2041 Sanctuary (Let There Be Light)

by Robert Storey

  Thinking about the people who sought to control him, Joiner’s thoughts returned to the main focus of his desire. What do they want to hide from me so badly? What is Project Ares really about? He would have to remain patient until he found answers. Myers would no doubt turn up something, but for now he would have to make do with what he had. Joiner tapped at the keyboard on his desk. The dossier on Sarah Morgan popped up on a section of the wallscreen. He pressed a button on his intercom.

  ‘Sir,’ said the voice of his primary aide, Grant Debden.

  ‘I want a secure connection to the decryption department.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Joiner waited before another voice spoke.

  ‘Decryption, secure line delta, eight five two zero confirm.’

  Joiner checked the spooling code on his screen. ‘Eight five two zero, delta confirmed.’

  ‘Very good, sir, how may I be of help?’

  ‘I sent down some files two days ago.’

  The man on the other end of the line paused. ‘Sir, I’ve just checked our logs and we don’t seem to have them.

  Joiner grew concerned. ‘Check again.’

  A longer moment of silence ensued before the man spoke again. ‘My apologies, Director. The files had been sectioned into a digital vault as requested and weren’t showing up on the main system.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We’ve been successful in removing the redacted sections, although due to the sensitivity of their nature we are relying on A.I. to inform us of the successful recovery of data. If you want human confirmation we can—’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’ Joiner twizzled a pen with his fingers. ‘This artificial intelligence … is it also aware of the security protocols involved?’

  ‘It is, sir, yes.’

  ‘And as soon as the data is transferred from your system—’

  ‘They’ll be irretrievable. The only copies will exist on your personal system.’

  ‘Excellent. Transmit the files to my location.’

  ‘Very good, sir. They’ll be with you shortly.’

  Joiner hung up and waited for the delivery of the digital packet.

  Joiner’s intercom buzzed. ‘Director, there’s a woman from the central bank asking to see you, a Ms. Selene Dubois.’

  Joiner froze. Selene, here? A Committee member gracing me with their presence outside of normal channels? It’s unprecedented.

  ‘Sir?’ his aide’s voice said.

  Joiner shut down all his data windows and sat up straighter in his seat. ‘Send her in.’

  Moments later the internal mirage of a setting sun broke in two as the doors to his office opened to reveal the woman he’d seen in the Anakim tower on his arrival at Sanctuary. By her side was the dread form of S.I.L.V.E.R.’s leader, Ophion Nexus, still encased in his chrome armour like a medieval knight lost in time. Behind him were two of his team, similarly garbed in gleaming metallic panels with their weapons attached to back-plates visible above their shoulders. Unlike Ophion, who held his distinctive helmet in the crook of his arm, these individuals wore sculpted headgear which was much like that of the Terra Force commandos, only these were sleeker and, if anything, even more formidable than their U.S. Army counterparts.

  Joiner rose and moved round the table, and felt the disturbing and unfamiliar sensation of being amongst people taller than him. ‘Ms. Dubois, this is unexpected.’

  ‘Is it?’ She walked past him to observe the scenery on display.

  Ophion held Joiner’s gaze before the intelligence director returned his attention to the Committee member, who continued to gaze out into the 3D imagery.

  ‘You’d like a progress update?’ Joiner’s tone was uncertain.

  Selene remained with her back to him. ‘You thought I wouldn’t?’

  ‘Of course, but—’

  ‘I made you well aware of the importance of this task and you have proven as ineffective as those you replaced. What do you propose I should do to solve this indifference? Ophion, perhaps you have some ideas.’

  ‘I have one,’ Nexus said, in his deep rumbling voice.

  Joiner approached Selene. ‘My preparations are nearly complete, as Ophion well knows.’ He flashed S.I.L.V.E.R.’s leader a look of fury. ‘The personnel have been assembled, along with all the equipment needed to ensure the fastest route through Sanctuary Proper. No expense has been spared. The track is nearing completion as we speak and the first shuttles will be out within the next twenty-four hours. I was going to provide you with an update as soon as we’d launched. If you’d have waited another day then this inconvenience would not have been necessary.’

  ‘Inconvenience.’ Selene turned to face him. ‘You think I’ve been inconvenienced?’

  Joiner didn’t know what to say. He glanced at Ophion, whose enigmatic expression showed no hint of humour, though Joiner could tell the assassin was enjoying his discomfort.

  ‘This is beyond inconvenience,’ Selene said. ‘That you think otherwise compounds the issue. It was decided for you to take the lead on this most important of acquisitions. It seems our trust was misplaced, once again.’

  Joiner cleared his throat. ‘If you—’

  ‘Enough!’

  Joiner clenched his jaw, cowed by the anger in her eyes.

  ‘You have one day, Malcolm Joiner, one day to rectify your mistakes. Make another and it will be your last as a functioning member of the GMRC Directorate. Do I make myself clear?’

