METEOR STORM

by David Capps

  I ran to the computer console that controlled the dish antennas. I quickly checked the program that had the satellite locations on it and aimed it at the most likely satellite. No unusual activity. I tried the next one. Nothing. I aimed the antenna at one of the military spy satellites overhead. Nothing there, either. I stopped to think. There was another satellite, a new one. I aimed the antenna at it.

  “Carl?” Tia said as she entered the room wearing her pajamas. “What the hell?”

  “Get on the console over there,” I said. “I’ll have data for you in just a second.”

  There it was. Two different frequencies were being used. I picked the first one and routed the data to Tia’s terminal, sending the second one to the terminal next to her. I ran over and sat at the terminal. I connected to the Internet and downloaded a program from my personal secure storage site.

  “I’m sending you a program,” I said. “Once you get it, open it and enter the frequency you have on your screen now.”

  “Okay,” she said, “I have it now. What am I looking at?”

  “In the upper right corner of the screen are the GPS coordinates and direction. The altitude is right underneath it. Read them to me.”

  As she read the numbers to me, I quickly translated them to a position and direction.

  “Okay,” I said, “the drone is just north of Denver heading toward Colorado Springs.”

  “Drone?” Tia shouted. “What do you mean by drone?”

  John entered the communications room. “Drone?” John said.

  “A military drone,” I replied, “like in Afghanistan. Only it’s here. It just bombed our media center. John, do you have any buildings in Colorado Springs?”

  “Yeah,” John said, “a distribution center.”

  “Get everybody out NOW!”

  John speed dialed his cell phone, ordering everyone out of the building.

  “Tia, in the upper left corner of the screen is the status box. What does it say?”

  “2LGB,” she said. “No, wait! It just changed. Now it’s 1LGB.”

  “Shit!” I said. “They just dropped a Laser Guided Bomb. What’s the altitude?”

  “Sixty one two eighty feet.” Tia answered.

  “Less the five thousand feet for the ground here in Denver… John you’ve got just under a minute and a half to get your people out of there. The bomb’s on its way!”

  “It takes that long?” Tia asked.

  “Yep,” I answered, “it takes time to fall through ten miles of air.”

  I checked the status of the drone on my screen: 1LGB. This was the drone that hit John’s media center. I checked the GPS and direction. It was headed here, to John’s cabin.

  “John,” I yelled, “get out of the cabin, take Tia, Ed and Nancy with you. The second drone is headed here.”

  “What about you?” John asked.

  “I’m going to see if I can take control of these drones.”

  “You can take on only one drone at a time,” Tia said. “If you’re staying, I’m staying.”

  “No. I need to know that you are safe. You need to get clear of the cabin.”

  Tia looked over at me with determination in her face. “There’re two drones. I’m staying.”

  “You said a minute and a half fall time for the bomb?” John asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “Has it been dropped yet?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m waiting until it drops,” John replied. He turned and shouted up the stairwell. “Nancy, get Ed and get out of the cabin. You need to be at least two hundred yards away from the building! Do you understand?”

  “Got it,” she yelled back.

  John checked with his people at the distribution center. They were clear. I could hear the sound of the explosion over John’s cell phone from twenty feet away.

  “Tia,” I said, “what is the direction of your drone now?”

  “Three hundred and twenty degrees,” she replied.

  I stopped and tried to visualize what would be in that direction.

  “Boulder?” I said, “John, you have anything in Boulder?”

  “Corporate headquarters,” John replied.

  “Empty the building now,” I said. “Drone on its way to that location. ETA less than ten minutes.”

  John speed dialed another number.

  “How are we going to take control of these drones?” Tia asked.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled. “Press control, alt, “L” and “I”, all at the same time.”

  “It’s a login window,” she said.

  “Username SH double oh seven.” I gave her the password and she typed it in.

  “Okay,” Tia said, “I’ve got administrative access, now what?”

  “Enter the command, all upper case letters, LOC, underscore, WEP, underscore, ABS.”

  “Okay,” she replied, “and what does that do?”

  “It’s an override command. It locks all of the weapons to the drone with a titanium pin. It has to be removed manually after the drone lands,” I explained. “They can’t drop any more bombs.”

  “What about missiles?” Tia asked. “I thought drones all had missiles on them.”

  “Mostly they do,” I replied, “but missiles leave smoke trails coming down from the sky. If you want to stay invisible you use laser guided bombs.”

  “Okay, now what?” she asked.

  “The picture you see on your screen comes from the onboard camera. Are you familiar with flight simulators?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah,” she replied.

