by Alex Bobl
A fat bald man came out of a deckhouse that rather resembled a riveted armored pillbox. He scratched his suntanned belly which hung above white shorts, stretched and yawned, then noticed the prisoners' column down at the pier. For a couple of seconds he stared at us, as if unable to grasp what he was seeing, then grabbed at the railing and leant over the stairs. The corporal shouted something, and the fat one hurried toward the sailors lurking under the crane.
"I have a funny feeling they brought us out earlier than usual," Wladas said.
"Could be," I agreed. "The sky above the base is getting dark."
"Where do you see that?" the burly miner said next to me. "It couldn't be clearer."
"Petro, wait. You don't know about this," Wladas turned to me. "I can see it, too. It's getting very murky right above the Fort. Have you any idea what's going on?"
The island was oblong, by the looks of it. The fort that had been built around the portal was surrounded by towering walls that ran the island's entire perimeter. Above it protruded a few segments of ancient parabolic dishes. I knew too little about Neumann's experiment: just bits of trivia of what had happened forty years ago. The wave from the electronic bomb that had created the wormway to Pangea had also caused the test site to collapse, together with its tropospheric station and part of the Kola Peninsula. Later, they had erected the inward-sloping wall around the base. Keeping the wormway stable demanded a shitload of power so they'd been forced to build a nuclear power station right on the base. The concrete top of its reactor peeked above the wall to our left. Rusty mesh parabolic dishes, several hundred square meters each, stood on tall steel supports behind the walls. The dishes had been mounted close to the center of the island and were oriented toward the cardinal points at opposing angles to each other. They were the only old installations left intact. The rest had been encased in steel and concrete, turning the base into an impregnable sarcophagus. Our scientists couldn't forecast the consequences of the wormway's collapse. The wave's nature was still classified research. I remembered a geek from our army school tell me that if they tried to shut the wormway down, it could cause a major catastrophe. Apparently, our continuum would collapse turning the entire Solar System into a new black hole...
"So Mark, what is it-" Wladas started.
Lightning flashed between the antennas. A deafening clap ripped through the air. I covered my ears and ducked. Many of the people fell onto the pier covering their heads.
The sailors seemed to be quite used to the local thunder and lightning. They'd finally managed to place the container onto the landing ramp. The crane operator prodded a lever unhooking the wire cables that held the container in place under the boom of the crane. Slowly, it slid down the slipway toward a square opening in the Fort's wall.
The corporal watching the crew from the bridge turned on his jetpack and shot skyward. He made a steep arc through the air heading for the gate we'd just left. Three guards waited there for him. The corporal landed and motioned them to begin. All three turned their backs to the gate and trained their weapons on us. A harsh voice spouted from concealed loudspeakers,
"Prisoners! You have broken the Earth's laws and are banished for good! There is no going back! There is no forgiveness! From now on, you're deportees!"
His voice grew louder and more powerful. Now it echoed over the island, deafening and hair-raising, bringing one to his knees. "The Earth's laws end here! Within the limits of the prison world, your life span is your own responsibility!"
As he spoke, the Feds were retreating into the gate, their weapons still pointed at us. The loudspeakers concluded in a lower voice,
"The jumpgate base and the island are Earth's territory. All prisoners have two minutes to clear it. In case of noncompliance, the Fort will engage its weapons systems."
With this last word, the armored gateway closed concealing the Feds. The square opening in the Fort's wall opposite the ferry shut, and the slipway retracted. The sailors rushed to cast off; the operator lowered the crane and began covering the hoist with tarps.
The fat bald guy - who seemed to be the captain - hurried inside the cockpit and emerged a few seconds later wearing a lifejacket. He raised a polished megaphone and shouted,
"Need a special invitation? In the cage, quickly! By the left, single file, quick march!"
Several round embrasures opened in the Fort's wall. I rushed toward the gangway, Wladas and the miner wheezing close behind. The rest of the deportees also jostled toward the ferry. The pier resounded with their howling.
