Broken Mirror: Apophis 2029 (29 page)

  "...And this isn't?" Thorn answered back with a questionable smirk. 

  We both giggled at that to the point it was infectious, until we couldn't seem to stop.  That feeling of feeling stupid and awkward around him melted away just then.  I looked at Thorn in the scarlet light as the sun hit the horizon.  We kissed.  It was over before I knew it, and I wondered if I had hallucinated what had just happened.  I was facing him and our hands were touching; but the sudden sound of gunfire echoing up the hall snapped our attention back towards the break room.

  We didn't say anything as we shot a single worried look to one another, and made a run for the hall.  Like an idiot, I had left my rifle in the breakroom with Ava, who was at the task of cleaning all the weapons.  Thorn drew his automatic pistol and we swiftly made our way down the hall.  Just as we were a few steps from the entry, shards of metal and plastic sprayed out of the break room as we covered our faces from the sound of the blast.  Wires and bits of gears sparked errantly amongst the debris on the floor when we finally rounded the doorframe. 

  We found Roy's limp body lay slumped over the central table with a smoking hole burnt out of the back of his head, while Haiti lay mortally wounded in a pool of his own blood by the door.  Kel was opposite the table, nervously holding a shotgun; its barrels still smoking from the blast.  What looked like a mechanical box sat sparking between us in the middle of the room.  Serena was sitting up on the couch staring at us in disbelief while Ava lay sprawled across the floor grasping for gun parts.

  "What the fuck was that?" Serena finally wailed aloud, having just woken up and suddenly left gawking at Roy's corpse and the hole
burned through his head.  We rushed to help Haiti who was gurgling in his own blood.  There were two neat holes in his side, causing him to bleed out.

  "Hold on Haiti, we'll patch you up," Thorn assured, trying to assess his wounds; though blood oozed through the punctures with every breath he took.

  "Aye, da fucking robot, man; what kinda shit is that?" he muttered weakly while he coughed up blood, its red staining his white teeth.  He looked dazed, his eyes were rolling in pain.

  "What happened?" I asked, trying not to lose my head.  Kel reloaded her weapon as Ava handed her another pistol, which she quickly reassembled just as Tasha came running around the corner.  She looked just as stunned as we had when we stumbled upon the scene.

  "Some sort of Lab robot came rolling in here and shot a laser into Roy's skull, then stabbed Haiti with its pincer when he jumped on it," Kel answered in shock.

  "Da fucking thing was quiet, man, we never heard it coming," Haiti coughed again, his breath getting shaky, "it just rolled in here without any warning and killed Roy ...and fucked me up real good too," he sputtered while trying to sit up.  Thorn tried to get him to lie still while searching for something to wrap the wound.  Haiti held onto his hand tightly, his grip tensing for a brief moment; then he gently collapsed.  Haiti was dead.

  A look of anguish washed over his face as Thorn turned to me.  The little small boy, who had been cowering in the corner, gingerly stepped over to Haiti's body, touching his arm with a mark of sorrow.  They had personally been closer than the others were; and Haiti had always been kind to him.

  It took a short moment, but the rest of us finally came to the realization that Betty was nowhere in sight.  The wheels began to turn in my head.  She knew about this facility because she had been a member of the laboratory team at one time.  How the panel in the elevator only seemed to work when she got close to it made me suspect she had an ID implant that allowed her internal access.  She had known the code for admission to this particular floor, and was acting so cavalier once she got here because she knew this place was her own
territory, where she would have the upper hand on us.

  "That bitch, Betty, said she needed to use the restroom and left down the hall.  Roy told me to keep an eye on her, so I tried to follow her," Tasha stated, "I lost her when she entered a room down the end of the far hallway, but the access button wouldn't work for me after she went inside," she revealed with a tone of regret.

  "She must have locked it from the inside," Serena mentioned from behind, referring to Beatrice sealing the door.

  "I don't think she needed to," I added, "I think Betty has an embedded chip that allows her access to any security points on this level,"  After revealing my suspicions, the rest of them agreed, and my analogy made perfect sense to Tasha.  We should have seen this coming, but the old woman had played us all too well. 

  "She probably sent that automaton in here to kill us all," Kel accused, pointing to what was left of the robot, "I knew we should have dropped that crazy cunt back at the pit," she admitted heartily, as she implied to the chasm under the derailed train where we had lost Felix.  Grudgingly, I had to agree.  Beatrice wasn't just a liability, she was unpredictable and dangerous.

  Thorn was just as shaken as Serena, seeing both of their comrades lying dead without any forewarning.  They had all been through a lot of close scrapes together.  Roy's maturity and tactical knowledge was of great value to their team, and even Tasha had admired him.  It was disturbing to think that with all his training and combat experience that he was taken down so easily with a shot from behind.  He didn't even see it coming.

