The Apocalypse Club (35 page)

“Empty,” they said in unison.

Okay, I thought. They hadn’t found Violet, which meant she had to be hiding somewhere on board. Obviously there was some secret compartment that she knew about that they didn’t.

“Great, aren’t they?” Ida said. “They were originally grown for the C-Mechs, but they didn’t fall apart, so they moved them into Ghost unit instead. Best soldiers you could ask for. They do exactly what I tell them to do and when. Nothing more or less.”

“Should we tie it up?” the triplets asked, pointing to the boat.

Ida shook her head. “They might have booby trapped it. Blow it.”

The first one nodded, pulled something off her hip and walked to the boat.

“No!” I yelled, lurching forward. The one holding my arms from behind was a lot stronger than me, however, and almost dislocated my elbow pulling me back.

“You’re pretty attached to that boat,” Ida said. “Why is that? Pleasant ride, was it?”

I ground my teeth together. What the hell was I supposed to do? If I told her that Violet was on board, Violet would be dead. If I didn’t, Violet would be dead.

“It’s empty,” the first one said again. “We checked everything.”

“Why are you talking?” Ida said. “I ordered you to blow it.”

The first one dropped whatever she was holding into the boat and jogged away from it with the other two. A moment later, the grenade exploded, sending multiple fragmentary fireballs everywhere. The boat was engulfed in flames in seconds.

“Good to see you again, Simms,” Ida said. “You’re just in time, too. The show’s just about to start.”

T
hey weren’t kidding about the size of the Weather Station, but the Förssagen ice sheet was the big surprise once we got up top.

The image I had of Greenland in my head before I arrived there was the same as everyone else’s, I suppose. I thought the name was a cruel joke played by Vikings to make people think it was an idyllic place of rolling hills and forests instead of a barren wasteland filled with nothing but ice, rocks and large cracks and holes into which one might fall into unexpectedly. I had no idea if polar bears lived there, but figured it was probably too inhospitable even for them. Although I couldn’t remember having seen a picture of the place, I had a surprisingly strong image of it in my head. Having grown up in a place where winter descended with horrible implacability for almost half the year, it wasn’t hard for me to envision a place that had nothing but winter.

This was not that place.

For starters, the ice sheet was gone, replaced by not so much a lake as an inland sea that stretched all the way to the horizon. Behind us was the cold, gray north Atlantic and in front was a glossy aquamarine expanse that any Caribbean resort would be proud to feature on their brochure. In the distance, I could just see four thin, curved mountains sticking up above the surface like the claws of a long-vanquished sea monster. Other than that, there was nothing.

The Försaggen Weather Station towered up out of the sea, looking to me very much the way a drilling platform probably looks to a carpenter ant – which is to say absolutely fucking gargantuanly more huge than my tiny mind could comprehend. It looked like a city on concrete stilts. The Weather Station itself was only part of the facility. A huge office tower rose behind it with the letters “HIG” on the front.

We were standing on a large circular platform that jutted out from the main station. Based on the fact that it had a large bull’s eye painted on it, I guessed it was some sort of helipad. We were on the edge of it, being watched by Ida and her group of Ghost soldiers, all of whom were now de-cloaked and waiting in a neat formation. I still couldn’t get past the fact that they were all identical. Any time more than one of them came into my field of vision, I would scan back and forth between them looking for any differences, but could find none. I finally stopped doing this when one of them caught me and advised that I stop before she ripped my eyeballs out of my head and stuffed them up my ass.

On the raised platform behind us, about a thousand people were sitting in metal stands. From the way they were dressed, they looked like an even mix of office workers, GDI troops and maintenance staff. The excited buzz of conversation increased noticeably as we were marched out to the edge of the helipad.

“This is quite a reception,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting it. Is there a buffet table somewhere? We haven’t really eaten in a while.”

“I don’t think this is for us,” Tristan said.

“Then who?”

“Out there,” Max said, pointing.

