Noah's Ark: Contagion (17 page)

“I think he’s busy at the moment. Can I give him a message?”

“You ‘think’? We have a situation here, and I need his help, now!”

“Maybe I could ask him to come over and find you?”

“What? No! This is too important. Either get him up here, or I’ll go and find him myself.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you down there ma’am, it’s restricted access.”

“My name is Lucya Levin, I am senior radio officer and a permanent member of the committee. Let me past now, young man, or else!”

Brian straightened himself up, looking sheepish. “I’m so sorry, ma’am, I didn’t recognise you. We don’t see you over here very often.” He stepped to one side. “Please go on down. Coote is in his quarters.”

• • •

“Halon,” Eric said, removing his gas mask once more. “It was halon gas you breathed in. It’s not dangerous, but you’re probably going to have trouble breathing for a while.”

“What happened? Did you cut through a gas line or something?” Jake asked. He felt like his insides had been pummelled, but at least his head was clearing.

“It’s the fire suppression system. There’s too much sensitive and expensive equipment down here to have regular sprinklers, so it uses halon gas. The vibrations from the asteroid must have set it off.”

“And the fact the gas was still in there, under pressure, means nobody has opened that or any other door since the asteroid went over,” Vardy said. “Which means I think we can rule out the idea of there being any survivors holed up down here.”

“Where did they go? The people who worked here?” Jake rubbed his eyes. They stung badly.

“Who knows? If it was me I would have made sure I was underground when that thing came over, but not in here. This base isn’t a hardened bunker; it’s office space.”

“Office space?” Jake looked surprised. “Why build office space underground? If this isn’t a shelter, what are our chances of finding food down here?”

“Honestly? Not great,” Vardy said. “We were underground to stay away from prying eyes, that’s all. I’m surprised this place survived as well as it appears to have done. Maybe we’ll find some clues inside as to where everyone went, but right now we need to find the machine, worry about our own survival. Do you think you can stand? Walk? The gas has started to disperse; it’s venting up through the tunnel. I’d put your mask back on though, for the time being.”

Jake nodded. He tried to get to his feet but stumbled, still dizzy. Eric and Ewan took an arm each and helped him up. Once standing, he found he could keep his balance on his own.

“The good news is that the pressure of the gas blew the door wide open,” Eric said, grinning.

The men rounded the corner again. The door was indeed wide open. Only the twisted bolts that should have secured it shut stopped it from falling flat on the floor. Beyond was more darkness.

“Anything else we should know about before we go any further?” Jake asked, looking around. “No anti-intruder systems that are going to shoot us with poisoned darts or anything?”

“Nope, there’s nothing like that down here. Our biggest challenge now is the dark. With no electricity we’ll have to rely on our torches and their limited battery life,” Ewan said. “So, Russell, if you’d be kind enough to guide us to your top-secret lab, we can take what we came for and get out of here.”

The three men looked at Vardy, waiting for him to take the lead, but he remained motionless.

“Ah,” he said. “About that. The problem is, I don’t actually know precisely where the lab is.”

“What?” The others said in unison.

“But you worked in it, you said so yourself!” Jake exclaimed.

“Well yes, I did. But like I told you, officially it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t appear on any schematics, and there aren’t any signs to it. It’s hidden.”

“Maybe I’m being stupid,” Ewan said, scratching his head, “but how did you go to work if you didn’t know where it was?”

“I was blindfolded. Someone took me down there on Monday mornings. I lived in the lab all week, then they blindfolded me and took me out on Fridays. As I was only on secondment, I didn’t have clearance to go in and out myself.”

“So you’re telling us,” Jake said, his voice raising in pitch, “that we’re looking for a hidden lab inside a secret base, and it could be anywhere inside?”

“That’s right.”

“How big exactly is this base?”

“Fairly sizeable. I believe there are about fifteen kilometres of tunnels in all.”

Jake spun round to face Vardy. “What? Fifteen kilometres? And you have no idea where the lab is? And you didn’t think to mention this before? We could be here a week and never find it!”

