Halon-Seven (51 page)

“It was over a week before Pellagrin heard of the massive explosion near Tunguska. No one knew what had happened, but reports came back stating that hundreds of square acres of forest were destroyed. To this day, there are still dozens of theories about what happened in the wilderness. Not one mentions a secret Russian laboratory. Apparently, every trace of it was obliterated by the blast.”

Reese looked stricken by the story. “But what caused the blast?”

“Pellagrin was never certain. He suspected that the TNT charges used by the soldiers caused some instability in the Fire Star ore. It resulted in a catastrophic reaction, which vaporized the entire area.”

Bayer thought for a few moments. “So you would have me believe the Fire Star meteorite was destroyed in the blast?”

Cyrus was genuinely pained at this part of the story. “It defies all reason,” he explained, “but the meteorite was the only thing to survive the blast.”

“How is that possible?” Reese asked.

“No one knows,” Cyrus admitted. “But following news of the Tunguska event, Pellagrin snuck
back
into Russia. Surprisingly the Russians weren’t in a hurry to examine the scene. Pellagrin suspected the Tsar was more concerned with covering up after the SNAFU. In any case, Pellagrin returned to the site. Not a trace of the installation had survived. But one thing stood out as obvious at ground zero. The old location of the base was still apparent, if you knew what to look for. Every tree for hundreds of acres had simply tipped over, like blades of grass in a windstorm. But, strangely, there was a pattern to the toppled conifers. They tipped outward, radiating from a single central point. When Pellagrin backtracked the point of origin, he found the same baseball-sized lump of stone he’d seen in the Fire Star apparatus. It was the only thing to survived the blast.”

“So the American spy did steal the meteorite!” Bayer concluded.

“Wow, you’re like a dog with a bone,” Cyrus snickered. “I don’t know, at that point I think an argument could be made that he just found a rock in the woods. There was no sneaking or stealing involved.”

“And you now use that meteorite to power the Meridian teleportation devices,” Bayer accused. “Is it not your power source?”

“It is not,” Cyrus said calmly. “It’s true that the Russian meteorite is what we refer to as Halon-Seven, but it’s not a power source.”

“It seems a little late to lie,” Bayer accused.

“It’s not a lie,” Cyrus explained. “The Russian scientists had it wrong. Halon-Seven isn’t a power source. It’s more like an amplifier and a battery rolled into one. A super-capacitor. But on its own, it produces no power at all.”

“That’s not true!” Bayer protested. “I have detailed reports from Russian scientists proving otherwise. You yourself explained that the meteorite was used to power the first Meridian platform!”

“I’m only saying that the scientists of that day didn’t fully understand what they were dealing with. There is no question that they thought they’d found a powerful means for generating power. But they blew themselves up before they could figure it out. The ore was only releasing the energy stored inside it—the energy it had accumulated as it plowed through the Earth’s atmosphere before making landfall. At that point, there was a massive amount of power stored in the ore’s nano-lattice, just waiting to be released.

“The scientists just didn’t know that the energy they were tapping was finite. It would eventually run dry, unless recharged in some way.”

“That is not possible,” Bayer countered. He had no evidence with which to counter but apparently rejecting the theory out of principle was enough.

“It’s possible,” Cyrus explained. “Halon-Seven is a necessary part of every Meridian platform, but not because it acts as a power source. It’s used as a battery and a capacitor. Every time a platform is used, an excess of energy is released. That energy is channeled into a sample of Halon-Seven, where it’s held in reserve to fuel subsequent uses of the platform. The Halon-Seven also amplifies the energy channeled into it, making it possible for the platforms to eventually function autonomously. Unfortunately, full scale production may not be possible in the foreseeable future,” Cyrus said in conclusion.

“On the contrary!” Bayer took great delight in his opportunity to contradict Cyrus. Having been largely relegated to the role of observer during the summation of historic events, the return of Bayer’s pompous demeanor indicated a power shift in the conversation. “I have the resources to put the platforms into mass production
immediately
!”

“You can build all the platforms you want,” Cyrus said with complete confidence. “It won’t do you a damn bit of good. Without Halon-Seven, those platforms are oversized paper weights.”

“I have the resources to mine as much Halon-Seven as needed!”

