The Void

CHAPTER 10

Jack Hammerson reread the summary of the report before him, titled: BREAKOUT. It was the result of several years’ observational analysis, interviews and conversations with Captain Alex Hunter, Hammerson’s HAWC team leader.

Alex Hunter was the first, and probably the last of their AWP, or Advanced Warrior Program, soldiers. The Arcadian program, from which he had drawn his codename, had literally caused him to rise from the ashes of a living death. Science had given him gifts and curses, but it was looking more likely they were in unequal measure.

He rubbed a hand across his face, his focus still on just a few paragraphs as if his mind had become a wheel stuck in sand, ever spinning, but not able to escape.

The military psychologists; Hammerson; Alex’s partner, Aimee Weir; and even Alex Hunter himself had worked hard to suppress the psychopathic urges of The Other that inhabited the deep, dark places in his mind. Alex had been given techniques to calm himself, and usually they worked, or at least he said they did.

Early diagnosis of a dissociative identity, or in layman’s terms, a split personality disorder, were far from satisfactory, and in fact, the detection of a neocortical mass in the center of his head led to theories that there was a physical aspect to the aberrant personality that haunted him. What they had at first thought to be a benign knot of scar tissue that surrounded an old bullet fragment in his brain was suspected of being something far more sinister.

Under MRI analysis, the mass was neuro-architecturally determined to be a bundle of synapses that had its own blood flow and was even triggering independent electrical coupling and neuronal synchronization, just like his brain did. But when they tried to investigate it more thoroughly, Alex’s body and mind had reacted — it was if the mass, the source of The Other, was defending itself.

“Hmm.” Hammerson scratched his chin. Yeah, that’s you, isn’t it? He thought. That’s where you live; the monster from his Id.

The HAWC commander turned the page, feeling his heart sink even further as he read on. There was the potential for total takeover of his personality. Alex Hunter, the person they knew, loved, and respected was currently the dominant personality pattern. And The Other was the rogue pattern he kept locked away. But the report’s author suggested that this psychological entity was becoming stronger not weaker, and perhaps it wasn’t Alex who freed it at will, but The Other that let itself out, whenever it chose.

The author also suggested they needed to prepare for the possibility of this darker personality not just asserting itself to become the dominant one, but one day becoming the only one.

Jack Hammerson knew that when that manifestation occurred, Alex Hunter wouldn’t be Alex Hunter anymore; he’d be a near unstoppable killing machine. The implications were horrifying — for Aimee; his son, Joshua; and Alex himself. And then there were the implications to Hammerson and his HAWCs.

What do you do with mad dogs? Hammerson already knew the answer to that. His eyes moved to the icon on his screen labeled ‘SWP’ — Synthetic Warrior Program. There was an old saying about hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. To that end, he had prepared a contingency plan to defend them all against a rogue Alex Hunter. He hoped the day would never come, but if it did, then they were ready to fight fire with fire.

Create a monster to kill a monster, Hammerson thought glumly. I hope, never. He sat staring at the report for several more seconds, not seeing the words anymore as his mind had turned inwards. The knock at the door gave him a start.

“Jesus.” Hammerson closed the report and pushed back from his desk. “Come.”

He already knew who it would be, so he cleared his mind and smiled as he stood. Alex Hunter paused to briefly salute, then he crossed to his superior officer with hand outstretched.

“Sir.”

Hammerson gripped the hand, examining his protégé. Alex had gray-green eyes that could project warmth, like now, or radiate a cold ruthlessness with an unblinking stare.

“Good job on the Manhattan.” Hammerson pointed to the chair opposite his own at the huge mahogany desk. “We recovered the device, all terrorists down, and Joe Public gets to sleep easy.”

“Except we lost the senator and his wife,” Alex said.

“True.” Hammerson sighed. “Gillian and Robert Anderson were dead the moment they boarded. Sometimes fate has plans for people and nothing or no one can change it. You saved millions of lives that day, but bottom line, we can’t protect everyone, everywhere.”

Alex stared into space. “We are the sword and shield.”

“Damn right.” Hammerson nodded. “Let’s move on. Are you rested?”

Alex turned. “Sure, if you call being decontaminated and debriefed for hours resting. I’m still waiting for that leave you promised me.”

“I promised you leave? Must be slipping.” Hammerson chuckled. “Anyway; I promised Aimee I’d give you leave — there’s a difference.” Hammerson raised his eyebrows. “How are she and Joshua by the way?” He watched Alex closely.

“Good, no, great. Having us all together, like a real family, it’s changed my life.” Alex seemed to relax further into the chair.

“And the headaches?” Hammerson smiled, watching.

Alex waved it away. “No, none.”

