Vampire's Day (Book 2): Zero Model (4 page)

14
. Lines-3

Hanging up, Walt sat motionless, experiencing an acute and irrational desire to break something. Smash something into smithereens. It was good that he had sent the girl away – now he was so angry that he might have beat and maimed her. He needed to calm down; this senseless anger was counterproductive and illogical. Walt counted to ten, and then turned to the glass wall and the ocean beyond. The rain had intensified, and he could see the tops of the palm trees rocking in the wind. The storm was approaching; and, because of this storm, the military had postponed a launch by twenty-four hours.

That rocket launch wasn’t supposed to happen; they had to allocate free time before the end of the day, until the Prometheus had landed at the specified point. Until that moment nothing was supposed to happen that could violate completion of the mission. But the storm had begun long before forecasted, advancing from ocean to land, moving toward the testing ground. Because the last three launches had failed, one of the generals canceled the agreements and ordered the launch to be moved to the start of a day before the storm hit.

The three previous launches had ended in failure, but the fourth was a success – the interceptor missile shot down a satellite target. The interception was carried out by the remote detonation of a cluster warhead; so the target was destroyed by a stream of fragments, at an accuracy of ninety percent. But not all the fragments found the target; some passed the satellite and moved on at terminal velocity until they found a new target: the spacecraft completing a long-term mission, on the last leg of the journey.

Prometheus received eight direct hits, which destroyed the engine system at the moment when the spacecraft completed a series of braking maneuvers before separating from the lander. Communication had been lost, and it wasn’t possible to find out the extent of damage, as Prometheus fell in an uncontrolled descent from orbit. The angle of entry into the atmosphere was higher than calculated, and it was surprising that the brake system worked at all, dropping the lander in the waters of the Pacific Ocean fifty-six nautical miles from the coast. There was no one waiting for its appearance and no one was ready for it. Prometheus didn’t get taken into the lab, as planned, and didn’t go through all the necessary quarantine barriers. No, it was just fished out of the water by some local fishermen who were there for tuna!

“Lord!” For the first time since living with his foster family, Walt invoked the God he had never believed in. “We work for seven years, we get the cargo, deliver it to a distance of ninety million miles and then lose it because of some idiot in the last five hundred kilometers!”

It was necessary to retrieve Prometheus as soon as possible. Instead of relying on numerous deputies, Walt decided to personally supervise the operation before it got even worse. He ordered a helicopter, despite the fact that he usually used a car, assuming that it was safer. Today security could not be taken into account, because time was of the essence.

15. Surgery-3

“Don’t stop calling them!”

The ocean breeze fanned the flames, and the pumps continued to pump sea water, but all that his men could do was not allow the fire to get to the last gates through which the first group would come. Five minutes ago, the leader had reported that they were able to break into the central hangar. From this moment communication was lost.

“Chief, listen!”

“Fire… can’t… a lot…”

“First, first!”

Bronson tried to call the leader, but the only answer was the roar of flame and gunshots. There were many shots, the bursts of several guns. Clearly there was fighting somewhere in the middle of the burning warehouse.

“Come on!”

He couldn’t wait any longer and Bronson led the second group, punching his way with silver streams of carbon dioxide from the fire extinguishers. They had no connection with the first group, but the beacon they’d left was only twenty-seven meters away. However, it was necessary to run these twenty-seven meters through the fire, dodging between the mangled skeletons of trucks and risking being buried under the burning roof.

The shooting had stopped a moment ago, but then started again, as Bronson and his men continued to move forward, every moment expecting to fight an unknown enemy. Instead of an enemy they came across one of the civilians, who had gone into the fire with the first group. Emil grabbed him and started shouting questions.

“Well, what did he say?”

“They were attacked, he kept saying that.”

“Who attacked them?”

“I don’t know!”

“I see them!”

Through the flames and smoke Bronson saw his soldiers and several civilians who were pushing a cart carrying a large metal ball. It was for this ball that they had gone into the fire!

The first group opened fire again, but Bronson still couldn’t see who they were shooting at. Just a couple of shadows flashed through the smoke.

“Get down!”

The shock wave hit with such force that they were nearly knocked down. This wasn’t like the shots from grenade launchers and hand grenades; Bronson realized that somewhere ahead had begun to detonate ammunition, which exploded because of the fire.

“Come on!”

He had no choice; he had to get the damn ball before everything here exploded. He went into the fire, his men lined up in a narrow wedge, cutting through the flames with jets of carbon dioxide. An intolerable heat began to work through his fireproof suit, but Bronson could see the cart, near the burned bodies of civilians.

