Steven Konkoly
THE PERSEID COLLAPSE
A Novel
To Kosia—still my number one supporter.
To Matthew and Sophia—two awesome kids who put up with dad’s long writing hours
About The Perseid Collapse
The Perseid Collapse takes place six years after the H16N1 virus ravaged the world in my first novel, The Jakarta Pandemic. Feedback and reviews for The Jakarta Pandemic exceeded all expectations, with many readers asking me to write another novel featuring Alex Fletcher and his family. I balked at the idea, hesitant to write a true sequel to The Jakarta Pandemic.
I buried the idea of a follow-on apocalyptic novel for two years, occasionally unearthed by a new reader with the same request—more Fletchers. In between Black Flagged Apex and Vektor, I started putting some thought into the possibility of bringing them back.
If I planned to bring the Fletcher’s back, I had to accomplish two things. First, I had to create a unique disaster scenario. Not an easy task given the recent flood of post-apocalyptic books. Second, I needed to rain hell down on the Fletcher’s world. They would not have the option of “bunkering up” within the confines of their home. The final disaster concept hit me like a meteorite, nearly derailing the publication of Black Flagged Vektor. I feel confident that you’ll share in my excitement, within the first few pages.
Time in The Perseid Collapse world is measured in plus (+) or minus (-) Hours:Minutes from the EVENT. Book One in The Perseid Collapse Series chronicles the first 48 hours post EVENT.
PART I
“RED DRAGON”
Chapter 1
EVENT -04:56 Hours
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
People’s Republic of China
Liang Zhen approached the shiny steel door and swiped his keycard, activating the biometric scanner. He pressed a shaky hand to the glass panel and waited for the system to verify his identity. He started to look over his shoulder, but stopped. They would read it on his face. The station’s endgame rapidly approached, and he had no intention of going down with his ship.
The pneumatic door opened, and he stepped into a new atmosphere—filtered of rank coffee breath and body odor. His sanctuary. The door hissed shut, and he doubled over, bracing his hands on his knees.
Breathe deeply. Get control.
He straightened up and cinched his tie. Loyalty be damned! His destiny did not include dying 450 feet underground, and he strongly suspected that Station Three would not survive the morning.
Station Three had served a single purpose since he arrived two years earlier: to prevent the world’s discovery of “ME8192019.” Working in shifts, the men and women of his station held a constant vigil over the vast digital fraud and network manipulation required for Operation Red Dragon to succeed.
Now that the operation had entered the terminal phase, his station remained the only loose end, and he wasn’t naïve enough to exclude the likelihood that Beijing would “close the loop” on Red Dragon.
He walked swiftly toward a stainless-steel door at the end of the hallway and entered the daily code into the keypad. Green light. Beijing suspected nothing. He opened the door to a brightly lit concrete stairwell, which rose several levels to a private elevator lobby. From there, Liang could summon one of Station Three’s elevators and escape the facility.
He felt like a traitor leaving everyone behind, but someone had to survive, and he was the only member of the crew authorized to leave the station. Any attempt at an unauthorized mass exodus would trigger an immediate response. He couldn’t wait to see the Directorate’s sour faces when he resurfaced. Shock would eventually yield to relief that the genius behind China’s recovery had survived.
Liang Zhen, then second director of the Cyber Warfare Recovery Directorate, had been the first to propose the Republic of China wage a more active, silent war against the West, with the ultimate goal of destabilizing European and North American economies. Liang oversaw the program from 2014 until 2017, when the Future Vulnerabilities Group discovered an “event” with the potential to do far more than temporarily destabilize the United States.
They immediately sent Liang Zhen to Cyber Warfare Station Three to oversee Operation Red Dragon and fulfill China’s destiny. He was simply taking measures to ensure that the chief architect of that destiny still had a seat at the table when the dust settled. Thick dust.
Liang reached the ground lobby and scurried up three stories of metal stairs to the surface. The wide stairs ended at a thick iron door, which opened into the center of a vast, empty warehouse. Gusts of wind buffeted the building’s thin metal walls as he walked rapidly through the roasting heat toward the door.
The driver better be there.
The station was located in one of the most isolated sections of the former Lop Nur Nuclear Test Range, over sixty kilometers from the nearest inhabited post. He had little chance of surviving an escape on foot, and he had brought nothing to the surface with him, aside from his wallet and identification card.
The door swung open, propelled by a burst of stifling hot wind. Squinting through his fingers, he spotted the SUV. Perfect timing.
He struggled against the gale, pausing once to look behind him at the lone warehouse situated between two windswept ridges. One hundred and eleven Chinese citizens had worked on Red Dragon for twenty months, buried deep below the surface. Dead and buried from the start. They just hadn’t known it. None of them had—until recently.
Would they cut the power and let it die slowly? Poison the air supply? Did the station already have some kind of self-destruct failsafe installed? Whatever happened, he planned to be as far away as possible.
Halfway to the vehicle, he shook his head. The damn driver was asleep! He had better be resting for the marathon drive ahead. He found the front passenger door locked and knocked on the dust-caked window. The driver didn’t move. He banged on the side of the door. Just his shitty luck. The executive service sent an incompetent fool! He wiped the thick layer of dust off the passenger window and stumbled backward, falling to the hardened clay surface.
How could they know?
He turned on his stomach and scanned the horizon. Several figures sprinted toward him from the left side of the warehouse. He was a dead man. How long had they waited for him? The lead figure penetrated the sandstorm. Chinese Special Forces. Death would be a luxury.
“Director, I need you to return to your post immediately,” stated the soldier, extending his hand.
He nodded eagerly. It made sense to him now. If killing everyone had been the plan, they wouldn’t send him back down alive. He kept his eyes focused on the soldier’s feet. What a fool he had been. He’d flushed away everything. The Special Forces team would report his escape attempt, and the career he had cultivated for the past forty years would be finished. Acceptable in light of his irrational behavior. How could he face Tin and the rest of his deputies below? He would have to come up with an excuse.
An emergency meeting at the surface!
“Please, there is little time,” said the soldier, helping Director Zhen to his feet.