BZRK: Apocalypse
Page 40
As Suarez did now. Seeing the smudge of green inside the sweat-dripping bubble, she felt herself drawn to it, and decided checking in at the Office could wait. Getting into the dome was a process—you had to shed your gear and walk in wearing a T-shirt and pants alone. And you had to pass through a double airlock.
It was while in the airlock that she ran into Charlie Bronk.
“Coming or going?” he asked her.
“Just got in,” she said. Bronk was a small man with a too-tough name. He was a mechanic who often worked with Suarez. They weren’t friends, but they were cordial.
“I’m supposed to head out to Forward Green,” he said. “One of their cats is wonky, needs a new fuel injector.”
“There’s no one out there can do it?”
Bronk laughed. “At Forward Green? Pff. Those are scientists and God knows what all out there. Sally Wills is the only one can turn a screwdriver, and she’s on an evac to Wellington.” He lowered his voice. “A psych thing. She lost her shit.”
“Damn. Sally Wills? The redhead?”
Bronk nodded. “I don’t suppose … I mean, I wouldn’t ask, but it’s my son’s bar mitzvah and I’m missing it. I was going to Skype.”
“You can’t Skype from Forward Green?”
“There’s no communication in or out of Forward except to here. Security.”
She was on the verge of asking him why there would be secrecy, but thought better of it. That was the kind of question that might be thrown in your face some day if there was a problem. Cathexis Inc. might not be military, but when it came to secrecy, they sometimes went the military one better.
“I could do it,” Suarez said with a shrug. “Of course you’ll owe me. And I don’t mean you cover for me on cleanup. I mean something more like you pull a shift. Three shifts.”
They agreed on one shift and a round of clean-up duty. And that was how Suarez ended up on a loud chopper heading almost due south. It was a hellish ride. The wind had come up. In fact, at the halfway point the pilots discussed turning back. Antarctic weather wasn’t something you took risks with.
But satellite imagery gave them a nominally clear hour before the hammer came down, so they went forward.
If Cathexis Base was businesslike and humane, Forward Green was a bizarre cross between survivalist compound and Ritz-Carlton resort. From the frosty window of the chopper she could see that the buildings were arranged in a sort of diamond around what was very certainly the only swimming pool on the continent. The pool was covered of course, and as sweaty as the Andalite Dome at Cathexis Base. It was an ostentatious symbol of wealth, because water—actual, liquid water—was one of the rarest and most expensive of commodities. It spoke of a profligate use of power—the heat to keep the pool warm, the light to make it shine, the lift capacity to bring it all together in this place.
It was built aboveground, of course—the shifting ice would have crushed anything cut into it. It was covered by a plastic roof that formed three peaks, vaguely reminiscent of the Sydney Opera House.
Suarez guessed that the power source had to be a nuclear reactor. But how had that been approved? The green movement had made peace with nuclear power, but here? On the ice?. And in private hands?
Once she’d looked beyond that eye-popping artifact of another world, Suarez took in the rest of the place. The buildings were identical—seven three-story ski-mounted structures, with an empty slot where an eighth building might go someday.
The windows aimed out toward the ice were small, with metallic shutters that could be mechanically closed against the wind. The windows facing in, toward the pool, were larger than anything she’d ever seen before in energy-conscious Antarctica. Though they, too, were equipped with strong steel shutters.
She imagined what the place would look like locked down, with all those shutters closed. And then she noticed the four half-buried towers two hundred yards out from each point on the diamond.
“I’ll be damned if those aren’t gun emplacements,” she muttered. Not that she saw anything like weapons.
A mile away to the south and barely visible because the wind was now blowing crystals of ice through the air was a larger structure—long, low, and unadorned—that could only be some sort of hangar.
That’s where the souped-up hovercraft would be.
It hit her then full force: they didn’t have anyone who could fix a fuel injector? At a facility where they were building jet-powered hovercraft? Bullshit.
She hadn’t cleverly exploited an opening to reach Forward Green: she’d been lured there.
Lystra and Bug Man left Stockholm not by way of Arlanda Airport but by car, to a private airfield fifty miles out of town, out into the landscape of snow and dark pine trees.
Bug Man had only a light parka that George had supplied, in no way sufficient to deal with a Swedish winter. The run from the car to the welcoming light of the jet was enough to freeze him, but Lystra seemed indifferent, still wearing her blood-drenched red dress—though she had swapped her shoes for a pair of shearling boots. She would look almost cute, Bug Man thought, if she were younger. And a whole lot less insane.
It was warm on the plane, which took off within minutes of the door closing, soaring up into the night.
