Final Days

TWENTY-SIX

Dorican Hotel, near the Florida Array, 8 February 2235

By the time Saul reached the Dorican, it was clear that the hotel had been caught at the centre of a riot. A fire truck had been rammed through the polished glass and plate steel of the hotel’s entrance, and what at first appeared to be bundles of rags turned out to be huddled corpses afloat on a sea of debris and torn-up carpeting.

He headed across the lobby, his stomach reduced to a tight knot of hunger and his feet a spider-web of painful blisters. He wondered if he was foolhardy to hope that Hanover might still be there, but just then he spotted the man himself sitting on a sofa at the far side of the lobby. He was facing away from Saul, towards a pair of sliding glass doors through which the Array was clearly visible in the distance.

Hanover looked up with a start as Saul approached him, glass crunching under his feet, then nodded almost as if he’d been expecting him. There was a raincoat draped across his lap, as if in readiness to go somewhere.

‘I suppose you’ve come to finish the job,’ he said, as Saul halted before him.

‘You mean kill you? Why would I do that?’

‘Good question,’ Hanover replied. ‘Because it would be pretty pointless under present circumstances, don’t you think?’

‘Why are you still here?’ Saul nodded towards the Array. ‘I’d have thought you’d have fled with all the rest of them by now.’

‘Hardly.’ Hanover laughed. ‘Who sent you? Donohue? Or did Fowler decide to get his hands dirty for once?’

Saul shook his head. ‘Neither. I think it’s fair to say I don’t work for the ASI any more.’

‘Really?’ Hanover regarded him with mild surprise. ‘So what did you do to piss them off?’

Saul thought about it for a moment. ‘I asked too many questions.’

Hanover nodded. ‘Never a good career move. So if you’re not here to kill me, what in God’s name are you doing here?’

‘I’ve learned quite a few things since Taiwan. I’ve seen video footage of Copernicus City recorded from a few years into the future, and it offers pretty conclusive evidence that whatever’s going to wipe out life here on Earth is going to do the same up there. And the only way it could have got there that I know of is through the Florida Array.’

Hanover nodded. ‘That’s the general consensus. So what’s your point?’

‘If it can reach the Moon from here, what’s to stop it getting all the way to the colonies as well? The only way to stop that happening is to shut down the entire Lunar Array. I might just have a chance of doing that, if I can get hold of a set of EDP codes.’

‘What makes you think just such an eventuality hasn’t already been carefully planned for?’

‘Has it?’

‘Of course it has,’ Hanover barked irritably.

‘Then what the hell happened to Copernicus City, in those videos from the future?’ Saul demanded. ‘If they couldn’t shut down the Florida–Copernicus gate in time, how can you be sure they’ll manage to shut down any of the rest?’

Hanover let the raincoat slide off his lap, revealing the Agnessa concealed beneath. His fingers were already gripping the trigger mechanism.

‘Tell me,’ asked Hanover, ‘why do you feel you have to be the one to do this?’

Saul took a step back, his eyes fixed on the gun. ‘Because somebody has to.’

‘You’re talking about an act of gross terrorism. Do you really want to be responsible for something as serious as that?’

Saul ran his tongue around a dehydrated mouth. ‘I’ve thought this through, every which way. I’ve explained my reasoning to you. What would you do?’

Hanover shook his head. ‘What would I do? I don’t exactly have a golden track record for making the correct decisions, son, so if you really want advice, you’re better off getting it from someone else.’

Saul tried a different tack. ‘If I don’t do this, the colonies are finished – and the whole human race along with them. Surely you can understand the logic in what I’m saying?’

Hanover nodded fractionally, his eyes turning down towards the gun in his hand. ‘I suppose I can,’ he replied, so faintly that Saul struggled to hear him.

‘So you’ll give me the codes?’

Hanover aimed the Agnessa towards Saul. ‘I know a few things about you, Dumont. I’ve read your psych-eval, and you’re loaded to the gills with resentment and self-pity, not to mention a barrel-load of self-destructive tendencies. If it were up to me, you’d have been kicked out of the ASI a long time ago. Maybe you’ve gotten it into your head that you can become a big hero, and kick your former employers in the balls at the same time.’

