by James Axler
His bioengineering complex had suffered no serious damage from the icequake, which was a relief as further delays could well prove catastrophic, both to him personally and to the population of Polestar Omega. The temblor was minor, but seismic events were coming more frequently. That was to be expected given the location—the redoubt’s main shaft had been sunk deep in the Ross Ice Sheet at a great cost in lives and 1990s tax dollars—and given the age of the structure. Its original designers had estimated it wouldn’t last much more than a century what with the pressure of a moving glacier and constant erosion by the rock and sediment trapped in the ice. Though it was linked to the global mat-trans system, the self-supporting research complex had not been created to survive an all-out nuclear exchange; that turned out to be a happy consequence of their extreme isolation.
All good things came to an end, it seemed.
The elevator stopped with a jolt, and he stepped out into a vast, domed, well-lit space. As he descended the wide, spiraling staircase of the main rotunda, he saw lines of workers in blue moving heavy crates and 55-gallon drums on four-wheeled dollies to the staging areas. The contents of the containers were identified by stencil markings on the sides and tops. Small arms—rifles, SMGs and handguns. Ammunition. Grenades and grenade launchers. Medical supplies. Water. Food. Pop-up shelters. The essentials for invasion. Because the elevators on the up-glacier side of the redoubt were no longer functional, the materiel stored there had to travel the long way around, through the center of the complex to the lifts on the lee side. The workers moved with all due haste; everyone knew the window for escape and survival of the enclave was rapidly closing.
Lima’s stomach growled. He was used to the sound, and to the accompanying gnawing sense of hunger. Never in his life, or his father’s life, or his father’s father’s life had there been quite enough for everyone to eat. All food had been carefully weighed and parceled out—particularly protein, the precious building block of life. Nothing was ever wasted. Of late, because of the stockpiling necessary to supply the invasion, the situation had become even graver, the residents of the redoubt were eating once every other day. He had seven hours to wait for his next meal.
For the doctor and the other residents, the aches in their stomachs were a matter of pride and cultural bonding. From its inception, Polestar Omega had a unique tradition, grounded in extreme physical and psychological hardship. The first whitecoats who inhabited the redoubt had been chosen for their ability to meet the challenges and deprivation of multiyear Antarctic assignments, the same selection criteria as the astronauts on the orbiting space station. Over the decades postnukecaust, the redoubt’s population had proved over and over how Spartan and how ingenious they were. If, as the saying went “you are what you eat,” they could and did live on anything that contained essential nourishment. They had exploited all the polar desert had to offer, gathering new information and using it to adapt and thrive in the most desolate place on the planet.
What could such a people, with their determination and advanced technology, accomplish in a wider world? Were there any limits on what they could do? They had known this day would come for more than a century, and for the past fifty years they had been developing a plan to take back their birthright, to leave their icebound prison, to cleanse and repopulate the Earth with a new and improved humanity and a human society based on scientific principles.
Lima moved against the flow of wheeled carts on the main floor, turning through a double doorway into the redoubt’s amphitheater. Below him and the curving rows of empty seats, on the proscenium stage two men and a woman in orange coveralls sat at a long table, attended to by scurrying staff, likewise clad in orange. The theater was the nerve center of redoubt, once the locus of scientific debate and decision making. Priorities had changed. It had been renamed the War Room twenty years ago.
The entire back wall of the stage was covered by an enormous, electronic Mercator projection map of Earth with infrared overlays from the satellite they had launched a decade ago. The missile and its satellite had been part of the research station’s infrastructure, defended from the nukeday e-mag pulse by deep burial in the glacier and massive concrete shielding. Reprogrammed from its original function, the satellite now tracked prevailing wind patterns and identified and monitored the planet’s most dangerous radiation zones and surviving population hubs. It also provided GPS and a vital communication link between forces in the field.
General Charlie India, his bald pate gleaming in the shifting, multicolored lights of the map display, looked up from the folders spread out before him, and locked eyes with Lima as he mounted the steps to the stage. The general’s orange coveralls accentuated his ice-tan: pale forehead, ears, cheeks and lower face where they had been shielded by a coldsuit’s tight-fitting hood; skin reddish and windburned looking around exposed eyes, nose, mouth and brows.
General India and the two other orange suits at the table, Commander Mike Romeo and Commander Quebec Sierra, were the military officers in charge of staging the evacuation of Polestar Omega and the invasion of the closest continental landmass to the redoubt, nearly three thousand miles distant at Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.
“I hope to hell you’re not here to tell us the icequake has stopped progress on viral deployment,” India said. “We’re tired of your excuses and delays. They will no longer be tolerated.”
“No damage was reported, sir. None at all, sir.”