“Anger flare ups, conflict, or… voices?” Hammerson’s eyes narrowed. “That one voice.”

Alex’s eyes slowly lifted, the gaze direct. “No, no, and no.” He opened his hands, arms wide. “No change, I’m fine, Jack. So there’s probably no need to watch them, us, anymore, right?”

“Probably not.” Hammerson just left it there, committing to nothing. The techniques they were using seemed to work while he was conscious. But even Alex knew that when dreaming, the monster ran free.

But while under control, that monster was very useful. Hammerson tilted his head. “You’ll have to bring Aimee and Josh in for a hello. I miss them both.” He sat back. “In fact, I’ve got something for Josh.”

The corner of Alex’s mouth lifted. “Please tell me it’s not a weapon.”

Hammerson smirked. “In the wrong hands, it might be.” He folded his arms. “I’ve got a friend that works out at the Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory.”

“The Tevatron particle collider at Illinois?” Alex’s brows went up. “I’ve heard of it. They’re doing some interesting particle-collision work.”

Hammerson nodded. “That’s them; they also run some interesting breeding programs for guard dogs. They’re designed to be big, strong, and with intelligence that’s well above average. The boss of the pack, Fenrir, has just sired another litter; I think I can get Josh a pup.”

“Jack, Joshua has been after a dog for years. But I think I’d like him to pick one out himself.” Alex said.

“I know, I know,” said Hammerson. “But he won’t find one like this. And besides, he gets to pick it… sort of. These dogs are part of their Wolfen Guardian Program, and they’re called that for a reason. They can almost understand human speech. The dog will protect Joshua and Aimee with his life, and will mortally bond with them.” Hammerson shrugged. “For when you’re away.”

Alex sat thinking for a moment. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt for him to have a look.” He stared from under his brows. “But no strings attached, huh?”

Hammerson smiled. “No strings. In fact, I’ll run them out there myself. There’s a male pup, three months old; I think its name is Torben.”

“Torben, Tor, I like it. Okay.” He looked up. “Hey, did you just say, for when I’m away?”

Hammerson opened his arms. “Got a little job for you.”

Alex’s grin faded. “One day, you calling me in here will be just to shoot the breeze.” A line appeared between Alex’s brows. “What have you got?”

Hammerson clasped his fingers together. “It’s a retrieval — the Orlando Space Shuttle Orbiter has come down. We need to search for survivors, and retrieve a package, top priority. Little more than twenty-four hours, in and out.”

Alex nodded. “Please tell me it doesn’t involve a cave, or at least it’s somewhere warm.”

Hammerson’s mouth hiked at one corner. “Well, I can tell you it’s certainly above ground — well above ground. Good enough?”

“No caves?” Alex cocked his head.

“Nope; no Antarctic labyrinths, and no going beneath any dark ice.” Hammerson smiled grimly. “But as for the somewhere warm, well, save that for your holidays.” He sat down, hit a few keys and pushed the image feed on his computer up onto a wall screen. “Revelation Mountains.”

“Alaska.” Alex whistled. “Yeah, well above ground is right.”

The ten-by-eight-foot screen showed the satellite view from several hundred miles up. The geography was a gray-blue and white-capped rumpled sheet. Hammerson zoomed in and they flew down from space as the HAWC leader selected a grid and enlarged.

The clarity blurred for a moment before the resolution software cleaned it up. He stopped at about a thousand feet up.

“A lot of what we are seeing here is computer extrapolation. What it can’t see it’s interpreting based on best-guess algorithms, because it’s dealing with some weird cloud formations that are distorting the image over the site.”

Alex frowned, stood and walked closer to the screen. “Looks like a giant volcano.”

“It does, but it isn’t.” Hammerson gestured to the screen. “That cusp is around 10,000 feet up, and created by three mountains being wedged up against each other, making a giant floating crater about two miles wide.”

“Like a molar with a bad cavity,” Alex observed. “But there’s something missing; snow. All the other peaks close by are covered, but this crater is ice-free. Did the Orlando suffer a fuel burn on impact?”

In response, Hammerson highlighted the area and further increased magnification. There were the remains of Orlando, its skid line, and its broken, battered shell plus the familiar cone-shaped spray pattern of debris dispersal.

“There she is, the Orlando, busted up real bad, but the cabin and bay area came down primarily intact. What that angle of descent and its fuselage positioning tells me is that it obviously came in under some sort of control, otherwise it’d be in a million pieces with nothing larger than a matchbox.” He turned to Alex. “Then there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.”

Hammerson joined Alex at the large screen. He pointed. “But that smudge you see is growing larger, and science division does not believe its chemical, heat, or debris scatter. What they do think is it’s something organic, and it’s growing.” He turned, arms folded. “Something that spilled out of the Orlando.”