“Dig as deep as you can. You won’t find any more,” Cyrus shot him down again. “Halon-Seven isn’t indigenous to Earth.”

Bayer looked at Cyrus with confusion. So did Dargo and Reese for that matter, though the look Reese gave him indicated she thought she understood where Cyrus was heading with this.

It was an opportunity for Cyrus to grind the pompous prick under his boot. “Hello? Remember? Meteorite? It comes from out there!” Cyrus glanced at the ceiling and the sky beyond. “Pellagrin didn’t have the technology available to him in his day, but Walter Meade did. Meade was the genius who eventually replaced Pellagrin on the project. Once Meade knew the properties of the ore, he used satellite technology to search the surface of the entire planet. Do you know what he found? There have been only three meteor impacts on the planet that contain Halon-Seven. Three meteor strikes—
in the whole of Earth’s history!
One in Russia, one in Australia, and one in South America. That’s it! No more! Nowhere on the entire planet! There were only three meteorites that ever contained Halon-Seven!”

Now Reese was dumbfounded. Cyrus caught the shocked expression from the corner of his eye. “So what are you saying? It was just dumb luck, a one-in-a-trillion chance that someone actually discovered one of the meteorites and studied it?” she asked.

Bayer had broken into a hushed, rapid-fire conversation with his bodyguard. Cyrus took advantage of the opportunity and spoke quietly with Reese. “Long odds? I’d say so. Outrageously long odds. Too fantastic to calculate, if you ask me. But in the span of ten years, two meteor impacts made landfall, one in the United States and one in Russia. Both meteorites were completely different in composition. The one in the US changed everything we know about our world. The one from Russia is about to change everything about the way we live in that world.

“It’s all there in Pellagrin’s notes and further substantiated by Meade, in his notes and observations since. The two meteor impacts in the United States and Russia are the important ones. Each meteorite was distinctly different, but they were both virtual study guides to the universe. The one in the US was the cornerstone for our understanding of quantum physics. The one in Russia was the first of the three Halon-Seven samples.”

“My God,” Reese thought aloud. “If that’s true, just think where we’d be as a people if our luck had been different.”

The expression on Cyrus’s face made it clear he was having trouble attributing it all to cosmic coincidence. “That’s been bothering me ever since I found the last set of papers. I don’t think luck had anything to do with it. Those cosmic study guides still wouldn’t mean a thing unless they landed in the hands of people intelligent enough to interpret them.”

“I don’t understand,” Reese admitted. “You’re saying it wasn’t a mistake that the meteorite ended up with Pellagrin?”

His eyes darted back to Bayer. The man was still having a quiet but heated discussion with his head of security. “We’ll talk about that later,” Cyrus said calmly. “When I make my move, I want you to duck into the aisles behind us and run like hell. Find a dark spot to hide, and don’t come out until you hear me call.”

He noted the confused expression on her face. He’d caught her off guard when the conversation changed gears. Her eyes snapped to his as she registered his meaning. He could see a steely determination coalesce behind her brown eyes. She gave him a crisp nod. She was ready.

Bayer called their attention forward. His expression showed a deep suspicion, but Cyrus could see the man was starting to see that his plan was not going to work the way he’d schemed. “You claim there is no cache of Halon-Seven,” he said. “Then how is it your team has built dozens of transport platforms?”

“Fifteen platforms,” Cyrus set matter-of-factly. “That’s all there is. We can’t build more than that.”

He could see that Bayer wasn’t satisfied with the explanation, so Cyrus elaborated. “As I said, there have been three meteor impacts. All three were tracked down and retrieved. All three samples were collected and studied. Professor Meade was able to split each of the three samples five ways. That left him with enough of the element to build fifteen platforms. It’s simple mathematics.”

Cyrus could see Bayer’s jaw clamped in frustration. Corded muscles danced beneath the skin of his lower face. Though not entirely certain, Cyrus though he’d seen a small facial tick at the corner of the man’s eye. He decided to needle Bayer just a little more. “That’s right. Your little megalomaniacal, super-villain wet dream is over before it started.” He waited a beat or two for dramatic effect, then, “Wait, don’t tell me. You haven’t already invested all your money in bottled water and dried fruit, have you?”

