ATLANTIS

by Greg Donegan

  Lisa Carpenter was also new. She was the computer expert and electronic troubleshooter. A black woman in her early thirties, she had a bulky, athletic build, with hair cut tight against her skull. She was seated at her console just below Ariana's position, looking up, her face betraying nothing of what she felt, waiting on her next instructions.

  The last member was Peter Mansor, the imaging specialist. He was the one who had bandaged Hudson's legs, using his experience from two tours of duty in the military where he had been a helicopter pilot. Mansor had been on several missions with Ariana and she knew he was steady if somewhat unimaginative.

  “All right,” she said, feeling the focus of six sets of eyes on her. “What do we have in here other than the food, water and first aid kits?”

  “A lot of computers, communications and imaging equipment,” Ingram said dryly.

  “Which we can run only as long as we have power,” Lisa Carpenter added.

  “What good does that do us?” Herrin asked irritably. “Computers aren't going to get us out of this.”

  “Communications might,” Hudson said.

  “Status of that?” Ariana asked him.

  “I've got nothing right now,” Hudson said. “I've tried sending but we lost our HF antenna in the crash. It was on the roof of the cockpit. I can't access the SATCOM dish on the rotodome. Diagnostics tells me the cable from my radio to the dish has been cut.”

  “Cut?” Ariana repeated.

  “Probably severed in the crash.” Hudson looked up at the roof of the cabin. “Hell, the rotodome with the dish might not even be up there any more.”

  “What else?” Ariana asked, not wanting to dwell on the external condition of the plane.

  Hudson ran a hand over his wounded legs, grimacing. “FM is pretty worthless as it's limited by the horizon. If someone comes close, it might work. Our FM antenna still seems to be attached.”

  “There are search teams looking for us,” Ariana said. “So keep the FM ready and broadcast every once in a while.”

  Hudson nodded.

  “Maybe we should leave here and look for the search parties,” Daley suggested.

  Ariana looked at Mansor who had been trained for such situations in the military.

  The former pilot firmly shook his head. “No. We stay with the plane. That's a basic law of survival training. You always stay with the plane. It’s the best way to get found. It’s a lot easier to find a downed plane than a small group of people wandering around in the jungle.”

  Herrin laughed, a manic edge to it. “I'm not going out there.” He jerked his head toward the cockpit. “We'll end up like Craight.”

  “What exactly did happen to Craight?” Hudson asked.

  Ariana glanced at Ingram but for once he had nothing to offer. “We don't know any more than we told you earlier.” Ariana had not wanted the conversation to go in that direction but she knew it wasn't something she could avoid forever. “Right now we worry about what is inside here. We seem to be safe for the moment.”

  Ariana had no desire to open the door leading to the cockpit again. They had the regular door in the left front and the emergency hatches over both wings and one on the roof, but she didn't want to open any of those until they absolutely had to.

  “You don't have a clue do you?” Herrin demanded. “You don't know what's going on, do you?”

  “Let's take this one step at a time,” Ariana said.

  “One step at a time? We've goddamn crashed!” Herrin exclaimed. “Craight is dead, his hand cut off and according to you he was whisked away by some sort of strange beam. John died in the crash, his neck broken. The pilots and navigator are dead. We don't know where we are or how we got here. Something's out there! Something that wants us!”

  “Shut up, Mike,” Peter Mansor said it in a low level, but in a tone that seemed to get through to the other man. “Running around screaming and yelling isn't going to do a thing for us right now.”

  Herrin moaned and sat down, his head in his hands.

  Ariana knew she had to get them on some sort of productive path, if only to take their mind off their predicament. “Anyone have any idea what happened to cause us to crash?” she asked.

  “The pilots reported losing power and instruments,” Ingram said.

  “Why?” Ariana asked.

  Ingram shrugged. “Could be an on-board computer failure.”

  Ariana looked at Carpenter. “Can you run through data on the main computer and check that?”

  “The mainframe system went down just before we did,” Carpenter said. “I'm going to have to reboot Argus. We can't be sure that its hardware wasn't damaged in the crash and we also can't be sure that Argus will reboot.”

  “Just try, Lisa,” Ariana said

  Carpenter turned to her computer and began to work.

  “How much power do we have in the plane's batteries?” Ariana asked.

  “If we just use computers and lights,” Ingram said, “we ought to have about fifteen hours worth. If we turn lighting down to emergency levels, we can up that to about fifty or sixty hours.”

  “Let's get lighting down to just the emergency setting,” Ariana ordered.

  “I'll have to do a systems check to make sure nothing else is drawing power,” Ingram said.

  “Do it.”

  Ingram threw a switch on the console he was at and the interior went dark except for several red lamps every ten feet or so. In the dim glow, Ariana looked around. “I want you all to go to your stations. I want to know what caused the crash. And I want to get an idea of what’s going on outside of this plane without actually going out there. Clear?”

  There were no verbal replies, just everyone heading back to their places, Mansor helping Hudson forward to the commo area. Ariana followed and after Mansor left, she took the other seat and spoke so only he heard her. “If we get a cable run to the satellite dish, can you make contact with the IIC?”