  "Gear up.  Ava, watch the door," Tasha instructed while we got the rest of the weapons together. 

  Betty was still out there; probably playing the same game she had back at Fallhaven.  Likely, she was sitting behind a control board watching us on some hidden security feed.  Mobile laboratory robots had some lethal capacity in their toolsets.  Clamps that could crush bone and scalpel lasers which had the ability to sear through living flesh; as in the case of Roy's grisly execution. 

  The droids reactions were quick and were equipped with quiet servos which made them silent stalkers.  We had to find Beatrice and either get her under control or put her down.  Serena stayed behind to guard the boy and the meteor sample.

  "Follow me," Tasha advised as Thorn, Kel and I made our way through a series of switches down the white tiled hallways; checking our corners as we went.  We finally arrived at the door where Tasha had followed the old woman.  The sign inset beside it was labeled: 'Tracking & Phase Development'.  The activation panel would not react to our touch, only confirming my suspicions that Beatrice had an ID chip with full security clearance.

  There was no way to pry the door panel open, and if there was a way to access its wiring, we couldn't seem find it.  As tempting as it was to bang on the door to cuss at the murderous bitch, we realized that kind of outburst would be entirely futile.  However, that did not keep Thorn from doing so in his anger.

  "Open up Betty, you damn..." Thorn yelled, beating the sliding steel door with the butt of his gun.  He never finished his verbal threat, as to our utter surprise, the door promptly opened.  I didn't know whether to be puzzled or impressed.  Tasha looked just as stunned, but she wasn't going to waste the opportunity to get inside. 

  She was smarter than I had given her credit for considering her age. Tasha took an empty clip and wedged it into the door slot to jam the door and keep it from closing on us.

  "We might need a way out," she advised, explaining her precautionary measure to keep us from being locked inside. 

  Within the rectangular room were stacks of blinking panels, most of which looked like data storage computers.  A few robotic arms whirred behind panes of glass of several dozen sealed cases moving a countless number of test vials containing mysterious substances.  At the far end of the room sat Betty, alone in a chair looking at multiple digital screens.  I thought Thorn was going to shoot her right then and there, as he raised his scope to aim for her head.  He stalled when she merely glanced over her shoulder and quaintly answered his rude summons to be allowed inside.

  "Welcome to my old workstation, come take a look at what I found," she declared. 

  With a note of vigilance, we slowly approached her to see that she was unarmed, and not seeming to be a threat, "I hope you don't mind me getting distracted by all this mess, but it's been a long time since I've been back here," she added; completely oblivious to Thorn standing directly behind her with gun and seething to put a bullet in her skull.

  "Why did you kill them, Betty?" I had to ask mournfully while putting a hand to lower Thorns rifle from the back of her head.  She turned around, looking a little baffled, then casually spun back to her task of monitoring the array of screens before her.

  "What an odd question; what do you mean, dear?" she babbled while distracted by the data in flashing on the desk before her. 

It slowly became clear that Beatrice had no idea what had just happened in the breakroom, and admitted to us that she had no control of the laboratory robotics in the facility.  Contrary to her past actions, we started to believe what she was saying.  She took a moment to bring up a status screen for the facility so we could see what happened here in the past.  Data began to stream across the board about the lockdown with bold red letters that lit up on the screen as they blinked: 'Failsafe enacted.'

  "Why were you in here and how are you able to open that door?" Tasha demanded, giving Beatrice the third degree. 

  "I have clearance," Betty replied, tapping at the hidden chip in her wrist, "everyone who had worked here has them."

  "You told the others you were heading for the restroom but ended up locking yourself in here instead ...whatever this place is?" Thorn retorted while scanning the robotic arms whirring behind the glass in multiple containment lockers.  Each of the automations were tirelessly filling jars of liquids in test tubes in one size or another, and replacing them on slotted trays. 

  "I passed by this station I once worked at and couldn't help but take a peek.  It is not my fault you couldn't get in.  I opened it when you knocked," Betty countered in her defense.

  Tasha gave us both an incredulous frown, noting though that her side of the story was entirely credible.  The question was, who the fuck sent that robot to lynch us in the first place?  It appeared that Betty had an answer for that.

  "I was just looking over the project results of the past several years when you dropped by," the old woman answered, "apparently, when the Failsafe was initiated the assistant mobile automations had been assigned alternate programming to act as sentries," she read from the emergency status displayed on the board before us, "anyone who wasn't authorized with embedded clearance would be considered a trespasser, and..." she trailed off as Tasha finished for her.

  "...Anyone trespassing on a military facility would be subject to the use of deadly force," the young girl noted.  Tasha had seen how touchy defense personnel could be when she was growing up.  Many times, they tended to overreact with too much testosterone, whenever push came to shove.

