Aftershock Read online

  ‘Well, I don’t know what to say,’ Steph said looking up from the box of tricks Howard had placed on the table. She studied the man’s face. ‘You really are a most remarkable man, Howard.’

  ‘Why thank you,’ he replied with a bashful smile and went off to the kitchen.

  49

  It took Steph another half hour of wire-fiddling to rig up the circuitry for the modulator on the kitchen bench. The generator stood at one end of the room. The equipment was an amorphous heap of metal boxes, wires, relays and lengths of plastic. At one end was the modulator looking totally incongruous among the piles of homemade electrical gadgets and devices that belonged in a museum. Steph had soldered together most of the components, but some wires were wound together and covered with insulation tape. The final step was to connect the leads to Howard’s ancient generator. She uncoiled two rubber-sheathed lengths of wire, clamped one end to the output pads of the transformer and the other to electrodes on the generator.

  Howard came into the kitchen as Steph was finishing off with the connections and checking everything through. Josh was sitting up in bed nearby, watching with interest.

  ‘How’s it going, Steph?’ Howard asked. ‘Looks horrendously complicated.’

  ‘Well, it looks worse than it is,’ she replied. ‘I’ve just connected the generator to the transformer and from there the power goes to the modulator. I’ve hooked up the modulator to the main transmitter in your radio. If we can get enough juice from the generator, we should be able to push the radio frequency range beyond the interference region, and maybe, just maybe, get a message out.’

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ Howard said and stepped back.

  ‘You want to do the honours?’ Steph asked, pointing at the switch close to the modulator.

  Howard had his hands up. ‘No ... Your machine. You do it.’

  Steph shrugged and leaned over the bench, held her fingers on the switch for a moment and then clicked it to ‘on’.

  At first, nothing happened. Then the modulator began to hum and a dull green light appeared inside it and started to pulse. Steph leaned towards a slider close to the main switch. ‘I’m going to gradually increase the power to the modulator,’ she said. ‘We need to get the transmission signal up to at least 102 gigahertz, the bottom end of the range E-Force operates in. If we make that, we just have to pray the interference band doesn’t go that far.’

  Steph moved the slider slowly. With each increment, the hum shifted to a higher pitch and the light inside the modulator pulsed a little faster. With the slider halfway along its groove, Steph stopped to check the frequency. It was at 30.3 gigahertz. Good, but still nowhere near the frequency she needed.

  Josh appeared in the doorway. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘You should be in bed,’ Steph said, without taking her eyes from the mess of tangled electrical components on the kitchen bench.

  ‘I’m feeling much better.’

  Steph pushed the slider to the three-quarter mark, and the hum increased in pitch again, turning into an irritating squeal. She checked the frequency. 57.8 gigahertz. ‘Damn it,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘What?’ Howard asked.

  ‘Should be 75 to 80 gigahertz by now.’ She shook her head and sighed. Then she adjusted a couple of the controls on the radio. ‘Ow!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s hot.’

  ‘Perhaps, we should...’ Howard began quietly.

  Steph ignored him. ‘So close...’ she announced and tapped the slider, nudging it a millimetre. Glancing at the frequency meter, she cursed and went to nudge the slider again. There was a loud crack and a spark flew from the modulator. At the same moment, the generator started to crackle where the leads had been attached to the electrodes. A wire connecting the radio to the modulator snapped, burst into flames, flew up into the air and hit the low compacted sand ceiling. It rebounded and shot back to the bench, missing Steph’s hand by millimetres. A low fizz emanated from the radio and the whole arrangement of components shut down as though a switch had been thrown to ‘off’.

  50

  Base One, Tintara Island

  ‘So, you can’t reach Pete or Mai in Dome Alpha?’ Tom said. An image of Mark at the controls of the Big Mac filled the screen in his quarters.

  ‘No. Comms between here and the hotel are completely down. You got anything on your monitors?’

  ‘I lost the link at the same time as you, Mark. BigEye has traces for each of them on infrared. Mai had just separated from a small group, leaving Pete behind. Their traces show they’re still in Alpha, but infrared doesn’t mean much.’

