“She’s probably up by now.”
“Did you tell her I said hi?”
“I thought it better not to.”
Borger frowned. “Oh.”
Roland laughed and took a sip from his cup. “Don’t worry about it.” He looked up as Lee approached with a juice and muffin. “So, what’s the big reveal?”
When Borger bit his lip, thinking, Roland tilted his head. “Let me guess. You can’t tell me.”
“Well…not entirely.”
“Okay, so what’s the favor?”
“We need help. With some hardware.”
“Hardware,” Roland repeated.
“Yeah.”
“What kind of hardware?”
Borger glanced around and lowered his voice. “Powerful hardware.”
Lee, who was listening to the exchange, followed Borger’s eyes curiously. There was no one else within fifty feet.
“I see,” Roland sipped again.
This time the younger Lee looked at Borger’s friend with curiosity. “Uh, Mr. Roland, where did you say you worked?”
“I didn’t.” The older man looked across the table. “You didn’t tell him?”
Borger shook his head. “Not yet.”
Roland responded to Lee with a trace of amusement. “I’m the Master Solution Architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.”
Lee’s eyes widened. “You work at HPE?”
“That’s right.”
“You make the new supercomputer system Mr. Borger was telling me about.”
Roland nodded assuredly. “It’s called The Machine.”
35
“You didn’t tell me you knew someone who worked for HPE.”
Roland peered across the table at Borger, while replying to Lee. “He knows a lot of people at HPE.”
“He does?”
Roland nodded. “A lot of us old-timers worked at DEC together. Including Will.”
Lee turned back to Borger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was a surprise.”
“That’s how you knew Mr. Roland was down here on vacation?”
“Kid, you’re starting to make me feel even older than I already am. Just call me Rick.”
“Yes, sir.”
Roland leaned back in his plastic chair. “So, you can’t tell me what this is for?”
“Not exactly. But we’re hoping to run some deep learning algos on it. And some historical and deep-level link analysis.”
“Piece of cake. Our hardware won’t even break a sweat.”
Borger cleared his throat and leaned in. “We, uh, might also need to crack some encryption ciphers.”
“Well, now that’s a little more interesting. Are you talking about the recent WPA2 crack?”
“No, I’m talking about the old ones. But there’s a lot of data to sort through.”
“How much data?”
Borger’s voice dropped even lower. “Terabytes.”
Roland did not react. He merely stared at his friend. There were not a lot of organizations he was aware of that could have terabytes of data encrypted with the older ciphers. Especially since most old ciphers were used in the 1990s, which is what he assumed Borger was referring to. Back then there was a lot less data floating around. In fact, the word terabytes wasn’t even being used yet. That meant it would have to have been an organization capable of collecting one hell of a lot of data. And to have that size of a net meant they would also have to have a lot of authority to go with it.
When Roland finally responded, he did so without making a sound. He only moved his lips, slowly and deliberately––N-S-A?
Borger nodded.
Roland shook his head. “We could get in trouble for this.”
Borger raised an eyebrow. “We’ve done a lot worse than this before.”
His friend sighed and placed his hands together in front of his chest. “True,” he said thoughtfully. “You are going to need some serious hardware. How many procs?”
“A couple hundred.”
“I can do that. But I can only keep it hidden for so long.” Roland raised a finger and rubbed his whiskered chin, thinking. “It will end up on the books sooner or later. I can probably buy you some time by burying it inside another order. In fact, we’re in the middle of filling a giant order right now, and you’re in luck because we’ve just started shipping the first editions of our memristors.”
Lee raised an eyebrow. “What’s a memristor?”
“The next game changer,” Roland replied. “Computer memory that operates on an atomic level using ionized helium atoms. It allows The Machine to work and learn at an atomic level, much like our brains do at the cellular level. A true neural net.”
“Holy crap.”
Roland shot Lee a furtive glance. “You can say that again.”
Studying Roland inquisitively, Borger leaned a few inches closer. “So, who is that giant order for?”
“A large U.S. government agency. So big that we have to fill the order in stages.”
“And which agency might that be?”
Roland smiled and finished his coffee. “Let’s just say this could be the mother of all ironies.”
36
An hour later, Will Borger and Lee Kenwood stood in front of the tiny airport again. The two gave a brief wave to Roland as he turned out of the small gravel driveway, heading south, back toward the harbor.
When the car disappeared beyond a field of small trees, Lee turned. “Well, that was worth the trip.”
Borger nodded. “Better than having to fly to Boston.”
“We were lucky he was down here on vacation.”
“Not as much as you might think. He and his wife come for a couple weeks every year. At almost the same time.”
“I don’t blame them. It’s beautiful.”
“It’s not because of the scenery.”
Lee looked to see Borger shaking his head. “Rick’s wife, Debra, was diagnosed with leukemia several years ago. It was acute, which meant fast moving. And he brought her down here because it had always been on her bucket list.”