  Joiner felt his blood boil, his top lip curling into one of displeasure. It was all he could do to contain an outburst, his nails biting into the palms of hands, the pain serving to quell the rising tide of anger as red rage distorted his vision.

  The Committee member and her armed retinue swept from the room, the doors closing behind them. Joiner snatched up a glass and hurled it at a wall. The crystal shattered in an explosion of glittering shards, leaving behind a fractured crater on the high-tech screen.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Joiner glowered at the doors through which his tormentors had departed, his sense of self threatened beyond toleration. The infuriating and excruciating irony was that Joiner had compromised his own position by delivering to the Committee a means by which to destroy him. Now they had subverted the majority of the Response Council’s Directorate, he could be voted off like any other. I should have seen this coming. How did I not see it?

  ‘Because you’re a wretched fool,’ he said aloud.

  He’d been manipulated, pressurised and bombarded with work, he could see it now, a choreographed assault designed to swamp him, ensuring he was too busy to realise what transpired under his very nose. The manufacturer of his own vulnerability. If he’d played such a hand himself he’d have seen it as a defining conquest, a sculptured attack of subtle yet simple beauty. That he had been the recipient of it, a victim – he shuddered at the thought – only served to fuel a desire for vengeance so powerful he felt it in his bones. All his years of graft, long hours and sacrifices had led him to this point. And I’m damned if I’m going to let it slide now.

  Returning to his desk, he reached out to his keyboard. His hand trembled from the surge of adrenaline caused by the confrontation. He shut his eyes and breathed deep, in and out, deep slow breaths like his physician had taught him.

  Moments later he opened his eyes; the shaking had ceased and he resumed his task. A few key strokes locked his office doors and brought up the secure transfer server. Having completed a host of security measures, Joiner saw the requested files lay waiting for him as the decryption analyst had promised. Switching the folder to his wallscreen, he stood and extracted the contents. Three video files appeared, files he’d acquired from the Committee, files that were incomplete. Now he’d see what they’d been hiding from him. He made a gesture with his hand and flicked the playback window onto a new section of the wall.

  A video stream appeared, filmed by an array of cameras inside the military vaults located beneath USSB Sanctuary’s museum complex.<
br />
  The woman at the centre of Joiner’s woes, Sarah Morgan, descended from the upper level of the large circular vault. He’d already witnessed what had happened before; she’d collected her confiscated artefacts, including the precious pendant that meant so much to all concerned. The scene continued to unfold and Joiner knew the process of redaction reversal had been a success, as previously unseen footage carried on without pause or break.

  The lithe form of the English archaeologist went from room to room, deactivating the opacity walls to transparency until she decided to enter a room full of ancient parchments. Stealing a few of these precious documents, she then stopped in front of a display cabinet. The image automatically spun round to capture the thief’s progress. Letting out a scream of frustration, Morgan heaved over the stand, creating a domino effect which trashed the whole room. Not stopping there and incandescent with rage, she then stormed into an adjoining room and grasped a massive Anakim shield suffused with jewels. No sooner had she grasped the object by its handle, than a faint ripple shimmered across its face. Unable to move the seven foot tall artefact, the woman made to rest the shield down, but before she could do so a wave of purple energy erupted from its surface, blinding the cameras with a flash of light so powerful it rendered the screen blank. Joiner assumed whatever had transpired had disabled the cameras in the vicinity as that was the end of the video. He rewound it and watched it back. Why was she so upset at seeing the Anakim parchment on display? He zoomed in on her face at the time of the event to see an expression of recognition. She’d seen this parchment before.

  Joiner searched through her dossier and found an intelligence profile that revealed Sarah Morgan was said to have claimed to have found similar maps some time back. Information gleaned from friends and colleagues by GMRC agents had revealed they’d been lost in a fire which had also claimed her mother’s life. Joiner began to understand his quarry’s motives. He turned to another document. From what he’d read before, this woman’s lifelong mission was to find evidence of a lost race of Hominid, Homo gigantis. Now that she had such evidence she would be attempting to reach the surface and release her discoveries to the world. He shook his head at her folly. The stupid girl was fleeing to her death, escaping from a facility that would protect her from the next wave of asteroids. Sometimes, it seemed, restricting the truth could prove detrimental to the bigger picture.

  Joiner moved on to the section where the shield had activated, slowed it down and rewound it before viewing it again. He ran the footage through a spectral enhancer. At the time of the shield’s activation he could clearly see the pendant concealed beneath the woman’s clothing grow hot in response, the outline of the pentagonal disc revealed under operation.

  He spooled up the next film, where the woman entered the military’s highly restricted laboratory complex.

  His eyes grew wide and he stopped the stream and enlarged the image. He’d seen a small amount of this file but, like the other two, all three had revealed very little of note with regard to Project Ares, despite Selene indicating otherwise when she’d warned him off the subject. Had she been unaware that Joiner would be receiving a limited view of what had transpired? If she had, Joiner thought with satisfaction, her warning backfired as it only served to tell me the files contained useful information about the project. A mistake he hoped she might live to regret.

