Vaporized

by Simon Rosser

  “No kidding! I’ll just stick with the salad and a cocktail then,” Amber said, laughing, as she spooned a heaped teaspoon of coffee into her mug. “What about you guys, any plans?”

  “Yep, surf’s up. Rosie and I are off to Cornwall for a few days. Managed to get her some surfing lessons at last.”

  “Sounds like fun, you’ve been talking about doing that for months. What about you Joe?”

  “Me? Oh, I got a couple of old university mates coming down from Liverpool, which means we’ll be spending the weekend getting smashed; just like old times,” Joe said, grinning.

  Amber rolled her eyes. “Boys will be boys,” she said.

  “Better get to it,” Ted said, as both men left the kitchen.

  Amber placed the milk back in the fridge and followed them out, just as two female members of staff she didn’t know that well, from the Commercial Department, walked in. They smiled at her and said, “Good morning,” before resuming their conversation.

  “Yeah, just seems really weird.”

  “I know. How can meteorites disappear, and then land without exploding, doesn’t make sense…”

  Amber realised they were talking about the newsflash she’d heard earlier. She took a sip of her coffee, pondering over what the women had said.

  “What time is the Mathews’ hearing, Amber?” The gruff voice of Donald Black startled her, bringing her thoughts back to work mode, with a jump.

  She looked up. “Ah, ten,” she said. I have another telephone hearing straight after it, at ten-thirty.”

  Black nodded. “You’d better get back to your desk, to prepare, then,” he said. “And don’t forget, you also need to get that report done on the Wright case, that I asked you to do.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure, I’ll have it done by lunchtime,” she said.

  Shit. She realised she’d completely forgotten about the detailed report, he’d asked her to do, on one of her cases. The client, a moaning, pain in the ass, thirty- something year old, who thought he knew the law inside out, had made a complaint about her. He’d thought the valuation she’d given him on his personal injury claim, a simple ankle fracture, with no complications which had kept him off work for three months, was too low. She’d valued his claim correctly in her view; 15k for the injury, and around 35k for consequential losses, including loss of income. But Mr Wright, clearly an apt name for him, thought he was right, by valuing his claim at 150k.

  Thankfully, she hadn’t come across too many clients like Mr Wright.

  Amber ended the call to the court, for the second time that morning, and removed the headset from her head. She’d obtained the court order she needed on both files. Both district judges must have been in a good mood this morning, she surmised.

  She was just about to get up to go to the rest room, when Donald Black appeared and sat on the edge of her desk. He had on a nice designer suit on, as always, but it couldn’t hide his middle age paunch, which was now hanging over his belt like a blob of jelly. “How’d the hearings go?” he asked.

  “Fine, thanks. Got what we needed on both matters,” she replied.

  Her boss gave her a smarmy smile and glanced out of the window, before looking back down at her. “Good. So, what plans does Miss Lee have for the long weekend?” he asked.

  “Ah, I’ll be seeing some friends, shopping, stuff like that,” Amber replied, trying to be nice.

  “Sounds like you’ll be having more fun than me,” Black retorted. “I’ve got my wife’s mother coming to stay with us. She’s a right royal pain in the butt, I can tell you.”

  Amber screwed her face up as she caught a whiff of Black’s bad breath, but smiled politely. What a sad asshole he is, she thought. She also felt sorry for his poor wife.

  “Anyway, guess I’ll see you Tuesday,” he said. I’m leaving early today. Don’t forget that report I asked you for. You can e-mail it to me,” he said, as he got up from the desk and walked back to his office, closing the door behind him.

  Amber managed to complete the report on her idiot client, Wright, by 4 p.m. when she suddenly realised that the afternoon was almost over. She attached the report to the letter she’d drafted to her boss, and e-mailed it to him. She checked her diary for next week, noting three court appointments she had at the back end of the week. She could prepare for them on Tuesday and Wednesday, so no need to take any work home, thankfully.

  She looked around the office, noting a good few people must have had either the day, or the afternoon off, as quite a few of her colleagues were absent.

