The World Game (36 page)

Nickle reached under the arm rest to release the broomstick which flicked up as the robot’s weight was released into the socket.

WHACK! The broomstick hit Nickle across his right hand, smashing several fingers.

Of course he swore again.

After some choice invectives, he calmed down enough to check out the medic-bot. The lights were on and it was charging its ancient batteries. Now he had to hope that the pharmaceuticals and supplies were still good. The bot could fix him. He didn’t bother trying to move again. He would wait for the bot.
                 

CHAPTER
75

“Have you found him?” Fuller asked the search team whose chatter had increased without explanation.

“No sir.” The cadet leading the party offered no explanation for the noise so Fuller queried him for the reason. “We found a small hatch in the wall of the tunnel leading to the reservoir sir. It is not marked on any plans and the only reason we noticed it was the rim shadow and some dislodged chalky dust. The hatch is locked sir, or at least we are unable to open it from here.

“Wait there. Do not attempt to open the hatch. I will be there in a few minutes. Be on your guard.”

Fuller pulled up the dimage of the fragment with all known tunnels and the complex superimposed. He brought up the beacon of the search team to locate the position of the hatch and zoomed in on the area. Most notably, there was a convergence of the tunnel system with the chamber housing the nuclear power plant, other than the one actual entrance. Now Fuller knew what Zardooz had been looking for. Some obscure documentation revealing this back door to the reactor chamber. Whether it was there officially or not, it made a great deal of sense to have an emergency exit. Fuller called Lucas and Lewis.

They arrived in short order and Fuller filled them in on events.

Lucas said, “Sheila’s program predicted a moderate range non self lethal threat from Zardooz. The very fact that he turned off the power and did not blow up the reactor, well knowing that the ship power would kick in, is a strong indication of his will for self preservation. We have identified a strong internal conflict in his psyche that stems back to his childhood where he was thoroughly brainwashed into the martyr persona. That is a subconscious reaction that arises every time an opportunity presents itself to do damage to the imagined enemy of his militant religion.

In his later formative years as a youth, spent as the son of an ambassador to the Western World, he discovered the reality that there are far more people existing in peace and harmony outside of his upbringing, other truly peaceful religions that do not demand forced conversion under the shadow of bloodshed. He was fully exposed to the Western educational system according to his profile and was constantly re-indoctrinated with the fantasy of the seventy virgins and the absolute rightness of Islam over all other peoples and religions.

He is a very strong personality, in spite of the apparent wavering between social normality and the instilled, mindless bloodthirstiness of his madras learning. He is able to resist a life time of brainwashing and has come to a compromise which has transferred his loyalty from religion to state. By doing this he has partially assuaged his internal voices that urge him to martyr himself, by reasoning that he must remain whole and alive for the sake of his country.

Col. Fuller, all the indicators are present that he will not self destruct and will capitulate if driven into a corner, provided there is some small way out of the predicament. If he is totally trapped with no out, he may well act out the martyrdom persona. It is imperative that we do not drive him into an absolute situation.”

“Thank you Doctor Lewis. Mr Lucas, anything to add?”

“Yes Colonel. Working with the same data, but applying profiling methods that the FBI developed, I tuned my analysis to be a little less in depth on the personal side, although the profile matches precisely that of Doctor Lewis, and looked for possible scatter effects. We knew he was searching for something and never pinpointed it. Now we have this event which fills in the blanks, but I have not had time to fully integrate this new data into the profile, so I am going to risk an analysis update on the fly. With Doctor Lewis moderating, I think what comes out will be close to accurate.

Taking up where The Doctor left off, Zardooz is the type that will pad himself with extra protection if he can find it. I would suggest at this moment that we determine the whereabouts of Arjmand, who would be his first level of protection, and then head count all other personnel, including children. He is a classic hostage taker. He will have levels of negotiating using each threat level until he gets what he wants or he takes the ultimate step and destroys everything.”

Fuller immediately called and emergency alert across the comms and ordered the head count. He sent a security team to check on Arjmand who was usually locked away in a room talking to himself.

“Mr Lucas,” asked Fuller, “We have determined that Zardooz will only self destruct if he is painted into a corner with no way out, and I do not intend for that to happen. If we do get hold of him he goes into the next room to Arjmand for the rest of the journey.” The comms interrupted.

“Colonel Fuller, Arjmand is not in his room!”

“There you go.” said Lucas.

A further urgent comm squawked out, “Col. Fuller, the head count shows Felicity and Jodie not accounted for! Gerald Shaw has taken a weapon and is heading for the hatch. We have warned the team there!”

Fuller switched the comms to Shaw’s personal frequency. “Mr Shaw! Report in please.”

“Go away!” came the growled reply. “This bastard doesn’t touch my family!”

“Mr Shaw, we have the situation under control. Your action could trigger an immediate self destruction by Zardooz who is using Arjmand. Gerald, calm down and report here to me. We will get Felicity and Jodie back safely and not blow us all up in the process.”

Shaw slowed down his headlong charge towards the tunnels and then stopped. A security team in front of him warily eyed the weapon he held and kept back. He looked up at the pair, suddenly realizing the fear he had put into them. He put the gun down and signalled then that everything was okay. They moved in and gently patted him on the back, telling him to report to Fuller. One picked up the weapon and the trio moved off.

“Shaw reporting for duty sir.” he replied to Fuller, the dismay clear in his voice.