  Mark knew precisely what Tom meant. Both Pete and Mai could be dead, but they would still have some residual heat in their bodies. For a while at least. He pushed the thought aside and focused. ‘Tom, I want you to make a detailed scan of the structure of the three domes.’

  ‘What’re you thinking of doing?’

  ‘I’m going in.’

  ‘But how’re you going to dock?’ Tom asked, surveying Mark’s face on the screen.

  ‘That’s why I want the information on the structural integrity. I’m going to have to cut my way in.’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘Anything more on Steph and Josh?’ Mark asked.

  Tom looked pained. ‘Oh, I’ve narrowed it down ... to an area about the size of New Jersey,’ he said, and looked at his control panel. ‘BigEye 17 is sweeping the area in a standard search pattern. I’m due an update in a few minutes.’ He looked up. ‘If they are alive I’m sure Steph and Josh will make their presence known somehow.’

  ‘Okay, Tom. Let me have those stats on the hotel asap, yeah?’

  Tom set to work straight away. He had the most recent BigEye images of the stricken hotel on his screen, ones taken after the second tremor that had broken the comms link with Pete and Mai.

  ‘Sybil, can you bring up the stress pattern for each of the domes? Start with Alpha.’

  The image focused in on the most westerly dome. It filled the screen and rotated slowly to show all angles. A series of coloured lines appeared. They looked like the lattice work of veins in a human body, or the filaments of fat in a side of meat. The top of the dome was shattered and closely packed fissures ran from the cap along the west side almost to the second floor. The clearest region was on the first floor on the east side.

  ‘Dome Beta please, Sybil.’

  An almost identical picture appeared. Dome Beta. It rotated slowly on the screen. The west side had fewer stress lines, and they were less closely packed than those for Alpha. The cap was holding up well, but this would be the worst place to try to enter the hotel. The glass was at its thickest and under the most stress from tension.

  Tom ran his hand over the virtual keyboard on the top of his desk and the image shifted to the east side of Beta. This was severely damaged, the stress lines packed tight and running halfway down the side of the dome. He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose. ‘Gamma please.’

  Dome Gamma appeared on the screen. The top of the structure was such a mess of fault lines, Tom was amazed the cap had not given way. The fissures ran down the dome in every direction. But, below these, the structure was remarkably undamaged. Tom closed in on the image, following fault lines from the top of the dome until they petered out. Then, moving down to the base of the structure, he could see that a small section at the east end of the linkway was still connected to the west side of Dome Gamma, but the corridor was completely unusable. The other end had snapped away from Beta.

  Tom shifted the image again to study the most easterly side of the dome. Here the structure was the most stable of any section of the hotel. If any part could sustain Mark’s effort to cut into the glass, this would be it. He turned to the control panel and sent the information over to Mark in the Big Mac.

  A signal sounded. It was the update from BigEye 17. Tom span his electric chair round and leaned over the plastic top of the console, not daring to hope the satellite would deliver some positive news. He flicked the signal
to the main screen. The image was clouded with lines of static. Tom waited for the image to clear, but it would not shift. All he could see was a background of orange covered with streaks of distortion and jagged white bands. From the speaker came nothing but white noise.

  51

  Dome Alpha

  Pete awoke to a horrible silence, and for a moment he could not move. He tried to sit up but was stopped by a heavy object across his chest. He looked down and saw a steel beam. It had come within centimetres of crushing him. Pete pushed against it. It was incredibly heavy and had stuck fast. Taking a deep breath, he pushed again with every ounce of his strength. The beam shifted. He lifted it away from his chest and pulled himself out from underneath.

  He sat up and felt a sharp pain across his forehead. His right leg was stiff, and when he moved it, his nerves screamed at him. He brought his arm up and stared at his wrist monitor. It glowed warmly in the dark. Tapping the screen, he checked the integrity of his suit. It was unscathed. Next, he instructed the suit to release painkillers. A glance at the medistats on the screen showed that he had torn a ligament in his right ankle, but nothing was broken. A few taps on the screen and several million nanobots were on their way to the damaged area to repair the tissue. Until that was fixed, he would just have to make do with the painkillers. He checked the time. He had been out for no more than a couple of minutes.

