Chapter 6
July 2076 ~ Sonora, Arizona
They were somewhere in the Sonora desert. Captain Tina Hammer felt weak, her throat parched, head throbbing, legs resisting her every movement. Whoever said black people don’t get sunburned was an idiot. Her face showed a deep red from sunburn, and there were signs of blisters developing on her nearly shaven head. She didn’t sweat anymore, even in the sweltering heat and being physically exhausted from days of trekking across the desert; she was too dehydrated. Her companions, Navy ensigns Dean Johnson and Kim Leffard and Army Lieutenant Henry Carroll, were still hanging on by sheer willpower, although Leffard was now slowing them down due to a sprained ankle.
“You should go on. I’ll catch up,” Kim said, while breathing heavily. “I just need a breather; you guys won’t get far without me anyways!” She was about the toughest woman Hammer had ever known, but sprained ankle or no, she now looked like she’d spent the last of her strength. Henry slumped down beside her, coughing heavily.
“Yeah right, and let you off that easily, eh?” He tried to pry off his right boot, but lost his balance, even sitting. Then he managed to slowly take it off, and saw that blood had seeped through his socks.
“I guess we’re both fucked good and hard now, Leffard. I don’t think I’ll be able to walk on this again for a while.” He shook his head.
“So damn close … It must be …” He took a pebble and put it in his mouth, an old trick. After a couple of seconds he spit it out again.
“Humph, never worked,” Henry continued. “Whoever made that one up never spent a week in the desert.” He licked his cracked lips, and grimaced. Then he lay back and closed his eyes.
Tina held up her hand and squinted to the east. They’d walked quite a ways since being dumped out of the chopper a few nights back, blindfolded and with only a couple of water bottles to share. She had no idea how far they had come, but the first few days they had walked a good twelve hours, daytime, before deciding it would be better to walk by night and rest while the sun was at its highest. That worked for another couple of days. After that, things had moved more slowly. Fatigue, blisters, hunger, and eventually thirst had slowly taken their toll. They had no idea how long they had to go, or whether they would be picked up if they decided they’d had it. Tina was deeply concerned. As the senior officer, she was in charge, and although she suspected they were being monitored somehow, in the back of her mind she worried that they were too far off the grid. Or that the instructors had dropped them out here to see how many would survive, and that losses were expected. She’d seen it before, and the situation was definitely extreme; in fact, you couldn’t get more extreme than this. It could be that this was the kind of situation where such extreme training and selection were deemed necessary. She rose to her feet, deciding such thinking was useless, and reached out for Kim’s hand.
“Let’s go. It can’t be far now. And if we don’t get there today, I’d like to find some shade. Come on, you too, Dean. Henry, you’ll just have to suck it up. You know that the pain numbs after a while. Now get that boot back on while you can. And no more of that ‘carry on without me’ crap, Kim.” Tina put her concerns away for now; the group was her responsibility, they were her team, and by far the best she’d ever worked with, and there was no way she’d let them down. She would not show her doubts.
They reached a dried out riverbed and decided to rest for a few hours. Somehow, they were still standing, but dehydration was now becoming a real danger. If they didn’t find any water soon … At least they had some shade; there were a few large scattered boulders that gave them some respite from the blinding white sun. Tina’s concerns had grown steadily over the last few hours, however hard she tried to suppress them. Of the four, she was probably the one in the best shape at the moment, although she felt the pain and exhaustion in every part of her body. She knew that, unless their instructors decided to show up, or they found some source of water, which didn’t seem likely now, her worst fears would come to life. She stared up at the cloudless sky, watching an eagle circling overhead, slowly, watching them, undisturbed by the human presence. Sleep evaded her, although she was so tired, oh so tired.
They had been split up into groups of twenty to twenty-five within the first weeks after arrival, and those groups seemed matched so that candidates with similar intended roles were grouped together. She’d been put in a group of experienced officers, Navy, Army, Air Force, even a couple of astronauts, which surprised her, as those were a rare breed these days. They were diverse in a lot of ways, but all had the common denominator that they were used to command on at least company level, or some equivalent. She knew other groups were similarly put together, and inferred that from each group, only one or two would be on the final list.
