by Greig Beck
Major Hammerson was one of the hard men of the military. His face could never be called friendly; its deep clefts and creases hinted at too much outdoor living and quite a bit of blunt force trauma. You didn’t need to read the major’s background files to know he could incapacitate an enemy in less than seven seconds. Hammerson headed up the elite Hotzone All-Forces Warfare Commandos – HAWCs, for short. His uniform, except for rank, was insignia free. His only identification was a plastic card with a barcode and the lightning bolts and fisted gauntlet of the US Strategic Command.
Major Hammerson and his special unit had been reassigned to USSTRATCOM eighteen months ago, and it seemed a good fit. The United States Strategic Command was one of the ten unified combatant commands of the United States Department of Defense. They controlled the nuclear weapons assets of the US military and were a globally focused command charged with the missions of Space Operations, Integrated Missile Defence, Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Other Special Operations. The ‘Other Special Operations’ was where Hammer and his HAWCs came in.
Normally a blunt and brusque man, today the major was in a great mood. In just over three weeks, and for the first time in five years, he would be fly fishing in the land of the midnight sun. He was taking two weeks off to camp out in a little place he knew up high on the Kenai River bend in Alaska, where the tides from Cook Inlet washed in the biggest king salmon found anywhere in the world. Biting cold air that made the breath fog, and water so clear you could see the pebbles on the bottom at near any depth. Hammerson sighed and rubbed his large hands together. Just a few curious grizzlies for company and the odd bald eagle watching suspiciously from overhead. He knew that a record ninety-seven-pounder had been caught in those parts, and he reckoned there was a hundred-pounder with his name on it.
The Hammer was practising long, slow casting motions across his desk when the phone rang. He hit the receive button on the console and barked a curt ‘Hammerson’ while still jerking on an imaginary rod. When he heard the deep voice on the line, he sat forward immediately and picked up the handset.
‘Sir.’
He listened with the intensity he always gave the highest-level mission briefings. His face was like stone, the only movement his eyes narrowing slightly.
‘I agree, that size pulse could signify weap-onability,’ he said. ‘Yes, something a little more surgically precise would be best. We can be ready in twenty-four hours, sir.’
There was a click as the connection was severed. Hammerson held the phone in the air for a second before replacing it softly in its cradle. Time to reactivate the Arcadian.
Greig Beck
Dark Rising
FOUR
WOMACK Army Medical Centre, Neuropsychological Unit – Fort Bragg
Captain Alex Hunter lay uncovered on a hospital cot in a room of steel, chrome and blinding white floor and wall tiles. His arms and legs were restrained by Kevlar cuffs attached by medium-gauge, pencil-thick wire cable to a special metal railing running around the outside of the cot frame. The room bristled with camera lenses, microphones and speakers.
Medical officer Lieutenant Alan Marshal stood behind the heat-tempered observation glass and looked at Hunter’s resting form. Although the soldier seemed to be sleeping peacefully, a storm was brewing behind his tranquil countenance. The tangle of two hundred and fifty-six electrodes and wires attached to his head showed that he was suffering both a migraine and an epileptic seizure simultaneously. Yet there was no external sign at all. Marshal shook his head. Alex Hunter was both medical miracle and mystery. Hunter was the US Army’s first super-enhanced warrior – part of a special military project codenamed Arcadian. The army wanted to know how this soldier could be so quick, so strong and heal so quickly. Alex Hunter was the project’s only success; all attempts to surgically or chemically reproduce his abilities had been an abject failure.
Marshal looked through the records he held in his hand. Several years ago on a clandestine military mission in northern Chechnya, Captain Hunter had been wounded by a single bullet to the head – he’d been as good as dead. His commanding officer, Major Jack Hammerson, had brought Hunter’s comatose body back home. There were two options: watch the young man wither away to a shrunken grey wraith as he lay trapped within his own body; or try something different… something experimental. And so Alex Hunter was entered in the Arcadian program. Two weeks later, Hunter opened his eyes, sat up, smiled and said he felt fine. He was more than fine; he was a new type of human being.
