Aftershock (8 page)

Michael Xavier stumbled back towards the small group of survivors. He had not been entirely honest with his son. He was hurt. He had a nasty cut running from his ankle halfway up to his knee, and he thought he had broken a rib because there was a terrible pain in his left side.

This end of the main hall was more badly damaged. There were holes in the floor and several large girders from the top of the dome had crashed down. Through the murk, he could make out the shapes of the other survivors. There were perhaps 30 of them, huddled together just beyond the edge of the stage. The pool ran in a sparkling curve behind them.

His mind was racing. The numbness of shock was passing, being replaced by a maelstrom of emotions – fear, anger, disbelief, and a churning confusion. What the hell had gone wrong? Had they been hit by an earthquake? Was it a bomb, for Christ's sake? And the emergency doors? Why wouldn't they work? The doors were supposed to be protected by a double redundant system. They couldn't have just failed. But they had.

He was so lost in thought it took a second for him to notice the grinding sound coming from close by. He looked up and saw a beam slide from its housing high up at the top of the dome. A metal bolt whistled past his ear and slammed into a table top, punching a hole right through it. He ducked instinctively. But as he came up, he saw the beam plunge through the air, and stood powerless and paralysed with horror as it dropped 9 metres. The beam, a hefty chunk of steel, sailed down, tipping end over end. Three metres above the ground it had rotated into the horizontal. The people on the floor of the dining hall saw it coming and scattered, but not everyone was quick enough. Covering the final 3 metres of its fall in a microsecond, one end of the beam brought down at least 10 people. An elderly man who had been slower to respond than the others was decapitated, his body crumbling as his shattered head rolled away. Another, a young woman, had her back ripped open by the leading edge of the beam. Almost split in two, she crashed forward, face first, hitting the polished wooden floor with an obscene squelch.

Michael snapped back to reality and ran as fast as his injured leg would allow. He reached the remaining survivors, dust and clouds of metal slivers still falling from the ceiling. Instinctively, terror building inside, he scanned the faces for his loved ones.

‘My God,' he exclaimed, as Hilary and Emily ran towards him. He held them and kissed them. He welcomed the dust on them. Beneath it, their skin was warm. They were alive. He looked around and saw Johnny stumbling his way. His face was cut, a gouge from temple to nostril, blood running down his neck. They looked at each other in disbelief.

Suddenly they heard a cry from under the metal beam. Michael rushed over. A young woman was alive, but her legs were trapped. He recognised her through the grime and blood. It was Samantha Braithwaite, the daughter of an old college friend.

‘Johnny,' he called. The younger Xavier picked his way towards them through piles of detritus. Michael crouched down beside the woman.

‘Sam,' Michael said again, trying hard to keep his voice level. ‘Sam. Can you move at all?'

She looked up at him, barely able to focus. ‘No. I can't feel my legs,' she said, her voice verging on hysteria.

Michael looked at his brother, who crawled to the other side of the beam. From there he could see the lower part of the woman's legs through her ripped ball gown. Her left leg was mangled, the right torn to shreds from the knee down. Johnny met his brother's gaze and slowly shook his head.

‘Okay,' Michael said. ‘We need some more help.'

As Michael turned, two men appeared. He knew them immediately – the engineer, Miguel Bandonis, and the American financier, Sigmund de Silva. ‘Miguel, Sigmund. Get to the end of the beam. Johnny, go with them. Try to lever your fingers under the rim.' Then, turning back to Samantha, he said, ‘Sam, we're going to get you free. Don't worry. We have three strong chaps here. When I tell you, I want you to try to push back from the beam. I'll pull.' He tucked his hands under her shoulders and turned towards the three men at the end of the beam. Johnny nodded. Groaning loudly, they just managed to lift the huge chunk of metal a few centimetres, and Michael yelled, ‘Now, Sam.'

Michael stumbled back and Samantha Braithwaite almost landed on top of him. She had just cleared the metal beam when it came crashing down again, the sound reverberating around the dome.

‘Is there anyone with medical training here?' Sigmund de Silva asked, as he knelt down beside the injured woman. Michael turned to his wife. ‘Do you know, Hilary?'

‘The only doctor here was Simon Frasier. But, he's...' And she suddenly crumpled, sinking into a heap on the floor, sobbing loudly.

Samantha gasped and gripped Michael's arm. He looked down at her. The woman's eyes were wide with terror. She started to shake, and Michael held her tight about the shoulders. He looked across to Sigmund. His face was a mess of small cuts, rivulets of blood smudging the dust, his eyelashes white with powder. The injured woman exhaled loudly and went limp.