There had been all kinds of activities, from arctic survival training to physics projects, mechanical training, basic to intermediate surgery, military exercises of every variety; it was hard to quite see how it all made sense. At some point during the first year, she’d discussed it with a colonel whose name she couldn’t remember.
“Redundancy,” the colonel had explained. “What happens if you lose half your crew on final descent?”
“But you wouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket,” Tina had argued. “You’d split the crew according to competencies, so you’d always have someone left who could do the job.”
The colonel had nodded, then scratched his cropped black hair, while chewing on some kind of nuts he had this weakness for.
“Of course, but what if … What if you had to split your crew differently? This is nothing like we’re used to; you know that. What if the crew had to be split according to demographics? What if you had to make sure there were enough men and enough women on each landing craft to be able to breed? What if you had to choose between sick and healthy? What if not half, but most of the crew were wiped out by some freak accident?” It was probably at some point during that conversation that Tina really began to understand the nature of what this mission was all about. Of course, it wasn’t until the news about Devastator had leaked that she’d truly fathomed the finality of it all, that this was probably humanity’s only chance for survival. But it was the conversation with the colonel that had opened her eyes to the fact that this was so much more than she’d expected when she was picked for Selection. If she could only remember his name …
The colonel had washed out during one of the weeding processes that happened at irregular intervals, just a few months after Tina’s conversation with him, and she’d never seen the man again. Rumor had it the rejects were moved to detention centers so that they were unable to reveal anything, for security reasons. She wouldn’t normally believe such rumors, but under the circumstances, she wouldn’t rule it out. The fact was, no one really knew.
The eagle circling above seemed to be closing in on them. What does it want? Tina thought. Somehow, she was vaguely aware that she was delirious, a weird feeling, kind of what she imagined an out-of-body experience must be like. The eagle landed and opened a door on the side of its belly. It was huge! Out of the door, little people jumped out, some in white, others in desert fatigues. A funny eagle, Tina grinned, whoever heard of an eagle with doors, and people inside. She passed out.
Tina woke slowly to murmured voices in a white, cool air-conditioned room. Ensign Johnson was standing next to another bed, where a middle-aged doctor and a tall, suited man were standing beside a sleeping Henry Carroll.
“He’s been through surgery, seems his leg was worse than we thought,” she heard Kim Leffard whisper quietly. “Some kind of infection. It’s a wonder he made it that far. Tough bastard.” Tina nodded in agreement. They were quite a team now: herself, Kim, Henry and Dean. They’d been in different groups throughout most of Selection, and had been put together as a team only six months ago. Now they were a tightly knit group, and she expected their experiences in the desert would bond them even tighter. Perhaps that was the whole purpose, she pondered.
The man in the suit turned toward her.
“Ah, it seems our pilot is back,” he said, revealing a broad smile, and a hint of pride in his eyes. He was clean-shaven, with dark blond hair, and couldn’t have been more than forty, although it was difficult to tell. The eyes, deep blue, seemed older, somehow.
“You, ma’am, have just made one hell of an impression. The Board has had their eyes on you for some time, and with good reason. Your team held on the longest of all, and you pulled everyone through till the end. You should be proud. I know I am.”
“Proud?” Tina said weakly. She still didn’t quite understand; she felt quite weak.
“Yes, damn proud. You don’t know me, but I’ve followed you for almost two years now. I’m on the Selection Board and you, ma’am, have been one of my favorites almost from day one. And I’m also happy to see that your team is ready to start your next phase of training.”
October 2076 ~ Washington, DC
Trevor Hayes was a man of few words, and his appointment four years ago as national security advisor had surprised a good number of Washington insiders. The media had also been taken by surprise, and they’ve been digging ever since to find background on this largely anonymous man. So far, very little had been found, except what was available from official sources. He had attended Harvard Law, and then served with the notorious Black Berets for close to ten years, before leaving the service to work for Pegasus Inc., a medium-sized company that provided security and private military services, a growing industry in the age of terror. The official file on him said he had worked in both the legal department and in several managerial and executive positions, and, although unsubstantiated, there were rumors that he was also involved in the company’s more clandestine operations. Within seven years, Hayes had become a partner, which meant a more public role. He had been involved in several of the lawsuits following the growth of the industry, but somehow they had escaped the media radar, being overshadowed by larger scandals, such as the royal wedding drug scandal in England and the Louisiana governor’s involvement in trafficking, which had covered the front pages for weeks. When the Supreme Court had dismissed the cases, there had been some stirring and talk of a shift in the checks and balances, assigning greater powers to the executive branch, but still Hayes had been just one of the many lawyers involved, although it was well known that he was one of the figures emerging as a leader of an industry growing steadily more entrenched with the sitting administration. And as America was evolving more and more each year into a one-party system, Trevor Hayes steadily rose in the ranks of the establishment.
