NEW YEAR’S EVE

The first whispering tendrils of mist crept over the ridges of the Albany hills just after nine p.m., sifting down through the tree blanket or slithering down the main highway that cut through the bush of the hillside.

It was New Year’s Eve. The last day of the year. Some said the last day of all years.

That might be true, Crowe thought, watching the mist creep toward him on the video monitor, if they couldn’t stop it here and now.

The mist flowed up to and over the camera, a small metal box stuck in the middle of the highway, near the top of the hill, turning everything to white. He switched to another camera, about halfway up the hill, and saw the mist just starting to writhe around a corner of the highway, far ahead.

In addition to the ground cameras, they had three helicopters operating, well above the puffy cumulus top of the fog, feeding images back to the control center.

Crowe picked up a radio. “The fog has crossed the hilltop,” he said tersely. “Time to light it up.”

Around him, the control center, just three hundred feet behind their main defensive line, was buzzing with activity. NZ Army and SAS officers were barking orders, running here and there, answering phones and radios. The battle for Auckland was commencing.

Lucy Southwell’s voice came back to him on the radio. She sounded scared but calm. “Stony, we’ve had a lot of problems trying to evacuate Auckland. We are still trying to get people out. You have got to stop that fog, or at least slow it down. If it keeps going at the rate it’s going, hundreds of thousands of people are going to die!”

Crowe turned and looked at Manderson standing next to him but said nothing.

Manderson smiled. “Let’s show these fluffy white teddy bears who they’re messing with.”

Flight Lieutenant John Ramirez was already in the cockpit of his FA18 Super Hornet fighter-bomber with the canopy sealed when the order came through his headset. He acknowledged immediately and gave a brief wave to the ground staff who were preparing for takeoff. The rest of his wing were already lowering their canopies and would follow him off the deck at intervals of just a few seconds.

The USS Abraham Lincoln was sailing a steady fifteen knots into the light breeze, to assist with the takeoffs. Once airborne, the flight to Auckland would take less than ten minutes.

On a hand signal from outside, he fired up his engines, turning night into day behind the jet, but held in place still by the steely grasp of the aircraft carrier.

All the planes had names. Some of the pilots named their planes after girls, like in the old bomber days. There was the Mary-Lou and the Barbara-Ann. Others gave their planes macho names, full of bravado, like Sky Warrior or Grim Reaper.

Ramirez’s plane was Deus ex Machina. Most of his fellow pilots had no idea what it meant. Some thought it was Hispanic, like Ramirez. It wasn’t Spanish, though; it was Greek. Deus ex Machina. The God from the Machine.

Ramirez had majored in literature. In the ancient Greek plays, the hero would often get himself into all sorts of drama and strife, only to have it all solved, just in the nick of time, by a god, who would be lowered onto the stage by an elaborate piece of equipment. The God from the Machine would intervene, just when all looked lost, and save the day for the hero.

That was his role, Ramirez felt, and he had named his plane for it. When ground troops were under threat, his wing of close ground-support fighter-bombers would be called in to save the day.

Today he had a mixture of high-explosive and incendiary napalm bombs attached under his wings. Someone, or something, was in for a very hot time in Auckland tonight.

The launch officer raised a hand above his head, then brought it sweeping down. Ramirez punched in his after-burners as the launch wire exploded forward, catapulting the fighter down the short runway of the carrier.

The acceleration rammed him back in his seat. It was a volatile adrenaline thrill that no roller-coaster ride could ever come close to simulating. He would miss it, he thought, when he was too old to fly and rotated off onto some boring desk job somewhere.

The edge of the carrier flashed past, and the plane dipped fractionally, then caught itself and he arced upward to the left. The other five planes of his wing were off the deck in quick succession, forming up on his wing tips. The six planes seemed as one as they banked around toward the dark coast ahead of them.

Tell me your troubles, Ramirez thought, confess me your sins, for here comes the God from the Machine.

Fatboy’s motorcycle was still parked on the gray concrete pad by the side of the house, where he had left it that morning. Had it been just one day? Tane realized that it had. It seemed like an eternity of time had passed since Fatboy had set out with the Chronophone.

The house was in darkness, except, unsurprisingly, for the flickering blue glow from an upstairs window.

They had driven back from the Marae in his dad’s Jeep Cherokee. The roads were increasingly impassable, and the sturdy four-wheel-drive Jeep seemed like a better bet if they had to go across fields or shoulder other vehicles out of the way.

Rebecca hadn’t said a word the entire trip. She had just sat there, thinking. Tane felt that she was making a momentous decision and left her alone to make it.

His own mind was filled with the image of his mother and father, standing at the carved wooden gates of the Marae, facing the fear, facing an uncertain future, in the embrace of their people, their whanau. He wondered if he would ever see them again and thought that he would not.

They entered the house quietly, so as not to alarm Rebecca’s mum.

Rebecca’s room was unchanged from when they had left it. The hole in the wall where the window used to be, the torn drapes, and the glass and wood splinters spread throughout the room. Even the paper was still on the printer.