Michael lowered Samantha to the ground, pulled off the remnants of his dinner jacket and covered her face with it. Taking her hands from her face, Hilary looked at her husband and screamed, throwing her head back down into her hands. Michael walked over and sat beside her, putting an arm around her bony shoulder.

‘I've seen Nick,' he said quietly. She looked up, her eyes red raw, tear streaks lining her cheeks. ‘He's okay. He's with some of the others, the journalist Harry Flanders and some people from our table.'

‘Where?' Hilary asked, barely able to contain herself.

‘There's a huge chasm in the floor, near the stage. Can't get over it. They're on the other side. I told them to get up to the mezzanine and try to reach Dome Beta. I think things might be better there.'

‘And what're we supposed to do?' Johnny asked, turning from the dead woman, a look of desperation on his face. ‘The emergency doors are screwed. We've gotta do something.'

‘I need to see what shape these people are in first,' Michael replied. He walked over to a small group of survivors, huddled together close to the edge of the stage. Most of them were in shock, their faces pale. Everyone was injured in some way, bloodied, their clothes ripped. They had the hollow-eyed look of those suddenly transported to a real-life horror movie.

Michael crouched down beside a young girl. Her arm was bleeding. Then he moved on to an elderly man, one of the major shareholders from an American bank. His suit was ripped and he had a deep gash across his forehead. Michael stood up. ‘Okay,' he said to the group. ‘This is the situation. The floor has been split in two. There's a 3-metre-wide fissure back there and flames are shooting up into the opening. I don't think many of us could get across in our condition. We've tried the emergency doors. There are two on this side of the chasm and two over the other side. They appear to be out of action. I guess the servo-systems have been knocked out by whatever caused this. I think the best chance we have is to try the stairs up to the mezzanine. I've seen a group of survivors on the other side of the fissure and they're trying the stairs. I think you should all wait here and my brother and I will try the door to the stairs.'

‘I'll come with you,' Miguel Bandonis said.

‘Me too,' another youngish man offered. Michael recognised him. He was one of the security team from the hotel, an Australian, Craig Deloray. His left arm hung limp at his side.

‘Craig. Your arm.'

‘I'm okay,' Deloray said. ‘It's not broken.'

Michael looked at him doubtfully. ‘Glad for your help,' he said.

‘No worries. Lead the way, sir.'

The island of Semja Alexandry is a deserted strip of rock about 60 kilometres by 15, located some 700 kilometres due south of the North Pole. During the Cold War, the Russian owners of the island built a radar station there. Today the derelict building looks like a rotten molar half-buried in the snow. Close by lies a potholed airstrip. When the UN-affiliated group who created E-Force first approached the Russian government to investigate the possibility of leasing Semja Alexandry, it took three weeks to find someone who actually knew where the island was.

Now, three years after the lease was signed, a circular metal platform 40 metres in diameter stands close to the radar station. The Silverback,
Paul
, with Josh in the pilot's seat, landed vertically on the platform. Josh recited a coded alphanumeric into his comms and a voice came over his headset: ‘Welcome back, Josh.'

The platform descended on a single gigantic hydraulic support, lowering the slate-grey Silverback 40 metres into the frozen tundra. A few moments later, it stopped, the hydraulics emitted a loud hissing sound, and Josh popped the canopy.

The hangar lay at the northern edge of the underground base. The entire complex, all 1.6 hectares of it, had been carved out of solid rock, making it virtually untouchable and unobservable by anything but E-Force's own detection equipment, the BigEyes. Designated Polar Base, 50 men and women worked there. It was one of seven stations dotted around the globe, each serving a multitude of tasks. These included processing data from the BigEyes, repair and maintenance of the vast array of hi-tech equipment used by E-Force, and acting as the location for training programs that could not be conducted on Tintara.

Steph met Josh as he climbed down onto the floor of the hangar. ‘How'd it go?' she asked.

‘Good. The modification to the remote guidance system works a treat.'

They had been on the island for over a week and it had been hard. This was their first day of relative calm. The rest of the time they had either been up to their necks in freezing water, abseiling down an icy cliff or trying to catch food on a two-day total immersion survival exercise, which had started with them being dumped in the middle of the island without cybersuits, without food or water, without a radio, without even a map or a compass.

‘You enjoyed a morning off?' Josh asked.

