The Extinction Switch: Book three of the Kato's War series (3 page)

“Okay, let me check.” The clerk’s eyes darted across the screen. Her expression changed to concern. “Um… I’m sorry, Miss Nishimura, but all our planes are out. We don’t have a single one here.”

“
What
?” Kassandra removed her disguise.

“Um… I’m really sorry…”

“Get me your manager.”

The clerk nodded in deference. “Certainly.” She left, through a door at the back, and returned a minute later with a fat, graying man.

“Uh… I’m sorry, Miss Nishimura, we don’t see a record of your charter,” he said.

“What? I came here from Lyon in it, and it was supposed to wait here for me!”

“As far as I can tell, ma’am, you have never booked with us.”

“Do you people know who I am?”

“I am aware of your status, ma’am…”

“Did somebody bribe you to give them my plane?” The manager turned red and looked down at the counter. “That’s it, isn’t it? How much did they give you?” Kassandra spat.

“I’m sorry, but no booking was received…”

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.” She shook her head slowly, while glaring at the man. “Screw you.” Her jaw was clenched, as she stormed away from the counter.

Annabelle followed her. “Don’t cry,” Annabelle said, as she hugged Kassandra. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Buy someone’s tickets from them,” Antonio said. “Money talks.”

Kassandra looked at him through her tears. “Yeah, I think you’re right.” She unclasped herself from Annabelle, wiped her eyes with a small handkerchief from her purse, and started with the nearest group of people. “I’ll offer fifteen million orbs for three tickets to Lyon.”

After a few minutes of nos and head shakes, one man with a woman and a child said: “Thirty million, and you have a deal.”

The woman looked appalled. “Albert!” She tugged on his arm.

“Deal?” he said, still looking at Kassandra.

“Deal.” Kassandra touched her payment ring to his, and then took the three fingernail-sized tokens from him.

“Thirty million orbs!” he said. “We’re rich!”

“But now we don’t have a ticket home!” his lady beseeched. Her tears began to flow. Their young child paid no attention.

Annabelle looked sad. Kassandra reactivated her disguise, and began to move away. “Gotta do what you gotta do,” she said.

“Yes,” Antonio said. “Nobody forced him to sell them.”

Annabelle shook her head. “This whole thing is going to get much, much worse before it gets better.”

----

On board
Revenant,
Kato sighed. “Why, oh why, did that bastard have to survive? He seems to creep like slime into every era of human existence. Starting with ours, back in the twenty-first century.” He looked down sadly. Zara nodded. “The stakes are a lot higher than some stolen technology this time.”

Zara started to say something, then stopped. Kato looked at her. After a few seconds, she began again: “I almost wish I hadn’t hijacked his ship. It’s possible he only popped up again in the twenty-fourth century to get revenge on me.”

“You don’t know if he did. He could have been alive all along, getting Renewed every twenty years so he wouldn’t die,” Kato said.

“True. He’s still the devil incarnate though. I don’t doubt he’ll kill a lot more people if he’s not bluffing about that virus thing being worldwide.” She gulped and sighed. “Is there anything that can be done to stop him? What about the FSE?”

“The FSE is a damn talking shop,” a nearby short man with thinning hair said angrily. He walked over to them. “Any real power they had is gone. Dissolved by national and regional interests. In some ways, the world’s heading back to how it was before the Tribulation.”

“Academician Korolev!” Kato said. “Didn’t even notice you were here. As for the Tribulation, its main cause was resolved, although with much violence. The ingredients for another Tribulation aren’t there, surely?”

“You mean other than the imminent extinction of mankind?” Korolev said.

“Point taken.”

Another man walked over to join them. He was nearly six feet tall, with a mop of gray hair parted just left of the center, and bushy eyebrows. He was General Peter Phillips, of the US Army. He extended a hand. Kato shook it weakly. “I can’t even call the damn Pentagon!” Phillips said. “All the military channels are busy.” Kato nodded. “I came over because I heard the FSE mentioned,” Phillips continued. “They can’t agree on anything, so I don’t know how much use they’ll be in responding to this disaster. It may be up to America. Again.”

