Midnight Zone: a Cade Rearden Thriller

by JK Franks

  Izzy shook her head and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

  Margaret continued, “Anyone else around at that time? People that weren’t on the payroll, or maybe ones that never got introduced to you?”

  “Lots of people,” Izzy said. “Ivan was becoming a media darling at that point. He was handsome, smart, and successful. Every few days, people were being shown through the place, and of course, the military guys, although they usually went out to one of the remote worksites.”

  “Remote sites?” Margaret asked. “I don’t recall ever seeing any of those mentioned in any of the filings. I know Cryptus leased rack space at a number of large server farms and mirror sites but never owned any of them.”

  “Yeah. There were several black sites, mostly for the top-secret work. Our offices would never have been secure enough for that. Thrall has a penchant for getting what he needs, then tossing it away when it’s served its purpose. I’m sure they simply liquidated them as the DOD contracts collapsed or were completed. Some of them were purpose-built, we simply referred to the black sites by their station number.”

  “What went on in these remote sites? You were a supervising project director. Surely you had access to them.”

  “I had the clearances; I didn’t have the authority,” corrected Izzy. “Most of them were fairly easy to guess at just based on the supplies requested and the kind of people they had working there. I had to review allocation budgets, so I saw all of that. I know one dealt primarily with voice recognition, which was fairly rudimentary back in those days. It didn’t last long, as we wound up acquiring a startup company instead. They had already figured most of the vocalization issues out.

  “Other stations were more challenging to understand, although I could, and did, take guesses. Everything but Site 21, that was by far our biggest budget expense outside of the AI labs.”

  Margaret looked up; this could be the one item worth pushing her friend for. Something that had never shown up in any of the files or court filings. “Any idea where it was, what kind of people were assigned there?”

  Izzy replied, “That’s just it, I could never put my finger on it. Lots and lots of computers, mostly supercomputers. Way more than the other sites, but then a lot of medical lab type equipment. Unbelievably expensive stuff with names I could barely pronounce. We employed several thousand by that time, so I didn’t actually have to approve anything directly, but what I saw painted a strange picture. I couldn’t reconcile it with our core mission of developing a high-functioning artificial intelligence, what turned out to be Janus. I once accused Ivan of building a cyborg army out there, and he just laughed and said, ‘Shh…don’t tell anyone else you figured it out.’”

  Izzy stood and walked down to the riverbank, then several paces downstream before turning and walking back. “There was a guy I had to deal with occasionally. I never went to Site 21, no idea where it even was, but a man came by the office a few times, normally when he needed something official or something handled by our legal department.”

  “What was his name?”

  “That’s just it, Margaret, I don’t think he ever said. Ivan may have introduced us, but I only remember him being called Richard. Big barrel-chested fella, thick Texas accent. Only thing was, he didn’t look like a Richard …or a Texan. You know?”

  Margaret flipped through several dozen photos, known associates and investors of Thrall that Doris had curated for her.

  “No, none of those,” Izzy said. “Dark hair, usually a beard. Looked kind of ethnic, you know, maybe some Italian in his lineage.” She leaned up on the table, her nerves apparently calming somewhat. “I don’t know. Sorry, wish I could help more.” She then got a faraway look. “Wait…”

  “What, hon, you remember something else?” asked Margaret.

  “Uh, probably nothing. I remember telling him ‘Merry Christmas’ one December when he was leaving, but he responded with ‘Chag Sameach.’ First, I thought he said, ‘Thanks so much,’ but later, I realized he was telling me Happy Holidays in Hebrew. I wondered then if maybe he was Jewish.”

  Now she had Margaret’s attention. The director had to know what all went on at Site 21 and who the Jewish man they called Richard really was. On a whim, she pulled up an old black-and-white photo, possibly of Ishel Golette, that Doris had managed to find. Triggering her personal Dee, she had it add a beard to the face in the image. Holding the SmartCom up so Izzy could see, she asked, “Does he look familiar? Could Richard possibly have been this man’s son? The other woman studied the image and eventually nodded. “Maybe, yeah, it could be…”

  69

  Caribbean

  Captain Cade Rearden was not a happy soldier, very far from it, in fact. Despite his flaws and his internal ghosts, he knew he was a good warrior. He was a man of action, a very capable man. Like most good soldiers, he just needed something to shoot at. Right now, they didn’t have that. Director Stansfield had also changed the MO from search and rescue to taking the Kalypso by whatever means necessary. She had determined its very existence was an imminent threat, although seemed to have no clue as to the why or how.

