Aftershock (26 page)

The view through the cameras showed a churning mass of dark water. They began to pick up speed and after a few minutes the images from the outside grew progressively darker. They could feel from the movement of the submarine that they were descending, following the ocean floor on its downward incline as the continental shelf began to slip away.

Mark and Pete had stopped watching the screen and were studying the instruments.

‘Heading north-east,' Mark said. ‘Now steady at 37 knots.'

Pete was running programs through the sub's computer system, trying to get sensor readings from the other subs. ‘Pretty regular Chinese Navy subs,' he said. ‘I've done an infrared sweep. Twelve crew on each. Neither vessel is carrying nukes. I'm getting low-res images of the sub's ID.'

He turned away from the panel for a second. ‘Computer. Designation of port vessel is DFCD-768R. The starboard vessel is DFCD-744N.'

‘No known vessels in database.'

‘Check online. All NATO and non-NATO information hubs.'

A few seconds passed.

‘No internet connection.'

Pete turned to Mark. ‘What the hell are we dealing with here?'

‘Not the Chinese military. Or any regular military on the planet, that's for sure.'

Then the power went off.

One of the women screamed.

‘Must have picked up our scans. Cut us off,' Pete commented.

Michael Xavier appeared at Mark's elbow. ‘Is everything down?' he asked.

Mark ignored him for a moment, tried bringing the dead plastic control panel to life by tapping at a few key points, but nothing happened. ‘The engine is off-line,' he replied. ‘Generators are down.' He glanced at his wrist where the monitor of his cybersuit glowed lemon in the dark. ‘Our suits run independently of the ship's systems,' Mark went on. ‘I'm picking up a very low frequency transmission.'

‘What does that mean?' Michael asked.

Mai approached and stood next to Michael Xavier. ‘Yeah, what does it mean?' she interjected.

‘The last time I spoke to Tom was when I was approaching Dome Gamma. He had figured out what had caused the quake.'

Michael stared at him, muscles in his cheeks protruding slightly as he clenched his teeth.

‘He believes it was caused by Extremely Low Frequency vibrations originating just over a kilometre from the hotel. He couldn't pinpoint the source, or how the vibration beam had been used, but he was convinced it was the cause.'

Mark turned to Mai and Pete. ‘He also believes the same sort of beam brought Josh and Steph's plane down in the Gobi Desert. He's pretty sure it's some sort of weapon. Most probably Chinese.'

‘Military research into Extremely Low Frequency radiation has been going on for decades,' Mai said.

The three men stared at her. ‘NASA had a leaked memo from the Pentagon. I saw it years ago. We've been developing ELF weapons since the 1960s. So have the Brits, the Russians, French and Chinese. It's generally assumed no one's got very far with it.'

‘Well, it looks like that assessment may have to change,' Mark commented.

‘So, let me get this straight,' Michael said, his face expressionless. ‘You're telling me my hotel has been destroyed and hundreds of lives lost because of a weapons test gone wrong?'

‘We don't know...'

‘The Chinese?' Michael's face began to change, anger flaring up in his eyes. He took a deep breath.

‘We don't know enough yet, Mr Xavier,' Mark said calmly. The Englishman turned and walked back to the others, lowered himself against the wall, too lost in confusion and fury to speak.

Mai left Pete and Mark at the control panel and crossed the room to where the survivors were huddled together. They were all filthy, hungry and scared. Hilary was clutching her children close to her. The three of them looked petrified. Michael had sat down beside his wife.

‘You guys must be hungry,' Mai said to the two children. ‘Would you like to help me get some food and drink for everyone? I've got a torch and there's emergency lighting in the other rooms and the corridor.'

The kids looked at their mother. For a second, Hilary didn't know what to say. Then she relaxed and managed a brief smile. She turned to Michael, who appeared to be in another world, put a hand on his arm and squeezed it gently.

‘You go,' she said, turning back to Nick and Emily. Mai helped the children to their feet and led them out of the control room.

The others were almost as despondent as Michael Xavier, each of them seemingly lost in their own thoughts. Harry had his back to a metal pillar, head between his knees. The pain in his foot had turned to a dull ache, thanks to the powerful drugs Mai had given him. He ran his fingers over the super-lightweight bandage wrapped around his foot and ankle and recalled how Mai had sealed his wound with that stuff she had called SkinGloo. Incongruously he thought how, if he ever got out of here alive, he would make a documentary about the advanced technology E-Force used. Kristy had sat down beside him, speechless, her face a blank. Jim was staring into space. Miguel and Sigmund had been talking, comparing notes, but had fallen quiet. Archie pulled himself to his feet and wandered over to Pete and Mark.

‘Where're they taking us?' he asked. ‘Who are they?'

Mark turned and put a hand on the young man's shoulder. ‘I wish I knew, Archie. But at least we're safe for the moment.'