  “It’s crude,” I explained. “Arrows for up, down, right and left, plus for more speed, minus for less. The letter L to move the camera left, R for right, F for forward and B for back. Aim the camera straight forward so you can see where you are going.”

  “Got it,” she replied.

  “John,” I said, “you have a protected place where you are keeping your Learjet 45?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I need the GPS coordinates and the direction for the landing strip.”

  “You mean?”

  “You’re about to be the proud owner of two military drones, one Laser Guided Bomb on each.”

  “I’ll make the call,” John replied.

  “Tia, the pilots of the drones will know they lost control. Spiral down in a gentle circle so they think it’s a malfunction. Once the drones drop below the radar level we head for the landing strip. That way they won’t know where they are.”

  “Sneaky,” she replied.

  “So why are military drones attacking my places of business?” John asked. “And in America?”

  “I don’t think it’s just you,” I replied. “I suspect the DIA has figured out I’m working for you now. I think they’re after me.”

  “The DIA has its own drones?” John asked.

  “The DIA budget is larger than the entire CIA budget,” I said. “Plus they have access to any and all the military equipment and people they want. No questions asked.”

  John looked at the floor.

  “I told you, you were better off not being around me when we first met.”

  “Without you we would have been totally unprepared for the meteor storm,” John replied. “Bringing you in was the best thing that has ever happened to us. Considering the alternative, I’m happy to have you here. Period.”

  Once we landed the drones Tia sat back and looked at me.

  “I know who you are,” she said, “what I don’t know is what happened to you.”

  John looked over at us. “It’s time to tell her the truth,” he said. “You can trust her.” He turned and headed slowly up the stairs.

  There were two things that terrified me: telling Tia the truth about me because I was sure I would lose her forever, and physical intimacy. I had fallen in love with her and realized now was the time for the truth I had been promising I would share with her. As much as I wanted to be with her, I knew that could never happen without a foundati
on of truth between us. As terrified as I was, the only way to get through this was to take it one thing at a time. I took a deep breath and began.

  “I was the Shadow Hawk. I hacked into the Pentagon computer system. I got through all three firewalls. I had read that there were billions of dollars that the Pentagon lost track of. I wanted to know where the money went. I found the financial files. There was a complete accounting of money that went to foreign rulers, private contractors and politicians with Swiss bank accounts, some of them political figures in the U.S. congress. I stayed in the system too long, and they found me.

  “I was sentenced to thirty years in a federal prison. I was only seventeen years old. When I arrived at the prison, the inmates immediately called me pretty boy. I didn’t understand at first. My first night there I was beaten up and gang raped. I spent the next month in the prison infirmary.”

  Tears started to run down Tia’s cheeks. I began shaking. I took several deep breaths, trying to calm the fear rising within me. Slowly I continued.

  “When I got out of the infirmary, I was returned to the general population in the prison. That night I was beat up and gang raped again. After another month in the infirmary, the warden moved me into solitary confinement for my own protection. I spiraled down into a black emotional abyss. I barely ate, I couldn’t sleep. They put me on drugs. I lost all track of time.”

  I looked Tia in the eyes. The look of anguish on her face was almost more than I could bear. Tears began running down my cheeks. I breathed deeply several more times, trying to lower the level of panic swelling up inside my chest.

  “After what turned out to be five months, an officer from the Pentagon came to visit me. He offered to move me to a lower security prison, where I would be safe, if I did some work for him. I agreed. That’s when I met General Strom. He had me revamp the triple firewall for the pentagon and add the reverse trackers so they could find hackers quickly. I wrote the program that found your friends and landed them in court. I’m so sorry. I didn’t have a choice.”

  Tia’s hands were starting to shake. The tears flooded down her cheeks. I paused, trying to stem the panic that was now shaking my whole body. Somehow I managed to summon the courage to continue.

  “They were impressed enough with my programs that they offered to commute my sentence if I would continue to work for them. They created a new identity for me, Carl Palminteri, and enrolled me at MIT. I finished my Electrical Engineering degree and a Master’s degree in Computer Science in three and a half years. I had a talent for controlling mechanical things.”

  “I wondered,” Tia said. “Nobody hacks into a system for drones like that and knows the administrative override commands.”

  “I wrote the program for the drones,” I said. “I distributed the login and administrative commands throughout the program so they wouldn’t be easy to find. It looks like that part worked. It’s just that all of the people who have died from drone attacks did so because of me.”

