Exodus (The Exodus Trilogy) (15 page)

Trevor Hayes sat in his holding cell in the FBI’s High Security facility
in Wyoming, waiting for his interrogators to show up. They should have been here by now, he thought. How long had it been since he came here, he thought, confused after weeks of hard interrogation. While still in his White House office, he had seen every person he knew to be involved in the conspiracy arrested and taken away, except the senator of course, who had disappeared before the Exodus left Earth orbit four years ago. They had never caught him, and Trevor wondered whether he was still alive, out there somewhere, hunted by every agency in the country. Then one day, as he was taking his daily morning run, he had received a phone call from President Andrews, still in office, in his fourth term. The president had simply told him he was disappointed, before he hung up. Moments later, several FBI agents had appeared and brusquely handcuffed him, before shoving him into a black van. He had been sedated, and when he came to he was here in this building. The interrogators had made his location no secret, and he knew it didn’t matter. He knew of the place, and no one had ever escaped it. He also knew what the interrogators wanted, but they would never get what they sought, as he was unable to give them that information. Of course, telling them that didn’t help. The interrogation sessions had been worse than he expected. Obviously, all pretense of being a democracy had vanished over the last couple of years, and although interrogation had always been a tough experience, especially when things like national security were said to be on the line, there had always been a distinction between interrogation and flat out torture. Not anymore though. Well, it didn’t matter either. The interrogators had been clear that they wanted names. They had gotten the names of the conspirators on Earth a long time ago, it seemed, at least most of them. But the ones on the Exodus had, as far as he knew, never been exposed. And now they seemed desperate. That told him that it couldn’t be long before impact.

The cell had no windows, so there was no way to know whether it was day or night, but he had the feeling it might be night, since the corridors seemed too quiet. There should have been sounds of footsteps, doors opening and closing, keys rattling. Unlike the interrogation cells, the holding cells weren’t soundproof, so there was always some kind of noise. Now there was nothing. Since no interrogators seemed to show up, that gave Trevor the chance to think. Earth was apparently doomed, they knew that Devas
tator was coming, and soon. They didn’t know where it would hit, and that was just as well. The effects would be global, and those who didn’t die from the impact would most certainly die in the aftermath. Well, Trevor thought, at least those on the Exodus have a chance now. They will make a better world. Earth was a wreck anyhow, he thought. The slow transition into tyranny that had taken place in America was by no means unique. And the way things had been for the last fifty years, it was unlikely that Earth would have been able to cope much longer. Overpopulation, global warming, pollution. We destroyed what we were given, he thought. In the end, nature struck back. Of course, it wasn’t that simple, but Trevor didn’t care anymore. He needed simple. That was how he still held on to his sanity these days.

As he sat there, alone with his thoughts, he could suddenly feel deep tremors, and as the shaking intensified he was thrown to the floor. After a few seconds of dizziness
, he got his wits back, and though he stayed on the floor, he looked around. The door had been twisted out of its frame, and as he crawled toward it, he saw that it was only connected to the frame by its hinges. The lock had been twisted open, and the door looked like it could actually be pushed out by force. He sat up, adrenaline surging through his body, and with his back against the door, he pushed as hard as he could with his feet. The door moved a bit, and he was able to crawl out. There was no one outside, and then he saw that the roof had collapsed at one end of the corridor. The other end looked unharmed, and Trevor got to his feet and went that way. Maybe, if he could just get out of the building … There was no telling how things looked on the outside, maybe it was as deserted as it was inside. Maybe he could actually escape? He continued a few steps before he was thrown to the floor by a second wave of tremors. The whole building shook, and there was a deep rumble that felt like it came closer. As he lay there, he realized the futility of what he was doing. There would be no escape from Devastator. Then the entire building started shaking, and parts of the roof fell down around him. The lights went out, and he called for help. He knew no one would hear him, but it still felt better doing something, rather than nothing. That was his last thought as the building collapsed on top of him.

