Birth of the Alliance (4 page)

Will’s time in the North Village included experiencing the bitter winters there. It had been quite some time since he'd experienced cold to that degree, but North Village winters would be considered tropical by Antarctic standards. He set his nanos around his body in a protective exoskeleton shield. This shield wasn't meant to repel weapons. It was meant to repel the harsh winds and deadly temperatures he'd be experiencing.

Bracing himself, Will teleported to the outside, so that he stood on the top of the Nautilus.

The cold bit through Will’s body, a shock to his system even through the nano shield. His limbs refused to move. His eyes seemed incapable of sight. His nostrils froze shut, cutting off any hint of a scent of frozen salt water, or any aromas carries on the vicious winds. While he wasn't shivering violently, thanks to his protective layer of nanos, the fact that he could still feel the brutal temperatures and sense his body start to shut down, gave witness to the sheer power nature had in this locale. He risked radiating a small bit of Energy around himself as he'd done during so many winters back in the North Village, and that tempered the cold enough that he could function. The landscape was barren, the winds violent, and snowfall constant. No person who valued his or her life would dare attempt passage here, not without sufficiently advanced technology capable of reducing the risk of death to something less than one hundred percent.

It was exactly the type of environment he wanted for the Alliance home base. Mother Nature would protect them as well as any type of shield.

Will teleported back inside the Nautilus, relishing the warmth inside, allowing his body and mind to return to a state of calm. He could hear the thrum of the engines, could taste the fruit juice he’d consumed a half hour ago still activating his taste buds. With his body functioning normally, Will took the submarine below the icy waters.

He’d spent three years circling the continent, using a backup of his sonar equipment to rig up a tracking system that would be able to find openings in the rocky landmass hidden beneath the snow-covered surface. The signal was able to penetrate about a mile in from the waters of the ocean. Day in and day out, he'd scan inward from his vantage point, finding empty pockets, but never anything sizable enough to meet his needs. Thankfully, as a man who'd lived over seven centuries, patience was a quality he now came by naturally. He’d reasoned that if he found nothing of sufficient size, he could figure out a way to enlarge one of the smaller caverns he'd discovered. There was always a way to move forward if you were willing to work at it long enough.

Finally, only a week earlier, he'd located what he needed.

The air pocket deep under the surface level was truly massive, stretching in a circle nearly three miles in diameter, a natural dome close to two hundred yards in height. With proper planning, he believed they could fit several thousand future Alliance members inside, a permanent home and base of operations forever hidden from Arthur and his minions.

He'd almost missed the tunnel with his scans as well.

The tunnel was a critical aspect to the location. Though the cavern’s size and location were ideal, he’d abandon it if the only means of access was via teleportation. Teleportation would be a lightning rod to someone like Sebastian; the immense Energy expenditure required to travel even the mile or so from the surface or from below the surface of the sea would be something he couldn’t help but notice. Instead, they’d need to reach it through more mundane means: an underwater tunnel accessible only via submarine, or some type of elevator shaft or staircase available only from the Antarctic surface. An underwater tunnel was far less likely to be discovered, but would require him to carve a submarine-sized tunnel through a continent to reach the cavern.

He spotted the imperfection in the readout as he contemplated the enormity of that task. The blip was subtle, a smaller opening in the rocky landmass than the huge cavern, but a natural gap nonetheless. He traced the tunnel down from the cavern for several hundred yards, watched it level off, rise again, and drop once more until it emerged into the sea. Will marked the spot and depth and set off for the location.

The waters were murky at that depth, nearly two miles below the surface, and even his powerful exterior lights struggled to pierce the liquid fog surrounding him. Will kept his focus on the continental rocks before him, searching for the opening he knew was there. The swaying underwater grasses attached to the rocks distracted him, adding to the hazy appearance of the water, and it was the grasses that obscured the tunnel opening. Will did a double take at the unusual shadows generated by his exterior lights, shadows that seemed to move into the rock, and realized such an image could only occur if he'd located his tunnel. Will reversed direction and carefully maneuvered the craft forward, increasing the brightness of the exterior light as he pulled directly up to the mouth of the tunnel.

He'd found it. The mouth was roughly twice the size of the
Nautilus,
which meant he wouldn’t need to excavate anything. After taking a deep breath, Will urged the submarine forward at a low speed.

The tunnel ambled along for over a mile, and Will was careful to ensure that he didn't scrape the sides of the craft against the rock walls. In his mind, he was already planning enhancements: some type of ambient lighting in the tunnel, warning systems to allow submarines to avoid collisions, possible projects to widen the tunnel to allow additional traffic flow, efforts to smooth the walls to avoid the possibility of puncturing the sides of any craft that made the journey. Or perhaps a submarine-based subway system, one in which Alliance commuters would travel the length of the tunnel to and from the city in the cavern, meeting up with connecting submarines able to transport them to more hospitable landmasses with access to the rest of the world.

After angling the submarine up and traveling another ten minutes, Will reached the cavern.

He switched off the exterior lights of the submarine as it emerged from the frigid ocean waters and surfaced, marveling at the complete darkness around him. Recognizing that the submarine's lights would be ineffective in illuminative the entire cavern on their own, he dispatched dozens of Energy orbs. Each of the orbs emitted powerful beams of light, and Will directed them outward until they reached the walls, ceiling, and surface of the massive natural structure he'd found himself in. Will had a dual purpose in generating the light. He needed to gauge the actual size of his new home from the inside, not via the technical readouts of his sonar system. The light showed an interior roughly dome-shaped, the highest point roughly in the center of the space. The tunnel he'd traveled in ended at what amounted to a beach, and he watched the water ripple still from the force of his exit from the water.

