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‘Would the BSA clean up their own mess?’ I wonder aloud.

‘Why should they?’ Runner asks. ‘They kill, move on, and let the people rot where they fall.’

Kat coughs and points to her screen with the live-stream of Ben’s plane. Another settlement. There’s a large hole in the centre, huts have been blown aside. We get the full view a few moments later when Ben pulls the machine around.
 

‘Still no visuals of the BSA camp,’ Ben says.
 

This settlement is largely destroyed, but we don’t see corpses anywhere here either.

‘Large amounts of explosives might have been used.’ That’s Yi-Ting’s voice. My stomach goes all fluttery.

‘What do you mean by “might have been used?”’ Runner asks.

‘No scorch marks.’

Before us, the huts lie flat on the ground, ripped wide open, pieces strewn away from the centre of the village, away from the crater.

‘Hmm,’ is all Runner says, tapping his index finger against his lips.

Kat takes two steps back, her face a stiff mask. She flicks off our mic and says to Runner, ‘It doesn’t match the satellite images.’

He looks up at her. The silence in the tent is deafening.
 

I flinch when Runner speaks. ‘I’m going in tonight. I want you to analyse all data you have on your hard drives, all satellite images of the weeks since before the BSA cut off our comm to Taiwan up until today.’

‘What am I looking for?’ she asks.

‘Any activity between the BSA’s entry point and the observatory during these past weeks. If you don’t see anything, and I mean nothing at all, no movements, no people, not even the faintest trace, I need you to run an image analysis on overlays or brush-ups of the area. If you find any, you know what to do.’

She nods pressing her mouth to a thin line, then reaches out to flick the mic back on. I gnaw on my cheeks. This is fucked up.

Half an hour later, we get a live-stream of the nuclear power plant. It, too, appears untouched.

When Yi-Ting and Ben return, things begin to happen faster and more quietly than usual. While we cook and eat lunch, Runner appoints tasks.

‘Ben, you get your machine ready at nightfall, not a minute earlier. What’s the reach without sunlight?’

‘Four hundred and fifty to five hundred kilometres, tops.’ Ben wears a frown. He doesn’t like to fly his machine without the fuelling sunlight. It doesn’t give him much manoeuvring space for the unforeseen.

‘You could get to the continent?’

‘If the winds are good, yes.’
 

‘Ah!’ Runner says and presses a hand against his forehead. ‘Doesn’t work. They’ll see the plane is missing.’

‘Are we all on the same page?’ Kat asks. When Yi-Ting and Ben shrug, she says, ‘Walk them through, Runner.’

‘What our satellites show us is not what you two showed us today. Neither of the two villages should exist. The last comm of the Taiwanese Sequencers stated that the observatory was under attack. After that, Taiwan was cut off. We have to assume they took control of our satellites, and have been feeding us fake images to conceal their activities.’

Ben leans against the tent’s wall, stumbles a step back when the fabric doesn’t carry his weight, and almost drops to his butt. The rice spills from his bowl. ‘Well, fuck,’ he mutters.

‘Now, the bad news,’ Kat adds. ‘They seemed to have also hijacked the Taiwanese satellite control. Taiwanese satellites are part of the Chinese satellite cluster. Problem is…’ She looks at every one of us. I feel the taste of metal on my palate. I always feel that when shit is about to hit the fan. ‘I didn’t use the Chinese cluster in the past couple of days. I used satellites of the ESA.’

‘They hacked the ESA, too?’ Ben whispers.

‘Can someone please tell me what the heck this
ESA
thing is?’ I demand.

‘European Space Agency,’ Runner says. ‘I don’t need to tell you that the consequences are far-reaching. We might lose the war before the end of this year. Do you all understand what that means?’

We all nod, our heads hanging low as if an unbearable weight is sitting on our shoulders. How could we possibly misunderstand the consequences? The BSA winning the war means only one thing — the crazy extremists get to wipe out humanity. The only force that stands between them and their goal are hundreds of Sequencers who can observe their every move and intervene. Weird. Shouldn’t we have…

‘There’s one thing I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘Since the BSA exists, Sequencers can see what the BSA is doing. Now, the BSA seems to turn satellites against us and is about to win? How can that be? Why didn’t we win first what with satellite control and all?’