  On-screen he could see a cluster of logos and signs on a transparent door. Two of the signs read:

  U.S.S.B. SANCTUARY

  in partnership with

  GMRC R&D DIVISION and

  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

  WARNING!

  RESTRICTED AREA

  Level 10 Alpha

  Special Access Personnel Only

  And beneath these, sandwiched inside the glass itself, were the emblems and logos of the respective partners, one of which consumed Joiner’s attention like no other, the symbol he’d been chasing ever since he’d seen its name:

  He took an involuntary step closer to the screen and resumed the footage, his eyes transfixed on every detail.

  The thief continued into a large chamber, her Deep Reach helmet deploying its breathing mask as she passed through a set of decontamination jets. Inside, she ran from an area which held a number of self-contained laboratories and into an adjoining chamber. The angle switched to a new set of cameras, following her progress. She approached a fifty foot high monolith, the only object on show. Surrounded by a pool of light and a host of monitoring equipment, the ancient piece of architecture had the form of a giant pentagonal prism. At its heart, a large, transparent rectangle had been built into the artefact and Joiner realised it was the front panel of a three dimensional container which housed some kind of fluid. Sarah Morgan placed her hand on one of three circular indents located on the front of this curiosity. The liquid inside darkened and a glow bloomed at its core, intensifying into a dazzling star of light.

  Like Morgan before him, Joiner hadn’t noticed a scientist who approached her from behind; disturbing her from the wonder Joiner now shared. The light died and Sarah Morgan proceeded to interact with the man, before distracting him with a computer readout and then knocking him out with a well-executed bash to the head with a heavy piece of equipment. Joiner rewound the footage and completed another spectral scan, identifying the glow from the pendant as again it activated on cue. He switched his attention to the massive Anakim relic. Heat signatures failed to reveal anything interesting, the viscous fluid contained inside the structure appearing as uniform as it did from the outside.

  He knew further analysis could be undertaken, but he didn’t have the software or inclination to tackle such a time-consuming process himself. There was also another problem; he didn’t want anyone else to be privy to his actions, especially not the Committee. This meant he would need to requisition an artificial intelligence console for his personal use. It was the only way he could ensure full concealment. But such units were expensive and few in number, and results were by no means guaranteed. Plus, acquiring one might raise suspicions – although, upon deliberation, he decided that was a risk he had to take.

  Moving on, the next section of video showed Sarah Morgan stealing yet another artefact, a small orb-like object which induced some kind of fit, sending her collapsing unconscious to the floor. Joiner fast-forwarded the stream, finding nothing further of note, just the woman recovering to flee from the restricted complex.

  The final file revealed little new material, apart from a similar incident to one he’d just seen. This time another woman, an SED employee, had attempted to stop Morgan from fleeing the base. After catching the orb that had been thrown as a last resort, this new character had been sent into a violent seizure, ending in death. It seemed the murder was anything but, more a case of self defence leading to a fortuitous result, at least for the thief.

  Joiner returned to his desk to ponder over what he’d seen. He brought up the footage again, this time on his workstation. He paused the stream at the point where Morgan activated the shield. He then introduced the next file alongside at the instant where the giant prism had glowed from within. He leant forward, running each one side by side in slow motion, stopping them time and again to rewind and replay. Slower and slower he ran them until they crept along, a frame at a time. Joiner’s vision narrowed into tunnel-like intensity, fixating on the power that flowed from the devices. His pupils dilated, he could feel, smell, sense, the infusion of power on display. A power such as that could make a powerful man almost invulnerable. He licked at his dry lips, his desire to wield the device, this pendant, all-consuming.

  Chapter Fifteen

  So, Joiner thought, Project Ares is intrinsically linked to Anakim technology. This is what the Committee sought, personal power, not a watered down version wielded through administration, media and money. Project Ares is the power of the Anakim, the power of the Gods.

  A spark of motivation ignited in his mind, a glimpse of what could be, a se
nsation of truth extracted from the ether.

  ‘I have to have that pendant,’ he whispered to himself. With it he could turn the tables on the Committee, run his own programme off the books, a personal black project. He’d operated such things before, normally coined ‘a civil servant’s wet dream’ by the parliamentarians that strove to cull the excessive spending of taxpayers’ money. Of course, Joiner knew, like most of the establishment, this was the greatest illusion of them all. Money could be created when needed; it was then down to the redistribution of debt to those beneath to ensure the system remained functioning. The process wasn’t perfect, but then neither was humanity, so the world continued to spin and the people continued to work – without it only chaos and war would rule, as without control, those that needed power, lusted after power, needed to maintain power, would do anything they could to secure it, regardless of the consequences to the masses. It had been theorised that in the future artificial intelligence might be able to produce a system that would negate the destructive impulses of man, but until that time, Joiner knew the current system would continue uninterrupted, at least as long as money persisted, which was where Professor Steiner had been so dangerous. A world without money. He shuddered at the thought.