by Ralph Kern
Millard nodded at last. “Whatever this is all about, whatever this is protecting, whatever is going on with our intel net, it seems to be about those two. Wakefield and Reynolds.”
“So, what’s the call?”
“Keep going with your investigation, keep filing your reports through the usual channels, but assume anything you get is suspect. And whatever you do, don’t raise your suspicions through formal channels. Find out what they’re covering up and end it. Hopefully we can use that to weed this damn place.”
“Shit,” Dillon muttered. “So we are in the cold?”
“Yes. You are,” Millard said. “I’ll do what I can at this end to find who might be leaking, but your focus needs to be physically finding whatever they’re protecting.”
“How much leeway have we got here, boss?”
“I’m not liking this at all.” Millard looked down in contemplation before he came to a decision. “Carte blanch.”
Grayson raised his eyebrow before giving a nod. “Fine. We’ll do what we need to from here. If there’s something to find, we will. Tell me, you ever heard of something called Elpis?”
“The Greek goddess of hope?” Millard replied, confusion on his face. Grayson raised an eyebrow at Millard’s knowledge of ancient Greek gods. Clearly the man had unplumbed depths.
“Yeah that’s what Google tells us Elpis is. But the context is an operation or a project.”
Millard puffed out his cheeks and shook his head. “No, I’ve never heard of Elpis in that context. But leave it with me.”
“It could be important.”
“Understood, I’ll get back to you. Look, there’s no one I’d rather have on this than you two.” Millard smiled briefly before frowning again. “But assume every means on coms is compromised. And if you get a hint about who is fucking with us at this end, please do tell so I can go have a long chat with them.”
“Roger that, boss.”
Grayson clicked the line off and looked at Dillon. “Well, buddy. We’ve been in bandit country before.”
“Yeah, give me the good ole days of dead drops and shady meetings on park benches any day over this technocentric post-truth world we’re living in,” Dillon replied with a rare introspective look on his face.
Grayson looked at his partner and felt an eyebrow raise again. “You know what, buddy? That almost sounds poetic.”
Chapter Fourteen – The Present
James played with the roughly hewn wooden toy of the Titan on the golden-sand beach. The super tanker ploughed its way through the grains as the child made a whooshing noise.
Grayson lay next to him, uncaring about the getting his clothes covered in the sand, instead trying to find contentment in simply enjoying the company of his son. Trying and failing. Deep down in his stomach, he had the hollow feeling of a job left undone. An ache—which try as he might, he knew he wouldn’t be able to ignore for long.
His son stood up and jogged away from him, then knelt next to the basket containing the collection of toys they had brought to the beach. It was, Grayson supposed, a simpler time for kids. There were none of the technological distractions of his own youth here. No games consoles or computers to keep his son occupied, or at least not in Anchorage. On Atlantica, it was a different matter, of course. There the people had all the mod cons and everything they could ever want.
In many ways, being in the military had meant for his whole adult life, he’d never actually had to worry about the pedestrian concerns of civilian street. Institutionalized, they called it. While others played computer games or VR of war games, he actually did it. And he was damn good at it. But a father? If he was honest with himself, that had always been ten years in the future, and he only expected to live five of those in the shady world of SAD/SOG. Grayson knew he wasn’t cut out to be a father, but then he supposed, who was? But the one thing he did know was since James had come into the world, this strange new world, he would do anything for him.
Anything except quit.
“Daddy?”
Grayson looked over at his son, the questioning tone in his boy’s voice breaking his reverie.
“Look.” James stood, one arm extended inland.
Grayson picked himself up and dusted his body down before strolling over to him. “What’s up, kiddo?”
“There. The mountain.”
Grayson followed the line of his son’s hand. His finger was aimed at the lone peak, far away. A geyser of a dark cloud emanated from it, and slowly weaved a misty spiral around the mountain.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know...” Grayson said slowly. Now he looked at it, it didn’t appear like a cloud, not the way it was venting out the side of the mountain. The only thing which sprung to his mind was a... volcano, perhaps?
Grayson felt his face twisting in a frown. If it was, then they could all be in big trouble. He tussled the boy’s hair. “Start gathering your stuff.”
“But—”
“Now.”
James began putting his toys back in the woven basket as Grayson continued watching the ominous peak.
***
Slater stood on the bridge and brought the binoculars to her eyes. The mountain centered in her view. From the sides, wisps of black smoke emanated, twisting and turning as they reached out and spiraled down.
“Perry, take a look.” She offered the binoculars to him. “What do you think?”
The bridge was quiet, only the watch officers present at their stations. The room still had a patched-together appearance, cabling crudely duct taped to the bulkheads, laptops settled on desks on which consoles once stood. But, Slater acknowledged, despite appearances, they were near as damn it back to 100% operations thanks to Atlantica’s 3D printers.
“I think we could be in trouble,” Donovan said quietly, still looking through the binoculars intently.
“Go on.”
“I’m no geologist, but that mountain is starting to look disturbingly like a volcano outgassing, or whatever they call it.”
“We’re what? Fifty miles away? Is that a safe distance?”