“Yes,” Korolev said.

“Problem is,” Phillips said, “we don’t have a space force to go and take him out. That’s even if we knew where this Seung Yi character is located, which we don’t.” The others nodded. “All the services have a handful of spaceships, but none of them even have weapons. They’re just used for personnel transport. Still, I think the only defense against this maniac is going to be a good offense. Once we find him. I mean, even if we handed Mars over him, what’s to say he won’t hold us all to ransom again, for something else?”

“True,” Kato said. “If I had to guess, I’d say he’s on, or in, a rock in the asteroid belt. It’s the only place in the Solar System he could hide.”

Phillips shook his head. He looked at both the others in turn for a moment. “You’re both smart men. Is there some kind of super weapon we can come up with that would just take the asteroid out?”

“Vesta!” Kato interjected. “I’ll bet he’s there! It’s the largest body in the asteroid belt besides Ceres, which no longer exists, of course. How he hid there for a hundred and five years, I’m not sure, but I’d almost put money on that being his location.”

Korolev sighed. “I don’t know of any weapon, Phillips. An enormous nuke could do quite a bit of damage. But if that’s where they are, they’re probably cocooned right in the center of Vesta. There’d be two hundred and fifty kilometers of rock protecting them. All it would do is shake them up a bit.”

“We no longer have any enormous nukes, anyway,” Phillips said. “The biggest nuke ever detonated is still the one the Russians set off in the 1960s. Our force is down to three thousand warheads, none of which exceed five megatons.” He sighed. “I was thinking of some kind of miracle weapon, like whatever blew up Ceres in 2357.”

“We still don’t know what happened to Ceres,” Kato said. Then his eyes widened. “What about a cluster of nukes, General? Get hundreds, perhaps. Time them all to off within one microsecond of each other!”

“By God, you’re right!” Phillips said.

“All of ISI’s resources are at your disposal, General. Ships, scientists, anything.”

“I appreciate that, Kato. We’ll need all the help we can get. We have six months to come up with, and successfully execute, an attack.”

----

The three friends sat abreast in the needle-shaped aircraft’s long cabin. “I feel bad for that family,” Kassandra said.

“Me too,” Annabelle said.

“No-one forced them to sell their tickets,” Antonio said.

“Call Mom,” Annabelle said. She gazed off into the distance, as the airplane started to taxi. There was no answer.

“You know what pisses me off?” Kassandra said.

“What?”

“That we didn’t think to buy a ride to Nice, instead of walking.” Antonio nodded.

“We were in a panic, just like everyone else,” Annabelle said. “Hindsight, and all that…”

“I guess.”

“We expect to arrive in Lyon at 1 AM,” a voice said over the loudspeaker. “Our flight time is thirty-six minutes.”

“Hope it’s not too cold there,” Annabelle said. “We’re still dressed like we’re going to a club.” The aircraft was soon in the air, swooshing speedily inland. A passenger to Antonio’s left got out a display unit, the size of a cigar tube, and switched it on. The news showed on a midair display about the size of a dinner tray. The trio leaned over to watch. At first, all that could be seen was fire. Then, people were silhouetted in the flames, throwing improvised missiles at the police. “Looting and rioting have broken out in Paris, Lyon, and every major city in France,” the broadcast said. “Store shelves have already been stripped bare, as citizens hoard food, water, and other necessities. Lawlessness is spreading like wildfire. Curfews have been imposed…”

Annabelle’s face turned white. “I was afraid of something like this,” she said, turning to Kassandra. “People think we’re all going to be wiped out too. There’s nothing left to lose. They will turn to hedonism, crime, or both.”

“Then the fabric of society will unravel quickly,” Antonio said.

“So, what do we do?” Kassandra said.

“In my case, try to get to my place in Paris as quickly as we can,” Annabelle said, “and ride it out.”

“And if the Extinction Switch is used again?” Antonio said.

“Then… shelter will be the least of our worries.”

A short while later, all three friends spaced out for a few seconds, apparently focusing on some message appearing in their minds. Kassandra was the first to speak. “Oh, my God! I don’t believe this! Earth is now quarantined! Nobody can leave!”

