Rise
1993
Seven years earlier
Nathan McCulvic was not a man who rattled easily. At forty-two, a senior director at the Pentagon, he had stared down decisions which would make other men vomit, and he had made them with a calm and rational mind. His world was one of frightening realities, of secrets that drove other people to madness, and of the terrifying knowledge that there was nobody waiting behind him to save it all if he failed. His was the office of last resort to every crisis – the safety net to civilisation’s collapse. Yet despite the enormous pressure inherent in his role, there was little Nathan would have changed. His position was not a job – it was a duty. McCulvic men had always served their country, in one form or another, and on most days Nathan slept soundly, confident that no matter how dire the tidings, he would rise to meet the foe.
Yet it was hard not to descend into panic, sitting there at 3am in the deserted boardroom on the third floor of the Pentagon and listening, alone, to the words seeping out from the screen.
“You must step with utmost precision,” the voice told him. The speaker’s call contained no video, only a faceless symbolic silhouette, the modulation warping the voice into deep, artificial tones. “One movement, one slip, and Heydrich will become aware of us. The moment that occurs, he’ll strike out. We cannot let that happen.”
The conference room was empty. Most of this floor of the Pentagon was empty, though the artificial lights still shone unrelentingly bright. The night was dark outside the drawn blinds and floor-length windows; most of his staffers had gone home. The smell of burnt coffee and copier ink mixed with vacuum dust and carpet cleaner as it ever did, familiar, acrid, unnatural. Unconsciously, McCulvic’s hands gripped the table.
“We can send a missile,” he practically begged the faceless stranger, “A nuclear warhead. It can be en route to the Academy inside an hour.”
“Idiocy,” the voice snapped, and even through the modulator Nathan could hear their irritation spark, “You would doom the world with raw panic. As if Academy systems would not detect such an attack incoming. As if Heydrich would not be alerted, in tune. You would in a single act destroy our one advantage and place an atomic bomb under his control.”
“Our security programs-”
“Are so robust that I’ve been able to waltz straight through them and contact you. Listen to me. We only get one shot at this. Conventional weapons will not work.”
“Then what-?”
“I’ve uploaded a schematic to your personal drive,” the voice cut him off. McCulvic turned to his open laptop. “I need it built.”
The senior director forced himself to close his mouth and moused through to find the document. He clicked on it, and a series of blueprints began popping open. Nathan’s eyes narrowed, and then his jaw dropped.
“You cannot be serious.”
“Nothing about this is a joke.”
“I… I…” The senior director ran his hands through his hair, feeling sweat begin to pool beneath his charcoal-grey suit in spite of the air-conditioning. He pointed from the laptop to the screen, as if the voice could see his movements. “This is absurd! How am I supposed to justify this to Oversight? I have discretion, yes, but without departmental approval…. a project this size, it’s… millions of dollars…”
“Billions,” the anonymous voice corrected, “Billions of taxpayer dollars which you will need to lie, steal and misappropriate in order to save the world.”
Nathan’s mouth worked wordlessly, opening and closing for a few seconds without making any sound. He threw his hands half up, then stopped when he remembered no one could see him. “I… I can’t do this,” he stammered, “I have no proof of any of this. For all I know it’s-”
“Re-check your personal drive,” the voice instructed him, “You’ll find documents setting out incontestable photographic evidence. Review them as much as you want. But show no one. Your circle of trust in this matter is a dot.”
McCulvic barely registered as his secure, state-of-the-art-encrypted laptop received yet another anonymous, unsolicited upload. He stared numbly at the screen. “I don’t even know who you are.”
There was a long, deliberate pause.
“Do you know why I chose you, of all people?” the voice finally asked. Nathan shook his head. “Because while you may not know me, Director McCulvic, I know you. I know your legacy. I know your family.” McCulvic’s thoughts suddenly flashed to the photographs in his office. The picture of his grandfather and beside that, of his uncle and his uncle’s best friend, their chests proudly armoured in crimson and gold. “And if there’s one thing I know about your people, Director, it’s that you never let a little thing like rules get in the way of saving lives.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
McCulvic gazed up at the anonymised screen. “Who are you?” he whispered, though in his heart he knew the answer.
“What will it be?” the voice continued, undeterred, “Embezzlement, fraud, treason? Or the end of humanity as we know it and Ironbound’s killer conquering the Earth?”
For a moment, McCulvic simply stared at the designs. Then finally, he shook his head.
“Wait until my kids find out I’m building a space laser,” he muttered.
“Not laser, Director,” the voice corrected, “Gravity hammer.”
*****
2000
Now
Twenty-two thousand miles above the Earth’s surface, the Mjolnir II orbital defence satellite floated in geostationary orbit. Constructed through seven years of secrets, lies, and blatant misappropriation, it was a $4.3 billion-dollar black hole in the American government’s budget that would never be properly accounted for. It represented a dozen hospitals that would never open, two hundred schools children would never learn in, and a myriad of social welfare programs that would never better any lives.
But none of that mattered.