I looked out towards the mountains and saw a tiny dot in the sky. As it got larger, I could hear the rhythmic thrum of giant blades cutting through the air and saw another, smaller dot hanging below it. As it approached, two lines of GDI troops ran out from behind us to encircle the platform. Above us, the hum of conversation dropped to a whisper.

“This is a nice, understated affair,” I observed. “Then again, all that money Firmamental saved by firing all of those employees had to go somewhere, I guess.”

“What are you talking about?” Max asked.

“It was one of Oren’s big talking points in meetings,” I said. “He liked to remind us that our only purpose in life was to provide value to the shareholders.”

“Which he did, up to a point,” Tristan said.

As the massive helicopter got closer, I could see that the dot hanging below it was Hudson’s C-Mech. It did a slow circuit of the station and then swooped in low to hover over the pad. The blast of wind from the dual rotors was enough to knock a couple of Ida’s Ghosts off their feet. Out on the edge of the pad, the GDI honour guard was forced to hold on to the railing to keep from being blown into the sea.

The pilot didn’t appear to be having an easy time of it, either. Despite the lack of an apparent crosswind, Hudson’s C-Mech was swinging back and forth wildly over the target. One attempt to touch down sent the C-Mech crashing into three GDI troops who made the mistake of trying to steady it. One of them was crushed and the other two were knocked over the railing into the water. The others had apparently been briefed on what to do in the event this happened and all shifted a few steps to fill in the newly vacated spaces. I could see the C-Mech waving one of its arms and opening and closing its mouth, but the rotors were much too loud to make out what it was trying to say.

The second attempt to touch down was more successful. The C-Mech managed to stay on its feet while four troops ran out to disconnect the lift cables. Once this was done, the helicopter lifted up again and circled around to land on another helipad on the other side of the station.

The C-Mech waited until the
blom-blom-blom
of the rotors had faded before stepping forward to wave to the crowd, which applauded wildly.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!” it said. It appeared to have regained control over its volume and cleared out the blockage in its nose caused by the fall. “As you know, this is a historic day.”

The crowd cheered as the C-Mech walked toward us. I could tell that it didn’t have full mobility yet. The left leg was dragging slightly and it had only used its right arm so far. Still, impaired or not, just the sight of the thing walking toward me was enough to make me want to wet my pants and run in the other direction, especially in light of what it had done to Oren.

“Good to see you again, old friend,” it said to Tristan. “You haven’t changed at all.”

“Neither have you,” Tristan said. “Old friend.”

The C-Mech’s expression changed to a bizarre mix of fury and puzzlement. It could clearly understand sarcasm but didn’t appear to know exactly how to respond to it.

“And you, Simms,” it said, turning to me. “Excellent work in tracking him down. By doing so, you have succeeded where many before you have not.” The C-Mech looked directly at Ida as it said the last part, leaving no doubt as to its intended meaning. Ida stiffened and tried to let the insult run off her back.

“All prisoners as ordered, sir,” she said.

“All except one,” the C-Mech said. “Now where might she be, I wonder?”

“These were all the personnel on the boat,” Ida said, defensively.

“I think not,” said the C-Mech. “No matter. She will turn up eventually, I’m sure.”

“We took this from the old man,” Ida said, stepping forward and handing Tristan’s leather satchel to the C-Mech, which ripped it open and found the glowing blue ball inside.

“Ahhhhhh,” it said. “I have been looking for this for quite some time indeed. Ever since it was stolen from me all those years ago.”

“Are you quite sure it wasn’t you who stole it in the first place, old chap?” Tristan said. “I don’t believe they were ours to disturb.”

“Everything is mine,” the C-Mech snapped.

“Well then I suppose I did steal it,” said Tristan. “Just as I am stealing the air that I am breathing this very moment.”

The C-Mech looked like it was about to grab Tristan by the throat to get some of that stolen air back, but it resisted.

“We have both been waiting for this day,” it said. “At last we’re finally going to see what was hidden under the ice.”

“I’m probably wasting my breath…but don’t do this, Henry,” Tristan said. “Look what you’ve become. Don’t become an even bigger monster in the process.”

