Protocol 7

OPERATIONS BAY 32

Eric Schultz had an advanced degree in mechanical engineering and an international award for his work in quantum alloys. Robert Pallaso had two doctorates, one in industrial chemistry and the other in high energy physics. Each of them had worked for less than two years at jobs in Antarctic Station 9 for UNED and a series of companies with names no one could pronounce when they were “recruited” to the deep research stations on Shelf 1 within a week of each other—part of a horrible storm-related “accident” that “killed” seventeen scientists and engineers and made them Vector5 slaves for the rest of their lives.

Today, these award-winning innovators and technologists were considered something less than mildly talented mechanics, assigned to the DITV operations bay, a thousand feet under the icy surface. Their assignment: to load heavy-voltage weaponry onto the killing machine’s chassis in less than ten minutes. If they did not do so, they would receive no end-of-shift meal. If they made an error, they would receive no end-of-shift meal. If they were caught complaining or refusing to contribute with the proper enthusiasm, they would simply be shot in the head. Twice.

A coterie of Vector5 soldiers formed a loose ring around the operations bay, watching impassively as the team of prisoners fought the weather and the mismatched technology to complete the task. The work was dangerous and difficult and unimaginably cold, but they kept at it. They had little choice. After all, the end-of-shift meal was one of only two given every day. Missing it wasn’t simply unpleasant; it was life-threatening.

“What the hell are they planning to do with these?” Eric asked under his breath as he tried desperately to mount the high voltage generator below the hull of the DITV.

“I have no idea,” Bob said in classic prisoner’s monotone. He could only be heard a few feet away; his mouth barely moved at all. “But it sure as hell seems like something is going on with the Black Ops team. Some kind of ambush.”

A dark look passed over Eric’s features. “Hope it’s not Lucas and the boys. They were good guys.”

“They were idiots,” Bob said bitterly. “Plain stupid to escape like they did. I mean, what the hell are they going to do?”

A Vector5 soldier at the edge of the circle banged the stock of his rifle against a pipe to get their attention. “Hey!” he barked. “Stop the chatter and move on!”

“Finishing up,” Eric said quickly and got back to work.

The vehicle was so tall they needed a special robot to hoist the generator to its mounting plate. It was perilous work, and the frozen conditions made it almost impossible, but they were motivated. Eric and Bob worked as fast as they could.

It wasn’t fast enough.

Eric was tightening the last two nuts on the generator when a five-man Black Ops squad came double-timing out of the shelter, complete in tactical gear. They rushed to the cargo doors that swayed open on their own—in response, Bob knew, to the special-status code chips embedded in their ice suits. It was virtually impossible to open the DIT, let alone operate the complex machine, without one of those s-s chips. Without its answer-back, the controls simply would not respond, the engines wouldn’t fire.

“They’re early,” Bob said.

“They don’t care,” Eric replied.

“This doesn’t look good,” Bob said and hurried to finish. He could feel the vibrations of the special team’s boots echoing from inside the hull; he knew they were stowing gear, strapping in, responding to the lash of the sergeant’s constant goading, “Move it, move it, move it!”

A heartbeat later, the main engine began to cycle up, but Eric and Bob still weren’t done.

“Robert, don’t forget the cable underneath the fuelling hatch. It’s going to catch.”

“I’ve got it,” Robert replied, and scrambled toward the back of the vehicle. The cable was lying in front of a massive, knobby twelve-foot tire; if the DITV rolled over it in its haste to depart, the vehicle itself wouldn’t know the difference, but the cable would be crushed and ruined and would have to be replaced—which meant more work, more punishment, and fewer meals for them. They just couldn’t let that happen.

As he started to jump for the cable, the engines directly over his head roared to full life. It made him flinch—just a bit—and when his boots hit the ground he slipped on the icy floor. Simultaneously, the massive hydrogen boosters whined to life, and the floor under the vehicle—under Bob—start to vibrate.

Bob shouted, “Wait!” and struggled to get to his feet.

It was too late.

He had only made it to his knees when the DITV, impatient to be on its way, jumped forward, smashed the cable deep into the ice, and rolled directly over Robert Pallaso, beginning with his knees and ending with half his skull.

He was crushed to a pulp in an instant.

Eric stood motionless for a long moment, frozen in horror, then dropped to his knees and screamed—a sound of absolute, inarticulate anguish as he stared at the pieces of his friend’s body splattered on the tunnel walls. The DITV had already disappeared into the deep tunnel, unaware and unconcerned about what it might have done. The asset loss would be logged in Vector5 files; Eric would be moved to another team, and he would continue to work until he, too, was no longer of any use. There would be no funeral, no service, no obituary. Vector5 would just…continue.

