Einstein Must Die! (Fate of Nations Book 1) (28 page)

He heard voices coming from the elevator shaft and was pleasantly surprised to know others had survived the attack. With the colonel gone, Bertram badly wounded, and Savannah distraught, he needed help. He sat her down on a chair, making sure her back was to Madelaine’s body.

“Wait here, OK? I’ll be right back. Just one minute.”

She slumped forward, her head in her hands. “OK,” she whispered.

Tesla crossed back to the elevator platform. He knelt beside Bertram and felt for a pulse along the side of his neck. It was faint, but there. The jagged piece of brick protruding from Bertram’s chest made Tesla wince, and he knew he couldn’t move him without help. Frothy pink bubbles had appeared around the wound.
Punctured lung
. For now, letting him lie quietly was the best he could do.

Bertram had raised the platform only two feet before being struck down. Tesla saw the open panel that worked the counterbalance system, and thought Bertram had the right idea, if the wrong timing. Getting that steel platform above them made sense, especially if more bombs were to fall.

He stepped up onto the platform, looking up the dark shaft. The voices of several men were clearly audible now, though he couldn’t recognize them. They were climbing down the emergency ladder recessed into the shaft’s wall. As they came lower, he made out a white lab coat on the lowest man.

“Hello,” Tesla called up. “How many are you?”

The lowest man looked down. “Mr. Tesla? It’s George. Sophia is with me, and we’ve got three more. Hang on,” he answered, and shuffled down the ladder faster. He jumped the last few feet, landing solidly on the platform. Straightening up, he smiled broadly. “Damn good to see you, Mr. Tesla.”

“Thank you, I feel lucky to still be here,” he said, watching the others descend the ladder behind George. Someone above was feeding down crates from a rope, and they began stacking the supplies on the floor just off the platform. Sophia slid down the ladder and flashed a smile when she saw Tesla. George went straight to her, and he wondered if the two had begun a relationship. Two more men descended, but Tesla hadn’t met them before. As the last person stepped off the ladder and turned around, Tesla was unkindly disappointed to see it was Edison.

“As we all do,” Edison said. “What’s your situation here?”

Tesla pointed to Bertram. “Bertram is badly hurt, but alive. We’ll need to get him to a hospital quickly. Savannah is unhurt physically.” He paused, unsure how to explain the rest.

Edison stepped off the platform and frowned, seeing Savannah crying. He looked around. “Is Madelaine…”

“I’m here,” said Madelaine, her quivering voice amplified through Beowulf’s speakers. Savannah jumped as though electrically shocked. She leaped from the chair and stood frozen, staring at Beowulf.

Edison whirled to look at the tank, his mouth gaping. “My God,” he muttered. “Tesla, what—”

“Mom? Mom, it’s dark. I can’t see you. I can’t see anything!” Madelaine’s voice was rising in urgency.

“It’s OK, honey,” said Savannah. “I’m right here, right next to you.” She looked down at Madelaine’s body on the table. Her daughter’s chest was still heaving, but the movements were slowing, with longer pauses between each breath. Savannah raised her voice to carry over to Beowulf, but her eyes were fixed on her daughter’s body. “How do you feel, darling?”

The voice from Beowulf was Madelaine’s, just bigger and more powerful. “I feel…I don’t know. For a minute, I was drowning. Now, I’m just…here. In the dark. Why can’t I see you?”

“You can, you just need to focus. Open your eyes, honey.”

A moment passed, then Beowulf’s twelve view ports snapped open. The inputs from twelve cameras fed into her mind at once, giving her a 360-degree view for the first time in her life. The flood of stimulation overwhelmed her mind. She wanted to gasp, but she felt no lungs, and no air. That scared her even more. Then Beowulf screamed.

Everyone clapped their hands over their ears against the amplified wail. Tesla ran to her and shouted, “Madelaine? Listen, focus on my voice!” The piercing scream wavered. “Can you see me? Look for me, I’m right next to you.” The scream faded away as she concentrated.

Beowulf’s cameras brought in a wraparound view, and her young mind couldn’t process it. She imagined closing one eye, and half of the view ports snapped shut. Now dealing with half the input, she began to calm down. She found Tesla’s familiar face and focused on it. He smiled, and the image comforted her.

“I see you, Nikola,” she said.