“That is entirely possible,” Vardy conceded.

“In a week, everyone will be dead!”

“Yes, that is the most likely scenario.”

“So you’ve brought us here on a wild goose chase. Realistically, we have no chance of finding this machine of yours.”

“Well to be fair,” Vardy said defensively, “we have some chance. A tiny one I will grant you, but some chance is better than none. And what alternative, Captain Noah? Would you rather we all sat on your ship and waited to die?”

Ewan stepped between the two men in a bid to calm frayed tempers. “If I may?” he said quietly. “Instead of wasting time arguing, perhaps we should split up and search for this lab? Vardy, perhaps you can give us some sort of clue about where it might be? There are three levels to the base. Do you, at the very least, have any idea which level it would be on?”

“The lowest,” Vardy said quickly. “They took me down in the lift, and I’ve spent enough time here to know that the time I spent in the lift was long enough to reach level three.”

“Okay, so that’s a good start. We can already discount ten kilometres of tunnels and concentrate our search. Is there anything else that might help?”

“What kind of thing were you working on down there?” Jake asked. “I think we can safely say the official secrets act no longer applies here?”

Vardy hesitated before responding. A lifetime of military service made it difficult to give up classified information, even though he knew Jake was right. “It was a biological warfare lab. You don’t need a huge imagination to work it out. Toxins, mutated viruses, nerve agents, lots of very nasty stuff.”
 

“Presumably there must have been some kind of air filtration system, keeping the bad things in and letting you breathe clean air?”

“Of course.”

“So if we find and follow the ventilation pipes, maybe we find your lab?”

“The air filtration system covers the whole base. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re underground. You can’t just open a window down here; it’s all filtered and pumped.” Vardy was on edge, upset at being made out to be the villain when really he was only trying to help.

“Why don’t we head down to level three,” Ewan said impatiently. “At least we’ll be doing something instead of standing around here talking. Vardy, maybe you’ll think of something else that might help along the way. Between the three of us, there must be a large proportion of the level we have already visited, places where we know the lab
isn’t
located. So we’ll concentrate our search on those areas we haven’t been to. Jake, you’ll just have to tag along and keep your eyes open, I guess.”

Jake nodded, and Vardy mumbled his agreement too. Ewan took the lead and disappeared through the door into the blackness of HMS
Neptune
.

• • •

The engine room of the
Spirit of Arcadia
was suddenly a hive of activity. While Lucya looked on, five engineers from the
Ambush
set about their task with true military efficiency. She watched, impressed, as two men located an emergency generator and set up temporary flood lighting. The other three were poring over the control panel with its unsettling warning lights and meter needles which crept ever closer to the red zone. She didn’t want to interrupt their work, but at the same time she had to know if they really were in serious danger.

“Is it bad?” she asked simply.

The lead engineer, a submariner named Gunson, looked up at her with a grave expression. “Not great, not great,” he said. He was a bald man with deep blue-green eyes, like the sea. He wore engineers’ overalls, but unlike the greasy mechanics who worked on the cruiser, his outfit was spotlessly clean.

“Okay, well can you fix it?”

“We have battery systems, but nothing like this. Given enough time, we could find the source of the issue and improvise a solution…” He spoke slowly and deliberately, each word carefully considered before it left his lips. Lucya felt he was leaving something unsaid.

“But?” she queried.

“But…time is against us. These batteries are overheating. The cooling system has blown. If we do not do something, they will explode.”

Lucya paced around, wringing her hands. “A big explosion?”

“Big enough to pierce the hull and probably sink this ship, yes.”

“Alright, yes that’s bad. That’s very bad. Can’t you unplug them or something?”

“From what? They are batteries. They are getting hot. They need to be cooled.”

“Could you pump water over them?”

“Miss, I don’t wish to sound rude, but it really would be best if you let us deal with this. Getting water on the batteries could electrocute us all. Please, my men and I will do everything we can.”