And now, in the Oval Office, sitting in a lounge chair opposite from him, President Andrews absently swirled a wide glass of whiskey, while considering Trevor’s latest proposal. The president hadn’t touched his drink once, which, to Trevor, meant he shouldn’t touch his either. The president gritted his teeth, still not meeting his eyes, obviously considering both the news he’d been given and the solution brought to him by one of his most trusted advisors. Hayes knew this very moment would either ruin his position with the president and severely damage his chances of success, or bring him a lot closer to one of his main objectives, the one he’d been working toward ever since his gradual involvement in the schemes of the charismatic and persuasive Thatcher.
“You’re sure about this?” the president asked him, his mask impossible to read.
“Yes, sir.”
“You want me to dump the one man that’s gotten Project Exodus this far? Is that your recommendation? That I replace him with a man I’m less sure about, one that I actually, to be frank, trust less?” President Andrews was often considered a man who valued loyalty over competence. Trevor Hayes would never underestimate him that way, although he saw that the question of loyalty would matter here, as the project was the president’s most important issue these days. And his only hope was that Senator Buchanan’s years of political maneuvering and the way he’d become a close ally of this administration through years as a party insider would deem him loyal enough to be entrusted with this project.
“Mr. President, we both know Senator Buchanan doesn’t agree with every one of your policies. But I think this only strengthens his candidacy. You know he will tell you his honest opinion, and you don’t need another sycophant that only tells you what you want to hear. That could be devastating when it comes to the project. When it comes to loyalty, I’d say that having someone who’s stuck with you through the years, despite occasional differences, is the kind of loyalty you’d want in a person who also needs to make tough decisions. And you don’t want someone who needs to be micro managed because he’s afraid of not always agreeing with you on every little detail.” Hayes knew this would strike a chord with the president, since for the past few years that had become a very real difficulty, but he couldn’t be sure that would be enough. The stakes were extreme at this point, and he had no way of knowing whether President Andrews would be persuaded by arguments or fall back on his tendency to demand blind loyalty from those closest to him.
The president got up from his chair, put his glass back on the table, still untouched, and walked over to the windows. He stood there for a moment, his back toward Hayes, staring out the window, where fallen leaves now covered the lawn outside. Hayes could see he was troubled, but didn’t interrupt him. This was the turning point, the point where he would see whether the plan had worked, whether or not the movement would gain access to the one position of influence, except the presidency of course, where they could seriously affect the outcome of the biggest gamble of all time. If it worked, they would actually stand a chance of success. If it didn’t, well, they would be back to square one, with no time to pick up the pieces.
Then the president turned.
“I trusted Mr. Shaw, you know. Apparently I didn’t know him well enough. I will have him removed immediately. I have no choice in the matter; I cannot keep that perverted, sick …” President Andrews stopped before his anger got the better of him, then walked briskly back to the table, picked up his drink, and emptied it.
“All right, Trevor, set up a meeting with Senator Buchanan first thing tomorrow. Tell him to put everything else aside. And prepare a briefing, in which he will be fully informed. He needs to know what he’s getting himself into. From now on, he is to be treated as one of us.”
Later, walking through the hallways of the White House, Trevor Hayes had that weird feeling that everyone he encountered could see his exhilaration, that every emotion that raced through him was clearly visible on the outside for everyone to see. Of course, that was just how he felt. After all, he was a professional, and he’d been in the cloak and dagger business for years. He knew how to put on a blank face and hide his natural, biological reactions, such as heightened heart rate and pumping adrenaline. He had succeeded. Tomorrow, Senator Joe Buchanan would be appointed by the president to manage the Exodus Project. Ironic, Hayes thought, President Andrews just gave his greatest enemies the weapons needed to destroy his legacy. He will have no idea what hit him.
