Aftershock (12 page)

When Steph woke it was pitch black and freezing cold. The material of the destroyed plane was fire-retardant, so even though it had been blown into hundreds of pieces, those pieces did not burn for long. The insipid red of combusting fuselage had been snuffed out. So too had the beam from her helmet light. The battery only lasted an hour.

She pulled herself up, shivering, and as her eyes adjusted to the light, she could make out shapes. Josh's prone form in the gritty sand, pieces of ripped cybersuit and, eventually, her emergency backup belt, a sort of bum bag that was always worn over the cybersuit. It was a throwback, but another smart idea of Mark Harrison's from the earliest design days.

Steph grasped the belt and pulled it towards her. Inside was a Swiss Army knife, a box of matches, a whistle and a pocket torch. She flicked on the torch and swept it around her. Crouching down, she turned Josh over, dreading the worst. She felt for his pulse.

‘Josh?' She shook him.

He opened his eyes. ‘What the hell's...?'

‘We crashed ... remember? You hijacked
Paul
. If you weren't injured and I wasn't a doctor, I'd smash your face in.'

He raised his eyebrows and let out a heavy sigh. Then he tried to move and cried out in pain.

Steph turned the beam to his leg. With expert fingers she gently prised away some of the fabric of the suit. His knee was a mess, bones protruded from ripped skin, blood had congealed around the wound. ‘Looks like you've fractured your patella.'

‘And no nanobots.'

‘Not sure. They're integrated into the suits, remember.'

‘Painkillers? They would be cool.' He winced.

‘Let me see your wrist monitor.'

Josh lifted his left arm, trying to move as little as possible. Steph tapped at the screen, but it was dead. She checked her own wrist. It produced a pale blue light. ‘Hang on,' she said, and scrolled through the information on the screen. ‘Some systems are working. And, yes ... I have signal transmission capacity over short distances. Which means...' she tapped a couple more times. ‘I can instruct your suit to release the good stuff. There ... it'll take a few seconds.'

‘What about you, Steph? You hurt?'

‘I'm fine,' she said, and for the first time realised just how fortunate she had been. She felt as though she had gone 10 rounds with a prize fighter and she was covered in cuts and bruises – but nothing serious.

She helped Josh remove his backpack, a unit only a couple of centimetres thick made from almost weightless carbon-iridium fibres. It was used in emergency situations to supply oxygen for up to 24 hours. It contained a chamber adjoined to the oxygen production tank which provided enough water and essential nutrients for a week. She placed the pack on the ground and helped Josh lie back with his head on the pack. He yelped in pain as his knee twisted, and Steph could see in the pale torchlight that his forehead was beaded in sweat.

‘Wow,' Josh said as the painkillers kicked in. ‘That's much better. Thank God for technology, eh?'

‘Okay. Assessment,' Steph said. ‘One: where are we?'

‘What was the last position you recorded?' He sounded exhausted.

A glance at her wrist monitor told Steph where they had been when the CyberLink between the plane and her suit snapped: 117.45°E, 43.66°N.

‘Well, we can't be too far from there. Not that it means much.'

‘We have no comms. It looks like your suit is completely inoperable. Mine has limited capacity.'

‘I'm freezing,' Josh said. The cold had only really hit him now the pain had been chemically dampened.

‘Me too. The thermal regulators are offline and the internal temperature controls are obviously damaged in both suits.'

Steph tried the water tube connected to her backpack. It was fine. She tapped her wrist to see what the situation was with the emergency nutrients, only to find that the connection to her suit had been broken. She leaned over to test Josh's emergency water and nutrient tubes. They were dead. ‘Okay, we've got water from my pack, but no nutrients.'

‘The first priority is getting warm,' Josh responded and shivered. He looked up at the black sky. ‘What time is it?'

Steph glanced at her watch. ‘19.33 local time.'

‘It's going to get a lot colder.'

Steph simply nodded. She stood up and started scrambling in the sand.

‘What you doing?'

‘Basic survival, Josh. Remember Course 46? Surely you couldn't have forgotten that!'

‘No.'

Steph clawed at the sand and began piling it onto Josh's body. ‘It'll conserve the little body heat you have,' she said.

‘And what about you?'

‘I'm going to do a reccie while the torch lasts. See what I can find.'

A few moments later, Josh was covered from neck to toe in a mound of gritty sand. Steph crouched down beside his head. ‘Here,' she said, plucking up a couple of scraps of cybersuit material and placing them over Josh's head, leaving his eyes, ears and mouth exposed. ‘You can lose over 50 per cent of body heat through your head.'

