The Extinction Switch: Book three of the Kato's War series

by Broderick, Andrew C.

  The explosive shockwave that was pulverizing much of the the inner workings of Ceres had caused the centrifuge’s thick axle to shear off its bearings. The massive disc rubbed against the rocky inside of the chamber that housed it, grinding and shaking itself to bits as it did so. The walls were shredded into twisted pieces of flying metal. Gray rock could be seen going by rapidly, through the gashes.

  Finally, the terrible crashing and grinding of metal ceased as the centrifuge ground to a halt. The artificial gravity was gone. Splintered pieces of metal, wood, and bodies floated back from the end of what had been the room. Seung Yi, Zan Tang, and Tai Zu had been on top of the heap, and hence had not been crushed. Zu howled as blood spurted from his left eye, where a flying shard of metal had embedded itself. Seung Yi gave an animal-like roar. “THEY DID THIS! THEY WILL PAY NOW!” The incandescent man launched himself towards the far end of the conference room, where a door stood open.

  Tang slapped Zu’s right arm, looking at him in alarm. “He’s going to use the Switch! Now!”

  Zu looked back with his one operative eye. “Does it still work?”

  “No time to find out! We have to stop him!” Tang half-yelled. He looked at Seung Yi, who was already disappearing through the door near where they had been sitting, and then back at Tai Zu. Dazed people struggled and writhed, pushing everyone above them towards the middle of the room as they floated.

  Seung Yi stopped his forward movement using the door frame, and then proceeded to float slowly out of sight of the others. Amazingly, the power had not gone out. He was soon near the one meter-wide globe of Earth that was projected in midair at one side of what had been his private antechamber. Once he reached it, he grabbed an armchair that was floating by and deftly kicked it in the direction he had been traveling. The reaction from this caused Seung Yi to stop in front of the control panel for the Extinction Switch.

  In front of the globe was a midair dialog box about the size of a dinner tray. It had three password entry fields. Seung Yi clicked on each, and punched in the ten-letter code. The words ACCESS GRANTED appeared briefly, before fading away. A globe of the Earth appeared. Above the globe was a button labeled ARM. Seung Yi reached out and touched it. It changed to say ACTIVATE. Using his right forefinger, he drew a circle around the landmass closest to him, which happened to be Europe.

  “Aaaaargh!” Zan Tang launched himself furiously at Seung Yi from the doorway, with a long jagged piece of metal in his hands. Seung Yi’s expression changed to one of absolute shock, as the charging Tang drew the metal shard back in a stabbing grip, ready to strike. Yi instinctively pulled his right arm back to shield his head, while he reached out with his left towards the ACTIVATE button. He pressed it. It turned red. Tang reached Seung Yi. He pushed Seung Yi’s already-raised right arm further up, away from his body, and plunged the sharp metal straight into his chest.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Kato's Grief

  Kassandra still had her active camouflage engaged, causing her to look like a static outline. “Mom! Dad! Wake up!” she said urgently to the two sleeping figures before her on the sidewalk. Akio opened his eyes partially, and then wide with fear as he saw the apparition standing before him.

  He nudged Zara, who had her head on his side. “I think it’s Kassie’s ghost!”

  “What?” She opened her eyes. “Oh, my God!”

  Kassandra pulled her ski mask off. “Oh… sorry! Forgot about that.”

  “Kassie? Is that you?” Zara said as she propped herself up with her left hand. She rubbed her eyes with her right. Akio was pushing himself up to a sitting position, staring wide-eyed.

  “Yes, it’s me.” Blake and the others had now begun to gather round. Zara and Akio looked around at them. “Who are all these people? Why are you dressed like that?”

  “Oh, yeah. I live underground now, and these are my friends. But, how did you get here?”

  “We came looking for you.” Zara said. “You said you were in Lyon. We searched the upper city for days.”

  Akio spoke over her: “Then a war broke out up there. We barely escaped with our lives.”

  “You risked your lives? Looking for me?”

  “Yes,” Zara said. “Sweetie, I can’t believe you’re here.” Zara was now sitting up. She opened her arms. Kassandra and her parents hugged for a long time. “Your hair’s so short. It hasn’t been like that since you were a baby.”

  Blake looked around at the others. “For once, I don’t know what to say.”

