Golem 7 (Meridian Series) Read online

  “I make it 98.37% integrity—and that’s from the Arion system, mind you. Good enough for you?”

  Kelly raised his eyebrows, impressed. Golem 7 had apparently been vindicated. “Alright, those are good numbers but—“

  “But what, man? Let’s get started! As soon as you activate the Arch, Paul and Maeve will get the call on their cell phones and rush over here. So turn things on!”

  “Well, hell, Robert, we’ve got any number of things to consider here—fuel being the main issue. PG&E was in here yesterday reading me the riot act. They’re going to deliver our next electric bill parcel post! Said we have to restrict operations to post peak hours or they’ll have to take us off the grid permanently.”

  “Oh, they’ll get their damn money, tell them not to worry. Look here… We can spin up on internal generators, right? Then let’s get on that now so we can establish a Nexus Point here. We’ll want to get the call out to Paul and Maeve right away.”

  “Well it’s not just the money,” said Kelly. “It’s the fuel situation. Paul was able to get all three generators filled, but he wanted to see about arranging a reserve supply.”

  “He’s filled the generator tanks? Good man! That should be plenty to get us started. Then we can go back on PG&E power after six tonight, and hopefully the power will remain stable enough for us to run a mission.”

  Robert waited, ready to overcome any further objection and watching Kelly’s closely. “I’ve got him, Kelly,” he said in a low voice. “Got him by the scruff of his neck. I know who he is and why he was born. And I know how he pulled it all off as well. I’ve got a paper trail on the bastard, even though he was trying mightily to keep a low profile, and I’ve even got him on surveillance cameras. Then I ran his whole genealogy, so I’ve got good numbers for Outcomes and Consequence to boot. Maeve won’t be a problem when she looks at the data, I can assure you of that much. Now…we can either sit here quibbling or we can do something about this situation out there.” He pointed at one of the walls where the world beyond the safe inner sanctum of the Arch complex was slowly spinning off its kilter and winding down into chaos.

  The world after the tsunami generated by Palma’s eruption and collapse was now a wild and dangerous place. Even here in the Bay Area things were rapidly getting out of hand, though the West coast had managed some level of normalcy, being farthest removed from the disaster zones in the East. Now, a week after the tsunami struck, people were finally over the initial shock and had shifted into a low level panic mode. Markets were being stripped bare of food and the supply chain was working overtime to try and restock shelves. Crime was on the rise, and it was no longer safe after dark, even in relatively quiet neighborhoods. The professor had to brandish his umbrella to fend off a man on the way over to the Arch complex that very afternoon. Street beggars had become uncommonly aggressive.

  Their last mission had managed to prevent a fate ten thousand times worse than all this when they intervened successfully to assure a victory in the pivotal Battle of Tours. Each member of the team had played a key role in achieving that outcome on a complex three part mission to the early eighth century. In doing so they had received some much needed help from their associates in the future. The Order had used some novel methods to overcome the challenge and obstacle of the Palma Shadow, now a near impenetrable barrier to Time shifts from their distant point on the Meridian.

  With the catastrophic effects of defeat at Tours forestalled, the project team closed ranks around their friend Kelly Ramer as the Arch spun down, its fuel depleted, and they feared that his life would again be forfeit in the world they would be left with. They had no time or resources to try and affect the outcome of Palma that night. Kelly would live or die, as fate judged him in that last hour when he reached for the power switch and turned off the Arch.

  He lived because it was not Ra’id Husan Al Din this time around, the nefarious terrorist that had been eliminated from the Meridian by the first mission they ran. Another man had risen to take his place. The Assassin cult of the future had run yet another operation in their grand scheme, reversing both Palma and the Frankish victory at Tours in one throw. Their effort at Tours had been parried, but Palma remained in place and, as each day passed, its shadow on the Meridian intensified. This time it was someone else behind the eruption that had sent a mountain of ocean water hurtling at the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. And here was Nordhausen, his pencil still tapping nervously on a stack of notebooks, a Blue-Ray disk in hand, and a determined look on his face as he waited for Kelly to act.

