and looked back at the map that King had marked up earlier. The area of destruction included the village of Langmere.
“Grandma’s?” Finn said.
“I know,” said Al. “It’s personal.”
The US President was incredulous.
“And who’s going to take on this mission?”
“Given the unknown physiological risks, we propose just a three-man team led by Captain Kelly from our informal military cohort. Captain Kelly and Engineer Stubbs – both with nano-experience – plus a pilot.”
“Wait! Nano-experience? You’ve done this before?” asked Finn.
“Roll the film,” said Al.
Up on the screen appeared some scrappy, hand-held digital footage of a goat on a lead. At the other end of the lead was Al. Both looked like they’d been partying for three days straight. A time code ticked over along the bottom.
Captain Kelly walked into shot and spray-painted ‘Good luck’ on the goat’s hide.
The image cut to the Fat Doughnut Accelerator operating with a loud hum. Outside, Engineer Stubbs sat at a desk crammed with laptops. Al tethered the goat in the centre of the Fat Doughnut.
The time code jumped forward a few minutes to a more distant shot of the accelerator. The camera zoomed in on the goat as it became increasingly disturbed. Wheeling around its tether until… the screen went suddenly and completely white.
The camera pulled out to reveal the Fat Doughnut now contained a ball of perfect, intense white light. It seemed to ripple and spin for a few seconds before it faded, leaving behind a party of blinking observers and… no goat.
Al ran into the centre of the Fat Doughnut. On hands and knees he searched for something. Kelly and Stubbs crowded in.
Very carefully, Al picked something up. The camera zoomed in on his hand. Trying to focus. All blurry, unfocused skin tone. And then – finally, shakily – in the rivulets of Al’s skin, in the lifeline, stood a rather confused, silently-bleating, 4.5mm goat.
“Me next,” said Kelly off-camera. “I’m next!”
“Hey! Who did all the work?” protested Stubbs.
“Back away!”
The argument raged. The goat didn’t join in. It was all way over its head.
DAY ONE 14:19 (BST). Willard’s Copse, Berkshire
Lay lay lay lay…
Smallpox had laid waste to the badger and left its corpse a wretched thing, barely identifiable, pustulated and leaking the gall the Scarlatti found so conducive.
For fifteen hours more the Scarlatti would continue to produce fat white eggs from its abdomen, straining to evacuate them, planting each one carefully in the decaying flesh, its insides a furnace of reproduction.
In each egg a primitive nymph was forming. In less than six hours, such was the furious rate of growth, the first of them would begin to consume the remaining contents of its egg sac before bursting out to feast upon the corpse in turn.
Someone whispered something in the US President’s ear. He made his decision and nodded.
“You want our Scarlatti, you got it,” he said simply.
“And further accelerator capacity from CERN, Monsieur le Président? Frau Chancellor?”
“Oui.”
“Ja.”
Commander James Clayton-King loved it when a plan came together.
Then the American President raised a finger. “One condition. We supply the pilot. I want a man onboard.”
King raised an eyebrow in protest.
There was another whisper in the President’s ear.
“Make that a woman.”
DAY ONE 15:17 (BST). Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, USA
A Variant T Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor taxied out of the restricted M3 hangar.
Delta Salazar knew nothing yet of the mission she was being asked to undertake, only that it was priority number one: transit to RAF Northolt outside London at maximum speed, refuelling in mid-air twice over the Atlantic. With afterburners engaged and almost no payload, her cruising speed would be well in excess of Mach 2. Deep in the heart of the $150-million fifth-generation stealth fighter, in the empty weapons bay, wrapped in an ‘indestructible’ transport crate, was a single small frozen phial.
Control had cleared the skies.
Delta loved Aviator shades, beating men at anything and strafing ground targets with 44mm cannon. She also love love loved to fly.
In fact, the only thing she loved more was her little sister Carla, but that was not the sort of thing that she would say out loud in the (Classified) M3 Wing of the US Air Force.
“Clear for take-off,” said Control.
With an easy touch, Delta fully engaged the twin F119-PW-100 turbofan engines producing 35,000lbs of thrust that shot the aircraft off the runway and into a steep climb.
Her mother had been an alcoholic and she’d spent most of her childhood neglected, finding escape only in video games (starting with Splinter Cell back in 2002). In 2004 the USAF had started looking for recruits with exceptional hand-eye coordination in the online gaming community. They noticed the data spike around Delta’s tag and traced it to a state children’s home in Philadelphia where they found a fierce, scruffy, skinny thirteen-year-old who intensely distrusted authority, having been separated from her baby sister when taken into care. She tested off the scale.
The USAF put her into a top-secret training programme, arranged an appropriate adoption for Carla, with visitation rights, and gave Delta the chance to excel. She was triple-A rated on six different aircraft and had won two Air Force Distinguised Service Medals and a Medal of Honour. She was twenty-three years old – even if she looked an Indie rock nineteen.
At 20,000 feet she banked east off the American continent. She could never get used to how great this felt.
“Badass…” she sighed.
“I heard that, Salazar,” snapped Control.
She laughed and rocketed off across the Atlantic.
DAY TWO 02:46 (BST).
