Bzrk Apocalypse (8 page)

even allow for a fight, was terrifying. It would be push-button mad-

ness.

Finally, Nijinsky laughed, a low, slow sound weighed down by

cynicism. “Well, I’m going to use that word again.
Convenient.
We’re

all sitting here wondering why we’re still playing this game, and what

do you know? Turns out the bad guys have the means to drive us all

insane and then enslave the human race.” He lit a second cigarette

and blew the smoke insolently at Plath.

She thought about telling Nijinsky to put it out. Show him that

she was back and in charge.

But was she in charge? That was not clear.

She checked Keats. He was as dubious as Nijinsky.

“Yeah,” she said by way of acknowledging their doubts. “Yeah.

Convenient. But I guess unless we want a visit from Caligula, we’d

better . . .” She faded out, realizing what she was saying.

It was Anya who put it into words. “In the Great Patriotic War—

what you call World War Two—Russians had soldiers. And behind

the soldiers they had NKVD. Secret police. If a soldier complained,

the NKVD shot him. If a soldier failed, the NKVD shot him. If a sol-

dier said, ‘To hell with this, I am going home,’ the NKVD shot him.

And then they arrested the man’s family and sent them to the gulag.”

“Well, they
were
fighting the Nazis,” Billy piped up.

Anya snorted a derisive laugh. “Yes, murderous, evil Nazis. And

who were the NKVD? Murderous, evil Communists.”

“I’m confused. Which are we supposed to be?” Wilkes asked.

58

(ARTIFACT)

A News Item

Wellington, NZ. Wellington Police Superintendent Thomas DuPré gave a

press conference today in which he discussed the recent suicide of two

Wellington Police Department officers, and the attempted suicide by a

third, who remains in care at Wellington Hospital.

“All three officers reported seeing strange visions about an hour prior

to their suicide attempts. They variously described these hallucinations as

involving bizarre insects and strange objects.”

Superintendent DuPré said all three were tested for drugs but results

were negative. “It’s possible that this tragic episode is simply a rather hor-

rible coincidence.”

All three incidents occurred nine days ago. The two successful and

one attempted suicides were particularly brutal and appeared to be

unplanned.

The investigation is ongoing.

Nothing was said publicly about the fact that the three officers, while on

their way together to a soccer match a week earlier, had come across an

overturned truck on the highway apparently headed to the port.

The truck had appeared to be carrying military grade weapons.

Higher authorities were called in to take over the case. And the three

policemen would have nothing further to say on the matter.

59

(ARTIFACT)

From Deadline Hol ywood:

The Academy announced today that Sandra Piper’s name would remain

on the ballot for the Best Actress Oscar. There had been suggestions

(surely not from studios and press agents tied to competing actresses,

heaven forfend!) that the actress’s bizarre suicide would send a bad

message to movie lovers and especially young fans. The statement reads

in part, “We believe that an Academy Award is given for the work, and

only for the work, and should not be affected by the tragedy that took this

great talent’s life.”

Comments:

QxT:
Sandra Piper was a great lady and a great actress. Shame on

those who are trying to prophet from her death.

KeyAgrippa:
She was nuts. That’s who we want to show off as a

symbol of Hollywood?

Book Guy:
Tragedy my ass. She was murdered. I don’t know how.

Yet. But I knew Sandra, we worked together on UTD. No way she killed

herself, she had everything to live for.

60

SEVEN

Seven thousand, two hundred and fourteen miles south and a bit

east from the watery grave of the
Doll Ship
, where bloated, bleached-

out bodies still fed indifferent fish, a very different sort of vessel was

roaring across very different waters. The navy called it an LCAC—

landing craft air cushion—a hovercraft some eighty-eight feet long

and forty-seven feet wide.

This LCAC was no longer part of the U.S. Navy; it was privately

owned, and it had been extensively modified with more efficient tur-

bines, tougher skirts, and integrated deicing systems.

It was one of two in active service in Antarctic waters. The craft

were used to carry large cargos ashore and, just as critically, to remove

garbage, and to do so in weather that would swat a helicopter down

onto the ice.

Environmentalists were determined to keep Antarctica “green,”

despite the fact that green was rarely seen on the ice.

The LCACs shuttled back and forth between shore and a refur-

bished navy-surplus amphibious assault ship now called the
Celadon
.

Celadon being a shade of green. (Her sister ship was the
Shamrock
.)

The LCACs were the
Jade
Monkey
and the
Emerald
, again, shades 61

MICHAEL GRANT

of green. But the LCACs were in fact painted white and gray with

splashes of rescue-orange.

The particular LCAC arriving in a whirlwind of salt spray and

noise was the
Jade
Monkey
, skippered by Imelda Suarez. Suarez—no one called her Imelda—had a four-person crew and a cargo of booze,

diesel fuel, and a massive electrical generator covered by a tarp, as

well as a climate-controlled steel container filled with potatoes,

apples, fresh spinach, grapes, and oranges. The box was painted with

the logo of Whole Foods, and indeed all the produce was organic.

For the old-timers the very idea that fresh fruit and meat could be

almost (not quite) year-round was astonishing, and it caused quite a

bit of grumbling about how easy things had gotten.

It was nearing summer in Antarctica, and there in McMurdo

Sound the thermometer showed a pleasant twenty-nine degrees Fahr-

enheit. The wind was a noticeable but manageable eighteen knots.

The sun was shining. This time of year it shone pretty nearly all day.

All in all about as pleasant as you could ask for at McMurdo.

The
Jade Monkey
floated over the water and up onto gravel, its

big black rubber skirts all puffed out and vibrating like a trumpet

player’s cheeks. Suarez powered down, and the vehicle came to rest

with a disgruntled wheeze of engines and a long, slow fart as the air

cushion bled out.