Marshal pulled an X-ray of Alex’s skull from the file, holding it up to the light so he could see the small dark mass at its centre. The projectile was still there, but instead of causing a mass of surrounding damage as expected, it – perhaps in combination with the treatment – had triggered a range of physical and mental changes that had astounded the scientists. There was evidence of significant rerouting of blood to Hunter’s midbrain, the area largely responsible for selecting, mapping and cataloguing information. It was also the primary powerhouse of endocrine functions, which controlled responses to pain, and the release of adrenalin and natural steroids. The flush of extra blood into this relatively unresearched area of the brain triggered massive electrical activity, waking new or long dormant abilities. The young man’s agility, speed, strength and mental acuity had increased off the scale – all beneficial side effects that hadn’t been fully expected.
But as the changes to the soldier continued, it became clear that some were not so beneficial. And some worried the scientists immensely. A foot constantly jammed on an accelerator usually resulted in the engine overheating – or exploding. In Hunter’s case, his acceleration meant he sometimes experienced bouts of rage that were barely controllable; furies that boiled within him, barely chained by his will. It wasn’t yet fully understood whether the rage fuelled his enormous strength and speed, or if it was the complete opposite: his strength and other abilities, when they reached their peak, ignited the rages.
‘Marshal, take a look at this and tell me what you think.’
The sound of his superior colleague’s voice made Marshal jump. He turned and took the hard copy sheets Captain Robert Graham was holding out. The captain pointed to a row of long chemical names and numbers.
‘High proteolipid and phospholipid count across the entire cranial sphere… hmm, not sure, never seen anything like it,’ Marshal said. ‘Could it be cross-contamination of the data?’
Graham shook his head. ‘Nope, I’ve checked several times and the count keeps coming back the same. I’ve never seen anything like it either, but I’ve got a theory. Crazy as it sounds, it looks like the myelin sheathing in his brain is undergoing some sort of restarted myelination process.’
‘Impossible!’ blurted Marshal.
The myelin sheathing in the brain stopped wrapping itself around the brain’s axons and neurons by the age of twenty. No one knew why it stopped then – most scientists theorised that the brain figured it could think fast enough by that age – but the one thing they did know was that it didn’t restart.
Graham folded his arms and looked at his younger colleague with raised eyebrows. ‘Well, from this data I’d say he’s undergoing remyelination. It could be what’s turbo-charging his ability to think and make decisions. The treatment certainly wasn’t meant to do this, and I can’t believe it’s the result of a significant penetration trauma.’
Marshal couldn’t help sounding excited as his mind worked through the implications of the physical changes. ‘Remyelination. Now that would be something – this guy walking around with a potential cure for MS and Alzheimer’s locked within him.’ He flipped another page on the printout and looked back at Graham. ‘Hey, do you think it could it also be responsible for his psychogenic disorder?’
Hunter’s improved mental abilities, amplified senses and staggering physical improvements were bordering on miraculous, but both scientists knew the man was paying a high price for them.
Marshal went to the electronic
s console to check on Hunter’s current readings. ‘I still don’t get it,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘These don’t even look like human brain waves anymore. There’s an encephalogical thunderstorm going on in there. His body should be responding with a massively elevated heart rate, increased oxygen consumption, or at least rapid eye movement signalling disturbance. But his blood pressure is still one-twenty over seventy, full resting normality for a man his size. We’ve had this guy in four times and we know even less now than when he left the first time.’ He looked at the senior officer. ‘Do you think we should halt treatment until we know more?’
Graham came and stood beside him, running his eyes over the chaotic lines displayed on the screen. He shook his head. ‘No, we continue. But I agree we need to know more. These EEGs are too imprecise. We really need to use MRI, but the magnetic field could cause the bullet to shift and bingo – we got one brain-dead HAWC. And I, for one, would want to be well out of the country when the Hammer took that call.’