“Good. That’s very good,” he said. “Now, let’s—”

Behind him Madelaine’s body convulsed, the muscles clenching hard and lifting her chest off the table. She hung there, gasping silently, then collapsed. She exhaled one last time and went still. Her head rolled to one side.

Savannah brought a fist to her mouth and bit down hard, stifling a scream. She tasted the sharp tang of blood, but the pain was necessary.

The body’s motion caught Beowulf’s attention, and she shifted her focus from Tesla’s face to the familiar body behind him on the table. In a stunned flash of recognition, she saw herself die.

“Is that me?” she squealed, a sharp edge of juvenile panic in her voice. “Did I just die? Mommy!”

“Dammit,” yelled Tesla, grabbing a lab coat from the floor and throwing it over the girl’s body. “I’m sorry for that,” he said.

“I just died!” she screamed. “I’m dead, I’m dead!”

Edison strode toward Tesla, getting in his face. An accusatory finger jabbed at his face.

“What have you done?” bellowed Edison. He gestured to the covered body. “This is your fault. You want to play God? Well, now you’ve made an abomination!” he yelled, glancing at Beowulf.

Tesla felt his face grow hot, just as he did in Edison’s home months before. The same urge to strike out rose to the surface. His jaw tightened, and his teeth ground together.

“He’s right,” screamed Madelaine. “I’m a freak now. What am I? I should have died!”

Edison turned back to Tesla. “See? Even a little girl knows—”

Tesla’s clenched fist swung and smashed into Edison’s jaw. The crunch was audible, and his fist lit up in pain. Edison’s head rocked back, a look of total, pained surprise on his face. Then he fell back, falling over a chair and crashing to the floor. His vision swam for a moment before seeing Tesla standing over him, his fist still clenched.

“Call her that again,” Tesla hissed, “and I will beat you unconscious, so to spare us your foolishness.”

***

7,000 FEET ABOVE FORT HAMILTON, NY, USA

“We are at seven thousand feet, Captain,” said the helmsman.

She nodded acknowledgement. “Bomb bay ready?”

He checked his board. “Bomb bay light is green, Captain.”

As far as she knew, she was about to make history. The first radiological bomb dropped in anger. Not the entry in the history books she would have chosen, but in war how much really goes according to plan?

She lifted the phone. “Bomb bay, bridge. This is the captain. Release the weapon.”

She watched the board as the green light flickered off. The bomb was away, now falling beneath them.

While the ship was now 2,200 lbs lighter, Captain Montgomery felt a heaviness settle on her shoulders and knew she’d carry it the rest of her life.

“Take us up,” she ordered. “Get us over the clouds again.”

The airship dropped water ballast and rose up through the cloud layer, breaking through at 8,100 feet.

With the comforting blanket of cloud below them, the
Orion
turned northeast and sailed for Boston.

***

Edison sat alone, nursing both his bruised jaw and ego. When Tesla came near, Edison’s eyes tracked him hard, but the two men had nothing to say to each other yet.

It had been agreed that Beowulf was their best chance of escape. The upper floors were destroyed, and even the ladder was useless above level three.

George had organized the team in getting their supplies down the shaft and loaded into Beowulf. They had one box of emergency rations, but the gear mainly consisted of data records and handheld instruments. Still wrapped in a white lab coat, Madelaine’s corpse was gently brought aboard by Tesla and Sophia for a proper burial later.

Tesla had rigged a generator to power the tunnel doors, and they were ready to load Bertram inside the massive tank and make their way out of the destroyed facility.

With everyone else inside Beowulf, Tesla and George carefully lifted Bertram on a makeshift stretcher. They got him inside the tank, and Tesla paused on the ladder before joining the group inside Beowulf.

The lab was in disarray, but held strong recent memories. Running away didn’t sit well with him, but he understood a strategic retreat was sometimes required before a final victory.

Then, from the open elevator shaft came a tremendous roar. It sounded far away, but hideously powerful. The roar grew quickly, and a hot wall of air pushed against his face. The heat and the intensity were jumping up fast. Already, his forehead grew slick with beads of sweat.

“Another bomb!” shouted Savannah. “Get in here!”

He turned and scrambled up the ladder, hearing the approaching shock wave chasing after him. At the top of the ladder, he sprang forward, diving into Beowulf’s crew compartment. Savannah slammed the heavy steel hatch shut and punched the locking mechanism.

