The Black Hole

by Hammond, Ray

  ‘I have now canvassed advice from eleven human experts in geo-physical seismic conductivity,’ responded Theodore, ‘and I have received data from over twenty-two thousand virtual assistants who are expert in subjects such as the geology of the Geneva region, the behaviour of shock waves in rock strata and the effects of serial thermo-nuclear nuclear explosions contained within similar rock strata. Following this input I calculate that the likelihood of damaging the Large Hadron Collider to the extent that it is no longer operable will be 76.915 per cent. To put it simply, the collider is a sensitive device and the shock waves from the N-DEPs will probably put it out of action.’

  The President nodded his understanding as his virtual assistant summarised the results of his high-speed global research effort.

  ‘And what is the risk of the fail-safe device actually being in place?’ he asked.

  ‘Negligible, sir,’ replied Theodore. ‘I and my colleagues are of the same opinion. It’s a bluff.’

  ‘Thank you, Theo,’ said Brabazon. He turned to scan the room. ‘So what should I do?’

  None of the humans in the Situation Room spoke. When making crucial decisions they had learned the wisdom of suppressing their own opinions until the superior intellects of the VAs had been polled.

  ‘You don’t have a lot of choice, Mr President,’ continued Theodore. ‘If you and the other democratic leaders tried in good faith to ban the technologies as Humans First demand there would be global economic collapse. The people would rise up. And if the Humans First organization was left intact they could re-enact this threat at any time. They would even be free to build up a stockpile of black hole weapons with which to terrorise the world into continuing submission. An attempt has to be made to stop them, no matter what the potential cost. It is simple logic.’

  Brabazon glanced around his cabinet. One by one the men and women nodded their agreement with the analysis presented by the president’s super-capable economic and political advisor.

  ‘Let me speak to the commander of the Ninth,’ said Brabazon after a long silence.

  ‘Flight Supervisor Captain Ian Marshall is now be able to hear you,’ said Theodore.

  ‘Captain Marshall?’ asked Brabazon. ‘This is the President.’

  ‘This is Captain Ian Marshall, United Sates Air Force, Commander of the Ninth Bomber Wing. Receiving you loud and clear, sir,’ said a confident, clear voice which seemed to float ethereally around the Situation Room.

  ‘What is your time to target?’ asked Brabazon even though he could still see the digital counter on the screen.

  ‘Four minutes five seconds, sir,’ returned the disembodied voice.

  ‘Very well,’ said Brabazon. ‘I realise there is a lot of responsibility on your shoulders, as there is on mine. You know what is happening down there in that particle accelerator. It is time to do your duty and I order the release your weapons.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ came the reply.

  ‘God be with you,’ said the President and he turned sombrely and nodded for Theodore to terminate the connection.

  *

  Floyd pressed the buttons on the telephone and fumbled the numbers. He was still panting from his run through what had seemed like endless corridors to find this researcher’s office. It was only ninety minutes since he had last been here with Nicole and Steffanie, but it seemed as if days had elapsed in between.

  He put his rifle down on the table and, gulping air through his mouth, he dialled again, this time forcing his trembling fingers to hit the right buttons.

  ‘CTU Operations,’ said a voice.

  ‘Get me Fox,’ said Floyd. ‘This is Floyd.’

  There was a click, then a short silence.

  ‘Floyd?’ asked Fox.

  ‘I’ve destroyed the collider,’ shouted Floyd. ‘It can no longer be used as a bomb!’

  ‘What’s wrong with your voice?’ demanded Fox.

  ‘My nose is broken,’ Floyd screamed at his boss. ‘It’s me, Floyd – L4, B22, H91.’

  ‘O.K., Harry, O.K. Are you absolutely sure that the particle accelerator is out of action?’ asked the director of Britain’s Counter Terrorism Unit.

  ‘I checked with Professor Lundgren – the CERN director,’ Floyd said. ‘He’s confirmed that it can’t be used.’

  ‘Hold on,’ ordered Fox.

  ‘Sir?’ called Floyd. But he got no response. He listened carefully. He could hear his boss issuing rapid orders in the background.

  ‘Tell the Americans to call off the bombers, NOW!’ Floyd heard Fox shout at the top of his voice. ‘My man’s disabled the accelerator. It is permanently out of action.’

  Then Fox came back on the line. ‘Well done Harry, well done,’ he told his agent. ‘Now we’ve got to get you out. Special forces are just attacking Access Shaft Number Two. Let them deal with the HFDA, do you hear me? Hide yourself. That’s an order. Got it?’

  ‘Understood, sir,’ said Floyd.

  ‘Just stay safe and out of the way,’ said Fox. ‘Now I’ve got to speak to the Americans myself.’ Then he abruptly terminated the connection.

  Floyd returned the phone handset slowly to its cradle. He remained staring at it for a few moments, breathing heavily as he leaned on the table top. Suddenly he felt overwhelmed with fatigue and all the pain in his body that he had been suppressing suddenly rushed into his nerve endings all at once.

  With a groan he sank down into one of the chairs at the table and rested his aching and throbbing head in his hands.

