Atlantech: The Early Days Volume One

Chapter 23: Ace of Spades

Soon after, Justin had just finished looking at the sample under the microscope while jotting down his notes when Artis suddenly walked in the room and announced himself. "Dendera said you wanted to see me, Corporal?"

"Yeah, that's right," Justin replied looking up from his notes. "But uh, you might want to sit down for this one."

"Alright then," Artis responded pulling out a chair and taking a seat beside him while eyeing the microscope. "I see you've got the microscope there," he pointed out. "So I take it you must have found something then?"

Justin nodded in response. "Hence why I suggested you sit down for this one, cause you're not going to believe what I've found."

"Well now you've got me curious," Artis replied leaning forward. "So go on then and tell me, I'm all ears."

Justin sighed and then handed over his notes. "I found traces of nitroglycerine in the engine," he explained while Artis began reading through them. "It was a small sample of course since most of the evidence had been burned away, but being that I myself am a chemist of sorts, well I know my chemicals and it's definitely nitro."

"I can see that," Artis agreed without even taking his eyes off the page. "But what I'm having trouble understanding is how it got here in the first place?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Justin remarked in disbelief. "It was planted there by someone looking to either kill that pilot or sabotage your work, and I'm willing to bet it's the latter. And look, I know well enough this isn't Atlantech's doing," he continued noting the sullen expression on Artis's face now. "So the only other possible answer is that it was someone in the AMF, or someone who had access to the jet before its final take off that day. But I'm willing to bet it was definitely someone from the base, and probably someone who didn't belong either."

"You mean like one of Morane's men?"Artis mentioned as he set the notes down onto his lap and then removed his glasses.

"Most likely," Justin replied. "I mean who else hates the AMF or Atlantech as much as he does?"

"Right," Artis sighed as he looked down. "But to tell you the truth, I don't know how I feel about this. I mean it's great that you've made this discovery and I feel relieved that it wasn't caused by a flaw in our design, but I just don't understand why this happened at all." He turned and looked Justin in the eye. "What have we done to deserve such hate?"

"It's not hate," Justin corrected him. "It's just madness, and it can't be reasoned with. No sense in trying either."

"Yeah, I'm afraid you're right," Artis sighed as he put his glasses back on. "But now we have to determine just how this nitroglycerine was planted. But if I were to make a wild guess I would go ahead and say it was a bomb."

"And you would be right," Justin answered. "It definitely was some kind of bomb and our perpetrator tried to be clever and waited until it was airborne to set it off. Why then and not when it was still on the runway? Well I'd guess it's because he was hoping for it to do more damage that way, possibly even taking out some of the base. But much to his surprise it didn't."

"Good thing too," Artis added. "Otherwise we would've lost many more lives that day."

"Indeed," Justin agreed. "But now we have to ask ourselves if it was just the one plane that was targeted?"

Artis began wondering himself now. "Good question," he replied. "But if I recall, only one of the AF-22 models was scheduled for testing that day. And following the incident the others were grounded and then quarantined for inspection and they all checked out clear as far as I can remember, but were still not permitted for flight."