The nuclear shock wave hit full force then, originating from an air blast a quarter mile away, channeled down the shaft and ending in their lab. A tsunami of blistering air slammed against Beowulf’s side and shoved the huge tank, its woven steel treads grinding and screeching against the lab’s floor. The tank was slammed sideways twenty feet before hitting the lab wall and punching a dozen gouges into the concrete.

Within Beowulf, anyone not strapped into a crew chair was thrown violently against the left side of the compartment. George sailed through the air, then slammed against a bulkhead before falling to the floor plating, a deep gash already bleeding over his eye.

Tesla, Bertram, and Savannah slid crazily along the floor, bouncing off equipment crates. Two other workers were carelessly thrown against the fire control dashboard, and tumbled on top of each other.

Edison had just secured himself in a crash chair, and his head lurched from the movement, but stayed safe.

Sophia had thrown herself into a chair and held on tightly. She tried to ride out the crash, but she lost her grip and fell. She sailed out of the chair and struck the safety railing, doubling over on it, then slipping to the floor, the air knocked from her lungs.

Madelaine’s body had been knocked to the far side also. The lab coat had come loose, exposing her face and long blonde hair. Her head rolled with the motion, then settled, her eyes open and staring blankly toward Edison. Strapped into the crew chair, he squirmed under the morbid gaze until Sophia pulled herself closer to Madelaine’s body and recovered her, tucking the fabric under her shoulders. Edison made a mental note to thank her later.

The tank settled then, smashed against the lab wall. Outside, the pitch of the shock wave shifted and drew down. At the point of detonation, the expanding shock wave had created a vacuum, and air was now rushing back to fill it in. Within seconds it was over.

Tesla opened his eyes and saw the steel floor plating. He rolled over and cautiously sat up. Nothing felt broken.

Beside him, Savannah was doing the same, running her hand over her head. She found some blood, but not enough to be concerned about, given the circumstances.

Everyone was pulling themselves to their feet and helping one another. A young man who’d been tossed against the fire control dashboard wasn’t moving, and Tesla saw his neck was bent at a disturbing angle. He felt for a pulse, but found nothing. The man’s neck had been broken by the impact.

“He’s gone,” said Tesla. “Quickly, at least.” He looked around the crew chamber. George and Savannah were on their feet, and Edison was unlatching himself from the crew chair. George checked on Sophia, and Tesla smiled at the one researcher he hadn’t met before.

“I’m Nikola Tesla,” he said, extending his hand. The young man picked himself up and stepped forward. With his bright red hair and wholesome country smile, Tesla would have placed him as a farmer or maybe a small-town doctor.

“Of course I know who you are, Mr. Tesla,” he said, shaking Tesla’s hand. “Nicholas Terrine. I’m assigned to level four, helping Dr. Klein with the carbon-dioxide laser. But today I was on level six, assisting with the antigrav tests.”

“A pleasure,” Tesla said, then he turned to the group. “So assuming we can open the blast doors, where shall we go?”

“Another army base, preferably,” offered Edison. Tesla nodded agreement.

George raised his hand as if they were back in grade school, making Tesla grin. “And we need a building large enough for Beowulf. Of which there aren’t that many.”

Edison grunted. “I’m not sure that’s our priority. We need to report back and be debriefed on what’s happening.”

“We certainly do,” said Tesla. “But we may as well choose a destination that can support ongoing work, with our best chance to push the British off our shores.”

Edison’s sour smile communicated his low opinion of that statement.

“We should head for Hanscom,” said Savannah.

“The air force base?” asked Edison. “Why there? We could join the general in Providence instead. It would be closer.”

“We could, but the fight is moving to Boston, and he’ll probably be gone by the time we get to Providence. Hanscom is ten miles outside of Boston. It’s a natural staging point. I’d guess that’s where the army’s center of gravity is moving. Plus, they have several large hangars, all big enough for Beowulf.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Tesla agreed.

“So it’s your intention to put this device into the fight?” asked Edison.

Tesla was incredulous. “What do you think we’ve all been working toward?”

“Research is one thing, and maybe when we had the colonel’s experience to control this thing. But now…”

Savannah’s eyes bored into Edison’s skull, but then she softened and sighed. “He makes a valid point, Nikola. We don’t know how effective Beowulf is now. Our previous tests aren’t relevant anymore.”