Eric couldn’t stop screaming. He couldn’t see anything but the crushed body of his friend.

One of the soldiers—the one who had shouted at him earlier—stepped close behind Eric and buried the muzzle of his weapon in the nape of his neck. The soldier knew the protocol. There was no room for mourning. The mission was greater than any one man.

“Get up,” he said.

Tears streamed from Eric’s eyes. He didn’t rise.

“Get up,” the soldier said, and before Eric could respond, looped an arm around the scientist’s neck, pulled him roughly to his feet, and dragged him, struggling, into the security shed at the edge of the Ops Bay.

The moment he was inside, he dropped him on the floor and said, “Get yourself together before you’re locked up.”

This was life underneath the ice, and the soldier knew it well. He was doing the prisoner a favor by reminding him of that fact.

Eric tried to compose himself, struggled to make his body move, stand, work.

He risked one look at the blank, glittering helmet of the Vector5 soldier. “Why?” he rasped, scarcely able to speak. “What could be so important? What could matter so much that…what happened…just wouldn’t matter?”

The soldier did not speak. He did not remove his helmet. After a moment he simply moved the end of his rifle, from aiming at Eric’s stomach to aiming at his head, and said tonelessly, “Get back to work.”

Eric got back to work. The pulped body of his friend had already been removed by others just like them—other laborers, other workers just a little too valuable to kill…just yet.

Over a mile away, the DITV began its climb to the side of Tunnel 5, a huge and deadly robotic insect on the prowl. The team knew their mission.

They would be taking no prisoners.





THE ENCAMPMENT

Samantha walked through the encampment without any real destination. She just needed to keep moving—for her peace of mind and for the tiny amount of warmth that movement generated.

She came across Nastasia, sitting in a corner of the roughly hewn ice room by herself, holding her inhaler in one hand and looking thoughtful. Sam had noticed the device when they were still in the Spector, but she hadn’t mentioned it before—there was simply too much going on.

She stopped in front of the Russian beauty. “Hey,” she said.

Nastasia’s head snapped up, surprised by Sam’s sudden arrival. For one moment she looked almost afraid—then just embarrassed.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I do not like to…take care of this…in front of other people.”

Sam gave her a gentle smile. “I am a doctor, you know. I might be able to help you.”

Nastasia shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not with this.”

“Is it asthma? There are many more advance treatments available these days, far past the old nebulizers.” She nodded at the little canniser-and-pump device in Nastasia’s hand. “That looks like a pretty up-to-date gadget, I admit, but—”

“No,” Nastasia said shortly. “It’s not asthma. And I prefer not to discuss it.” Her eyes burned for a moment, and then she looked away. “Thank you,” she said, dismissing Samantha.

“Oh,” Sam said, slightly stunned by the rudeness. “Oh. You’re welcome.” She turned on her heel and walked away quickly, stung by the rejection. Around the next ten-foot pile of debris, she found Simon and Lucas in deep conversation, and she didn’t like what she saw.

Lucas was lecturing their leader—again—and Simon was not taking it well. He shifted from foot to foot, scowled with impatience, tried to interrupt and didn’t succeed, balled his fists and let them loose again, all in an attempt to remain reasonable—or at least give that illusion.

Lucas was holding a complicated bit of robotics, a roughly spherical mechanism with more legs than body—something she had heard called a “scrambler drone,” just hours before.

“You have to understand the scope of what we’re dealing with here,” Lucas began again.

Finally, Simon had taken all he could stand. Samantha could see him snap, even from a distance. She held her breath and tensed; she almost covered her ears in anticipation of Simon’s explosive reaction.

“No,” Simon said, his voice dripping with badly suppressed anger. “I don’t ‘need to understand.’ I understand enough. You need to understand that I’m not waiting here anymore. Now just tell me: where the hell is my father being held?”

She had never heard him sound more tightly controlled…or more dangerous.

“Look,” Lucas said, sounding perilously close to condescending “I don’t think you—”

Simon grabbed Lucas by the neck and yelled, “I don’t give a f*ck what you think.”

Max stepped forward and put a hand on Simon’s upraised fist. “Hey, let’s—”

Simon shrugged it off, his muscles tense as iron. “Tell me!”

It was Samantha’s voice that cut through him. “Simon!” she snapped. “Please!”

