Aftershock

by Sam Fisher

  32

  Base One, Tintara Island

  Tom Erickson was in his quarters. In the eight months since Mark Harrison had recruited him and got him out of Aldermont Correctional Facility, Tom had been away from Tintara for a total of just five days. Two of those had been to visit Los Angeles for publicity, the other three were to visit his folks in Baltimore. As the only member of E-Force rooted to his post on the island, his bond with Base One was especially strong. He considered it home.

  Tom had made his quarters the hub of his world. It was wired to Cyber Control in the main building so that all data streams and computing facilities could be accessed on a screen that took up an entire wall of Tom’s room. Computers were Tom’s life, and his room was his version of a cybersuit.

  He wheeled his chair into the centre of the floor and faced the screen.

  ‘Sybil,’ he said. ‘A detailed map of north-east Russia, Mongolia, north-east China please, in the range 77 degrees to 118 degrees east, 40 degrees to 50 degrees north.’ The screen filled with the required portion of the earth’s surface. At the very top of the picture, a red beacon shone – the location of Polar Base.

  ‘So, what’s the story then, Josh? Steph?’ Tom said aloud. ‘What happened after you left Semja Alexandry?’ He stared at the screen, lost in thought. ‘Syb? How long after takeoff from Semja was the last verbal communication from the Silverback?’

  ‘Eighteen minutes 23 seconds.’

  ‘So that would make it,’ he did a quick mental calculation, ‘12.28 local time.’

  ‘12.28.09.’

  ‘Thanks! Do you have the transmission on file?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What was their location?’

  ‘110.48 east, 49.78 north,’ Sybil replied immediately.

  ‘And what time did the signals from the suits cut out?’

  ‘12.32.23.’

  ‘So that’s just over four minutes flying time after the last verbal contact.’

  ‘Four minutes, 14 seconds.’

  ‘Which, at Mach 10, is about ... 900 kilometres.’

  ‘864.21 kilometres.’

  ‘Sybil, project a circle onto the map centred at the coordinates of the last transmission.’

  A circle appeared on the map, sweeping 360 degrees like a search pattern on an old-style radar screen. It covered a vast area, more than two million square kilometres. ‘What was the Silverback’s course at the time of the last transmission, Sybil?’

  ‘Heading 149.34 degrees south-south-east.’

  ‘Superimpose it on the map, please.’

  A red dotted line appeared.

  ‘So, let’s make some assumptions. Suppose the plane crashed. Suppose that after the last transmission they didn’t change speed or direction. That would bring them down just about...’ And Tom tapped his virtual keyboard. ‘There.’

  A red flashing dot appeared on the map.

  Tom read the coordinates. ‘115.45 east, 42.65 north. The Gobi Desert, just inside the Mongolian border.’

  ‘You are making some very imprecise assumptions.’

  ‘I know, Syb,’ Tom responded, staring blankly at the screen. ‘I know.’

  33

  Pacific Ocean

  Pete and Mai decided not to retrace their route back to the main dock. Instead, they pushed south to circle the base of Dome Alpha from the opposite direction. It was a mistake that cost them 10 minutes – the route was strewn with pylons and flapping cables and they were forced to reduce speed to ensure they did not snag anything that might be keeping the dome stable.

  As the Narcis approached the dock they could see that some of the dust and debris had settled. It afforded them a clearer view.

  ‘I’m running a spectrum analysis,’ Mai said, tapping at her control panel. A full sweep of the mangled dock with sensors on the Narcis would show them the stress lines and the precise way the dock had been damaged.

  The results appeared simultaneously on their screen and on Mark’s in the Big Mac. Pete studied the coloured stripes and the fracture lines.

  ‘Twist fractures mainly,’ Pete said. ‘Produced when the dome wobbled and tilted. But something hit it too. See the pattern there, the concentric circles?’

  Mai considered the image and closed in on the door of the dock. ‘Okay, so what do you suggest?’ she asked.

  ‘The sonic drill would be the easiest thing. We could blow a hole through the door in a few seconds, but it would be dangerous.’