Alex could hear the girl’s voice. She was alone in the dark and was calling his name – frightened, so frightened – she needed his help. The ancient tunnel was desolate, black and icy cold, but his extraordinary senses allowed him to perceive the danger all around him.
It was Aimee. She screamed his name again, so terrified and alone. The walls of the tunnel were collapsing, suitcase-sized granite blocks were falling in on him. Alex used his enormous strength to lift and throw the blocks out of his way – but the more he threw, the more rained down on him.
He screamed his pain and anger into the dark.
‘Holy shit.’
The EEG alarm screamed as the machine’s four reading pens crazily mapped Alex’s alpha, beta, theta and delta waves onto the printout. His encephalogical storm was turning into a full-blown hurricane. Lieutenant Marshal tried to make sense of the wild oscillations and spatial disturbances, but even to his trained eye, the pages were now almost black with impossible scribbling.
Marshal moved back to the observation window in time to see Alex’s body convulse upwards. The soldier made a fist with his right hand and slowly tried to bring his arm up. His muscles bulged and sinews stretched – and a fatiguing metallic sound echoed through the observation room’s speakers. The iron railing on the cot started to bend.
Aimee screamed again. He wasn’t going to make it in time. More stones were falling in on him and the leviathan was rapidly approaching from below. Alex had to do something – now. He pounded the rock with his bare hands, smashing the ancient boulders in an effort to break a path through to Aimee.
The creature had him now. It had hold of his arms and was trying to drag him down to its lair. He had to break free; he had to try harder. Anger and fury pulsed through him – he would tear it apart, he would destroy it.
The two scientists stood immobile at the toughened glass of the observation window. Lieutenant Alan Marshal knew he had his secondary physical manifestations to accompany the psycho-cranial quake taking place in Hunter’s mind. No longer the face of calm, Hunter’s visage was a mask of pure rage. His eyes were still closed but his lips were pulled back to reveal gritted teeth that gleamed whitely against his flushed and perspiring face. Veins bulged in his neck and shoulders as he struggled with the monster in his mind. He tried to bring his right arm up – and the specially strengthened steel bar on the cot groaned and bent another inch.
Marshal stared in awe at this display of raw strength. He had witnessed many things in his years of medical military service – feats of outstanding bravery, bursts of impossible energy or Herculean effort under pressure – but no one should be able to bend high-gauge military steel like this soldier was doing.
‘That ain’t gonna hold,’ Graham said. ‘We need to wake him. Give him 20ccs of dextroamphetamine.’
As he spoke, the steel railing gave way with a metal snapping sound usually only heard in heavy industry accidents. Alex’s arm broke free and whipped back and forth across his chest. His clenched fist connected with a solid steel cabinet alongside the cot and sank six inches into the metal.
‘Lieutenant, get in there,’ Graham ordered.
Marshall had a look of incredulity on his face. ‘You want me to go in there with just a syringe? Are you shitting me? I’m not going in there with anything less than an elephant gun.’
‘For Chrissake, I need you to buy me some time,’ Graham snapped. ‘I don’t know how, Lieutenant – sing to him if you have to – just get in there. That’s an order.’
Captain Robert Graham picked up the phone and, without taking his eyes off the carnage behind the glass, spoke just four words.
‘Get me Hammerson, now.’
FIVE
Tel Aviv University, Israel – Astrophysics Department
Zachariah Shomron’s hands shook so much he nearly spilled his cup of hot chocolate on the new oxide crystal radiation unit – OCRU for short – that the department had just acquired. It was a delicate and beautiful machine – a blend of sci-fi aesthetics and high-tech pragmatics. Gleaming silver-steel casing and glass domes held rosettes of gadolinium silicate-oxide crystals – the best option for detecting gamma rays and high-energy X-rays. The OCRU displayed the invisible heavy particles as light pulses within the vacuum domes – the more brilliant the glow, the greater the strength of the radiation and its proximity. The visual display was accompanied by a computer application that translated the light pulses into radiation sievert strength, and also calculated distance and direction. Ohhh yeeessss, Zachariah mouthed as he ran his long fingers over the glass domes. This was a work of art with a scientific purpose. And it was his paper on geo-astrophysical gamma ray bursts that had swayed the university budgeting committee to pass the funding for the purchase of the expensive Swiss precision device.
