CHAPTER ONE
DREAM-LINKING
ERYN
“They get everywhere,” the Furious Ocelot moaned, speaking to me via the main console rather than through a physical envoy. “And you should see the state of some of their quarters. Clothes and empty plates all over the place. It’s disgusting.”
The Ocelot was a trailblazer. His job was to scout a path for the Thousand Arks of the Continuance. He was not— and he had taken every opportunity to point this out over the past few days—a passenger vessel. Usually, it was just the two of us out here among the unnamed stars, exploring the territory ahead of the main fleet. Having another three bodies aboard made the place seem overcrowded. Once we’d located Shay and her ship, I wouldn’t be sorry to say goodbye to this crew and reclaim my solitude.
From my seat on the Ocelot’s bridge, I stared out at the swirling, unreal light of the substrate. I knew Shay was out there somewhere, and I was going to find her. In the days since her ship’s disappearance, I’d lobbied hard to be allowed to lead this follow-up mission. I’d called in favours and banged on desks, and finally been given the assignment— on the strict condition I also bring a team of experienced search and rescue personnel. But the Ocelot didn’t like hauling passengers, and he made no secret of the fact.
“I’ll have a word with them,” I promised. “And ask them to pick up after themselves a bit more.”
“Please do.”
Green readouts on the windshield told me all the ship’s systems were operating within normal parameters. Despite his bitching, the Ocelot and I were still in synch. We were still functioning as an effective partnership. He remained the same old ship I had known for so long. I revelled in the familiar smell of the grease on the hydraulic arms supporting the cargo ramp, the clang of our footsteps on the metal gratings set into the decks, and the ever-present grumble of the engines.
The evening before our arrival at the Couch Surfer’s last known position, we gathered in the Furious Ocelot’s crew lounge for a final briefing from Tom Snyder, the ranking leader of the expedition. Food printers and a sink were set into one bulkhead, and a large screen into another. The rest of the wall space had been given over to equipment panels and overhead lockers. A hexagonal table took up one corner of the room. It doubled as an eating space and conference table. I sat with my hands curled around a coffee cup. The Ocelot’s envoy sat to my left. He was a heavy-set, bald, blue-skinned man in a three-piece suit the same colour as his complexion. Although physically human, he had no independent mind of his own, and it was the Ocelot that looked out from behind those cobalt eyes. The xenologist, Li Chen, sat beside him, with her back to the wall. She was somewhere in her twenties, and slightly built, with purple hair and contact lenses to match. Alvin Torres, the skinny paramedic, sat opposite me, and Tom Snyder occupied the stool to my right. With all five of us in there at once, the lounge felt cramped.
“Okay, listen up, folks.” Snyder had dark skin and a grey beard. “As you know, six days ago, one of our long-range scouts went missing. What you don’t know is that according to its last transmission, it ran through an emissions shell originating in this system.” The table surface cleared to reveal a map of nearby space. Snyder tapped one of the points of light. “More specifically on this planet here, which we’ve designated ‘Candidate-623’. It went to investigate, and it hasn’t been heard from since. Our job is to locate the missing ship and retrieve its crew, including Eryn’s sister.”
The Ocelot put his pudgy hand over mine. The others wouldn’t meet my eyes.
After an awkward moment, Chen cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, did you just mention an emission shell?”
Snyder enlarged the picture of the planet. “It’s coming from a single source, located in the southern hemisphere.”
“One of ours?”
“Not as far as we can tell.”
“Then what is it?” Torres demanded.
Snyder shook his head. “We have no idea. But I guess we’ll find out when we find the Couch Surfer.”
Torres was about to respond but Snyder held up a hand to stop him. “You’re all here because you’re the best in your fields,” he said. “I’ve seen your work. You’re conscientious, highly knowledgeable, and still young enough to be open-minded.”
“But why didn’t you tell us this was more than a straight rescue?” Torres was clearly unhappy. “Why weren’t we told up front about this signal?”
“Because the Vanguard decided to keep this mission as classified as possible. It didn’t want any rumours leaking into the general population, in case anyone else decided to hop in a scout ship and come trampling all over our investigation.”
“And Eryn?”
Snyder glanced at me, and then looked away. “She’s here because her sister was on the ship that made the discovery, and because she called in a lot of favours to be assigned.”
My head felt hot and dizzy. My pulse thumped in my ears. I pushed the coffee away, feeling suddenly woozy. “So, they haven’t just disappeared? Something might have got them?”
