The canvas of marque tent flapped and cracked in the midnight breeze, bringing a welcome chill into the claustrophobic space, made hot by the heavy breath of men in padded military attire. Theo stood lazily at military rest, his wandering gaze desperately trying to latch onto anything of significance in the grey and uniform space, beside his squad shifted nervously. Big meetings like this always meant trouble. What would it be this time, he wondered? Another surface excursion, no doubt. A sombre affair that was just as fruitless to the community as it was terminal to squad that attempted it. Theo didn’t wander too long about this as he stood in the cramped and ragged ranks of men and women. Unlike most of them, this was the only world he’d ever known, he had never seen a cloudless sky or a world without sickness, he only knew this place in all it’s lost and lonely glory. A Stirring among the ranks centred his vision and he saw an imposing figure ascend to the stand at the end of the room. Hagiel, the leader of the military branch of the Perdix Alliance and sometimes its sole source of civic pride, was about to talk. He reached the podium and faced his assembled audience, Theo fancied he could see a small, almost sadistic grin flash across his face before he began speaking.
“In the year 2199 a biological weapon ravaged the earth. Detonating squarely over the Australian outback, the high yield Nuclear bomb, since named ‘the Daedalus progenitor’ exploded in the upper troposphere of the Earth’s Jet stream with a virulent bioengineered organism as it’s ultimate payload, seeding the earth with a devastating radioactive virus.
The irradiated the contents of the canister of biologically hazardous material, were mutated beyond predictable parameters whilst simultaneously spreading it across nearly 70 percent of the Earth's atmosphere, following both the trajectory of the Jet stream and spread even further by the blast radius of the mushroom cloud. The Result was the mass release of a sickness known as Labyrinth Syndrome, named as such because of the maze of copper coloured marks that would erupt on the flesh of those afflicted by the virus, marking them as carriers and the dead. Attaching itself to the hypothalamus of its victims, it often resulted in massive mutations before the eventual death of its victims, often driving them mad and causing their bodies to grow and their urges for food and water to decrease or intensify to dangerous levels before eventually burning itself out.
It’s academic which nation fired the ‘Daedalus’ Bomb, as there were no nations left by the end of the week.
Now, sixty years on, the only survivors are those who inhabited the very corners of the world, we are only safe because our forebears were able to hide out in the closed off environment of the Andes. For a brief time we were in contact with Members of the New Russian Alliance, who were able to whether the worst of the sickness by simple fact of their climate preventing the Labyrinth sickness from surviving. But as many of you know we lost contact with them some years ago. For all we know and it is not unwise to assume this, we are the last of humanity to escape the terrible plague that still haunts the land below, the last not to be driven mad or to the grave. We may sometimes think of ourselves as the forgotten embers of a dying light, but I prefer to think of our society as an enduring spark that will one day burn away this infection and reclaim our planet. We are Perdix, and we will live on!”
There were some ‘hurrahs’ from isolated corners of the room and a general consensus to clap, but for the most part, the men sighed and began to file out of the structure, eager to divest themselves of their gear and enjoy some downtime, which included mostly farming what they could to feed the meagre populace or visiting the ‘ashram’ as it was nicknamed and seeing about getting a girl or two for the night. “What a load of absolute shite” a familiar husky voice said behind Theo, causing the young man to grin despite himself.
“If you say so, Ignacio” said a somewhat more weather worn sounding voice nearby in a tone that was both diplomatic and amused in equal measure. “Well it is! It’s absolute bullshit, this is all we’ve got, there’s no chance of getting down this mountain scouting trip to get the scraps of the old world, beyond that, we’re just pissing in the wind!” Theo turned around to see his older friend staring daggers at the older man, their commanding officer, Sergeant Milton Rodriguez. Theo new the drill in this situation, indeed the sergeant had rehearsed the necessary steps for these moments when Ignacio got ‘all existential’.
“Hey Iggs, how Ellen doing these days?” Theo casually said as he gracefully moved in between the two men. Ignacio’s expression immediately softened and his fists slowly unclenched,
”She’s doin well Theo, the doctors say she’s recovering real well, even though the birth was hard on her” The tall and muscular man who could strip a sub-machine gun in under a minute couldn’t hold back a smile ‘and the little one is almost sitting up I tell you, you can see it in the her eyes’ he said excitedly. At that moment a whistle blew and the crackly P.A. system came alive briefly. “Squad Exodus 7 will report to Commander Hagiel’s office immediately for assignment into the field” it announced in clipped syllables and a cheerful tone. “Well that’s cocks for the chop!” Swore Ignacio, his good mood blackened once again. Theo looked briefly to the Sergeant who was fiddling with a small portion of his dinner that was stuck in his tobacco browned teeth. “You know the score boys, let’s move out and see what the big man wants from us today” He casually hoisted his rifle onto his back and set an easy stride in the direction of the office, but anyone could see he was nervous, his eyes would linger on the exits to the marque just an instant to long and the thumb on his left hand shook perceptibly. Theo saw all this as easily as a veteran of battle, he’d been here his whole life and he knew these men better than his own mother, whoever she was.
