Midnight Zone: a Cade Rearden Thriller

by JK Franks

  “All very interesting, but I’m not seeing the national emergency, here. Where’s the fire?” Cade asked.

  The director nodded. “Cade, the country is going broke. Janus wrecked us politically and economically. Now, someone else may be about to finish us off. There is a disturbing financial aspect weaving almost all of this together. The prevailing theory in D.C. is, at best, it is a very sophisticated attempt to further destabilize America and possibly other world powers. Something that amounts to a financial terrorist attack.”

  “What would be the worst-case scenario, Director?” Cade asked.

  Margaret shook her head. “At worst, Captain, the damage may have already been done. America is currently on some very shaky ground. Politically and financially, many of our allies are very suspicious of our role in what they refer to as The Troubles, and our enemies…well, let’s just say they have their own agenda. Washington thinks someone is about to make a land-grab. Best bet is that Russia wants Mid-East oil fields. They need the U.S. to stay weak, and starving us from oil would hurt us in ways we can only imagine.”

  Margaret looked around the room. “Personally, I think that is bullshit. We have plenty of oil, as does Russia, at least for now. I believe we are looking at a new player, someone possibly not state sponsored, who has quietly been building his or her organization, waiting for the right time to make a play. Waiting for America to be on its knees. That time, people, is now, and we are the first line and the last line of defense.”

  12

  The analyst persona was bubbling rapidly to the surface of Cade’s consciousness. Although normally reclusive, the highly intelligent team at The Cove seemed to draw him out with increasing frequency. Cade had taken to referring to this entity as Ace, and right now, it was pissing Margaret off by thumbing back through the briefing images to some truly graphic images of dead sea creatures on a beach. The photo looked like it may have been from a cell phone.

  Riley smiled and nodded. She liked Cade’s analyst personality, and she felt confident this was the persona driving right now. He was sharp, factual, and offered a clarity that tended to cut through the bullshit. “What are you thinking?” she asked him.

  Cade looked back at the image, Ace apparently also looking for a clue, or perhaps grasping the subtle familiarity that had escaped his host. “What other things were in that file fragment?”

  “File fragment, Captain?” Margaret asked, a look of confusion etched across her face.

  “Um, yes, one of you told me Janus got a look at the alien message or a fragment of it. What was in it?”

  “Janus,” Riley said slowly. The name itself seemed to be distasteful to her.

  Time stretched out as the faces stared at one another, then back at him. Margaret Stansfield carefully picked up a pen and made a note on her pad. Riley picked up the explanation. “We know when Janus destroyed an earlier version of Doris, Version 1.0, she had a fragment of the alien message, a message decrypted from an alien broadcast that held the potential of nearly unlimited technological advances. The contents of that message fragment encompassed several elements. While I doubt anyone that has it could have made as much headway in cracking it as us, we can’t guarantee that we are the only ones with it. You’re suggesting that perhaps someone used a bit of that to create something that’s behind all of this?” She directed the question to Ace as she waved up to the display behind her.

  Cade wasn’t at all sure where Ace was going with this. He was just along for the ride. “Not suggesting anything, just asking a question.”

  Doris’s avatar projected toward the front of the table. She rarely did this anymore since Margaret was in charge of operations and was the de facto head of The Cove Project. “Captain, the fragment was part of a primer. In the first part of the alien message, the Dhakerri used to teach us the basics, so we could decode and understand the next piece. I can provide you a list, but it included advanced mathematics, including a more robust interpretation of non-Einsteinian space-time. Various new materials development, such as our composite polysteel, radical new extreme pressure vessel design, and various substrates such as the liquid purification, gas extraction methods, geothermal heat exchange systems, and so on. Rather mundane by the standards of all the high-tech that came after, but still very revolutionary.”

  “Seems like an unusual mix for a first lesson,” Cade said.