  “Well?” said the professor. “Do something!”

  Kelly sighed. “Alright, alright. I made the call to shut down the last operation, and my life was on the line then. So I guess I can fire this baby up again if you insist. I don’t like operating on the advice of just one Golem Bank, but it was number seven, and well… I’ve developed a fondness for those little buggers. I’ll move into startup mode, but when Paul and Maeve get here you’ll have to answer for it if this doesn’t pan out, my friend.”

  “Don’t worry about them,” said Robert. “Once they look at the data I’ve uncovered they’ll agree it was the only thing to be done. Get it all on-line, Kelly. We’ll be protected in a Nexus and they’ll be here in no time.

  “Give me a second…” Kelly was already flipping switches, putting the number one internal power system on-line and setting up a backup generator as well. “I’ll get the Arch up in ten minutes, but as soon as the number one generator comes up to speed I’ll have to take us off the outside power grid or we’ll have cops here with a warrant in no time.”

  “They threatened you with that?”

  “Damn right. The silly PG&E rep was adamant. We get no more than basic kilowatt cycles here until post-peak hours or they are going to have the whole place shut down. Power is a big issue all over the state now. And we’re starting to get a huge migration of people from the east coast, as California is one of the few places left in the country with some civil order. So resources are really going to be stretched thin.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Nordhausen. “None of that will matter soon enough. Just turn everything on.”

  “Well, what in God’s name are we going to do? I don’t want to sit here wasting precious fuel like this.”

  The Professor smiled. “You just get us safely into a Nexus Point here and I’ll tell you all about it, my friend. I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Chapter 2

  Mers-e-Kebir Harbor, Oran – July 3, 1940

  It was a hot July evening in 1940 at the port of Mers-el Kebir, just north up the gently curving coast from the great city of Oran, Algeria. The sun was falling slowly towards the horizon, and the quality of light was deepening to a rich gold, painting the sharp angles and squared turrets of the main French battle fleet which rode at anchor here, one of several naval flotillas scattered about the Mediterranean after France had capitulated and finally signed an armistice with Germany the previous month. Admiral Gensoul sat fitfully in his ward room, his discomfiture increasing hour by hour throughout that long afternoon. For even though hostilities with Germany had officially ended, the threat of war was still close at hand, only this time from their former friend and ally!

  Even now British battleships were waiting just offshore, intent on forcing one of several possible outcomes they might deem favorable concerning the disposition of Gensoul’s powerful battle fleet. He had two fast battlecruisers here with him, the Dunquerque, where he kept his flag, and the Strausbourg, both sleek and powerful ships that had been explicitly built to hunt down and kill ships like the troublesome Deutschland class “pocket battleships” Graff Spee and Admiral Sheer of the German navy. And with them were two older ships, the battleships Bretagne and Provence, relics from the first war, with keels dating back to 1912.

  The four big ships were moored side by side at the northernmost segment of the harbor, their bows pointed landward, an oversight that would soon prove most uncomfortable for the ad
miral. It meant that all the guns on his battlecruisers, being forward mounted, were pointing away from the sea, and half the guns on his battleships were equally disposed landward. Directly opposite them, closer to the shore, were a line of cruisers and smaller destroyers that comprised the remainder of his battle fleet. The sailors were restless in the muggy heat of the day, nervously manning their stations as the hours crept by.

  A proud and experienced admiral, Gensoul had bristled when the British dispatched a mere captain to conclude negotiations, and he refused to see the man. Cedric Holland came in on the destroyer Foxhound and anchored a mile from the outer quay. He had been sent because he was fluent in French, not to snub or diminish the French Admiral. But pride goeth before the fall, and Gensoul was much irked by these developments. He ordered the man to return to his ship and leave the harbor, but the upstart British captain boarded a whale boat and rowed forcefully for the French Admiral’s flagship, the Dunquerque. There he waited, pleading to see the Admiral and hoping to convince him to negotiate and reach an honorable decision.