He faltered then, but only for a moment. His eyes flicked to the side to meet hers, and he abruptly let loose of the scientist’s jacket collar and stepped back, letting the man collapse to his knees, clutching his throat and gasping for breath.

Samantha started to say something more, but Simon held a hand up to her to stop the interruption. He had already communicated what he had intended: there was no stopping him, and Lucas understood that now.

“All right, then,” he said roughly, rubbing his neck. “Traverse the broken tunnel above the Gorge; that will descend a mile onto the opposite side, and take you to Dragger Station, where there are more Vector5 than I’m willing to deal with.” He gave him a hooded, hostile look—no longer the friendly colleague of a few minutes ago. “You’re welcome to take one of the MagCycles with you, if you think you can manage it. And good luck in that frozen hell.”

Simon didn’t thank him. He simply turned and walked out of the encampment alone, finding his small duffel bag and stuffing it with a few of the ration packs they had brought from the Spector and some climbing supplies. Max followed close behind, looking grim and resigned. He knew there was no stopping him at this point.

Samantha’s body had gone cold with the realization of what was coming next. It’s too soon, she thought. Too fast. The team had been given no chance to sleep; they had barely eaten. Their level of tension concerning their own survival was higher than ever, and here was Simon, already pushing ahead.

Ryan stood up and said, “Simon, how are we all going to fit inside one ice cycle?”

Simon turned back instantly. “We’re not.”

“But…”

“But what, Sam? I’m going down myself.”

Andrew shook his head violently. “No,” he said. “No. We’re in this together. You can’t just do this on your own.”

Simon held up his hand again as if he didn’t need compassion any more than he needed argument.

“I need you guys here,” he said. “You need to figure out how the hell to get us out of here.” He snapped a look at his father’s friend. “Hayden,” he said sternly, “I’m counting on you to get back to the Spector and make her operational again before I return. And that won’t be long.”

“You’re daft,” the inventor said.

“…And you’ll need Ryan and Andrew both to pull that off.”

Hayden looked stubborn for an instant. “You’re still daft,” he said defiantly. “You’re right, but you’re still daft.”

“Don’t you think for a moment that you’re leaving this camp without me!” Samantha said sternly.

“I am. They need you here, and so do I.”

Her mouth tightened into a hard line of pain. Nastasia was already gathering her own belongings. “I’ll come with you,” she said as if she already knew what the response would be. “You’re going to need someone to help you navigate, and I’m the only one here who has a sense of the continent’s topography.”

Right then, something clicked inside Simon’s head, as if it was meant to be. The note, the rendezvous, the sign on the back of her neck. It felt as if she was supposed to be here. He could not put his finger on it. He looked at her head on and simply said, “I know.”

Max allowed himself a small smile knowing there was more to this than he originally thought.

The room fell silent for a few seconds. Simon threw his half-filled duffel over his shoulder and said, “It’s time.”

He walked over to Samantha and kissed her. He tried not to notice how she was fighting to hold back tears. “Sammy,” he said gently, “I’m coming back. With my father.”

She couldn’t contain her emotions as he let her go; she turned from him, weeping as he stepped away and tapped Hayden on the chest.

“I’m counting on you.”

Hayden’s nod was almost too delayed, but Simon pretended not to notice. He had already moved on before Hayden had any time to respond.

Samantha turned back to look at Simon one more time. Instead, she caught a glimpse of Nastasia’s slim figure following Max and Simon toward the fleet of MagCycles at the far end of the dark tunnel, the silhouettes of their bodies growing smaller and smaller as they walked away, until she could no longer see them.

Max took only a moment to squeeze into the pilot’s seat. He was already adjusting his helmet as Simon climbed into the passenger seat, and Nastasia pressed in front of him in a space not truly meant for a third party. Seconds later, the cycle’s powerful engine fired up and an electric blue light began to glow from the sides of the magnetic wheel. Before they even had a chance to feel the vibration building beneath them, the cycle tore up the ice below its wheels and exploded into the dark tunnel at lightning speed.

Nastasia’s body pressed tightly into Simon. All Simon could think of was Oliver.

* * *

Samantha turned back to see Hayden and the men already hard at work. Exhaustion and starvation didn’t matter to them; they had been given a job: fix the Spector, find a way out, and they were going to do it. They had little time to reach the Spector before the CS23s reached it. They had to move fast. She approached and heard the tail end of an odd conversation.

“…there is more than one network of tunnels down here?”

