Final Days (47 page)
He had emerged from the airlock to find himself at one end of a curving corridor located in a service and maintenance area close to the southern tip of the Lunar Array. Hanover had told him he needed to get to the ASI offices, but he guessed they were still at least thirty minutes away on foot, or less if he could find transport. As he started walking, he again hailed Mitchell, but the man had fallen silent once more. The only thing Saul could feel sure of was that he hadn’t seen the last of him.
Saul eventually came to the first of thirteen enclosed concourses, each of which accessed a different wormhole gate. The place was eerily silent and clearly abandoned. Heavily reinforced windows at one end of it looked out towards the far lip of Copernicus Crater, a hundred kilometres away. The bright lights of the city were clearly visible closer to hand, and only a little further around the inner rim of the crater wall. Escalators at the concourse’s opposite end led to a higher level not far below the roof, where shuttle-cars that normally carried passengers through the wormhole gate to the Clarke colony waited in silent ranks.
He walked past empty shop fronts and flickering UP-ads, until he discovered a small service car abandoned next to an information booth. He grunted with satisfaction on finding it to be fully charged.
The concourses were all linked to each other by a wide lane that ran through the whole Array, along its inner edge and just below the windows. Automated transport vehicles used for shifting heavy goods had been abandoned all up and down this route. Saul boarded the service vehicle and guided it along the lane, the vaulted space all around him so still and quiet he could alm believe the entire facility had been abandoned for a century, not just a few hours.
He drove steadily, though the car’s top speed wasn’t much more than a few kilometres per hour, till he passed through an archway and into the next concourse, which proved to be equally abandoned. As he passed through the one after that, he had to guide his vehicle around the still-smoking ruins of a Black Dog, dark smoke spiralling upwards to the curved ceiling far overhead.
He came across further evidence of fighting when he reached the Kepler–Copernicus gate. Half a dozen armoured personnel carriers stood parked close together below the embarkation area, all of them showing the signs of having come under heavy fire. One still burned fitfully.
Saul drove closer, constantly ready to hit the accelerator if he ran into trouble. The bodies of troopers were scattered all around the APCs, and the air reeked of cooked meat. He stepped out of the car to retrieve a Cobra from the outstretched hand of one of the troopers, seeing from the weapon’s readout that it was fully loaded with concussion shells. He adjusted the strap and slung it over his shoulder, feeling more confidence in it than in Amy’s home-brew concoction, which he now abandoned in the rear seat.
He noticed two APCs standing about twenty metres away from the huddle of vehicles surrounded by corpses. They had suffered less damage, but had clearly also come under fire at some point. He moved closer and saw a body slumped in the driving seat of one of them, while another corpse rested against a wheel, with a Cobra cradled in his hands.
Something in the way these bodies were positioned, and the fact that this one group of APCs stood apart from the rest, made Saul sure there had been infighting here of some kind. He wondered if some of the troopers had countermanded their orders and been executed for their trouble. Perhaps they had families back home, and hadn’t wanted to be forced to leave them behind.
He finally climbed inside the less badly damaged APC, trusting it to get him further faster, and to afford him a much greater degree of protection at the same time. Saul placed a hand on the dashboard and waited until it blinked, accepting his authorization, the wheel unfolding to become rigid enough for him to take a grip on it. He drove it straight back on to the transport lane leading to the Copernicus–Florida gate, from where he could take an elevator down to the ASI’s main operations room.
Saul smelled smoke not long before he passed through the archway leading into the Copernicus–Florida concourse.
At one end of the open area stood all that remained of a terminal station for passengers arriving from Copernicus City. Much of it had been reduced to rubble, and a cool swift breeze told Saul that the Array’s atmospheric integrity had been compromised. Several Black Dogs stood motionless at the foot of the escalators leading up to the station itself, their weapons systems clearly active still.
Saul glanced the other way, towards the departure area, accessible by another bank of escalators. He could see shuttle-cars standing at the top of them in silent and empty rows. No Dogs had been set to guard them, although there were numerous crowd-control stg tbarricades arranged in rows at the bottom.
