Falling Ark

by Leigh Snelson

He wanted to tweak the designs for the sleds, and he also had the idea of another machine, this time round, like a frisbee with a gunning point that could rotate in all directions. I had told him it looked more like a flying saucer but agreed that we could build a prototype and see how it performed.

  Looking down the corridor, the silhouette against the harsh LED lights made it obvious, nobody else in the base had that kind of bulk to them, no-one cast a shadow that large.

  “Hi Hank.” I shouted down the passageway and I turned to my computer to bring up his new designs. “Did you see the press release from Lara? Predictably she is making us out to be terrorists, again.”

  “But you are the terrorists!” The voice came from the doorway. It was much harsher than Hanks voice.

  I recognised it instantly.

  I didn’t even need to turn around to see.

  It was Frank.

  I instinctively ducked under the desk just as a barrage of bullets flew over my head and ricocheted around the steel encased room.

  “Frank!” I yelled. “How are you still alive!”

  “VisionTech has all kinds of secrets you can’t even dream about, boy!” Frank growled and pointed his gun towards me as I scuttled underneath the desk and over to the other side of the office.

  One benefit of making all the furniture out of cut up pieces of steel, they were practically bullet proof.

  One downside, the bullets bounced off and around the room causing damage and nearly hit me on several occasions.

  Here I was again, hiding in this room with someone shooting at me. Last time it had been Lara, this time Frank, but a lot has changed since that first time.

  I heard the pinging of bullets again and a slow hiss followed.

  The bullets must have penetrated the steel skin of the room.

  It wasn’t anything to be concerned about. I had made sure the entire base was covered in a gravity blanket that would keep any air from getting too far away.

  Right now, there was a vacuum on the other side of these walls that the air was leaking into. Creating holes big enough could cause a rapid decompression if we were not very careful, that could be explosive.

  “Frank, you’re going to kill us both if you keep shooting!” I yelled. The ringing in my ears from the gunfire made hearing any response difficult.

  “Haven’t you realised yet? I can’t be killed! Lara will upload my thoughts into another body. Or haven’t you realised?” Frank replied.

  “That’s how you keep surviving?” I asked, raising my voice over the increasing volume of the air escaping.

  “That’s right. You however, you will not survive this!” Frank spoke calmly, as if this was just another day at the office for him.

  More pings flew around the small office, smashing into some of the computer screens and sending sparks everywhere as they exploded.

  I found myself under a desk near the output tray of the replicator. The time counted down.

  ‘Three…’

  ‘Two…’

  ‘One…’

  The conveyor belt started to move causing Frank to empty his barrel in the space around it. Then it went quiet as Frank quickly re-loaded his machine gun. This was my chance, I reached onto the belt above my head until I felt what I was looking for.

  A small tennis ball made from cold metal rested in my hand. I yanked it down, under the desk and fiddled with the two dials that stuck out along the little balls’ equator. A small screen connected the two controls and I cycled through a list of elements.

  It was a simple system, like an old mobile phone, not the best for navigating a long list. Finally, I found the one I was looking for. The screen read ‘nitrocellulose’. The explosive chemical found in bullets.

  I turned the other dial and the screen changed to display a readout of mass, it read ‘One Kilogram’. That was too much, I was trying to target just the small amount of explosive material inside each bullet. Rotating the dial, it settled on ‘one gram’. That should do it.

  Hoping that these settings would work and disarm the weapon I pressed the button on the top of the ball and heard a huge clunk from the other side of the room.

  Carefully I looked out, over the table to see Frank wrestling with his gun that was stuck to the floor.

  The little ball had done it.

  It had targeted the explosive material in the bullets and caused it to have a huge gravitational attraction to the moon. There was no way that Frank could lift that gun off the floor, it now weighed several tons.

  “Give up Frank.” I said calmly, getting to my feet. “You picked the wrong side. You are the terrorists and you will be held accountable for your actions.”

  I turned the dial again on the little orb in my hand. The screen changed to ‘auto’ and a laser beam shot out onto Frank, a little red dot appearing on his face.

  It was moving around a lot, I sounded calm but my hands were shaking. This made targeting Frank tricky, fortunately, he was a big man and there was a lot of him to aim at.

  The little light turned green and the screen now read ‘Molecular Composition Accepted’.

  “You lose Frank.” I said, coldly.

  I threw the orb at the metal wall behind Frank. It stuck like it was magnetic and then a gravitational force started to tug at him. It was strange to witness.

  It looked like someone was pulling him back towards the wall, but he was too strong, he held onto the gun to anchor him down.

  The gun was still stuck and I could see the force increasing on Frank. In desperation he pulled the trigger and bullets started to fire at the metal floor, heating it up and turning it molten.

  Then his feet left the ground, being sucked in by the orb high in the air. He was now dangling upside-down holding on to the gun, itself stuck to the floor and emptying its contents. A few moments later and gun ran out of bullets. Since there was no more explosive material attracted to the surface of the moon, the gun let go of the floor.