They had been walking for weeks, and by now they had reached the northern outskirts of Colorado Springs. It wouldn’t be long until they reached Denver, and they had to decide whether to risk going through the city or take a detour around it. As far as
anyone knew, they were still escaped detainees, and based on what little they’d been able to learn since they’d left the camp, there was very little left of the country they had once known and loved. There were police shooting people on mild suspicion of minor offenses, army personnel looting and taking whatever they could get their hands on, and the war raging on in the north had brought an endless stream of refugees southward. And Devastator was coming. The last few days and nights had been cloudy, so they hadn’t seen it, but apparently they should’ve been able to if the weather had been clear. John Rawlins had begun to worry that they wouldn’t make it to Boulder in time to be reunited with his family, but they were by no means on the verge of giving up.

Derek Hewitt had shown himself to be a resource, despite John’s doubts when they set out on foot. It was remarkable what he knew, and he seemed to be able to scrounge together resources however sparse and turn them into something useful. Like the radio they now had, that
allowed them to catch up on what was going on in the world. That was something Derek had fiddled with night after night by their camp fire, and within a week, they were able to listen to the news, some kind of music, and the occasional report from the starship Exodus, which by now had left the solar system altogether.

Johanna Peters on the other hand, had come down with a bad case of pneumonia, and Rawlins didn’t know what to do for her. They couldn’t see a doctor or get her to a hospital, and she seemed to weaken a little more every day. Without antibiotics
, John worried that she might not survive their trek. Now, as they were preparing their camp for the night, John heard her coughing until she vomited. She had gone off behind some bushes for some private business, as she called it, but he suspected she also tried to hide how bad a condition she was actually in.

Suddenly, a flash of light appeared on the horizon to the west. At first it was bright white and lit up the twilight sky, then it slowly turned yellow, and after about a minute it became a deep orange glow, which didn’t go away. A few minutes later the ground shook, and they were tossed around by tremors to
o violent to remain standing or even sitting. All the while there was a rumbling sound like thunder.

“
Oh shit,” Derek said, as the tremors slowly subsided. “Was that …” John nodded while gritting his teeth. It couldn’t have been anything else. And soon they would feel the aftershocks and the other effects, whatever they might be. They had very little time, and if they were to survive, they would have to move quickly. They both looked around, and saw Johanna slowly come creeping out from the bushes. Her expression was twisted, and there was sweat in between the dirt on her face. Her face looked pale, and her eyes were half closed. She coughed and spat, and she moved slowly, crawling over the ground, every movement seemed to take an eternity. John immediately saw that there was something else, not just the pneumonia, although that was already bad enough. Then, as he ran over to her, he became aware of her left leg, and the way it twisted in an odd angle at her knee. There was blood pouring in regular spouts out of her broken knee, and now they could see the bone sticking out. Not a word came out of her mouth; she only coughed and gasped for air. Then their eyes met, and she slowly shook her head. He instantly knew that she wouldn’t live long, and it seemed she understood as well. For a split second, he considered making a travois, an old Indian method for transportation, and dragging her along, but he knew there was no time. Johanna looked him in the eyes for a few seconds before she smiled faintly and closed her eyes.

Moments later, it seemed like an eternity to John, Derek came over. He touched John on the shoulder and whispered, as if afraid that someone might hear his words.

“We need to get going. She would have wanted us to.”

She’
s not dead, John wanted to call out, a sudden flash of anger at them both, but his words caught in his throat. He knew Derek was right, and that Johanna would have wanted them to carry on. She still breathed, although wheezing and laboriously, but he knew it wouldn’t be long until she stopped breathing altogether. They slowly stood up beside their dying companion. Neither of them said anything as they looked toward the light on the western horizon. Finally Derek went over to where their bags and equipment lay scattered on the ground and started filling the bags with whatever he deemed worth carrying. They knew the aftershocks were probably just minutes away, but they couldn’t sit still anymore. John walked over and started helping out. They carelessly stuffed their bags until they couldn’t fit anything more. As soon as they had packed as much as they could carry, they looked at each other, then cast a final look at Johanna, who still seemed to breathe faintly, and started walking. John realized they would probably be dead soon. But better to die walking toward something, than while hiding out in a hole somewhere. Devastator had finally struck, and there was nowhere to hide from that.