‘Yeah, I guess you're right there, mister. Gotta be better than a collapsing hotel, ain't it?'

They all felt the sub start to slow.

They could see nothing of the outside, the vessel was windowless and the cameras had gone down when the power was cut. The deceleration was rapid, and in a few minutes they had almost stopped moving. They heard a loud clanging sound as the clamps were released. Then came the grinding of metal against metal. The sub juddered before stopping dead.

‘What's happening?' It was Harry Flanders. He had pulled himself up and crossed to the control console.

‘I think we may have reached our destination,' Pete replied.

‘What're we going to do?' Jim asked, standing up and walking unsteadily into the middle of the room.

Mark and Pete stood in front of the panel. Mai stood at the back of the room. Mark sighed. ‘We have no choice but to let them board,' he said.

‘But they could kill us.' Kristy said, her eyes wide with fear.

‘I thought your vessels were impregnable,' Archie declared. ‘Least that's what I read.'

‘They are, to a degree,' Pete responded. ‘But we have no power, no comms to the surface.'

‘But your base. The rest of the team ... won't they be able to get here and sort things out?'

‘Maybe. But I don't think we have time. The air will run out, and without power, it's going to get very cold in here very quickly.'

It was only then the others seemed to notice the temperature had already dropped several degrees.

‘Whoever is responsible for this probably knows that. They can wait it out.'

Mark gazed around the room. They all looked sullen, defeated. Michael Xavier pulled himself up from where he had been sitting in silence. ‘Mr Harrison is right,' he said, easing himself to the front of the group. ‘We don't have a choice. Worse case scenario, they kill us. Might be preferable to slowly suffocating.'

There was a silence in the sub. It was broken by a distant voice, coming from a speaker beyond the hull of the sub.

‘Prepare to be boarded,' the voice said, the English heavily accented. A loud bang rang along the corridor beyond the control room. Someone was bashing the Maxinium shell of the sub with what sounded like a hammer.

‘Everyone stay here,' Mark said. He walked into the corridor and turned right. On the wall was a box containing two stun pistols. They were the only weapons E-Force carried. He stepped back into the control room for a second and tossed one of the guns over to Pete.

Pete turned to Mai. ‘You still have the taser you took from Archie, right?'

She nodded.

‘Wait here,' Mark said and ducked back into the corridor, priming the stun pistol as he ran.

The banging grew louder. It was coming from the other side of the main exit, a sealed metal door at the far end of the corridor. Mark stood still. ‘Who are you?'

‘Prepare to be boarded.'

‘That's not good enough.'

‘Prepare to be boarded.'

Mark opened a small metal sliding panel to the side of the door. Inside was a large red plastic handle. Above this was written: ‘Emergency Door Release'. He pulled it down and quickly took a step back, assuming the power stance, brandishing the stun pistol in both hands.

The door flew open. A soldier holding a QBB-97 light machine gun capable of firing ten 42mm shells per second charged through the opening. He was wearing a gas mask.

‘Drop weapon,' he said in English, his voice muffled by the mask. Mark lowered the stun pistol. The soldier took two steps forward and smashed the barrel of the gun across Mark's left temple, sending him to the metal floor.

Turning, the soldier pulled the pin on a canister of M99, a powerful synthetic opiate. The nozzle burst open and vapour billowed along the corridor of the sub.

‘Tom?'

‘Madeleine,' Tom replied, studying the tech's face in his holoscreen.

‘The planes are on their way from Polar Base.'

‘Cool. What's their ETA?'

‘They've sent a Silverback ahead at top speed to make contact with Josh and Steph.'

‘I thought Josh and Steph had the only Silverback there –
Paul
.'

‘No, the base has two of its own,
Mick
and
Keith
.'

‘Okay. What else?'

‘A Hummingbird is right behind
Mick
.'

‘And they've been told the top priority after getting the guys outta there is to dissolve every piece of wreckage on the ground?'

‘Of course.'

‘All right, thanks, Maddie.' Tom turned back to his laptop. He was on the balcony above Cyber Control. The warm afternoon sun lit up the bright jungle colours of Tintara and the ocean spread out below. He liked coming up here on his own, loved gazing at the glorious tropical vista, feeling the natural warmth on his face. ‘Okay, computer,' he said, and clicked his knuckles before splaying his fingers over the virtual keys in front of him. ‘We have work to do.'

The sun came up over a line of hills to the east of the crash site. It was huge and orange and it threw warm shafts of colour across the speckled desert. But it was the last thing Josh, Steph and Howard wanted to see.