  “Indeed, it was,” Doris responded. “My assumption then, and I believe it still holds true, is that they, the Dhakerri that is, find that many of the new species with whom they contact, critically need one, or perhaps many, of these technologies. Maybe even have a desperate need for survival. In our case, it was a way to defeat an AI threat. Other species may need to develop advanced space travel more quickly, harness alternative energy sources, or just simple, pure liquid water. The primer seems to be basic tech to them and is offered as a gift and an enticement to decode the rest.”

  “Like a cheap knife set the bank gives you for opening a new account?”

  “Well, no, but maybe, Captain. It was an enticement. Something too good to ignore,” Doris answered.

  “Director, I think it’s safe to say that someone else likely has this primer, also.” Cade pointed at the timeline slide on the display. “Some of these, um, events seem to originate prior to Janus. Hell, before Doris even received the alien message. How would that be possible?” Ace offered this up as his apparent final thought on the matter.

  “What’s our next step?” Cade added.

  “We investigate…we assess, we correct,” answered the director. “Washington is calling it Project Outfield, and it is more along the lines of our charter, closer to the purpose of which we were formed—we need to make it count,” she said slowly, motioning at the maps again up on the screen. “Something big is in play, people. Lastly, we may have a line on someone who could know some of what is going on.”

  ”What—a spook? You found Golette?” Cade asked.

  “No, no, someone else,” Margaret explained. “More of a privateer. He’s presumably American but carried out missions for whoever paid the best. He is totally off the radar; we never even knew an actual name. He was in the mission briefing and may have had ties to Project Saraph or Golette, as well as tracking down a group of missing scientists several years ago, which our analyst in Washington now thinks may be linked to all this. This could be nothing, or as we learned from Janus, it could be a distraction. The point is, the president wants to know for sure, which means I want to know. America is bleeding money right now. Six months from now, we may join the list of third-world countries if this doesn’t end.

  “We have been given a mission, and it is to run down these events and backtrack them to their source. This may take every team we have, so spin up everybody available. Captain, Sergeant Taylor, and I will handle the assignments, but I want you and a small strike team to go find this asset. I want wheels up by 0700.”

  The meeting ended with everyone leaving Margaret at the table, reassembling her notes. “Director,” Doris said, “can I ask why you only provided part of the intelligence to the team?”

  “It was a tactical decision, Doris,” she said without looking up. “It would have only muddied the water, and I believe could perpetuate a confirmation bias. Are you familiar with the concept?”

  “I am familiar with all twelve forms of cognitive biases,” Doris replied curtly. “I am not sure I see the connection, though. Rearden was brought in by me, and I have committed to be honest with him in my dealings.”

  “Doris, we both know the captain is more of an ensemble than an individual. The analyst in him believes there is a connection to Janus, possibly to the alien message. If he begins down that path, every clue he finds may reinforce that belief, and in doing so, cause him to ignore a potential greater truth. It is a very human thing, Doris, not something easily explained or quantified, but I made a gut decision.” She began to exit the conference room, but stopped and turned before adding, “The captain will see if
there is a link.”

  13

  Caribbean

  Ivan was worried, something that he was unaccustomed to. While outwardly, his persona had been of an outrageously successful self-made man, the truth was much more complicated. Right now, he looked like a man with a mission, and that part was accurate. By most accounts, he’d already lost everything important, his family, his company, his reputation, and by numerous normally reliable accounts—his life. Despite that…or more likely because of it, he sat in his office now planning his next steps. A soft chime beeped from his phone. The voice from the built-in intercom announced, “Mister Thrall, your guest has arrived, docking port four.”

  He acknowledged receipt and glanced up at the primary monitor. The scene showed something resembling a remora, or flattened torpedo-shaped object, entering through the outer hull several levels deeper in the complex. This will be a challenging few days, he thought as he made his way to the elevator.

  “Thrall!” the voice called out minutes later as the burly man crawled from the cramped confines of the Corsair submersible. “Looking good, my friend…for a dead man, I mean.” The thick Texas drawl was artificial and seemed particularly out-of-place down here.