Saul felt his face grow hot. ‘You’re saying my motivation is suspect. Fine, shoot me then. Put me out of my fucking misery. What the hell do you owe them, anyway?’

Hanover stared at him silently for a good twenty seconds, then lowered the gun back towards his lap.

‘Fuck it,’ he said, ‘maybe you’re right. Besides, I don’t have enough bullets in this gun for you as well, even if I did decide to shoot you.’

Saul frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

Hanover raised his eyes towards the ceiling. ‘My family are upstairs. Cassie and both the kids, that makes four of us. There isn’t a fifth bullet for you.’

Saul felt a hollow sensation in his gut. ‘You’re going to kill them?’

Hanover smiled bitterly. ‘They’re not allowed passage through the Array. I am, but not them. That’s my punishment, apparently. If they’d killed me, or ordered me to stay behind, I could have accepted that after everything that’s happened, but . . .’ He shook his head and began to weep. ‘But this is cruel.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Saul. Somehow the words seemed far from adequate.

‘I don’t know how long it’s going to take – if it’s going to be sudden or slow, painful or just like going to sleep. Do you understand me?’

Saul shook his head. ‘Not really.’

‘We don’t know what’s going to happen,’ Hanover rasped. ‘All we know is that everything’s going to end. The means aren’t clear.’

The Agnessa slipped from Hanover’s grasp, and clattered to the floor next to him.

‘Here,’ he said, and a moment later, Saul’s contacts flagged him regarding the arrival of a string of letters and numbers.

‘What’s this?’ he demanded.

‘An access code,’ replied Hanover. ‘You need to head straight for the ASI offices up in the Lunar Array. Soon as you’re in range of the localized security network, activate it. It’ll log you into a restricted network, and guide you to where you can get a keycard that’ll trigger the entire process.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘More or less. There’s a terminal room from where you can use the keycards to then trigger a manual shutdown. Its exact location’s kept secret from everyone but the director of the ASI, but assuming the restricted network accepts your authorization, it’ll guide you there as well.’

‘And then?’

‘And then, assuming you’re operating under normal circumstances, there’ll need to be two of you, with separate authorization and one keycard each, before the system will respond. You have to activate two separate terminals at exactly the same time, or nothing will happen.’

‘There’s no way to trigger the process remotely?’

‘Of course not. The security risk would be preposterous.’

‘Then just the one access code isn’t any use, unless I’m sure of someone being there to help me. Is there any way I can get hold of another?’

‘I said “under normal circumstances”,’ Hanover replied. ‘There are measures, however, in case only the one person is available.’

‘What kind of measures?’

Hanover leaned forward. ‘Both ends of the Copernicus–Florida gate are linked to shielded servers that maintain constant radio contact with each other. If the servers at either end of a wormhole gate stop transmitting, for any reason, it triggers a major security alert.’

He sat back. ‘Now say, for whatever reason, there’s only one person in a position to respond to that alert; maybe because there’s been an attack, or – and this is why they set things up this way in the first place – because something alien and vicious, something completely unknown, has come through one olony gates. That puts all the rest of the gates in equal danger. What they don’t tell you is that it’s possible to simultaneously shut down not just one wormhole gate – but all of them.’

‘Why have I never heard about this before?’

‘Because it’s such very dangerous knowledge,’ Hanover replied. ‘It’s the kind of thing you really don’t want your enemies knowing. Or most of our friends, for that matter. If there isn’t an immediate response to the security alert – within, say, half an hour – the two-man rule is automatically rescinded and just the one person can trigger a gate shutdown. Are you following me?’

‘That’s what happened to the Galileo gate, isn’t it?’ asked Saul. ‘You were in charge of the investigation, and you were the one who dismissed the idea that EDPs had played a part in causing the wormhole to collapse. But Donohue told me you’d been playing both sides, that you gave the separatists everything they needed to cut Galileo out of the network. Did you tell the separatists the same thing you’re now telling me?’