  “Those are my people down there, Nomad. Trondo, Nance, Coffee and hell, even Kissa. Good men and women, good soldiers,” Charlie stated.

  Cade lifted his palms up. “Our people, Charlie. Our soldiers.” Truthfully, he was charged with all of their safety. Something he did not take lightly. Yes, it was a dangerous business, but part of that code is, you didn’t leave a brother-in-arms behind. Not if you could prevent it. Also, Kissa wasn’t a soldier, not anymore. Kissa or Warlock as her had been known back then had been a hell of a goo9d one. Maybe he still had that warrior spirit burning deep inside.

  “Have you gone through the new equipment Riley sent?”

  The sergeant nodded.

  “Yeah, it's all there, but not like any of us understand it, no training yet in any of it.”

  “The Cove is modeling it into the ReLoad update now—they’ll have us familiar with it before we deploy,” Cade answered. In truth, he was just as worried. Nothing beat experience and familiarity. While he’d grown to trust the technology literally with his life, the muscle memory and instinct for your equipment’s capabilities only really became engrained with endless drills and training.

  “What about the missing dive suits?” Charlie asked.

  Cade shook his head, worried. “I don’t know, they’re fabricating them as fast as possible, but the window of time seems to be shrinking. How many do we have now?”

  “Six.”

  Jimmy and Alan had come down from The Cove on a C130 with the first two of Riley’s Jackknife XOD dive suits as well as one of The Cove’s largest 3D fabricators. The dive suit was unlike anything anyone had ever seen, and they were doing all they could to keep some curious Navy boys away from the converted warehouse where they were being assembled.

  Traditional exo-hardsuits for deep water or saturation diving were like miniature personal submarines. Thick steel, bulky arms and legs with joints that severely limited most movement. They usually clam-shelled open, and the divers were bolted inside. They were so heavy; the diver needed a crane to raise and lower them to the water. Those suits would not allow for anything resembling combat, and most of these were only rated for around 1000 feet, max.

  The Kalypso could be down ten times that far, so Doris and the wizkids had come up with something else. Thankfully, the Dhakerri had already provided them with some unique ways of creating extreme pressure vessels. The Jacknife XODs were the result.

  With these, they would be suiting up in what looked like a futuristic version of an Ironman suit. The white, polysteel body took some work to get into. Each had a built-in atmospheric containment system, a powerful set of thrusters, weapons systems, light array, and more. All this in something sleeker than any traditional spacesuits.

  One way the ‘kids’ had made these suits small and maneuverable was eliminating the bulky breathable air system. Instead of tanks, they had
a regenerative gas device that could extract oxygen directly from water. The tiny system mechanically replicated what the gills of fish do naturally. They would have to carry onboard oxygen supplies for just the first part of the mission, as the system wouldn’t work in normal atmosphere. The depth rating of the XODs was theoretically unlimited as long as they weren’t damaged. The aliens had apparently found intelligent life living fine on planets with intense pressures and studied how life would adapt to handle such environments. The fact that this was in the unencrypted portion of the primer indicated it was probably so basic that any intelligent species should know it. That also meant they must assume Thrall and the occupants of Kalypso might have it.

  Cade really hoped not. In the last year, he’d gotten used to having an edge, either a technical or an intelligence advantage over an enemy. Now, they would likely assault a superior force in a battle space that was much more familiar to the enemy. “Okay, Deuce, who’s on the initial assault team?”

