Omega

Within seconds one of the flanking screens showed a flurry of movement as the Omaha installation vanished beneath a watery turmoil in whose explosive turbulence were fleeting glimpses of what must have been capital ships—great vessels of tens of thousands of tonnes, hoisted and upended, thrust through netherspace, voided onto one of the nerve centres of the American military in the heartland of their territory.

There was no sound. This made it only more awesome, something that transcended nature itself. But it was easy, and indeed essential, to imagine it: an oceanic thundering, accompanied by a cacophony of crashing, mangled metal. Easy to be transported into grandiose realms of patriotic imagery, to envisage the storm god Thor repeatedly striking his enemies with a celestial hammer, relentless and irresistible. These were Owain’s sentiments, I thought fleetingly; not mine. But I couldn’t escape his sense of awful thrill: I felt it myself. Didn’t all of us who were drawn to military exploits secretly yearn for it in the most shadowy and tremulous chambers of the heart? The pain-free catharsis of an apocalypse?

No one moved or spoke. The Omaha maelstrom slowly began to abate, leaving a strewn mass of naval wreckage that sloughed off torrents of water. I could imagine it gushing down ventilation shafts and escape hatches, inundating everyone below.

It was hard to know where to look, and whether to keep looking. On the central screen the white crest had begun to resolve itself into a pair of tsunamis already racing away from one another, swamping the hapless ships that had escaped the earlier swallowing. If the excision had gone deep enough to take a section out of the ocean bed, surely other waves would follow in their wake as the crust readjusted. Or would the sea in the vicinity boil as magma welled out?

Only the screen showing the teardrop coastal emplacements remained unchanged, looking exquisitely tranquil in comparison. It dawned on me that they had indeed been purpose-built to withstand a sea-borne invasion, not of men and arms but rather of the great waves that my uncle and other senior commanders knew would be thrown up by the use of Omega on the ocean.

How much longer did they have, the personnel inside them, before the first wave struck? Minutes? Hours? It was unlikely they would have been told much more than to hold fast if something struck them from outside. Don’t poke your heads outside under any circumstances, until you receive further orders. There would probably be monitoring devices, sophisticated stress and pressure gauges to measure the effect of the impact, operatives secretly assigned to the tasks. As much useful information would be garnered as possible. As a basis for future provision.

The decision to deploy the weapon in the Atlantic had obviously been made many months before. What action had been taken to draw the American fleet into a suitable target area? It had probably required some ongoing provocation: overt submarine activity, zealous shadowing of American vessels, the bellicose rhetoric of which both sides had become masteld ver the past half century.

Stewardesses were moving around the cabin, filling glasses from bottles of vintage champagne. Henry Knowlton was actually slapping my uncle on the back as if he personally had created the weapon. The two of them stood at the back of the crowd exchanging incredulous grins like criminals who had pulled off a particularly spectacular robbery. And in a sense they had: it was the most audacious grab-and-smash in history.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” my uncle said above the continuing sounds of awe and naked enthusiasm. He waited until heads reluctantly began to turn.

“Please raise your glasses to Omega,” he said. “I hope and pray that it will be the salvation of us all!”

The cabin filled with the clinking of glasses and baritone reverberations of the toast. What happened next was confused and may owe as much to reconstruction as actual experience.

I thought I heard a dull metallic thud, and imagined that something had fallen over—my uncle’s stool, perhaps, but no, he was standing and it was still upright at his side. I became aware of a little commotion near the flight deck corridor, as if a scuffle had broken out. A thin mist was rising from the floor, carrying a faint menthol-like odour. I scrambled for my handkerchief and pressed it to my nose.

It was nepenthe.

FORTY-EIGHT

Instants later I was grabbed from behind and spun around. A dark figure with a bulging snout pushed some kind of leathery hood over the lower part of my face.

Rhys, wearing a respirator.

“Don’t take it off!” he warned, and I realised he had put a similar mask on me. He attached the straps and pushed me towards a corner of the cabin. I collided with a table, scattering bottles and champagne flutes, setting off a brief crescendo of shattering glass. Rhys thrust something into my hand before disappearing into the haze.