‘Let’s just say,’ said Hanover, ‘that I wasn’t given a great deal of choice in the matter.’

Saul stared at him, momentarily speechless. All these years, and the man responsible for so much pain and anguish had been right there, working for the same people as he did. But instead of anger he felt only a curious emptiness, as if a cavity had been dug out of the core of him.

Hanover regarded him with evident amusement. ‘Are you really sure you’re up to this, then?’

‘No, but I don’t feel like I have any choice either.’

Hanover nodded wearily and bent over the side of his chair to retrieve the Agnessa. ‘You should probably go now.’ He stood up stiffly, inspecting the gun before heading towards a bank of elevators, without so much as another glance at Saul.

‘Wait,’ Saul called after him.

Hanover paused, without turning. ‘Please don’t try and stop me, son. Especially since I’m armed. I hope you manage to pull this off, I really do. But to be frank with you, I’m glad I won’t be around to find out, either way.’

Saul watched Hanover step inside an elevator, and the doors closed behind him. He then turned and walked back out the lobby entrance and into the warm, moist air, and realized his hands were shaking.

He received an incoming call from Olivia, as he was putting distance between himself and the Dorican. ‘Did you get what you were looking for yet?’ she asked.

‘I did. Have you explained to the others what I’m planning to do?’

‘Mitchell didn’t say much, at first. Jeff was pretty shoc, but he seems to be on your side.’ There was a bitter tone in her voice as she revealed this. ‘Mitchell offered to fly out there and pick you up.’

‘Really?’

‘Yep. Insisted on flying out all on his own to fetch you, but Lester vetoed that. Said he wanted one of his own pilots on board.’

‘Who’s Lester?’

‘Lester Rose. He runs Launch Pad with his wife, don’t you remember?’

‘Christ.’ Saul felt the warm patter of rain on his skin. ‘I do, now.’ Lester had been a cantankerous old fellow even back in those days, and Saul was surprised to learn he was still alive.

‘How is Mitchell getting here?’

‘He’s borrowed a tourist hopper. Try and see if you can find somewhere flat and even for it to land in the meantime.’

Saul moved further away from the Dorican until he spotted a deserted car park around the far side of the hotel building. ‘I think I’ve found somewhere, and I’ll send you the coordinates in a minute. How long before he gets here?’

‘Two hours maximum. Think you can hold out that long?’

‘Sure I can.’ Saul paused before his next question. ‘How long before you and Jeff set out for Inuvik?’

‘I . . . Saul, we’re already on the way there. We boarded a sub-orbital just a few minutes ago. We’ll be landing in the North-west Territories in another hour or so.’

Saul felt something lurch deep inside him. He pictured the sub-orbital arcing high over the northern wastes of Canada, before dipping down towards a settlement spread out along the shores of an Alaskan lake. It was a journey he’d made many times before, for the Inuvik Array had been one of the first of its kind, located in the remote north when the technology had still been experimental. It was still the only way to get to the Jupiter Research Platform.

‘About that enquiry you asked me to make,’ she continued. ‘I’m still not sure just what it is I’m supposed to be looking for, but I’ve set up a couple of automated queries. Assuming they aren’t discovered, they’ll return any correlations between Mitchell and the shipment. I don’t know how I’ll get anything back to you, once we’re out there, but if there’s a way, I’ll find it.’

Saul felt his throat tighten. ‘Thanks.’

‘One other thing,’ she added. ‘Once you’re on your way to the Moon with Mitchell, we want you to send the contents of the Tau Ceti database to this network location.’ Saul received a string of data even as she spoke. ‘We’ll share those files with any survivors on Mars ad the other research platforms, see what we can find out. After that, it’s up to you to get your own copy through to at least one of the colonies.’

‘I’ll miss you,’ he said.

He could hear the catch in her throat as she replied. ‘Goodbye, Saul – from both of us. Take care.’

And with that she was gone.

He sat down hard in the dirt and dust, suddenly light-headed. After a minute he heard something like gunfire from the direction of the hotel. Three shots in rapid succession, then, after a brief pause, one last shot that affected him like a hammer blow.