“Right, yes, of course. Of course.” She continued pacing, held her tongue, and let the men work in peace.

• • •

The base reminded Jake of a hospital, with its endless corridors, whitewashed walls, and polished concrete floors. The only light was from the torches the men carried, but he could imagine that when circumstances were different it would have been brightly lit, filled with people, a truly buzzing environment.

It was laid out on a grid system, like a modern American city. At every intersection of corridors there was clear signage that made their task of finding a stairway much easier.

Although they were already well underground, they had entered the base on the top level. The stairs took them down much further. There was no point in stopping at level two; they continued to the very last step. Jake’s torch picked out a huge sign that announced they had reached level three.

“Okay,” Ewan said, flashing his light up and down the central corridor they had arrived in. “Up there is the dry dock. We know that area well enough, so I suggest we start working towards the opposite end of the base.”

“If we take a corridor each, we’ll get this done more quickly,” Vardy said. “We need to check every room.”

“What exactly are we looking for?” Jake asked. “I mean, this is all new to me. How will I know a secret lab when I see one?”

“You won’t see the lab, we’re looking for the entrance. There will be a security door, a card entry system, something like that. And it won’t be obvious. I mean, it won’t be directly off the corridor. Remember, most of the people who worked here had no idea the lab existed. It’s not on the plans, so the entrance will be hidden or disguised. It could look like a cupboard or a store room, I don’t know. But I do know it won’t have a big sign on the door saying ‘secret bio-warfare lab.’ Use your common sense, guys. If you see something that looks odd, or find a door you can’t open, shout.”

The men nodded.

“Jake, you take this corridor. This is like the backbone of the base, the main highway. It runs north-south along the length of the installation. There’s less chance of it being along here. No offence, but you’re not as likely to spot it as us. We know what looks out of place. We’ll take the next three north-south corridors.”

Vardy, Eric, and Ewan all set off to find their own corridors to search, leaving Jake alone in the darkness. With only one small beam of light, the place suddenly felt oppressive. Gone was the clinical-but-friendly air. Instead it seemed as though anyone or anything could be hiding in the shadows, watching him.

He headed off in the direction Ewan had indicated, away from the dry dock. Plain doors punctuated the bare walls at regular intervals. Taking a deep breath, he opened the first of them. It was engraved with the number 3-103.

The room inside was about the size of a classroom. Indeed, Jake thought, it looked like it
was
a classroom, or a briefing room of some kind. Ten single desks faced a whiteboard and a large steel desk at the head of the room. The board was blank, the desks empty. The space was spotless, as though it had never been used.

The next two rooms, 3-104 and 3-105, were exactly like the first, and appeared every bit as redundant. After crossing an east-west corridor, his search continued. The next block of rooms were offices. Each was dominated by a huge oak desk, and bookshelves were stacked with heavy tomes on subjects from the history of warfare, battle strategy, and ship building, to group psychology and human physiology. Jake could have spent a happy hour or two browsing through the books, but that was time he didn’t have. Instead he moved on, working his way along the passage, opening door after door. He found storage rooms, planning rooms, recreation rooms, even a small gymnasium. But nothing that looked remotely like it might harbour a secret lab.

When he reached the end, Eric and Ewan were already waiting for him. Vardy arrived a minute later.

“Anything?” the doctor asked. The three men shook their heads.

“This place is immense,” Jake said wearily. “Why so big? I mean, there was a whole base outside as well, wasn’t there?”

“This level is for submarine crews when we’re in dry dock. The other two levels were designed to accommodate some of the essential staff from the Admiralty. If ever world war three broke out, they would have relocated here. This base would be a legitimate military target, and like I said, it’s not hardened against attack, but it wouldn’t get hit as hard as London.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We work the next four corridors. Same drill as before. Come on, let’s get on with it.” Vardy disappeared down an east-west corridor, the others hurried after him. “Jake, you can take this one. Ewan, you take number eight, Eric, number seven, and I’ll take six.”

The three submariners continued on, and Jake set off working back the way he had come, opening yet more doors.