  “We really need to be careful,” Thaddeus said.

  These words seemed to bring Kassandra back to reality. “Uh, it’s extremely dangerous down here at the moment. The fighting up top is probably about to spread to down here. We saw the army trucks moving in. We need to get you guys back to Silo 7.”

  “Silo 7?” Akio said.

  “Yeah, that’s where we live.”

  “I can’t walk,” Zara said.

  “I’ll carry you again,” Akio said.

  “I’ll carry her,” Blake said. “You two look like you’re in rough shape.” He crouched and scooped Zara up into his arms, carrying her bridal-style “We’ve got to get back as quickly as possible. Luckily, it’s only five hundred meters away.”

  The group began to move off quickly down Rue Borchal. The intersection with Circular Route 20 was checked carefully before they proceeded. “Looks like this place has already seen its share of fighting,” Akio said, as he surveyed the debris and smashed vehicles in the road.

  “Yeah,” Kassandra said.

  “How did you get down here anyway?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when we get back.” The group only had to hide one more time before reaching the safety of the anterooms of Silo 7.

  “What is this place?” Akio asked, as he looked around in wonder at the white corridors and disused control rooms.

  “Wait till you see what the rest of it’s like,” Kassandra said. Thaddeus punched in the code for the door, and they stepped onto platform 30A.

  “Holy crap!” Akio said, looking around at the seemingly endless space. He looked over the edge. “Does everyone live at the bottom?”

  “No, on the platforms.”

  “Unbelievable. How deep is it?”

  “Hundreds of meters. Anyway let’s go; we’re getting left behind.” Blake, who was still carrying Zara, was already halfway along the catwalk to the center ring. The others were with him. Kassandra and Akio hurried to catch up.

  JC was standing tall and defiant, in conventional military camo, as they approached. “No. Absolutely no more strangers. We haven’t the resources for our own people, never mind waifs and strays. They are to be knocked out and dumped.” He saw Kassandra, the only one without her ski mask on, and Akio approaching. “I have a feeling you’re responsible for this, Nishimura.”

  “They’re my parents, sir.”

  JC raised his left eyebrow. “Oh, so we decided to bring mommy and daddy along. How nice.”

  “It’s not like that, Sir. I didn’t know they were down here. My mom’s injured…”

  JC’s jaw clenched. He glared first at Zara, who was still in Blake’s arms, and then at Akio. “We can go…” Akio offered.

  “You’re not going anywhere!” Kassandra said defiantly to Akio. Her tone caught him by surprise. She looked from Akio back to JC.

  There was silence for a long, tense moment. At last, JC nodded in Zara’s direction and said: “Take her down to twenty-nine for treatment.”

  “Yes!” Kassandra said. She then covered her mouth, embarrassed.

  “You’re really skating on thin ice, Nishimura,” JC said.

  “Thank you, Sir. You won’t regret this.”

  Kassandra accompanied her parents down to level twenty-nine. Once he had carried Zara down the stairs, Blake returned to level thirty to debrief with the rest of the patrol.

  Platform 29A was half covered with blankets and mattresses. Around the edge stood gray metal cabinets containing medic
al supplies. “These are your parents?” one of the young nurses said to Kassandra.

  “Yes.”

  “How did they end up here?”

  “Long story.”

  “Oh. Well, anyway, I’m Amelia,” she said to Zara.

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Let’s get your legs taken care of.” With some effort and wincing on Zara’s part, they cut the legs of her pants. The bruises on her right knee and left ankle were already beginning to turn yellow.

  “Hope they’re not broken,” Zara said.

  Amelia left, and returned seconds later with a scanner about the size of a paperback book. She held it above the injured legs. Her eyes narrowed as she watched the screen. “Not broken. Good. Just bad sprains most likely.” She walked away, and returned with two beige smart bandages. Peeling the backing off, Amelia applied them to Zara’s right knee and left ankle. They conformed to the contours of the joints.

  “Wow!” Zara said, her eyebrows raised. “The relief’s flooding in!”

  “Yeah, they’re pretty good,” Amelia said. “Give it a day, and it’ll be like it never happened.”

  ----

  “How long was I asleep?” Zara asked, late the next afternoon.

