Terminal White. James Axler
with three designated breaks—I am assigned ville cleaning duties with another citizen, named Citizen 058F—a woman like me.
Our duties involve checking the factories and walkways of Epsilon Level, cleaning and sterilizing all walls and floors, checking and sterilizing the stairwells and elevators in the west tower, checking and sterilizing the linking walkways between west and north towers, cleaning and maintaining fire safety equipment, collecting and labeling any debris larger than a fingernail so that it may be retained and analyzed, and assisting in the cleaning of all personnel exiting manufactory 8.
Once our circuit is completed, another team takes our place to begin cleaning again while we are designated as off-shift. At this stage, we are stripped and sent through the personnel cleaning facility at factory 8 to ensure that we have not picked up any rogue dirt or dangerous debris. Once we are clean, we are expected to return to our residences. Citizen 058F resides in a block close to my own, and so we travel together via trolleybus. We do not discuss where she works during the day, preferring to sit in composed silence as the bus makes its circuit of the ville. She gets off one stop before me.
—From the journal of Citizen 619F.
At dawn the next morning, two sleek bronze-hued aircraft cut across the skies over the former province of Alberta in the western part of Canada. The craft were known as Mantas, aircraft designed in ancient prehistory by an alien race and capable of phenomenal acceleration and other feats, including subspace travel. They had emerged from a hidden hangar in the Cerberus redoubt at a little before dawn, launching one after another and veering northward in perfect formation.
Identical in appearance, the Mantas were constructed from a bronze-hued metal whose liquid sheen glimmered in the early-morning sunlight. Their graceful designs consisted of flattened wedges with swooping wings curving out to either side of the body in mimicry of the seagoing manta, and it was this similarity that had spawned their popularised name of Manta Craft. Each Manta’s wingspan was twenty yards and their body length was almost fifteen, but it was the beauty of their design that was breathtaking, an effortless combination of every principle of aerodynamics wrapped up in a gleaming, burned-gold finish. The entire surface of each craft was decorated with curious geometric designs; elaborate cuneiform markings, swirling glyphs and cup-and-spiral symbols. Each vehicle featured an elongated hump in the center of the body which provided the only indication of a cockpit.
Inside those cockpits sat three individuals. Piloting each craft were Kane and Grant, dressed in their shadow suits, their heads hidden behind the almost-spherical, bulb-like helmets that were built into the pilot seats of each vehicle. The interior was small and simple, with very few displays showing other than a few indicator lights. Rather, the dashboards existed in virtual space, projected onto the pilot’s retina using the heads-up technology of the weird-looking helmets.
The third occupant of the Mantas was Brigid Baptiste, sitting in the backseat of Kane’s vehicle, where she was using a portable tablet computer to analyze the local weather patterns and generally familiarize herself with the local climate and terrain. It wasn’t necessary, of course—she had already gone through all of the material the night before and her eidetic memory ensured she would not forget so much as a single detail. And yet, nervousness or perhaps that human instinct that one might have missed something made Brigid check the material again while running through scenarios in her head.
“You okay back there, Baptiste?” Kane asked, raising his voice slightly over the low hum of the Manta’s engine. The Manta utilised two different types of engines, depending on the specific flying that was required of it. One was a ramjet while the other was a solid fuel pulse detonation, which was useful for work outside the planet’s atmosphere. Neither was especially noisy, however, and Kane raised his voice more out of habit and the weird feeling of his skull being encased and muffled by the helmet rather than any real need. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
“Just thinking,” Brigid said as the Manta cut through the cold air high over Mount Robson in the Canadian Rockies.
“What do you think we’re going to find?” Kane asked, making conversation. “Another baron?”
“I don’t like to speculate,” Brigid said.
“Go on, speculating’s fun,” Kane encouraged.
“I hope we find nothing,” Brigid said. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Yeah, that’s the adventurous spirit we’ve all come to admire in you, Baptiste,” Kane teased.
The two Mantas sped on, cutting through the cold air like knives through cloth.
* * *
THE SNOWSTORM LOOMED up ahead like an angry ghost. Dark clouds haunted the sky, thick as smoke from a fire, a thick sheet of white snow descending from them coupled with spits of razor-sharp ice. It was almost like a curtain draped across the landscape, a thick line that no one in their right mind would try to cross.
Leading to that ominous curtain was the desolate wilderness of Canada, ravines and sweeping plains, streaks of thick forest that thinned out as they approached the static storm. Down there, occasional animals could be seen flitting among the trees, birds taking wing.
Kane and Grant brought their sleek Manta aircraft toward the snow curtain on a low approach, observing the landscape carefully, searching for signs of life. Other than the occasional wolf or raccoon there was nothing but trees and scrub dappled with icy snow.
The Mantas could travel in subspace and under the sea, so neither pilot had any fear of entering the snowstorm. Their only concern was the lack of visibility it ensured, leaving them entirely reliant on their crafts’ formidable scanning capabilities.
Grant’s voice patched over their linked Commtacts. “Nothing happening so far,” he stated. “Looks clear.”
Watching his heads-up displays, Kane nodded. “Displays are clear,” he confirmed.
And yet there was something eerily uncanny about the storm, seen from high up and this far out. It really was like a curtain, a thick line delineating one part of the terrain from another. If what Cerberus had discovered was true—that this spot had been encased in this storm for years—then it was anyone’s guess what they might find within.
Kane sent more power to his engines, accelerating toward the thick white curtain of snow. A moment later the two bronze aircraft had disappeared within.
* * *
IT WAS MOMENTARILY STRANGE. Moving from light and normality into a world the only description of which was one word: white.
Snow fell, thick lines of it fluttering diagonally across the Mantas’ windshields, painting everything the same shade of white. People wear black at funerals, thought Brigid, but white is more somber, more chilling. When seen like this, a great expanse of nothing but white and cold, that is the picture of death, the way it overwhelms and demolishes and rewrites.
The Mantas hurtled on, crossing the vast expanse of land hidden by the blizzard, their sensor displays showing the flat terrain stretching out before them.
“There’s nothing here,” Kane muttered, triggering his Commtact automatically.
“Nothing on my side, either,” Grant confirmed. “Just snow.”
The Mantas hurtled onward, crossing the dull white landscape, ice thrown against their wings and bodies. Below, the land seemed unchanging. Whatever it had once been was hidden beneath the blanket of masking white.
“Kane,” Grant radioed, “I’m picking up a heat signature on our ten.”
Kane had seen the same heat signature appear on his own heads-up display even as Grant began to speak. “I see it,” he confirmed. “You want to give it a closer look?”
“You know I do,” Grant replied.
“Yeah, anything to break the