2041 Sanctuary (Let There Be Light) (42 page)

WARNING!

MISSILE LOCK

WARNING!

Jessica heard Brett swear. Flying close to the ground, their plane rolled right and up and Jessica felt her stomach leave her.

The flashing warnings continued and their aircraft released a spray of blazing flares.

Two explosions rocked Jessica in her seat. The four remaining dots closed on their position and Bic banked the aircraft up and then dived down. The horizon line on the HUD spun as the plane ducked and weaved. More flares were released and three more explosions buffeted them.

Skyscrapers of a floodlit city appeared ahead and Jessica’s eyes widened.

Engines screaming, the aircraft tore through the narrow streets at low level, shattering glass with its passing. The final rocket closed before the aircraft turned at the last minute, dodging a building.

The missile on the radar disappeared and Jessica fought down the urge to vomit. ‘Bic, never do that again!’

‘I’m afraid I can’t comply with your request, Jessica Klein.’

The three fighter jets chasing them reappeared ahead. Rockets fired and their plane angled up. The same warning message appeared as six more rockets homed in on them.

A new alarm buzzed in the cockpit and a sheath of material curled over Jessica’s legs and waist. The helmet that had hung above her lowered to muffle her ears and the dials in its visor blazed to life. A single message appeared before her eyes:

SABRE ENGINE ACTIVATION IMMINENT

The missiles drew closer.

‘Have you ever wanted to be a record-breaker, Jessica Klein?’ Bic said.

Jessica’s fingers dug into her seat. ‘Not really!’

The plane levelled out. ‘That’s a shame, as you’re about to become one.’

‘What!?’

Another message appeared:

SABRE ENGINE ... ENGAGED

A deep rumble exploded into deafening noise. A flash of light, and the aircraft went hypersonic.

♦

The lights from roads and towns flashed past, faster and faster, blurring into lines. Behind, the missiles fell back as their drone passed Mach 6.

A host of systems tracked their craft as it shot south across the continental United States. Missile batteries on the ground fired and tracer rounds lit up the air.

Bic angled the plane left, right and into a series of heart-stopping barrel rolls. Teeth rattling, Jessica clung to consciousness as the world span out of control, upside down and inside out. They levelled out and soon after they were over the black swell of the Pacific Ocean, which tore past below. The drone dropped lower and calm waters exploded upwards in their wake. Another alarm sounded. The United States North Pacific Fleet unleashed its weaponry, lighting up tranquil seas in a blaze of fire.

Bic banked the plane up, while multiple rockets chased them through dark skies.

Jessica closed her eyes. ‘I thought planes couldn’t fly through the dust cloud!’

‘We’re about to test that theory,’ Bic said.

A blaze of light, a sound like thunder, and the craft thrust forward. Jessica thought of her family as they entered the upper atmosphere to disappear into the great cloud.

♦

Some time later Jessica opened her eyes.
I must have passed out
, she thought. Ahead the dust cloud thinned and a shimmer of light exploded into a blaze of glory. The sun’s rays bathed the cockpit of the military drone before its engine stuttered to silence.

Jessica’s body felt light. ‘Are we in space?’

‘Just brushing its fringes,’ Bic said.

The sensation continued a while longer before gravity returned and the plane sank back into dark swirling obscurity. Warning messages and symbols covered the displays.

‘The craft’s engines are no longer in operation,’ Bic said, ‘I’ll have to glide you down.’

‘Have we dodged the missiles?’

‘Yes, their tracking systems would have been disrupted by the dust and this craft’s defensive technology. We will have to hope the military units in South America are too occupied in their civil wars to worry about one lone plane entering their airspace.’

Skimming down through the heavens, the streamlined craft plummeted back to Earth.

Lightning dazzled as they passed through an enormous storm. Dust and rain battered them while thunder cracked the sky open like the hammer of God.

A bolt of lightning struck a wing, plunging the plane into a flat spin. Warnings sounded and lights flashed red.

Jessica’s breathing sounded ragged to her ears as they dropped like a stone. Sounds and lights swamped her senses. Unable to move, she managed to say one word: ‘BIC!’