  Wincing, he stood up. His helmet light illuminated the room. The ceiling had caved in. Two steel girders lay on top of a heap of rubble. He picked his way to where the injured had been lying. Gazing down at the monitor on his wrist, he checked for life signs, then using his cochlear implants, he listened for heartbeats. Other than his own, there were two. They were both strong and steady. He touched a control at the side of the screen.

  ‘Mai? Mai? Come in, Mai.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Mark? This is Pete calling Big Mac. Do you read me?’

  Nothing.

  Pete cursed and lowered his wrist to his side. Then he heard a voice.

  ‘Pete?’

  He turned towards the sound. The beam from his helmet seared through the dark and lit up a pale face a couple of metres away. It was Archie Barnet.

  ‘Can you help get this thing off me?’ the boy called.

  The remains of a table lay across Archie’s body, a chunk of concrete with metal rods sticking from it at odd angles lay on top. Pete bent down and lifted the concrete, resting it on the floor beside him. Then he levered up the table with his left hand and helped Archie up with his right.

  ‘You hurt?’ Pete asked.

  Archie patted himself, then put a hand to his head. His cut had reopened and blood was running down his cheek. His face was blackened with dirt and dust. ‘I’m okay ... I think.’

  Pete turned as he heard a whimper. Taking two paces across the room, he found Sandra Rimmer. She was pulling herself from under a pile of debris. Pete took her wrist and she clambered to her feet. Her right sleeve was red with blood, the fabric clinging to her. Pete helped her over the rubble into a clear area. He ripped open the woman’s sleeve and studied the laceration.

  ‘Here,’ Archie said. He pulled off his jacket, tossed it to the ground and tore a strip of fabric from one of his shirt tails.

  Pete took it and wrapped it around Sandra’s arm just above the cut. ‘That’ll stop the bleeding,’ he said, and looked into the woman’s face. ‘You all right otherwise?’

  She nodded.

  ‘She’s shaking,’ Archie said. ‘’Ere, Sand, love.’ He plucked up his jacket and put it over the woman’s shoulders. She gave him a weak smile.

  Pete left them and checked to see if anyone else was alive. It took him only a few minutes. Sandra and Archie both watched him as he picked his way back through the debris. He simply shook his head, and Sandra burst into tears.

  ‘Come on,’ Pete said.

  ‘Where?’ Archie asked.

  ‘First we find Mai. Then we stick to the original plan. Try to get you to the dock.’

  He turned, and the other two followed him through the door and along the passageway. He stopped and lifted his wrist. ‘Mark? Mark, Pete here. Do you read me? Mai? Mai?’ He paused and tried again.

  Nothing but a quiet hiss of interference.

  At the end of the passage, the floor was strewn with rubble. They clambered over it and turned into Reception.

  It had been hit hard. The desk was reduced to firewood. A curved line of metal stumps were all that remained of it. At first glance, the sculpture of Neptune looked untouched, but even this had been blasted. The god’s toes on his left foot had been blown away, steel rods protruded from the feet. All along the left side of the sculpture there were pits and marks, and Neptune’s nose had been snapped off.

  Mai lay with her back propped up against the plinth. Her legs were spread and her arms hung limp at her sides. The god towered over her.

  ‘Mai,’ Pete yelled and dashed over. He slipped on some loose plaster, almost went down, but just managed to keep his balance.

  ‘Mai.’ He crouched beside her. She opened her eyes, taking a few seconds to focus.

  ‘Pete! What...?’

  Pete scanned her with his wrist monitor, running it over her torso, her head and then along her limbs. ‘Anything hurting?’ he asked.

  Mai shook her head and looked round as Archie and Sandra appeared to her right. ‘The others?’ she asked.

  ‘Dead,’ Pete said. ‘Come on, up you get. You seem to be in one piece, lass.’