  Frank hung there momentarily, floating upside down in the air, then he hit the wall with so much force, firstly his feet, then legs, then the rest of him. His legs broke into pieces, possibly impaling up through his chest, it was difficult to tell.

  The force of the impact started to buckle the wall.

  I hadn’t noticed before, but there were bullet holes all around him and the wall was beginning to rip apart under the force of the giant man being sucking into it.

  “Goodbye Frank.” I said, leaping into the corridor.

  As I flew through the airlock I pressed a button causing the makeshift steel door to close behind me.

  A little window gave me a view into the room. Frank was an unrecognisable, organic mess, stuck to the wall, then, it was all over. The wall gave way and he was sucked out onto the lunar surface.

  I watched as the air followed him out, keeping his body protected from the harsh vacuum. Then the rushing air slowed and stopped, about fifty metres away from the base, and Frank continued, instantly freezing up and floating away, far out of view.

  The forces would have been immense. I couldn’t be sure if Frank made it into orbit around the moon or landed somewhere, miles away.

  One thing that was for certain. He was no longer alive.

  Chapter 35

  Hank was affected most at the revelations that Frank had somehow managed to infiltrate our outpost on the moon.

  He always saw his position as the security expert in the team and he was convinced that on some level, Frank obtaining access to the base was a failing on his part.

  “Hank, there was nothing more we could have done. We didn’t know Lara had the ability to reach the moon. We didn’t even notice the metal cigar that buried itself in a rock floating above our heads.” I explained.

  He wasn’t listening to me. He had spent the last few hours ripping out cameras from the planes and setting them up around the base.

  He also had the replicator create personal communications devices that not only allowed us to speak to each other over diffe
rent channels but also track our locations throughout the base using a sensory system that Derek helped him design.

  “Hank, calm down, if everything goes to plan we won’t be here that long.” I again tried to reassure him but he was adamant that we needed more protection.

  I guess these were quite critical things that we should have installed at the very start, but things were moving so fast it was impossible to keep on top of all the things that needed doing, I still had a tree outside that was frozen and needed atmosphere, lots of jobs were critical and we had prioritised them according to our needs.

  Hank was currently sitting in the control room of the Armillary in front of a dozen screens all displaying camera feeds and schematics of the base showing the locations of everyone. He had been here for the past few hours and I don’t think he had slept at all since the attack which was now thirty hours ago.

  Since the attack the rest of us had all stayed within the ball of the Armillary. This structure seemed like the most secure place in the entire base, possibly because of the new additions Sam and Derek had added.

  Simple things like walls between the bedrooms, soft chairs in the control room and a large table in the kitchen area where we could all eat together. It might not sound like the plush furnishings of a king’s palace but to us, right now, this was our mansion and it was where we were staying.

  We did feel guilty for bringing the crew to the moon. They were just innocent bystanders. Sure, they wanted the same goals as us but I was hoping a lot of people wanted to see Lara fall from her ivory tower, these guys were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and now they found themselves stranded thousands of miles away from their families. When they first agreed to join us none of them would have imagined this would be where they ended up.

  “She’s nearly ready.” Ava said, walking over to me in the kitchen and grabbing the toast I had just buttered. With her big eyes staring back at me she starting to nibble at the toast.

  “Hungry?” I asked. “I’ll make you some toast.” I smiled at her and tried to put on my saddest puppy dog face as I looked at my toast in her hand.

  “Nope, don’t worry, I have some.” She smirked.

  Ava looked like she needed a good night’s sleep. We all did. It was hard to sleep when we were worried any moment someone could come through the door trying to kill us.

  “Who is nearly ready?” I asked.

  “Lovelace. The crew are just putting the final pieces of her back together then we can power her up.” Ava explained.

  “Well, I’m glad I got my toast now, before Lovelace sucks up all the power. Oh wait…” I gestured to my empty hand and looked again at the toast in hers.

  Ava and I were finding it harder than most to get sleep. Thanks to the relocation of the supercomputer we now had to share a room, and unlike the rumours Derek was happily spreading, we were not going to do that at the same time.

  Out of respect for Ava I let her dictate when she wanted to sleep and I tried to fit around that.

  It seemed like an odd position to find myself in. Derek could have bunked me or with Sam but he was smart. I knew exactly why he had arranged it this way.

  He knew I would bend over backwards for Ava. Sharing a room with anyone else would have made it difficult and awkward, but I wasn’t going to make an issue of it with Ava and likewise her with me. It made for an easy life for the rest of the crew and he knew that. He was playing on my emotions, but everyone else was happy so who was I to complain.

  That same moment Derek came thudding down the spiral staircase into the kitchen from the hanger bay above.

  “Hey Dom, guess what, we found the little orb that you created. The robots are bringing it back now.” He said from across the room.

  “Any sign of…” I didn’t need to finish; he knew what I was going to say.

  “No, no sign yet.” He said, cutting me off.

  I was getting worried that we hadn’t found the remains of Franks body yet. If I have learnt anything about Frank in recent times it is that, just when you think he had been killed, he comes back wanting vengeance.