One of the Dogs turned itself in a half-circle as Saul drove towards the middle of the concourse, tracking his progress with an eyeless gaze. Saul watched with deep trepidation as the weapons systems mounted between its shoulders whined and shifted. He slowed the vehicle to a crawl and eased the driver’s-side door open in case he had to make a run for it, but the machine merely continued to track him without taking any further action.
He got out of the car, eased the Cobra off his shoulder and stared around. There were the corpses of yet more troopers by the barricades, so clearly fighting had occurred here as well. The only sound he could hear now was the occasional click-whir of the Black Dogs echoing across the concourse.
At the centre of the concourse was a recreation and dining area, consisting of several low buildings and open-air restaurants surrounding a paved courtyard, where a small fountain stood in the middle, surrounded by shrubs. Saul looked around, but there was still no sign of life. If Mitchell was really determined to prevent him from shutting down the gates, he was certainly taking his time about it.
Saul made his way towards an elevator set into a recess beneath a plaque reading ‘ARRAY SECURITY AND IMMIGRATION’. His shoes squeaked slightly on the polished floor of the silent concourse, sounding unnaturally loud to his ears.
Something suddenly clattered to the ground at an indeterminate distance away. Glancing immediately towards the row of Black Dogs, Saul noticed that the same one that had tracked him earlier was now turning to face the other way, as if something on the far side of the recreation area had drawn its attention meanwhile.
Something, or someone?
It had to be Mitchell. He was obviously hiding somewhere close, and Saul wondered what he was waiting for. He took a firmer grip on the Cobra, ignoring the rapid tattoo that his heart was beating against the inside of his chest, and tapped on the weapon’s screen so that it integrated with his contacts. Targeting information instantly superimposed itself over everything he saw.
He scurried towards the elevators, crouching low, passed through a cordon that would normally be manned. Recognizing his UP, one of the elevators opened at his approach. Saul stepped inside, pressing his back against the interior wall, while aiming the Cobra back in the direction he had come.
Just before the doors closed, he caught sight of movement somewhere by the fountain. Mitchell, he decided: it couldn’t possibly be anyone else.
Lunar Array, 11 February 2235
Saul logged into the Array’s localized
security network. As he stepped into the lobby of the operations room, he saw personal belongings scattered on desks and jackets hooked over the backs of chairs, as if the staff here had simply got up in the middle of their work and departed en masse. Perhaps, he thought, that was exactly what they had done, and he wondered just how much warning they’d received. If that was the case, had they chosen to flee, or simply gone back home to be with their loved ones?
He slung the Cobra back over his shoulder, its targeting data fading the moment his fingers released the barrel. Moving on quickly, past the empty desks and workstations, he began activating the code given him by Hanover. A further layer of information appeared on top of his usual UP overlay, guiding him towards the single elevator that serviced the executive suites assigned to the members of the ASI’s directorate. It carried him yet further below the lunar surface, depositing him in a carpeted corridor, where he headed past conference rooms and numerous locked doors until he was guided to the suite of offices belonging to Thomas Fowler, the Director of the ASI himself.
The door was locked, and there didn’t appear to be an option in the EDP overlay that would allow him to bypass it. He swore softly under his breath, then unslung the Cobra and fired a short burst directly into the door. It swung inwards as if it had been kicked.
Saul entered to see an enormous oak desk to one side, a couch and several leather armchairs on the other, along with a wall-sized display of a beach at sunset.
The EDP overlay drew him towards Fowler’s desk. As he sat down in the chair, the surface of the desk automatically came to life, with sets of icons floating above its surface. He followed the overlay’s instructions, reaching out to one icon in particular and once again entering Hanover’s code.
Hearing a click from somewhere next to his knee, Saul pushed the chair back to find one of the desk drawers had slid open. He dipped a hand inside and withdrew a single unmarked keycard.
He stared at it dry-mouthed. It looked so innocuous for something that could change the fate of the human race. That caused a momentary flicker of doubt, and he wondered if perhaps Hanover had tricked him deliberately, and the keycard served some other purpose.
Only one way to find out.