That crisis averted, Fuller turned back to Lewis and Lucas. “How do you recommend we proceed gentlemen?” The pair looked at each other and Lewis indicated to Lucas to speak.

“If we were not in this bizarre situation, I would compare it to a classic terrorist hostage scenario of the jihad movement of the last century, typically the aircraft hijacking. Usually the actual mastermind was not present at the hijacking and used his drones as perpetrators and cannon fodder. Thus as the atrocities proceeded through the decades, the soldiers if you will, died and were replaced by more brainwashed automatons who also died thinking they were going to get the seventy virgins when they could often not get even one in real life. It was national intelligence services and their active teams that took out the head terrorists and that tended to calm the activity for a time until a new engineer of terror rose out of the murk.

We have a small scale event being conducted by a schizophrenic half statesman half terrorist accompanied by a totally brainwashed follower. I believe that Zardooz will use Arjmand as his weapon. His threat will be serious, even paralyzing to us, but he will be in a safe place until the effects of his attack dissipate or until he can find further safety. He will sacrifice Arjmand without compunction and Arjmand will do it willingly, whatever it is.

Zardooz is fully acquainted with the capability of our youniform and buddy combinations. He also know we have drugs that can incapacitate, Arjmand being the give away, so he will be doing something that he believes we cannot stop using any of these known tactics, or if we do apply them, the hostages will also be harmed.

It is clearly in his own interest for us to reach and achieve landfall on a new home planet, or his purpose is totally negated unless our profile is completely wrong.

I am puzzled as to why he has made his move now instead of in another two years or so when we approach Alpha Centauri. I must conclude that he has some other agenda other than the purist jihad focus. We need to figure out what it is very fast, as the turnover time seems to be the trigger for his action.”

There was a silence of thought for a few moments before Fuller asked the doctor, “How do we handle the hostage situation. That is my first concern, to get Felicity and Jodie out in one piece.”

“The key,” the doctor answered, “is to keep that small chink of hope open for him at all times. Throw doubt on his premise, whatever it is. Keep him negotiating and that will keep his moderate, Western influenced persona dominant. He wants something so he needs to give something back to get it.”

“I have an idea. We need to call Sheila and Martin in.” said Lucas. “She mentioned something in passing  while we were setting up the program that may give us a clue to what Zardooz is up to. I suspect it may have something to do with the aliens and the disappearances.”

“Do it.” answered Fuller.

Minutes later Martin and Sheila showed up at the door. Fuller let them in and seated them, signalling Lucas to proceed.

“In the manner of Sherlock Holmes, when you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, is the answer. I do believe, since we have eliminated every logical reason for Zardooz to strike now, that only leaves an expectation of alien intervention.

Zardooz is quite warped, mad if you will, but still a scientist under all those veneers. He has had enough time to work out the Dinkshif effect and to understand the theory behind the practical application. He also experienced the alleged alien interference first hand and has been privy to the fact that since we entered Dinkshif space, there has been no sign of the aliens. This whole episode appears to hinge around the mid journey turnover when we reduced the drive thrust for just enough time to rotate them for deceleration. The nuclear power cut off came at the precise moment of lowest Dinkshif effect.

I was able to discuss some of the theory with Graham who explained that the glitch in power turnover to the ships when Zardooz cut the reactor could have exposed the fragment to full or partial normal space in our own universe for nanoseconds. I do believe, putting all these jigsaw pieces together, that Zardooz wanted to let the aliens back in on the principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” even though the aliens are clearly no friend. Which brings us to Martin and Sheila.

You two have had the most exposure to the disappearances presumably orchestrated by some all powerful alien civilization. Starting with you Martin, what were the exact circumstances of your event?”

“You know,” Martin had a far away look on his face as he thought deeply, “As wierd as it sounds Corcoran and I didn’t actually see the passenger disappearance happen.

But before that, when the original mutineers were sucked out into space, we could see the agony on their faces as they asphyxiated and boiled out, apart from the lacerations from broken glass. They were in terrified agony. As they were swept away into space I followed their path using the youniform zoom to keep them in sight as long as possible. They simply winked out on me. One moment there, then gone. I thought they had drifted into a lunar shadow and about then I had my hands full with the rest of the passengers who were rioting and had locked myself and Corcoran out of the transport. We could see in and it was an absolute shambles. We got back in and blasted off in a hurry, about ten of the passengers had vanished when we went back to check on them. During the prep for ejecting the useless stuff we were both occupied and when we went back to the passenger area the ship was empty. We knew something weird was going on but there was nothing we could do about it.”

“Thank you. Sheila, your experience with the fleet and Bob Evans please?”

“I can’t add any more to my original report. Our shuttle was almost out of reaction mass as we headed to join the fleet behind the moon to escape the anti-matter swarm. Corcoran and Martin had used a laser reflecting off the anti-matter to send out a Mayday signal and the reflected laser frequencies from the anti-matter set off grand mal epilepsy like seizures in people who had no history of the affliction. If they were not removed from the source very quickly the seizures stressed the body beyond limit and the person died, which is what happened to our pilots and one passenger.” She reached out for Martin’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly, for no matter that no one could have predicted such an effect, he still felt bad inside and his face had dropped at the verbalizing once again.

Shelia continued,”We figured out what the message was and by then we were in line of sight communications with the fleet. Commander Bob Evans had taken charge and put me in command of my ship. He worked out an intercept with Martin and Corcoran but we had to lose their transport. It was calculated but risky, however the alternative was to see them go by and continue into space forever.