  I wouldn’t be able to rest until I knew that we were safe from him.

  “Stop worrying.” Ava said, “As soon as Lovelace is back online, she will analyse the video feeds from all the cameras that caught the explosion and triangulate the landing zone.”

  “I know, I just want to be sure.” I said, ending the conversation as the room went quiet.

  We all jumped as the toast popped up from the machine.

  “That new orb was a pretty cool invention.” Derek said with intrigue. “It can target individual atoms just by pointing a laser at it. Impressive.”

  “I had originally imagined it to work the other way around. It could be used repel things like sea water, or fire so that a rescuer could get into flooded areas or buildings on fire.” I explained.

  “Now that’s an awesome use for it!” Ava agreed. “Imagine creating a bubble of protection around a firefighter. It could save untold lives.”

  “Yeah, but now I suspect that if Lara found out about it, she would use it as a weapon, just like I had.” I said glumly.

  “Isn’t it just a smaller version of a gravity drive?” Derek asked.

  “Not really, without getting into the complicated maths behind it, it’s very different. It was the prototype that lead to the gravity drive though.” I said, trying to gloss over the need to explain it.

  “I liked the way it stuck to the metal wall too. Like a magnet.” Ava added, sensing my desire not to get technical.

  “The wall was actually sucked into the orb rather than the other way around, it can easily attract all kinds of metals, I just told it to attract the specific composition of office wall.” I explained, feeling like I was losing their interest.

  Ava looked at me and suddenly went wide eyed as if she just thought of something important!

  “Shouldn’t we turn it off before it gets close to more metal? If that robot flies over the base it could rip everything apart?” she asked with alarm.

  I sprung across the room and ran up the stairs without saying a word. Across the hanger bay and up the other spiral staircase that led into the control room.

  “Sam!” I yelled, “Stop the robot from coming back with the orb!”

  Sam was sitting at one of the many new desks. Derek and Sam had built little round, horseshoe shaped desks that people could sit inside and surround themselves with screens.

  They all faced towards the front window in a grid, three rows of three desks, but each one could be rotated so if needed they could all point towards the middle desk where a captain could spin around and give direct orders.

  Sam was naturally sitting in this desk, in the middle, with all the other desks rotated to face him.

  As we burst up the stairwell he turned the whole desk around to face us. He looked at me, saw the urgency on my face and tapped some buttons on the screen in front of him.

  “Done.” He said. “Care to explain?”

  I heard the panting of Derek and Ava behind me as they finally caught up.

  “Dom’s just trying to kill us all.” Ava said, punching me in the arm as she walked past.

  “Oh, the usual then?” Sam confirmed.

  Ava walked up to one of the desks, tapped on the screen and adjusted some settings.

  “One, Two, Three, Four. That was the password on that orb? Right?” Ava asked me.

  “Are you hacking into it?” I questioned.

  “With a password like that I wouldn’t really call it ‘hacking’.” She replied. “It’s fine now, you can bring the robot back, I’ve disabled the orb.”

  Ava shot me a glace that reminded me how many times she had saved my life over the past few days.

  “Actually, I’m glad you’re all here, I was just about to call you. There is something strange going on in Earth’s atmosphere and I want your thoughts.” Sam explained. “Watch these recordings from a few moments ago.”

  Sam
tapped on the screen again and the Earth appeared with strange lines crisscrossing over it. The lines were clearly added by Sam and they appeared to be tracing out flight paths.

  “These are real time movements of gravity distortions.” Sam said.

  “How are you getting these readings?” I asked.

  “Derek and I have rigged up a sensor linked to a gravity drive to detect them.” He said, smiling at his creation sitting by the concrete pillar in the middle of the room.

  “Bet you didn’t know it could do that!” Derek asked me.

  “Nice one!” I replied, genuinely impressed at the creativeness of the solution.

  “If these readouts are correct.” Ava started, “Then Lara not only has several hundred planes, but they are all capable of going much faster and higher than before.”

  “That was my conclusion, and look, they are flying in formation over city centres. I believe she is putting on a performance, showing off her military power before she comes to wipe us out.” Sam said in a sombre tone.

  “Then what do we do?” Ava asked, a hint of panic in her voice.

  All eyes turned to me.

  “We have to act first!” I said, “Get everyone up here. We need to act, now!”

  Chapter 36

  The strategy was the same. We had plenty of ships and not enough pilots. One pilot would fly a command ship with five drone ships flying in a loose formation.

  The main addition this time were the sleds. They were too small to be detected by conventional radar and in many ways were disposable. They could fly close to the enemy before being detected, causing as much destruction as possible, limiting the risk to our pilots.

  “What do you think?” Hank asked as he showed me the racks of sleds in the Armillary hanger.

  “I’m not sure we have enough!” I jested, looking around the room.

  Hank had managed to fill the hanger bay with sleds. He had built shelving systems which allowed them to be stacked five high and the room was full.

  “We have fifty-five in here that can join the swarm of sleds flying around the ship, it will give us close to a hundred at our disposal.