January 2077 ~ Antarctica
This was said to be a learning experience; no cuts, no weeding out this time, and it did seem to be true, at least for the time being. Maria Solis knew they were somewhere in Antarctica, probably on the high plains, because of the altitude. They could feel the thin air, and while they’d been blessed with nice weather, the sun warming just a little and no wind to speak of, the hard-packed snow still felt crisp beneath her feet, and her every breath stung just a little in her lungs, even with the face mask.
“How ya doin’ over there, Solis? Breckinbridge?” she heard Jeremiah Lowell call at her and her friend Sophie Breckinbridge. He was standing a bit to their left, his back bent, trying to bring life back to the snowmobile, which seemed utterly dead at the moment.
“How’s it gonna be? Y’all gonna just stand there, or ya’ll gonna help out? Jesse could use another pair of hands on the tent.” To people who didn’t know him, his Southern twang cou
ld sometimes seem faked, as he’d lose it from time to time, but Maria knew better. A professor in the Geology department at Cambridge, England, he’d somehow over time developed a curious mixture of his native accent and pretty standard Oxford English, and for some reason there was no apparent consistency to it.
She nudged Sophie with her elbow, and they walked over to Jesse Gibson, who was busy getting their tent ready for the night. They were originally a team of five, and had been put together from their various core groups that had been formed from the beginning. When the core groups had been split up, they’d known it was significant. So they’d decided it was the five of them for the remainder, and had already gotten to know each other deeply during their early days as a team.
Now, though, only four of them remained, and that was one of the reasons this usually cheerful lot seemed somehow quiet, glum. It had been but a few weeks since they were reduced to four, and it had made them all acutely aware of what they were a part of. The seriousness of the situation had sunk in, and although the mood had changed, they were even more determined than before. They all knew they were among the very few who still had any prospects. Something to work for, to stick together for, to do everything possible for.
Maria Solis was the youngest of them at the age of twenty-one. She had been a high school senior when she came to Selection, instead of going to college, like most others her age. Although the Solis family was among the major contributors to the Consortium, she had no guarantees of being on the final list for the mission. Actually she’d expected to be among the first to be cut, but one of the other members of her core group had shown symptoms of mental illness early on, and one day he was simply gone, all his belongings removed and no explanation given. That had given her the necessary time to adjust to the situation. She spent hours upon hours studying, practicing, until finally she seemed to come to grips with some of the areas unfamiliar to her. She’d really struggled with agriculture and biochemistry, which were completely alien to her, but after some initial difficulty, those were areas she came to enjoy. Now she’d turned out to be one of the top students in agriculture and life-support systems, and although she didn’t expect to use the latter unless there was a serious emergency en route, she knew she was quietly etching out her little niche that just might earn her a spot.
The others on her team were several years older than she was, with Sophie the closest, both in terms of age and relationship. She was twenty-nine, and already she had made a name for herself in academic circles, being among the top contenders for the prestigious Obama grant when she was picked for Selection. She had once told them how she had been approached by some government types and persuaded to come to Selection, even though she had never shown an interest for anything to do with space. She had reluctantly agreed to come after they had told her they needed knowledgeable people from various backgrounds and professions. Hers was law. Not a likely candidate for space, until now. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, they had said. She hadn’t really taken any of it seriously in the beginning. How could anyone have known it was the very last opportunity? After this, there would be no more opportunities for anything, for anyone, ever.
The professor, Jeremiah Lowell, wasn’t a leader, usually, but in this group, that was the role he had assumed. Maybe it was his age; at forty-seven he was by far the oldest. Turned out the new role suited the professor, and it had stuck, even when others were put to the task. That was not necessarily a good thing, but he had that fatherly charisma that smoothed over most problems, even when he made his opinions clear, loudly, as usual. Maybe it was his concern for others or that strangely twisted way of speaking; who could tell?
The silent one was Jesse Gibson. He sometimes seemed an odd one, and usually took no part in discussions or sides whenever someone argued. But when he did speak up, he was usually right, and his voice and insight always seemed to tip the argument. Introspective, bordering on antisocial, he somehow came to be a natural part of the group, someone they could rely on to complete his tasks in the most efficient manner, whatever they would be, and then help the others out.
