Redemption Protocol (Contact) (15 page)

Fournier looked delighted as he fussed along the front row. The coffee smelled delicious. Even Whittenhorn looked impressed.

“Wonderful,” Prince Charles said from one side.

“God that is
orgasmic
,” said one of the women on the security team.

Havoc felt increasing distress as he watched the remaining cups dwindle. Surely Fournier would keep that last cup for himself? Havoc felt himself tense up. The coffee smelt like ambrosia of the Gods.

Fournier stopped beside him. The tray was empty. Havoc grieved.

Fournier turned to him.

“I'll just get the next tray.”

A choir of angels sang a chord in divine harmony. Havoc watched Fournier threading through the group in what was perhaps the most surreal briefing of his life. He realized that Fournier needed the attention. Fournier had a huge brood of kids at home and was used to fussing over, and being fussed over, by his wife and kids. He needed this.

Fournier came back and presented him with an espresso sized cup of coffee. The surface was a lustrous red-rust crema. The aroma rising off it was intense and pure. It smelt divine. Havoc sipped it, savoring its thick, viscous texture.

“Bliss,” Touvenay murmured.

Best coffee of Havoc’s life, bar none. He looked up at Fournier.

“Fantastic, thank you.”

Fournier looked gratified as he continued to move along.

Darkwood murmured with approval as he set down his cup.

“What would life be if we couldn't enjoy simple pleasures?”

Touvenay savored the flavor with the assiduity of a connoisseur.

“There is no sincerer love than the love of food and drink. We should, after all, show our new friends that we can enjoy the virtues of civilization.”

Havoc noticed Tyburn off to one side with Weaver as he sipped his coffee. The pair were clearly casting to each other, as their faces indicated conversation but no words were being spoken. Weaver spun on her heel and stormed back to the front, evidently furious.

Tyburn turned and communicated with Brennen.

Brennen turned and walk toward Havoc.

Oh dear, he thought.

“John, we've decided to appoint you to the scientific team as a floating escort,” Brennen said.

Havoc deciphered the heated cast between Tyburn and Weaver. Tyburn was dumping Havoc on Weaver and Weaver didn't like it.

“Oh?”

Brennen nodded.

“We've decided the security team forms a cohesive unit already and that the scientific team is more decentralized. They could use various types of direct support like escort, pilot and––”

“General dogsbody?”

Brennen smiled at him.

Havoc spread his hands.

“Whatever you think is best.”

“Thank you, John.”

Brennen turned to Fournier, who looked gratified as he stood sipping his coffee at the back.

“May we?” Brennen asked, amused.

“Please, Captain,” Fournier said, incorrectly addressing Commander Brennen for perhaps the second time. Who did not correct him, Havoc noted.

Brennen turned and nodded to Weaver, who stepped forward.

“We have a lot, and I mean
a lot
, of supplementary data on shipnet. This is strictly some of the high points.”

She gestured at the holo.

“Plash’s atmosphere is non-breathable and consists largely of nitrogen with decreasing amounts of ammonia, sulfur, oxygen and carbon dioxide. The surface gravity is half of standard and the surface pressure is two atmospheres. Wind speeds can exceed a thousand kilometers per hour depending on height and exposure.”

Havoc winced. The wind sounded atrocious.

Weaver spun the holo with a flick of her hand.

“Plash has a magnetic field that fluctuates between one and five times standard and it actually flips, reversing direction, around every twelve hours. We don’t know why.”

Weaver zoomed the holo onto Plash's surface at the transition between night and day. On the cusp of light and dark was a vast standing wave of fire and vapor, hundreds of meters high, that was constantly curling forward as the planet rolled away beneath it; it was a never breaking tsunami trapped in the limbo between night and day.

“Sick,” Jafari said.

“It looks like the Wrath of God,” Darkwood said.

Weaver projected data alongside the holo image.

“The surface temperature varies from minus one hundred and fifty degrees Celsius in the shade up to eighteen hundred in direct sunlight. Plash’s orbital sector around Neria is colder; while around Jötunn, as Plash will be on our arrival, it experiences the heat.”

Fournier’s tone was mild.

“Those temperature ranges seem unlikely. Given the atmosphere there shouldn't be sufficient time for that type of temperature differential to develop.”

“I agree.”

Fournier frowned.

“Unless the heat is being drawn off, somehow...”

Weaver grinned.

“Exciting, isn't it?”

“Is our equipment rated for those temperatures?” Kemensky asked.

Weaver turned to Brennen, who answered.

“The entry vehicles are, for a time, though most equipment would degrade to failure in the maximum temperature. We don't want to be out in the sun. We have major constraints on surface access to Plash when it orbits Jötunn.”

Weaver nodded as she zoomed the holo in on a giant hyperboloid structure, wider at its top and bottom than at mid-height. Reddish clouds hugged the narrow waist of the elongated hourglass.

“I want to highlight some notable surface features. Across the surface are lines of these towers, each fifteen kilometers high.”

'Oohs' and 'aahs' came from the audience.

Touvenay looked enraptured.

“Genuine alien architecture,” he breathed.

Weaver panned the holo.

“Near the equator are more architectural features, including these towers of varying sizes.”

There were sounds of awe. Havoc studied the immense circular structures. Their walls, though fuzzy at the presented resolution, were adorned in arches, columns and carvings.

“We call the largest central tower the Colosseum. It's three kilometers high.”

Marsac, the Titan X, whistled. Havoc smiled. Even taller than you, he thought.