“Push the cart back!”

Soldiers began to push the cart to the door. Explosions were continuing, but he could no longer hear shots. A flaming man fell out of the fire at him, in which Bronson somehow finds his fighter.

“Close face!”

The burning man couldn’t hear him, and Chief used his extinguisher, quickly getting rid of the fire. There was a second burning man following immediately, and Bronson once again used a silver stream of carbon dioxide, completely emptying the tank. And then he realized that it wasn’t one of his soldiers, but a woman. He dropped to his knee and shouldered the burned soldier, and, as he did so, he felt his right leg pierced by a sharp pain. The woman had grabbed his leg and clenching her teeth over his high boots and biting through the extremely durable fireproof fabric. With a lightning-quick motion, he pulled out his gun and immediately shot a bullet into the only surviving eye on the burned face.

16. Surgery-4

The two soldiers with the cart had already got through the gate and were outside; the other two, one of them wounded, were almost at the exit, when ammunition started to explode. Bronson shuddered from the impact. It felt as if his back and legs had been hit by a sledgehammer, and he lost his balance, falling to the hot floor with burned soldiers hitting him. Chief tried to get up, soldiers coming to help.

“Faster, the foot is about to collapse!”

Two soldiers lifted him, while another one picked up the wounded, and together they escaped from hell.

“Medic!”

The fire at the warehouse continued, but now it wasn’t their problem. The main problem now lay on the steel cart, towed to a safe distance and surrounded by soldiers. Bronson looked at the charred sphere, while the doctor removed his burned protective suit and applied an anesthetic.

“Who shot me?”

“No one. This isn’t bullets or buckshot; you were hit by brick rubble. The armor on your back withstood the blow, but your legs are badly affected.”

Chief was aware of that without the doctor telling him. He could see his blood-soaked trousers and feel how much blood was in his shoes.

“Will I be able to walk?”

“Yes, you will. Why did you go into the fire? We need to get you to a hospital, there…”

“I can’t go to the hospital yet. Get me the patron!”

The patron had been trying to solve questions of salvage, so the soldiers quickly led him to Bronson.

“How many people did you send with us to the warehouse?”

“Twenty-one, senor. It seems that none of them returned.”

“Okay, so it should be. No survivors!”

“I got it, senor.”

The ball had already been covered with black fireproof cloth and was fixed for loading on the rover. Bronson was ready to make the call; he wasn’t planning to let anyone else steal the glory.

“I have the cargo. I repeat, I have the cargo, ready for transportation to the base!”

“Condition?”

“Your ball was badly burned. We had to take it out of the fire.”

“Losses?”

Bronson thought for a moment. From the first group they had managed to save only two men, both badly burned, so it was not certain if the hospital would be able to save them. Two more soldiers were missing, and their bodies would only be retrieved after the fire was out. The three marines killed in a padded Hummer he didn’t count, they were from the base and so were subject to other commanders.

“Two killed, two wounded. No witnesses.”

“Stay on the base until further notice. The receiving team has already taken off and, if necessary, you will offer them support.”

“Roger that.”

He had double vision in eyes from loss of blood and was under the effect of a powerful anesthetic, but still Bronson watched the loading of the ball in the armored truck, and only then allowed Doc to lay him on an ambulance stretcher. The work wasn’t finished yet, because now he was responsible for the mysterious cargo.

17. Lines-4

Immediately after takeoff, Walt’s thoughts went back to the lines, only now it wasn’t an attempt to solve an interesting scientific problem; he now believed that the lines were the key to the crisis, which was becoming more and more real. First Prometheus crashed, and not where expected. Then the lander was found by fishermen. And then, where it was found, for some unknown reason a battle had begun. The Special Combat Group had been sent for the lander, but in any case it’s another unfortunate accident. Even worse - perhaps it’s no accident, but regularity.

Walt couldn’t escape the thought that there had been an encrypted warning in the lines that he hadn’t understood in time. This hypothesis was no worse than any other.

The lines had been found one hundred and twelve meters to the north-east of the Object, on the second day of their searches. A plate with the lines on it was lying at an angle, and on the left side it was buried under the sand. First rover resource to the moment was almost completely consumed, the rover was severely damaged after slipped off a cliff and now moved slowly, passing smudged image with the sole survivor camera.

The technical team had conducted a small miracle, using the images from the dying robot. Overcoming the huge time delay - Mars at the time was coming to aphelion - they produced films and photographs of the Objects, before the link to the rover was finally lost. A day later, Walt received his customer's offer to join the project, not knowing then that it would become the main focus of his life.