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The Squad of three stood motionless in front of the heavy oak desk and Hagiel regarded them critically. “You three have been designated the honour of a high priority mission, the outcome of which may decide the future of not only this community, but humanity as a whole.” He sat back slowly and looked at the three sets of eyes in the room in turn. They did not react overmuch, they’d heard the rhetoric that he gave out to the suicide squads that he’d send out to retrieve some small piece of seemingly useless data as part of one of his pet projects, the few that returned alive spoke about it often when they’d seen the bottle of one too many bottles.
The men were called out of these morbid thoughts when Hagiel once again, began to speak.
“During the time before the bomb, when civilization wasn't the aim, but the existing ideal, men wanted more than this planet, lush and vibrant though it was.” At this close range the men fancied they could the commander’s eye’s glaze over as though he could see the grandeur of the past that they had forgotten
“They hoped to leave this world and begin anew on others, however it was only in the years just before the bomb that men of science caught up to this dream and so was born the Icarus Vt orbital satellite. A space-station the likes of which you cannot imagine, full of the best and brightest who were working in collaboration to achieve one aim, to terraform and colonise the planet Mars!” He looked expectantly at the morose squad once again and was disappointed with the lack of wonder in their eyes, Theo was especially confused as tried to predict where this tale might lead to include them. The commander resumed his monologue without comment “at any rate when the bomb came it knocked out most satellites in the vicinity which just happened to include the Icarus and it crew. The exact sight of this crash has been unknown for many years, until now!” With a theatrical flourish that he produced a small device that looked like a bulky cellphone of the old-world, heavily encased in plastic and metal strips. “This” he whispered, his eyes gazing almost lovingly at the strange device “Is the Ariadne, it houses a one of a kind quantum entanglement device that will lead us directly to the crash site of the ‘Icarus Vt’ and the treasure trove of terraforming and bioengineering technology that is housed within!” He beamed at the other men and saw their eyes finally light up with recognition at their objective.
“You three will be the vanguard of the expedition to the site, where you assess the viability of the materials within and set up a small convoy t and get the most relevant materials out to see where you and the technology will be air lifted back here to safety while I remain here and martial the bulk of our scientific division to decontaminate the salvage and begin work on re-purposing the technology for use on Earth.” The commander stood up and treated the men to an encouraging smile. When it was not reciprocated his expression turned sour
“Is that understood?” At this point the somewhat more savvy Sergeant Rodriguez placed a firm hand on Ignacio’s shoulder, who had gone very still apart from the clenching and unclenching of large fists and said “Orders received sir” in as mild a voice as a man can give his executioner. Hagiel, refusing to notice the tension in the room merely sat down and said “Good, the site of the crash is, as far as we can ascertain, Lake Macleod in the most western half of the Australia. You’ll be dropped outside of the nearby city of Perth as this is the nearest area where air drops are possible without malfunction due to Radioactivity and residual magnetism disrupting our instruments” At this all three men in the squad let out a small hiss of shock, Australia was a no fly zone, the radiation was strong here and the Labyrinth virus was rampant in more strains that anywhere else on the planet.
“You will of course receive the very finest we can assemble in the way of equipment including 3 salvaged Graphene Radiation suits that will protect you from any bacterial or radioactive damage. You will also be outfitted with any weaponry you require as I can imagine you may need to deal with some of the surviving local populace” Theo bit back a curse as he thought of what that could mean. Those afflicted by the labyrinth syndrome always died, in the best case scenario. In the worst case scenario virus attached itself permanently to the host and maintained an uneven balance of chemical within the body that prevented the host from dying but jacked up their pituitary gland and caused them to go insane with hunger and thirst, these hulking and crazed beings had been nicknamed Minotaurs by the Perdix military, due to their size and tendency to charge head first at anything they thought they could eat. All told, the Perdix had encountered maybe thirty of these poor individuals in the last sixty years, but in the heart of the explosion, where the virus would have been exposed to prolonged bouts of radiation, Theo shuddered at the possible corruptions to nature that might exist in that heart of darkness. Hagiel looked pensively for a moment at some paperwork on his desk and without taking his eyes of the lines of typeface he announced “Dismissed”
That was 12 hours ago.