‘I know,' Josh replied testily. ‘I don't think I've ever felt so vulnerable ... or so humiliated.'

‘Oh shut up! I still haven't ruled out leaving you there after what you did,' Steph retorted. ‘You'll be fine. I'll be back before you know it.'

The torch was weak, but its narrow beam lit up a surprisingly large area in the pitch darkness. Steph could smell burning plastic and rubber and followed her nose. The first thing she found was a Maxinium panel. The metal was almost untouched but it had been sheared from the plane along a join. Close by lay a chunk of carboglass, a piece of Silverback canopy. As she walked on she found more and more pieces of plane, modules with wires protruding, pieces of the plastic consoles, engine parts still smouldering in the sand. Then, she caught a flash of red.

She extinguished the torch. It was hard to tell how far away the fire was, but it was definitely fire. She flicked the torch on again and picked her way through the debris, sweeping the beam to left and right as she went.

The fire was small, enclosed in a bowl-shaped piece of Maxinium containing aviation fuel. Some flammable parts of the Silverback's interior had fallen into the liquid and kept the fire burning. It stank and Steph was forced to keep her free hand over her mouth. The flame would not last long – the fuel had almost gone and the flammable materials were almost used up.

Steph moved the torch around in a regular search pattern, scanning the sand for anything she could use to keep the fire going. There was nothing but lumps of twisted metal, electrical components and featureless plastic sheets. Widening the search, she paced out a square with the burning debris at the epicentre.

When she found it, she almost fell over it – a dried out shrub, a sagebrush perished in the cold. It was a rather pathetic specimen, little more than a bunch of tendrils sprouting from a central stem. It was about half a metre tall with a spindly trunk. She crouched down and yanked at the dead plant. It was stuck fast: ‘Yep ... roots have to go deep in a desert,' she said aloud.

After a second failed attempt, she sat back in the sand and took a deep exhausted breath. Unzipping her backup belt, she pulled out the Swiss Army knife, opened the blade and attacked the trunk of the dead plant, hacking at it with all the energy she could muster. The knife cut through the dry wood with surprising ease and she pulled the plant away.

Back at the burning wreckage, she snapped a large desiccated branch away from the trunk of the shrub and tossed it into the last of the burning fuel. It caught immediately, red tracers slithering along the dead fingers of wood. Steph then added three more pieces, and gradually, the area around her began to lighten. She flicked off her torch and tucked it into her backup belt. At the edge of the pool of light, she could see dozens of dead plants similar to the one she had just incinerated.

Thrusting a branch into the fuel, she held it above her head, and set off to explore the area. She followed a square search pattern as she had done before. This served two purposes. It would allow her to know where she was in the dim light, and it ensured she missed nothing.

Most of the wreckage was useless, but there were a few things that could mean the difference between life and death for her and Josh. Sheets of plastic for building a shelter, lengths of cabling and wires from the complex electrical systems of the Silverback that could be used as binding. But what she really wanted was a working radio or even one of the emergency beacons. She knew these were stowed in a specially constructed Maxinium box in the main body of the plane immediately beneath the cockpit. The trouble was, the wreckage from
Paul
was probably scattered for hundreds of metres around. The chances of finding a beacon were not good.

She gave it 10 minutes and decided she had to get back to Josh. Returning to the small fire she had nurtured, she threw the last twigs from the dead plant onto the pyre and ran over to where the other dried out shrubs stood. Five minutes later, she was back at the fire clutching two more bundles of dried wood. She threw a few branches onto the fire for good measure then, crouching down, she used some of the electrical cabling she had found to bind together the remaining branches. Using the last piece of wire, she tied it to the binding, made a loop at the other end, and with a blazing branch in her left hand, she dragged the wood across the sand, heading back towards her team mate.

The exertion of pulling along the bundle of wood started to warm her up, but she began to sweat and this cooled her down again. Her damaged suit clung to her and she shivered as she strode on. She had to get back and build a fire as soon as possible, or they would both die of hypothermia.

After a few minutes, the patch of light from the burning branch lit up a familiar rock formation and she knew she was almost back where she had left Josh. She lowered the branch to cast light onto the ground immediately ahead of her. Two steps on, and she glimpsed the mound of sand she had made 20 minutes earlier. But it looked different. Moving the flaming torch a little way to her left, she checked to see how Josh was doing.

Jolting backward, she almost dropped the branch. He had gone.

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.'

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 vibration 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.