by Barry Kirwan
She coughed, tasted blood, and then spat it out. No, not like this! Her mind tried to outrace her two immediate enemies: the rising water and the onset of the temporarily shock-deadened pain. They were only a meter from the opening. She tried to think. What still had power? She plunged her fractured elbow into the freezing water to give her a few more vital seconds to concentrate. But the pain burst through, like red hot scalpels stabbing into her, and she allowed herself one stark cry of anguish through clenched teeth, her good hand reaching out again for Dimitri’s bulk, squeezing his arm hard. She caught her breath after the first smarting flood of hurt eased off, then grimaced again, as she realized there was only one system that had any power remaining – the emergency escape hatch. She was sure she’d been in worse situations during the War, but nothing came to mind. The water rose. She shook violently. She clamped her teeth together to avoid breaking them.
Her father had taught her that in real emergencies underwater you had five seconds to decide what to do and act on it. The freezing water clawed at her waist, Dimitri’s bulk floating off the floor. She pulled him towards her, cradling her elbow around his neck. She took three deep breaths, sealed his mouth and nose closed with her left hand, and kicked at the hatch release.
***
SSV Ganesh, Mariana Trench
Four men skulked around a broad oak table in the conference room two floors beneath the ship’s bridge. The horizon rocked back and forth every eight seconds, and every third pitch downwards was accompanied by a yaw to the left, then the right, which was in turn succeeded by a rolling action that meant any object slid off the table unless it was held fast.
One man chain-smoked, one looked sea-sick, and another held a closed vidcom. The fourth man was Captain of the vessel, his wiry beard long ago bleached white by unremitting sun and sea-spray. They hunched around the sturdy table that had seen many years at sea, and many discussions, but few as somber as this one. They all wore Indus Valley Systems weatherproof parkas.
"So, he was right after all," the smoker said, blowing a ring of pale grey smoke.
"Dead right," Jason said, beginning to turn green.
"Didn’t know you had a sense of humor, Jason," replied the smoker.
He chafed at that, loosening his collar, trying to keep his eyes fixed on the rolling horizon.
The man with the switched off vidcom played with it idly. "What about Calder?" he said. "He’s the reason we funded this in the first place."
The smoker stubbed out his cigarette with his left hand, while his right flourished another. "Disappeared. No trace. Either Chorazin or Alicians have him. Probably dead either way. We need the special sub, the new armed one the Indonesians have."
Jason got up and began pacing. "Jesus! Let’s just head back to shore and work this out. We’re obviously way out of our depth here – literally. Two people just died, or will be dead soon enough, and we lost a fifty-million dollar sub." He staggered to the window, grabbing the rail just in time. "And for what? We don’t even know what’s down there, only that something lethal is protecting it."
"We have to try again," the smoker said. "Word will leak out soon, and if we leave, another ship will take our place, our stake. Do I have to remind you all? The Corporation needs this find." He lit the new cigarette, and threw a sideways glance at Jason. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought him along after all. He was too new to the company.
Jason turned back towards the table. "Maybe we should go public – I mean, this is bigger than a corporate find – Christ, whatever it is down there, it’s not from here, is it?" He stared at the faces around the room, failing to find purchase. He walked back to the table and slammed both palms down, hard. "Hell, guys, am I the only one who recognizes we’re no longer in fucking Kansas?"
The smoker made his decision. He raised his hand and fixed Jason straight in the eye.
"You’re right. We should abort. You go on ahead. Take the V-jet back to Guam. And the pictures from the pod we recovered. Encrypted of course. Meet with our man there, brief him and wait for instructions. I’ll call Head Office."
Jason nodded. "Hallelujah! I’m out of here!" He raced out, ushering in a blast of strong salty air, and headed below to pack his things, interrupting himself to lean over the side as a vicious roll of the ship caught him unprepared. The door swung closed, the sound of the wind and the sea muted again. A blast of spray lashed against the windows.
The man with the Vidcom man stopped tapping. "Never seen Jason get seasick like this before. Must be those pictures. Scare the hell out of me, too."
The smoker drew in a long breath, exhaling slowly through pursed lips. "The V-jet will be intercepted of course, assuming it even gets as far as Guam. Satellite’s too risky – it’ll be hacked for sure."
A scratchy voice from the Vidcom, not switched off after all, came on-line.
"Indonesian Government just agreed to dispatch their newest IP Attack sub. It can be with you in forty-eight hours."
The man with the vidcom eyed the smoker, waiting.
The smoker nodded. "Get the sub here, and give Jason false data, suitably encoded. Make the V-jet ditching look like an accident, but ensure the files are found." He exhaled slowly. "No survivors."
The Captain glared at both men, and stood up, hammering two balled fists onto the table as he faced the smoker. "Then I’ll pick a pilot who isn’t married."
He didn’t look back as he launched himself through the door into the sea spray outside, his footing firm despite a brutal wave breaking over the side. The storm was getting worse.
The man with the vidcom spoke as soon as the sound of the sea receded.
"Kostakis and the girl – I’ll notify their next of kin tomorrow morning. I served once with her father in the War, though she didn’t know me." He paused and looked out to the sea. "He was a good man."