  "Wait a moment.  So you had us walk in here knowing we would become targets?" I had to inquire, bewildered by what Betty had just admitted to.

  "This facility has many levels of automation, and for one, Caitlin, I had no clue that the system Failsafe had been triggered," the old woman stomped back in response to my damning accusation.

  "Well, you could have taken a wild guess!" Thorn spat back, waving his hands around the place, noting the containment lockdown and the hordes of weepers roaming the massive facility.  He did have a point.

  "Thank you for the attitude," she replied with a rancid tone towards Thorn, "but I had no idea the lab automations could be programmed in that manner; hell, I wasn't even sure my own clearance would still work on the upper level after all this time," Beatrice admitted.

  It took some convincing, but Tasha upheld the old woman's excuse, and that it wasn't exactly uncommon for upper Military Admin to enact hidden protocols whenever shit hits the fan. It took some digging, but Beatrice was able to bring up the files on the VEIL project and what had happened here at the facility after the impact event.  Tasha was attentive to this information; secretly hoping that her father hadn't become one of the infected wandering the base.  If she ever found him in that condition, she knew what he would want her to do.

  International governments and the military complex had been preparing for such an event well before June of 2004, back when asteroid MN4 had first been discovered.  Within the files, we found an inventory log recording the several thousand asteroid flybys over the past century alone that had the same prospect to cause a similar catastrophe.  Apophis itself, was only about as broad as a twelve story building, but that was big enough to punch a hole through Earth's atmosphere and devastate a small country if it hit land and could cause wide spread tsunamis if it made contact with the ocean.  Nobody would have guessed it would do exactly that by breaking up and striking two separate sites by both land and sea.

  A collision with Earth had been theoretically possible, but the narrow odds were disturbing enough. Scientists on the MN4 project calculated the asteroid's trajectory would bend during the flyby encounter in early 2029, but as a result of Earth's gravitational pull.  Their ability to see where Asteroid itself would go after extrapolating its orbit was fogged by the lack of credible data.  Astronomers noted that it would be premature to predict if Apophis would cross into our orbital path again after it swung around the sun for another encounter exactly seven years later to the day in 2036.

  The only way they could be sure was by calculating the data during its near-earth pass and on its return loop back into tracking range.  As anyone could imagine, that simply wasn't good enough for the heads up high.  They demanded results for an alternate resolution to the problem whether it really existed or not; and prompted an assurance that MN4 would never become a viable threat to the planet; which seemed like a humanitarian endeavor on the surface, but it was solely motivated by their desire to retain power over the population.

  Most nations had been locked in resource wars at the time of the event, and tensions ran high among the public and politicians.  There could be notable benefits appearing to act like a Savior in the eyes of the world forum and social media, and it would be a tremendous financial and strategic advantage to use the alleged menace of Apophis for propaganda and leverage towards their own ends.  Upon that premise, the VEIL project was formed as a semi-secret black budget program, and was sold to the public and rival nations as their only salvation.

  The classified files we read within revealed the roots and true purpose of this enormous facility we now stood in.  To reduce the range of the asteroids trajectory into Earth's orbital path, it was proposed that they could help nudge the floating rock out of the danger zone.  The sooner they gave the asteroid a gentle push, the farther it would veer from its given course.

  Beatrice brought up a visual model covering the details of the project hardware.  Up on the central screen displayed the specs for a space probe. It was a very advanced and expensive spacecraft which was designed to shoot out to the approaching asteroid and land on it to deploy a wide reflecting screen.  This device would deflect solar radiation in small enough amounts to gradually change its trajectory and push it off its projected path towards our planet.  The sooner it was deployed the wider the range of safety to distance the celestial object from ever intersecting Earth's orbital plane. 

  All of us except Betty were baffled and amazed by this revelation.  All these years of preparation for this event had been kept under wraps from the eyes and ears of the civilian population.  It did not make much sense to hide such an important venture, one that seemed like it would have gotten overwhelming public support; yet, it was entirely censored.

  "So, unbeknownst to the public, they sent up a rocket to shove the asteroid in another direction.  For what logical purpose would they keep that a secret?" Kel inquired of the old woman, who seemed to be just as interested in the information.

  "Obviously, something went terribly wrong," she answered, "and the less people who knew about the program, then they would have no one to point their finger to or use as a scapegoat to blame."

  Betty made a valid point.  It was another evasion of liability game our government entities chose to play; one which had been groomed by decades of poor judgment and leadership.  Had project VEIL actually been a success, they would have promptly stepped out into the spotlight to take all the credit for saving the world.  Instead, somebody fumbled the ball.  I was disgusted by the thought of it, but it was still a viable answer.  However, what we discovered buried beneath all the data, deep within that file log did not sit well with either of us.  The VEIL program was merely a sub-project for its secret sister program; a military space station.