  ‘Let me check,’ Mark said from the Big Mac. Pete and Mai heard him talking to Sybil through the comms link with Tintara. His voice came over the speaker. ‘You’re right, Pete. Sybil has calculated that anything more than a millisecond sonic drill burst would create a wave front that will disturb Dome Alpha’s fragile foundations. It could bring the whole thing down.’

  ‘How long a burst of the drill would we need?’ Mai asked.

  ‘Too long,’ Pete responded. ‘We’re going to have to blow a hole in the door the old-fashioned way, with explosives.’

  ‘But won’t that cause a similar disturbance and destabilise the dome?’

  ‘Not the way I do it, lass,’ Pete replied, his eyes sparkling.

  Pete was suited up in under two minutes. The E-Force cybersuit doubled as a diving suit. He had to upgrade the helmet to one specially designed for high pressure environments and flippers were slipped over the skin-tight smart fabric of the suit’s feet, but no oxygen tank was needed as the backpack of the suit served all requirements.

  Pete opened the inner lock and entered a long, narrow, low-ceilinged passageway. A subaqua scooter stood close to the outer door. Checking his suit settings, he spoke into his comms. ‘Ready, Mai.’

  The chamber filled with water, the outer door slid open and Pete moved slowly through the hatch. He started up the scooter and studied a small screen between the handle grips. Depth 98.5 metres. Pressure 9.67 atmospheres. Water temperature 6.3 degrees Celsius.

  The water all around the dome was churned up, as though a giant food mixer had been dipped in and switched on. Through the visor of his helmet, Pete could see the damaged dock door. Pushing the scooter to half speed, he shot forward, covering the hundred metres to the door in a couple of seconds. Mooring the scooter to a metal bar jutting from the side of the hotel, he swam over.

  A quick inspection of the steel door confirmed Pete’s impressions of how to blast it away with minimal disturbance to everything around it. From a pouch at his belt, he extricated a thumbnail-sized piece of explosive material nicknamed HELP – high explosive lithium plastic. It was a unique formulation which he had developed with CARPA scientists and the tech guys on Tintara. Blending his experience of explosives with the amazing new synthetic materials CARPA had in its labs, Pete had come up with an explosive that ticked every box. It was lightweight, extremely malleable and very powerful, so that only small amounts were needed for most jobs. It was also remarkably stable and therefore safe to transport.

  Pete eyed the metal surface, running calculations through his head as he broke the tiny piece of plastic into half a dozen smaller bits, placing them in a seemingly random pattern on the distorted metal. He then ran a set of narrow wires between the lumps. The wires were connected to a metal box which he stuck to the door frame with a suction pad. A light flashed green on the sealed unit. At the last minute, he moved one of the pieces of explosive a couple of millimetres to the left. Satisfied, he returned to the scooter, stopping 50 metres away from the dock. Pete glanced at the monitor on the wrist of his cybersuit. Tapping a sequence on the tiny keyboard, he touched the screen and paused, looked at the door and took a breath before touching the monitor again.

  There was a momentary flash of yellow. Burning lithium compounds from the knot of HELP flew out from the

  door, creating pale red and white streamers of fire that were quickly snuffed out. A pocket of air formed and grew, bursting into a thousand smaller bubbles. Pete felt a wave front of displaced water hit him, followed by a secondary vi
bration from ricocheted energy. A few moments later, the gases from the blast had dissipated and pieces of metal floated down to settle on the seabed under the bottom of the dock. Within a minute, the water had cleared and Pete could see a neat, metre-wide hole punched in the door. Beyond that lay a featureless black passageway leading to the inner door of the air lock.

  ‘Well done, Pete,’ Mark said through the comms. ‘Mai’s already on her way.’

  Pete looked up to see the outer door of the Narcis open and Mai speeding towards him, her scooter churning through the water. He turned, flicked the accelerator of his scooter and headed for the opening in the dock. Tethering his machine to the hotel wall, he watched as Mai drew alongside.

  ‘Neat work,’ she said, studying the hole in the door.

  ‘Yeah, I’m a neat freak when I blow things up,’ Pete replied.

  Mai anchored her scooter to the same spot and followed Pete as he swam into the newly formed opening.