‘It was hardly a morning off. I had to reconfigure the computer systems without a manual, and then I had a really fun two-hour simulator course. I feel bruised all over.'

Josh laughed and gripped her shoulder.

‘Ow!'

‘Come on, let's grab some lunch.'

Josh led the way along a metal gantry. A flight of steel stairs took them down to a long passageway. At the end of this was a glass-fronted elevator. They stepped in and Steph pushed the button marked ‘Level 3'. The elevators stood at one end of a vast opening in the earth. Around the other three sides were gantries on each of the 14 levels. On some of the levels they could see windows opening onto laboratories, service areas and workshops. Next to these, passages led away to accommodation and recreation areas.

The cage stopped and the door opened automatically. A short, brightly lit corridor took them to the mess hall. Here, everything was automated. One wall consisted of a bank of food dispensers and plasma displays. Josh walked up and touched a screen. The computer chirped up.

‘Luncheon selection today: 1. Roast chicken with vegetables of the season, roast potato. 2. Sea bass with beans and mixed salad...'

It went on to list 10 more dishes. Josh listened carefully then asked for selection Number 6 – lasagne. Walking along the row of machines, he reached a service hatch. Steph placed her order. They picked up their trays and ambled over to a table close to the far end of the canteen.

‘This lasagne isn't half bad,' Josh said after a couple of silent spoonfuls.

Steph had a mouthful of food and just nodded, waving a fork in the air above her plate.

It was then that Josh's comms sounded. ‘Yes,' he said.

‘Josh. Is Steph with you?'

‘Hey, Mark. Yeah, she's sitting across from me stuffing her face with clam chowder.'

‘There's been an incident. We need you there, asap.'

Steph and Josh were back in the hangar in under three minutes. On the way, Tom filled them in on what they knew of the disaster near Fiji.

‘And there's no definite cause?'

‘Not yet.'

‘What's the team status?' Steph asked.

‘Pete and Mai are in the Big Mac, left about two minutes ago. Mark's just boarding
Ringo
now. He'll be there before them, of course. His ETA is 21.57 local time.'

Josh paced over to the crew who were refuelling and checking out
Paul
. Steph went to get suited up.

‘We'll be ready in under five minutes,' one of the techs told Josh.

‘Make that four,' he retorted.

Steph appeared a minute later and they stood beside the craft watching the techs finish off. An engineer in a black boilersuit approached. ‘So whose turn to pilot?'

‘Mine,' Josh and Steph said in unison. The tech looked from one to the other, not sure whether to say anything.

‘I think if you look at the log, Dr Jacobs, you'll see that you commanded the last mission.'

‘Okay, Professor Thompson,' Steph responded. ‘I refuse to play silly games. The keys are yours.' And she gave Josh a sweet smile. He turned and climbed the steps up the side of the Silverback and lowered himself into the pilot seat. Steph followed him up and jumped into the copilot's seat directly behind him.

A few moments later, the chief engineer shouted to the others and they all headed for the control shelter at the far end of the hangar. As he went, he gave Josh the thumbs up. Josh glanced at his watch. The engineers had prepped the plane in three minutes 55.

Paul
ascended on the hydraulic platform, the floor of the hangar dropping away beneath it. A slit appeared in the ceiling. It grew larger as the two hemispheres of the landing pad separated. Above the plane stretched clear blue sky. The lift took the Silverback through the opening and stopped at ground level. Josh and Steph looked around them at the frozen wasteland. Close to the pad lay a few wiry, sorry-looking scrubs, but apart from these the view consisted of granite escarpments, and beyond that a scarred and rutted strip of tarmac. This was all that remained of the airstrip the Russian military had slapped down almost 60 years earlier. Beside the strip, they could see the ugly squat shape of the radar station. Rust lines ran down its concrete sides and not a single pane of glass had survived the years.

‘Polar Base. We're making a final preflight check,' Steph announced into her comms, and she ran her fingers quickly over a control panel.

In the front seat, Josh adjusted his holovisor and made a tiny adjustment to his earpieces. He could see a 3D representation of the island of Semja Alexandry. ‘Lay in a course for Fiji,' he told the computer. A panel of lights flashed on his control panel. ‘You got that, Steph?' he asked.

‘Perfect,' she replied. ‘Flight time, one hour 37 minutes.'

‘Okay, let's go.'

‘Polar Base ... ready for takeoff.'

‘Copy.'