The plane continued to fall out of control. The cyber terrorist didn’t reply and Jessica felt consciousness slip into the abyss of nothing.

Chapter Forty Eight

‘Jessica.’

‘Hmmm?’

Hands shook her shoulders. ‘Jessica, wake up.’

Jessica opened her eyes to see the face of Eric peering at her. ‘What’s going on? Did we make it?’

Eric gave a nervous laugh and looked around the cockpit of the military aircraft. ‘It looks that way.’

‘Where are we?’

‘I have no idea.’ Eric helped her up from her seat.

‘Where’s Brett?’

‘She took the professor into the building.’

‘Building?’

Eric led Jessica out of the plane and pointed to a large structure nearby. Shrouded in darkness, a single light emanated from one of its many ground-floor windows.

They moved towards the glow.

‘This way,’ said a disembodied voice.

Jessica adjusted course to find the shadowy form of Brett holding a door open for them.

They entered and the FBI agent pushed past to lead them down a dim corridor and on into a brightly lit room. Jessica looked around what appeared to be some kind of operations hub. Long, curved desks stood spaced out in rows before a large wallscreen, each one sporting a host of computers and banks of intriguing electrical equipment.

The still form of Professor Steiner lay on one of the desks.

‘Is he okay?’ Jessica said.

Brett followed her gaze. ‘He’s alive, if that’s what you mean.’

‘He must have passed out like the rest of us.’ Jessica walked over to see that his chest rose and fell in the rhythm of life. Nearby a printer lay idle, a continuous sheet of paper hanging down from it in folds. Jessica studied the data that had printed out. It was a mass of meaningless numbers and graphs. ‘What is this place?’

‘We’re at the radio telescope array,’ Brett said.

‘We made it to Chile?’

Brett moved to a window and pulled up a blind. Outside, sat the grey bulk of the military drone, its shape just discernable in the lights of the building they now inhabited.

Eric rubbed a shoulder. ‘I thought we were goners.’

‘Me, too,’ Jessica said. ‘Bic must have regained control somehow.’

The pocket of her coroner’s uniform vibrated and she withdrew Bic’s console.

‘You are correct, Jessica Klein,’ Bic said. ‘But it was touch and go, you are all lucky to be alive.’

‘No thanks to her.’ Eric gestured at Brett.

‘I was doing my duty.’

Jessica ground her teeth. ‘Did you believe anything we said?’

‘You’re convincing,’ Brett said, ‘I give you that. But whatever is true, it doesn’t change the fact you’ve committed multiple crimes.’

‘And your career comes first, is that it?’

‘Of course. I’m not about to let a bunch of terrorists determine my future.’

Jessica bunched her fists. ‘You don’t have a future, none of us do!’

‘According to you.’

Jessica let out a screech of frustration. She’d never met anyone so pig-headed.

Brett leant against the window. ‘I don’t know why you’re so surprised.’ She pointed at Steiner, who stirred awake. ‘He’s told us nothing. You really expect me to let him go? That my father escaped justice is bad enough, but for them
both
to get away with mass murder – no way. I can’t let that happen.’

‘And so you decided to offer us up,’ Jessica said, ‘just like that?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Didn’t work out though, did it?

Brett ignored the comment and returned her gaze to the darkness outside.

‘Who the hell was that man, anyway?’ Jessica said. ‘What did he call himself?’

‘Malcolm Joiner.’ Brett glanced back. ‘He’s on the GMRC Directorate.’

Jessica thought back to his words.
I had hoped you were dead
. He obviously knew her. He must have been the person behind her fall from grace. It made sense. Her on-air rant about the GMRC back in New York would have ruffled more than a few feathers. That it attracted the attention of the Directorate should be no surprise. But now he knew she was working with Bic, she’d become the terrorist, fighting against the system she’d once enabled. She massaged her face, trying to make sense of it all.
One thing is certain
;
Bic has taken me even further into the rabbit hole
.

Professor Steiner groaned and sat up.

‘Are you okay, Professor?’ Eric helped him to his feet.

‘Apart from a blazing headache, it seems so.’

‘So, what happens now?’ Eric said.

Brett faced them. ‘Well, it looks like your theories are out of the window.’