  Suddenly the table twitched and he heard a distant and muffled explosion. Then there was a second. Floyd didn’t know whether the blasts were being triggered by the attacking forces or whether HFDA forces were beginning to detonate the demolition explosives they had deployed around the complex.

  Pushing himself to his feet, Floyd picked up his rifle, slung it over his shoulders and ran from the relative sanctuary of the researchers’ office.

  *

  Thirty seconds, said VX-21in the inner ears of his human supervisors. Course steady, bomb bay doors open.

  Ian Marshall nodded his understanding. Neither of the supervisors in the cockpit, nor any of the humans in the cockpits of the other eleven bombers who were following behind, would actually have to press a button to launch the GPS-guided, nuclear-armed bunker busters. The process was now entirely under the control of the virtual pilots.

  The two men in the lead aircraft of Whisky Wing watched the digital display as it counted down.

  The huge aircraft gave a gentle lift as the weight of its four, thirty kiloton ‘robust nuclear penetration missiles’ left the bomb bay.

  Bombs gone, reported VX-21.

  ‘O.K.,’ said Ian Marshall injecting a tone of exaggerated normality into his voice. ‘Engines to maximum power please. Take us home.’

  *

  ‘Mister President,’ said Theodore. ‘I have an incoming high priority call from Ray Fox, director of Britain’s Counter Intelligence Unit. He’s asked to be patched directly through to you without delay.’

  President Brabazon glanced questioningly at Mike Ryan, who returned a single nod of approval.

  ‘Put him through,’ the President told his VA. An image of a thin, worried looking man with a shock of dark hair appeared on the main screen in the Situation Room.

  ‘What is it Ray?’ asked Mike Ryan.

  ‘My agent in CERN has completely disabled the collider at CERN,’ Fox in a rush. ‘They can no longer use it as a bomb. This status has been confirmed by the director of the CERN Institute. I repeat, the CERN collider cannot be use as any type of weapon. I suggest–’

  ‘Get me the Ninth Bomber Wing,’ ordered Brabazon jumping to his feet, cutting off the British caller. ‘And patch in Andrews Air Force Base.’

  *

  A conventional, unguided 2,500lb would take about 11.3 seconds to fall to the ground if it was dropped from a height on 30,000ft. Terminal velocity would be about 240 feet per second.

  But the N-DEPs released by Ian
Marshall’s bomber were both satellite-guided and exceptionally aerodynamic. As a result, the forward and downwards velocities of the missiles were adjusted constantly as the internal navigation systems trimmed the four ailerons fitted to each weapon’s tail fins – fins which resembled small wings rather than conventional rudders.

  The robust nuclear deep-earth penetrator had been developed through six generations of bunker-busting weapons, all of them intended to burrow down into the earth to destroy enemy chemical and biological weapons facilities and to knock out the buried concrete hide-outs so beloved of dictators, renegade military commanders and terrorist leaders

  Each bomb’s six-foot-long nose cone was made from a titanium shell filled with solid depleted uranium. This part of the projectile was not designed to cause target damage; the super-hard, super-dense metals were moulded to a curved point to achieve the greatest possible penetration through earth, sand, rock and even reinforced concrete.

  The three-foot-long nuclear warhead itself was positioned in the middle of the slender missile, in front of the navigation system compartment and the extended tail fins. Inside a two-inch-thick titanium casing, a small but powerful high explosive charge nestled tightly against two containers in which isotopes of plutonium 239 were suspended. Nuclear fission and supercritcality would not be triggered by the initial shock of impact; only when the missile had come to a complete stop would the explosive charge detonate, smashing a billion neutrons into complete plutonium atoms. In a picosecond, each of Ian Marshall’s missiles would release a third more thermonuclear energy than was released by the ‘Big Boy’ atomic bomb when it was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

  Six seconds after leaving the bomb-bay, the four weapons released by Captain Marshall and his crew were, themselves, travelling forwards at a ground speed of 180 knots. As their navigation systems received co-ordinates from the chain of navigation satellites overhead the missiles adjusted their course and calculated their precise angle of impact.

  From the moment they left the warplane’s bomb-bay, the guided N-DEPs would take twenty-two seconds to reach their respective entry points on the CERN campus.

  *

  Floyd rounded a corner in a white-tiled corridor and ran at full speed into the arms of two young HFDA soldiers.

  The British agent was ready for action. He swung the stock of his rifle into the stomach of one man and, even as the soldier grunted and collapsed onto the floor, Floyd swung his muzzle up and fired a burst into the other man’s chest from a range of eighteen inches.

  The solider was blown off his feet and, as he flew backwards through the air, Floyd turned to see the first HFDA terrorist rising to his knees and lifting his weapon.

  Floyd clubbed the man under the chin with the butt of his rifle and he felt and heard the man’s jaw break as his head snapped back. The soldier slumped to the floor, completely unconscious.

  Glancing along the brightly lit corridor, Floyd could see no one else. From the distance came the rumble of a deep explosion.