Instead of replying, the C-Mech managed an approximation of a grin and strode back out to the middle of the platform. When it began speaking, its voice was automatically amplified so that the people in the stands could hear it.

“As you all know, we’ve been waiting for this day for a long time!” it said. “You’ve all worked extremely hard to help this happen, and for that I give you my sincerest thanks for a job well done.”

The crowd cheered.

“In a moment, we will activate the charges that will blow the seven hundred eighty-seven individual dams holding in the water from the melted ice sheet. This will cause an almost instantaneous rise of global sea levels by nearly three hundred feet!”

The crowd cheered again. I looked at Tristan in disbelief.

“Did he just say three hundred feet?” I whispered.

Tristan nodded. “Approximately.”

“But that…”

“…is enough to kill about half the global population in a single swoop,” the C-Mech finished my sentence for me. “I know the optics of this move are bad, but once those remaining see the bigger picture, I’m sure they’ll come around.”

“You’re crazy!” I yelled. “That’s…” What was it? Genocide seemed like entirely too small a word for it. All of the worst dictators and mass murderers in history put together didn’t even come close to a number like that (not that Stalin, Hitler and Mao didn’t give it the old college try). “That’s mass murder!”

The C-Mech nodded to Ida, who punched me quickly and fiercely in the gut. I landed on my knees, momentarily unable to breathe.

“We all know we had to make some hard decisions, here,” the C-Mech went on. “If sea levels had slowly crept up over time, no doubt our little project here would have been discovered and somebody somewhere would have tried to stop us. Rest assured, we did not just decide to kill three billion people without giving the matter a great deal of thought.”

After a few anxious moments flopping on the deck, I managed to get air back into my lungs. Stars flickered at the edge of my field of vision. Was I imagining this? I could hear the crowd cheering again.

“What kind of people cheer an announcement like that?” I asked.

“The kind of people who think they’re not going to be among the three billion,” Max said.

“Down there beneath the waves lies the ticket to our future!” the C-Mech said. “Now, as much as I’d like to bring you all with me, I can’t. However, I have prepared a little something to show all of you just how much I value your contribution.”

More wild cheering. Most of the crowd was on its feet. They clearly believed that they were about to receive the mother of all bonuses.

“I would not be going where I am about to go without you,” the C-Mech said. “Hm…you know what? I’ve changed my mind. Who wants to go?”

The crowd were apoplectic with excitement, now. Most of them were bouncing up and down and waving their arms. Some of them were trying to climb over the barricades.

The C-Mech walked over to a silver lectern decorated with gold bunting. The lectern was set at a height for a normal-sized person, so it barely came up above the machine’s knees. The C-Mech leaned forward so that a scanner on the lectern could pass a beam of red light over its left eye. A moment later, there was a click and the front of the lectern slid away to reveal two red buttons. One was small (the size of an elevator call button) and the other much larger (the size of a pie plate).

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I whispered.

“I’ve had a bad feeling ever since I was twelve years old,” Max said. “This is worse.”

The C-Mech raised its right arm dramatically up over the lectern. “And so, faithful employees of the Hudson International Group, anon to your ultimate reward. Don’t let the ocean hit you in the ass on your way out the door.”

It brought its hand down on the first button. There was a rapid series of a dozen or so small explosions that rocked the platform. Some of them were so close together that they sounded like one large boom instead of several smaller ones. I felt the helipad wobble under my feet and, for a second, I was convinced that we had been the target of some sort of unexpected terrorist attack, but the C-Mech, the GDI and Ida’s Ghost troops all seemed to know that this was coming and didn’t move a muscle.

I spun around and watched the stands behind us – the whole structure – drop through the floor and fall toward the sea. The crowd wasn’t cheering now. The ones who were making any noise at all were screaming. I watched the contraption and the people fall for what seemed like an absurdly long time before they hit the water with a tidal wave-inducing splash and vanished almost instantly.

“Fucking employees,” the C-Mech growled. “Can’t stand any of them. Just a big, complaining red line on the balance sheet, that’s all they are. Adios, you health care and pension-sucking little shits!”