Josh was up and walking, almost mended. He had his cybersuit on, running on its lowest power settings – just enough to keep him warm and the nanobots functioning. Howard was wearing his greatcoat, ragged old jeans and walking boots he had bought in England in another life. He had loaned Steph a wolf fur jacket he had made himself, which she wore over her almost redundant cybersuit. They looked an odd group, as though an interstellar traveller had gone on a field trip with a couple of hippies.

They stopped next to the fuselage of the downed Silverback. Steph lowered herself onto a metal cylinder, part of one of the plane's engines. She was exhausted. She had not slept for over 24 hours. Every muscle in her body ached from the exertion of making the cross in the sand from pieces of wreckage and debris. She looked over at Josh sitting against the fuselage. ‘How you bearing up, Josh?' she asked.

‘I feel better than you look.'

‘Oh, thanks, buddy,' she laughed. ‘Whereas you, of course, look ridiculously well.'

‘Good old nanobots. Love 'em.'

They had tried to persuade Howard to stay behind, but he would have none of it, claiming he could not rely on them to save his home. He leaned against a section of wing that had gone edge-first into the sand when the plane had exploded the night before. Pulling out his old army revolver, a Webley Mark VI, he checked it was fully loaded. ‘My father's,' he said, patting the weapon proudly. ‘Used this at El Alamein. Colonel, 50th Northumbrian Infantry Division. We have this to thank for the furs.' He grinned.

Steph raised a hand suddenly.

‘What is it?' Howard asked, cocking the firing pin.

‘Sssh.' Steph and Josh both strained to hear.

‘Choppers. Three of them.'

‘Coming from the north,' Josh added.

They ducked down, using the fuselage and the morning shadow to keep out of sight. They knew it was not a serious hiding place – the choppers would have infrared sensors.

The first helicopter came in low and swooped over the fuselage no more than 20 metres above the ground. Two others hovered overhead about 100 metres up.

‘We'll have to surrender,' Josh said. ‘Otherwise we have a very strong chance of getting ourselves shot.'

‘Yeah, but they may just kill us anyway. Who would ever know?' Howard replied.

‘That's a possibility,' Josh agreed. ‘But there's a chance we won't be shot if we surrender. There's nowhere to run. With respect Howard, your father's World War II pistol won't do us much good.'

The first chopper was making a tight circle over the wreckage and started to bank back around towards the crash site. Steph stood up, raised her arms above her head and walked slowly away from the fuselage of the Silverback. Josh came up behind her. Howard pushed himself away from the wing and followed suit.

The chopper hovered directly overhead, kicking up great clouds of sand. The powerful rotors were incredibly loud, slicing the air as the engines roared, keeping the chopper in a holding pattern. The three figures on the ground could do nothing but close their eyes, keeping their hands in clear view above their heads.

A second chopper began to descend as the first one prepared to land. It was then they heard an incredibly loud shriek. Howard tried to open one eye to see through the sand gusts. He lowered a hand to shade his eyes, but all he saw was a flash of green streak low overhead at incredible speed.

Josh and Steph had no need to look. They knew what the sound meant. The Silverback screeched over the sand and the wreckage in a tiny fraction of a second, moving so fast it was almost impossible to follow it with the eye.

Two hundred metres beyond the edge of the crash site, the Silverback named
Mick
pulled up and soared into the sky at almost 500 metres per second, faster than a bullet. Dimitri Godska, E-Force's only Ukrainian pilot, rolled the plane, bringing it horizontal and heading due south-southwest, ready for a second run.

‘My God!' Howard exclaimed.

‘Come on,' Steph snapped, and pulled Howard towards her. Josh turned on his heel and all three of them ran as fast as they could back to the fuselage.

The Chinese chopper crews were too stunned by the Silverback to pay any attention to the three people on the ground. The two helicopters close to the ground rose up, their engines roaring, kicking up sand and loose debris.

Steph, Josh and Howard made it to cover just as the Silverback came back around, even lower than before. Steph stepped out from the shadow of the twisted metal of the fuselage as far as she dared, waving frantically.

The Silverback slowed and in little over a second and a half came to a dead stop directly over its smashed up twin, hovering 30 metres in the air.

There was a momentary crackle, then a voice came over a speaker mounted on the front of the Silverback.

‘Steph, Josh,' Dimitri Godska said. ‘I'm dropping you a comms set. A Hummingbird is right behind me. ETA ... 65 seconds.' A small door on the underside of the Silverback slid open and a metal box about 30 centimetres square fell out and plunged to the ground. It landed close to the wreckage and the sleek E-Force jet climbed, rolled and shot off at a diagonal, rising 2000 metres in the blink of an eye.

Josh pulled the box over to the relative safety of the fuselage. Its Maxinium case looked like the day it came off the production line – not a scratch on it. Josh opened the latches on each side and pulled the lid back. He grabbed the handset and flicked it on. For a few seconds all they could hear was static, then a voice cut through the cold morning air.