  He bent and picked up one of the fallen automatic rifles. Then he set off along the corridor again, running as fast as his bruised and battered body would allow.

  *

  After releasing their payload, neither Ian Marshall nor his co-supervisor had looked at each other. Both men were staring straight ahead into the dark night. They were waiting for the first flash from far behind.

  Suddenly there was the hiss of radio communication in their headphones.

  ‘Captain Marshall, this is President Robert Brabazon again,’ said a voice they both knew. ‘I order you to abort this mission immediately. I say again, abort, abort, abort. Do not drop your bombs. Do you copy?’

  Marshall glanced at his co-supervisor. Such a scenario had been played out hundreds of times during their training, both in simulators and in the air. But in the simulations the abort order had never been given by the President himself.

  ‘We need coded confirmation from command,’ the co-supervisor reminded his captain.

  14.31 seconds to first impact, said VX-21.

  ‘Do you copy, Captain Marshall?’ demanded Brabazon again.

  Just at that moment the supervisors’ screens showed a highlighted top-priority message being received from Andrews Air Force base in Washington.

  CODE Z2719633. ABORT MISSION, read their screens. RETURN TO BASE. CONFIRM IMMEDIATELY.

  Code confirmed, reported VX-21.

  ‘The birds have already flown,’ Marshall told his president and all the others who would be listening. ‘In-flight abort now being initiated.’

  Abort codes sent, VX-21 told his supervising captain. And…confirmed. Birds are dead, at 3.793 seconds to target.

  ‘Bombs destroyed,’ the flight supervisor told the President. ‘Mission aborted.’

  As soon as the connection was closed, Ian Marshall checked with each plane in the Wing that the orders to abort had been received and acted on by them all and to confirm the new heading that would take them back to Britain and USAF Fairford.

  When his task was complete and the plane was both banking westwards and climbing above the lanes used by commercial air traffic, Captain Marshall sat back in his chair and wiped his brow. Although he hadn’t realised it, he had been sweating profusely despite the chill of the pressurised cabin. Then he realised that his hands were trembling.

  *

  Floyd crawled out onto the metal walkway that hung in the darkness above the suspended tungsten lights of the main Accelerator Hall. The sound of distant explosions had now ceased and from the bent and twisted condition of the steel elevator doors far below Floyd guessed that HFDA soldiers had destroyed the lift shafts and the stairwells to deny access from the campus level up above.

  He glanced around the hall and, with a grim sadness, he spied the spread-eagled form of Professor Lundgren lying behind the barricade of steel containers. There were large bloodstains visible around the chest area of his white sterile environment suit. But there was no sign of Nicole.

  Elsewhere in the vast room Floyd saw HFDA soldiers gathered in small groups. They were clearly awaiting orders.

  Floyd crawled further out onto the dark walkway. The electronic pass he had taken from the buggy driver in the tunnel had opened all of the access doors on his long climb up to the ceiling space.

  A television light came on at the far end of the hall and Floyd saw the figure of Alexander Makowski stride into the room. He was followed by Colonel Poliza and two HFDA soldiers. Captive between them Floyd made out the small, dark-suited form of the American agent Nicole Sanderson.

  Makowski stood with his back to the end wall and faced the camera. Poliza remained close to him, but just out of frame.

  ‘I speak now to the natural humans of the world,’ began Makowski, his words floating up to Floyd via the whispering gallery effect just as clearly as before.

  ‘The Humans First Party has failed in its struggle against the transhuman cyborgs and machine intelligence this night,’ Makowski said. ‘But I now call on all humans, on those natural inheritors of our planet, to rise up against the machines that will otherwise enslave us. The struggle must go on’

  Floyd shook his head in disgust. Now Makowski was trying to inspire others to take up his cause and the British agent knew that there would be thousands of susceptible young men who would find his rhetoric attractive. And the leader of Humans First now had a world stage.

  Standing up carefully, Floyd raised his rifle.

  It was a long way to the far end of the accelerator hall, almost the length of a football pitch, way beyond the range of his rifle’s laser guidance system. But this time the camera crew were standing back slightly and the target was clear. Wishing that Maria were with him to enhance his vision, Floyd took careful aim at the brightly lit but distant figure of Alexander Makowski.

  The leader of Humans First was still urging others to take up the violent struggle as Floyd estimated the trajectory and allowed for the unavoidable inaccuracy of his Chinese-made
weapon over such a long distance.

  Floyd fired a sustained burst, sweeping the muzzle of his rifle through a short diagonal and horizontal arc that he calculated would compensate for any inaccuracy. Makowski went down immediately. Floyd immediately fired a second burst and Poliza dropped to the floor. The HFDA soldiers scattered and Floyd saw Nicole running for cover.

  For a few moments there was a stunned silence in the hall. Floyd turned to run for the end of the walkway but then a hail of bullets struck the gantry ahead of him. He dropped onto his stomach as more bullets tore into the metal and into the ceiling all around him, killing several of the suspended tungsten lamps. There had to be scores of HFDA terrorists in the hall below and hundreds of bullets were now whining all around him. He was completely pinned down.