2040 Revelations (48 page)

‘Don’t worry, Commander, it’s not much of a delay and besides, this is an incredible find, don’t you think?’

Hilt looked at the statue again. ‘Perhaps,’ he conceded, ‘but hardly important in the scheme of things.’

Goodwin removed his mobile computer from his jacket pocket and took some pictures so he could examine them later. ‘I wonder who put it here? It looks terribly old. I can’t quite grasp how it’s located all the way down here, especially considering Sanctuary is only about thirty years old.

‘Is it?’ Hilt said. ‘What do we really know about this base? It’s shrouded in secrecy and as far as I know no Darklight teams have ever set foot inside it. Do you know anyone who’s ever been here?’

Goodwin considered Hilt’s words for a moment. ‘The professor has, and the secrecy is just part of the GMRC protocol regarding the subterranean programme.’

‘There’s secrecy and then there’s secrecy,’ Hilt said. ‘Has Professor Steiner ever disclosed any pertinent information about Sanctuary?’

‘He’s mentioned systems and management issues on occasion,’ Goodwin replied.

‘None of which is descriptive of the base itself. I’ve never heard anything about its structure, design or capacity and now that I come to think of it I haven’t met anyone else from any other base that has ever been here, either.’

Hilt was right. Goodwin had never spoken to anyone else who’d been to, or come from, Sanctuary. He’d never really thought much about it before, as plenty of GMRC assets were regarded as black projects. He had high level clearance, but accepted he didn’t know everything that went on. This find was very strange, however. He gave it a final look before they left to rejoin the rest of the group.

It wasn’t long until they were moving again, but little time had passed before the sergeant came back on the com once more.

‘Sir, we’ve come out of the tunnels into some kind of … cavern. There’s still no sign of the base.’

‘Copy that,’ Hilt replied.

‘Sir?’ the Darklight operative said again, his hesitance plain to hear.

‘What is it, Sergeant?’ Hilt said calmly, with only a hint of exasperation.

‘Sir, we’ve err – found something else. You better get up here.’

Hilt’s jaw clenched as the radio went silent. Goodwin hoped whatever the team had found this time was good, for the sergeant’s sake. He’d never seen Hilt angry and he decided he didn’t want to, either. Nevertheless, it must have been worth risking the wrath of their commander for, and therefore worth checking out, so Goodwin once again accompanied Hilt forwards.

They found the recon teams a few hundred yards outside the exit from the caves they had been endlessly trekking through. The area they were now in was vast, as their torchlight didn’t reach any walls;
most likely an unused chamber of the base
, Goodwin presumed.
At last we’re getting somewhere
, he thought, relief washing over him like a thirst-quenching wave. Ever since the earthquake he’d begun to fear they’d be trapped down there forever.

Coming to a halt, Goodwin noticed they stood at the edge of a large drop and strangely none of the soldiers had their torches on.

‘This better be good, Sergeant,’ Hilt said to the man, who had turned towards them at their approach. The rest of his men still had their helmets on and were peering up into the darkness.

‘It is, sir; trust me, you won’t believe this.’ The sergeant detached an odd looking gun from his armour, turned away from them, adjusted a few dials on the side of the weapon and then aimed and fired into the air above them.

A small trail of smoke shot up into the dark and disappeared from view. Silence followed and then after a few seconds a small detonation sounded high above and a plume of yellow light sprang to life, shedding a powerful glow around and beneath it.

The scene that greeted them made Goodwin inhale sharply in surprise and wonder; they weren’t in a chamber at all, at least not a small one, definitely not a small one. As he craned his head back towers, huge impossibly tall towers, rose up out of the earth in front of them. As the parachute flare drifted down the recon leader sent up two more, further apart and even higher.

‘This is not possible,’ Goodwin said, his voice a breathless whisper.

Hilt stood silently by his side, also taking in the unveiling of the spectacle before them as the other flares burst to life.

‘There must be scores of them,’ Goodwin said.

Another soldier handed him some goggles. ‘More like hundreds, sir.’