“Precisely,” replied a German scientist named Rolfe—once rotund, now hollow-cheeked and flabby from malnutrition and stress. “High-speed tunnels, not meant for human transport. They are using special pods that travel hundreds of miles across the continent suspended magnetically from structures embedded into the ice tunnels for transport of resources from one end of the continent to the other. There are only a few vehicles fast enough to travel in these high-speed shafts, and sometimes Vector5 uses them. They are known as Ice Raptors.”

“Well, people wouldn’t need to use them for the most part, would they?” Ryan asked. “Moving resources and supplies I understand, but surely with the cameras and communication systems, it doesn’t make sense for Vector5 to have humans travel these distances at these speeds.”

Rolfe shrugged. “I agree, but sometimes Vector5 has to transport personnel. Using the Raptor is very dangerous, however. There have been more than a few catastrophes where pods have slammed into the receptors and sliced through them. We’ve heard of a few openings on the other side that are easier to escape with, but I definitely do not suggest traveling through the transport tunnels to get there!”

Hayden looked bitter—another alternative eliminated. Samantha watched the men converse for a moment longer, then turned to walk along to the makeshift kitchen area where their meager food supplies had been laid out, scattered over random cases sitting on the icy floor.

She started to pick up an unopened MRE and noticed Nastasia’s nutrition pack slumped against the back of a crate, half-buried in discarded wrappers. It almost looked hidden.

Samantha pulled it from the trash and walked over to Hayden with a confused look on her face. Hayden was still in deep concentration over the plan to restart the damaged Spector, even though it was stuck in an icy tunnel miles away. She plopped it down on the floor next to Hayden.

“She left her med-bag here.”

Hayden looked up, completely distracted. “Who left what?”

It caught Andrew’s attention. “That’s odd,” he said. “She held onto that thing as if her life depended on it.”

Samantha nodded thoughtfully, then turned the pack over, letting the contents spill onto the worktable next to Hayden’s plans.

“Hey!” he protested, but she ignored him.

She pushed her fingers through the debris that had been in the bag. Nothing important, really: scraps of papers, a pen, a bottle of headache pills. “The inhaler is gone,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. “She must have taken it with her.”

“No she didn’t,” Andrew said. “She left it on the Spector.”

Samantha frowned. “But I saw her with it, just a few minutes ago—just before they left.”

“I’m sure,” he said and squinted as he recalled the last few minutes aboard the amphibious vehicle. “She was using it for whatever was bothering her. Then she shoved it into her nutrition pack and left it in the ready room. I’m positive.”

Samantha shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would she do that? And why would she have two of them?”

“Back-up?”

She shook her head one more time. “Have you seen these new inhalers? A year’s supply or more. And still: why put it in with a med-pack of vitamins and protein powders of all things?

“Maybe she took the other one with her,” replied Ryan. “She—”

“No,” Lucas said shortly, still out of sorts from his earlier disagreement with Simon. “I helped her buckle in. She was carrying nothing—certainly not an inhaler or…or any kind of small bag. “

Samantha began to lose herself in thought.

Lucas mistook her confusion and concern for weariness—though he wasn’t far wrong.

“Here,” he said, “let me show you a place you can rest for a little while.”

She wanted to say “no”—she wanted to resist with all her strength, but she realized resting would be the smart thing to do. She was going to need her strength.

“Thank you,” she said quietly and followed him to an insulated sleeping tent.





THE NETWORK

7:05 AM

Nastasia used all her strength to grip the armrests of the chair beneath her, steeling herself against the tremendous pressure of the MagCycle’s acceleration. She gritted her teeth as the unrelenting weight pushed and pushed against every square inch of her body.

The MC-7 was an ergonomically designed little cockpit connected to a massive ice-tire by a magnetic field, and that huge wheel carried its passengers down the cored tunnels of the Vector5 network at speeds that were beyond comprehension. It felt as fast as a bullet shot from the barrel of a rifle because of the narrow tunnels. Max struggled to control their headlong flight through a console that closely resembled the yoke of a small fixed-wing plane with foot-pedals and slide-buttons that dictated speed, attitude, and acceleration. He wore a flat-faced HUD navigation helmet that gave him a supernaturally clear view of the tunnel ahead, complete with luminous annotations on cracks, irregularities, and potential hazards. Max had used similar rigs in supersonic fighter planes over the years, but he had never seen one on a land vehicle before—and certainly never on a magnetically constructed unicycle that traveled over a hundred miles an hour.