  Hudson shrugged. “I don't know. I lost SATCOM before we crashed so even if we get a cable from my radio to the dish, if the dish is still there, it still might not work. And who is going out there,” he pointed to the roof of the plane, “to run the cable?”

  “We might have to do that,” Ariana said, “but not yet. I just want to know what my options are. Keep monitoring FM. There are search parties out there.”

  “We lost FM too before the crash,” Hudson pointed out.

  Ariana leaned close. “Just because we lost it then, doesn't mean it's down now, right?”

  “Well--” Hudson began, but she cut him off.

  “Your job is communications. The only way we're getting out of here is by talking to someone, so I don't want to hear what you can't do, I want to know what you can do. Clear?”

  Hudson's jaw quivered and his hands went down to his wounded legs. “Clear,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Good.” Ariana put a hand on his shoulder. “I know you’re hurting, but we need you Mitch. Hang tough.”

  “Yeah,” Hudson turned his back to her.

  Ariana left him and went to console area.

  “I've got something strange,” Carpenter called out as she walked in. Ariana and Mark Ingram hurried over to her position.

  “What is it?” Ariana asked.

  Carpenter was staring at her screen. “You turned on the emergency program to get the lights on,” she said. “That's run off a separate, smaller, back-up computer from the mainframe to keep the two systems from contaminating each other in case one gets a virus or malfunctions.”

  “I know that,” Ariana said.

  Carpenter looked at both of them. “I took Argus off-line just before we crashed, but--” she paused.

  “But what?”

  “But it didn't go off. It's been on this whole time.”

  Ariana frowned. “So?”

  “Well, first, it should be off. I know I hit the shut-down. But that’s only the first weird thing.” Carpenter pointed a long black finger at the massive racks containin
g the hardware for Argus. “It's on and I can't access it.”

  “I don't understand,” Ingram said. “What's it doing?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Take a guess,” Ariana pressed.

  Carpenter frowned. “Well, it's like someone's taken it over. Maybe planted a Trojan Horse program in it that got activated or, I don't know, sending commands into it some other way.”

  “Hie-Tech,” Ariana muttered. “Could that have been what caused the crash?”

  “I don't know,” Carpenter said. “I don't think so, but it's possible.”

  Ariana pointed at the computer. “Shut it down.”

  “I told you I can’t get access from my console. The only way I can do that now,” Carpenter said, “is to cut the power coupling going to Argus's base unit. Pull the plug.”

  “Do it.”

  As Carpenter walked over to the racks, Ariana walked Ingram to his position. “What do you have?”

  “I'm putting together the data we recorded just before we went down off of tapes,” Ingram said. His eyes were on his screen. “As you know we lost SATCOM, GPR, and FM first. I've got our last transmissions and our last GPR position. After--” he paused, squinting at the screen.

  “What?” Ariana prompted him.

  “There's something funny about the GPR data,” Ingram said.

  Ariana frowned. The GPR was just a link from the plane to the nearest three global positioning satellites that gave them their location. She waited as Ingram worked his computer.

  “Someone piggybacked on the GPR signal in and out,” he finally said.

  “What does that mean?” Ariana asked.

  “It means someone in the crew was sending a secret message out that we weren't supposed to know about,” Hudson said. “Someone was sending our data to another location via the GPS satellites just as we were sending it to the IIC.” He looked up at her. “We have a spy on board.”

  “Great,” Ariana muttered.

  “Oh God!” the yell came from the computer racks.

  Ariana raced there, the others following. Lisa Carpenter held a gray panel in her hand, but she was frozen, staring at the bulky metal rectangles that held the core of Argus.

  Ariana immediately saw what had caused Carpenter's reaction: a golden beam about eight inches in diameter had punched through the skin of the plane underneath the main computer console. A foot from the computer hardware, the beam split into four smaller lines of two inches diameter, each one going into a different box. The gold lines pulsed and rippled and as they watched a new two inch line split from the main beam and probed its way blindly to the left, finally hitting another piece of Argus. There was a brief hiss, then the line was in. The main gold beam widened by a couple of inches.

  “What the hell is that?” Ariana demanded.

  “I have no idea,” Carpenter said. “But I know why I can't access Argus now. This thing is taking control of it.”

  “Cut the power!” Ariana ordered.

  Carpenter pointed at a black cable lying on the floor. “I already did that.

  Whatever that thing is, it's not only controlling the mainframe but it’s also powering Argus.”

  *****

  Conners had given the order for the satellite carrying Bright Eye to change orbit over twenty minutes ago. Since it was in a fast polar orbit, execution required a firing of booster rockets to maneuver the angle of flight over the target area. The computer told her that she had a TOT of another twenty-two minutes before Bright Eye made the pass, which gave her time to reflect on the secretive history of the equipment she was about to use.

  She knew that Bright Eye had gone into orbit a little over a year ago. Although Star Wars had been officially cut when the Democrats took over the White House as part of the ‘peace dividend’, Conners knew what had really happened. The Black Budget people had simply kept Star Wars, renaming it the Odysseus Program, and kept eighty percent of the funded programs alive behind a veil of secrecy that had existed in bureaucratic Washington ever since the end of World War II.