Goodwin put them on and was greeted with the sight of more towers. They stretched as far as the eye could see, hundreds of spires reaching to the heavens in a great city that humbled anything found on the surface of the Earth many, many times over.

 Goodwin gave a shake of his head. ‘My God,’ he said, the spine-tingling vision sending a shiver of awe coursing through his body, ‘what is this place?’

♦

It wasn’t long before the thirty thousand strong column of Darklight and GMRC personnel walked between the enormous structures. Using spectral range finders, some of the buildings measured around two miles high.

As Hilt relayed the information to him, Goodwin marvelled at the prospect. ‘That’s over ten thousand feet!’

‘According to the major,’ Hilt said, ‘the ceiling of this space is another mile above that.’

Goodwin couldn’t help but laugh, the sound verging on the hysterical. ‘That is just – wow.’

‘How is that even possible?’ Hilt asked him.

‘Well, we know Sanctuary is far deeper than Steadfast, due to the duration of the journey from the surface in the elevator,’ Goodwin said at last. ‘Couple that with the steady slope through the cave system and we must be about five or six miles down, maybe more.’

‘Shouldn’t we be experiencing some kind of heat issues this far below ground?’

‘Well, yes, you’re quite right,’ Goodwin said, impressed at the Darklight man’s knowledge. ‘At this depth it should be reaching around one hundred degrees Celsius. The continental crust ranges from twenty to thirty miles thick and where it meets the mantle, temperatures will exceed four hundred degrees.’

‘So how are we not toast?’

Goodwin considered the question. It was a good one. ‘There must be something beneath shielding us from the heat. That’s the only explanation I can think of that makes any sense.’

‘And does the GMRC have that kind of capability?’

‘To protect against one hundred degrees C, on this scale? No, not even close, no one does. And the chamber size, an impossibility with current technology.’

‘So this place, it isn’t—’ Hilt said, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

Goodwin held his gaze. ‘Made by us? No.’

‘Then who …?’

‘Perhaps that tomb was more important than we first thought.’

Hilt nodded mutely as they moved past a huge opening to one of the towers, the size of the doorway mirroring the building it provided an entrance to. The whole place seemed ominous and more than a little spooky as ghostly edifices loomed around them, hemming them in from all sides, even though the widths of the avenues between them were also immense.

Rather than move any deeper into the eerie metropolis, they decided to make camp and sent out larger Darklight teams to map out the terrain and surrounding area. The three main recon units were given the task of searching the closest structure.

As they settled in, Goodwin’s phone sounded an alert signal. Considering they weren’t in the vicinity of any transmission relay stations, he thought this odd to say the least. Withdrawing it from his pocket he looked at the screen.

It was a video message from the professor.

Selecting it, he moved away to a more secluded area on the edge of their temporary base to ensure he had some privacy. Against the backdrop of the powerful lanterns that the Darklight forces had erected, Goodwin opened out the phone’s larger screen and pressed play.

Professor Steiner’s face appeared in front of him.

‘Richard, if you’re watching this video it means you’ve reached Sanctuary. I will have told you that a message awaits you in my office at the base; however that was to misinform any unwanted eavesdroppers on our conversation. This is the message I want you to hear and I will embed it in the access programme I will be transferring to your phone shortly. The file was set to alert you to its presence when you reached a certain depth, which can only be achieved at Sanctuary.’

Steiner’s face became grave as he paused before continuing. ‘Richard,’ he said, hesitating again, adding to Goodwin’s mounting tension. ‘What I am about to tell you is well beyond top secret and is far above your clearance level, but given the new circumstances forced upon us by Malcolm Joiner I feel full disclosure is very necessary at this point. When the asteroid 2011 AG5 was first discovered twenty-nine years ago, NASA had already begun testing a new high Earth orbit deep space detection array. This system was categorised as an unacknowledged Special Access Programme – or black project, as we call them – due to its unique capabilities, which included satellite disruption technology that was to be utilised against enemies of the United States, as required.

