Recalling Destiny

by Michael Blinkhoff

  “What do you mean disappeared?” Came the loud response.

  “We’ve lost visibility Ma’am,” the operator replied, albeit hesitantly.

  “Where is the Viper?”

  “We’ve lost communication.”

  “That’s impossible, all stations priority one, I repeat priority one … someone give me something.” the matronly woman calls out for the whole room to hear, more than a little exasperation in her voice.

  “Her cell-phone camera is on screen now Ma’am.”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Alternate cell phone trace located Ma’am …” another operator calls out from within the large room.

  “Of who?”

  “Closest to targets location.”

  “And?”

  “Activating now on the main screen Ma’am.”

  The woman looks up at the large cinema like screen that dons the main wall of the room, within moments a dull image flashes onto it. The operator has remotely activated the camera on a mobile phone and now relayed its images onto the main control room screen.

  But the vision showed nothing, and the sound was muffled, meaning the cell phone was obviously inside the owner’s pocket, the woman eyed the screen for something of use but quickly dismissed it.

  “Who’s phone are we looking at?”

  “Ma’am, its listed as a company asset.”

  “Name?”

  “C.O.D Resources.”

  “That’s a government, baloney name if I ever heard one, where is target one?”

  Another operator calls out, “Ma’am, trace was completed on all digital assets within five miles, that was the only other one.”

  “Then increase the bloody range!” she bellowed.

  “Activating all momentarily, Ma’am.” came the response.

  “Good.”

  The woman scratched her head as she tried to think of possible solutions to her current predicament. Before she can come up with one though, she’s interrupted by another person. This person is not operating a station though, he’s the only other person walking the floor as the woman was, he is her second in command.

  “Ma’am, the secondary target?” he enquired.

  “Number Two I told you, we are priority one at the moment, I don’t care about the flipping boy ... find our main target!”

  “Ma’am ops have reported him being taken by …” the man was cut off.

  “I said I don’t give a shit, we are priority one on the main target.”

  The man turns quickly after the scolding, returning to a nearby console.

  The woman eyes the main screen, willing for something to appear on it but nothing came, nobody noticed her flinch at the sound of the shouting that was coming via the mobile phones audio, alerting to distress taking place.

  “I need more than bloody audio!” she shouted. “C’mon people!”

  She moved hastily to the centre of a large auditorium style room to be back in the centre of the action. The room was laid out much the same as any surveillance operation, four rows comprising of eight stations are set back from the main screen, which dominates one end of the room. The stations were where operators searched various digital sources on their screens for the woman to navigate through and give directions on.

  Here at Destiny they could search and hack anything digital, anything.

  “Number Two?” the woman called out to the man she’d shut down previously.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Solutions?”

  “Ah ... Nothing, Ma’am. All other devices found in the area are active, we have audio but, but no trace of her.” He irked at his mistake of mentioning that it was a female target, “We have no trace of the targets voice and no video images.” he corrected himself quickly.

  Another man, a bald man, who had been sitting in the back corner of the room, looked up at the mention of it. He says nothing but underneath his round glasses one can see him raise an eyebrow in curiosity.

  “Five?” the woman called out. “What’ve you got for me?”

  “I’m sorry Ma’am ... satellites have temporarily lost video capability. I don’t have a visual.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since this started Ma’am.”

  “What! How?”

  “Not sure, some interference is blocking me. Resetting connections now.” the operator set to work.

  “Hurry it up!” she demanded coldly.

  “Yes Ma’am.”

  “Ma’am, it is Africa. I mean …” the second in command speaks up, trying to plead with her.

  “Not good enough.”

  “Ma’am, Africa just doesn’t have the technological capabilities, I mean ...”

  “Rubbish ... We find the target, understand?” she replied, steadfast in her resolve.

  The woman, taking a moment to think, moved in close to her number two, whispered something in his ear and promptly left the room. The bald man who was in the corner raised an eyebrow as she made for the door, but the look Ma’am returned made him look away cowardly. One could tell that he feared her.

  She moved quickly and deliberately, once outside of the building she exited into an open yard that was set amongst the bush of Australia.

  She crossed the yard quickly and quietly, moving past a second demountable building and behind it into what appeared to be dense forest. Even though it was dark, the woman navigated her way easily though the thicket and came into another clearing that resembled a woodcutter’s abode.

  The area appeared abandoned, as it looked in a state of disarray. Cobwebs covered buildings and corrugated iron surfaces had rusted holes borne into them. Trees had fallen in several places across the large shed structure and the grass had grown high, making it, on the whole, appear a seemingly uninhibited part of the complex.

  The first building was a small wood and iron shed, evidence of logging could be seen around the structure but nobody was in sight. The night sky is blocked by the dense foliage, making it a truly dark and foreboding place. Next to the shed though, a small lamp hangs over another much smaller structure, an old outhouse. A rusty old sign on the outside door stating that it was out of order.