"You idiots!" the captain yelled. "In single file!"
The crane operator, having covered the hoist, sprang to a low concrete stand nearby, jerked the lid open and produced a machine gun: an ancient German MG with its holed barrel shroud and wide-mouthed flash suppressor. The crane operator flung a leather strap over his head and hung the weapon at his thigh. He placed the gun barrel onto the railing, straightened the ammunition belt and drew the bolt.
"Halt!" the captain yelled from the bridge.
Lightning flashed. Another clap of thunder tore through my ears. I stopped in front of the gangway.
"Form ranks!" he commanded. "At the double!"
All over the pier, people started pushing and swearing.
"Do it, Georgie," the captain said without lowering the megaphone.
The machine gun rattled, sending a semicircle of hissing bullets ripping through the air overhead. Somebody screamed and collapsed onto the pier. Some rushed back to the shore, others froze. The thick dark barrels of weapon systems emerged from the round embrasures in the walls. The characteristic flattened ends of the barrels blackened with soot told me what they were. Flame throwers.
"Listen here!" the captain shouted. "You have ten seconds to fall in. The last ones will get a bullet. Ten, nine-"
He gave the crane operator's shoulder a shove pointing to an inmate who, despite the orders, had bolted along the pier back toward the base gate. The gun barrel traced the escapee and cut him down in one long spurt.
"Start moving on my command," the captain said matter-of-factly. "Three, two, one! Toward the cage, at the double!"
I took the gangway in three long bounds and dived into the cage's opening.
"Step it up!" the captain hollered. "And don't you dare puke on my deck!"
I strode to the bow side of the gate and rested my hands on the bars watching a fair-haired sailor cast off. In one practiced motion, he released the dock line from a bollard, threw the line into the water and turned round showing a young freckled face.
"Hey, Oakum!" the captain yelled in a strained, breaking voice. "Quit shirking! To the engine room, now!"
The youth chose not to walk back past the cage, apparently for fear of someone pushing him into the water or grabbing him through the bars. He unlatched a hatch under his feet and before I could call him, jumped down into the opening. The hatch closed with a clang and I looked up.
The whole scene must have taken a minute and a half. The barrels of the flame throwers moved forward all at once aiming at the pier. Most of the deportees had already boarded the ferry. The rest faltered on the pier, anxiously waiting their turn. Inside the cage, Wladas elbowed through the crowd toward me. He nodded at the murky gray mist thickening high above the island. Slowly, it formed an enormous conical thunder cloud.
"What's going on?"
"A hurricane, probably," I nodded at the antennas. "The blast wave. Has to be, for sure. The jump takes too much energy disrupting the status quo and causing perturbations. The residual effect of transporting us to Pangea."
Wladas nodded. During jumps, the antennas worked like lightning rods redirecting surplus energy into the Pangean atmosphere. But the atmosphere had its own ways of dealing with this phenomenon.
Looked like our army school geek had been right about the future catastrophe, albeit a local one.
When the last deportee had entered the cage, the sailors hooked up the gangway with barge poles and dragged it onto the bridge. Mo
re sliding bars blocked the exit onto the deck. The cloud over the base thickened, heavy as lead.
"Full speed astern!" the captain barked.
The deck shook and the ferry wallowed as it moved between the pier and the Fort wall. The antennas emitted bolts of lightning, bathing everything in their colored blaze. The sky rumbled.
A guard boat came into view abeam: a squat vessel with square deck houses. It headed for the Elephant Ridge: a much shallower area than here, flooded with daylight, its horizon dotted with trawlers' sails...
The Elephant Ridge? Was I supposed to know that? Or was it Information defusing in my head again? I was a bit fed up with its nonsense. I'd get to the mainland first, and then I'd try and give it all a good think.
The anxious deportees argued and quibbled. Some squatted down, others stood holding onto the bars. I headed toward a tight bulkhead at the back part of the cage and stood under it. Wladas forced his way through behind me.