‘How do you figure?’ Jessica said.

‘The skies are clearing.’

‘What?’

Brett pointed outside. ‘Look for yourself. The dust cloud is lifting, light is filtering through.’

‘Where?’ Jessica moved to the window.

The twenty-four hour night they’d been enduring had shifted to a darker shade of brown and a flat desert landscape was just visible, as if illuminated by the dying embers of dawn.

Brett stared out at the concave dish of a nearby radio telescope. ‘So much for your doomsday theory, they said as soon as the light reappears the dust will disappear exponentially.’

‘And who told us that?’ Jessica said. ‘The GMRC. I’d rather trust you.’

Brett scowled at the inference before Bic’s console beeped. ‘I’m picking up a signal, Jessica Klein.’

‘The one you told us about?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it seems to be GMRC in origin.’

‘What does it say?’

‘Is there a wallscreen in the room?’

She turned round to look. ‘Yes.’

‘Put my device against its induction pad.’

Jessica walked over to it and attached the console to the magnetic area designed for high speed data transfer.

The wallscreen powered up at Bic’s command and its image coalesced into a mass of black and white pixels. With a fuzz of sound a picture emerged from the ether, depicting a scene of pure beauty. Sunlight glinted on a distant horizon. Blue skies shone above a lush green forest and a flock of red and green macaws flew past a tribe of howler monkeys foraging in the trees.

The sounds of nature came through the room’s speakers to further immerse them in the lustrous vision before a shadow moved across the screen and a tall figure appeared.

Jessica recognised the man from Brett’s video call.

Malcolm Joiner held his hands behind his back and faced the camera that filmed him. ‘Ah, there you all are. I feared you for dead.’

No one spoke and Jessica moved to the fore. ‘What do you want from us?’

‘Ms. Klein. It seems you and your merry band lead a charmed life. Your escape from U.S. airspace was nothing short of miraculous, although I believe that was down to your hacker friend more than anything else. Is he there, by chance?’

‘I am here,’ Bic said, his voice also coming via the room’s speakers.

‘Excellent,’ Joiner said. ‘Your acquisition of our drone was – well –
unexpected
shall we say? You’ll have to let us know how you keep managing to access our systems so freely.’

‘That is for you to find out, Malcolm Joiner. I would have thought, however, with the resources at your disposal you would have figured it out by now. Clearly your intelligence is as lacking as your power.’

The half-smile fell from Joiner’s face. ‘You think that because you continue to elude us you have power? You have none. Your attempts to disrupt GMRC protocols have all failed. The information you think you have is worthless and whatever plans you’ve devised will never reach fruition. Time is running out for you, B.I.C., running out for you all.’

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Jessica said. ‘What do you want from us?’

‘Do you know the worst thing about a traitor, Ms. Klein? They forget on which side their bread has been buttered.’ The intelligence director moved to his screen, where a graphical box appeared at a touch of his hand.

Jessica’s eyes grew wide with fear.

‘This is your family, is it not?’ Joiner paused the footage of her husband and two daughters. ‘The young are so precious, aren’t they? And so fragile, unable to defend themselves against the terrors of the world.’

Jessica felt panic rising.

‘It would be a shame for them to meet a premature end, would it not?’

Jessica didn’t know what to say. What could she do? She was helpless and he knew it. She would do anything to protect her children, anything.

Malcolm Joiner failed to hide a smile of pleasure. ‘And you, Agent Taylor. I’ve spoken to the relevant departments and it seems we have a position available for you here at the GMRC. It would be a massive pay increase, of course, and you would be operating outside the limited reach of the United States government. Is that something that would interest you?’

Brett glanced at Jessica. ‘I don’t work well with people who threaten the lives of innocents.’

‘Pity,’ Joiner said. ‘Your father will be loath to hear of your death when the time comes.’

‘You know where he is?’

‘Oh, yes. I was the one who ordered his release.’

‘He wasn’t released, he was broken out, and you’ve just admitted a federal offence to an agent of the state.’

‘A suspended agent, Ms. Taylor. And one who’ll be lucky to stay alive, let alone step foot back in the United States and bring charges against a man who’s above the law.’