  “Richard, still the charmer I see,” Ivan said, grasping the man firmly in an embrace. “Welcome, my friend, to the Midnight Zone. Welcome to Kalypso.” The two men separated as the Texan looked anxiously around the sealed chamber.

  “Where are the others?” Richard asked.

  “Coming,” Thrall answered. “I wanted to talk with you first, Richard. Things …”

  “The shit went sideways, Buckaroo, no need to pussy-foot around the facts,” the Texan said.

  Thrall nodded; his visitor was quite right. Richard Goldman was more than just one of the money-men, someone who’s trust and faith he couldn’t afford to lose. While Thrall had been wildly successful building his tech company, Richard seemed to have the gift of pulling fortunes from thin air. Bucking the trend of most Texas billionaires, none of his investments were in oil. Richard preferred to invest in people, those he believed in. Thrall had benefitted greatly from that trust over the years.

  “Hell of a place. Glad to see all the millions didn’t go to waste.”

  More like billions, Thrall thought. “Let me give you the nickel tour,” he said, touching the big man lightly on the arm to guide him to the door.

  Twenty minutes later, the two men sat alone at a small, mahogany table. “This is the cupola,” Thrall said, pointing to the massive convex window that dominated the adjacent wall. The men sipped on drinks as they stared out into the black abyss.

  “I always wondered why windows were needed down here. It would be the structural weak point, but I think I get it now.”

  While almost every exterior wall panel in this part of the facility was, in fact, a display of the scene outside, very few actual windows looked out into the depths. This was by far the largest. “The cameras and displays are good,” Ivan said. “The best—but some things just are better seen by human eyes. If this were regular polycarbonate, it would need to be four feet thick, embedded deeply into the side walls, and most likely, the viewable portion would be no larger than your head.”

  As it was, the slightly convex oval window reached nearly from floor to ceiling. With a small gesture, Thrall dimmed the interior lights and then slowly faded to dark. Everything inside the cupola space was black other than a few tiny strips of ambient glowing dots indicating the door. “Give it a few minutes, Richard, you know, for your eyes to adjust.”

  Goldman knew no sunlight penetrated this deep. They originally constructed a portion of the lab long ago for other purposes. Acquiring it had been ridiculously easy, as were the newer portions that had been built in various dry docks, then towed out to sea separately for construction. While the component parts resembled common ocean platforms, oil rigs, deep sea habitats, or automated research stations, none of the assembly crews knew what they were really building, nor where it would wind up. The Kalypso lab was generally oval, larger than a cruise ship, and was now positioned far from its point of origin and almost 3000 meters below the ocean’s surface. Richard tried hard not to think of all that water above. The pressures here were immense, the craft could never have been constructed without some very new techniques and materials.

  “You see?”

  Ivan’s whispered voice coming from darkness interrupted Richard’s thoughts.

  Looking to where he assumed the cupola window was, which was nearly as black as the room, Richard could just begin to see. At first just a flicker of light here and there. Mostly faint blues and greens, occasionally a pinkish red. “Bioluminescence,” he said in a near whisper. He knew the creatures at this depth often made their own light. Possibly to find mates, attract prey, or to signal something to others of their kind.

  Slowly, as Richard’s eyes fully adjusted to the darkness, he realized the water outside was filled with life, with light. All manner of it. Schools of small glowing fish swam by the bubble of glass, their skeletal structure shown in green glowing outlines. He let out an audible gasp as a darker shape cruised through the schooling neon fish. Some creatures’ light shows pulsed with a hypnotic rhythm, others stayed on. A glowing cloud that resembled falling snow drifted past near the visual edge of what they could see. “It’s beautiful, my friend,” he said, leaning forward, his face just inches away from the inside of the window, all thoughts of where he was now absent from his mind.

