Blast Protocol

Chapter 6

RAZOR

Razor stands out on the hangar deck of the ship, arms folded. The vessel hovers in a sort of stasis, several hundred feet above the ground. Stretching out ahead is a vast, sweeping dunescape. Rolling hills and plains of sand, pocked with a few high, flat plateaus of dusty rock.

According to the archives, this used to be a lush, green place, with a mild climate. Well above the equator—by thousands of miles—and only a few hundred miles east of the Pacific.

Razor brings up an Augmented Reality program inside his OS. His vision flickers. Now, instead of a reddish-brown desert, he sees fields of tall, thick, green grass, rippling in the breeze, flowing like waves on an emerald sea. The sun is still low, angling down, and the shadows of fluttering grass stream across the hills in repetitive, undulating patterns. Towering pine trees make an appearance here and there, with a sizable copse of them to the east, next to another larger cluster, merging into an impenetrable wood.

The AR program functions as a simulation based on climate data, but it also pulls from old satellite imaging as well. This is a rural area, with some farmhouses and cabins and such. To the north, some fields of crops, with combines—large, rumbling, mechanical harvesters—trundling across them, one end to the other. To the distant south, the alpine stretches of some buildings can be seen, reaching up toward the sky. Buildings that are all mostly gone now, ravaged and skeletal remains steadily picked clean by the wind and sand. It's as if the dunes themselves are slowly flowing upward, enveloping them, swallowing them up.

Not that it matters. It's all a bygone era, now. So removed by time and circumstance that it may as well be a fairy tale at this point. As relevant to everyday operations as findings of a far off galaxy, or microbial biology.

The use of the AR tech in this case, for Razor, is in the readings the program provides. They stream across the lower part of his vision, endless cycles of numbers and code. He keeps a tab, recording parts of interest for later reference.

A notification beeps, and a log window pops up, interfering with the program. Some seismic activity picked up by the ship's sensors.

Sighing, Razor accepts the ship's request to show him a video recording, taken mere seconds ago by one of the cameras. The feed shows a blast of sand spewing upward somewhere out there in the desert, followed by a thin stream of smoke at the same location.

This isn't right. There shouldn't be activity this close to the surface. At the surface.

But what does it matter? The safeguards are in place. The good little soldiers have been dispatched. If he has to, Razor will send more. It's as simple as that. It is not yet time to 'up the ante', as the humans used to say.

Still. It is troublesome. Every moment spent dealing with this is a distraction from his research.

Razor strolls the width of the hangar and ducks through the open doorway. He navigates a winding corridor, coming to a stop in front of a door marked 'Greenery'. The door slides open automatically, activated by proximity sensors, then shuts behind him.

The air is different in here. Climate-controlled. Tiny misters spew condensation at precise intervals, fine droplets which help to adjust the humidity, sparkling under the glow of the UV lights. Fans blow in the vents, cycling the air and generating artificial wind.

'Greenhouse' is the word the humans would have used for this. To Razor, it is a conservation effort. An attempt to peer back into the world that used to be. And perhaps, with time, restore some of it. But those last are thoughts he is especially sure to keep to himself.

The Greenery is split into multiple sections, cordoned off from each other, each with their own climate specifications. There are all kinds of flora here, from all over the continent, from shrubs, to berry bushes, to cacti, and even a few smaller trees. Though Razor keeps dozens of saplings, eventually he will have to throw most—if not all of them—out and start over. The same is true of the full-fledged trees themselves, once they grow too large. He has yet to find a suitable place to permanently transplant them; on this continent, anyway.