by Greig Beck
Hex broke cover and stood. He moved the KBELT’s calibration down to the broader range low-energy pulse and pressed the button twice. The effect was startling: two golf ball-sized spheres of lightning flew towards the flat-faced rock. The first smashed the boulder into smoking shards of debris; the second did the same to the concealed Takavaran. Stone and flesh rained down to the dark sand for many seconds afterwards. Hex raised his eyebrows. Satisfying result, he thought.
The last echoes of the explosion bounced off the mountain, rolled across the desert basin and then out to the wide, cold plains. Silence once again fell over the ancient Persepolis ruins.
Hex looked up at the sky. Please let there be only friendly birds watching, he thought. Then he stared coldly at O’Riordan, his wintry eyes the only sign of his annoyance with the new HAWC.
O’Riordan’s face was redder than usual. He glared at Hex for a few seconds before shouting, ‘I could’ve hit him if I had a light sabre as well, Mr Luke fuckin’ Skywalker.’
Hex studied the man for a further few seconds, then turned away and pressed his comm stud.
*
Alex paused at the outer door of the Jamshid I facility as he heard the message from Hex: ‘Twelve down. Clear.’
‘Roger that,’ said Alex. ‘Come on down, bring Irish and Rocky. Over.’
Alex waved his small team out of the ruins. The tent over the entrance was gone – blown away by the force of the blast. There were bodies lying around the perimeter; in the dark he could see their thermal images fading as they rapidly cooled in the icy night air. He spotted a small round burn hole above the right eye of one of the Takavaran. As expected, Hex hadn’t missed.
Alex pressed his comm stud again. ‘Good shooting, Lieutenant, but I’ll still want that gun back.’
Alex turned to check on Sam, Adira and Zach. Their suits were heavily marked from the blast, the ceramic plates over the shoulders and armadillo scales down over the lower back scarred and pitted. They’d been lucky. As Alex was running his fingers over the back of his helmet to check for damage from the stone shrapnel, he felt his SFPDA comm unit vibrate in one of the pouches at his waist. The Hammer wanted to talk.
‘Sam, get the men to drag all these bodies back into the tunnels, and see if you can resurrect that tent over the entrance,’ Alex said. ‘Clean the perimeter. I’ll update HQ and receive orders.’
He walked away a few paces into the dark and cold desert air. He pulled the miniaturised military PDA device out and switched it to wirelessly receive into his helmet comm. The signal was clear and strong, already piggybacking over the strongest communication grid it could find while frequency-hopping to avoid detection.
O’Riordan was pulling one of the bodies into the mouth of the tunnel when he spotted something small in the sand. He nudged it with his toe to bring it to the surface – a human finger. It must have been blown off one of the Takavaran by Hex’s laser when he moved it to a broad-beam pulse. He bent and picked it up, and looked at it for a few seconds before he glanced across at Adira. She had her back to him while she talked to the young scientist. A hundred possibilities ran through his mind.
‘Don’t even think about it, Irish,’ Rocky said. He was watching with his hands on his hips; plainly he’d read the redheaded HAWC’s mind.
O’Riordan saw Alex near the woman and gave up his plan. ‘I know where I’d like to fucking stick it,’ he said. He threw the finger to the sand and ground his boot over it until it was buried inches below the dry desert surface.
*
‘Did we have to kill them all?’ Zach was saying to Adira. ‘Couldn’t we have just knocked them out, or shot them in the leg?’ He had his arms wrapped around his torso and shivered slightly as another body was dragged past him.
Adira shook her head. ‘Them or us, Zachariah. This is the real world and how it works – very different from the lecture theatre, yes?’
Zach shrugged his shoulders and let his arms drop. ‘It feels wrong.’
Adira grabbed his upper arms and looked up into his face. ‘Sometimes you have to fight. Sometimes you need to defend yourself and others.’ She shook him slightly. ‘When the time to fight comes, what will you do, Zach?’
‘What is your status, Arcadian?’ said Hammerson into Alex’s helmet comm.