More than six years had passed since the Exodus left
Earth orbit. Since then, the starship had first traveled inward for the slingshot by the sun, before it passed through the solar system at 10 percent of light speed on its way toward Nemesis. Four years into the journey, they had received a final signal, before Earth went absolutely quiet. That had been just hours after the projected impact by Devastator, and considering the time it took for the transmission to reach them, it would have been recorded some time before or after the impact itself. No one would ever know what happened to their home world, now that it had gone quiet.

The Exodus had continued its journey, undisturbed
, through the vast emptiness of space beyond the solar system, following the carefully plotted course through the Oort Cloud. Reaching the twin star of the sun, the starship had made a second slingshot, before finally reaching cruise velocity. The fusion rocket had been spent when accelerating toward the sun, and after two slingshot maneuvers the starship now floated through space at more than a quarter of light speed, on a steady course toward Aurora. Before it reached its destination, the magnetic sails, now stowed in the nose of the ship, would fold out and give it the deceleration it would need in order to enter an orbit around the new world.

Tina
Hammer hadn’t been around for any of this, having been deep in Sleep since before the first gravity assist by the sun. Waking had been a terrible experience, from which she was still recovering, and she could understand perfectly well why something had to be done about the process. It had been three days, and still she felt feverish. The price you pay for survival, she thought to herself. She’d been through rough times before though, so she knew it would pass. In a couple of weeks, the guinea pigs, as she’d come to think of them, would be revived the second time around. She would have to steel herself for that. She knew that if they were physically damaged by being subjected to cryo sleep twice, she would have a nasty task ahead of her. She could hope for the best, but in the worst-case scenario, she would have to be quick and ruthless. That would be the only way to save the rest of the crew and passengers of the Exodus from the same fate. There simply weren’t enough cryo cells to let everyone sleep through the entire journey, which had always been deemed the safest option. That had been the plan all along, and the ship had even been outfitted with ten extra cells just to have spares in case of a failure. They had also thought these could be used for parts, in case an emergency repair had to be done. In such a case, the repairs could have been performed by the maintenance robots, or bots as they were called among the inhabitants on the Exodus. But even the best laid plans cannot predict every conceivable event, and when a shuttle filled with children was launched up from the wreckage of a civil war, the commander of the Exodus, Admiral Greg Hamilton, had conceded to try every effort to save everyone on board. The responsibility for making sure this didn’t cause them injury—or worse—all had fallen on Tina, and she would have to deal with the consequences if their method failed.

For the next two weeks,
Tina got up to speed with what had happened so far, reading and studying about the trip and going over the news from Earth until it went silent. Although the thought of what would most likely have happened back on Earth saddened her, she’d accepted it and dealt with all that a long time ago. Humanity was now right here on this ship, and would continue to live on and prosper once they settled in on their new home. Having no family to leave behind back on Earth probably helped her establish such perspective. She also spent considerable time reviewing the data from the last waking of the guinea pigs. Although there was nothing spectacular or remarkable about these data, she knew she’d have to make thorough comparisons, and she needed to know exactly how to spot anomalies that might indicate that something was wrong, and separate those from variations that would be considered normal. There were fifteen others awake at the time, but none of them were initiated into this; they were computer technicians and life-support technicians, and a few scientists, such as Karin Svensson, the ESA astronomer. Tina needed to make sure that her decisions were correct, or she’d endanger the entire ship and all of its inhabitants. In Selection, she’d studied medicine, so she had already familiarized herself with the terminology, and if she could only find the key data that would indicate anomalies, this task should be something she could perform with a level of certainty.