‘The BSA has always been very loosely organised, if at all,’ Runner explains. ‘They don’t have a command structure. If a handful of them decide to invade a city, then we can only see it when it’s already happening. Often it’s too late for us to stop them. We have to move our forces and that can take hours or even days. Then the BSA is already done killing and is moving on. It’s impossible to anticipate their moves. They are everywhere and nowhere. They can be anyone. If you look from far above you see people. Who’s a BSA member? You can’t tell. If they only pull out their black flags and uniforms right before an attack, how would you know who’s who until it’s too late? That’s their advantage — they look like you and me until they pull out their guns and cause a bloodbath.’

‘If they were more organised, their movements would follow a pattern and it would be easier for us to predict their next actions,’ Kat says. ‘But they don’t behave like troops. They are erratic, chaotic and extremely brutal. Each small BSA group is autonomic. Once in a while we get to watch one BSA group attacking another. They have no idea they are both BSA! Can you believe that?’

‘What happens then?’ I ask.

She shrugs. ‘The attacked group whips out their black flags, the attackers stop, and everyone has a party. Sometimes we get there soon enough to take them down, sometimes they disappear before we can move in our forces.’

‘Isn’t that…isn’t that an unusual degree of organisation for the BSA to shut off an entire island and gain satellite control?’ I turn to Runner. ‘Is that even possible? Don’t you overestimate them?’

‘It has happened before. Two…no, three times.’ Ben says. He still sits on the floor, the bowl of rice between his feet. ‘Not the satellite control stuff, but the assembly of a number of BSA subgroups. One man, talented in organisation and leadership, took command and turned BSA followers into soldiers. Trained them in combat. We saw it and took them all down. No problem. We prefer it to this,’ he waves at nothing in particular, ‘…chaos of factions.’

‘And now you can’t see them anymore,’ I note.
 

We all stare at Ben’s rice bowl as if a solution could be dug up there.
 

Yi-Ting clicks her tongue and grins. ‘It will work,’ she says. ‘You can fly, Ben. Let’s assume the BSA can control satellites and fake satellite imagery. I don’t quite believe it; it’s way too sophisticated compared to a simple failure of transmission, for example. But let’s pretend for now, it’s possible. So they see we are here and we have fun playing with our airplane, and you have fun with your sharp shooting and torturing Micka.’

Runner frowns at that, but she continues undisturbed. I suppress a smile. ‘So far, we’ve given no sign of knowing they can see us, let alone modify satellite data. So far, all we do is quite boring, except of course, when we fly to Taiwan to search for their base camp. Am I correct so far?’
 

Kat and Runner nod. ‘Cool,’ she says. ‘They watch from far above and probably want to cover our whole camp, if not the whole of Itbayat. I doubt they’ll zoom in to check if I brushed my teeth this morning, or to count the screws on Ben’s airplane.’ She claps her hands together and smiles at us. ‘So you guys do what you have to do, while I build a paper airplane, or…tarp airplane. I’ll pretend to be Ben fixing his machine which, very sadly, can’t fly for a few hours. I’ll be all of you guys plus myself, walking in and out of our tents, wearing the clothes you usually wear. But I’ll have to find something that looks like your pretty hair.’ She reaches out and tugs at my bangs. My heart goes
thump-thump
.

‘And I promise I’ll not point my middle fingers up at the sky if I can help it,’ I say. Yi-Ting bursts out chuckling and I have to fight the urge of curling my arms around her slender waist and kissing her neck.

Runner draws his eyebrows farther down, then nods slowly. ‘Excellent idea, Yi-Ting.’ He brightens up and smiles at her. Her answering blush hurts my chest.
 

‘This is bigger than I can handle,’ says Kat. ‘I’m not a satellite expert, but if I know one thing, it’s this: if the BSA gained control over two systems, what keeps them from gaining control over others? Ben, you and I will go to the continent. I need to talk with the council and a…friend.
 

‘Whoa! No way,’ Ben holds up his hands. ‘If you want me to fly to Taiwan and then all the way to the mainland, I can’t take everyone. Sorry, Kat, but…no way. Runner, his equipment and me is all the machine can carry that far.’