He stood up, letting the overlay guide him to a single unmarked door at the far end. The door was locked but a single slot, at waist height, was just about the right size to accommodate the keycard. Saul inserted it and the door swung open with ease.
Saul retrieved the keycard and let the door swing shut behind him. He found himself standing in a functional-looking space that was almost as large as the office itself. Apart from a couple of terminals facing each other from opposite walls, the room was entirely bare.
This, then, was the secret terminal room that Hanover had told him of.
Security menus appeared as Saul walked further into the room. He waved them to one side, while the overlay directed him towards the terminal set against the right-hand wall. He stepped right up to it, more menus appearing around him. He scanned them quickly, then reached out to touch one in particular. Following its instructions, he then re-entered the access code.
With one trembling hand, he placed the keycard into a slot and waited to see what happened next.
Nothing.
Of course
. He’d almost forgotten Hanover’s warning that the two-man rule was only rescinded when one of the pair of security servers fell out of contact with the other.
Maybe, he surmised, that was the reason the Copernicus–Florida gate had never been shut down. Maybe the paired servers had stayed in contact with each other until it was much too late, and the force devastating the Earth had done the same to Copernicus.
If that was the case, maybe he was going to need someone else’s help after all. He slammed a fist against the wall next to the terminal in fury, nearly weeping with frustration.
At that moment, he heard the sound of movement through the door leading back into Fowler’s office.
Saul gripped the Cobra close to his chest, remembering the speed with which Mitchell had moved inside the lander.
He stepped cautiously back out into the main office, swinging the barrel of his weapon from side to side.
Nothing to be seen.
He licked his lips and moved on past the desk, and towards the ruined door.
From of the corner of his eye, he saw part of the image in the wall-display move, the beach-front houses rippling. The scene looked like it might be somewhere in the Florida Keys.
Too late, he realized it was a trooper with his chameleon circuitry activated. Saul caught a brief flash of an angry face before something slammed into his skull with terrible force, plunging him into darkness.
Saul woke to the smell of smoke and an intensely bright light shining into one eye.
‘He checks out,’ said a voice from somewhere close by. ‘Minor concussion, but that’s it.’
‘Fine,’ said a second voice, as the light receded.
Someone kicked Saul in the shin. ‘Get the hell up,’ ordered the second voice.
With a groan, Saul heaved himself upright. He looked around to see he was back on the concourse that served the Copernicus– Florida gate. Six troopers – four men and two women – stood in a semicircle gazing down at him, where he had been propped against the wheel of an APC. Their faces streaked with grime, their eyes uniformly bloodshot, they looked more like the walking wounded than anything else.
‘Where the hell did you come from?’ asked Saul, rubbing at the back of his neck. He noticed that the owner of the second voice was a man in his late thirties, his sandy hair cropped short above frightened eyes. The UP ident floating next to his head identified him as a Colonel Bailey.
Bailey responded by dragging Saul to his feet, then slamming him hard up against the APC. ‘How about you tell me what you were doing here in a restricted area?’
Saul glanced to one side, at the open back of the APC, and saw that it was loaded with several crates. The top of one had been ripped open, revealing a load of flat, grey bricks that stirred up a mote of recognition. He knew that he should know what they were, but somehow he couldn’t seem to recall.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ replied Saul. ‘You can see my UP, can’t you? I have clearance.’
‘Yeah – and, according to the last update we got before everything went quiet back home, you’re currently wanted for attempted murder, sabotage and terrorism.’
‘Listen to me, will you? There’s a man here planning to kill us all. We’ve got to stop him.’
‘Answer my question, Mr Dumont.’
‘I’m trying to prevent whatever’s happening back home from happening to the colonies as well.’
‘Well, shit,’ said one of the women, ‘that’s exactly what
we’re
here to do. We got sent back through from Clarke, and—’
‘Shut up, Peggy,’ snapped Bailey, before returning his attention to Saul. ‘Prevent it how?’
‘Emergency destruct protocols,’ said Saul. ‘You know what that means?’
‘I do – and so do you, clearly.’ Bailey pulled out Saul’s keycard to the terminal room and held it up. ‘Mind telling me who gave you the access code?’