  Sergeant Charlie Taylor spelled it out—who was in, who was out. If they deployed today, it would be six that could attack at depth, another six could descend to about a thousand feet in a modified Rapide Submersible version of the standard BattleSuit, not as good, but still helpful. If they could get the damn enemy vessel near the surface, they would have nearly two full teams. Cade moved two people from the roster to the reserve team and made substitutions, one of which Charlie strongly disagreed with.

  “Why, Nomad?” he asked when they were alone.

  “You know damn well why. They’re smarter than us, we’re not going to beat Thrall with guns. You can damn well bet he has more firepower than we’ll be able to take. It has to be one of the kids. So far, we’ve worked with all of them in the field, except Jimmy. They’ve proven themselves. Shit, Alan saved my life last week. We have to have the smartest kids in the room, and even then, I think we’ll need to catch a lucky break.”

  “Get lucky. That’s your plan? That’s why you want to bring one of the geniuses? What if they get hurt? This is not how we plan missions, Nomad.”

  Cade nodded; Charlie was insubordinate, but he was right. It was near suicidal to design an op with all the unknowns. “We don’t have a choice, Deuce. If Thrall gets away, nothing else may matter.”

  “You know something? Something not in the briefing?” Charlie asked.

  “A feeling. Something Ace has been bugging me about. Stansfield has identified several more potential members of Thrall’s possible accomplices. Jimmy was tracking their money flow, purchases, travel, and shit. They use tons of shell companies and cut-outs, all seemed pretty random to them.”

  “But your analyst found a pattern.”

  Cade rubbed his face with his hand and looked out to sea. “Yeah, it all fits together if you’re preparing a doomsday vault. They are caching supplies in enormous numbers. Way more than just that one ship can hold.”

  “Oh, great, a doomsday cult,” Charlie said.

  “Yep, the question we have to determine is, do they just know something we don’t, or are they going to be the one causing it? In either case, I have advised the director to assume the threat is real and time is short.”

  “Well, fuck, Rearden, happy fucking Monday to you, too. How do you know it’s coming soon?”

  “The associates. Of the ten identified, six have disappeared in the last month. Assets gone, accounts cleaned out, no trace of them remains.”

  Charlie’s face pinched tight into a frown. “What about the other four?”

  “Three dead, all under mysterious circumstances. One still unaccounted for. Someone known only as The Lion.”

  70

  Kalypso

  Thera stayed silent a long time, a very long time. The shock of what she was seeing defied understanding. With all the revelations the last few weeks had brought, perhaps none was as unsettling as this. The Asian man pushed her toward the translucent panel in the wall. The face of her fiancé stared mutely at her from the far side. “Kissa?” The words tore something away deep inside. “Why are you here?”

  She knew he couldn’t hear her. Many of the rooms had wall panels like this. They were thick, floor to ceiling, and had solid doors that fit into channels on all four sides. The purpose of such over- engineering was lost on her, but she admitted it made for an effective prison.

  “You will speed up the progress on SS4,” the man calling himself Ruan demanded. “Your boyfriend’s life will depend on you reaching the required milestones as scheduled.”

  “Why are you here? How did you find me?” Thera mouthed. Years of diving together had attenuated their senses to understand much of what each other was trying to say without actually having to hear it. How did he find me? She could recall the final dive, looking at what she thought was a unique outcropping of some plant life or bio-mass, then the blue light, the headache, and then… nothing. A total blank. Waking up as someone carried her off a small enclosed boat into this…'thing,’ whatever it was.

  Kissa’s hands rested on the glass, she gently placed hers on the opposite side. They were separated by about six inches of the translucent material. It reminded her of the thick mega-aquariums she’d spent so much of her life working around. This time, though, it was her fiancé on display, not some exotic sea life. Kissa looked like he’d been in a battle. One eye was swollen nearly shut, a ragged cut ran down the side of his face and along half of his thick neck. Other cuts and bruises showed the man had battled his way here only to probably wind up being tortured and killed for his efforts. “I’m so sorry,” Thera mouthed.

  He pointed to his eyes and then motioned around his face and pointed at her. Thera shook her head; she didn’t feel beautiful, but she knew he loved her. He had even managed to find her. The evil man’s hands pulled her away and pushed her roughly back toward the research wing. “You work now.” She tried to turn to get one more look at Kissa, but Ruan blocked her view, offering a demonic smile in the process. “You want to see him again, unlock the information we want!” The man seemed to be spitting the words at her.