  Instead Gensoul ordered a staff officer, Lieutenant Dufay, to take the British captain a message stating that his ships would not be surrendered and that any attempt at forcing the issue would be met with equal force. It was bad enough that his nation had been swiftly defeated by the German blitzkrieg, and now the humiliation of being ordered about by former allies was salt in the still bleeding wounds. The British were here for one reason, he knew. They wanted his ships! Their ultimatum had proposed several alternatives that each seemed fair enough on the surface. Either sail with the British in open alliance, or sail with them to a neutral port to be demilitarized. A third option was to simply scuttle his ships where they sat, removing them as a threat to British interests. Gensoul would have nothing to do with any of these propositions, and he said as much. His loyalty was to his nation, defeated as she was, and it was his to command and preserve the French navy here if he could.

  Even as he waited, Gensoul learned that the British had already begun operations to seize French ships in their own waters, those which had fled to England after the disastrous yet miraculous British retreat at Dunquerque. And he also had a secret cable informing him that reinforcements for his battle fleet were getting up steam at other North African ports and preparing to join with him. Perhaps the British were aware of this threat, he thought, but it would make no difference. No reinforcement could reach him in time. The two sides, allies just weeks ago, now seemed implacable enemies, neither one willing to stand down in the confrontation that was looming as the sun fell on that fateful day. Gensoul was playing for time, and waiting for darkness to carry the negotiations over to another day. He was hoping the British would not make good on their threats, but in so doing he was betting against the wrong man.

  Out beyond the far quays of the harbor, the British Admiral Somerville was holding station just offshore with a fleet of powerful ships in Force H. He had been sent to this place by direct order of the Prime Minister, and he too was impatiently waiting the outcome of negotiations aimed at neutralizing the French fleet and thus preventing its use by either Germany or Italy. By mid day, when it seemed the French were digging in and refusing to negotiate, Somerville ordered five Swordfish planes off the carrier Ark Royal to begin laying magnetic mines at the harbor entrance to deter the French from trying to make steam and leave. An experienced seaman, he could detect signs that they were firing up their boilers and making preparations to get underway, and he knew what he would soon be forced to do about it.

  For Somerville, the assignment was most unwelcome, and it was one he had opposed in direct argument when it was first proposed. “Operation Catapult,” as it was named, seemed a distasteful and risky proposition to him. It would surely enflame the occupied French and curtail their much needed cooperation, particularly if he was forced to actually carry out the order before him now. The other side, led by the stalwart Winston Churchill, had prevailed. What if the French were allowed to retain their fleet and at some future time the Germans threatened to burn Paris unless they surrendered those ships to the Axis? It was purely hypothetical, Somerville knew, and he said as much, arguing that neither Germany nor Italy could produce enough trained sailors to even crew a third of the French fleet! But his arguments, and those of Admiral Cunningham as well, were not enough.

  He read the last cable with great misgivings: “You are charged with one of the most disagreeable and difficult tasks that a British Admiral has ever been faced with, but we have complete confidence in you and rely on you to carry it out relentlessly.”

  The Admiralty wanted him to settle the matter quickly, yet Somerville had a feeling of profound disquiet in his gut as he read the page. It was more than the stain of honor that would come from firing on a former ally, and more than the disheartening loss of his strongly held argument on the matter. He had the strangest feeling that his next actions would conjure up some great doom that would cascade through the ages, yet he could not see what it was. The feeling of presentiment hung like a shroud over his thoughts, and it was with great reluctance that he sent his final ultimatum to the French Admiral Gensoul: “Comply or I will be forced to sink your ships.”

  Captain Holland was back on the destroyer Foxhound in short order, his eyes wet with tears as he made one final salute to the French flag. Two old allies, long comrades in arms against their mutual German enemy, were about to fire on one another.

  At 5:45 pm that evening, Somerville gave the order to commence hostilities. He had three big ships with him, HMS Hood, the pride of the fleet, and two other battleships, the Resolution and Valiant. Together they turned and presented a combined broadside of twenty four 15 inch guns. Only eight French 12 inch guns could easily return fire, as their big ships were pointed the wrong way. Shore batteries would join in the action, but it would not be enough to seriously threaten the powerful British battle fleet. Ironically, when his flagship Hood opened fire, it was to be the very first time her guns had fired in anger.