“As I say, I’m no geologist, ma’am,” Donovan replied.
Slater frowned. This could be a real problem. Yes, they were a long way away. But there was every chance it could affect them, even here, depending on whether it blew big or not. Slater turned and looked down at the bay toward Anchorage and the fields. This could put everything at risk they had created.
Slater picked up the radio mic and pressed the button on the side. “Atlantica, this is Ignatius Actual. With my compliments, I need to speak to the admiral and Liam. Permission to come aboard.”
***
“You’re right. This is somewhat unsettling news. Possibly literally.” Reynolds paced at the head of the table, his hands clasped. He looked at the others sitting around Atlantica’s conference room. Floor-to-ceiling windows covered one entire wall of the room, giving them a perfect view of the picturesque bay from the elevated position, and the peak which was causing such concern. If it wasn’t for the fact of a possible volcano not much more than a stone’s throw from them, the place wouldn’t have looked dissimilar to a paradise in the Caribbean. “But let’s not jump to conclusions immediately. What are our options here?”
Laurie stood, a young man rising hesitantly next to her. “This is Maurice Tsang, who has a doctorate in Geophysics from Yale. He’s the closest I’ve found to a volcanologist aboard, and I’ve asked for him to provide his expert opinion and what this might mean for us.”
“Err, thank you.” Tsang looked around the table before leaning over his tablet and tapping on it. A map of the section of the world they had charted appeared on the table, showing a distended stretch of coastline. Blinds automatically slid smoothly down, covering the windows, stopping the glare on the touch-screen surface.
Most of the information they had on the geography of this future world had been gleaned from Donovan and Kendricks’ adaption of one of Ignatius’s RIM-161 missiles. They
’d refitted it into a launcher for a spacecraft to map the fleet’s vicinity—a job it had performed amazingly well, for something jury-rigged together.
The north and south landmasses of America had, over the millions of years the fleet had skipped through, closed like jaws, turning the Eastern seaboard into a more southerly orientation.
“We are around here, located not far from Delaware, which was about the closest point of land in North America to where we arrived.” He pointed at the table, somewhat redundantly for the sailors around the table, but Laurie let him roll with it, to tell the story his way.
“Now in our time, this is located more or less centrally in the North American tectonic plate. In other words, it’s relatively stable and not prone to earthquakes we find near the fault lines. Nor are there any volcanos in this area.”
“Yet we seem to have one on our doorstep,” Reynolds said pointedly.
“Well yes.” Tsang nodded. “And that is curious. It shouldn’t be here.”
“Clearly in the years between our time and our arrival, a significant amount of geological activity has occurred,” Donovan said. “For starters, whole continents have moved.”
“Yes, and somewhat differently than how many models predicted. I’ve been doing some work on this and tracing the movements and how it may fit into existing theories. What doesn’t change, however, is that fundamentally the tectonic plates will stay mostly the same, they’ll just... shift around a bit. Although there is also some growth and shrinkage, too. Look, this is what I’ve worked out so far.”
With a few more taps on his tablet, another display appeared, this one a map of the Earth of their time, with sweeping dashed lines overlaying it. “These lines are faults—the edges of the tectonic plates. Now obviously I only have a small sample to show how things have changed. It’d be really interesting to see the rest of the world, but—”
“But you can only make do with what we have,” Reynolds prompted.
“That’s right.” Tsang nodded. He tapped on the map and an animation began. The segments began to swell, some of them faster than others, causing the map to grindingly move. “Now, what I’ve figured has happened is that the Caribbean plate has steadily pushed west, muscling the North American plate out of the way and causing it to twist downward, hence why the East Coast is now more like the Southeast Coast. At the same time, the Nazca plate, on the western coast of South America, which we knew was pushing to the east, has started to flip the South American continent around, too. Meanwhile, tectonic activity off map to the far east or west regions, is pulling or pushing both continents to the pre-event west. By the way, this stuff is a bit early to be presenting to you? Is that okay that we’re speaking about this?”
“We can get this all peer-reviewed later.” Laurie smiled encouragingly. It still made for some confusion for the fleet’s navigators that, at some point between now and the time they came from, that there had been a polar shift—north had become south and vice versa. But they were slowly getting used to it. “For now, we just need your best guess.”
“Okay, I guess. But it could be wrong.”
“That’s okay. Just what you think at the moment.”
On the screen, the plates twisted until they took the position they now occupied. “As you can see, under this model, eventually North and South America might, in effect, rotate around the Caribbean plate like it’s a pivot point.”
“All that disturbance must be causing all kinds of effects,” Slater said.
“Yes and no. This was happening in our time, too. It’s a perfectly natural thing and it’s occurring over millions of years. It’s not anything that would be catastrophic in nature.”
“But it may have made this area vulnerable to a volcano forming?”
“Well, no,” Tsang said. “Under this model, there’s no way that a volcano could have formed here. It’s right in the middle of the North American plate. Whatever that is, it isn’t a volcano.”
“Then what could it be?”
“I don’t know. Thinking about it, there shouldn’t even be a mountain there. While isolated peaks aren’t uncommon, it does seem strange that it protrudes in that position.”
