Under Pressure

Marcus’ already pale skin was washed out and necrotic in the nacreous green light of the flashing cursor blinking at him maddeningly on the old style CRT monitor. A bead of sweat escaped from his hairline and gained speed as it rolled down his forehead, veering right around his hawkish nose and getting caught up in the stubble sprouting from his upper lip. Marcus barely notices the moisture collecting there.

His lithe fingers hovered over the old keyboard that was embedded into the tower before him, an ancient, outdated collection of oversized circuit boards and wiring, the entire thing likely having less computing power than the phone in his pocket. Marcus balls his fingers and then splays them again, trying to release some of the tension building up in the muscles, trying to will the answer to come to him and guide his fingers to the correct answer.

Thirty minutes ago a violent tremor rocked the silo. Marcus was torn from sleep almost physically by the shaking of his bunk and the shrieking of metal on metal. He almost slammed into the wall as he stepped out of his cot, losing his footing on the deck that was now canted heavily off center, possibly as much as forty-five degrees. Adjusting to the tilt, Marcus moved to the door where he could hear panicked yelling intermingled with a few screams of pain filtering in from the corridor beyond the door.

Marcus had been catching a nap in the server room. A few weeks ago, when he had started his tour in the silo he brought a fold out cot into the server room. No one else on the base worked here due to funding cuts, and as he was always on call anyway he saw no reason that he couldn’t just set up shop near his station. The commanding officer didn’t seem to be aware of his sleeping situation, or if he was he didn’t seem to care.

The door to the server room opened outward into the hall, and being a largely clean environment, was a sealed bulkhead. Marcus tried to force the door open to no avail. A klaxon was blaring on the other side of that bulkhead, parroted by an alert from the consoles in the server room. The base and the silo were on lockdown, and apparently there was flooding in the lower sections. Marcus was surprised to find there was an evacuation order as well.

Bringing up a readout of the base as a whole, Marcus could see that there must have been some sort of collision or explosion near the ocean floor. He tried to send a ping to the CO but got nothing in return. Pulling out his phone Marcus found, unsurprisingly, that there was no signal. If the base was compromised and so severely pitched it was likely that the communications tower on the surface was damaged or at the very least out of alignment. As the overhead lights cut out leaving Marcus in the dull, sanguine emergency illumination, a sickly green glow seemed to beckon him from the rear of the stacks in the server room.

Climbing to the back of the room on that tilted floor was harrowing. The stacks containing progressively older and older tech as he climbed were sturdy, but Marcus was almost brained a few times as blades or drives slid out of their housings. The slant of the room increased as the silo continued to crumple, and while Marcus was as yet safe from flooding, if the base started to sink he would be crushed before he drowned. Eventually he made it to the oldest section of the stacks, propped himself up with his back to one stack as he faced that prehistoric CRT monitor, and he read the screen.

Missile released from housing. B41 Warhead [25 megatons] armed. Detonation imminent. Targeting computer offline. Current target unknown.

Launch (Yes/No).