‘Take out the seats,’ she says.

‘Yes, we’ll rip out the seats. But you, Kat, will stay here. Micka will accompany me.’ Runner throws a glance at me and I will my lungs to breathe normally. Doesn’t work as well as I hope.

‘I don’t like it,’ Kat growls, hands deep in her pockets. ‘I’m the intelligence expert, I know how to handle these things, I—‘ She breaks off, seeing Ben shaking his head. ‘Okay. I’ll write my friend a letter and give you his name and location. Ben, if you open it, I’ll kill you.’

‘What the fuck, Kat? Am I suddenly not trustworthy enough?’ Ben flicks a rice kernel in her direction.

‘Of course you are. I’m sorry. It’s just… This is not the way I want things to happen,’ she answers. ‘I hate being stuck here while you guys get all the action.’

‘You can help me build a paper airplane,’ Yi-Ting quips.

Runner coughs to hide a snort but it doesn’t work.
 
He receives a cold stare from Kat in return. Now, I know what bugs me about her — she mistrusts everyone. I wonder why that is. Does she trust herself?
 

‘I’m busy with image analyses,’ she retorts.
 

Rain begins to tap on the tent. The wind picks up and tugs at the fabric.

‘Micka, your apprenticeship might be coming to a very quick end.’ Runner squints at me and instantly I know what he means. It has nothing to do with having learned all my lessons. ‘You and I go in tonight. Ben will pick us up in four days.’

I swallow. Am I even ready?

‘Yi-Ting will prepare provisions for us. And you have precisely ten minutes head start. Two paint bullets only. I want to know how well you function when you’re unprepared.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sniping practice. The time is running, Micka.’

‘You cannot be serious! We have to pack our things, prepare for…for…’

‘I’m preparing you right now. Eight minutes head start, Micka. Move. Now.’

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EXTRAS

(Click on the links to learn more)

For the first time in evolution, a species evolved that was able to teach its young about objects and events not present, to pass on wisdom gleaned from the successes — and the mistakes — of the past, to make plans for the distant future, to discuss ideas so that they could grow, sometimes out of all recognition, through the combined wisdom of the group.
 

Jane Goodall

The seventh cholera pandemic started in the 1960s. It occurs in more than sixty countries, affecting more than 7 million people.
From:
“Oceans, Climate and Health: Cholera as a Model of Infectious Diseases in a Changing Environment,”
lecture by Prof. Rita Colwell, former director of the United States National Science Foundation

Recent studies have associated temperatures and rainfall anomalies with diarrhea and cholera, and stress the role of climate variability in cholera transmission…
Trærup et al., 2011. Int. J. Environmental Research & Public Health

Tuberculosis (TB) is a global health emergency that demands concerted management efforts. Recent World Health Organization reports reveal that multidrug-resistant TB is a substantial problem in every region evaluated.
Cohen & Murray, 2014. Nature.

World-map showing the spreading of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis
(World Health Organisation)

“…understanding global disease dynamics has become a major 21
^st
century challenge.”
Brockman & Helbing, 2013. Science.

Sustainability: A development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
 

World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987.

Q & A with the Author

Q:
You’ve written a Victorian thriller series that took off quite well. Why a SciFi now?

A:
The idea came to me in early summer 2014. I was in a meeting with twenty environmental scientists. We discussed our visions (nope, we didn’t smoke stuff) and future projects. I wanted to know how to lower a person’s CO2 footprint to the recommended level. To my surprise, none of the people in the room (all senior scientists, all in the environmental and biotech field) knew what the average German CO2 footprint is (11 tonnes of CO2 per person per year), or the recommended level (2.5 tonnes). What surprised me even more was that none of them thought it had anything to do with science to find out how one can lower one’s footprint, none of them believed it could be done on a per-individual basis, and some thought new technologies could help us reach the 2.5 tonnes goal. I then asked which technologies could help us reach this goal in the next ten years. The answers were…sobering, to put it mildly. So a bunch of experienced environmental scientists, who have known about climate change for roughly twenty years, had no idea how to fix it and certainly didn’t think it necessary to change their own habits significantly. This pissed me off so much that I killed ten billion people in my SciFi. Talk about anger management…