Evil Genius (Part 1)
Added: Within YearUpdated: Within YearA Whateley Universe Story
Evil Genius
by Bek D Corbin
Part One
June 12th 2016
The cargo VTOL circled the remote base three times before being given permission to land. This was expected and usual. When the VTOL landed, prisoners came out to help unload it. Again, this was expected and usual. But as the young men, little more than boys, in thick coats over red scrubs unloaded boxes, a woman in a stylish coat, wearing a chic hat and trim trousers alit from the VTOL. She wasn’t in a uniform or in chains or in any sort of strange life support system. She was expected, but quite unusual. She paused and looked around. As far as the eye could see, flat desolate tundra stretched with only a few patches of scrabbly green breaking up the taupe of the barren ground. It was just within the Arctic Circle, and at these latitudes, even at the height of Summer, it was in the mid-40s. In a couple of months, Winter would overrun Autumn, and the place would become the frigid icebox that the Lower 48 tends to think that the rest of Alaska is year-round. There was no sign of any road. To strike out into that tundra without a vehicle right now would be dangerous going on foolhardy; come winter it would be a death sentence. But despite that glaringly obvious fact, the base was surrounded by a double-fence with thick reinforced concrete pillars, and between the barbed wire-topped fences there was a five-foot wide empty area. Signs on the fence stated that the fences were electrified, and that the space between them was a minefield. A Sensor packet on a track moved across the space over the minefield. The only signs of anything to protect- or contain- were three large concrete discs set about a quarter mile apart, and a few squat poured concrete bunkers.