“So, we have strange geological features on our doorstep and you didn’t think to bring it to our attention?” Slater asked pointedly.
“Well, no,” Tsang said nervously. “I needed time to figure out what it was before I spoke to you.”
“Right.” Slater’s tone was gentler than normal. She clearly recognized the man was nervous and needed to be encouraged, not shut down with impatient and testy questioning. “Then have you got any theories?”
“Not really, beyond maybe it’s an imperfection in the plate, but it didn’t really hold true.”
“Okay.” Slater waved her hand. “Would it help if we go have a look at this thing?”
“Well, yes. Of course.” Tsang nodded. “If we have a closer look, maybe I can figure it out.”
“Thank you, Doctor Tsang. Please take a seat.” Reynolds gestured at a chair. “Captain. I know you’ve been having some difficulties with your helicopters, but could I ask for a reccy on this mountain? We need to ascertain what it is, and what threat it poses to us here.”
“Absolutely. I’ll task Lieutenant McNamara to head over there in the operable Seahawk.” Slater turned to look at Tsang. “It would be helpful if she had an expert on board to take a look with her.”
“You mean I get to go on a helicopter?”
“That’s the plan.” Slater let a flash of a smile cross her face.
“Oh yes!” Tsang grinned, his enthusiasm evident.
“Ma’am,” Donovan spoke up. “With your permission, could I dust off a flight suit and head over with them?”
“Perry, do you just want a ride in a helicopter, too?”
“It would be advantageous if a senior officer helps make the assessment.” He looked around the table. “And frankly, you all have more important things to be doing. I’ve been relegated to checking inventory and keeping the itinerant crew in check.”
“That’s a fair point.”
“And as the head of the science team—” Laurie piped up.
Slater held up her hand. “This isn’t a joy ride. Every pound of weight on that helicopter equates to more fuel burn.”
“Ma’am, I may not be exactly current, but I do have a helicopter PPL,” Donovan said. “It’s really not that long a flight. I can take the copilot position for Mack and we’ll have a position available for someone else.”
Slater sighed and turned to Reynolds. “Is this the part where I exert my authority?”
Reynolds shrugged. “I’m not going to micromanage you, Heather, they’re your birds to manage as you see fit. But I can see the benefit. No offense Doctor Tsang, but arguably Laurie can help articulate what you see out there when you report back to us.”
“Surely that will be Perry’s job... oh Fine.” Slater sighed resignedly, giving up halfway through her rebuttal. “Mack, Perry, Laurie, and Doctor Tsang can go on the recon mission. But that’s it. No one else.”
Laurie gave a dazzling smile to her father.
Chapter Fifteen – The Past
The waiter laid a Caesar salad in front of Grayson. He stabbed his fork into a piece of chargrilled chicken and dipped it in the creamy dressing.
The yacht club overlooked a harbor filled with gorgeous boats of every description. Men sat lounging, with the uniform du jour seeming to involve polo shirts, red trousers, and espadrilles—without socks, of course. For the women, airy sundresses and expensive-looking jewelry were in the dress code, each trying to outdo the others in ostentatiousness.
They’d given Bradley the good news. At least, Grayson supposed ruefully, Millard was taking them seriously and not calling bullshit about there being a leak at Langley. That was the only positive he could find in this whole messy situation.
“While you guys were checking in,” Bradley said between mouthfuls of her own caramelized pear and walnut
salad. “I have found out two things while knocking around here.”
“Go on, and it better make our day,” Grayson responded.
She inclined her heard over Grayson’s shoulder. He slowly chewed and swallowed a hunk of chicken before “accidentally” dropping his napkin. As he leaned down to pick it up, he glanced in the direction she had indicated.
Beyond the yacht club, an ugly set of hangers abutted the water’s edge, long concrete ramps leading from them. That end of the harbor had a far more industrial air to it than the marina section where they were now sat.
Grayson sat upright and turned back to the table.
“Osiris,” Bradley said. “She’s in the furthest hanger, apparently being refitted, and has been for the last month.”
“Where’d you get that from?” Dillon raised an eyebrow.
“A valued and often overlooked intelligence source in the modern world.” She smiled in response.
“You chatted up the barman then?” Dillon smirked at the woman.
“Yup.”
“Sounds like an easy objective to me,” Grayson said. “We need to go take a look at her.”
“That’s your job.” Bradley nodded in agreement. “But I have another task.”
“Oh, do tell?”
“Apparently, Wakefield’s crew are running an... audition.”
“For?” Grayson prompted.
“It seems, he has a need for girls on his next cruise out.”
Dillon gave a snort as Grayson shook his head in dismay. It looked as if the twenty-first century hadn’t caught up with Wakefield yet. Or maybe for the filthy rich, this kind of thing was deemed as acceptable.
“Okay,” Grayson couldn’t quite keep the distaste from his voice. “So, you’re going to try out?”
“Yes,” Bradley said, the tone of her voice suggesting she took as dim a view of Wakefield’s audition as Grayson did. “It could be our best chance to get inside.”
“You know how compromised we are,” Grayson said. “They could know who you are, what you are.”