‘I got it from Constantin Hanover. He’s a task-force leader. I was about to shut down the whole Array, when you smacked me over the head.’
‘The
whole
Array?’ Bailey frowned. ‘The only gate you need to shut down is the one leading back to Florida. Why the hell would anyone want to cut off the colonies from each other?’
‘Maybe he’s working for the separatists,’ suggested one of the others. ‘Maybe he’s one of them. Maybe that’s the real reason he was there.’
‘That’s not how it is,’ protested Saul, feeling a surge of panic.
‘But that is what the separatists want, isn’t it?’ Bailey demanded.
The flat grey bricks, Saul suddenly realized, were explosives. Being knocked unconscious had made it hard for him to think clearly. Things were starting to come bk to him now, little recollections and fragments from over the last several days, but some if it was still disconnected, as if all the thoughts and memories gathered in his head had been knocked out of synch and were now struggling to reconnect with each other in the right order.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Saul, ‘if you reckon all you need to do is close down the Florida gate, ask yourself why Copernicus City was evacuated! Why even bother doing that, if anyone thought the Moon was going to be safe? Shutting down the Florida gate isn’t going to work.’
‘What the hell makes you so sure?’ said Bailey, his expression still disbelieving.
Saul started to form a reply, then he stopped.
I’m sure because I’ve seen into the future
, he thought, and realized there was no answer he could offer Bailey that they might accept. He had Jeff’s stolen files, of course, but there wasn’t nearly enough time now to go over all of that.
Bailey nodded, as if Saul’s silence were an admission of guilt. ‘I’m going to need you to give me whatever access code you have, and wherever the hell you got it from.’
‘Is that why you were sent here?’ asked Saul. ‘To shut the Florida gate down?’
‘No, the man we were escorting here was supposed to shut it down, except now he’s dead. We’ve only got one of the pair of codes we need. So give me,’ Bailey snarled through gritted teeth, ‘your fucking
code
.’
‘I will if you’ll tell me why your truck here is filled with explosives.’
‘We were going to try and blow up this end of the Florida gate with HMX,’ Peggy butted in. ‘With our guy dead, we figured that was the only—’
Bailey turned to glare at her. ‘Peggy, what part of shut-the-fuck-up do you not
understand
?’
He turned back to Saul, and slid his Cobra off his shoulder, taking aim at the prisoner’s head. ‘I won’t bother counting to five. Just give me your fucking access code or—’
‘Okay!’ said Saul, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Okay, I’m sending it now.’
The colonel lowered his weapon as he received the code, then turned to one of the other soldiers. ‘Isnard, check it out, will you?’
A trooper with a shock of red fuzz standing straight up from his scalp nodded, staring off into the distance as he scanned the information now arriving on his contacts.
‘They wouldn’t have sent only the six of you,’ remarked Saul. ‘Where’s the rest of your squad?’
‘We’re all that’s left,’ said the other woman, apart from Peggy, her expression grim.
‘The code’s legit,’ said Isnard. ‘But his authorization doesn’t square with his ID.’
‘So it’s stolen?’ asked Bailey.
Isnard made a face. ‘Guess so.’
Bailey grimaced and turned back to Saul. ‘Don’t even think about trying to talk your way out of this one.’
Bailey turned to the surviving members of his squad and started giving orders. ‘Isnard, Jessup, take up positions over at the courtyard. Keep an eye out there. I don’t want to get caught out like last time, and lose anyone else. Merrill, take Dallas with you and get to work placing the rest of the HMX. Peggy, you’re with me.’
‘Before you do anything else, you need to listen to me,’ said Saul, his voice sounding ragged. ‘There’s a man named Mitchell Stone . . . he’s going to try and stop you from destroying the gate. When you grabbed me upstairs in the executive suites, I thought you were him, coming to try and stop me.’
‘He wouldn’t be the first to try stopping us, Mr Dumont, but we’re more than ready for trouble.’
‘That’s not going to be enough,’ Saul insisted, watching the others head off, which left him alone with just Bailey and Peggy. ‘This isn’t any ordinary human being you’re dealing with.’