  She closed her diary down and opened up the internet to catch up on the day’s news.

  She’d been so focused on drafting the report and letter to her boss on the client, that she’d forgotten all about the strange meteorites, observed by NORAD the night before, but was reminded of them as soon as she opened up the BBC News website. The headline read;

  “NASA BAFFLED BY MYSTERY SPACE OBJECTS.”

  The article confirmed that the space agency, NASA, had also tracked the objects, as they had entered Earth’s atmosphere, and moved towards the North-western USA, only for one object to vanish, and the other, to seemingly strike land without causing any damage, somewhere in Alaska, 83 miles south of the North Pole.

  The article confirmed that a team of scientists were on their way to the location today and would report their findings in the next day or two.

  Very weird, she thought, as she exited the website and closed down her case management system.

  The time was approaching 4.45 p.m. and weekend fever was already gripping the office. Some of the younger female paralegals were donning their makeup, ready to go out and hit the town as soon as the clock ticked 5 p.m.

  Other colleagues were chatting excitedly about their plans for the weekend. Amber started feeling her stress levels drop too, as the end of the working day approached. There was nothing like that “Friday feeling”; the best day of the week.

  She was also excited about seeing three of her good friends in a few hours. She’d planned to meet up with them in the Ship and Anchor pub, for a few drinks, before heading over to The Shard, and dining in its thirty-second floor restaurant, Oblix, at 8.30 p.m.

  Amber shut her computer down and took her cup back to the kitchen. Ted and Joe were just walking out the main office door. “See you on Tuesday, Amber. Have a great weekend,” Joe said.

  “You too, guys. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and if you do, be careful,” she said.

  Joe raised his eyebrows, and blew her a kiss, as he headed out into the corridor. Ted grinned and said “That leaves a lot of options, Amber. Take care, but have fun.” He followed Joe through the door.

  Amber headed back to her desk, grabbed her handbag and jacket and took one last glance down to the street below. People were streaming out of various office buildings, some no doubt escaping the city for the long weekend, others just heading to the nearest bar for a drink.

  Amber waved goodbye to the paralegals, who had just about finished preening themselves, and headed towards the elevator.

  Sammy, whose small office was just off the main corridor, was nowhere to be seen. She must have already left, Amber thought, as the elevator doors pinged open.

  One of the building’s cleaners, a middle-aged black guy whom she hadn’t seen before, was stooped over, in the elevator, fumbling with a Henry vacuum cleaner. He backed out of the lift, oblivious to her presence, mumbling to himself. “I’z telling you, Henry, God damn end of the world, it is,” he said.

  Amber stepped out of his way. The cleaner ignored her and dragged the large red, smiley-faced, vacuum cleaner down the corridor, mumbling the same sentence to himself, over and over.

  Amber stepped into the elevator. Crazy guy, she thought.

  As she descended, her thoughts drifted to the picture of getting home and slipping into a nice hot shower, before meeting her friends at 7 p.m.

  CHAPTER 3

  Alaska, Arctic Circle

  18:00, August 23


  “THREE POINT TWO miles to impact zone,” Colonel Lance Tanner said, speaking into the satellite phone fitted into his protective headgear.

  The message was relayed back 3500 miles to the joint NASA/NORAD Anomaly Mission Control – NAMC, which had been rapidly set up following Thursday’s Earth atmospheric breach by two mystery objects.

  “Roger that, Colonel, use extreme caution,” was the static-filled response.

  Tanner’s message was also sent to the other three mission team members, as they followed him on their Polaris snowmobiles over the white, undulating, Arctic terrain.

  Tanner reduced the throttle on his machine slightly, as they approached the impact zone, raising his right hand to signal to the men behind him to slow down a little.

  The sun was shining down, on a sixty degree angle from the western horizon, as low as it would dip for the time of year in the Arctic, glaring off the white snow.

