CHAPTER 2. ZERO KILOMETER (Part 1)

  Consciousness returned in jerks, as if someone were trying to start an old engine in the cold. First came the sound—a ringing in the ears, thin and nasty like a mosquito's whine. Then came the sensation of his own body. It hurt. Everything hurt: the ribs he had slammed against the console, his neck stiff from an unnatural posture, and his head, which felt filled with lead.

  Dmitry opened his eyes. Darkness. Absolute, thick darkness one never encounters in a city. No reflection of streetlights, no flicker of dashboard indicators. Even the emergency diodes, which should burn red during any failure, were dead.

  Dmitry lay on the floor, curled up by the server rack. His cheek was pressed against the teak parquet. And the parquet was icy.

  This thought broke through the fog of pain first. *Cold.* The last thing he remembered was the scorching African desert, +44°C outside. Even if the AC died, a machine heated by the sun should take hours to cool, turning into an oven. But now, a cloud of steam escaped his mouth. He felt it on his skin. It was no more than five degrees above zero in the cabin.

  “Hey...” he rasped. His voice sounded hollow, as if into cotton wool. “Light.”

  Silence.

  “Ark, report!” he barked louder, trying to inject authority into his voice.

  Silence. No hum of servos, no whisper of ventilation. The *Ark* was dead.

  Dmitry tried to move and froze instantly, paralyzed by horror. *Legs.* He lay in an awkward position, and his legs were numb. In the dark, in the cold, that phantom fear from eight years ago engulfed him completely. *Is it happening again? Did the connection break?* He convulsively, painfully dug his fingers into his right thigh through the fabric of his tactical pants. A pinch. Pain. Sharp, living pain. Dmitry exhaled, and the breath sounded like a sob.

  “Working... Thank God, they're working.”

  He rolled onto his back and sat up, rubbing his face with his palms. He needed to calm down. Panic was death. He was an engineer. He had a problem, and it needed solving.

  Dmitry fumbled at his belt. The Fenix tactical flashlight was in place, in its holster. The click of the button sounded like a gunshot in the silence. A narrow, powerful beam of light sliced through the darkness.

  The beam revealed devastation. The pilot's chair was turned sideways. The coffee cup lay in the corner; a dark stain from spilled liquid marked the wall. The tablet lay on the floor, screen down. But the server rack looked the worst. Dmitry shone the light on it. The emergency reset lever, the very switch he had pulled in panic, was down.

  “Good job, idiot,” he muttered. “You killed your own machine.”

  He had pulled the "Kill Switch"—a mechanical circuit breaker. He had physically cut the batteries from the onboard network to save the electronics from a voltage spike or whatever madness was happening with the instruments. It worked. But now the *Ark* was just a hunk of iron.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Dmitry, groaning and holding his lower back, got to his feet. He swayed. He approached the main power distribution panel.

  “Okay... Easy. We’ll just return the lever, close the circuit, and the UPS will pick it up.”

  He grabbed the cold metal of the switch and forced it back to the "ON" position. A dry click echoed. Dmitry froze, expecting the familiar beep of system boot, blinking lights, the hum of inverters. Nothing. Darkness remained darkness.

  “What the...?”

  He shone the light on the analog backup panel voltmeters. The needles lay at zero.

  “Batteries...” he whispered, feeling a chill run down his spine. “Zero? How?”

  The main bank of lithium-iron-phosphate batteries, 800 amp-hours, couldn't discharge instantly. Even with total generator failure, they should have lasted for two days of life support. But the needles didn't lie. There was no energy. None at all. As if something had sucked every last electron dry at the moment of transition. Or had he been out cold for a week?

  “No, not a week,” he told himself. “I’d be dead of thirst. Or frozen to death.” He shone the light on the mechanical watch on his wrist. Self-winding. It was ticking. So, not much time had passed.

  Dmitry walked to the solar panel control console. The system was dead; actuators didn't work. But he could look out the window. He aimed the flashlight beam at the cabin's armored glass. The beam hit the glass and scattered. Outside, it was gray.

  “Is it day?”

  Dmitry stepped right up to the glass, shielding the flashlight with his hand to prevent glare. Outside, it was gray. Not night, but not a clear day either. Thick, dense twilight. Overcast. The sky was choked with leaden clouds, low and heavy. Solar panels? Useless. Even if he deployed them manually (which meant climbing onto the roof with a wrench), in this weather they'd yield maybe 5% power. Enough to charge a phone, not start a 26-ton monster.

  “Great,” Dmitry stated. “Batteries dry. No sun.”

  One option remained. The heart of the *Ark*. In the aft compartment, inside a soundproof casing, stood a Cummins diesel generator. Reliable as a sledgehammer. It should have started automatically when voltage dropped, but the automation was dead. That meant manual start.

  Dmitry shivered. The cold cut to the bone. He wore only a t-shirt and light pants—clothes for the African climate.

  “Alright. Recon first, then startup. Need to figure out where I am. Why is it so cold? Where's the sand?”

  Dmitry aimed the flashlight beam down through the side glazing, trying to see the ground. What he saw made him forget the cold.

  There was no stone. There was no sand. There was water.

  Dirty, black, stagnant water, from which protruded gnarled, dead tree trunks covered in moss. And the *Ark* was sitting in this sludge deep. Very deep.

  “Swamp?” Dmitry whispered, disbelieving his eyes. “Where the hell is a swamp in the Sahara?!”

  He rushed to the airlock door. The pneumatic drive, naturally, didn't work.

  “Mechanics, Dima. Remember mechanics.”

  He found the emergency door release lever under a plastic panel. Leaned on it with all his weight. The unlubricated, stiff mechanism yielded with difficulty. The heavy armored door slid aside, opening the way.

  A smell hit him in the face. Not scorching desert air. Not dust. The smell of rot. Musty water, decaying algae, and wet wood. And silence. Dead, ringing silence, the kind only heard in a place where no one lives.

  Dmitry stood in the open doorway, illuminating this new, alien world with his flashlight. Around him, as far as the beam reached, stretched the bog. Gray, dreary, endless. Hummocks overgrown with withered grass. Black windows of water. Twisted trees looking like the hands of drowned men. And his *Ark*, a thirty-million-dollar technological marvel, sat belly-deep in this quagmire, listing to port. The wheels, a meter and a half in diameter, were sunk in mud up to the hubs.

  “Well, hello, deep shit,” Dmitry said. “Long time no see.”

  ?? SYSTEM ALERT: SUPPLY DROP

  Chapter 2 is ALREADY FINISHED and fully uploaded!

  10,000+ words (8 episodes) ahead of the public release right now!

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