Lima deeply resented the implication that the units under his command were somehow dragging their feet, or worse—scientifically incompetent or methodologically overmatched. His was by far the most technically demanding element in the plan for conquest. Yet he knew explaining that to military leaders was an exercise in futility, as was expecting them to fully fathom the tragedy of what they were being forced to leave behind. Though the facility’s original staff had all been scientists—university-trained PhDs in biochemistry, genetics, physics, mathematics, cybernetics and space science—and were focused on a single challenge with ramifications for all of humankind, a century of fighting for survival had forced a branching of personality types, intellectual and physical capacities, and job specialization, which in turn had led to the current, highly stratified society and a color-coded division of labor with hot orange at the apex.
“Have you extracted what you need from the new test subjects you acquired?” Commander Sierra asked.
Though she filled out her tailored coveralls admirably, front and rear, her hatchet face, hard, dark eyes and discolored teeth were not material for sexual fantasies—even in Antarctica.
“The process is well underway,” Lima assured her. Cracking the code to switch on a universal mutie death gene remained the key missing piece of the puzzle—he didn’t feel compelled to clarify that tiny detail. The bioengineering section had already crafted the viral transfer mechanism. All they needed was the magic bullet.
“Can you give us an updated delivery date?” Commander Romeo said. He was the youngest of the three, his face prematurely weather-seamed, his hair flecked with gray above the ears.
“I should have a result in the next twenty-four hours,” Lima said with as much confidence as he could fake. Before they abandoned the redoubt, it was vital that the infectious lethal agent be in full-scale production and ready for deployment when they made landfall. Leaving the redoubt before the magic-bullet genetic research was complete would mean constructing new isolation chambers and DNA labs in South America. The trio of military leaders had steadfastly refused to devote limited resources to that kind of duplication of effort.
They needed the kill switch, and they needed it quickly.
The expressed goal was to be sitting at the southern border of Deathlands in five years, and to have consolidated all the territorial gains in between. It was a tall order no matter the size of the army, no matter how determined or well equipped they were. That’s where the viral cleansing ca
me in. They planned to move their main force up the remnants of north-south, predark highway corridors, spreading the death gene with hovertrucks and aerial sprayers as they advanced. They didn’t have to deploy it very far past the roadbeds; the virus and its lethal switch would move from mutie to mutie, jumping species and geographical boundaries, destroying the genetically compromised.
Although Lima deemed this was not the time to raise the subject, there were still a lot of unknowns. What was the effective range of transmission? Could it spread as predicted from plants to animals and vice versa? Could it really span a continent? Would the death gene remain functional after the virus had traveled through a series of very different hosts, or would the infectious agent mutate as it was passed until the desired effect fizzled out? Did some mutie species already have immunity to the viral tool, or could they quickly acquire it through natural selection? These questions had no answers at present, and finding the answers was unlikely given the time constraints. The viral technology would no doubt undergo revision and further refinement after the weapon was released and its effects on the mutie population quantified. Small mobile labs under Lima’s direction could reengineer and test revised viral delivery systems on the go; the peptide kill switch would theoretically remain the same.
Lima looked up at the huge map and the pinpoints of red that indicated population areas. Deathlands, the former United States, had been long believed to be the source of all mutation in North and South America. It was the last on their list of immediate conquests. And not simply because it was the most distant, land-accessible target.
Based on satellite intel and statistical analysis, it had more muties per square mile than any place on the planet.
The military’s research, drawn from scouting expeditions at the tip of South America, had revealed the sad state of the human populace there, victimized by brigands and self-proclaimed barons, preyed upon by savage monsters straight from nightmares. It had also revealed just how deeply “norms” hated mutie life-forms. Those without phenotypically expressed abnormalities routinely hunted down and slaughtered all creatures displaying obvious mutant characteristics.
Taking a page from the armies of ancient Rome, the redoubt’s military expected to attract an ever-growing army of volunteers along the route north, true norms eager to spill mutie blood and share in the division of spoils and future bounty. The anticipated conquest would eventually be global, and would survive much, much longer than its historical counterpart—perhaps tens of thousands of years. With the elimination of mutie competition for space and resources, and the elimination of the threat of mutie attack, the 2,764 adults and 845 children of Polestar Omega could live and breed in peace, exploit the planet’s resources with an eye to sustainability, and create a paradise for themselves and their offspring.
That had always been the bold promise of science. To understand the world in order to reshape it more perfectly for human benefit.
Or the benefit of particular humans.
“The commander didn’t ask you about a ‘result,’” India said.
The sharp remark took Dr. Lima by surprise; he thought he had already neatly circumvented the issue.
“She asked you when you would have weaponized product in dispersal canisters sufficient for the invasion to begin.”
Lima opened his mouth to respond, his mind reeling as he tried to think of an answer that might be acceptable, but before he could speak, India continued.
“If you need more laboratory technicians to get the job done, pull them off the scavenging detail you have been unwilling to terminate despite direct orders for you to do so. As you have been made well aware, under present circumstances that mission is no longer a priority and needs to be shut down immediately.”
“But, sir, there is so much still...”
General India held up his hand for silence. “I promise you we are going to evacuate this redoubt as planned and on schedule, well before it implodes on us,” he said. “Delaying the evacuation is not an option. A postponement on our part does not guarantee you will be able to produce the desired result in time—it does increase the risk that none of us will escape from here.”