All Nastasia could see outside the cockpit windscreen was a blur of black shadows flowing past in an endless torrent, illuminated only by the fitful flicker of the MagCycle’s own headlights. Her body swayed to one side, then the other, then back again as they careened forward through a darkness as thick as ink. And still the pressure made it almost impossible to breathe.

Max concentrated on his HUD diagram. In no time at all, he knew, they would reach the end of the tunnel, where it had been sliced open, sharp as a knife-cut from the great earthquake a dozen years ago. They would actually have to leap across that gap to the tunnel opening on the far side, if they hoped to reach Dragger Pass and below onto deeper tunnels and the elevator shaft that would take them to Oliver Fitzpatrick. He knew leaping across that Gorge almost meant suicide and they needed to accelerate full speed to even have a chance.

He did the only thing he could: he pushed his foot down even harder on the accelerator pedal and poured the last bit of power from the MagCycle’s electric generator into its wheel. He actually felt it jump forward, yet again, hitting and exceeding its top speed.

It was the fastest he had ever traveled on land.

Nastasia was painfully aware of how the massive acceleration was hurting Simon, sitting behind her, but there was nothing she could do about it. “Simon?” she said between clenched teeth. “Are you all right?”

He didn’t speak, but she felt the tight, brief nod of his head against her collarbone as he struggled to bring it forward from the pressure of the speed.

The downward angle of their headlong flight suddenly grew steeper, and the MagCycle picked up even more speed. I didn’t think that was possible, she told herself. She heard Simon curse under his breath as blood started rushing into their heads.

“Mother of god!” Max shouted as he looked into the lens of his helmet. “See the Gorge, and it’s f*cking huge.”

“Think we’ll make it?” Simon shouted back, his voice betraying some of the strain of her weight on him, as well as fear for all their lives.

“We have to,” Max said simply as he steered them down one last, long straightaway. His gloves gripped the yoke more tightly than ever.

“When will we—”

“NOW! HOLD ON!”

Max stamped on the accelerator to gain the last threshold speed, and Nastasia saw the world open up, revealed in a dim gray light that fell from high above them. The end of the tunnel spread wide open directly ahead; a cliff was visible on the far side of the Gorge, absolutely uninterrupted but for one ridiculously small circle—the other side of the tunnel directly ahead and below them, their target. But she was seeing so much more: a world that went up and up and disappeared into infinity and that plunged downward into impenetrable darkness. One that spread its arms into invisibly distant corridors left and right. She gaped at the tremendous space all around her, rushing toward her, during the one brief heartbeat that she still had solid ground beneath her.

Then they were airborne, projected from one side of the massive Gorge to the other in one long, almost graceful leap from the broken edge of the tunnel to its counterpart on the far side.

Max used all his strength to pull the control yoke back toward his body, shifting it to the left at the last moment as they flew, aiming for the tiny target of the tunnel mouth on the far side. G-forces caused Nastasia’s body to multiply its weight five times more as they flew; she heard Simon grunt as the pressure became literally unbearable.

For one fraction of an instant, in the moment after the MC-7 blew out of the tunnel opening like a projectile, it seemed to fly straight and true. But then, just as suddenly, it started tilting upward, lifting their bodies while the cockpit tried to spin over its own wheel, squealing and groaning in the air as it turned.

A millisecond later, the gigantic wheel smashed into the opposite ice wall, missing the opening by no more than two feet. It dug itself into the ice, disintegrating on impact; the magnetic field blinked out of existence and the cockpit flew free, rocketing through the air in an all-new arc.

They tumbled into the tunnel, clearing the lower lip of the opening by mere inches.

The box-shaped cockpit hit the floor of the tunnel in a shower of sparks and debris. Broken pieces of machinery cart-wheeled all around them as the chamber skidded against the ice floor, screaming down the tunnel for two hundred yards, then three hundred, skirling through the frost and ice until finally, inevitably, it began to slow and finally stop.

The cockpit housing, twisted hopelessly out of shape, came to a halt with one final bone-rattling jolt.

Nastasia was absolutely astonished. They were still alive.

Everything had gone black when the MC-7 hit the wall. Now she could feel the heat of a small laceration high on her forehead; she could hear Max breathing heavily, struggling to move.

“I’m stuck,” he said between clenched teeth. “Help me! We need to get out of this thing!”

“Just give me a minute,” Simon said briefly, sounding as if he was in pain.

Thank god he’s alive, Nastasia thought. In that final tumble across the cockpit, she had lost contact with him. She had no sense of where they were, where the doors were, even which way was up.