  She didn’t care about his information, whatever it was. Others handled that part. Her job was to mature the creatures to a point they could retrieve it. Somehow, the Saraph’s DNA only unlocked its secrets at a certain level of maturity. Her predecessor had hypothesized it was sexual maturity. Once they went through puberty, then they would make the information available. It was an ingenious way of soliciting help in preserving the species, but also in how to pass down significant information from one generation to another.

  DNA alone was like the book of life. Even in humans we don’t understand most of what is stored inside our genetic material. What if it could be harnessed? Besides just dictating the color of eyes, our height, and predisposition to certain illnesses, DNA could also include the collective wisdom of all the prior generations. All of it just sitting there waiting for you to reach a certain level of maturity and unlock it. Instead of just being born with a handful of genetic-founded instincts and biases, you had as much intelligence as your parents on the day you were conceived. How much faster could a species leap-frog human intellect with an innate ability like that? Each new generation would be expected to propel an intellectual evolution and add to an ever-expanding collective knowledge base.

  The possibilities were truly astounding to comprehend. Unfortunately, Thera was working with a lab subject that seemed well short of sexual maturity, if that was even how they reproduced—she still wasn’t entirely sure. Additionally, the creature seemed very much unwilling to share anything. She had to find a way, something that would unlock the next set of data. Not just her life was in jeopardy now. Kissa’s depended on it as well.

  71

  Caribbean

  “Cap, you with us?”

  Cade had been staring down through the breaks in the clouds and small outcroppings of light amidst a sea of darkness. The sun was just coming up in the East. First light across the Caribbean Sea could have been a magical moment to enjoy with someone
special. Instead, he had Charlie and two newly reworked Talon Teams. “I’m here, Deuce, just wish this was someone else’s job.” The go order had come less than an hour earlier. The modified C-27J Spartan aircraft was cruising at 32,000 feet about ten miles outside Cuban airspace. The route and altitude was a familiar one for both military and commercial air traffic. The plane would make no detours on its next stop in New Orleans; it would just have a lot fewer passengers.

  “We need to be in the XODs before the ramp drops,” Deuce told Cade in a voice closer to yelling than normal conversation. The interior of the plane was loud. It was not designed for comfort. The four enormous, six-bladed turboprops needed a lot of power to generate lift in air this thin, and the entire aircraft reverberated with the sound.

  “I know, just… not looking forward to it,” Cade answered. He’d only made two HALO jumps in his time at the Advanced Tactical Infiltration Course, or ATIC, and one of those was actually an inadvertent HAHO or high-opening, when his chute had deployed prematurely. Charlie Taylor had numerous MFFs, or Military Free Fall, jumps in his career. Cade had absolutely hated it; Deuce had once lived for the rush, not so much these days. No one had ever done one like this, though. Going from six miles above the ocean to possibly several miles below. Strangely, many of the risks were similar. HALO jumpers had to take precautions not to get the bends from the rapid changes in pressure in a jump, carry an oxygen supply, and keep a close watch not on depth, but on altitude.

  “WarHawks up,” Deuce yelled. The WarHawks were the seven men and one woman who had the Jackknife XOD suits. Yes, they were going to be jumping out of a plane wearing a deep-sea diving suit. It was as dangerous as it sounded. Once locked into the suits, they would have to stand tethered to the metal track overhead. The other six members of Talon had more traditional HALO gear covering the marine submersible version of the Rapide Battlesuit, while they were honoring Captain Nance using her team’s call sign of WarHawk. Team Two would use the call sign ‘Raptor.’ Due to the limits of their equipment, Team Raptor were already in oxygen masks breathing a special mix to help them acclimatize to the deep ocean. The more sophisticated XODs took care of most of that for the occupant, in theory at least. “I damn sure hope this shit works, Riley,” Cade whispered as the upper half of the dive suit clicked into place around his waist.