Juggernaut

An empty shelf. No case. No missile. The warhead was gone.

The Catacombs

‘Let’s find the generator,’ said Voss. ‘Let’s get the lights on.’

Jabril led him deep into the tunnel. Voss pulled a flare from his pocket. He struck the cap. Splutter and fizz. Crimson fire. Limestone walls lit blood red.

‘How does it feel to be back?’ asked Voss.

‘I dream about this place every night,’ said Jabril. ‘Awful nightmares. It almost feels like coming home.’

‘Yeah?’

‘It’s difficult to explain. Some events, some places, are so terrible they become an indelible part of you.’

The cavern.

Voss checked the lab units.

A scorched hatch hung open and crooked.

‘Someone blew their way inside,’ said Jabril. ‘Some kind of breaching charge. Very recent. I can still smell the cordite.’

‘Gaunt. Better watch our backs.’

Voss stepped inside the lab.

He kicked at the Chemturion suit crumpled on the floor.

He examined the polished zinc of the necropsy slab. Cuff restraints. IV stand. Examination lights. A camera tripod.

Surgical instruments laid out on a metal table. He picked up stainless steel pliers.

‘Bone rongeurs,’ explained Jabril. ‘For splitting skulls.’

Voss snorted in disgust. He threw the rongeurs onto the necropsy slab. Harsh clatter.

‘We should leave,’ said Jabril. ‘We shouldn’t be in here. It’s too dangerous. We have no protective clothing.’

They left the lab.

They approached the high, opaque plastic dome of the bio-containment structure.

‘Is this Spektr?’ asked Voss.

‘It’s safe. The craft itself is not contaminated.’

Voss slung his shotgun. He unsheathed his knife and slit plastic. He ducked through the polythene curtain, and held the flare above his head.

The orbital craft rested on a flatbed rail car.

Voss walked a slow circuit of the vehicle. He ducked beneath the ragged Delta wing. He reached up and stroked thermal tiles discoloured by the unimaginable heat of hypersonic re-entry.

‘This thing actually flew through space,’ he murmured. ‘Left the Earth and came back again.’

Jabril contemplated the shadows of the open airlock.

‘Pandora’s box. We should have left this craft in the desert. It would have been buried forever.’

Lucy climbed the ladder to the locomotive walkway. She entered the cab.

She rolled the dead engineer with her foot. No signs of infection.

She checked the pockets of the engineer’s boiler suit. Cigarettes. Prayer beads. A key.

She dragged the body out onto the walkway. She lifted the desiccated corpse over the guard rails and threw it onto the track.

She returned to the cab. The engineer’s console. Red brake handle. Big throttle. Key slot.

She inserted the key and turned the ignition.

Nothing. No instrumentation lights, no engine noise. She looked around the cab for breakers, any kind of power switch.

A brief flutter of panic and despair, crushed before it began.

RSM Miller, her platoon sergeant, laid it out for her, the day she applied for the Fourteen Intelligence Company.

‘The difference between regular army and special forces is simply the ability to maintain composure. To think straight in situations of extreme peril. Special recon training is a constant live-fire exercise. Endless boot camp endurance tasks while bullets whizz past your head. I’ve been out to that dummy village they built on Salisbury Plain. So many cartridge cases lying around, they crunch underfoot like gravel. The instructors will teach you to think through a haze of adrenalin and exhaustion. They’ll teach you to survive.’

Lucy swigged from her canteen. She rubbed her eyes.

The locomotive wouldn’t fire up. Maybe the ignition battery was dead. Must be some way to check available current.

She began a methodical survey of the cab.

Jabril left Voss in the cavern.

‘I want to find my old room, collect some of my things.’

He wandered down a low passageway. His blue cyalume lit chiselled walls, timber props and roof beams.

A faded door sign.

Dynamite Store.

Jabril pushed open the rough wooden door. A small cell. A windowless cave.

A canvas cot, a table, a trunk. A wash table and mirror.

His old room.

Jabril sat on the bunk. He lay the cyalume on the blanket. The chemical stick lit the room cold blue.

He dragged the trunk towards the cot. Leather. Louis Vuitton. A relic of his previous life.

He unbuckled straps and popped latches.

Books and neatly folded clothes. He searched among his possessions. He found a gold cigarette case and a Ronson lighter.

He lay on the cot and smoked a Turkish cigarette. He cried a little, then sat up and wiped tears.