  Tanner approached a series of large, jagged, ridges and was forced to make a forty-five degree right turn to negotiate around them, steadying his snowmobile against a sudden gust of freezing wind, which seemed to come from nowhere. He slowed down and cautiously ascended a steep mound to the right side of the ridge, glancing behind him to make sure the three scientists were following.

  Tanner checked the small screen of the Satellite Topography Mapping device, fitted to the steering column of his snowmobile, which displayed an image of their current location. An ominous red dot was now flashing, indicating a location just one mile ahead, where the object had supposedly impacted, confirmed by seismic readings collected from multiple earthquake stations in the region.

  The four snowmobiles continued across the barren glacier, for a further fifteen minutes, before Tanner spoke into his radio. “Let’s get to the top of that mound ahead and take stock of our surroundings. Impact zone: just under two-hundred feet,” he said.

  Tanner ascended the ridge and noticed the temperature suddenly increase by 8 degrees Celsius, as he approached the summit. The temperature monitor, fixed to the left side of his craft’s impact frame, was now registering, a relatively balmy, – 10 Celsius.

  The three colleagues Tanner had chosen for the expedition followed him up the incline. Professor Anton Ruddle, from Alaska’s Earthquake Center and his assistant, Dr John Collins, and Professor Mike Rogers, both from the Canadian Space Agency.

  The four men reached the top of the summit, switched off the engines on their craft, and removed their headgear. The katabatic wind produced an eerie whine as it blew through, and around, the steel frames of their snowmobiles.

  Professor Rogers shook his head. “That sure as hell isn’t an impact crater,” he said, through gritted teeth.

  “Damn weird,” Tanner said, looking out over a shallow depression, some fifty-foot in circumference, a short distance away from the base of the mound they were perched on.

  Tanner spoke into his satellite headset. “This is Colonel Tanner speaking,” he said, nervously looking at the three scientists. “We’ve arrived at the location of the supposed impact site. We are positioned at the top of an elevated region, and have a visual on a shallow depression, a few hundred feet ahead; looks very weird from up here. The centre of the depression seems to be covered in some dark material, perhaps ejecta of some kind,” he reported.

  There was a long silence, followed by intermittent static, before the voice of Lieutenant Mike Spees at NORAD could be heard. “Advance with extreme caution. I repeat, advance with extreme caution. Satellite imagery confirms...”

  The line suddenly went dead and there was a burst of static – Kerschhhht. A second or two later, Spees voice could then be heard again. “- emanating from the region. Something doesn’t look right, over.”

  “Damn static,” Tanner cursed, tapping the headset. “Repeat last message, over,” he shouted into the satellite coms, fitted into his headgear.

  The sound of static was drowned out by the howling wind whistling over the mound.

  Professor Rogers frowned. “What could be emanating from the region? I can't see a damn thing,” he shouted. “My eight year-old son is sitting back at home waiting for me to call him, to describe the meteorite I've been sent here to find, but my senses are telling me we should retreat, establish communications again and find out what the satellite is picking up.”

  Colonel Tanner turned to the others. “What do you think?”

  Professor Ruddle shrugged. “I'm with Mike. I say we get the hell out of here, find out what that last message said before moving in.”

  Dr Collins nodded his agreement.

  “Ok, let’s move one mile southwest and try and reconnect with NORAD,” Tanner said, pulling his headgear back on.

  Before he could do so, a sapphire-coloured light blinked on from the centre of the shallow depression at the base of the mound, growing in intensity and size.

  Tanner dropped his headgear onto the ice. “What the hell is that?!”

  The three scientists looked on in awe, as the blue light grew more intense.

  Professor Rogers reached down for his camcorder, stored in a small pouch on the side of his snowmobile. He pulled it out and fumbled with his gloved hands to turn it on, but dropped it onto the ice. “Shit!,” he mumbled, as he pulled the glove off his hand to retrieve it from the snow.

  He managed to turn the camcorder on and quickly put his glove back on. With a trembling hand, he held the camera up towards the depression and the blue light now radiating from it.

  “Could it be Russian, or Chinese?” Tanner said, lost for words.