The smoker nodded ruefully, stubbing out his barely begun cigarette. He gazed forwards towards the heli-deck where the Captain was already talking to someone. "They usually are."
Chapter 13
Booster
The beetle-shaped aero-taxi powered straight upwards like a glass bullet emerging from the barrel of a gun, as it exited the underground shaft towards ground level. Micah held on to the steel handrail as he was spat out into the granite sky, skyscrapers looming around him on all sides. The pilotless vehicle slowed its ascent, pitched forward as if gathering breath, then sped off through the towers, a small buzzing insect hurtling through giant redwoods.
He’d only travelled in one once before – they were so expensive – on the occasion of his father’s funeral, and he’d shared it with his mother and only sister, who had followed their father three years later courtesy of radiation-induced multiple cancers. She’d been that much closer to LA zero, the largest detonation.
The sun never quite managed to chip its way through the rice-colored haze above New LA, though occasional splashes of orange dribbled around the hills near sunset, like melting wax. Just as well, he thought, with so little ozone left. The aero-taxi crossed an invisible boundary into NLA Central, sailing between the most recent and fanciest buildings, all at least two hundred floors high, the first thirty or so window-less, shielding against the background radiation, most concentrated at ground-level. And the dust. Millions of people had been instantly cremated in the initial shock attack on LA – city of angels – and once somebody had pointed out that the fallout contained the ashes of millions, it became impossible to forget. People wanted to live and work high up, or else underground. Almost no one walked the city streets, even though the ashes had long ago been washed away, scoured clean by acid rain. At ground level, ten hours a week was maybe safe, but after that you had a dose that would start looking for cells and genes to mess with.
The aero-taxi, slightly bigger than an old-style car, was mainly made of the ubiquitous transparent and tough plazglass, so Micah had impressive views in any direction, including down. Most of the skyscrapers were traditional block-shapes, but some o
f the latest ones were triangular, like sharply rising stepped pyramids. Off to the left the Global Fundamentalist Headquarters came into view – a vertiginous, twisting tetrahedron, a three-sided building that swept up from the mucky city floor on three massive graphite-colored spokes. There were no floors until mid-level, but entrail-like elevator tubes stretched down to ground and subway entrances. Its gold-tinted windows reflected the sky in sepia. Micah had to admit it was impressive, majestic even. They certainly had money, and knew how to make a statement. ‘Better to inspire than coerce’ was one of their mottos. He suspected they did both.
He stared forwards, past the automated control console – automatics steered all public transport these days – to the distant edge of the city, and beyond to the old LA center leveled a decade ago by three separate nuclear detonations on the very first day of the War. He shuddered. He remembered the sirens, him and his two school-buddies laughing and joking that some idiot had let them off a day early before their regular weekly test. He stumbled backwards shielding his retinas when the first flashes lit up the sky above LA Central ten kilometers away. They’d played this game often enough, but now it was for real.
They ran full pelt ahead of the shock wave – a broiling tsunami of rubble and flaming cars and trucks consuming buildings in its wave front – radiating outward toward them. Micah had always been the fastest, and tore ahead of Timmy and Jonah, running in the relative silence, in and out of cars and machinery stopped dead in their tracks by the EM pulse, dodging people not realizing what was happening, until they saw a burning cloud rushing their way. Micah knew that if he heard the blasts, then the wave would be upon him, and it would be too late.
He remembered diving for cover though the closing shield doors seconds before the scorching wind caught up. Timmy and Jonah, and other people had been behind Micah, running for their lives too. They were never found. No one knocked on the glowing shield door for a long time afterwards.
The ground kept warping, the seismic after-shocks rippling outward for two whole days, making even the reinforced nuclear shelters hazardous. Micah had been lucky. He’d been granted a day off school since his father was home after a long mission. Micah had wanted to be anywhere but home, so had cycled to a suburb, near the hills. His friends, his teachers, all of them had died. Ashed.
He recalled lying in a shelter with imperfect strangers: quiet, confused people, all in deep shock, terrified. Only the babies made any noise, the rest sat, arms around knees, some rocking, listening to the rumbling and occasional crashing down of buildings merely crippled by the first batch of incinerating shock waves. He lost track of time, since it was dark even during the daytime, with the smoke above, and the thick dust that tasted like metal, everywhere. They had a pump to keep positive atmospheric pressure, so the dust stayed out, mostly. But he saw and tasted it whenever they opened the entrance to let someone in, always watching, waiting for his family to arrive.
At these moments he glimpsed the sky, ravaged by curling talons of fire and black smoke – the only reference he could think of was an image of William Blake’s painting of Dante’s Inferno he’d seen in the art gallery on a school trip. But the flashes left his vision blotchy for days, and he couldn’t stop his body’s violent tremors – his own internal earthquakes.
Everyone had known it might come to war, the government had been so gung-ho. The satellite-based anti-missile lasers, as well as the aerial patriot robots were thought to be impenetrable – God knew they’d cost enough. LA wasn’t alone in the first wave – the White House and the Pentagon, along with New York Central, had been obliterated in the same moment as part of a tightly coordinated attack; the government finally held accountable for their arrogance, their hubris.