Because after seven years of utmost secrecy, crafted from technological advancements that would have revolutionised the civilian world, Mjolnir II sat in perfect geosynchronous orbit over a radium-white ‘X’ 22,000 miles away. And fired.
Space rended. Clouds parted. And the Black Death looked up.
“Oh,” he said quietly.
DDDDDDHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM
In an instant the world around Heydrich exploded, obliterated in a fifty-foot circle as a concentrated wall of force blasted down with the fury of an avenging god. The stone crumpled, the earth shattered, and the Black Death screamed as he was pummelled downwards, unable to move, unable to breathe, his body turned desperately to diamonds as ten-thousand Newtons of force crushed him against solid rock. The gravity beam flew down unrelenting, and it was all Heydrich could do to let out a soundless cry.
Alone in his command centre, Mentok’s console flared to life.
“Net!” he roared, but the order was already given, already racing along neural implants as in the valley below hundreds, thousands of jet-black drones erupted from caches and hidden cover, racing towards the battlefield, towards the Black Death and the unstoppable, unrelenting wall of force. Fast as bullets they flew, a storm of urchin-like orbs, spreading out and into position, a wide and perfect ring around the cylinder of pummelling death.
Then in an instant they began humming a familiar, Disruptance buzz.
Beneath Mjolnir’s hammer Heydrich screamed, and his skin shone with electric light. A pulse of blue energy exploded from his body, towards the machines preventing his teleportation – but the moment before it hit, each drones’ two largest spines flared to attention, and the electricity washed harmlessly over them and was absorbed.
Inside the deadly circle, the Black Death’s face paled. And inside his command centre, Mentok’s orders roared.
“GO!” he barked, and suddenly the entire valley around Heydrich shone. Across the stony plains, on every side of the Disruptance sphere, holograms shimmered as dozens, no hundreds of soldiers raced forwards, appearing from nowhere with mangled, frenzied cries. The illusion dropped – and suddenly, the valley was no longer empty but swarming, surrounded in a living circle of military colours. American, English, Russian, Chinese – all armed, all armoured, and all deployed with one very specific power.
Heydrich’s eyes widened. And as one, the army of Neutralisers raised their hands.
“HOLD!” roared Mentok, and for a single instant, in that longest moment as he watched Heydrich struggle to rise, as the Black Death’s eyes spun in fear from the shock-proof net of drones to the horde of soldiers surrounding him to the torrent of blurring power descending from on high, Viktor’s heart rose in his chest. We’ve done it, he whispered in his thoughts.
Then abruptly Heydrich stopped trying to rise and flew face first into the ground.
“Visual!” Mentok roared, but he could already see the readouts, the motion-trackers and seismic sensors detecting something churning through the Earth, burrowing through solid rock towards the mantle, away from the Disruptance net-
“DEFEND!” he shouted, but it was too late, the movement was outside the field of the gravity hammer, outside the range of the neutralisers, beyond their line of sight, and it was turning back, speeding up through the Earth and-
BAR-OOM! The ground around one soldier’s feet buckled and a dark shape erupted from beneath him, grabbing each shoulder, tearing him in half. All around the battlefield, the Neutralisers turned, shouting, as inside his command centre Mentok hurriedly sent the drones scattering and turned off the gravity beam. The Black Death was a blur, already racing, tearing through the earth and hurtling towards the next soldier, who screamed and tried to shield her face-
BOOM. A second before Heydrich struck something landed, enveloping the woman in shining silver – and suddenly the Black Death found his hands grasped by titanium fists and his face staring up into glowing robotic eyes.
S22, Eject and Execute, came Mentok’s instantaneous mental command. The mechanised suit’s eyes blazed, and the plates forming its back-half folded like metal origami from around the woman’s body forward to lock Heydrich’s hands in place. The murderer’s mouth opened.
And then ten thousand volts exploded through the metal armour and the Black Death screamed in pain.
“Drop the anvil,” Mentok ordered, even as his fingers raced with a thousand orders, as metal suits landed amongst the crowd, ready to intervene and protect even as he repositioned the hammer and drones. Through S22’s eyes he watched as Heydrich writhed in agony, only a moment later to pull in the current and heal, jaw gnashing as sparks leapt between his teeth. His burning flesh turned once more to diamonds and his muscles bulged, and with a rending, tearing shriek he tore free from S22.
Then a shadow fell over Heydrich, and he looked up.
As from amongst a waft of sulphur a titanic figure fell, and a fist the size of a sledgehammer slammed into his jaw.
CRACK. Heydrich stumbled, staggering from the force of the impact, unable to hold his ground. He fell to one knee, his crystal face fractured, blood streaming from his nose, looking up in the direction of the blow – to see a giant in crimson armour, his body blocking out the sun.
“No,” Heydrich whispered.
And before he could react James Conrad lunged forward and kicked him with enough force to shatter diamonds, and with another thundering crack the Black Death tumbled, back out into open space, as all throughout the soldiers gleaming figures appeared in bursts of red and gold.
Fire, Mentok commanded, and Mjolnir II rained death down once more.