  The woman moved toward it, opened the creaky, rusted iron door, walked in and closed the door behind her. Once inside the small toilet, she looked directly at the top right corner of the outhouse and waited patiently.

  Within moments of the door closing the room changed.

  The toilet started lifting vertically, raising itself up slowly. A low mechanical sound hummed as it rose and once at waist level, a hydraulic lift exposed itself as being the cause for the change.

  As the toilet, clearly a ruse, was lifted high, a stairwell started to reveal itself, tunnelling beneath the structure.

  Once clear, the woman entered the tunnel and disappeared down into its depths, the toilet quickly returned to its original state and the scene back to its abandoned state.

  After descending the dark concreted stairwell, she exited the passage onto a large mezzanine level set above a large underground room, similar in design to the operations room she’d just left. Like the other operations room this one too had a main screen at its forefront and a series of digital stations set up in a semi-circle behind it, in view of the main screen wall.

  But this was no ordinary surveillance operation, this was the real Destiny facility.

  As soon as the woman exited the stairwell onto the mezzanine, she took another set of stairs that brought her to the ground level, the floor of the operations room.

  “Sit-rep!” The woman called out as she descended into the main area.

  “Ma’am we haven’t located the target yet,” a man sitting at a station with the number three on it called out in response.

  “I know that!” she scolded him. “I want secondary action pla
n prepped and ready to go three, understood?”

  “Understood Ma’am.”

  “Five, where are my satellites?”

  “Still nothing Ma’am.”

  “Station eight?”

  “Hmmm?” came a calm reply from a mature aged woman, looking at her screen over her spectacles. “Just woke up,” she said with a yawn.

  Ma’am appeared frustrated by the lack of interest from the other woman and spoke louder and with more authority, “Where’s my target Eight?”

  “Oh, we haven’t been able to find her for ages, not since …” she is cut off.

  “Don’t care, find a trace of her in the thread, anywhere!”

  The woman sitting at Eight doesn’t seem frazzled by the outburst, she keeps at her desk, keying in commands as if she was unaffected by the tone. “I’ll try but it just doesn’t work like that hmmm, and besides she isn’t even part of the thread so, she …”

  “You don’t need her thread to find her,” Ma’am cut her off. “Find any other idiot within the time frame, understood?”

  “Hmmm, searching … understood Ma’am, roger, roger that.” The older lady of Station Eight complied, making a mock salute as she did so.

  Ma’am didn’t react though, she looked around the room quickly to see if anyone was watching her movements. Satisfied nobody was, she moved in closer to the woman and whispered in her ear quietly, “Please Marion, just find her. Find her for me, you’re the only one who can.”

  Checking her watch and realising the time, Ma’am left the station, back in the direction of the stairs she’d come from. It’s a large room, or rather a theatre, much similar to that of a lecture hall.

  A large screen dominated the forefront of the room, with one large main screen and eight alternate, smaller screens running on either side of the large screen. The layout of the room consisted of four console rows of computers, all manned by workers and set in a formation that gradually inclined backwards in a semi-circle. To the rear of the rows and the back of the room, were two identical hexagonal stations that were also manned, it made for an impressive technological sight.

  The rear of the room housed panelled glass, with a couple of rooms that held facilities such as bathrooms and kitchens for the workers. At the floor level there were only two doors, one to the right and the other to the left.

  The door to the right led to a small, glass room that was sealed. The other led down a long corridor that contained a large underground network of staff housing and amenities.

  To the rear of the main room a large steel staircase led back up to the mezzanine level. The mezzanine level was smaller but had a balcony view of the floor, with a couple of small offices to the right hand side. The main feature though, is that it housed the main entrance to the facility, the stairwell that Ma’am had just come through. A large, fully encased steel door now seals it closed from the outside world.

  It was a completely self-contained operations facility, housed secretly underground and separate to the other facility upstairs.

  The woman, known only to the floor operators as Ma’am, quickly ascended the steel stairs to the mezzanine and headed for an office marked as private. There is a guard stationed outside, he acknowledged her presence, opened the door for her and indicated that she was going to have to take a seat and wait.

  She sits in a chair fiddling impatiently and pondered over her dilemma whilst staring at the desk. She is a woman unaccustomed to failure at her post and for the first time in a long time, she feels unsure of herself coming into a meeting with Samuel. More to the point, a situation is unfolding below and she’s anxious to resolve it.

  “We heard that we lost the target in the fold?” the voice of a man called out in a questioning manner from behind her.

  She jumped in her chair, a little startled by his entrance into the office. Damn, he must have been in the bathroom, thought he was in the coffin … “Yes Samuel, we lost the target somehow.” she replied.