When the day came,
Tina had prepared herself for whatever would come. She would start by reviving one, then go through all the tests and evaluate the data she got, and at last compare it to the data from the last time that person was awake. It was a tedious process, and would most likely take the entire day. If there was something wrong, and that proved to be serious enough, she would make sure that when she revived the next person that would be the first thing to look for. In all, she would have to wake up at least three people to be certain. If there was a system to it, a recognizable pattern, she would execute her contingency plan. She would fake a small radioactive leak, and give everyone awake, including the scientists and technicians an iodine pill that had the side effect of putting them sound asleep, and then she would inject a lethal dose of morphine. Instead of reviving the others, she would let them sleep. That would minimize the losses to only those who’d actually been woken twice. All this would be properly logged, and she would finish a report that would document everything that had been done, the findings that she had made, and how all of this had been done to ensure the survival of as many as possible. Then she would check the settings for each and every cryo cell, so that no others would be woken before the ship reached Aurora. In the end, she would inject the last dose into her own vein. That wasn’t part of the plan she’d discussed with Admiral Hamilton, but there were some things that shouldn’t be discussed with anyone. She would share the fate of those she had condemned, that much she would decide for herself.

The first person to wake up from cryo sleep was a young administrative assistant. Her n
ame was Tori Peters, a blonde around thirty, although with her shaven head and distorted features from the agony of waking, Tina thought she looked at least forty. As she tried to comfort her while she sobbed and shivered, she quickly took blood and skin samples for testing. Then, after about an hour, Tori calmed and, although feverish and somewhat disoriented, she was able to take care of herself, so Tina went back to the lab to get the samples analyzed. That would take hours, so as soon as she had placed the samples in the appropriate slots, she went to get Tori a cup of nice Darjeeling tea.

“
D ... did it feel like this for you as well?” she asked. Tina just smiled at her while she nodded.

“
I d … didn’t remember how bad it was … But I … guess it was the same the last time …” Her teeth rattled and she shivered hard. Tina didn’t know whether she should get to know the guinea pigs, or whether it would be wise to avoid them just in case. After a moment of hesitation, she decided that she couldn’t get all the data she needed just from samples. The psychological effects might not show if she didn’t try to get to know them. Her conversations with the ship’s psychologist, Kenneth Taylor, had made her realize that even if the physical samples turned up nothing, there might be damage that only a close examination of the psychological state of those who were woken would expose, such as certain brain damages. There might be long-term effects that would take years to expose, but that was something that Taylor had thought could be mended with the proper treatment, so it shouldn’t condemn anyone to death. Tina decided to get to know them as well as possible. She knew she would be able to perform her duties if need be; it was something her military background had taught her. To save many lives, you sometimes had to make sacrifices. And the personal pain you felt when you knew those who would be sacrificed, or even when you had to make the hard decisions of who would live and who would die, was just as much a part of the sacrifice.

“
Waking up from this is probably the worst thing I’ve ever been through,” she said quietly. “But it heals, just give it time.” She smiled reassuringly, while Tori sipped her tea. She had difficulty holding the cup steady, and spilled hot tea over her fingers, so Tina took the cup from her hands and held it carefully up to her lips. Tori smiled faintly and gave her a grateful look. As she finished her tea, Tina left her alone for a while and went back to the lab to wait for the first round of results.

Three days later
, she had woken four people, and still she had found nothing to indicate that waking more than once had any lasting effects, other than the short-term agony and distress experienced by the process itself. As she went over the results one final time, she let out a breath of relief. She then took out her tablet to start filing her report. She now felt certain they could get everyone on board safely to Aurora. Eventually her report would be publicly known, and everyone would know what would have happened in the event waking more than once had been deemed dangerous. There would be a lot of questions, she knew that. But in the end, she also knew the hard truth of it all. Her primary goal had been to get everyone safely to the new world, and so far it had been a success.