Soon the ferry caught up with the guards' boat and followed in its wake. Lightning flashed over the island although not as often. Still, the sky remained dark.
The guards' boat started to turn, the ferry mimicking its maneuver. On the bridge, an alarm wailed, and another one answered from the guards' boat. The deck swayed sending me sprawling onto Wladas. We collapsed. Everybody screamed. The ferry kept turning without slowing down.
When it turned its stern toward the island, a tornado swirled over the antennas, its funnel flashing occasional bolts of lightning. The leaden sky was pressing down on it as if trying to flatten it and crush it into the Fort. The thunder clapped and crackled; then sunrays ripped the top of the funnel and pounced through the thick darkness illuminating the pier and the Fort's gray walls. A tall rumbling wave concealed it from view.
It rolled on quickly, but I managed to take a deep breath and cover my face. The deck lurched. Water poured through the cage bars.
Chapter Three
Questions
Colored circles flashed before my closed eyelids. My lungs burned, about to explode. I pushed with my elbows struggling to force myself free from a stranger gripping my back.
I couldn't. I could barely tell top from bottom as I kept hitting and kicking. Pointless. The bulk of the water around me absorbed the impact.
My fingers brushed the bars. I grabbed at them, pushing myself up, and started climbing up toward the light, hoping that the inmate who clung to me would loosen his grip once we were out of the water.
When we surfaced, his fingers at my throat slackened. I took a swing and elbowed his temple. His nails scratched the skin on my neck as he went underwater.
Every second could be my last, the thought pulsated in my head. I climbed further up, higher, as far from the water as possible.
Once I’d climbed about six foot up, I forced my hand between the bars and gripped them tightly, pressing my side to the grate. No one was going to pull me away from it. I'd make a quick job of anyone who tried.
Turned out, I wasn't the only clever one. About a dozen more people, Wladas included, hung along the perimeter of the cage clinging to the bars. The deck was now to our left and the ceiling to our right. The ferry had to be lying on its side... sinking.
Below in the water, people struggled and screamed, calling for help and drowning each other.
I looked around. I had to get out of there. The ferry was about to become a mass grave.
"Over here! Help!" voices came from my right.
I turned my head to the bars. The guard boat rocked on the waves nearby, heading for the island. The deck was empty.
"Hey!"
"Come here!"
"Help!"
Our screams followed the boat. Apparently, no one was going to help us. They weren't interested.
Someone tugged my ankle. A gentle pull - not an attempt to grab my foot and drag me down. Someone was trying to get my attention. I looked down, prepared to kick a wet face, but reconsidered. Hanging below me was a Chinese. He looked like the one who'd just lost his buddy in the airlock. He pointed down, nodding.
What the hell?
"Why down?" I asked.
The Chinese started climbing down.
"Where are you-"
"Mark!" Wladas called.
I turned my head.
"Jump!"
The guard boat slowed down, the feathered waves in its wake settling. The turret on the stern turned its twin guns toward the sinking ferry.
I let go of the bars and kicked myself away and down.
What's better, the hydrodynamic shock or being showered with shrapnel? It depended on the gunners' aim, and I had a funny feeling they were about to target the emerging part of the ferry. Otherwise, the Chinese wouldn't have-
The bang came from the ferry's bow. It felt as if someone had put me into a barrel filled with water, covered the lid and started pounding it with a sledge hammer.
I surfaced, mouth wide open, trying not to scream from the earache. I nearly hit the Chinese when he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me in the direction of what seemed to be a gap in the grating. The explosion had bent the torn and twisted bars inward. On the foredeck, water gushed in amid billowing smoke and fire.
" Wladas!" I snorted and shook off the Asian's hand. "Where are you?"
The Asian pushed away a dead body drifting toward us and dived down. Lots of bodies around. And blood. The water was dark with it.
"Wladas!"
"I'm here-" the neurotech choked.
I made a stroke toward the gap and looked up. The bars drew closer. The ferry was about to go down hook, line and sinker.
