager as I was to see it working.
I started to tap on the screen in front of Ava and loaded the gravity drive instructions.
“It should be able to create a gravity drive almost every hour, based on my programming.” I said.
Ava grinned back at me in her usual mischievous way.
“What have you done?” I asked quizzically.
“I ran your processes through Lovelace and she spat out a new instruction log. How does a new drive every ten minutes sound?” Ava asked as she grinned with pleasure. “And don’t worry, I’ve updated the instructions for the robots too, they will keep the materials flowing.”
“Wow!” I said with excitement. “I think I need to personally thank Lovelace for the hard work that she has done here!” I quipped, expecting a remark from Ava, instead I she just stuck her tongue out at me.
She jumped up out of the seat and onto a metal bench, making room for me to sit down on the worn-out chair in front of the computer, the only thing left to do was press ‘Start’.
This office chair was missing a wheel which caused it to sit unevenly. We had found the wheel embedded in the back of a wooden bookcase that was lying on the floor when we opened the airlock for the first time. Clearly the trip from Earth could have been smoother.
One prospect that did excite me was the ability to make more comfortable furnishings. I was getting bored of the steel and concrete walls, metal furniture and basic equipment. We hadn’t exactly left Earth with luxury items on board.
I checked the settings one last time and pressed the button to start the machine. The readout changed and read ‘Twelve Minutes’. This was the countdown until the first gravity drive was complete.
“Creating five drives an hour does give us a problem. Where are we going to keep all of them?” I asked Ava.
“Not my problem.” She replied, getting closer to stare at the screen, watching the timer.
A little icon suddenly lit up in the corner of the screen. Sam was trying to conta
ct me, so I pressed it expecting to see his face.
Ava leaned away, out of view of the camera but it was not Sam that greeted me, instead he was broadcasting a live news report and on the screen I saw the face of Lara.
“Sam! Warn me when you are going to put her face on my screen!” I moaned through the microphone.
“Listen to what she has to say!” He replied, then remotely turned up the volume.
“I am calling upon the world to unite under my leadership, together we can defeat these terrorists. They will not get away with the destruction. Thousands of planes destroyed at a cost of billions! What will their next target be? We must stand against them. Together!”
It was a call to arms speech. Passionate and the most animated I had ever seen her. We had clearly rattled her.
“Surely this won’t work.” Ava asked. “People aren’t going to hand over power to her, are they?”
“Together, we will get through the dark days that lie ahead and into a prosperous future.” She continued.
“You know, I think they might. She has control of the media and she can spin this any way she wants. We need to get the truth out to the world. They need to know how much humanity has been held back because of her!” I said.
“Act now, before they attack us again!” Lara yelled out and the crowd that had gathered in the little room yelled and cheered audibly on the recording.
“It’s all a ploy, it’s a room of actors!” Ava said.
“Now let me introduce our partners.” Lara continued and gestured to right of her. The camera spun around revealing a dozen smiling people with their company logos plastered on the wall behind them.
“Do you recognise anyone?” Ava asked.
“I know one or two.” I confirmed.
“I don’t know any of them.” Ava replied, casting her eyes over the line-up.
“He runs a multinational food company.” I said, pointing to a man in a smart suit and a bowler hat. “And she is involved in cars, or oil, or something.”
“I guess Sam could name them all.” Ava suggested.
“You bet!” Sam’s voice came through the speaker.
I forgot that he was re-broadcasting the message to us.
Falling Ark Page 26