“I’m pushing on the passenger door with my feet,” Simon told them. “I think it’s stuck.”

She could locate him now, from the sound of his voice. “Here,” she said. “I’ll help.” She twisted around, felt through the darkness until her legs were lying alongside his and found the crumpled panel of the passenger door with her feet. “Both at once,” she said.

“Do it!” Simon yelled. “One…two…three!”

They kicked at the panel together in one strong blow and the door cracked open, just a bit. But it was enough. A second combined kick, and then a third, and they were able to wriggle out of the wrecked vehicle and roll onto the iced surface of the tunnel.

Simon activated the head and shoulder lamps of his exo-suit as he freed himself. It was all the light they needed.

The heat from Nastasia’s wound started throbbing as she pulled herself to her feet. She could feel herself trembling, and the paltry light of the suits showed her Simon was shaking as well—from the cold and shock in equal measure. A moment later, Max rolled out of the crushed cockpit as well, crawled to his feet and snapped on his emergency light source as well. It cast an eerie shadow over the fragments of broken machinery scattered fifty yards along the ice in both directions.

Nastasia saw something glittering against the ice and realized the heat from the wheel housing had melted the ice below it. There was actual water flowing down here, she realized. But as she watched—in a few seconds—it grew gelid, misty, and started to freeze all over again.

Max tapped at one of his shoulder lamps; it was already starting to flicker. “How much time do we have before the batteries die out on these suits?” he asked Simon.

“Eight hours,” Simon answered, looking at the digital readout on the suit’s forearm.

Nastasia looked at her own watch and thought for a moment. She could not help but wonder if Andrew and the rest of the team had found her satchel and noticed the missing items—or guessed that an identical set of items were still in the Spector.

She knew why she had left it there. She hoped that they would not retrieve it before her mission was complete.

Seven hours and twenty-six minutes, she told herself. That was how much time it would take before the cases she brought would explode, simultaneously, disintegrating the Spector and the renegade camp alike with all its inhabitants.

She forced herself not to give in to her growing empathy for these people. This was why she had been sent here. It had been bestowed upon her to carry out this task, and she would never, could never, question the will of the society that was her life. These were the instructions she had been given, etched for mere moments into that block of ice. She had to do as she was ordered, no matter how much she might wish it to be different.

It was called trimethylzone-18. It was a binary explosive; it came in two parts, one solid and one gaseous. Taken individually, they were inert, benign. But when the gas was mixed with the solid—when it was even exposed to it—the explosion that resulted was incredibly destructive.

The weapon had been developed by Nastasia’s masters to break things. The shockwave it generated actually shattered the fundamental bonds that held solid matter together; the molecules of stone, wood, ice and flesh were blasted to powder in an instant, no piece larger than a grain of sand. Even the compressive sound wave it created could kill a man at more than five hundred yards, and the mass required for the devastating effect was quite literally tiny.

The solid element of trimethylzone-18 was mixed with a bit of pigment and put into two protein powder packs. The gaseous element was compressed in a small canister and disguised as a medication inhaler. Then the tiny battery and timer embedded in the base of the inhaler was all the fuse that Nastasia needed: set the time, touch the base just so, and at the appointed moment a tiny charge from the batter would detonate an equally small bit of gunpowder, no bigger than a fingernail, that would crack the gas canister.

It’d mean death. As simple, as pure, and as final as that: death. All Nastasia had to do was put the inhaler in the nutrition pack, set the timer, and close it. And no one would escape the explosion to come, she knew. Not even Simon.

She had started to care about Simon. After all, she was human; she had come to care deeply for these people. But her cause outweighed her compassion. There was no room for hesitation or regret—not now. Mankind’s fate had been written. This was all she knew: it was better for the planet in the long run, and she would do as she had been told. She had to.

Simon noticed that she was in a daze, suspended in her own space for a few moments. He remained quiet, recovering himself. It was Max who broke the silence.

“Come on Nastasia. We have to keep moving or the heat cells will drain the battery in the suit.”

“Wait, Max,” Simon gestured as he approached her, standing inches away from her face. The light from his suit illuminated Nastasia’s face and made her stark blue eyes stand out like an apparition’s. “Do you need to tell me something?” he asked.

For the first time, Nastasia realized that she might not be able to do this. She had started to care about him too much, but she needed to stop her emotions from getting in the way of her mission.

“No,” she replied stolidly.

Max waited for them impatiently.