Imelda Suarez was twenty-eight years old, five feet seven inches

tall, dark-skinned, weather-beaten but pretty in the right light. She

had worked for Cathexis Inc., owner of the
Celadon
and her two

LCACs, for three years, two as skipper of the
Jade Monkey
.

It was grueling, brutal, often boring, but occasionally terrifying

62

BZRK APOCALYPSE

work. Suarez had never lost a cargo, she had never lost a crewman,

and she had kept that spotless record by never underestimating the

A-factor. The Antarctic factor. The capacity of the most alien of all

continents to complicate or obliterate the schemes of
Homo sapiens
.

Antarctica was always out to kill you.

But the advent of the Cathexis era had changed life on the ice. In

the old days the bases that dotted the rim of the continent had been

cut off for as much as ten months out of the year. Aircraft get a bit

unsafe in high crosswinds. LCACs do, too, but these specially modi-

fied versions could make a forty-mile run from the
Celadon
in all but

the worst conditions—and in emergencies, even then.

All of which was extremely useful, because McMurdo Base—

MacTown, as it was known—was growing more rapidly than just

about any place on Earth. There was oil under the ice and offshore.

With the Middle East in turmoil even the greens admitted that oil

exploration on the ice was a better option than fighting wars to main-

tain supplies from volatile countries.

MacTown, which had once been full of nothing but scientists, aca-

demics, and support staff—generally from cold lands like Alaska and

Montana and Maine—was now home to a whole lot of people from

Texas and Louisiana. The same evolution was occurring at British,

Russian, Aussie, Kiwi, Chinese, Japanese, Chilean, and Argentinean

bases. The effort to locate oil and develop the technology to survive

the harsh environment was big, well financed, and in a hurry. And

they could afford oranges that cost fifteen bucks apiece to bring in

from Wellington or Tierra del Fuego.

Suarez stepped out of her cockpit, nodded at her chief who was in

63

MICHAEL GRANT

charge of matters from this point, stretched up onto her toes, hefted

a rather heavy shoulder bag, and headed up the long gravel slope into

MacTown. Solid ground, ground that was not bucking and vibrating

like the deck of the
Jade Monkey
, felt oddly uneven and unsteady. She

headed toward the new admin building where Cathexis Inc. had a

small wing of cubicles—nothing but a bunk and an electrical outlet,

really. This was her third trip of the day, and Suarez was required by

company policy to grab a minimum six hours of sleep. LCACs did not

want to be steered by sleepy pilots. LCACs steered by sleepy pilots had

a tendency to flip over.

She was intercepted on her way up the road by a tall, not-bad-

looking man with a full beard, sunglasses, and a big grin. Jim Tanner

was Lockheed security. Lockheed ran McMurdo. But it was well

known that Tanner was former Naval Intelligence. And it was widely

assumed that he was the U.S. government’s eyes and ears on the base.

Or at least, one set of eyes and ears.

“Well, hello there, Suarez. Whatcha got in the bag?”

“What, this bag?” Suarez asked innocently.

“Wouldn’t be contraband booze, would it?”

Suarez stopped, unzipped the bag, and pulled out a bottle of

scotch. “Huh,” she said. “I wonder how this got in there? And look, it

has a twin. You here to help me destroy the evidence, Jim?”

Alcohol was sold at McMurdo, but it was also rationed. Nobody

begrudged you a drink, but there were supposed to be limits.

“I would like nothing better.” Tanner took one of the bottles, held

it up to read the label. “Ah, the Macallan Sixteen. You’ve grown and

matured, Suarez. You have grown and matured.”

64

BZRK APOCALYPSE

“If you’re nice to me and let me get to sleep eventually, I’ll share.”

Tanner handed her back the bottle, grinned, looked away a bit

sheepishly, and said, “Sadly, I am here in an official capacity.”

Suarez’s eyes narrowed. “Your
official
official capacity? Or your

unofficial
official capacity?”

His smile thinned out. “This will be a conversation that involves

your signing a legal document promising not to disclose the nature of

the conversation. The document in question is not a company docu-

ment. It’s a
company
document.”

The company was Lockheed. The
company
was the CIA.

“What the hell did I just step in?” Suarez demanded, no longer in

a joking mood.

Tanner’s office was tiny—space was always at a premium in a place

where Home Depot was ten thousand miles away. It was overheated,

so neat that no piece of paper could be found, and seemed to have

been furnished entirely with the kind of office furniture that a self-

respecting Goodwill store would reject.

The document he had for her was on an iPad. If it had been

printed out it would have taken up four pages. Pages full of threats

and requirements and official language. The long and short of it was

that if she spoke of this meeting to anyone not properly cleared for top

secret or better, she would go to jail.

“I’m going to remind you that even though you have been sepa-

rated from the Marine Corps, Lieutenant Suarez, the corps still owns

you.” Tanner turned the pad to her. She scribbled a fingernail signa-

ture and at his prompting spoke her full name to the camera.

65

MICHAEL GRANT

“And now do we get to the reason for this cloak and dagger,
Cap-

tain
Tanner?”

He was behind the desk in the good chair, the one that swiveled.

She had a steel-frame chair with the stuffing half blown out. The bag

of booze was at her side on the floor.

“Cathexis Base,” Tanner said.

“Okay. What about it?”

Cathexis Base was a facility built by Suarez’s corporate masters. It

was used as a transshipment point, a storage facility, a rescue facility

for the
Celadon
and her sister ship. There were repair facilities for the LCACs there, as well as for the helicopters and planes Cathexis used

on the ice.

“Well, let’s start with this: Have you ever seen anything suspi-

cious at Cathexis?

No, she had not.

“What about at the satellite facility. What do they call it? Forward