  “Fifteen hours,” Kassandra said. She was now wearing gray sweatpants and a t-shirt, rather than her Raider uniform.

  “Holy cow!” Zara said. She was still lying under a blanket on the walkway near 24C, with Kassandra sitting next to her. “I thought I’d dreamed this whole thing.” She looked around. “Where’s your dad?”

  “He woke up about an hour ago. Went for a walk.”

  “Oh.” Zara’s eyes widened, as she saw the X scar on Kassandra’s right forearm. “Oh my God, baby! What happened to your arm?”

  “Oh, that. We all had to get one. To prove we’re part of the community here.”

  “What community?”

  “The Excluded. AKA the dwellers of Silo 7.”

  “How did you end up here?” Kassandra related the whole story, from having been in Monte Carlo until that moment. Zara was silent for a while as she processed what she had heard.

  “Hi, Mrs. Nishimura,” Annabelle said as she walked up behind Kassandra. “Remember me?”

  “Oh… yeah! From Kassandra’s eighteenth birthday party! How are you, anyway?”

  “I’m fine. Kassie telling you all about this place?”

  “Yeah. You guys had quite an ordeal.”

  “Yes we did. But so did you. Let me go and fix you some breakfast. Such as it is.”

  “Yes please!” Zara said. Annabelle walked back over to the cooking area. Zara sat up, and brushed her hair from her eyes. She looked at Kassandra’s hair. “Did they make you cut it short so you can be a soldier?”

  “Yes. I’m a Raider. That’s how I found you last night,” Kassandra said. “We were on a recon mission, to try and figure out the cause of the earthquake.”

  “Being in the army, any type of army, is the last thing I’d have seen you doing. I suppose they made you do it?” Zara said.

  “No, I volunteered.”

  “What? My baby became a soldier by her own choice?”

  “Yep. I’m good at it, too.”

  “So you’re happy doing that?”

  Kassandra smiled. “Yes. Honestly Mom, I’ve never been happier.”

  Zara frowned a little as she took this in. “Oh…”

  “You thought I’d be doctor or a lawyer, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yes. I’m hoping you still will be.”

  Kassandra shook her head. “I don’t think there’s going to be much need for lawyers for a while, even if that damned extinction thing isn’t used. Doctors, on the other hand…” Kassandra shrugged. “I’ll only go down that path if it’s what I want to do though.”

  Zara looked downcast. Kassandra continued, “There is something I’m not happy about, though.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve killed people.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I’ve killed at least two directly, and probably a lot more. There was a war with Silo 6…”

  Zara cut her off. “My daughter is a killer?”

  Kassandra nodded.

  “But… you’ll get locked up for life!”

  Kassandra blew air out through puckered lips. “I suppose it could happen. If there’s even a government to try people any more. But, there were extenuating circumstances.”

  “What the hell kind of circumstances could have justified that?”

  Kassandra explained about having saved Taygete during the raid, and the fighting against Silo 6.

  Zara sighed. “Well, I admire that you saved someone. After that, I guess you had to try and stop what you’d set in motion.”

  “Mom, there was going to be a war with them anyway, over food. It just ended up happening sooner.”

  Zara shrugged. “I’d still rather you hadn’t done those things.”

  “So would I.” The two women’s eyes locked for a long moment.

  Eventually, Zara’s shoulders relaxed. “It’s a different world down here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I’m just glad you guys escaped. Mom, you shouldn’t have come looking for me. You nearly got yourselves killed.”

  Zara chuckled slightly. “That happened before we even got here. Our shuttle crashed!”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes.” Zara went on to relate that tale.

  Kassandra spontaneously hugged Zara. “I couldn’t have wished for a better mom and dad. Speaking of which, here he comes.” Akio came striding along the catwalk, having come from the center ring. Kassandra stood up and hugged him. “It’s good to see you Dad.”

  “You too sweetie. Our even having found each other blows my mind. The chances must have been one in a hundred million. And this place! it’s enormous!”

  “It sure is.”

  “Looks like it sustained some earthquake damage though, like the streets outside.”

  “Yeah.”

  Annabelle returned with metal plates of celery sticks and gray dumplings made from fried NBH. Magana also came over and introduced herself.

  “Guess who’s also down here with us?” Kassandra said, once they were all sitting down and eating.

