Winter World (The Long Winter #1)(81)

The sites where the ships are being constructed are heavily guarded. I haven’t been to one, so I was very excited when James asked if I wanted a tour.

We ride in the electric, self-driving car to the site, James and I in the front, Oscar in the back, like a bizarre post-apocalyptic family outing.

The camp has changed so much so quickly. More and more people join the military every day. Their time is mostly dedicated to training and exercises. Maybe the government has intelligence that another war is imminent. Maybe they’re planning to start it. Or perhaps the AU leadership thinks we’ll be fighting the solar cells and their creator here on Earth soon. Seeing so many in uniform, marching every day, brings a sense of doom. The fading sunlight only accentuates it.

Up ahead, a tall chain-link fence surrounds the factory.

A security guard clears us and motions us forward to the main building. It’s absolutely massive. It reminds me of a giant warehouse, a thousand feet wide and seemingly with no end. Workers bustle about, focused on building the new ship’s modules.

I look up at the high ceiling above us. “The building provides cover?”

“Yeah. There are several decoys nearby. Basically, empty buildings, but identical. We even send people to each one every day to complete the charade, just in case they attack. And the shelter allows us to work for longer periods as the temperature continues to drop.”

He motions deeper into the building. “We’re working on something else.” He raises his eyebrows. “Top secret.”

“You have my attention.”

As we walk, James holds up a tablet. The image looks like an ant colony. There are endless passages snaking back and forth, corkscrewing deeper in the ground, ending at a large cavernous space.

“A bunker?”

“We’re calling it the Citadel,” James says. “This location is ideal for it. The water table is deep here, and there’s a large aquifer close by.”

The scale of the bunker isn’t apparent from the diagram, but a glimmer of hope runs through me. Could this be the key to our survival if the Long Winter never ends?

“How large is it?”

He sees the hope in my expression. His tone turns cautious, the answer already apparent. “It can only house about two hundred people—short term. We’re planning to move the most vulnerable down here when the weather gets really bad. Sick. Young.” He pauses. “If the weather gets bad,” He adds. But we both know it will.

“It’ll have water?”

“Yep. And energy.”

I knit my eyebrows, surprised.

“Geothermal. The big challenge has been getting our wells to a depth where we can harvest enough of the geothermal energy. But I think we’ve pretty much solved that. I say ‘we,’ but it’s actually a team of German and Scandinavian scientists. They’re brilliant.”

James is getting animated now.

“At a depth of two hundred meters it’s about 8 degrees Celsius. If you go down to five thousand meters, temperatures can get up to 170 degrees Celsius.”

“You can drill that far down?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Farther.” He taps on the tablet, bringing up a wider image of the bunker complex. In the zoomed-out schematic, the tunnels, bunker, and aquifer seem so close to the surface. Lines descend from some of the smaller open spaces directly toward the center of the earth, like fishing lines hanging from a boat.

“Our plan is to get to a depth of ten thousand meters. The temperature there will be 374 degrees Celsius. Water pressure will be 220 bars. The amount of energy we can generate is enormous. Easily enough to sustain the bunker.”

“Incredible,” I whisper.

We’re almost to the center of the building, and the opening to the tunnels looms ahead. It has a gentle downward slope, like a highway tunnel that runs under a river. As we walk into it, I feel as though we’re wandering into the mouth of some massive beast buried in the Earth.

James goes slowly to keep pace with me. I still can’t walk nearly as fast as I once could, or as fast as I want. The doctor was right: I’ll never regain my full strength, but I have adjusted to my new reality. That’s life.

There’s a rail system at the mouth of the tunnel, and we board a small electric car, James driving. The temperature drops as we descend, and the light from the warehouse fades away, leaving us in darkness except for the LED lights above.

Up ahead a cavern looms. As we approach I realize its scale: at least a hundred feet wide and two hundred feet deep, with a twenty foot ceiling above us.

James is grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Welcome to the Citadel, Commander Matthews.”

“It’s amazing.”

He stares ruefully at the cavern. “I worked on a plan to grow food down here. I had hoped to create a self-sustaining colony. But we don’t have the time or resources. Or the space. Every inch will be dedicated to housing.”

As I look around, I can’t help but wonder what life will be like down here. Never seeing the sun. Never walking on the surface, breathing fresh air. Away from nature. It’s sort of like the ISS—a whole new world, separated from the earth.

Back at the surface, we pass by the white modules of the ship.

“These will be part of Sparta One, the largest space ship humanity has ever built. She’ll be loaded to the hilt with ordinance: nukes, attack drones, rail guns, you name it.” He studies it a moment. “I just hope it will be enough to bring the crew and me home.”