  Conners knew now that the military-industrial complex Eisenhower had railed against as he left office had been only the tip of the iceberg. Very little of what was really going on was visible to the public eye. Billions and billions were spent every year on classified work and the War on Terror insured that it would continue indefinitely.

  What Conners also knew, having worked at the National Security Agency and being affiliated with the NRO, National Reconnaissance Office, which oversaw almost two-thirds of Black Budget operations, that many of these projects were valid national security endeavors and not a waste of money. In fact, many great strides had been made in varied scientific fields through Odysseus Projects, the results slowly filtered out to the rest of the scientific community to not draw suspicion.

  Much of the laser work for Bright Eye project had helped other scientists in the medical field. But no one outside of the intelligence community had any idea that something like Bright Eye was beyond the conceptual stage and actually in orbit.

  Bright Eye had evolved from a Navy program, which in itself had begun with a problem that needed to be solved. With the growing advancement in the threat posed by submarines, particularly missile carrying ones, the Navy had begun to place greater and greater emphasis on being able to track enemy submarines, especially those that carried ballistic missiles.

  The first step in that process had started in the fifties and sixties when the Navy had developed a sound surveillance system, codenamed SOSUS, to track submarines. The first SOSUS systems were laid along the Atlantic Coast. Then the Navy put in a SOSUS system codenamed Colossus along the Pacific Coast. Then, with further advances in technology, the Navy moved part of the system toward Russia to catch Soviet subs as they put to sea, putting systems off the two major Russian submarine ports at Polyarnyy and Petropavlovsk.

  Over the years the Navy added to the SOSUS system. They put a line of hydrophones off Hawaii in the Pacific. Each of these individual listening devices was as large as an oil storage tank, towed out to the designated point, sunk to the bottom of the ocean and linked by buried cable to the next listening device in line, eventually being brought to shore in Hawaii, an intricate and expensive project.

  Then, having achieved the ability to listen to activity in both major oceans, the Navy went a step further, tying the various systems together. Prior to that, SOSUS could only give a rough idea of a sub’s location. By linking the various systems, the Navy could now pinpoint the exact location of any sound emitter in the ocean using triangulation from various SOSUS systems. The Navy hooked all the SOSUS systems together using FLTSATCOM--the Fleet Satellite Communication System and downlinked it all to a computer at Fleet Headquarters.

  All in all, a most efficient system, Conners knew, except for one major problem the Navy had had from the very beginning: they could tell where submarines were, but the system couldn't tell if the submarine contact was friendly or enemy. When Conners had first heard of that problem she had wondered why it was a problem at all, since she had assumed, as most people did, that the Navy knew where all its submarines were and if it wasn't ours, then it must be their's.

  She was surprised to learn that the Navy didn't know the specific locations of its own submarines for a deliberate reason: to insure their security.

  The boomers, as the Navy called them, patrolled at the discretion of their own skippers within a large designated area. That way no one could find them. But the Navy realized after hooking the SOSUS system together that they had to be able to tell friendly subs from unfriendly or else they could end up sinking their own submarines in time of war.

  The solution to that problem became the seed idea for Bright Eye. Some whiz kid at a Navy lab happened on the answer, which at first was greeted with disbelief. Every US and NATO sub was given an ID code which was painted in large letters and numbers with a special laser reflective paint on the upper deck. The Navy could read the codes by pinpointing a sub's location usin
g the SOSUS, then using one of the FLTSATCOM satellites firing a laser downlink. Using a high intensity blue-green light, the laser could penetrate the ocean to submarine depth. The paint reflected the laser beam and the satellite picked up the reflection, forwarding the code to fleet headquarters. No code was a bad guy.

  The Odysseus scientists studied the results of this laser program. The key to Star Wars had always been finding and tracking enemy planes and missiles in the first place. You couldn’t hit it if you couldn’t find it. Surveillance was the critical link and they were looking for the next step beyond the infrared and thermal imaging used aboard the KH-12. Lasers, operating at the speed of light and capable of great power, seemed the next logical progression and thus Bright Eye was born.

  Bright Eye consisted of a large circle of laser emitters. By varying the focal length of the emitters, the operators could vary the color of the beam emitted. Using a special computer, the lasers could cycle through a spectrum of colors in rapid succession. Depending on what colors were reflected and how quickly, an accurate view of Bright Eye’s focus could be developed. The advantage of the lasers over other emitters was their more powerful beam could cut through severe weather conditions. They were also effective at night. Having a power source in orbit strong enough to fire the lasers from orbit down to Earth was solved by lifting a small nuclear reactor into space, a move made in the utmost secrecy. There was of course the possibility of nuclear disaster if the launch vehicle had exploded going into orbit. Fortunately, no mishaps had occurred.

  The second problem was a substantial one. The lasers were so powerful that they would blind any humans in the area who happened to look up into the beams at the moment they came down; therefore Bright Star’s use was limited.

  And this was why Conners had gone to Konrad. She didn't want to be responsible for hundreds, if not thousands of blinded Cambodians.