‘Twelve bad guys down. Good guys still unannounced. Target site is confirmed as ground zero for gamma pulse and gravitational distortion. Nothing remains in operation. Party has gone elsewhere.’
‘Attention. Party has now been reacquired – secondary pulse detected. Partially shielded gamma signal confirmed; coordinates being sent now. Further instructions on rendezvous with blue doves. Beach holiday now extended. Good luck, Arcadian. Over and out.’
Alex signed off and looked at the SFPDA. There was an attachment that opened to supply the coordinates. A map appeared – their current location was circled in red, another circle appeared to their north, and a line connected them. A name appeared: Arak. Alex knew the blue doves were the Israelis, so obviously Mossad had more information to share with them. He called Adira over.
‘We’re being redirected. Tell me about Arak.’
Adira made a guttural sound in the back of her throat and rolled her eyes. ‘Smallish city in the Markazi Province, just under 500 miles to our north.’
Alex couldn’t help groaning.
‘If we take the new highways, about one day,’ she told him. ‘But there are roadblocks. If we take back roads, several days and we will need an SUV. The fastest and safest way for us is to meet the returning supply train from Bushehr. It’s fast and cuts right through the Zagros Mountains. We need to jump off at Kashan and then trek west up into the Markazi. Should get us there in just over a day.’
The clean-up was complete. Seen from the air, the interaction was now completely erased. Alex checked his watch: 0200 hours. It had all started and finished in three hours – not bad. They still had about four hours until sun-up – they needed to make use of it. He looked across at the truck one of the Takavaran squads had been resting under. ‘Irish. Get that truck working ASAP.’
He turned back to Adira. ‘Now, where do we meet that train?’
TWENTY-FIVE
The president was coming. Ahmad Al Janaddi was sweating profusely from the pressure of a thousand unfinished tasks. Even though Moshaddam wasn’t due for a few days, he needed to have the facility rebuilt in time to conduct a third trial to finalise the calibration of the test openings – or ‘Judgment Events’ as the president had instructed they now be called. The scientist was a little unnerved by how Moshaddam so smoothly intertwined religion and science. He spoke as if every successful test was a prophecy straight from the holy book.
Al Janaddi thanked Allah that they had refined the rebuilding process, with many of the pieces prebuilt for fast installation. The entire acceleration chamber could now be recreated and operational within twenty-four hours. The latest test must occur today, without fail, and then they must be ready to rerun by the time the president was on site. Since Moshaddam had announced he was coming, the schedule had become immutable. Al Janaddi didn’t doubt for a second that all his successes would count for nothing if he were seen to be slow in responding to a direct order from the president.
Installation of the new silver sphere was almost complete, and the circular line marking the edge of ‘Allah’s Gateway’ was already in place. There would be just a single traveller this time, and the president had personally provided the blueprint for the design of a six and half foot lead capsule that was to be fully constructed and in place before the next test run. Inside the hermetically sealed pod, which weighed many tons, there was room for a man to stand comfortably. In addition, it held black box-type recording equipment, homing beacons and communication devices. Theoretically, when the traveller returned, he could be detected and retrieved from anywhere in the world.
The computer simulations were very encouraging; it now looked possible to control the size of the Judgment Event and ev
en its duration. This was the most important step in being able to design a harness for the powerful gamma radiation emissions – a repository to actually store the enormous cosmic energies. Al Janaddi smiled to himself. Already he had achieved more than dozens of scientists working in laboratories around the world. If only he could tell someone… If only he could tell everyone.
Al Janaddi was a talented scientist and a man with great dreams. Like every science professional, he imagined the ultimate recognition of his work – a Nobel Prize for science. It had proved to be more than a dream for one Iranian. Shirin Ebadi had been awarded the Peace Prize in 2003; she had been showered with wealth and was now treated as a national hero.
Al Janaddi closed his eyes and dreamed for a moment. Success and recognition could bring him many fantastic things – enough money to buy his mother a new house with heating that actually worked in winter, a new car for his lazy brother – just a small one though. A holiday for himself, maybe even to America; it would be worth it, even if he had to have a Republican Guard accompanying him everywhere.