Weaver spun the holo.

“I won't give you the complete tour but I encourage you to check out, at the very least, the Javelin, the Anvil and the Arena on shipnet. But finally, this.”

A dark pyramid stood on a flat plain. It was massive and elemental, an aggregation of conflicting slopes, odd steps and uneven blocks rising relentlessly to a gloomy, Cimmerian summit. The pyramid looked immutable and foreign to its environment – it possessed a somber quality as if light was water and it was coated in oil.

“Brr,” Stone said.

What was inside such a place, Havoc wondered. The Devil, bound and chained? If someone had suggested that he could feel unnerved by a building he would have dismissed it as ridiculous, before now.

Weaver highlighted a low wall that surrounded the pyramid.

“To give you a sense of scale the wall is fifty meters high. The pyramid itself is four kilometers high. There appear to be four entrances, one on each side.”

Weaver zoomed in and the holo blurred and deformed as it reached the maximum resolution they had gained so far.

“Some distance from the fourth gate is scattered debris, but on each of the other three gates is one of these.”

There were gasps around the room.

“Unbelievable,” Marsac said.

Stone looked astonished.

“That’s terrifying. Imagine a planet full of those.”

Havoc examined the holo image. It was a massive statue of... what? He had no idea. A gargoyle? A dragon? So that answered that, Havoc thought. There was, or had been, something living there.

Contact
.

Everyone examined the blocky and distorted image. It showed a statue of a gargantuan creature with folded wings and exposed claws, sitting back on its haunches.

“What is it?” Marsac asked.

Weaver smiled.

“I don't know. But I do know one thing. There goes my fantasy about sleeping with an alien.”

 20. 

Havoc entered disc five to unpack his kit and meet the security team, after Weaver told him he wasn't needed at the science briefing.

The security team was arrayed on the far side of the equipment hangar, standing amongst the piles of kit that characterized the organized chaos of any initial deployment. All except for Ethan Marsac, the Titan X giant, who was excavating a container over to Havoc’s right, presumably searching for his kit.

Tyburn acknowledged Havoc and made a hand sign, one, five, so 'about 15 minutes'. From experience, Havoc gave himself at least half an hour.

Havoc checked the storage manifest and then walked toward Marsac. It turned out his five containers were stored adjacent to the one that Marsac was emptying. It was, of course, a rule of all deployments that whatever you wanted, down to the smallest fixing, would be at the opposite end of whichever container you opened therefore requiring you to empty it completely and in the process lift out up to forty tonnes of cargo.

Havoc nodded to Marsac.

“Hey, big man.”

Marsac's brilliant white teeth sparkled under the hangar lights.

“Hey, Havoc.”

In Marsac's accent, he pronounced Havoc’s name with the 'H' absent, as '-Avok'.

Marsac lifted a Sentinel autocannon across the floor with ease. The barrel was longer than Havoc was tall and together with the tripod, targeting system and two magazine cases, it must have weighed over a tonne. Havoc nodded at the improbably heavy duty weapon.

“Your side arm?”

Marsac laughed.

“Don't know why my gear is separate but it's here with the static.”

Havoc shook his head in commiseration as he moved to the end of his first dark container, recessed neatly into the wall rack next to Marsac's. He touched his finger to a depression on the access panel and the mechanism formed a perfect seal. It flashed to disrupt any eavesdropping then a feed snaked out of his finger and established an optical interface – the signals being transmitted in such a way that eavesdropping would disrupt the signal and indicate it had been intercepted.

Havoc exchanged a series of codes with his container and authenticated himself. The panel surface slid away and a further interface was revealed.

Marsac stopped to watch.

“That your own container?”

“Yep.”

“You are pretty paranoid, huh?”

“Yep.”

Marsac chuckled as he re-entered the tunnel he was digging toward space.

Havoc authenticated himself with the second interface and accessed the container security information. He reviewed the scan sensors, tamper seals and exposure meters. Darkwood wasn't kidding when he said they'd scanned his containers – they’d scanned the shit out of them; they were practically glowing. They'd tried to inject code, though it didn't look like they'd succeeded. Havoc signaled to open the container and there was a hiss of depressurization as the door swung open.

Next to him he heard a low whistle. He turned and saw Marsac deep inside his container, near the far end. Havoc's eyes adjusted to the low light in the container, augmenting from the infrared spectrum. He was convinced that his vision was keener and definitely more hyperspectral than before his death. Marsac leaned over something.

“Salut bébé,” Marsac said.

A figure rose up, towering over even Marsac's two meters of height. Marsac walked out with the large figure following him. It was Marsac’s suit. As it emerged into the light it looked, as Jafari might say and for once with no hyperbole, awesome.

On the front of its nearside shoulder was a moving image of a dark haired girl dancing with abandon, her hair flying from side to side as she gyrated in a tiny tank top and a clubbing micro-miniskirt. Havoc looked the suit up and down, watched the girl for a second and then raised an eyebrow at Marsac. Marsac grinned and stepped back.

“My wife.”

On the opposite shoulder there was an image of the same girl in more modest attire. She held up a little boy in dungarees, who was waving.

Havoc thanked the Gods he hadn't had time to make an inappropriate comment. Marsac pointed between the dancing image and the woman holding the boy.

“When you have this, you end up with this.”

Havoc laughed.

Marsac smiled fondly at the image of his dancing wife.

“She wants me to remove it, now.”

“Ah.”