If we wanted to stay alive, we had to get out as quickly as possible.
"I'm here! He-help!"
Wladas' head disappeared under water within a meter from the gap. A disheveled burly man held him down and grabbed at the bars, pushing himself up. The Asian resurfaced nearby and grabbed his feet. Before the burly man had time to react, the Asian climbed his shoulders and locked his hands under the man's chin. Then he kicked hard at the man's shoulders, straightening his legs like a deadlifter.
Vertebrae crunched, and the dead man collapsed on top of me. I recoiled. The Asian dived into the gap, and Wladas showed his head again.
"Out!" I gasped. "Quick!"
I looked back. A few more men swam toward us, including the miner who'd fathered the cloned triplets.
By the time I looked back, the neurotech had already escaped. The gap was now halfway in the water, sinking. Or should I say, the entire ferry was sinking. Quite rapidly, too.
I took a deep breath and dived in, praying that no one else would catch up with me and grab my foot hoping to survive. Either that, or I could go face first onto a jagged bar. Or just miss the opening.
In front of me, the gap's uneven outline came into view, its bent broken bars barely visible. I stretched out my arms, put my legs together and slid, dolphin-like, through the opening. I surfaced and tried to get as far from the ferry as I could before the vortex pulled me under.
My heart pounded. With every third stroke, I made a quick gasp and kept going. I took another stroke and my hand bounced off inflatable rubber. I didn't have time to slow down. Face up, I’d collided with the orange side of the safety raft.
"Where d'you think you're going?" I heard overhead.
"He looks strong enough. Georgie, Oakum, get him out. Put him with the rest. And let’s pick up the others."
I raised my arms. They grabbed my elbows and pulled me out.
The raft was a six-seater. The bald fatso, a.k.a. the ferry captain, sat on top of a waterproof personal survival kit. He was in his fifties, a round red face, a smooth suntanned skull, and bushy gray eyebrows. His shoulder sported a tattoo: an anchor with a towline wrapped around it and a spike-headed combat dolphin below. Military geneticists had developed those dolphins in order to destroy underwater saboteurs. From what I'd heard, the spikes on their heads were sharp and strong, and also venomous.
On either side of the captain sat the
young sailor and the crane operator with his machine gun.
The crane operator, dark-haired with gray temples, looked older than the captain. His thin face, wrinkled and wizened, was covered with three days' worth of stubble. By the confident way he held the machine gun you could tell he'd been in a scrape or two.
I looked at the young sailor. His strawberry hair was tufted together making it stick out like... like oakum. That's how he must have gotten his nickname.
The youngster handed me a short paddle that looked more like a trenching spade.
"Take it and row," the captain said.
"Give me a chance," I leaned against the bulwark catching my breath.
"Georgie," the captain said.
The crane operator pointed the gun at me.
"You fucking clone's ass," he grinned showing gapped yellow teeth, "Shut your mouth and row!"
I grabbed a paddle and straddled the rubber float. The ferry boat was gone. Jetsam floated on the surface. Amid the growing oil slicks, two bodies rocked in the waves. The murky mist over the jumpgate base had dissolved, and the bright white sun blazed in the clear sky overhead. The silhouette of the guard boat was barely discernible against the steel-and-concrete island.
"Why did they shoot at us from the boat?" I asked.
"Just row!" the crane operator said in a coarse three-packs-a-day voice. "The Feds have their own orders."
"Where do you want me to row?"
"Over there," Oakum pointed behind my back.
I turned around. Wladas and the Chinese were rocking on the waves a few meters away. Neither of them spoke. I didn't like it. The neurotech lay on his back, arms wide apart, staring into the sky.
I sat down with my back to the machine gun, lowered the paddle into the water and pulled violently. Oakum on the other side countered, trying to make sure the raft didn't turn. We soon reached the two heads bobbing in the water. I glanced over my shoulder. Several large bubbles billowed up: all that remained from the ferry boat. A few more bodies resurfaced.