India paused, glaring at him. Lima knew the other shoe was about to fall.
“If you do not succeed in completing the task you have been assigned,” the general said, “if we do not have the bioweapon we have been counting on, we are going to evacuate this redoubt without it and take our chances on the new continent with military force and the conventional weapons in our arsenal. It has already been decided that if you fail us, Dr. Lima, you will be left behind. You and your precious Ark can share the same grave.”
Chapter Five
After the door closed behind Ryan, Krysty sagged back, leaning against the wall and the steel ring she was chained to. With her lover—and the companions’ leader—gone, the dire nature of their situation was brought into even sharper focus. They had no idea where Ryan, Doc or Mildred had been taken, or even if Doc and Mildred were still alive.
No one said anything for the longest time. Perhaps because words could not describe what each was feeling.
When Krysty glanced over at J.B., she could see that he was breathing hard, and Jak’s eyes burned like red-hot coals against the dead white of his albino skin. The two companions looked as if they were about to explode in helpless fury.
Finally Ricky broke the silence. “What do we do now?”
“Wait for the bastards to pick us off,” J.B. snapped. “Let them lead us out of here one by one like lambs to the slaughter.”
Krysty tested her range of movement from side to side. It wasn’t ideal, but it could have been a lot worse—her ankles could have been bound together. She knew what she had to say to the others, what they needed to hear, what she thought Ryan would have said had to them had she been the one taken for treatment first.
“We’re not waiting for anything,” she told them, though she knew that J.B. had reacted to Ricky’s question with sarcasm. “We’ve got to make our move now, before they weaken us any more. We’ve got to create our own opportunity while we still have the chance. When they come again and unchain one of us, we go for them.”
“Yeah, we’ll go for broke,” J.B. said.
“When they came to take Ryan, there were only two of the bruisers in black,” Krysty said. “Two against four. If the whitecoat shows up again, he isn’t going to be much of an obstacle. We just have to keep him from sounding an alarm. Whoever they release from the wall next has to maneuver both of the men in black within reach of the rest of us, whatever that takes. Our legs are free to kick and to strangle with. We can bite and tear. This is to the death.”
They all loosened their muscles as best they could given their restraints, jumping up and down in place to get warm, practicing forward snap kicks. After a few minutes they were as ready for the battle as they were ever going to be.
But nothing happened. The door didn’t open.
Time dragged on and on, and the longer it dragged, the harder it became to maintain the necessary fighting edge. Krysty felt it slipping from her grasp.
She strained her ears, trying to pick up approaching footsteps in the hall. What she heard instead was a rocking boom, like a couple of pounds of C-4 had been touched off close by; the explosion was immediately followed by a violent jolt that staggered her and nearly dropped her to her knees. The boom faded, but the jolt replayed over and over again in a roaring, jarring tape loop. As the room shook back and forth, every surface flexing, a crack appeared in the center of the floor and snaked toward them.
The crack climbed up the wall behind them, yawning wider and wider, and a rush of frigid air rolled through the room.
Krysty gripped the metal ring behind her with both hands. She could feel the ring’s anchor bolt vibrating in the wall, grinding the surrounding concrete to powder and loosening its h
old on the metal shaft. From the awkward arm position she attacked the ring, twisting it as hard as she could, trying to wrench it free, but the anchor was too long and too deeply embedded.
The shaking seemed like it was never going to end; everything became a blur of frantic motion. When it stopped after a very long minute or so, Krysty and her companions were dusted head to foot with gray powder and left gasping for air in a room that looked like it was filled with gun smoke. The pulverized concrete in the back of her throat scratched like ground glass.
She was still coughing and spitting when not two, but four men in black entered with the silver-haired whitecoat and a female whitecoat in tow. They carried locking collars on six-foot-long metal poles, and they knew how to use them.
Krysty tried to defend herself with a front kick, but it came up well short. The loop dropped over her head, and she found herself snared by the neck. When she tried to lash out another kick, the man with the pole pulled down, tipping her off-balance and controlling her with ease. The more she struggled the tighter he squeezed the noose around her throat. She stopped struggling so she could breathe; it was either that or pass out. J.B., Jak and Ricky were all in the same predicament—snared like rabbits and rendered helpless. Dr. Lima stepped in behind Krysty and disconnected her cuffs from the wall ring. He did the same for the others.
“This way, bring them along,” he told the black suits as he stepped through the doorway and exited the room.
They were marched single file down the corridor and through a bulkhead door that opened onto a landing with stairs leading down. There was no illumination on the staircase, just on the landings between flights. As they descended the steep treads, Krysty could just make out Jak’s white hair ten feet below her. And they kept going down, landing after landing, until she lost count. The deeper they went, the colder it got. When they reached the bottom, there was sheet ice on the floor and she could see her breath; her nose and lips were already starting to go numb.