Josh tapped at the plastic panel in front of him, and he and Steph heard the engines fire up. He surveyed the parameters moving across his field of vision in his visor and ran his fingers over the panel again. The plane began to lift into the cold, crisp air at 300 metres per second, then gradually accelerated until it had reached the optimum cruising altitude of 20,000 metres above the Tundra.

‘Okay, what's your tune?' he asked Steph as he simultaneously ran the flight schedule through a final check and prepped the engines for horizontal flight.

‘My tune?'

‘Yeah. What do you play on takeoff?'

‘I...'

‘Oh never mind,' Josh shot back. ‘You'll have to put up with mine.' And he snapped the plane into horizontal flight mode, the engines began to change tone and the Silverback shot forward, accelerating to Mach 10 in a matter of seconds. Lynyrd Skynyrd's ‘Freebird', Josh's favourite, burst through their headphones.

At an altitude of 20,000 metres, very little detail of the land below could be distinguished by the naked eye, but
Paul
was packed with the most sophisticated detection and analysis equipment coming out of the CARPA labs. Passing over the north-east coast of Siberia, Josh and Steph could have picked out individual hairs on a yak's rear end if they had wished to. Instead, Steph was refining the flight-path to get to Fiji in the fastest possible time, but avoiding hostile airspace.

E-Force had a special arrangement with the former Soviet states and had automatic clearance to fly over Russia, Georgia, Ukraine and the others. China, though, was a different matter. Beijing had not been involved in the creation of E-Force and they had refused to cooperate fully with the UN, only allowing E-Force to enter Chinese airspace in dire emergency. Since the recent heightened tension between Beijing and Washington even this small concession had been withdrawn.

Steph had felt the Silverback turn sharply without warning. ‘What‘re you doing, Josh? ... Josh?'

‘I'm taking us directly south.'

‘But that's...'

‘Yep, it's over our friend's precious airspace.'

‘Josh, you can't do that.'

‘What? You think they have anything that can out run us?'

‘No,' Steph snapped. ‘But they could fire at us.'

‘What? And risk an international incident?'

‘Too damn right they would.'

‘I'm sorry, Steph, but I'm the one piloting this aircraft. It's my decision. We have to get to Fiji. Lives are at stake. You know that.'

Steph said nothing. She was trying to steady her breathing, trying to keep her mental balance. ‘I don't think you've thought this through, Josh.'

‘Oh, I have.'

‘If the Chinese kick up a stink, the UN are not going to be happy with us. You could be forced out of the team.'

‘I'll take the chance.'

‘At least let Base One know.'

‘Don't be ridiculous. Mark will have a coronary. We can be in and out of Chinese airspace before anyone even notices.'

‘I'm against this, Josh.'

‘Course plotted. It'll get us to Fiji 20 minutes faster.'

‘No!' Steph cried. ‘Please, Josh. Don't do this.'

‘Too late. I'm sorry, Steph.'

Steph watched the display in front of her. Light patterns shifted across the highly polished plastic. The new flight-path was programmed in and would take them straight over the Gobi Desert, then out over the East China Sea. Josh had locked in the command.

There was an ominous silence between them. Steph was boiling with rage but she knew ways to force herself to remain calm. Years of yoga and practising meditation techniques had their uses. ‘On your head be it,' she said, unable to keep the anger out of her voice. ‘You can unlock the controls, Josh.'

The plane ascended another 3000 metres, rolled and swerved randomly to confuse any radar tracking that might break through its camouflage. The Camoflin coating made it almost completely radar-invisible, but a Chinese satellite might pick it up.

On the holodisplays in their helmets, Steph and Josh could see the terrain 23,000 metres below. It began to change, turning from rocky high ground to the orange wash of desert. The guidance system flashing across their visors told them they had encroached into the northern region of the Gobi Desert, a vast wasteland that stretched into the heart of northern China.

They flew on in silence. Steph was still too angry to accept fully what Josh was doing. She knew his heart was in the right place and that, in some respects, he was a better E-Force member than she was. He always put the mission first. But she also knew that she was the more disciplined person, respectful of the rules and regulations, someone more bound to protocol – and she believed in her approach. She could not admit it right then, but she knew Josh's individualism and self-belief got things done. She just didn't like the way he went about it.

A voice broke over their comms. ‘Unidentified object approaching at high speed.' It was the onboard computer.

‘What!' Josh exclaimed. ‘On screen.'

‘What is that?' Steph said.

‘Unidentifiable,' the onboard computer responded. ‘Object now 4.9 kilometres due south-south-east. It's falling away from us.'