FTBYDNTGO.WTRBLSTMPS.DSVLETHM.

SLTABS.DNTABSRB.

Rebecca looked at the message a long time, and finally sighed. “MPs, macrophages. ABs are antibodies.”

“Water blast,” Tane said. “High-pressure water.”

“I think so,” Rebecca said. “The macrophages are made of some kind of spongy tissue. Bullets don’t affect them; they just punch straight through. But a pressurized jet of water would cut them to pieces and dissolve them.”

“SLT?” Fatboy asked.

“My guess is salt,” Rebecca replied. “I thought it meant that the antibodies can’t absorb salt, but that makes no sense. But what we do know is that if you crush an antibody, it just gets absorbed back into the mist. Then the mist probably just makes a new one. So no matter how many you destroy, there are just as many attacking you a few minutes later.”

“But salt stops them being absorbed,” Tane worked out slowly.

“It’s only a guess. But I suspect that salt, on that slimy surface, would alter the chemical structure of the creature, and that would stop it being absorbed.”

Fatboy said, “So once you kill them, they stay dead!”

“Something like that.”

Fatboy said, “We need to tell Crowe.”

“What about the Chronophone?” Rebecca asked.

Tane asked, “What about the Möbius?”

“I can get back to the Skytower and install the Chronophone,” Fatboy said. “I’ll be able to squeeze into the city on the bike.”

“No,” Rebecca said. “I think you should both go to the Skytower. That has to take priority. I’ll try and raise Crowe on the portable radio.”

“Do you think he’ll listen?” Tane said.

She just shrugged.

There was a long drawn-out scream from the skies above them, rising, then dropping away as the sound passed overhead.

Xena screeched in fright and leaped into Rebecca’s arms.

Rebecca looked up. “What was that?”

“A jet,” Tane said, “moving fast.”

“More than one,” Fatboy said. “Sounded like fighters.”

“Oh crap,” Tane breathed. “It’s already started.”

As if to confirm his analysis, a sound of distant thunder rolled in from the north. Through the smashed window, the skies lit up with brilliant flashes.

“They’re bombing the hell out of something,” Fatboy said.

“We’re all out of time,” Rebecca whispered. “We’ve got to get moving. We may already be too late.”

“I’ll get the Chronophone,” Fatboy said. “Tane, find me a backpack of some kind to put it in. Rebecca, you’ve got to take the Jeep. Get to the Devonport Navy Base, find the submarine. I don’t imagine it will be difficult to spot. Bring it across the harbor and we’ll meet you down by the waterfront, at, say, the end of Princes Wharf. That’s easy to find from the sea. On the way, try to raise Crowe on the radio.”

“What about Mum?” Rebecca asked quietly.

“Take her with you. You can explain about her new home on the way.”

Her new home. A little tin tube on the floor of the ocean.

Fatboy raced out to the Jeep to get the Chronophone and Rebecca disappeared upstairs.

Tane opened a few cupboards, trying to remember where he had seen Rebecca’s schoolbag, a black backpack.

He had found it by the time Fatboy came in with the silver briefcase.

“Have we got time to run a test?” Tane asked.

“No. Where’s Rebecca?”

“Still upstairs with her mum,” Tane replied

“Go and hurry them up. She’s got to get moving.”

Before he could move, he heard Rebecca’s voice, shrieking from above them.

Tane bounded up the stairs and down the hallway to Rebecca’s mother’s room. The door was wide open.

The television was on. Helicopter camera shots showed the fog creeping over the top of the Albany hills. The view cut to the black silhouettes of warplanes streaking overhead, just visible in the moonlight, then back to the hillside. Massive explosions rocked the camera, and the whole hillside shook in front of their eyes. Rivers of fire exploded in the treetops as breathless reporters tried to explain in voice-overs what was happening.

“Mum!” Rebecca shrieked once again. “You have to come with us. Now!”

“Don’t be silly,” her mother replied calmly, her eyes glued to the images of fire and fog. “This is the news. This is important.”

Tane looked out the window. The sky to the north was ablaze, massive tongues of flames leaping up into the black air from the conflagration on the ground. There were more flashes, more thunder, and he saw the silver flash of a jet caught for a second in the moonlight.

Rebecca turned to Tane in anguish. “She won’t come!”

“I’ll get Fatboy,” Tane said calmly. “We’ll carry her out.”

Rebecca had one last try. “Mum, if you stay here, you will die!”

“Ssshh,” her mum said irritably. “I can’t hear what they’re saying.”

“I’ll get Fatboy,” Tane said again, turning to go.

“No.” Rebecca’s hand was on his arm. “No. We don’t have the time.”

Her legs seemed to be unsteady, and Tane put his arm around her shoulders to support her.

She slowly backed out of the room, one small footstep after another, her eyes never leaving her mother, washed in the soft light from the television set.

Tane, by her side, had no words of comfort.

Rebecca said again, her voice just starting to crack, “We don’t have the time.”