  Mai leaned on Pete’s arm and pulled herself to her feet. ‘Wow! Do I have a headache.’

  ‘I’d think yourself lucky.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I do,’ she retorted and glanced at her wrist monitor. ‘According to my sensors, the aftershock was less powerful than the first, but it’s caused some serious damage. Bound to have weakened the hotel’s infrastructure.’

  Pete nodded and tried his comms again, but the system was still down. ‘We have to get to the dock.’

  ‘Lead the way.’

  The floor was treacherous. Covered with shards of glass and rubble, there were great holes in the marble, and some parts of the floor that looked intact were little more than a crust of tile with nothing under them.

  It took them several minutes to cross Reception. From where they stood, the view of the exit was obscured by a giant mound of masonry, twisted metal and shattered tiles. They picked their way towards the obstruction and then around it to the left. They could see a clear space stretching towards the door to the service stairs. Then, 2 metres in front of it, the ceiling had collapsed, bringing down a second, larger mound of rubble. It blocked the door, making it completely impassable.

  ‘Well I guess that narrows our options to one,’ Pete said, turning to the others. ‘We’ll have to press on to Beta.’

  52

  Dome Beta

  Harry, Kristy, Jim and Nick tumbled through the smashed glass panel one after the other, collapsing onto the floor and gasping for air. Water was only a couple of centimetres deep here, and that was draining away into some hidden hole or invisible opening. Harry tried to pull himself up, but his knees gave way. He was chilled to the bone and shaking. It was several minutes before he could roll over and sit up, his back against the wall. He looked down and blood ran into his mouth. His left foot was throbbing. He tugged gingerly at the lace of his shoe and loosened it carefully. The pain screamed through him and he gasped. Very slowly, he pulled the shoe away from his foot, removed the sock and stared at his foot. It was torn to ribbons, great cuts ran along the top of it and along both sides. The sock coloured the puddle of water pink.

  He turned to the others. They were in little better shape. They looked like drowned rats. Kristy’s stage costume was in tatters, the bandana long-gone, and the silver jumpsuit soiled and ripped. Nick was the closest to him and seemed to be the least injured by the trauma of their escape.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ he said.

  ‘Looks very much like it,’ Harry r
eplied.

  Jim turned to them, saw Harry’s injury and pulled himself to his feet. He came over and slumped down against the wall next to him. ‘Let me see,’ he said and bent forward to study Harry’s wounds. ‘You’re losing a lot of blood,’ he said. He staggered to his feet and pulled a length of black fabric from his trouser pocket. ‘Don’t think I’ll be needing this for some time,’ he said, holding up his bow tie. He settled himself unsteadily on one knee and, with great care, wrapped the tie tight around Harry’s ankle, just above the uppermost laceration. ‘Best I can do, I’m afraid.’

  Harry smiled at him. ‘It’s Armani, isn’t it, Jim?’

  ‘Certainly is. Cost a fortune at Barney’s.’

  ‘Well, thanks. And thank Barney for me,’ he quipped. Without missing a beat, he pulled himself up. Holding onto the wall for support, he managed to keep his injured foot off the ground. ‘I’m going to have to improvise a crutch or at least a walking stick,’ he said. ‘Without that, I’m, going absolutely nowhere.’

  Jim glanced around. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Nick, I can see a metal rod over there. It’s stuck under that smashed up table. Can you see it?’

  The boy nodded and headed over. He could just squeeze through an opening in the rubble covering the remains of a mahogany table that had once stood close to the foot of the grand staircase. Pushing his head and shoulders through, he emerged a couple of seconds later with a metal pole about a metre long. Beaming, he walked back to the others.

  ‘Perfect,’ Harry said and leaned his weight onto it. He caught Kristy’s eye. She was sitting against a sturdy metal box that had somehow found its way into the hall. Harry limped over and, leaning on the stick, he offered the singer his right hand. She looked at it for several moments and then glanced up at Harry’s expressionless face, before she slipped her small hand into his. She was so light, it took little effort to pull her to her feet in one smooth movement. She let out a quiet groan as she straightened.