“Look!” Lystra said, and drew him out of his seat to look through the window on her side.
The sky was an eerie light show, green against black, the stars all rendered irrelevant. The green was a veil, translucent, shimmering.
It was while in the airlock that she ran into Charlie Bronk.
“Coming or going?” he asked her.
“Just got in,” she said. Bronk was a small man with a too-tough name. He was a mechanic who often worked with Suarez. They weren’t friends, but they were cordial.
“I’m supposed to head out to Forward Green,” he said. “One of their cats is wonky, needs a new fuel injector.”
“There’s no one out there can do it?”
Bronk laughed. “At Forward Green? Pff. Those are scientists and God knows what all out there. Sally Wills is the only one can turn a screwdriver, and she’s on an evac to Wellington.” He lowered his voice. “A psych thing. She lost her shit.”
“Damn. Sally Wills? The redhead?”
Bronk nodded. “I don’t suppose … I mean, I wouldn’t ask, but it’s my son’s bar mitzvah and I’m missing it. I was going to Skype.”
“You can’t Skype from Forward Green?”
“There’s no communication in or out of Forward except to here. Security.”
She was on the verge of asking him why there would be secrecy, but thought better of it. That was the kind of question that might be thrown in your face some day if there was a problem. Cathexis Inc. might not be military, but when it came to secrecy, they sometimes went the military one better.
“I could do it,” Suarez said with a shrug. “Of course you’ll owe me. And I don’t mean you cover for me on cleanup. I mean something more like you pull a shift. Three shifts.”
They agreed on one shift and a round of clean-up duty. And that was how Suarez ended up on a loud chopper heading almost due south. It was a hellish ride. The wind had come up. In fact, at the halfway point the pilots discussed turning back. Antarctic weather wasn’t something you took risks with.
But satellite imagery gave them a nominally clear hour before the hammer came down, so they went forward.
If Cathexis Base was businesslike and humane, Forward Green was a bizarre cross between survivalist compound and Ritz-Carlton resort. From the frosty window of the chopper she could see that the buildings were arranged in a sort of diamond around what was very certainly the only swimming pool on the continent. The pool was covered of course, and as sweaty as the Andalite Dome at Cathexis Base. It was an ostentatious symbol of wealth, because water—actual, liquid water—was one of the rarest and most expensive of commodities. It spoke of a profligate use of power—the heat to keep the pool warm, the light to make it shine, the lift capacity to bring it all together in this place.
It was built aboveground, of course—the shifting ice would have crushed anything cut into it. It was covered by a plastic roof that formed three peaks, vaguely reminiscent of the Sydney Opera House.
Suarez guessed that the power source had to be a nuclear reactor. But how had that been approved? The green movement had made peace with nuclear power, but here? On the ice?. And in private hands?
Once she’d looked beyond that eye-popping artifact of another world, Suarez took in the rest of the place. The buildings were identical—seven three-story ski-mounted structures, with an empty slot where an eighth building might go someday.
The windows aimed out toward the ice were small, with metallic shutters that could be mechanically closed against the wind. The windows facing in, toward the pool, were larger than anything she’d ever seen before in energy-conscious Antarctica. Though they, too, were equipped with strong steel shutters.
She imagined what the place would look like locked down, with all those shutters closed. And then she noticed the four half-buried towers two hundred yards out from each point on the diamond.
“I’ll be damned if those aren’t gun emplacements,” she muttered. Not that she saw anything like weapons.
A mile away to the south and barely visible because the wind was now blowing crystals of ice through the air was a larger structure—long, low, and unadorned—that could only be some sort of hangar.
That’s where the souped-up hovercraft would be.
It hit her then full force: they didn’t have anyone who could fix a fuel injector? At a facility where they were building jet-powered hovercraft? Bullshit.
She hadn’t cleverly exploited an opening to reach Forward Green: she’d been lured there.
Lystra and Bug Man left Stockholm not by way of Arlanda Airport but by car, to a private airfield fifty miles out of town, out into the landscape of snow and dark pine trees.
Bug Man had only a light parka that George had supplied, in no way sufficient to deal with a Swedish winter. The run from the car to the welcoming light of the jet was enough to freeze him, but Lystra seemed indifferent, still wearing her blood-drenched red dress—though she had swapped her shoes for a pair of shearling boots. She would look almost cute, Bug Man thought, if she were younger. And a whole lot less insane.
It was warm on the plane, which took off within minutes of the door closing, soaring up into the night.
“Look!” Lystra said, and drew him out of his seat to look through the window on her side.
The sky was an eerie light show, green against black, the stars all rendered irrelevant. The green was a veil, translucent, shimmering.