“Oof. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be,” Borger said. “During that trip, they spotted and swam with some dolphins off the bow of their boat. Something everyone wishes they could do. And when they got back, they found Debra’s leukemia was beginning to recede. It eventually went into full remission, and Debra insisted that something happened when she was in the water with those dolphins.”
Lee stared back with surprise. “Is that true?”
“Completely true. Ever since then, they’ve come back every year to do the same thing. And the leukemia has not returned.”
“That’s a true story?”
“More than you know.” Borger turned back to Lee with a knowing grin. “And that was several years ago. Before you, Alison, and Chris had even built your IMIS system.”
“Wow.”
“Yup.” With one hand holding his pack over his shoulder, Borger abruptly turned and reached for the door with the opposite hand.
Together, the two approached the tiny counter and checked in for the next flight. With a broad smile shining brightly against her deep bronze skin, the attractive woman handed them tickets and motioned behind them to the plastic chairs. Before they reached the seats, Borger’s satellite phone rang in his pocket. Taking a few more steps, he dropped his bag and simultaneously fished out the phone with his right hand, answering on the second ring.
“Borger here.”
There was a long pause, and his eyes fell to Lee, intently listening.
He finally nodded and replied flatly. “Yes, sir. Right away.”
Borger ended the call and dropped his arm, still clutching the phone tightly in his hand. He took a deep breath and turned to Lee.
“We just got some news.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re headed back to Trinidad. ASAP.”
“What for?”
“The crew of the Path
finder just located Lieutenant Elgin Tay.”
Lee inhaled. “And?”
“And he’s alive.”
37
Elgin Tay’s eyes shot open when he heard the deep pounding above him. He had dozed off. Finally. The first sleep he’d managed to get after waking up inside.
He blinked and stretched both eyes open wide. Then quickly realized he’d missed some of the message. All he’d caught were the letters ‘U’ and ‘S.’
He sat up and found the piece of driftwood next to him on the ledge.
A-G-A-I-N
It took a few minutes to hear a reply, coming from above.
S-T-A-T-U-S
Tay leaned into it and steadily pounded his answer.
S-A-M-E H-U-N-G-R-Y D-A-R-K H-U-R-R-Y
Minutes later, the answer was short and sweet.
E-T-A 1-0 H-R-S
O-K
Tay waited for another reply but received only silence. Giving a satisfied nod, he stepped back and began to lower the piece of wood, before stopping.
He felt noticeably better. Less pain, plus his arms and legs felt stronger. Rested.
He raised his head and peered out into the blackness. His stomach had long since passed growling, replaced now with a deeper hunger that was almost an ache. It felt to Tay as if his stomach was actually trying to digest itself. Painful, but now tolerable for the next ten hours.
The thought now dominating Tay’s mind was just how they planned to extract him? Getting in was one thing. Getting out, against all that water pressure, was another. At the surface, the water was about 14.7 pounds per square inch. And each foot of seawater added almost another pound on top of that. A calculation Tay was intimately familiar with given his work on the Pathfinder’s submersible rovers. At sixty feet deep, including the pressure loss from the surface, it would be a modest twenty-six psi or two atmospheres. But Tay had fallen some distance which meant the water pressure would only be that much stronger if they tried to drill lower, presenting an even bigger problem. Which meant they would have to come in high.
He tried to think of what he could do to help. The ledges were too far vertically from each other to climb, especially when he couldn’t see anything. And neither his knife nor the small log would do him any good.
What he needed was more information about his environment.
With a controlled hand, Tay lowered the end of the log onto the ledge beneath him and stood it upright, thinking. Even with eyes that had long since adjusted to the darkness, he was still virtually blind. Which meant the only tools he really had were his hands.
***
“Well?”
All eyes stared intently at the Pathfinder’s new lead engineer, Lieutenant Commander Ronald J. Ackerman. Burly and squat, with a thick chest and arms, he had served aboard the Pathfinder’s sister ship Henson for nine and a half years. And being an integral part of the Navy’s Military Sealift Command, he thought he’d seen it all. Both the good and the bad. But this was one for the record books.
The rest of the engineers stood facing him, including the three new recruits whom Captain Emerson had sent down, filling most of the ship’s Engineering Control Room. Behind Ackerman was a short gray metal wall, paneled from floor to ceiling with hundreds of electronics and monitors. Above him were several screens filled with live video feeds from various sections of the ship.
Ackerman scanned the faces of the engineering ensigns in front of him. Smitty spoke up first. “The DSRV is our best chance.”
The rest of the engineers nodded in agreement.
“No plan A then,” Ackerman’s gruff face nodded beneath a flattop littered with specks of gray. “And the skirt?”
This time Odonnell spoke. “The drill’s still too big for the skirt, even without its housing.”
“Which means,” said Ackerman, “we’ll need to make the hole and get that drill detached as fast as we can. Then we have to seal it in one godawful hurry.”
“The hydraulic vacuum can establish a seal in thirty seconds and keep it open. If we can get it in place.”
