To the west, bright rays of sunlight flashed, piercing the dense veil of clouds. The ATLAS cabin was instantly filled with joyful golden reflections bouncing off polished panels and porthole glass. For a moment, everything we had experienced seemed like a bad dream—until I looked down. Over Earth, thick clouds saturated with smoke and soot swirled and raced at furious speed. Clouds that had risen to altitudes of fifteen to twenty kilometers during the fires now, like sinister dragons, expanded, covering an ever-greater part of the stratosphere. Their lower edges descended, mixing with ash, while the upper ones touched the ionosphere, where sunlight reflected, creating an ominous glow.
Our automation, controlled by "Alice," was still selecting uncontaminated patches of sky to park in, scanning the atmosphere within a two-hundred-kilometer radius. Sensors registered concentrations of aerosols, radioactive isotopes, and toxic gases. The instruments indicated that soon there would be no such places: contamination levels were rising exponentially. Then we would either have to climb even higher—but the stratospheric turbines were already operating at their limit—or keep moving continuously, like nomads searching for clean air.
Hunter lay back in his seat, tilting his face toward the sun's rays penetrating through the porthole filters. But something alarmed him. He struggled to rise, leaning on the armrest, approached the control panel, and brought up readings from the external sensors determining the composition of the environment on the main screen: carbon dioxide—0.12%, soot—3.2 g/m³, cesium-137—42 Bq/m³.
"The clouds blocked the path of sunlight, and returning to space, it becomes extremely radioactive," he said and pressed a button near the porthole. Dense upper blinds made of multi-layered composite material smoothly closed over the glass, cutting off the external light.
"You mean ultraviolet radiation?" I asked.
"No," he came over and sat in the seat he'd been lying on. "ATLAS is protected from ultraviolet radiation by triple coating. But the electronics..." he didn't finish.
More and more often, I couldn't understand what he meant, and apparently, this was related to his condition. I didn't press.
"Plot a course back to the Mojave?" I suggested, looking at the map.
"Let's head west, toward the ocean. Route at visibility altitude, low speed," he agreed. "We need to survey the coastal zone."
I approached the control panel; my fingers touched the sensor panel, and a new route appeared on the screen. ATLAS smoothly tilted, entered dense cloud cover—the cabin immediately darkened, became uncomfortable. Sensitive LIDAR locators, scanning space within a fifty-kilometer radius, guided the ship along the most optimal route, avoiding zones of increased turbulence.
We looked through the portholes, protected by polarization filters. Cloud density increased and decreased, finally reaching an altitude of a kilometer above the ground. In rare breaks in the clouds, mountains and the Toiyabe Range flashed—massive, cracked, with peaks covered in ash. From the depths of canyons, as from giant pipes, thick smoke mixed with steam billowed upward. Fog, driven by hurricane-force winds of up to a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, raced toward the ocean. The closer we flew to it, the more everything changed around us: black clouds gave way to gray, watery ones; forked lightning flashed, and clouds, overflowing, poured streams of radioactive rain onto the land.
We reached the coast, sharply turned right, and flew along it at the set speed and altitude. The rising hurricane wind tried to knock ATLAS off course, but the hull only shuddered, stabilized by gyroscopes. It seemed to stand still, but "Alice" lowered the machine, then gained altitude and speed again, firmly holding the set direction.
On the shore, whipped by high waves crashing against coastal rocks with enormous force, everything had vanished: multi-story hotels with neon facades, glass skyscrapers, seaports with gleaming white yachts, resorts, and sanatoriums. Even the places where they had stood were now impossible to determine—only chaotic piles of concrete, steel, and glass, drowning in black foam.
"It's because of scientists like you, Ork, that our Earth perished," Hunter said reproachfully. "Even now, when you see with your own eyes the monstrous crime that was committed, you still doubt..."
The lecturing condescension with which he'd spoken to me after the catastrophe infuriated me.
"If it weren't for those very scientists you speak of with such contempt, there would be no civilization..."
"And what about war?" he interrupted angrily.
Intellectually, I understood Hunter was right, but agreeing that scientists were to blame for everything was beyond me. When, after years of peace, countries possessing nuclear weapons resumed nuclear testing, scientists were the first to protest. Thousands of scientists, academicians, and professors signed appeals against turning Earth into a testing ground threatening peace. If it weren't for the blackmail and threats from the international globalist elite, who needed this war. In recent years, the world had changed rapidly, and they were more ready to destroy everything than to lose even a small fraction of the power they were accustomed to, secretly ruling the world for years.
We flew over straits with ports and shipyards where huge factories were located—places for building strategic nuclear submarines and repairing aircraft carriers. Here, everything was still ablaze: docks burned like giant furnaces, and explosions of munitions lit up clouds from within. ATLAS shook more violently—turbulence from thermal flows reached critical levels.
"Enough. We've seen everything. We mustn't risk our only shelter any further," Hunter said.
He approached the control panel and dialed in a higher altitude. The cabin darkened. We had to turn on the soft internal lighting.
Suddenly, I remembered that several years ago, my team and I were summoned to a secret government facility. A large anti-nuclear shelter was under construction there, and we were to consult on installing an autonomous system controlled by artificial intelligence. I pointed at the map that appeared on the central screen.
"Here, between the Big Creek and Railroad valleys, stretches the Toiyabe Range. That's where the largest anti-nuclear shelter and food storage depots with strategic supplies were built," I said sadly.
"Where exactly?" Hunter began zooming in on the map on the screen.
"Right here, in the mountains," I pointed at the spot on the map.
He measured the distance from the coast and changed ATLAS's route. Soon, on Alice's command, ATLAS stopped and began descending. Mountains weren't visible due to thick cloud cover, but radars detected a flat area among the rocks, and we landed near the entrance to a large canyon. As soon as the landing gear touched the ground, faint signals from an emergency radio station appeared on the screen at 121.5 MHz.
"Another submarine?" I asked in surprise.
"Doesn't look like it." He routed the signal to the main console, and the screen immediately flickered: "State facility 'Bastion Toiyabe,' identification number 1723, requests assistance!.. Facility 1723 requests assistance!.. Our coordinates..."
Hunter compared their coordinates with ours—the discrepancy was less than three kilometers.
"That's somewhere very close to our target," he said and began preparing to leave, but he was unsteady on his feet.
"Maybe I should go?" I suggested, standing up.
"No!" he categorically rejected my proposal. "Only someone sentenced to death should risk their life!"
He was convinced he had received a lethal dose of radiation, and arguing with him was pointless. I helped him descend through the emergency hatch and, turning on the circular cameras with infrared and night modes, began watching as Hunter trudged toward the canyon, ankle-deep in ash.