  “Who?” Zara said.

  “Antonio.”

  “Oh yeah, I remember him too.”

  “He got the early shift on garbage shoveling duty,” Magana said, half-chuckling. “The guy can’t catch a break!”

  “At least he made it down here,” Akio said. There was silence for a while as they ate.

  “At least everyone down here is safe from the Extinction Switch,” Zara said.

  “That’s about all we’re safe from,” Magana said. “We used to live a pretty comfortable, if basic, existence. Now, we can hardly find food, and the NPRF’s out for our blood. We’re pretty sure they’ll find this place.”

  “All they have to do is look at the plans for the city’s infrastructure,” Annabelle chimed in.

  “We’ll have to leave here regardless of who’s in control out there,” Magana said.

  “Where would we all go?” Annabelle said. “The other silos like this one are all occupied, and they’re no better off than we are.”

  “Plus, how do we move three hundred and fifty people?” Magana said. “Especially without being seen. We have a life here. The community’s been here for forty years. Half of us were born here, myself included. A good number of us have never actually been outdoors.”

  “Wow,” Akio said. “I can’t imagine that somehow.”

  Magana shook her head. “I can understand why Lord August doesn’t want to leave. We might not have a choice though.”

  “Why?” Zara said.

  “We’re only getting twenty percent of the food we used to from raids. We used to have about two weeks’ reserves, but it’s now down to almost nothing.”

  “What about the fighting?” Annabelle said.

  Magana shrugged. “We’ll
have to chance it I guess. We’ve lived off the scraps that fell from the table of the city above. Since there probably isn’t a city anymore, this place is now untenable. It’s either starve or take our chances getting out.”

  ----

  Kato stood with Alexei Korolev on the bridge of the Revenant. The white room with its smooth, rounded surfaces, maintained constant Earth-level gravity. The entire front half was taken up by a view of the ever-changing Earth, 3,000 kilometers below. The large ship was now only half-full with passengers, with some having elected to head to the planet below now that ISI’s own transport interchange was complete.

  Revenant had warped to a high orbit after saying goodbye to the Arcadantera. Kato and Korolev had only talked about one thing for the past two weeks: the impending destruction of Vesta. The two men looked towards the back wall. It showed a view of Vesta from a telescope parked fifty million kilometers away, which was as close as anyone dared go. The disc of the asteroid was just visible, with a fuzzy outline. “Won’t see a damn thing,” Kato said. “No blinding flash of nuclear destruction. Nothing. The first we’ll know is when Arcadantera reappears near Earth and gives us a report.”

  “We may never find out for sure what happened,” Korolev said, “Apart from hopefully never hearing from that despot again.”

  “We can always make a new gravity map once it’s deemed safe to go there again,” Kato said. “The inside will have changed considerably. Nine hundred and fifty megatons will do that.”

  “Six minutes out, six minutes back, five minutes to deliver the payload. Seventeen to twenty minutes total. That’s all the time Arcadantera should take,” Korolev said.

  “Mmm.” They were silent for a while, watching the blank screen expectantly as the mission clock counted up. Fifteen minutes had elapsed. The smile on Kato’s face grew wider and wider. At twenty minutes it started to fade.

  At twenty-five minutes he began to frown. “Okay, they should be back by now,” he said.

  The clock ticked over to thirty minutes. “I don’t like this at all,” Korolev said. “I’m starting to think the worst.”

  Kato sighed. “Me too.”

  A box began to flash in the corner of the screen, alternating red text on a while background. URGENT BREAKING NEWS. Kato commanded the report to open in an inset box. “This is ENN America. A situation beyond belief is developing. Much of Europe has simply gone dark. Nobody is reachable from Sweden, Norway, Great Britain, and France. We’re trying Germany and Italy now.” The gray-haired male newscaster had tears in his eyes. “The unthinkable may have happened again. We’re hoping against hope that it’s just a widespread communications failure.” He paused for a second. “Wait, telepresence networks are still online. The cameras are showing very disturbing pictures. We will not be broadcasting them. People everywhere are dead or dying. It seems the massacre from space, known as the Extinction Switch, may have been used again…” Kato clapped a hand over his mouth. With a last look at Korolev, he fell on the spot.