Falling Ark Read online

  We poked around the supercomputer room, looking for anything interesting. I wandered around the cabinets while Ava found a display and keyboard, she started to input commands.

  “I think I have found the pilots.” She said, shouting across the room to me.

  “Really, are they here?” I asked.

  “Kind of, your standing in them.” Ava replied, gesturing around the room.

  I looked at the floor and then glanced around me, unsure what to look for.

  “The super-computer!” Ava added.

  “You mean all the craft were controlled by this computer?” I asked, catching on what she meant.

  “Looks that way, and the current count is zero which is good.”

  “It makes you wonder why Lara went to the expense of putting so many seats and life support systems inside the planes when they are clearly more effective as drones.” I questioned. “It seems like such a waste.”

  “I get the feeling they were designed as escape vehicles for this spaceship.” She said, gesturing me over to see the designs of something on the screen.

  I made it halfway across the room before the monitor exploded.

  A large hole appeared in the side of the server tower, sending sparks everywhere, but my attention was on the person who fired the weapon.

  We both turned around and saw him. Coming through a back door to the server room was Frank. The beast of a man stumbled through the narrow passages between the large computer cabinets.

  He raised his gun again and pointed it at Ava. Without thinking I reached for my glass rod blaster that was in my fluorescent, VisionTech emblazoned coat pocket. Aimed it at him and pressed the little button on the handle.

  A laser beam shot through my jacket and dispersed out in a very wide beam melting the surrounding cabinets and melting Franks body with the metal slag on the floor of the server room.

  Frank was instantly knocked over onto his back and liquid metal started to pool around him from the superheated computer cases. Moments later he was on fire and slowly melting into the floor. It was a horrible sight, Franks body lay lifeless on the floor, slowly bubbling and melting away from the energy blast.

  If the gun had been set with a narrow ark then I would have missed, my aim not as good, and Frank would have fired on Ava. Thankfully I knew my aim was not good, collateral damage aside, Frank was not going to point a gun at Ava and get away with it!

  “You saved me!” Ava said as she came running towards me.

  Just before she leapt into my arms she stopped and stared at me.

  “Your pocket!” She yelled.

  I looked down to see the laser had set fire to the jacket and the flames were increasing.

  I quickly took it off, threw it to the ground and stamped out the fire, making extra sure to stamp all over the VisionTech logo. The moment the fire went out Ava grabbed me, spun me around and kissed me.

  “Does it always need to be a live or death situation when we kiss?” I asked.

  “Seems that way.” She replied, winking at me.

  “Come on, we have a job to do first.” I replied, reaching for the laser gun inside the crumped, burnt jacket.

  “I have never noticed that door there.” I commented, pointing at the opening Frank had entered through. “It’s not on any of the plans or blueprints.”

  We started to walk towards it and I held my hand over Ava’s eyes as we stepped over the remains of Frank. His face was still noticeable although the rest of his head and body had melted into the metal puddle on the floor.

  I held my breath as I stepped into the room.

  Inside were a series of huge glass tubes, each with strange liquids inside. There were dozens of them, floor to ceiling high and over a metre in diameter.

  The fluid inside them was cloudy and they each glowed with different colours, from orange to green. In the middle of the room there was a screen and a control desk. The screen seemed to be moving, like someone was using it, remotely.

  Ava ran over and tapped on the display; it was Lara’s face with a button underneath that read “Disconnect”. When Ava pressed it, the entire workstation went dead, and the lights came on in the room.

  “I don’t think Lara is here.” Ava said, “I might be able to trace the connection, but she is probably long gone.”

  Ava turned to face me. As she did fear crept over her face once more and she glared over my shoulder.

  Without hesitating and turned and shot.

  Purple slime went everywhere as the glass container exploded, instantly vaporising and sending hundreds of litres of fluid across the floor before it was all sucked away by little drains dotted around the room.

  Something remained, lying on the floor, a small person, possibly injured, the skin was stained purple from the liquid, and it had the face of Frank attached to a childlike body.

  I looked around the room, now the main lights were on I could see inside the tubes and they all contained heads that looked like Frank attached to different stages of growing bodies.

  “She was growing them.” Ava said looking around the room.

  I fired my blaster into more of the tubes and watched as the liquid drained away under my feet.

  Suddenly both of our communicators lit up and a concerned Sam spoke over the radio.

  “Are you guys safe? We are stood outside the server room and we are about to enter, do not shoot!”

  I spun around, back to the door and saw Sam and Bill along with Hank, Derek, Tony and Julie make their way into the room.

  “What on Earth!” Derek exclaimed as he saw the destruction around me.

  “We have checked the entire place. There is no-one here.” Sam said.

  “We know.” Ava informed him. “The computer out there was piloting the planes and Lara was operating this room remotely when we came in, she could be anywhere by now.”

  “Then let’s get out of here.” Sam said. “We have done enough.”