  It was pitch black inside, but their helmet lights were powerful and cut broad swatches of light in the passageway. The channel was about 35 metres in length, just big enough to hold the subs used to transport guests from Suva. Specially sealed electrical conduits ran the length of the dock. On the floor lay a pair of metal rails, and at one end stood a cradle for incoming subs.

  ‘So far, so good,’ Mark said from the flight deck of the Big Mac, 100 metres above their heads. ‘Next step, try the pumps. The manual override switches are close to the inner door on the north wall.’

  It took Mai and Pete only a few seconds to find the controls. They were sealed units with touch-sensitive screens. The screens were blank.

  ‘No power, by the look of it,’ Mai said.

  ‘There should be a backup control,’ Mark’s voice emerged from their comms. ‘Hang on.’ They could hear him tapping at the virtual keyboard on the control panel of the aircraft. ‘Okay, I’ve got the detailed schematic here. The backup control is a red metal lever to the right of the control box.’

  ‘Got it,’ Mai said. She pulled on the lever, it clicked into place and the dock filled with a tremendous noise. The water in the chamber began to churn violently. Mai slammed the lever back as fast as she could and the cacophony stopped abruptly. ‘Whoa! Seems to be working!’

  ‘Fantastic,’ Mark responded. ‘Better get the sheeting up.’

  Pete and Mai swam back to the door and trod water. From a pocket in the leg of her suit, Mai removed a rectangular block of Morphadin. A white rubberlike material, Morphadin was another product of collaboration between Pete and the scientists at CARPA. It was a superstrong ‘smart material’ that could be morphed into any shape desired. In the lab, the inventors lightheartedly referred to it as playdough.

  Mai started to mould the Morphadin with practised fingers, quickly stretching it into a tray-sized rectangle. Pete took one end, and between them, they opened out the material as though it were a sheet of well-chewed gum. Moving the rectangle into position close to the door, Mai and Pete pulled from each end and pushed the material hard up against the wall around the circular opening. As the Morphadin made contact with the metal it held fast, but when the fabric of the diver’s cybersuits came into contact with it, a static charge from the suits altered the polarity of particles in the rubbery material, making it instantly malleable again.

  After a few minor adjustments, Pete and Mai pulled back from the covering and trod water. The Morphadin hardened almost instantly to form a watertight seal. Pete lifted his hand and ran it in front of the sheet, scanning for imperfections by checking the monitor on his wrist.

  Mai led the way back to the control panel at the far end of the chamber. ‘Here we go,’ she said, grasping the handle.

  The water pumps started up, their noise filling the enclosed space of the dock as water began to swirl and churn. The Morphadin held perfectly. In less than 60 seconds, the water had been sucked out of the dock.

  Mai returned the lever of the backup control to ‘off’ and nodded to Pete who was standing on the wet floor close to the manual override for the inner door. He turned a large handle that had been countersunk into the wall of the chamber and with a hiss of warm air, the door into the Neptune Hotel slowly opened.

  Pete poked his head through the opening. Taking one step into the hotel, he almost tripped over a body on the floor. As Mai came up behind him, he crouched down on one knee, his helmet light illuminating the floor. It was a man in the red braided uniform worn by hotel staff. He lay on his back, his arms raised, his hands frozen into claws. His nails were ripped to shreds, fingers red raw, broken and covered with dried blood. The man’s eyes were almost popping out of his head.

  34

  Dome Alpha

  ‘Poor bugger,’ Pete said, opening the visor of his helmet. Mai did the same then crouched down to inspect the body. Turning the corpse over onto its side, she and Pete both saw the wounds along the victim’s back and legs. ‘I reckon he was badly hurt by some sort of explosion, but tried to get out through this door. He must’ve lost his mind. There’s no way out here, even if he could have got through the locked door.’

  ‘Maybe he thought a sub was still docked.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s possible, I guess,’ Mai replied, standing up.

  The light from their helmets lit up part of a wide corridor. The floor was carpeted. There were paintings on the walls, all of them misaligned. It was eerily quiet. All they could hear was the creaking of metal straining against metal.

  ‘We have to get some power on,’ Mai said. ‘There must be an emergency lighting circuit.’