Zachariah began the software load into the OCRU, watching the lines of code scroll up the screen. Gamma rays had a well-deserved deadly reputation, but their power and prevalence throughout the universe meant that the first to harness their cosmic muscle would have access to an energy source that was infinite in quantity and strength. Perhaps he could be the first to design some sort of stellar mining project – now that would be really cool.
Zachariah, or Zach to his friends, was what was affectionately known as a university ‘drop-in’. He was a brilliant young man who, with doctorates in gravitational astrophysics, particle physics and pure mathematics, and a specialisation in black holes and cosmic dark matter, could have had his choice of any number of advisory or teaching positions at Tel Aviv University or any other place of higher learning around the world. Problem was, Zach didn’t want to do anything in the real world. How could he? There was so much more to learn and never enough time. As soon as he finished one degree, he enrolled in another, and another; he had been the same since his first senior class at the age of thirteen – always moving forward and expanding his encyclopaedic knowledge of the cosmos and its strange forces.
After his parents were killed in a bomb attack, school had become his shelter and books his friends. They were always there for him, faithful and factual, and had nothing to do with war. Not like his parents, who had both been victims of this war that seemed without end. His father had died when he wrestled to the ground a man who carried a live grenade. His mother had died shielding her young son from the full force of the blast. When Uncle Mosh and Aunt Dodah had taken Zach in, they had worried about his withdrawal into a world of reading. But it soon became clear that it was just his way of dealing with his personal tragedy.
Tall and skinny, with long bony hands on the end of even longer bony arms, Zachariah was a man in perpetual motion. He always had something to do and rushed about, knuckles cracking, feet tapping, hands flying over computer keyboards or drawing things in the air for others. A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles completed the image of the stereotypical uber-nerd.
Zach slurped the last drops of his chocolate, threw his mug onto the bench and switched the device on. With the OCRU, he would soon be able t
o detect anything from a normal daily pulse of gamma right up to a mega blast. The Earth had encountered mega-range blasts before. A prehistoric far-galaxy short burst of gamma rays had once been suggested as a possible reason for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Luckily, those types of events happened about once every 500 million years. Even luckier for Earth was that no gamma bursts had ever occurred in its galaxy. And just as well, Zach thought; a single ten-second burst from a source just 6000 light years away would strip the planet of its atmosphere and burn all life from the surface.
The computer screens flared to life, showing graphs and charts with unexpected intensities, and the crystals glowed strongly, bathing Zach and his laboratory in blue light. This can’t be right, he thought.
He typed in a few commands, muttered a brief, ‘Impossible,’ turned the device off and gave it thirty seconds. When he powered it back up, the result was the same. ‘Impossible,’ he said again and picked up the phone to call his current professor, Dafyyd Burstein.
‘Shalom, Dafyyd, you’re not going to believe this – I’ve just picked up a terrestrial nanosecond gamma-ray burst. And that’s not all. I believe the pulse came from the Middle East… from the central Iranian desert.’
*
General Meir Shavit was the head of Metsada, the Special Operations Division of Mossad. Short and grizzle-haired, he had served his country for over fifty years in both military theatres and dedicated intelligence services. He could even boast an apprenticeship under the fearsome Ariel Sharon in the infamous Unit 101 – Israel’s very first Special Forces command.
From its headquarters in Tel Aviv, Mossad oversaw a staff of around 2000 personnel. It was one of the most structured and professional intelligence services in the world, and also one of the deadliest. It consisted of eight different specialised departments – one of which was General Shavit’s Metsada, responsible for assassinations, paramilitary operations, sabotage and psychological warfare. If the army was the spear and shield of Israel, then Metsada was its secret dagger dipped in poison.