  Ava reached out for my hand, I put the blaster away in my pocket and held her tightly.

  “You won!” she whispered in my ear.

  EPILOGUE

  One Day Later

  “Hey Dom!” Ava woke me.

  I was asleep in the bedroom of the Armillary and it was the best night’s sleep I had received in a while. I didn’t like being woken, until I saw that it was Ava.

  “Morning!” I croaked.

  “You need to watch this.” Ava said, ramming a laptop screen into my face.

  “Great, you’re a morning person!” I moaned.

  “I haven’t been to sleep yet!” She replied.

  “Really? What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing much, watch the screen!”

  My eyes hadn’t opened yet and the harsh light of the screen wasn’t helping. Eventually two slits opened, allowing me to see the blurry glare shining back.

  A news reporter sat behind her desk giving a report about VisionTech. After a few moments, I noticed the headline across the bottom.

  ‘VisionTech Stock Crashes!” The little on-screen graphic read.

  “You did it!” Ava exclaimed.

  “I did what?” I asked, still unsure if I was dreaming or not.

  “VisionTech. Lara. Everything. It’s all come crumbling down. The share price is worth pennies, everyone is selling. Apparently, a website went live last night with their entire research, leaked.” Ava informed me.

  “Leaked? On a website?” I asked. “So that’s why you haven’t slept, you leaked the files?”

  “I might have done, but it doesn’t matter now. The truth is out, and the world has united. They want the technology! You won!” Ava bounced on the bed to wake me up.

  Finally, I sat up, the reality of the moment dawning on me. This was a whole new world now.

  “We actually did it?” I asked for confirmation.

  “Yes!” Ava replied, jumping on me, wrapping her hands around my waist and hugging me tightly, pushing me over, back onto the bed.

  “What do w
e do now?” I asked.

  “That’s the best part!” Ava grabbed her laptop again and scrolled along to an earlier part of the news report.

  The lady was facing a different camera and was reading from a sheet of paper.

  “To the Crew of the Armillary, if you are watching this, wherever you are, we want you to know that you have safe passage back to Earth.” She said in a calm, monotone voice.

  “It’s a pardon from all the Governments in the world. They are vindicating us!” Ava said excitedly.

  “Let’s go home then.” I said, getting out of bed and stretching away the night.

  A few moments later and I was on the command deck with Sam, still dressed in pyjamas I had borrowed from the crew and still wearing the slippers he had leant me all them days ago.

  “Are you sure about this?” He asked.

  “Absolutely.” I confirmed, conviction in my voice.

  Sam started the process and the Armillary started to float back to Earth.

  In the hours after the raid on VisionTech we decided it would be safer to get the ship out of sight. The only place we could think of was straight up.

  We gave the crew permission to fly their planes wherever they wanted, take them home, go on vacation, we didn’t mind. The ship was theirs as payment for their services these past few weeks.

  Bill disappeared on his own ship after the battle and the seven of us floated away from the Earth, hopefully for one last time. Merriment and partying started before we all realised that we were too tired, and we all retired early to sleep.

  Now we were finally returning to Earth for good. Our first destination, Derek’s house in Scotland. He was desperate to get back to his family.

  One Week Later

  The world was getting to terms with the large data leak.

  In front of me lay a magazine on the coffee table. It’s headline, ‘Welcome to the Future’, and dotted around the front page were headlines for articles explaining the various wild technologies and how they could be used.

  One story caught my attention, the headline read ‘Where is Lara Now?’

  It was true that we didn’t have a clue. She was not in the facility and even Ava wasn’t able to trace her. She had completely disappeared, her company had crumbled and the technology she had coveted, released to the public. She was no longer a threat anymore, eventually we might track her down, but it wasn’t a priority.

  Right now, I was sitting in the reception area of NASA’s Washington headquarters. They were very keen to hear the complete story of events on the Moon. They were worried about contamination of the pristine surface, and they wanted to explore the uses of all the technology we had unveiled.

  As it stood, my moon base was one of only two locations where the gravity drives could be made, the other being at Bills factory. The moon replicator had been working nonstop pumping out the drives and we were going to start delivering them to clients around the world soon.

  I had bought a container of drives with me as a gift to the US government. It never hurts to have influential friends. Sam taught me that.

  Sam had gone off the radar. Taking a well earnt break from everything, as had Derek and Hank. Julie and Tony were currently doing interviews explaining the different slimes, and food production techniques they were pioneering and there were rumours that they were being headhunted by some large corporations.

  Ava was sat opposite me, backing me up and providing moral support for the upcoming meeting, the first of many.

  A tall, slender lady entered the room and ushered us down a series of corridors to a meeting room.

  There were no windows, and only one door but the room was lit with good, ambient lighting around the large conference table.

  Five men and two women sat around it and they all had notes in front of them. Likely containing the mountains of questions, they wanted to ask me.

  Ava and I made pleasantries as we entered the room and accepted drinks before making our way towards the two empty seats in front of us.