“
Merde…
” Annabelle said. “There goes your survival plan, Kass. You should come to Paris with me, since you can’t get off Earth. And that’s all there is to it.”

“Or you could come to my place…” Antonio said. Kassandra shook her head no. His expression fell from excitement to deep disappointment.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Cull

Entara was the name that Seung Yi’s descendants had given to their former home world, Ceres, on which most of had them lived. They staked a claim to this dwarf planet as their own sovereign territory, despite the Outer Space Treaty explicitly forbidding any such claim. Since the reemergence of the Yi Dynasty, 105 years after the destruction of Ceres, they had now made the same claim on the asteroid Vesta. They now referred to this body as Entara. The small hospital was the only place on Entara, besides the quarters of the High Councilors, which had artificial gravity. Located a little way out from the center, its business was mostly slow—apart from the maternity unit. Seung Yi wore a black robe. Tai Zu and Zan Tang, two of the twelve High Councilors, wore scarlet robes. They exited the elevator onto a sterile corridor some thirty meters long. One wall was clear. It gave a view onto a ward with ten beds, eight of which were occupied. The men walked a few paces down, and entered. The women and three white-uniformed nurses alike looked up in complete surprise. The orderlies bowed low towards him. “You honor us with your presence, Master,” everybody present said in unison. Seung Yi looked around, fixing each person briefly with his eyes, showing no emotion.

He walked to the nearest bed, and stretched out his hands. The woman handed her baby over immediately. Seung Yi exited the ward, still holding the baby, with the other men in tow. The door had barely closed, when the other women said: “Blessed are you! The Master has your baby!” She beamed.

Outside, Seung Yi held the infant up so his face was level with his own, using his fingers to support the newborn’s head. Tiny eyes stared back, unfocused. He turned to Tai Zu, standing to his left. “What is a human life worth, Zu?”

“Um… it’s an interesting question, Master.”

“I hold that its value is measured by its industry, Zu,” Seung Yi said. “The bloated masses on Earth have machines to do practically everything for them. That branch of the species has lost its drive to achieve, in its comfort and complacency. We, on the other hand, worked for everything we had. And then they destroyed it.” The last words were laden with fury. Both the others nodded. “The old Entara is no more. However, we now have the opportunity to gain an entire planet of our own. Death has led to rebirth, as seems to be the natural order of things. Though we are few in numbers now, we will be able to expand almost without limits once we have the room. Within generations, Zu, our industrious population could number in the tens of millions. And every one of them will be worth a thousand Earthlings.”

“Quite so, Master,” Zan Tang said. Both men looked at Tang coolly.

“The Extinction Switch is an instrument of natural selection, Master,” Zu said.

“Indeed it is,” Seung Yi said. “It came from the minds of brilliant men whose backs were against the wall. The very survival of Entara was at stake. And yet those minds produced something which will ultimately rebalance the species.”

“History will ultimately thank us,” Tai Zu said.

Seung Yi’s eyes narrowed, as he looked back at the baby. “The result of the cull of Earth will be a pure, tenacious species, with the drive to colonize the galaxy.”

“W…what cull, Master?” Zan Tang said. “Besides the billions that have already died?”

Seung Yi turned to him. “A few decades after we have settled in on Mars, and caught up to Earth technologically, the Extinction Switch will be used again. This time, in full.”

Tang looked aghast. Silence reigned for a long moment. Then, Seung Yi said: “You are dismissed.”

The other men bowed their heads, and then headed back to the elevator. Once they were gone, Seung Yi walked down the corridor, with his back to the ward, until he was no longer in view. The baby’s tiny arms flailed. The man cradled the infant in his left hand, and put his right forefinger up. The baby grabbed it, though his fingers barely wrapped around it. Seung Yi smiled. He playfully pinched the baby’s nose. “My blood runs in you,” Seung Yi said. “You will know a better life than any Entaran before you.” A few more moments passed. Seung Yi then returned the baby to his ecstatic mother, and exited the ward.