‘Good,' Josh said.

‘There's a second object,' Steph announced.

Josh was silent, dumbstruck.

‘That's falling behind too. Some sort of missile by the look of it. It came into range briefly.'

‘Warning. Warning.' It was the metallic rasp of the onboard computer again. Three rows of lights on the control panel began to flash. The sound of the engines changed pitch, descending rapidly. The plane began to rock on its axis.

‘Switching to manual,' Josh said. ‘Steph. Anything more on what those things are?'

‘Hang on. Picking up a low frequency emission from the second object. It's not a conventional missile. It's ... damn!'

‘What?'

‘Just got a momentary sensor reading from the limit of the range. It's not an explosive device. It's some sort of probe. The first object must be a jet. The probe is emitting low frequency electromagnetic waves.'

‘You put the shields up?'

‘Yep. It's cutting straight though.'

‘I can't believe that.'

‘Chinese ... clever people.' She resisted the urge to say
I told you so
. ‘I'm modulating the shield randomly.'

‘Just what I was about to suggest.'

‘Oh good!'

The plane rocked violently. Josh and Steph were pushed forward, their bodies straining against the safety restraints. The lights flicked on, then off. They stayed off for three torturous seconds before coming on again at half power.

‘Steph? You okay?'

‘I've been better.'

‘The modulation isn't working.'

‘No, and the whole shield system is now offline. Engine two is working at 40 per cent efficiency, and...'

The lights went off, and stayed off. The tone of the engines changed again, shooting up through several octaves. The plane shuddered.

‘Ninety per cent of the electrics are out, Josh,' Steph shouted above the screeching of the engines.

‘Copy that. I'm going to try to land.'

Josh ran his fingers over the controls. Almost nothing worked. He grabbed at the emergency joystick, a design feature added in case all other control systems failed. With the engines working at low efficiency, it took all Josh's flying skills to bring the plane down to a lower altitude. He was also worried that without the servos and antigrav systems on board, the plane would be unable to handle the ridiculously high speed they were still travelling at. He glanced at the control panel to check their speed and altitude, but nothing was working.

‘We've got to bail,' Steph screamed into her headset. But comms were down. She glanced out the window. The plane was banking hard. She could see the orange sand thousands of metres below. Then the Silverback rolled again. They were falling at an incredible speed, the sand rearing up towards them. She felt sick and fought it down.

The plane was shaking so violently it felt like it was about to shatter into a million pieces. Steph jolted in her seat as a crack appeared in the carboglass above her head. The crack slithered along the smooth parabola of the canopy and she could hear the air rush from the cabin as it decompressed. Her cybersuit was still functioning normally. She could breathe and she could withstand the cataclysmic drop in cabin temperature.

‘Steph,' Josh called, his voice desperate. ‘Don't think you can hear me, Steph, but I'm going to try to land in the desert. Hold tight.'

Josh leaned on the joy stick and the plane surged into an even steeper descent. Then, with expert timing, he pulled it back, praying the servo mechanism of the manual override could handle it. It was like the power steering in a heavy car. He needed it if he was to have any hope of landing
Paul
in one piece. The landing gear was offline. Through the window, the sandy terrain, featureless except for the shadow cast by the Silverback, seemed to rise up at him. It was almost impossible to get his bearings, to gain any sense of distance or scale.

Seconds before he had expected it, the plane touched the ground. Josh reacted with lightning speed, bringing up the nose of the jet, letting it skim along the sand. He knew they would survive just so long as the infrastructure held. It was an incredibly strong plane. But something like this had never been tested before.

Josh focused all his attention on steadying the Silverback, letting the underside of the plane take the strain. He had to hope the Maxinium would survive the landing. Josh was thrown around in the seat, the safety restraints screaming. The sides of his helmet smashed against the head rests and ear guards. He felt his guts churning.

The plane hit something and shuddered. There was an explosion to port. Josh could not turn to see, but he knew what it was. The engine had gone. Debris slammed into the canopy. Then the canopy itself shattered. Pieces of carboglass flew outward, propelled by the internal pressure in Josh's cabin. He heard a second explosion. This time from under the plane. Something seemed to be coming up through the floor. He couldn't quite believe it. Couldn't understand what it was. Then he realised it was a section of undercarriage sheared clean away from its support bracket. It emerged from the crumpled steel under him and then flew up, missing his face by a few millimetres before shooting out into the freezing air.