  The start of the questioning was easy enough. How we used the gravity drives, a simple recount of each day’s activities and a list of rocks we pulled from the asteroid belt. Then came the difficult questions.

  “What happens now to your moon base? Who is running it?” One of the ladies asked.

  She was much older than I was, slightly overweight with a small blonde bop of hair. Her makeup was overdone, and I generally didn’t get a good feeling about her.

  “At the moment there is no-one active on the base. The crew have returned home, and we are taking a much-needed break.” I replied.

  “Then how do you explain the activity we are witnessing from our telescopes? Just this morning several containers were moved.” The lady asking the questions slid images of the base towards me. “These are photos taken this morning two hours apart.”

  “We have left the facility on autopilot, creating gravity drives. Robots are filling containers ready for delivery; this might involve moving things around.” I replied, happy that I had answered her question.

  “And what about is this new ship design?” She asked, again sliding photographs of the moon base towards Ava and me.

  The base was exactly how we left it, in a giant cross. The container ship in the south, the domes in the north, the tree on the west side and a space where the Armillary had once docked on the right.

  It all looked fine, except, there was no space where the Armillary should be. Instead a large square took its place. Something was there, something I didn’t know how to explain.

  “Is this some sort of a joke?” I asked, wondering if the picture had been doctored.

  “I assure you; we do not joke about matters of national security.” A man wearing a military uniform spoke up.

  “I need to investigate this then.” I replied, looking at Ava.

  She was already tapping into the feed from the moon. Before we left, we put cameras all around the base and she was frantically searching the various rooms looking for something out of the ordinary.

  “If you cannot explain this, then we will have to investigate for ourselves.” The man said, getting up, starting to leave the room. “We cannot allow this technology to fall into the wrong hands.”

  He left the room looking very angry.

  I didn’t know what to say. Was it possible that someone had acquired a gravity drive, built their own ship and was now taking over our moon base?

  Another man cleared his throat and started to talk.

  “These gravity drives, as you call them, what are your intentions?” He asked.

  “We intend to gift them to the world. To different countries to complete infrastructure projects.” I replied.

  “And have you decided who gets access?” He followed up.

  “Access to what?” I questioned, confused by what he was asking me.

  “Access to the different capabilities. Don’t tell me you are going to deliver these things unlocked. You do understand that if these devices got into the wrong hands the effects could be catastrophic.” He explained.

  “We are going to hand them over to appropriate governments and corporations, what they do with them is not our business, we trust that they will use them in the spirit that they are intended, to improve humanity.” I replied.

  “And who decides what is best for humanity?” The man asked but then got up before I had chance to answer, grumbling as he did, and left the room.

  “One final question.” The tall, slender lady started. “Why do you think you are a good judge of who deserves this technology?”

  “I don’t.” I replied. “I believe this technology should be accessible to everyone.”

  “That is a very risky situation you are putting us in. Not everyone will want to use your technology for good, you must understand that.” The woman replied, staying calm but anger creeping into her voice.

  “I understand your concerns but let me explain. If I wanted to build a nuclear bomb, I could easily get the blue
prints and the knowledge out of any high school textbook, it doesn’t mean I pose a threat. These inventions, while they sound dangerous in the wrong hands, could catapult humanity centuries into the future if handled correctly. Who am I to stop innovation? Who am I to act as judge to the world?”

  One Month Later

  It was a mess. Stock markets around the world had crumbled. Traditional, safe companies were now threatened by the imminent release of the technology. Investors didn’t know where to put their money and who to trust.

  They couldn’t give it to oil companies, because energy was about to see the biggest upheaval since in the invention of electricity.

  Car companies were going out of business as nobody had a clue what transport this new world was going to need.

  Food and drug companies were collapsing as Tony had proven that a lot of the traditional medicine was no longer needed thanks to his slime, and food could be grown inside cupboards in people’s houses using Julies magical plants.

  Even traditional, long term investments like gold and raw materials were crashing now that companies were proposing to mine the asteroids and bring Earth an abundance of wealth.

  I met up with Sam. He tried but kept failing to explain what was happening in the world.

  “It’s like the wild west!” Sam explained for the tenth time as we sat on the top deck of the Armillary, looking out over the plains of the Sahara Desert.

  “How do you mean?” I asked, taking a sip from my fruit juice.

  “Everyone is a prospector. Companies are popping up all over the place, looking for investment, claiming they are going to be the first company to create moon hotels, cloud cities, pills that give you immortality and every other conceivable use for the technology.” He explained.

  “Well, they probably can, there is some crazy technology in the released documents, even I haven’t read everything. They will just use VisionTechs plans and formulations.” I confirmed.

  “Yes, but that’s the thing. It’s still not that easy, only a few people in the world understand how this stuff works, in the meantime, companies are asking for huge sums of money and investors don’t know if their claims are true, or if they are just trying a cash grab.” Sam said.