“All right then,” said Simon quietly, looking straight at her face for a few seconds longer. Then, abruptly, as if released from a trance, he cracked his knees, bent down, and snatched at the gear he had by his feet: his small duffel bag, the climbing tools, and the bizarre weapon that Lucas had given them. He turned from her without another glance and started to walk straight ahead, deeper into the tunnel. She followed a few steps behind. Max brought up the rear.

The temperature was close to twenty degrees below zero—the suits told them so. They could feel the cold against their faces despite the technology’s best efforts. Nastasia wondered what would happen if the batteries ran out.

But they were close. The limited directional capabilities of the suits told them that they would reach Dragger Station in less than a mile.

It’s almost over, she told herself as she watched Simon trudge onwards, a scant few feet ahead of her. Finally, it will be over soon.

* * *

Blackburn tapped his shoulder and said, “I’ll be ready for the transport to the Nest in seven minutes. I need to see what the hell is going on down there for myself.” He hadn’t spoken a word of his intentions to his adjutant, but the man was a professional: he didn’t betray an ounce of surprise. He simply said, “Yes, sir, commander,” and slipped away to make the arrangements.

Things were happening, he knew—just outside of his view, just beyond his reach—and he didn’t like it when things happened. He had seen the long-lens images of the things they had uncovered more than ten thousand feet below the surface. He had read the reports and interviewed the few surviving workers about their experience before they had finally been put down. But he hadn’t seen them first-hand—at least not yet.

He needed to talk with Oliver Fitzpatrick face-to-face. It was time to get the information needed from the stubborn man, one way or another.

Oliver Fitzpatrick had been part of Blackburn’s greater plan. He had summoned the scientist to Antarctica to study the first of the anomalies and then imprisoned him when the situation began to get out of hand. He couldn’t risk having him leave—or talking to anyone. That’s why he was “killed,” to spread the story about his death. Oliver was Vector5’s now—now and forever. That was just the way it had to be.

But Blackburn was running out of time. The Committee wanted answers. The damn artifacts absolutely pulsed with a level of power that no one had ever seen before, and they wanted access to it immediately, not after years of overly cautious study.

As he stepped inside the transport, he checked the magazine of his rifle and placed it in his holster.

He was prepared to do whatever was necessary to end this.

This would be Oliver’s last chance.

* * *

The Black Ops team didn’t have a name; it didn’t have a designation. Its existence, though entirely secret even within the confines of Vector5, was completely denied. It simply didn’t exist, until it was needed by one of the very few, very powerful higher-ups in the organization.

Blackburn was one of those higher-ups. And right now he needed that team to exist.

The team members did not speak to each other as their specially equipped DITV left Dragger Station and pushed its way into a narrow fissure. The canyon was a shortcut: it would take them upward quickly, right to the entrance of the target site where the intruder vessel waited for them.

The intruder vessel was just a secondary consideration now. The real target was former Commander Roland.

The DITV seemed to writhe like a living thing as it climbed, compressing its sophisticated wheels against ice walls as hard as glass. The void below it fell well over one thousand feet; the shaft above it climbed just as high, though it was impossible to tell. The darkness in all directions was midnight black and impenetrable.

It didn’t matter. The Deep Ice Transport—or rather the AI that drove it—knew exactly where they were going.

There had been some kind of commotion at departure—something about those worthless, lazy workers who didn’t clear the departure zone quickly enough. No one on board knew or cared; the work they had been assigned had been finished. Now the high-voltage generator was securely mounted to the vehicle’s underside, poised to produce enough electricity to melt almost any material on contact—including whatever material comprised the body of the intruder vessel. The DIT was also mounted with a more powerful version of the ray gun carried by the soldiers themselves. The bullets of this particular armament were designed to penetrate deep frozen ice on impact, but they would also destroy any shield from vehicles that it came in contact with—the super-powered equivalent of Teflon-coated “cop killer” bullets, scaled up to the size and strength of a rocket-powered grenade.

The diehard soldiers thought about their armament as much as they thought of the workers they had left behind. If they thought about anything at all, they thought about their mission. That was all that mattered: kill Commander Roland and, if possible, destroy the intruder vessel.

Nothing else.

* * *

“Still no response?” Roland asked, trying to keep the shrill annoyance out of his voice.

“Nothing, sir.”

“Then call again. Now!”

He looked out the front windscreen of his Vehicle at the distant, immobile CS-23s attached to the sidewall of the airshaft. The massive ice Spiders were too large to go any farther down the utility tunnel; it was amazing they had managed to get as close to the intruder vessel as they had. Roland’s craft, however, was much smaller and far more maneuverable. It was fully capable of threading that icy needle.