  Thrall had planned this moment; he knew the effect it would have on his friend. It had been the same with him the first time he saw it, and the hundredth. He remained silent for several more minutes, not wanting to break the magical spell of their location here in the Midnight Zone. Finally, he sat the empty tumbler back on the table, the large exposed ice cube clinking softly as he did so. “We think they are attracted to the structure for shelter, and perhaps they can detect the energy inside. Not sure, but they began congregating outside almost from the very beginning.”

  Richard could now see larger and smaller creatures in the mix. Some so delicate and dim they looked like apparitions, yet many had patterns so intricate, so beautiful, that he could barely express the joy in seeing them. “Nature is a marvelous artist,” he whispered.

  They sat in near silence for almost thirty minutes. Occasionally, one of them would point out a new or particularly interesting creature as it swam by. “It is amazing, isn’t it?”

  Richard nodded enthusiastically as Thrall continued, “Few people have ever seen this. Most humans that get to this depth are locked behind reinforced pressure hulls, coffins of reinforced steel. Even our new undersea rovers with their remote HD cameras can’t really do it justice. The Kalypso is the only platform that will work to truly study the deep ocean. If you were to trap any of those,” he pointed to the already dimming sea creatures outside, “and took them to the surface, they would look dull and gray or white, many would simply dissolve because of the rapid pressure changes.”

  Richard nodded in agreement, unsure if his partner could see the gesture in the dim light from outside. Steeling himself, he asked the question that had been on his mind since beginning the journey down, “Is it out there?”

  Ivan didn’t respond right away. Slowly, he offered an almost whispered reply, “Yes, my friend. Two of them. Always they patrol, always they hunt.”

  Nervous excitement coursed through the Texan’s body. “I haven’t seen one fully grown yet. It was quite small the last time we visited.”

  Thrall took out his phone, and Richard heard his finger making contact on the screen. “Look high and to your right. I will send it a feeding alert. Normally, they will signal.”

  “Holy shit! Jesus fucking Christ, Thrall!” The creature came into view, flashing bright blue for just a moment. Unlike the other sea life, though, it was so bright it lit the entire room. The afterimage seemed etched in Richard’s retina. Glowing spike-covered tentacles ending in hooked claws, a blunted head, and tapered body
, followed by a tail that looked nothing like any sea creature he’d ever seen. “It is huge, like the size of a city bus. I had no idea.”

  “About forty meters, yes. And…we are not even sure if it has stopped growing. The science team now believes they keep growing throughout their life cycle. Its metabolism rate seems to have slowed somewhat, though, possibly due to the lower quantity of food we are providing.”

  “But it is a predator, no? It can hunt its food.” Richard said it more like a question.

  “Oh, yes, it very much loves to hunt and eat. Its biologic system is complexly incompatible with our biosphere, though. It cannot metabolize anything out there except the food we make for it. That doesn’t stop it from trying, though. It has some interesting evolutionary advantages to make it an apex hunter. Be glad you are in here, my friend.”

  As their late lead scientist had learned the hard way, thought Richard. A shiver ran through his large body. He was glad Thrall couldn’t see. “You wanted to speak with me, Ivan,” Richard said flatly. “I assume it is about the next phase?”

  Thrall nodded somewhat reluctantly as he brought the lights back up. In reality, there were multiple reasons for this lab being down here. One was proximity in the deep ocean, a requirement for much of the inner workings of the facility and its ongoing research. The other was secrecy. Literally nothing man-made could detect them at this depth. The hull was a special lattice composite that absorbed sonar waves. No energy signatures escaped, no sound, heat, light, nothing that would give them away. Isolation and invisibility were the top priority for Kalypso and Project Angel, and it was vital for their work to continue unabated. The third thing, well, that was the main reason they were meeting today.

  “So, tell me, Richard, have you found a replacement for Aksell yet?” The Texan had murky connections all over and co-ownership of more than one paramilitary group that supplied professional soldiers and security teams to hotspots around the world.