“What the hell were they working on up there?” Alex asked.

Hammerson shrugged. “Just your basic low gravity experiments. They also had some lab animals, some mold and fungi spores, insect specimens, but nothing that could conceivably cause what we’ve seen on that mountaintop. But…” He held a finger in the air. “…the outlier in all this, is that they took onboard a fragment of space debris.”

Alex turned. “We talking space junk?”

“No,” Hammerson said. “Part of an asteroid, NASA tells us. Came out of the void — deep space.” He went back to his computer and then split the image — the first remained as the mountaintop, but the second now showed the video feed from inside the Orlando cockpit just before it went down. He started it playing.

Once again Hammerson gritted his teeth at the sound of panic, fear and madness. The rushed movement was blurred, but no matter how many times he heard it, it still wavered between being vaguely human vocalizations to something that was bizarrely unidentifiable.

“That was the last contact from the Orlando before it dropped out of orbit.” Hammerson turned to Alex.

Alex continued to stare hard at the screen. “Play it again.” He then asked Hammerson to play it over and over, each time the creases in his forehead grew deeper.

“If you ask me, sounds like someone sent us a recording straight from hell.” Hammerson grimaced. “After that, they went dark.” He returned to his seat and leaned back in his chair. “And then they came down hard in the mountains.”

Alex was still frowning. “Three voices, two men and one woman — I’ve never heard such fear in a human voice. Screaming for their lives.” Alex looked back at the mountains. “And now, something is growing up there, when nothing should have even survived the crash.”

“Something did; we got movement as well. We just don’t know from what.”

“The last image is blurred,” Alex observed.

“That’s right, those weird low clouds; our Sabers satellite has detected a range of gases that are being held over the crater in high concentrations. It seems a pretty primordial mix. Our science teams think it might have a high fungal, bacterial or viral load, causing some sort of xeno change. Whatever is growing down there seems to be off-gassing.”

“Well, can’t be all that lethal if we’ve picked up movement, so there’s someone or something alive down there.” Alex retook his seat. “So why us?”

Hammerson expected the question. “That’s what I said. Normally, I’d kick this type job straight back upstairs. We’ve got enough potential firestorms going on in the world that we can be poking our noses into. But then the general told me two things — one is that there’s a data chip that contains the images of every missile silo in the globe. He wants it retrieved from that crash site at all costs.”

Alex whistled.

Hammerson nodded. “And the second thing is, we’ve intercepted a Russian communication — seems they’re going to make a play for it as well. They’ll be there before us, and we expect they’ll send some heavy hitters. They’ll want to get in quick, steamroll anyone that gets in their way, and then vanish.” He looked into Alex’s eyes. “And you know what that means?”

Alex nodded. “I do, they’ll clean the site.” He snorted softly. “So now it’s a race.”

“It’s always a race, son.” Hammerson gave him a crooked smile.

“I choose my team?” Alex raised his chin.

“The HAWC team, sure. But be advised this is a NASA mission, we’re just riding shotgun.” He held up a hand as he saw the protest building. “I don’t like it either, but this one is not in my control.”

Alex’s eyes narrowed. “NASA controlled until I determine a hotzone. Then I own it.”

Hammerson smiled. “Works for me.” He slid a computer tablet toward Alex. “Here’s your available mission stock; pull a team together. The NASA techs you’re going to be chaperoning are already inbound. Say your goodbyes, pick your team, and get down to the armory.” He sat back. “Six hours, you’re airborne.”

Alex grimaced. “Jesus, Jack, Aimee will…”

Hammerson held up a hand. “I’ve taken the liberty of flying them in.” He checked his watch. “And by now they should be both out on the far training grounds, having a picnic.”

“Pretty confident, huh?’ Alex shook his head, but grinned.

Hammerson shrugged. “Been meaning to catch up with them. And besides, later I can organise for Josh to see the dog. Give them both a hug for me.” His face became serious. “Then be ready to brief your team, prior to dustoff.”

Alex grabbed the tablet, stood, saluted and went to turn toward the door when he paused. “Where’s the big guy up to?”

“Sam?” Hammerson smiled. “Oh, he’s got all the new kit built in.”

“Built in?” Alex raised his eyebrows.

“Oh yeah.” Hammerson returned the smile. “Been out of surgery for weeks. He’s down in the armory now. About time we put the big guy back to work.” Hammerson saluted and Alex pushed out through the door.

Jack Hammerson lifted his coffee and toasted the screen. “Here’s to you, Mother Russia. You didn’t really think it was going to be that easy, did you?” He picked up the phone. “Put me through to General Chilton.”