They had literally waited hours for the go-ahead from Central to cross the last few thousand feet of ice and grime to take the target, but nothing had come through. Roland was past worrying about it: he had grown weary of bowing to protocol. It was time to act.

Roland was about to give the order to start down the pitch-black tunnel on foot when the comm officer suddenly straightened up, a finger to his earpiece. “Sir!” he said. “Finally! What is the word?”

The comm officer blinked wide eyes at him and forced out the words he clearly did not want to say. “You are instructed to stand down,” he said. “Pull back. Out of the airshaft. Retreat to Fissure 9.”

“What?” Roland said, purely astonished. “What? Who the hell gave that order?”

This time the comm officer touched a panel on his console and let the technology do the talking. The voice from Command was deep, resonant, and totally inhuman. It was a higher-order AI, the one who worked directly for Blackburn. “This command is a direct order from Central.”

“Who at Central?” Roland demanded. He had known all along that his failure to stop the intruder vessel could prove to be dangerous. Blackburn had no tolerance for such things.

“Sir, I’m picking up data from below Dragger Pass,” said the signals officer.

Roland’s whole body turned toward him. “Profile?”

The answer came instantly. “Sir, it seems to be one of our own vehicles heading up the fissure. Radio silhouette is familiar, sonar pick-up is dead on for a DITV. Other than that, I’ve got no ID.”

Black Ops, he told himself.

“All right,” he said grimly “I think I know what this is. Let’s pull back.” He was no different than the rest of them; he had heard all the stories about Commanders who had been “retired” by nameless, silent Black Ops teams. No one doubted that Blackburn was paranoid enough to do it, even to the veterans who had helped him build up the project from nothing more than a mission.

It didn’t matter. “It is what it is,” he muttered. Vector5’s second most popular motto, right up there with Forever Secret.

The vehicle whirled on its axis and started back toward Fissure 9 at a reasonable clip. The ice beneath the DITV’s wheels, frozen in place thousands of years ago, cracked like shattered glass.

Roland sat in the darkened cockpit and watched the screens around him. There was nothing more to do…but wait.

* * *

Simon, Max, and Nastasia walked for a long time and spoke barely spoke a word. Conversation had been difficult to begin with; soon it became entirely too much trouble. Even listening itself was an effort; they seemed to drift in private, frozen worlds of their own where even the grinding of their boots against the icy ground no longer registered.

They just walked. And walked. And walked.

They took a final, gradual curve to the right and realized that they no longer needed the guttering illumination of their shoulder lamps. The ground beneath their feet sloped up slightly and then, quite simply, ended. It dropped off at an almost perfect ninety degrees, as if a giant’s guillotine had split the earth and pulled out a slice.

They stopped more out of surprise than caution and found themselves standing in the shadows less than fifty feet from an unusual suspension bridge that spanned the Gorge. The bridge was wide enough to carry vehicles and machinery across the vast opening. At the far side of the bridge, rising above its span for more than a mile, plunging below it to an even greater depth, was the elusive vertical fortress built into a wall of ice as smooth as glass.

Draggar Station.

To Simon it looked as if the massive structure was stuck to the wall of ice like a parasite, alien to the environment but blending in perfectly. It cast a faint glow on the surrounding ice, creating an eerie image, a lighthouse in a dark ocean that was not simply below it, but all around it, forever.

Behind the massive façade there were cavities in the ice: expansive living quarters. Immediately behind that four-story structure swelled a spherical cavity the size of a small stadium. Half a hundred small tunnels opened into that half-dome, each leading in a different direction, all of them surrounding three huge vertical shafts that carried vehicles, equipment, and soldiers thousands of feet below to Central Command. This, clearly, was the hub, the point from which a Vector5 soldier or captives could begin the journey outwards to any corner of the continent, or descend to its lowest, most powerful point: Central Command and the dark secrets below.

At last, Simon said to himself. At the crossroads. And he couldn’t deny it: there was a magnetic attraction here, the pull of gravity itself, drawing him toward Dragger Station, drawing him deeper into the mystery…and closer to his father.

Max was the first to hear the distant rumbling. He mistook it for the deep-throated roar of the icy breeze in the Gorge, and ignored it for the moment.

He didn’t know what was coming their way…and the Black Ops, half a mile from that same bridge, still not in sight of the Gorge, had no idea what awaited them either.