‘During its first year of full operation, the array surveyed large swathes of space. In 2012 this new system revealed an extremely disturbing image. Following in the same trajectory as AG5 were six other asteroids. The first four of the six will be impacting Earth in 2042, the last two in 2045.

‘The asteroids striking in 2042 are a variety of sizes. The smallest is half that of AG5, while the largest is five times as big. Considering the predicted fallout from AG5, this next wave will utterly destroy the fragile order that is human civilisation. Any remnants of human life that survive past 2042 will then be faced with the final asteroids in 2045, the largest of which is forty times the size of AG5 and is classed as a world ender. No complex life on the planet’s surface or oceans will survive its arrival.

‘The reason these objects are so staggered is due to the speed they are travelling at. Over the millennia, varying velocities have ensured the distances between them have been amplified. This stagger is also the reason that the Mount Lemmon Survey that discovered AG5 did not pick up on the presence of the further six objects. Once it was confirmed that the telemetry from the deep space array was correct, it was decided, in the utmost secrecy, to inform other major nations around the world in order for humanity to prepare for the defence of its existence on this planet. Thus the GMRC was born and many subterranean facilities were subsequently designed and built.

‘During numerous summits it was agreed, rightly or wrongly, that these powerful governments would keep this terrible truth hidden from the rest of the world in order to maintain stability. Without a well-oiled and performing world economy, the task of creating these underground bases would have been nigh on impossible. Technologies had to be created and advanced in order to ensure our survival; if word had got out then a breakdown in civilisation would have severely hindered our goals.

‘You may be wondering how, over the years, these new threats haven’t been spotted by the many observatories around the globe. The answer is quite simple; with the world’s greatest powers behind you it is easy to subvert and control many things and those we couldn’t influence we forced closed. As we also controlled the media, any that slipped through the net were muffled and silenced. Unfortunately when your entire race is under threat of extinction, difficult and sometimes abhorrent decisions must be made.

‘After AG5’s arrival the dust cloud will ensure the general population doesn’t get any forewarning of what is to come, thus ensuring normality continues, at least for a time. This is important as while the GMRC and the world’s subterranean bases are ready for the arrival of the next wave of asteroids, there are still many final preparations to make. These preparations might not be as critical as our immediate survival, but they are still extremely important to our continued existence; such tasks include the relocation and protection of as many animals and as much plant life as possible. The placing of as many of humanity’s greatest works of art, structures and objects in our B Class subterranean bases, including U.S.S.B. Washington and U.S.S.B. Haven, are still ongoing. With a breakdown of law and order these tasks, and many others, would be much harder to complete.

‘The other sad fact is that it is in the interests of the majority of the world’s populace that people do not know what is to come. Chaos, disorder and lawlessness would only serve to make everyone’s remaining days a living nightmare. It will be hard for you to accept that over ninety-nine point nine per cent of the world’s current surface population has less than five years to live. Due to the first wave of asteroids that will arrive in 2042, many of these have under two years of life remaining.

‘The truth is,’ – Professor Steiner clenched his jaw as he fought to keep a hold of his emotions – ‘difficult to hear, I know. When I first found out, I refused to believe it, I wouldn’t believe it. Why couldn’t we deflect them, blow them up? Anything to prevent their arrival. Believe me, it was attempted, but the distances and speeds involved are beyond immense. For this reason, among others, plans were set in motion for a multi-tiered response to the threats we faced. If we were unable to prevent the arrival of the seven asteroids, we would build subterranean facilities all over the world in order to preserve our species and all other life on the planet.

‘While these monumental construction projects began, the world’s major space capable nations pooled resources and expertise to tackle the asteroids head on. Under the guise of exploration and communications improvements, over one hundred missions were sent up with varying degrees of success. Many fell short of even landing on 2011 AG5, which was deemed the best trial target since it was the closest to Earth. The few that were able to reach AG5 within mission parameters failed to affect its trajectory, although two came close. Due to further failures and unforeseen complications, it became apparent our resources were being ill-used and the majority of space missions were wound down and finally mothballed in 2035, leaving the subterranean response as humanity’s last and only hope.’