Ahh, what would it be like to live in America with so much freedom? He daydreamed some more: Hello, I live in New York. Hello, I live in Texas. Hmm… He breathed in through his nose, a smile just touching his lips as he imagined the Norwegian gold medal being hung around his neck while the world applauded.
He opened his eyes and made a guttural sound in the back of his throat as the image of that disgusting creature in the containment cell ruined his beautiful daydreams. It wasn’t my fault, he thought, pushing harsh reality and its side effects to one side as he returned to fiddling with some software refinements. He still had much work to do.
On Al Janaddi’s instruction, his fellow scientists and the attending technicians went through a final operational program while he reviewed the facility’s image recorders, transponders and other electronic sensory equipment. New equipment had been added, which, they hoped, would contain the dark matter and stop it evaporating so rapidly. More refinements were still on the drawing board and would be engineered following this test; every run now was an opportunity to learn more about the mysterious anomalies they were creating. It was all in order – they were ready.
Al Janaddi stopped flicking between cameras when he reached the sphere room and stared at the lead capsule standing in the semi-gloom of the chamber. He had made one adjustment to the president’s blueprints, more as another option for retrieval of the capsule than as any form of improvement. A large half-ring had been welded to the back of the capsule; attached to it was an inch-thick titanium cable that snaked away to be bolted securely to an industrial winch on the wall. An extra 500 feet of cable was coiled at the base of the wall – hopefully enough to allow the traveller to enter the black hole far enough to obtain meaningful data, then be reeled back in like a fish.
Al Janaddi flicked the image feed to a small camera inside the lead capsule. The old cleric who had volunteered for the test looked almost rapturous at his imminent departure through ‘Allah’s Gateway’. The promise of a personal meeting with God followed by eternal life in Jannah was irresistible to any man of faith. Al Janaddi wondered whether the cleric would be so composed if he met the distorted remnant of humanity that moaned and slavered in the tunnel complex below.
He raised his voice without turning. ‘Green light in sixty seconds.’ This time there was little enthusiasm, just nods and one weak ‘Allahu Akbar’ from a younger technician. Al Janaddi lowered his visor and initiated the particle acceleration lasers – once again the lights dimmed.
As before, faster than human vision could comprehend, the sphere room disappeared into a nothingness so black it hurt the eyes and confused the consciousness. This time, however, the event was suspended and didn’t dissipate so quickly. Encouraged, Al Janaddi levered up the accelerator just one notch on a dial that held over fifty calibrations. Immediately, a wave passed through the laboratory that made his fingertips tingle and caused his stomach to threaten to erupt. He checked his dials – no radiation leakage, but his small screen clock seemed to have slowed.
The capsule was gone. The thick cable fed out with a surprising slowness into the black emptiness – a loop every twenty seconds, as if the capsule were on a sedate and comfortable voyage.
Excellent, just one more, Al Janaddi thought, and pushed the dial up another notch. In an instant all the lead shielding started to warp out from the walls and ceiling. Red lights flashed and a siren screamed a warning that the gamma particles were threatening to explode out of the complex. The scientist sucked in a frightened breath and eased the lever back, allowing the event to stabilise for another moment.
‘Merciful Allah, that was close. Now let us see if we can bring him back…’ Al Janaddi pressed the winch button and, with a deep whine, the loose cable was drawn up from the floor. After the slack was taken up, there was a thump and the whining changed to a deeper grinding noise.
Achhh! Al Janaddi switched the winch off, and was deciding on his next move when an even more ominous sound started within the chamber. The cable leading into the cold blackness, already piano-wire tight, moved up, then down, grinding and shrieking as it wrenched against the winch ring. The cable thrummed, as if something was hauling itself grip over grip along the metal cord. As Al Janaddi watched with an open mouth, he couldn’t help but be reminded of when he was a boy, fishing with his father, and they had hooked a big shark. The fishing line had done something similar before they cut it free. ‘Never bring a shark into the boat,’ his father had said in a low voice as they watched the cut line whip over the side.