Odonnell nodded. “The inflow of the water should help with that. As long as we come in straight.”
“Assuming we can come in straight. Which won’t give us a margin of more than six or seven inches on either side,” Ackerman said. “The biggest question is when we do get the drill through again, how fast is that hole going to try to close up on us?”
The room fell silent.
The hole Lieutenant Tay had entered through was open only briefly before the side of the alien ship took a direct hit from a torpedo. By the time they were able to return and investigate, the opening was gone. No one knew if, or how quickly, it would happen again.
Ackerman continued. “Judging from the short time Tay was communicating with Borger before the impact, we could have as little as twenty seconds.”
The room nodded, all aware that part of their estimate was based on the gruesome fact that Tay made it through the hole in the ship while Lightfoot’s body did not.
“Let’s say fifteen. So, at the very least, that gives us fifteen seconds to get the ring in place to prevent it from closing.”
The men nodded.
The ring was a three-foot-round and three-inch-thick titanium brace. It was the best solution they could think of, certainly the strongest. If it could not withstand the closing pressure of the alien ship, at least temporarily, then no one knew what else would.
“Okay, so we make the hole, set the ring, and make the supply drop as fast as we can. Then work like hell to get the skirt sealed around it. If we fail, or we lose the seal, then Lieutenant Tay at least has enough to last another week. If we can maintain the seal, we send the harness in.”
Commander Ackerman made it sound almost rudimentary, although every man in the room knew the truth. The plan was anything but simple. Making a point of entry, or another hole, was the first big challenge. Securing it was the second. If they could just accomplish those two, they should need only seconds to drop supplies to Tay on the other side. As long as nothing went wrong.
The hardest part...would be trying to get him out. Odds of establishing a sealed environment around the opening, even just large enough for a human figure, were not good. Let alone maintaining the seal.
The hydraulic vacuum was their only option since there was nothing on the alien ship’s wall to attach to. And that meant pressure alone would be holding it in place around the circumference of the hole. If they lost that physical tension at any point around the opening, the sudden change in pressure could be explosive.
If the seal held, they then had to contend with getting the harness in and down to Tay.
There were a lot of variables, any of which could go wrong. And the two items that would more than anything determine their success or failure were little more than a chunk of titanium and a giant piece of rubber.
Irritated, Ackerman shook his head in silence. There just weren’t a lot of options at the moment. Or time.
The commander twisted away from the men to study another monitor behind him. It was a satellite picture of their location, showing the islands of Trinidad and Tobago directly to the west and the mid-Atlantic to the east. Overlaid on top of the picture image was a Doppler image highlighted in green, swirling slowly westward from the eastern edge of the picture.
“Just perfect,” Ackerman sighed, turning back around. A hurricane would be a perfect addition to their problems. “Let’s get that hydrophone in the water and find out exactly where our man is.”
***
The second time was easier. Tay’s rested limbs had found more strength. And it took less time before the log, being pushed ahead of him, finally bumped into what Tay was searching for. The same interior wall he’d discovered the first time.
This time, still treading water, Tay quickly skimmed his hands in either direction, searching for the small lip he’d felt before.
But he couldn’t find it.
He moved further to the right, hand
s sweeping back and forth over the surface. Then he swam farther. Still nothing.
Just when he was about to turn back, Tay hit something. His right hand immediately swept back to verify. It was the lip––long and straight, like some kind of vertical groove, extending high above the waterline and over his head. Then he found a second, farther away and past the first.
But the slight protrusion from the metal wall was not enough to hold onto. So Tay ducked underwater and continued tracing the line downward. It continued for several feet before he found something else. A wide hole between both lines.
He darted his hands in and around the opening, assessing it before trying to place a foot inside. He desperately hoped it was high enough. All he needed was enough of a foothold to support his head above the water.
But almost immediately after Tay slid his foot into the wide gap, everything changed.
The thin, narrow lines on either side suddenly lit up.
38
After long since adjusting to the darkness, Tay’s eyes were not prepared. Both grooves immediately flared into brilliant lines and exploded together up the wall, followed momentarily by the area between them. The entire space directly in front of Tay had now turned a blazing white.
He forced both eyes shut and covered them with his hands, causing him to stumble back into the dark water. The light hit him so intensely that Tay could see the glare through his fingers and eyelids.
A stunned Tay whirled around and clawed frantically at the water, desperate to remain above the surface. He accidentally gulped a mouthful of water before spitting it back out and carefully cracking his lids back open.
With the light now behind him, Tay’s pupils painfully tried to adjust and gradually focused inside the ship for the first time. When the picture before him grew clearer, he gasped at the sight both in front of and above him. The entire inside of the ship’s walls was now visible, illuminating a massive interior with the shelves he had been clinging to for three days. Now he could see just how many they were. Not hundreds as he had guessed. There were thousands.
Mosaic (Breakthrough Book 5) Page 14