Building a new rover took more than a year, and happened under his direct supervision. Previously, Walt hadn’t done work for the space industry, so this secret mission dominated him entirely, requiring new, unexpected perspectives and objectives. Feeling the lack of knowledge in this area, Walt continued to educate himself, passing accelerated courses on the creation of spacecraft, as well as space flight theory.

They built a unique machine, Walt and his men managing to create the smallest nuclear engine in the world specifically for the rover; it would provide enough energy to work all the time, without depending on solar panels, which were inefficient on Mars.

The long flight of Prometheus was a success, Walt leading the flight from his own mission control center, where former NASA specialists worked. As a result, they were able to bring the Prometheus to the target and successfully land at the desired point, although one of the two accompanying reconnaissance satellite crashed. Because of a programming error the braking engines worked too early, causing the satellite to fail to exit Martian orbit. Walt found its loss acceptable; he knew how many spacecraft were destroyed, having never reached the fourth planet from the sun.

Once Prometheus had successfully landed, the second satellite went into orbit and every fifty minutes passed over the Object, providing quality pictures and finally confirming the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence to Walt.

18. Lines-5

It took two days for the rover to reach the Object, gently rising from the crater on a small plateau, the top of an extinct volcano. Walt’s team had spent those days producing detailed maps and three-dimensional models of the Object made on the basis of images from orbit. Wide-angle lenses filmed day and night, supercomputers worked on the analysis of the satellite data, but they hadn’t found anything else that even remotely resembled an artificial object. There were only stony plains, craters, red sand dunes and the flat tops of mountains.

The Object at the center of the plateau was a square stone plate with a size of ten meters, by five meters climbing over sand and pebbles. On the eastern side of the plate was a gently sloping ramp which the original rover was able to climb up, a few minutes before the connection was completely lost. Anyway, they knew that they could get to the top, and had a few photos. In the center of the stone foundation was a massive metal octagon obelisk, two meters in height.

The second rover found the first one in the same place that it had remained for two years, and proceeded to the obelisk. It provided an accurate measurement of size, and detailed photographs from all possible angles.

There was nothing extraordinary, nothing that couldn’t be analyzed. The obelisk was made of steel, with a significant amount of molybdenum, nickel and vanadium. The steel top was sealed with a thin layer of light volcanic glass. The purpose of a glass cover was unclear, but it certainly didn’t protect the steel under it against corrosion - on Mars there was no corrosion.

Semenov, chief of materials in their group, had insisted on sending samples of glass and steel back to Earth in the Prometheus lander, at least a few tens of grams. He didn’t want to miss the opportunity to explore how the steel changed under the influence of the seven hundred and fifty million years on the Mars surface.

Having carefully studied the obelisk, Walt took the decision to stop working there and go back down the ramp to explore the plate with lines. He couldn’t come up with an explanation why the plate had been placed separately, but was sure that it was deposited there as the answer to the question that hides the obelisk.

The rover returned to the plate and slowly cleaned off the sand with its manipulator. Thirty-seven hours later they finally managed to see the lines with all the details.

The plate wasn’t oriented to the cardinal, it was at an angle to the obelisk and understanding where the top or bottom was wasn’t possible. The lines weren’t painted, but bulged out of the surface; this wasn’t done by a cutting tool, but with a laser. There was the same steel, with a significant amount of molybdenum, nickel and vanadium, and the same volcanic glass, although here it hadn’t survived as well.

A chip, that's what it is, Walt thought, looking at the plate model, made by photographs and three-dimensional images. It's part of some chip or mechanism, abandoned near the obelisk for an unknown reason. Understanding the meaning of those lines wasn’t possible, and he said as much to his customers immediately, on the first day when he saw a few pictures of very poor quality, made by the first rover.

It was possible that the lines were meant to convey some meaningful message, but he couldn’t decrypt it. No one could. They needed a key, or at least a few well-known words, without which any attempts to understand what the lines meant, would end in failure. He remembered unsuccessful attempts to translate the language of the Minoan civilization on Crete – and that was a language created by people and for people. These lines had been burned on the plate when life on Earth had not moved beyond the warm shallow seas.

The customers didn’t believe Walt and made a number of attempts to decipher the lines using the most advanced military supercomputers. As Walt expected, it was ineffectual.

He also tried to understand the lines periodically and also repeatedly failed. Sometimes Walt tried to convince himself that the lines didn’t mean anything at all, that the plate was just a piece of some machine or debris thrown away by the creators of the obelisk as unnecessary. And yet he couldn’t stop thinking about the lines, suspecting that he was doomed to see them in a dream for the rest of his life.