Snyder looked uncomfortable. “Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I wanted you to be able to concentrate on your job.”
I opened and shut my mouth. Certain things were only now falling into place. For instance, the journey to the Couch Surfer’s last reported position had so far taken four days, and I’d spent most of that time hoping I might receive a substrate message from Shay saying she was back on our home ark and fine. When the signal didn’t come, I had resorted to touring the ship, inspecting all the fixtures and fittings. The Ocelot had just undergone an unexpected refit, so there were new scuffs and scrapes on the walls and equipment; a new aircon system had been bolted to the corridor ceiling; and the rusty ladder from the cargo bay to the crew area had been replaced with a bright new one.
The Furious Ocelot was a blunt-nosed wedge with large engines and four sturdy, retractable landing legs equipped with heavy-duty shock absorbers. Following the refit, a cluster of new blisters disturbed the lines of his lower hull. One housed a full-spectrum mil-spec sensor suite, which had been installed to aid our search for the missing ship. If there was anything larger than a hydrogen atom floating around out there, we were going to be able to spot it. The other blisters contained ship-to-ship beam weapons, and a complement of semi-autonomous combat drones.
When I’d first seen them, I had been confused. “That’s more firepower than I expected.”
The Ocelot’s envoy dabbed his forehead with a blue handkerchief. “It’s just a Vanguard thing. They want us to be prepared for all eventualities, however unlikely.”
And now I suddenly understood what those eventualities were.
Snyder said, “You’re upset.”
“Of course, I’m fucking upset. You just told me my sister vanished while investigating an alien beacon. Now, I don’t know what to think.”
“My apologies.”
Fighting my queasiness, I watched dust motes drifting through the beam of an overhead spotlight, borne aloft on the warm air. “Tell me what happened. I want to know everything.”
“I can’t really say. We don’t know much, and what we do know is classified. All I can tell you for now is that they put down on the planet designated Candidate-623, as I said, and we haven’t heard from them since.”
“That’s pretty fucking vague.”
“At the moment, vague is all we have.”
Into the ensuing silence, Torres said, “You knew there was a possibility they might have been lured into a trap, and you thought it would be a good idea for us to follow them?”
Snyder clasped his hands together. “Hence the combat drones and weapon upgrades.”
Chen rolled her eyes and let her head fall back. “Oh, fucking hell.”
CHAPTER TWO
FULL-THROTTLE ARMAGEDDON
HARUKI
Seventy-five years ago, the world came to an end. I was in my greenhouse at the time, talking to my personal assistant.
“They’ve launched nukes.” We had been discussing the worsening political and global climates, but now Juliet’s crisp and professional demeanour faltered.
Trowel in hand, I rose from the line of tomato plants I had been tending. “How many warheads?”
“At least two thousand.” She was standing on the wooden duckboards between the vegetable beds, tablet computer in hand, and her face was pale. “Some aimed at military and infrastructure targets, but the majority targeting civilian population centres.”
The air in the greenhouse was humid, and rich with the comforting scent of warm tomato plants. I shook my head and looked up at the rock ceiling overhead. I felt like crying. After years of escalating tension, the idiots had finally gone and done it. This wasn’t going to be limited to a tactical exchange—they were going for full-throttle Armageddon. “What triggered it?”
“The British Prime Minister made a joke about pressing the button. He didn’t realise his mike was hot.”
I suppressed a groan. That clown. I should have expected it. “So, who launched first?”
“Does it matter?”
“Projected survivors?”
“Globally, less than thirty per cent in the short term, dropping considerably over the next few weeks.”
Beneath the ceiling-mounted sunlamps, bumblebees drowsed along the orderly rows of flowering plants. In contrast to Juliet’s exquisitely tailored grey business suit, I wore a simple white t-shirt and a pair of blue designer jeans. It was as close as I ever came to being dressed casually. I put down the trowel and peeled off a pair of five-hundred-dollar gardening gloves. “Well, I guess that settles it,” I said. “It’s time to see if this place is as safe as it’s supposed to be.”
“Full lockdown?”
Some of the other gardeners had paused in their work to listen. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. My knees and back ached from hunching over the soil. “It’s our only option.” For months, my team had been preparing this bunker in the Canadian Rockies, financed by my personal fortune. When it was complete, I’d intended to gather my friends and key employees in order to sit out Doomsday—whether that came from climate change, pandemic, or asteroid impact—in relative comfort. But now the birds were in the air, none of that mattered anymore. There wasn’t time to get everyone here. My aged, leathery parents were in New York; my trophy popstar girlfriend at a charity gig in Boston; my management team still on their way from Los Angeles and not expected to touch down for another forty-five minutes, by which time it would probably all be over, one way or another. I’d have to cope with the skeleton staff already on site. Everything was screwed. All I could do now was make the best of what I had.