  “Well then, no matter. We’re sure you’ll find him.” he waved dismissively, the topic seemingly of no importance to him.

  He moved into the room still drying his wet hands on his business pants, and sat on his office chair behind a large rosewood desk. He wasn’t a man of great height, but he did carry himself with a great dignity, despite the bulge of his stomach. Samuel was one of the founding members of the installation and as a result could be a little pompous about it.

  “We are prepping to launch another causality as a countermeasure Samuel, first event launch was nine years ago, second event is being setup. We estimate contact with subject will occur in seven days if she turns back up.”

  “Sounds intriguing,” Samuel replied, sitting himself down.

  “It was the only way to find her.”

  “Her? We thought we were looking for a him?”

  “My priority target is under some distress.”

  “So what?” he responded as he pulled a packet of sweets from his drawer.

  “So we are trying to resolve the situation as we speak.”

  “How did this happen?” He eyed her warily. “Thought you had her under guard?”

  “Seems we’ve had betrayal of some sort, and only two people knew she was out in the jungle of Africa.”

  “Who’s the contact?” he asked, curious.

  She passed a document folder over to Samuel for him to inspect, “Her brother Mark and a former lover, Peter Friendly. Also, I have to let you know that they are both registered on ASIO servers, so we are being extremely cautious.”

  Something changed in Samuel’s mind at the mention of ASIO and he immediately waved the document folder away. “Inside are details we do not have time to ponder on, all we expect is finality on the subject. This is your project and not ours.”

  “Samuel, I …” he cut her off.

  “And ASIO you say, you know what we think about government involvement!” He shook his head.

  “Of course Samuel,” her teeth grind together. “I know the protocol, no government involvement.”

  “They can’t know what we do here. You messing with government employee’s only spells trouble for us.”

  “I know.”

  “And hey! That Thomas fool upstairs, the government dummy, he’s a spy in case you didn’t know.”

  “What?”

  “Well, we think he is anyway.”

  “You have proof?”

  “Nope, but we could care less about him anyway. But if you’re worried about betrayal or leaked information then we would certainly suggest you consider that one first.” he began to pick at his teeth, scraping furiously at whatever was stuck inside.

  “It makes sense, he’s got a seat upstairs in the control room.” she bit her lip as she thought more about it.

  “Maybe don’t do operations up there then.”

  “Yeah.”

  He eyes Ma’am very inquisitively, as if searching for something. “You seem a little agitated Lucinda, is this one getting to you?” he used her real name.

  She pursed her lips and remained silent, it was a rather daunting situation she was in and Samuel was never entirely predictable in his response to situations. He could sometimes lose his temper and other times would be just as likely to smile and say, I know you’ll take care of it.

  “You must understand Samuel, the amount of resources that have gone into this undertaking have been vast and widespread. I have utilised upstairs to ensure the job gets done …” she was cut off.

  “We have already told you that no government involvement is allowed on projects like these, they already know too much on what we do here. I mean, aren’t they trying to capture her as well?”

  “Yes, but ...”

  “No buts, protecting this facility is always our main priority, right?”

  “Yes.” she replied reluctantly.

&nb
sp; “So don’t mess with it. We’ve eluded them for a reason, stay away from it.”

  “Yes Samuel.”

  “Now what about this kid, the one they call Han Solo?”

  “His name is Harrison.”

  “What’s the story there?”

  “Apparently he hacked the government servers and obtained information on Destiny. We were tracking him and were about to intercept when he disappeared.”

  “In the middle of Sydney!”

  “I know, we had two agents who were following him in the street, plus surveillance. And then all of a sudden he disappears, we back tracked as much information as we could upstairs but as yet have nothing. Downstairs the thread shows nothing on him either, as if he’s disappeared from it too. The last we saw he was crossing a parking garage.”

  “And the agents in pursuit?”

  “They claim he was hit by a car at a parking garage and disappeared after. They haven’t found him or the car since.”

  “So, why can’t downstairs find him?”

  “Resources have been diverted to locate the primary target.”

  “Dammit!” Samuel slammed his fist down on the table. “That girl does not take any priority over that little piss ant kid, do you understand?”

  “That girl is …”

  “We don’t give a crap who she is!” He stood up from his desk. “If anyone discovers us here, discovers what we are doing down here then we’re ruined! It’s bad enough what we do upstairs, but at least the government know about it, if they find out about what we do down here ... we haven’t finished our work here.”

  “They won’t find us.”

  “That kid is one of the best you know, one of the smartest and resourceful hackers we’ve ever seen. He’s the only one to have found our software, hacked it and gleaned information from it. Ever!”

  “He’s not the only one.”

  “Oh crap, not Suni. She worked here and understood how we operate, so she doesn’t surprise me. This kid though ... he had no idea we even existed!”

  “Yes, I’ll admit that he’s got some talent.”