  Now all the pegs started to fall in place.  The military and government elites had a backup plan, and needed a convenient excuse for the amount of funds and hardware that were being consumed on such a secretive and colossal enterprise.  Over-budget costs and emergency funds were all too common on such venues.  Tasha had a point to make after viewing the files, a question that would linger on our conscience.

  "So, what was the purpose of keeping this facility operational after the failure of the probe?" she asked Beatrice who was busy ogling the screen.  We did not like the answer.  She brought up the computer audio to dictate what had happened here at the Lab site since her evacuation to Fallhaven along with Kane those many years ago. 

  "The Veil Probe was launched eight months prior to its estimated intercept date.  Echoes from the  planetary radar telescope revealed the asteroid's precise distance and velocity for rendezvous with the potentially hazardous asteroid 99942 known as Apophis," the monotone computer voice dictated, "the probe landed and successfully deployed its reflective panels, however, the subsequent results of radar observations revealed that the predicted solar radiation that was calculated to help reduce the risk of interception with our orbit; instead aggravated the trajectory by increasing the rotation of the solar object."

  We looked at one another with distain, realizing that the massive amount of resources and costs that had been incurred to prevent the chance this disaster, had instead guaranteed it.  The computer files continued to display the outlandish failure on the screen before us in vivid, heart wrenching detail.

  "Unforeseen by previous data forecasts, the resulting intervention of the probe amplified the target solar object's dynamics and trajectory to a point that elevated the predicted impact," the computer affirmed, "upon entering our orbital plane, MN4 was subject to Earth's gravitational pull.  As impact was now immanent, the Project chief and assigned Commanders initiated a surrogate backup plan by detonating the thermonuclear payload within the Veil probe as a last resort, attempting to disintegrate the target.  This attempt failed to pulverize the object as expected, and created two main shrapnel bodies that retained their critical mass upon entering the stratosphere."

  A new screen opened up as the other faded, this one showing the celestial event from a view in space; recorded by satellite footage with superimposed graphics of its repercussions across the globe.  Apophis had split into two projectiles shortly before punching sizable holes in the atmosphere. This resulted in a pair of electro magnetic pulses that encompassed almost the entirety of the planet; sending us back to the Dark Ages. 

  Several military complexes had equipment and vehicles that had been specifically constructed with protective shielding for such an event, but not ones of the magnitudes we encountered.  The civilian population was not prepared in any form for the catastrophic impact of a peak EMP wave.  Many populated areas were subject to a double effect that devastated most regions as all electronic components were demolished and the power grid severed.  Our modern world had become far too reliant on such vulnerable technology.

  As it turned out, the computer data revealed that this was actually a similar risk we had faced daily from our closest star, the Sun.  In the form of Coronal Mass Ejections errant solar storms have occasionally razed the planet for billions of years throughout Earth’s history.  The difference being that we have built a civilization reliant on such a frail infrastructure.  Everything from power plants to global communications suddenly stopped working, and we all ran around like chickens with our heads cut off, looking like fools.

  At zero hour, there had been massive blackouts where people took to the streets, which had quickly escalated into wide spread looting and food riots.  There was no radio or working navigation as commercial airliners fell from the sky.  Ships at sea became lost, as the EMP burst had not merely been aimed downward towards the planets surface, but had also fried every satellite and positioning systems in close orbit.  Any effort at celestial navigation soon became futile as the atmosphere quickly clouded over in the days that followed, with the dust and debris from the land impact of the first fragment of Apophis.  It was an effect akin to a nuclear winter that endured for years to follow.  Raging electrical storms soon followed in its wake as global weather patterns were disrupted on an epic scale across the entire hemisphere.

  Like I said, the shit hit the fan, to put it mildly; and life these past few years had been a real challenge for everyone on the planet.  With no power and backup systems that failed, hospital patients on any kind of life support quickly expired.  Nine billion people fought for food and shelter in the failing climate, making life beyond unpleasant at every degree ...then came the MN4 plague.

  The towering amount of data displayed on the screen was almost too much to ingest.  The classified sister program of the cover VEIL program, was the MIRAGE; tag named as a mirror site for the protective shelters.  Mirage was the secret space station solely designated for the top Elite of the elite.  It was a designated command post to oversee the entire project and guarantee the continuity of government.  This information made us wonder what the hell they have been doing up there in orbit all this time while the world went to hell down here?

  "That's interesting..." Beatrice noted to us as we all stood gawking at the screen, trying to absorb the information thrown at us.  It was difficult enough to swallow how our space program had fucked up so badly and directly caused the asteroid to hit us; but that some self appointed arrogant assholes had saved their own sorry butts by jetting off to safety in orbit while we all rotted away down here.

  "What is it?" I inquired to Betty's unfinished remark, as we watched while she tapped inquires on the control board.