  “It sure as hell isn’t a meteorite,” Professor Rogers said, his mouth gaping open, as he continued filming.

  As the blue glow intensified, Tanner shouted to the scientists, “Put your headgear back on to protect your eyes, we’re getting the hell out of here!”

  The three scientists did as instructed and started their snowmobiles. As they manoeuvred their craft to descend back down the mound, three bright blue balls of light shot out, from the central core that was building in the plateau below, three striking each of the scientists in the chest.

  Tanner watched as the three scientists were vaporized in a flash of blue light in front of him, then a split second later, he felt an instant surge of heat spread over his body, as the fourth ball hit him, then nothing.

  The camcorder, now lying in the snow, continued recording the four snowmobiles as they slid slowly back down the ridge.

  CHAPTER 4

  London

  Friday, August 23

  AMBER JUMPED OUT of the shower and quickly dried herself. It was ten past six already and she was running a little late. She only had 50 minutes to get to the Ship and Anchor, where she was meeting her friends. Thankfully, she’d not needed to wash her hair, or that would have added another 15 minutes to the clock, at least.

  She ran into the bedroom, letting the towel she had wrapped around her drop to the floor, and grabbed the first set of matching black underwear she could find. She reached for her knee length, shoulder strap, black dress – couldn’t go wrong with her favourite black number, she thought – and wasted a little more time fumbling for the zipper at the back, before finally managing to zip the back of the dress up.

  She grabbed her black two-inch high Parcours Paris heels, slipped them on, and carried out one final check in the bathroom mirror, to ensure the eyeliner and lipstick she’d quickly applied looked ok.

  Considering the rush, she looked good. She pulled her leather jacket, handbag and umbrella from the hook in the hall, and left the apartment.

  She walked into the pub at 7.10 p.m., feeling a little overdressed, but that feeling would soon be gone once they were all inside Oblix, on the thirty-second floor of The Shard.

  Amber spotted her friends over in the far corner of the softly lit bar. One of the things she enjoyed about London was the Capital’s charming, and atmospheric, old fashioned pubs.

  She headed over to the table, where her friends were sitting. Ben Casemore, whom she'
d known since law school days, was sipping from his pint of beer. He still had his unmistakable long sideburns, now slightly greying, and his trademark smart striped shirt and cufflinks. It would appear that the years had not dampened his style. Lucy and James were sitting opposite Ben, old friends from Cardiff University, where she'd studied law.

  She walked over to them. “Hi, you guys, sorry I'm a little late. My boss made me complete a report I didn't really need to do, before I left. Yes, he's still an asshole!” she said, apologetically.

  “Hey, Amber, great to see you,” Ben said, getting up. “You’re looking great!"

  “Amber always looks great,” Lucy chimed. “How are you girl?” she said, giving her friend a hug.

  “I'm good. God, I can't believe it's been what,…nearly three years, since we all last saw each other?”

  “Yep, got to be,” Ben said, sitting back down. “The last time was when we all met in Cardiff, I think, for the Wales v Ireland game.”

  “Oh, bloody hell, yes. I remember...what a day. I seem to recall feeling really ill, on the Sunday night train back to London.”

  “What’re you drinking, Amber?” James asked.

  “Vodka and coke would be great, thanks, James,” Amber said, taking off her jacket and sitting on the well-worn beige sofa, next to Ben.

  “So, how's life with you?” Ben asked.

  Amber sighed. “Oh, usual stuff, you know, feeling over worked, under paid and under appreciated.”

  “Sounds about right,” Ben said.

  Amber gave them all a condensed version of the last thirty-six months, how much she loathed her boss still, and how much she wanted to get out of the legal profession.

  “Do you know, I think almost everyone I speak to feels the same way,” Lucy said. “It’s a real shame. Remember when we were in college, there was that great TV show called This Life, about a group of barristers in a London chambers? It was filmed like a fly-on-the wall documentary, shaky camera work and all that. I really couldn't wait to qualify after seeing that series. But now, you're right, the job really is underwhelming most of the time.”