Thank god Juliet was here. She was my rock. What she didn’t know about the running of this bunker wasn’t worth knowing.
I was especially disappointed Frank Tucker wasn’t here. The young physicist showed real promise, and I had been sponsoring him for some time. Now, just as the kid’s research into wormholes reached an exciting point, everything was going to hell. I had hoped that in another five or ten years, I’d have been able to use Frank’s research to create a network of portals that would allow instantaneous travel between the major cities of the world. Maybe between Earth and the moon. But right now, Frank was stuck in his lab in Oxford and there was nothing I could do to change that. And even if I could magically conjure a wormhole to escape the coming holocaust, where would it lead? Earth was fucked and there simply wasn’t anywhere else to go.
I pulled out my own tablet and linked to Juliet’s. “Show me missile tracking.”
“This is what we have so far.” She fed through a Mercator projection of the Earth based on data assembled from hacked military feeds and instruments concealed aboard my own fleet of digital communication satellites. High above the scrappy remnants of the North Polar ice cap, Chinese and Russian missiles were nearing the zenith of their trajectories. Only minutes remained. On the ground, the population would be panicking. Some would be engaged in a futile scramble for shelter, while others raged at their leaders. Newsreaders would be clutching their earpieces and turning pale, unable to believe what they were about to report. Panicked crowds would be fighting to get into subway stations and underground car parks. Families would be huddling together, helplessly trying to protect each other in the face of the impending holocaust.
I had lived through stock market crashes and flu pandemics. I’d grown up with the ever-present threat of a steadily deteriorating climate and had devoted much of my personal fortune to discovering ways to fight back and ensure I could keep my loved ones safe during the next emergency. My whole life, I’d been preparing for the end of the world, and now here it was.
I cleared my throat. “Okay, sound the alarm and get everyone inside.”
“Yes, sir.”
Could this really be it? My shoulders felt like weights. All that struggle, all that work. The modern world had instant access to all the great achievements in science, art, music and philosophy, but now the barbarians were torching the library. After today, most of it would be forever lost. In the bunker’s archive, I had digital files of almost every book ever written and every song ever recorded—but they would only be of use to me, here, with my own private generator and electronics hardened against the effects of EMPs. I couldn’t use them to rebuild civilisation.
“We should have done more,” I said. If we’d had another couple of months, maybe we could have started to turn the tide of public opinion. Rigged an election or two. Deposed a few leaders or funded a few grassroots campaigns for peace. What was the point in being the richest man in the world if I couldn’t save it? I’d spent years preparing this underground refuge for myself. What billionaire hadn’t taken similar precautions? But now the hour was at hand, all I felt was a crushing sense of failure.
I should have done more.
“They pressed the button,” Juliet said, seemingly reading my thoughts. “Not us.”
“They caught us unprepared. I didn’t expect things to escalate this quickly.”
“I know.” Juliet’s voice was starting to lose its professional calm. “I’ve been hearing rumours. Something’s been going on behind the scenes. Something nobody’s been talking about.”
“Any idea what it might be?”
“I don’t know. Something to do with the outer solar system.”
“How could anything out there possibly be relevant to this?”
“There’s been some buzz about it over the past day or so.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. Not that it matters now.” She broke off to check something. “Okay, outer doors sealed. Air filters operative. We’re all zipped-up and as ready as we’ll ever be.” Her voice cracked into a nervous smile. “We did it, Haruki. We’re going to live through this.”
I pushed a hand back through my thinning grey hair. I knew she was right, but I still found it hard to reconcile the deaths of billions of people with any metric of objective success. Especially when I still had fresh dirt on the knees of my five-thousand-dollar jeans. I had intended today to be all about cultivating new life. About relaxing and taking a break from the infernal complexities of the planet’s politics. A few hours with my fingertips submerged in the loamy mulch of the gardens, my awareness pared down from the wider global perspective to the basic needs of the plant before me. I hadn’t been ready for this.
One of the missiles on the screen flashed red and my heart seemed to convulse in my chest. “Are we being targeted?”
“Fuck!” Juliet tapped her screen. ...
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