He was also looking for movement. Will wanted to be certain that he'd not piloted his submarine beneath the surface to find an advanced and unique ecosystem, one complete with carnivores able to sense unlucky prey in the total darkness. Such a creature would likely be blinded if it possessed any sense of sight; moving from the pitch dark to anything approaching visibility for Will would be like putting someone wearing night vision goggles outside on a sunny day. Even if such creatures weren’t sensitive to light, the presence of the submarine might make them move and react, and the light would give Will the opportunity to identify any threats before exiting the submarine.

Thankfully, he saw nothing. He was the cavern's only living, sentient occupant.

Uncertain about the temperature, he reformed the nano-based exoskeleton around himself for warmth, and then teleported outside.

His lungs exploded in agony and his muscles twitched. His eyesight was filled with flashes of light. Will barely had the time to teleport himself back inside the
Nautilus
before he lost consciousness.

He gasped, filling his lungs with the clean, fresh air inside the cabin, and then submerged the submarine once more beneath the waters. He’d not returned to the cabin and the salt river tunnel connecting sea and cavern due to a discovery of poisoned or foul smelling air; but because here, there was nothing to breathe, no air, a literal vacuum inside the cavern. He submerged the
Nautilus
as he was uncertain as to what such a vacuum on the outside might do to the submarine’s hull. The craft was designed to withstand excessive pressure from the
outside
; if he'd truly found a void like that in space, the greater pressure would come from
inside
the cabin, and he'd risk the structure developing a crack that would doom him. The sub wasn’t designed to deal with an issue of greater internal pressure than external, and so he returned to the water.

Abandoning the location for another, one with breathable air, would be an easy solution to the problem, yet he discarded the idea immediately. He'd have plenty of time to walk away from this spot in the future if he couldn’t overcome the problem, but the cavern was completely ideal in every other way. He’d spend his time figuring out how to make it work, rather than beginning his search anew.

The submarine regularly served as his home for weeks or months at a time, and much of the time was spent underwater, outside the normal atmospheric air. He used the ocean water as a source of oxygen and other components to enable him to breathe in the pressurized cabin, and ventilation systems eliminated the carbon dioxide he exhaled. The cavern was, in many ways, like the inside of his submarine cabin. The system pulled in salt water and generated fresh drinking water, energy for propulsion, electricity to power his sensors and computer systems, as well as the clean air he breathed.

Could he build a replica of that system, on a much larger scale, and let it fill the cavern with breathable air? There was only one way to find out. It would take time. But he had plenty of time.

He wouldn't be able to complete the project here. The pressurization issues meant he'd need to design the equivalent of a space suit to work outside the submarine in the airless void, using thick gloved hands to try to put machinery together. It was an impractical approach.

Will extinguished the Energy light orbs, plunging the cavern into complete darkness, and piloted the submarine back through the tunnel. He set a course to return to Eden at top speed, and the submarine moved swiftly through the frigid, salty water as Will began planning his design approach to aerating the cavern.

As he saw it, he could build a much larger version of the submarine’s internal systems for the Cavern. He’d need fresh air, water, and eventually electricity to power computer systems, lighting, and a host of other systems. The concern was that the system would be large, bulky, and difficult to transport back to the cavern after construction on Eden.

Could he build the system in pieces? The submarine version was, of necessity, a single unit. The Cavern version had no such constraints. Could he build large individual systems and transport them individually to the Cavern?

The submarine stored several weeks’ worth of food and fresh water; he could keep himself properly nourished and hydrated for quite some time without erecting a water purification system capable of serving the entire cavern. He wouldn’t need large volumes of electricity until later. He’d need to reproduce the air purification system only on a larger scale, just small enough to fit inside the submarine. He'd build it on Eden, disassemble it for transport to the cavern, and upon arriving at the end of the tunnel he’d teleport the pieces outside and assemble them in place using telekinesis. Once the device was activated and filling the cavern slowly with breathable air, he could make round trips to Eden to build the water purification system, carbon dioxide scrubbers, and a generator. It could take months to complete each construction project, and the round trip between Eden and the cavern was around one month. It would take months to fill the Cavern with air, and those extra round trips were both acceptable and necessary. No sense moving in until he could breathe outside the submarine.

With that baseline—breathable air, water purifiers, carbon dioxide scrubbers, and a small generator—he could begin transforming the cavern from a place he could survive, into a place he and others could thrive. With a generator and ample power production, he'd be able to create lighting within the cavern without needing to expend valuable Energy. He'd be able to bring in the rudimentary computers and video screens and data storage systems he'd build back on Eden, and expand upon them. And he'd have the basics in place to create tillable soil for growing crops, raising livestock, and gradually turning the cavern into a self-sufficient community.

With the basics taken care of, Will, and other Alliance members living there, could work on researching various technological advances. They’d need to figure out how to shield the entire cavern against Energy leakage, for example. A growing population of Energy users would eventually attract Sebastian’s notice. Will himself would build upon the basic microscopes and lenses Sarah and Anna had developed centuries earlier, building in additional magnification using electrical power, so that he could see the in workings of cells affected by ambrosia. Will had lived for seven centuries as a result of eating the fruit. He had only three left to figure out how to reverse at least one side effect, or his children would never come into existence.

Will shook his head. There was so much work to be done. Even three centuries might not be enough to finish it all. He moved to the controls of the submarine and urged the craft toward Eden at higher speed.