‘Unless he’s driving a tank, I’m not worried,’ Bailey replied dismissively. ‘Right now we’re going to go head down to that terminal suite and shut the Florida gate down.’ He turned aside. ‘Peggy!’
Peggy moved up beside Saul and pushed him back in the direction of the elevators, while Bailey took the lead, striding fast.
At that moment a deep and almost subsonic rumble came from the direction of the Florida gate.
It’s coming
, Saul realized, breaking into a cold sweat.
Bailey stopped, staring towards the gate, his face several shades paler than just a moment before.
He turned back towards them. ‘Get moving,’ he barked, ‘
now
.’
Peggy shoved Saul forward again, and this time they broke into a run.
Bailey suddenly made an
oof
sound, after they’d covered a couple of dozen metres, before collapsing to his hands and knees. At first Saul assumed he’d tripped over something, but then the colonel slid to one side, his jaw slackening. Blood began pooling under his chest, and quickly spread out across the tiles.
Peggy gaped down at him, her eyes round and wide
. He’s been shot
, thought Saul, realizing he had heard a sound like a wet cough from smewhere far away across the concourse, just before Bailey had collapsed.
Peggy swung her Cobra all around, but there was nothing for her to aim at. If the attacker was Mitchell, he was thoroughly hidden.
‘We need to keep moving,’ hissed Saul, and began backing towards the elevators. ‘We’re too exposed. He can pick us off easily while we’re out in the open.’
‘No!’ she yelled, spinning around until the Cobra was directly trained on him. ‘Stay right where you are.’
Saul glanced towards the barricades, fifty or so metres away, and saw Mitchell materialize next to Merrill, with alarming suddenness. He drew a knife across Merrill’s throat and the trooper collapsed, blood spurting out from his neck in a gruesome arc.
There was no sign of Jessup. Already dead, Saul guessed.
Peggy must have seen Mitchell too, for she fired off her Cobra, explosive rounds digging cavities in the tiled floor at the precise spot he had been standing. But Mitchell was already gone, speeding back towards the central courtyard and the deserted restaurants surrounding it.
‘Isnard,’ Peggy yelled across the concourse, her face twisting in panic, ‘where the fuck
are
you?’
Saul heard more gunfire, followed by screams.
‘Peggy,’ Saul tried again, ‘if you want to stay alive, we need to get to those elevators now.’
She glanced at him blankly, as if she’d forgotten he was there. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s go.’
They started running again, Peggy sprinting ahead of him. That subsonic rumble had intensified, he thought: it was definitely a little louder. He prayed that didn’t mean it was already too late.
The door of one of the elevators slid open at their approach, and Saul allowed himself to hope that his lifespan might still be measured in more than just seconds. Then a shadow flew past him, slamming Peggy against the wall adjoining the elevator, and he then realized it was already much, much too late.
Mitchell had one arm tight around Peggy’s neck. She uttered a small cry, like a bird, in the moment before Mitchell snapped her spine. As she dropped in a lifeless heap at his feet, he stepped back, his chest heaving from exertion. There was a Cobra slung over one shoulder.
‘So you gonna thank me for saving your life?’ Mitchell panted, wiping a forearm across his brow.
Saul forced himself to meet Mitchell’s calm blue gaze. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he demanded. ‘Aren’t you going to finish the job now?’
‘Saul,’ Mitchell’s voice was almost gentle, ‘hey were going to
kill
you, is what it looked like to me.’ He nodded towards the departure area. ‘Didn’t you listen to one damn thing I said? We’ll be
transformed
, and so will the colonies. Then we can live for ever. I just wish Jeff and Olivia could have been here to share in it.’
‘You’re out of your fucking mind,’ Saul shouted. ‘Back there you said you wanted to kill me.’
Mitchell laughed. ‘That was when I thought you posed a significant threat, but now you’re unarmed and defenceless. Look,’ he said, gesturing towards the departure area, with a radiant smile on his face.
Saul looked, and saw a heat-haze like shimmer make the air tremble at the top of the escalators. The low rumble had given way to a kind of ululation, like the wordless moan of a million massed voices, and growing incrementally louder by the second.
‘If you’re not going to kill me, that means you’ll let me go?’