Colony by Benjamin Cross (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

Callum was escorted down the hallway to another room. He was shown inside and the door was closed behind him. In the centre of the room were a series of desks pushed together to form a refectory-style dining table. Somebody was already seated opposite.

“Darya!”

When she looked up and saw him, a wide smile blossomed on her face and she jumped to her feet. He raced past the table and threw his arms around her. They kissed. He’d forgotten how beautiful she was.

“Are you okay?” He stroked his hand through her hair and let the dark strands trip from the tips of his fingers. “I didn’t know if they’d let me see you.”

“I am fine,” she said. “The doctors come to see me this morning. They think that I should have full movement again.”

He looked down at her cast supported in a sling. She wiggled her fingers.

“That’s wonderful,” he said, still holding her tight. “But where is here?”

She shook her head. “I do not know.”

The door reopened and a third person was escorted in.

“Ava!”

The Canadian looked even thinner than when they had first met on the Albanov, but the colour had at least returned to her cheeks. She burst into tears of joy as she rounded the table towards them, and the three survivors hugged each other.

They seated themselves at the table and began discussing where they thought they were, what they thought might lie ahead. None of them knew anything for certain, but Darya suggested that they were likely to be somewhere near Moscow.

Moments later, they were served with plates of hot food.

“What happens now?” Callum asked.

“Now I think we must explain.”

Ava looked worried. “Do you think they’ll let us go then?”

“This I do not know. I hope, in the end. But I think that we will be here for a long time.”

“I think you’re probably right,” Callum said.

“What do we tell them?” Ava asked.

“The truth,” Darya replied forcefully. “Anything else and they will know.”

“But they’ll never believe us,” Ava said, “about the creatures… or anything. Somebody’s even been through my stuff. They’ve taken anything I could’ve used as evidence.”

“Same here,” Callum said.

“Me too.”

They shared a look.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Callum said at last. “Darya’s right. There’s no point trying to hide anything. We tell them what they want to know as many times as they want to know it and hopefully we’ll get to go home. Besides,” he threw a suspicious glance around the room, searching for the cameras that he knew must be there, “something tells me they’ll be a lot more interested in Peterson.”

4

That same afternoon, the interrogations began. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defence, and the Federal Security Service, not to mention representatives of the G&S Corporation, all took turns examining and cross-examining the survivors individually, probing into their accounts in excruciating detail.

The interviews were draining and repetitive, each conducted by a single po-faced interrogator and, where necessary, an interpreter. After only a few days, Callum had repeated the same story so many times that he’d begun to question it himself.

His description of the Troodon colony raised eyebrows, as did his mention of Ngana’bta. But, as he’d suspected, the main focus of interest had been Dan Peterson, Volkov and the data stick.

“So Mr Peterson alleges that Mr Volkov set him up?” the interpreter said for the hundredth time.

Callum dropped his head into his hands and kneaded his temples. “Again, I can only tell you what Mr… what Dan Peterson told me just before we escaped from the island.”

“Please.”

“He said that Mr Volkov had contacted him under the codename Finback and tasked him with destroying the Albanov, which he did using high explosive.”

“And why would Mr Volkov do this?”

“I don’t know,” Callum replied. “But the way Peterson told it, it was just plain greed. The environmental impact assessment for such a massive project was due to be long and costly, pushing back the construction date by several years and costing a small fortune. And that’s without the cost of any subsequent mitigation measures.”

“And?”

“And so Volkov figured that if he could engineer and then expose an American terror attack at Harmsworth, he could legitimately renounce the Arctic Council requirement for a foreign-led EIA. He could then expel myself and the rest of the team and replace us with one of his choosing.”

“So then there would still be team at Harmsworth.”

“Yes, but this one would be in Volkov’s pocket,” Callum continued. “They’d do the job in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost, saving him millions. Peterson mentioned something about twenty billion rubles minimum.”

The interviewer and interpreter exchanged glances.

“Like I said before, because of the weight of evidence that Volkov could produce on Peterson, he could do all of this with the sympathy and full understanding of the international community, instead of their condemnation. The man was a monster. He tried to kill us, all of us. He didn’t care about the damage he would do to international relations in the Arctic, or to the Arctic itself. He just wanted to make a saving.”

“And what about Stuxnet?”

Callum sighed. “When Peterson was on board the Albanov he uploaded the virus from a simple data stick. Seems he did it without Volkov knowing.”

“And tell us again what is happening to this data stick.”

“He entrusted it to Doctor Lee before destroying the Albanov. It was a precaution, so that it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Anyway, Ava didn’t know anything about it and neither did myself or Doctor Lebedev. He just hid it in her survival tin. When Volkov shot Peterson and left him for dead, he came after us next. He must’ve worked out that one of us would have the stick.”

“And where is it now?”

“As I told you before, I’ve no idea. Last I saw of it, Volkov put it in his pocket. The last I saw of Volkov, he was fleeing into a tunnel beneath the southern end of the