That brought a chuckle from Dargo. Cyrus was quick to join in. After only a moment, both were laughing outright. Until, mid-laugh, Dargo’s eyes met Cyrus’s. Dargo was indicating he was ready. Cyrus gave him the slightest of nods. The men moved as one. Both were already free of their flex-cuffs.

Cyrus delivered a punch to the throat of the gunman closest to him. He gave it everything he had. The man’s trachea collapsed, which made relieving him of his rifle a simple matter. Tucking the rifle to his shoulder, Cyrus unleashed a three round burst of fire that dropped the guard across from him, before the man could react.

At the same time, Dargo lashed out at the soldier nearest him. He slashed the man’s throat using a short, thin blade he’d kept hidden through the pat-down. Dargo felled the man in one smooth motion, before taking up his assault rifle. The maneuver was grotesque but effective. A moment later, he unleashed a burst of fire that dropped the last remaining guard on the ground floor.

Reese was caught somewhat flatfooted by the brutal assault. The first burst of automatic fire had already left Cyrus’s rifle before she turned and bolted into the dark confines of the warehouse.

Just as Cyrus and Dargo had jumped into motion, the first in a series of rapid crashing sounds echoed through the building. The rapid crashes stood out even over the brief bursts of automatic fire that sprayed from the assault rifles of Cyrus and Dargo.

Cyrus had loosed a burst of fire that stitched the body of the mercenary on Dargo’s side of the room at the same moment that Dargo opened fire on the man. The body spun across the floor under the onslaught.

When his magazine ran dry, Cyrus dropped to one knee and snatched a fresh load from the combat harness of the man whose throat he’d crushed. He slapped the fresh magazine home and released the charging bolt in a single fluid series of actions. Still on one knee, he brought the sights of the rifle up into the rafters, expecting to see one of the four armed guards above already drawing down on him. But as his sight picture settled on the sentry’s position, Cyrus found only a corpse slumped over the railing.

He spun on his knee, searching out the next of the four men on the raised walkway. As he made a quick circuit of the rafters, he was relieved to find each of the four men heaped where they had once stood. Spinning slowly around the room, Cyrus found it clear of hostiles. Dargo was completing a similar circular maneuver.

Looking down at his feet, Cyrus saw the first guard he had taken out. The man’s eyes were bulging. He was writhing in pain, clutching his shattered windpipe. Cyrus knew there was nothing he could do for the man. It would be a slow and painful death. There was no changing that now, and he wanted better for the man. Raising his rifle, Cyrus fired a single shot into the man’s head, ending his suffering. Some would think him callous, but Cyrus understood, just as the dying soldier did. It was a kindness, given the circumstances. A slow suffocating death was a terrible way to go.

“Clear!” Dargo called out.

“Clear,” Cyrus said with some sadness. He never wanted to take these lives. So much for leaving his old life behind.

Kneeling over one of the fallen soldiers, Cyrus retrieved his phone and confiscated Springfield from the man’s battle harness. He secured his handgun in the holster behind his back before taking one more cautious glance into the dark confines of the warehouse and slinging the rifle over his shoulder. Two taps of the phone screen and he was connected with Hondo. “How are we looking?” he asked without prelude.

“Internals of the warehouse are clear,” Hondo confirmed. He’d been shooting from the rooftop of a neighboring warehouse four hundred yards to the east. “I have one more on the move at the perimeter. I think he’s making a run for it—” There was a lone, distant rifle shot. Part of it reverberated through the earpiece of the phone. “Scratch that. Tango down. Hold while I do another thermal scan.”

Cyrus wasn’t letting his guard down while he waited. His eyes probed the dimly lit confines of the warehouse. There were any number of places to hide. But there was no hiding from the thermal imaging device Hondo was using. Anything with a thermal signature greater than ten degrees over ambient would show up like a signal flare.

“Confirmed,” Hondo concluded. “If I assume that rhinoceros next to you is Dargo and your last remaining tango is Bayer, he’ll be hiding about thirty meters to the northwest. It looks like he’s on his hands and knees. Be careful… I can’t be sure without better magnification, but thermal shows what might be a puddle on the floor. I’m pretty sure he’s pissed himself.”