His parents had survived; they’d taken a day-trip to Santa Barbara. One day his mother arrived in the shelter, then his father initially joined them, but had to leave them as he was an army major, and felt he had more chance of finding Micah’s sister from inside what was left of the military machine. So he said goodbye to Micah and his mother, telling Micah to pull himself together – a tough order for any thirteen-year old – to look after them both while he was gone. But Micah cried, held onto his father’s sleeve, begging him not to go. His father threw him a cold contemptuous stare, unpeeling Micah’s fingers from his jacket, one by one, until Micah grasped air, hot tears tumbling down reddened cheeks. Micah’s mother immediately grabbed Micah and held him close. From that moment on, Micah knew he was no hero, not like his father, and from then onwards, he never wanted to be. His father returned, two years later, with the hero’s rank of military colonel – at least that was what it said on the coffin.
Micah realized he was gripping the aero-taxi seat arm tight with clammy palms. He let go, averting his gaze to look eastwards, towards the Eden Mission complex. It was a purely functional affair: three brown, closely inter-connected blocks, the tallest reaching two hundred floors. It had been hastily constructed, then extended numerous times as it became more ambitious, and as The Heracles failed to deliver. Its blandness was intentional – it sent a message that no money would be wasted on extravagance – only the pursuit of colonizing Eden.
Like many others, when space colonization had become a realistic possibility, Micah jumped at the chance to work there. His father’s credentials got him through the tough security checks, and though he’d never be an astronaut, probably would never even make it off the planet, he wanted to work on that dream. But as he looked at the Eden complex, seeing the chaotic pattern of construction, the lack of forethought, he couldn’t help but wonder if humans would just drag all their baggage with them and trash Eden as well.
Then, as if on cue, he felt different, more positive. The doctor had said it would happen, that the booster had psychoactive properties that would make him feel more confident, more in control – he would see opportunities where before he’d seen insurmountable challenges. But there had been a warning, too.
"You’ll feel better, and with it, cockier, more powerful. You’ll take more risks, maybe say things you always felt you should say; things that have been bottled up will get released. You can get yourself into a lot of trouble on boosters. That’s why they’re illegal, not to mention psychologically addictive. Just watch yourself, think before you speak or act, and try to go through things habitually. And when it wears off, be prepared for an equivalent scale of depression – best to take a few days off when that happens. Oh, and just so you know, and you will soon enough, you’ll feel a lot more libido. Be careful of that, too, there are enough diseases out there… Well, I don’t have to tell you."
Micah had asked whether he would get another one after 72 hours if his mission was not finished by that time.
"No, on two counts. First, Vincent said you’ll be finished by then, one way or another." The doctor had cleared his throat at that point. "Second, three boosters in a row tend to cause sterility and impotence; five in a row and that becomes permanent. And since you’re one of the thirty percent safe-sterile men left on the planet, because you got to the shelters fast enough, you should hang onto that."
The booster had arrived in a syringe that looked like it was destined for a horse, and had left a lump in his upper arm, which the doctor had said would go down in an hour or two. Micah had taken a shower and changed into some new clothes, and seen how beat-up he looked, especially his back. The doctor said the booster would help with the bruising. Micah tried to see his image in the aero-taxi plazglass, but it was too bright outside.
He was, however, really feeling a lot better, no matter how he knew he must look. His mind turned to Antonia. He wondered if his temporary confidence would enable him to get noticed by her. But his mind jumped of its own accord to Louise, and an array of images paraded through his mind. He shook himself. This stuff’s pretty strong. He faced the exit door as the aero-taxi docked at mid-level on one of the Eden complex towers. He saw from his wristcom it was 08:35.
His retinal scan passed security, and he joine
d the queue for the express elevator to the upper working levels. He was the only one in the aluminum-walled lift smiling.
Rudi arrived at 10:30 am. They went straight for coffee in one of the lounges scattered through the complex, some four hundred meters above ground level. This one was an octagonal affair, furnished with several coffee and stim machines. The room contained a variety of red leather seats, holographic notice boards, and a vid-screen running a news channel continuously without sound. The place was decked out with bland oval tables at standing height, which was what people used most of the time, since they spent enough time sitting when they were doing their jobs. Half a dozen people were already there, but Micah knew none of them by name; over nine hundred people worked at the Complex.
"You’re in pretty late today, Rudi." He tried to say it innocently. Rudi’s short black curly hair and dark-ringed Hispanic eyes made it impossible for Micah to ever tell if Rudi had had much sleep – he always looked like he had been out till the small hours of the morning. With his features, Micah always assumed he had a string of women.
"Well, actually, I’ve been in a meeting all morning with security. And you can talk; you didn’t even show up yesterday."
Micah coughed on his coffee, which didn’t go unnoticed, but rather than play it down he decided to play it up. "Random rad-check, you know how it is. No big deal. Security, eh? What have you been up to, something naughty?"
Rudi looked pissed off.
Micah smiled, but it erupted into a grin. "Hey, just messing with you!"