  Pete tapped the screen on his suit and pulled up the schematic of the hotel. Scrolling through the various images, he finally found the electrical systems diagram. ‘Looks like there’s an emergency backup. As you’d expect. But it should’ve come on automatically.’

  ‘Obviously failed. There has to be a manual override. Can you find the access point?’

  Pete tapped at the screen again. ‘Follow me.’

  He led them along the corridor, took a left and then a right. The passageway had been tastefully decorated. There were recessed lights in the ceiling, ornate light shades spaced along each wall of the corridor. The carpet, now soaked, was originally a plush red. This, Pete reflected, was the first view visitors had of the inside of the Neptune. It would have to make a good impression even if it was simply a connection from the dock to the main body of the hotel.

  On the right stood a door. A sign read ‘MAINTENANCE: AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY’. It was locked. Mai stepped up to it and lifted her gloved hand. From her wristband a tiny tube extended – the business end of a vector-laser, a device that fired a beam produced by a high field-intensity laser built into the cybersuit. The beam width and power could be finely adjusted, allowing the vector-laser to perform a wide range of tasks. Mai touched her wrist monitor and a narrow blue beam hit the lock. It vaporised. The door swung out and Pete stepped in.

  It was a cupboard, the walls covered with metal conduits and junction boxes. Wires led around the boxes. He tugged at the cover of a box close to the door. Inside was a series of switches and relays. Pete studied his screen, then looked at the circuits in front of him. He tapped his monitor and, using a cursor on the screen, turned the power of the vector-laser at his wrist to ‘minimum’.

  ‘Broken connection. There, see?’ Pete said to Mai. ‘Just needs a gentle touch.’ An ultrafine, soft blue-green beam struck the circuit board. He moved his hand slightly and the broken connection between two printed circuits was sealed immediately. Switching off the laser, Pete stepped back and closed the lid of the junction box. Beside it was a switch that had flicked to ‘off’ when the circuit malfunctioned. Pete moved it up and the lights came on.

  They stepped out into the hall now flooded with light. ‘Eureka!’ Mai exclaimed.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What?’ Mai strained to hear. There was a faint sound coming from along the passage towards the submarine dock.

  ‘Foo
tsteps,’ Pete said. Then his expression darkened. ‘And what sounds like the safety catch coming off a weapon. You wait here, Mai.’

  She nodded and Pete walked slowly along the corridor, retracing their steps back towards the dock. He could hear the shuffling of feet. The rustling of fabric. Irregular breathing. One person. Someone nervous.

  Pete approached the corner slowly and edged round.

  ‘Stop!’ someone yelled. It was the hotel bellboy. He looked about 17. His red uniform was torn and stained and he had a cut across his forehead. He had blond, almost white hair, cropped short. It was matted with blood. He was holding a taser he had lifted from a dead security man, clasping it with both hands, his knuckles white. Pete could see the boy was shaking.

  ‘We’re here to help,’ Pete said calmly.

  ‘Oh yeah, and me old mum was the Prime Minister.’ The boy’s voice was pure cockney. He kept the taser trained on Pete.

  ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I told you. We’re here to help.’ Pete took a step forward.

  ‘No closer.’

  Pete stopped 6 metres away from the kid. ‘We’re not a threat.’

  ‘We? Who’s that? Where you from? Up north by the sounds of ya.’

  Pete couldn’t resist a brief smile. ‘I’m a Geordie, son. And you sound like the original cockney sparrow.’

  ‘Yeah, and so what if I am?’ The boy’s expression was a blend of fear and pride.

  Pete was about to reply when he caught a sudden movement behind the boy. Mai appeared a few metres away. She took a step towards him, plucked the taser from the kid’s hands and grabbed his left arm, pulling it hard behind his back.

  ‘Ow!’ the boy yelped.

  Pete took two steps towards him.

  ‘Oh fuckin’ ’ell,’ the kid squealed. ‘Okay, make it quick, mister.’

  ‘What you talking about, lad?’ Pete flicked a glance to Mai. ‘Let him go. Poor sod’s terrified.’

  Mai released her grip on the boy’s arm and slipped the taser into her belt. The boy looked around, obviously weighing up his chances of escape.