  Somerville watched from the bridge, a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach as he soon saw the French ships struck by fire and steel. The smell of the cordite was bitter in his mouth when he witnessed the old battleship Bretagne capsize and sink. Dunquerque strained against her moorings until they snapped, but she had already taken hits to damage her forward guns. Only the fast battlecruiser Strasbourg was able to make steam and navigate swiftly out of the harbor mouth, carefully avoiding the mines there. She fled with a gaggle of French destroyers, making it safely to Toulon when Somerville declined to chase her.

  Something had happened on that muggy July evening that he could not quite comprehend, yet Somerville, and others who took part in the action, would carry the odd feeling in the back of their heads for years thereafter. Something snapped just now, he thought. He could feel it, sense it, yet he could not see what it was. The words of Tennyson’s Locksley hall echoed in his mind as the action concluded: “Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.”

  The admiral himself considered resignation, certain he would suffer consequences for failing to pursue the Strasbourg. And afterwards, every ship that took part in the battle seemed beset with a bad luck that came to be called “the curse of Mers-el-Kebir.”

  The French would have their revenge on battleship Resolution when the submarine Bevezier torpedoed her off Dakar later that year. Battleship Valiant would be struck by two bombs in May of 1941 off Crete, and then suffer further damage when she was mined and torpedoed by the Italians some months later. And the very next time the mighty Hood would fire her guns in anger, the pride of the fleet would see a cataclysmic end on the surging grey swells of the cold Atlantic. Oddly, another man named Holland would command her at that time, unrelated to the French speaking officer that had come in on Foxhound to try and prevent, quite unknowingly, a disaster that no man of that generation could ever imagine or foresee.

  Paul sped up Hearst Avenue to Cyclotron Road, accelerating up th
e hill until he reached the hairpin turn at the lower visitor parking area. He cornered sharply around the turn, and continued up the hill to the squat blue security booth, stopping briefly to flash his facility ID. The guard recognized his white Honda and waved him through with a smile. He checked his rear view mirror as he entered, but there was no sign of the vehicle that had been following him, so he bore right onto Chu Road at the fork ahead, and within minutes he had keyed his security code and was through the last facility gate, taking the driveway down to the underground garage beneath the Arch Complex.

  The Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories were just beyond the campus, up a winding way called Cyclotron Road. Born on the Berkeley campus, the facilities had grown considerably over the years, and eventually moved to the rolling green hills that overlooked the university. A host of scientific disciplines were rooted in the lab, which was a major center of research and a place where some of the most profound questions imaginable were asked, and sometimes answered, with the secret arts of Quantum Science. Things that were once thought to be impossible, even unimaginable, suddenly became odd realities. Travel in Time, long debated by physicists, was one of those unimaginable things.

  The project team held forth on the old site of the venerable Bevatron complex. Built in 1953, it was once one of the world’s leading particle accelerators but was deemed seismically unsafe and completed demolition in October of 2011. As no other facility was immediately scheduled for construction there, Paul and his project team members had formed a joint private company to purchase the site and build their independent Physics Center.

  The public knew it as a basic physics research lab, with a primary focus on magnetic resonance and quantum theory. A segment of the facility served those general scientific studies, with a small lecture center, a section of labs for graduate student research, extensive computer facilities and a library. But the hidden heart of the complex was deep underground, where Paul had guided the slow development of the Arch Matrix for experiments that had remained confidential and closely guarded secrets. At any given time the lab could be used for general experiments in quantum physics, and conveniently passed inspection every year in spite of the fact that its real hidden purpose dappled in the nascent art of singularity generation studies, the scientific effort to create a tiny quantum singularity. This would be called a “Black Hole” in layman’s terms, though the principles involved were much different from the massive natural phenomenon astrologers had seen in distant space.