Never bring a shark into the boat. Al Janaddi quickly hit the disengage button. Now free, the cable thrashed away into the dark pool almost faster than his eye could follow.
He switched off the acceleration beam and the Judgment Event dissolved as fast as it had appeared. He looked around at the lead-lined room and sucked in an enormous breath, realising he had forgotten to breathe. The shielding over the command centre had held, otherwise he and his technicians would be melted flesh or would have been dragged into the black hole’s corona. He sat down and wiped cold perspiration from his brow – he needed better technology to hold and manage the event.
He checked the other monitors; in the previous test runs, the subjects had been returned almost instantaneously. But of the elderly cleric there was no sign, no signal, nor any images. Either the recording equipment inside the capsule had short-circuited, or the man and capsule were no longer on the planet.
Al Janaddi thought again about the behaviour of the cable. He suspected the little cleric was gone for good.
The creature stopped its slow, insidious movement through the sand. Small glands in its head sensed the slight radiation pulse that had leaked out of the containment sphere facility, and it remembered the same feeling just before it was wrenched from its home.
It raised itself up; sand falling from its armoured plating. Its unearthly vision allowed it to see electromagnetic and X-ray waves travelling across the ionosphere. Its fan-like protuberances waved in the air, scooping molecules from the atmosphere to sample and taste. It could detect the heavy radioactive particles and was drawn to their source – the Jamshid II laboratory.
It reared up on its four powerful hind legs, each bristled point digging into the crusted sand, and called again to its own kind across the desert floor. It held immobile for a few seconds – as before, there was no reply.
The sun glinted off the waxy, mottled shell as it drew in the sensations of this new world. The armoured exoskeletal plates had been compacted together to preserve precious fluids within its body, and its bullet-shaped head was drawn back into the bulbous hump across what could pass for shoulders.
As two black chitin-covered eyes extended on the end of eyestalks, the plates opened out, and its upper body flared open briefly to dislodge more particles of the annoying dry sand. The creature flexed, and the open carapace revealed an underbelly that carried two enormous curved claws – each covere
d in rows of teeth and ending in a blackened talon. Below these lethal daggers were row upon row of numerous smaller thoracic limbs that slowly undulated. A slight clicking could be heard from the sharp tips whenever they struck each other in their wave-like twitching. Further in, greasy flaps and tendrils hung, coiled and furled amongst the rows of dark green armoured tiles. The carapace shuddered, and then closed across the thing’s hellish appendages.
The fan-like tongue flicked out again and its head swayed slightly as more of the radioactive particles bathed its sensory organs, and it turned to face the direction they were coming from – perhaps there was a way back to its home.
It dropped to the sand and sped towards Arak and the sphere chamber.
TWENTY-SIX
Hammerson read the information brief quickly. Another radiation pulse – weaker, but still heavy gamma and little else. This one again from the small city of Arak at the foot of the Markazi Mountains. Whatever they were doing there certainly wasn’t finished.
Hammerson pressed the button on his phone. ‘Annie, get me Major Harris at Space Strat. Then put a secure call through to Moss-1 for me.’
Right now he needed two things: some thermal images from around Arak to get an idea of what Alex was walking into; and to speak to his old friend General Meir Shavit. Mossad needed to be kept in the loop.
Hammerson would trade what he had with the Israelis because he needed to know what they were thinking and what they were planning. The constant radiation emissions coming from central Iran would be worrying the hell out of them. He could only keep them on a leash for so long before they decided to take matters into their own hands. He needed to give his team time to secure the technology before the general decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to incinerate everything.
Hammerson knew that most of the Middle Eastern countries tolerated, distrusted or downright hated each other. But nothing would unite them quicker than an attack from Israel, and somehow it always ended up being America’s fault. Life was a lot simpler when they just burned our flags, he thought as the call was put through to his desk phone.