‘This is Omar Deseau on Hummingbird 3. Steph? Josh? Come in please.'

‘Josh here, Hummingbird 3. Great to hear your voice, Omar.'

‘What's your status, please?'

‘Steph and I are fine. We have a civilian with us. We're being buzzed by three Chinese helicopters.'

‘Okay, we're a few seconds away.'

‘What's the plan?' Steph asked.

‘We get you out, then we have to USAM the whole area.'

‘Copy,' Josh said and looked at Steph.

‘What the hell is USAM?' Howard asked.

‘It's...' Josh began and looked at the ground.

‘Ultra Sound All Materials,' Steph interrupted.

‘And that means?'

‘Howard, it means one of our planes will fly low over this area and turn everything to powder with ultrasound radiation.'

Howard looked at them, horrified. ‘Even my home?'

‘We can't leave a trace...'

The air was filled with the crack of machine gun fire. A chopper swept low overhead and banked as the Silverback,
Mick
, came around for a third time. The E-Force jet shot past and there was more gunfire. Then a chopper was landing directly in front of Steph, Josh and Howard, so close they could see inside. The pilot turned to them. Directly behind him, a second soldier swung a mounted machine gun, the barrel pointed straight at them.

They scrambled for cover. There was a sound like rocks cascading down a mountainside, an ear-splitting roar. The earth shook, pieces of wreckage rattled where they lay. The fuselage of the downed Silverback shuddered, flakes of Maxinium tumbled to the sand.

Steph had thrown herself behind a steel sheet, not daring to lift her head above the rim. She could hear Chinese voices raised in panic. Barked orders. She felt a rush of air and sand spraying everywhere. Then came the unmistakeable change in pitch as the chopper climbed and pulled away.

‘Steph?' It was Josh. She pulled herself up and he was leaning down to help her out. Howard was behind him. The three of them crouched close together. They were covered in sand and dust, their faces almost black. The sand had found its way into their mouths and up their noses. Their eyes stung.

‘It's the Hummingbird,' Josh cried above the noise.

A voice came through the comms. ‘Hummingbird here. Guys, you ready to move out?'

‘Where have you put down?'

‘We're approximately 30 metres directly east of your position. We couldn't get any closer because we thought it would destabilise the wreckage.'

‘But the choppers–'

‘Dimitri is doing his best to distract them,' Omar replied. ‘But we have to move ... now.'

‘Steph. I'll go first. Then Howard. You okay with that?' Josh looked from one to the other. They both nodded and scrambled to the edge of the fuselage. Josh looked out. He could see two of the choppers in the distance. Dimitri was playing with them, swooping close then ducking away at phenomenal speed. The helicopter crews could not have any clue what the hell was going on. He turned to Steph and Howard, took a deep breath and ran as fast as he could into the open.

It felt as though he was running for hours. His knee had been repaired, but he was still stiff and sore. The sand rushed past. He could see the ramp of the Hummingbird descending from the underbelly of the enormous aircraft. At the top of the slope stood a figure in black fatigues encouraging him on. The new morning seemed superbright. Colours streamed past. Sounds bounced around. He felt the sand giving way under his boots. He made it to the ramp, the hard Maxinium floor so very different to the sand. He almost stumbled, but managed to stay on his feet.

Then he was running up the slope into the safety of the plane. He stopped and turned. Howard was halfway across the stretch of sand, his greatcoat flapping about him, his long, grey hair flying around his face.

A chopper lowered itself into view no more than 20 metres beyond the fuselage, directly behind Howard. Steph had dashed out from the wreckage to follow Howard. Josh watched, horrified, as the machine rose up a few metres and sped forward, directly toward the Hummingbird. Steph and Howard were caught in the open.

Steph saw the chopper, but kept going. Howard was running as fast as he could, gasping for breath as he went. He was a dozen metres from the ramp when the rattle of machine gun fire split the air. Josh could see the end of the 12.7mm barrel flare orange and yellow. The bullets thudded into Howard's back, exiting through his abdomen and sending a fountain of blood in front of him.

Josh dashed out into the open again. The man at the top of the ramp cried out, but Josh ignored him. Steph was there first, almost falling over Howard and sliding to one side in the sand. The chopper roared overhead. Bullets spat from the machine gun, thumping into the sand. A few more hit the fuselage of the Hummingbird, not even denting the Maxinium.

Josh and Steph grabbed an arm each and dragged Howard towards the ramp. The man in the black fatigues ran down the ramp towards them. He helped them up onto the metal slope and yelled into his comms.

They had just reached the top of the ramp when they all felt the Hummingbird start to rise up from the desert. The ramp came up, slithering into its recess with a loud hiss. Another door opened in front of them and they all fell into a corridor as a pair of E-Force paramedics rounded the corner directly ahead and dashed towards them.