The fifth member of the group had been John Rawlins, an engineer with a military background, although he had turned civilian ten years prior to Selection. He was the classic engineer; with bridges, roads, buildings, tunnels, whatever came to mind, he’d done it already. A genuinely nice guy, with one … weakness … one might call it, that eventually caught up with him. Just before leaving for Antarctica, the news of Devastator had finally come out, and Selection took on a new meaning to them all. It was no longer a long series of cuts, training, more cuts, and then, for a lucky few, an adventure that no one really knew anything about, except that it had to do with space. It was about who would live and who would die. Get cut, and you die, simple as that. John was a married man, having left his wife and two kids at their home in Boulder, Colorado to participate in this project. He took the news harder than the rest of them. And one day, he simply packed his belongings, said his good-byes, and went to spend the rest of his time left with his family. Who could blame him?
So here they were, the four of them, setting up camp in the middle of this last wilderness left on Earth. All sounds were muffled, the snow and ice and sheer vastness absorbing most of them, and there was no background noise at all. Will it be something like this in space, Maria wondered. She knew this was nothing compared to space, but still, she felt some familiarizing or something like that had to be their purpose for being here, not just getting used to bulky clothing, face masks, and spending time in a tent. There was usually more to every exercise, every test, and every lecture, than first assumed. Nothing was ever just what it seemed; everything had a specific purpose and an opportunity to grasp some higher meaning, if you only looked beyond the surface of things.
That evening they shared a nice meal together, something Jeremiah had magically cooked up from their usually bland provisions, a mix of canned foods and MREs.
“My secret ingredient,” he winked smugly. “I could tell y’all, but then I’d have to kill ya.” Maria liked the professor; she really hoped he’d make it through Selection. He did have useful qualifications, but she knew the competition would be harsh until the final names were to be announced. And even then, she wouldn’t bet on anything. His age could be a problem. They might be looking for younger people, since some kind of breeding population would obviously be an aspect of this. Then again, he was still here, wasn’t he?
“So, what do you guys think?” Maria changed the subject. “What is the destination? Could we colonize the outer solar system somehow?” She didn’t direct the question anywhere, but as usual, Jeremiah was the first one to address it. He shook his head.
“Doubt it. Titan or Europa could be habitable, somehow, but they just seem too darn … hostile … I mean, the environments of those two just seem hostile, unfriendly, nothing invitin’ about them. They’re probably more likely candidates than Mars would have been, had it still existed, and training in Antarctica definitely seems to hit the bull’s-eye, but still …”
They all knew the professor sometimes spoke with some of the suits that turned up from time to time, usually whenever there was time for a cut, or some major information to be revealed, although he never shared anything he learned from those brief encounters. But somehow he always seemed to know more than they did, and he was usually a step further along, as information went. So his opinion definitely mattered. Sophie and Jessie had been listening, but weren’t really participating in the conjecturing. Sitting quietly, leaning in toward each other, they seemed to have some kind of thing going, although if there was anything more than a tight and mostly quiet friendship, it wasn’t obvious to anyone outside their group.
“So what do you really think, Jeremiah?” Maria said. “Are we talking outside the solar system, could it be done? I mean, we’d be talking light years. And the last time I heard we didn’t have the means to go any further than Mars. With manned flight that is. And even that was a total sc
rew up.” Jesse and Sophie both nodded in agreement. They all knew this story well. It had been decades, but still the memory of how the colonization of Mars had turned into tragedy was part of common knowledge, taught in schools as an example of how NASA, in their final mission, had revealed every negative trait the organization had ever developed. Of course, official history also claimed it showed every negative trait of society as such, and the aftermath of the Mars incident had paved the road for the reforms brought on by Holloway and Andrews. They had never discussed this on the team, but the one thing they all knew was that the Mars incident had meant an effective end to manned space exploration beyond Earth orbit, and when Devastator appeared, it all had to be reassembled from scratch.
“I believe there is a lot to be learned,” Jeremiah said. “And it’s been what, a little more than four years now, since Mars got blown to pieces. And from the moment someone could see where this was heading, people with considerable resources have been gathering to solve the issues, to create a plan so that we don’t go extinct. And I believe the remaining years will be utilized to the fullest; we’ll see the absolute pinnacle of human ingenuity. There will be breakthroughs, even up until the last moment, and maybe even beyond launch, so I’d be very wary of saying we can’t.”