  “No,” Tia said. “That’s not on you. That’s on the people who operate and fly the drones. If you hadn’t written the program, someone else would have, and hundreds of John’s people would be dead right now, including us. The only way we could save them is because you did write the program and you put in a back door that we could use to gain access to the drones. You didn’t kill anyone; you saved hundreds of people today.”

  What she said was making sense. I really hadn’t looked at it that way. The shaking inside me was calming down and the panic was receding some, as well. I had shared the ugly truth and shame that was hiding inside of me, and she was still here. This was the hardest thing I had ever done. I never imagined it could also feel so liberating.

  “And NASA?” she asked.

  “NASA isn’t really a civilian controlled agency like it’s presented,” I replied. “It’s organized under the Department of Defense. They put me there to control the Mars Rovers. I also wrote their programs.”

  “So what about the robot’s head?” she asked.

  I had to smile. “That’s the strange part,” I explained. “I got into a shouting match with my boss, Dr. Sheldon Woolser over the information we were getting back from Mars. We found evidence of an ancient civilization on Mars. Not only that, but the Mars Orbiter photographed thousand foot high trees and migrating animals. There’s life on Mars and I believed that the public was ready to accept the truth. We’re not alone in the universe. Life is everywhere. But the Department of Defense had all of this information classified because they thought people would panic if they found out.”

  “That argument got me sent to the Clark Street Storage Facility doing inventory work. That’s how I found the robot’s head. The rest you know.”

  “What about relationships?” Tia asked.

  “Relationships?” I said.

  “Significant others?” she replied.

  I shook my head.

  “High school sweetheart?” she asked.

  I shook my head again. “I was a real nerd in high school – didn’t really have many friends.”

  “No high school prom?” she asked.

  I looked down at the floor. “The night of my high school prom was my first night in federal prison.”

  There was an awkward pause.

  “In college?”

  “Too busy.”

  “And while you were at NASA?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I thought about it,” I said, “I just couldn’t. I…”

  “A paid companion?”

  I shook my head again. “I…”

  “So you’ve never…” she asked.

  I shook my head again. “Pretty bad, huh.”

  Tia got up and took my hand. She led me up the stairs to the great room. The terror of the emotional abyss started to come back. I was breathing hard and fast, trying my best not to panic. My cheeks were starting to tingle, as were my hands and arms. I was feeling disoriented as we crossed the kitchen to the stairs that led up to our rooms. A third of the way up the stairs I stumbled and fell to the steps.

  “Carl, you’re trembling,” she said.

  I couldn’t stop shaking. I started weeping and couldn’t stop that, either. The intimacy that I knew she wanted had me so terrified that I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I felt so panicked that my brain froze. I couldn’t think. I was just so filled with fear and raw emotion that I was paralyzed, unable to function at all.

  “Oh, God, Carl,” she said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand.” She held me tight and rocked me in her arms as she sat on the steps.

  I heard John’s voice. “Okay,” he said quietly. “The denial is over. Now he can start healing. You can help him if you want to take this on.”

  “I do,” Tia said quietly. “I do.”

  “Nancy was a rape counselor as well as a nurse,” John said. “Talk to her. She can help.”

  CHAPTER 22

  We had moved our personal belongings to the cave during the past week along with most of the equipment from John’s cabin. Alex left the main screen and the television receivers connected in the communications room. I had gradually recovered from my panic attack. John and Tia said nothing about it.

  “One last check of the news?” Alex asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Tia came into the communications room as Alex selected Network News on the receiver. “Tonight is going to be the greatest celestial display in the recorded history of the world,” the reporter said. “And people are gathering by the millions to see it.”

  The scene showed a pudgy man sitting in a lawn chair with a glass of beer in his hand. Next to him on a table was a half keg and snack food. To the right of the table was a large barbeque.

  “Meteor party!” the man shouted, raising his glass of beer into the air. “Eeee, haa!”

  “The meteor display is still eight hours away, and already people are celebrating,” the reporter continued. “This is going to be the biggest party since the turn of the millennium. Stay tu
ned as we provide continuing coverage of the meteor display.”

  “They have no idea what is coming, do they?” I asked.

  “We sent all of the media companies a complete packet with all of the backup data and research in it,” Alex said. “It’s not like they didn’t have a clue. We told them. They simply have chosen to ignore everything we have said.”

  “This is really depressing, and sad,” Tia said.

  “Seen enough?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah,” Tia replied. “Meteor parties.” She shook her head and started up the stairs.

  “Hang on,” I said. “I’m coming with you.”

  John was in the kitchen fixing our last meal in the cabin.

  “They’re having meteor parties,” Tia announced.

  John exhaled and hung his head. Ed came down the stairs from his room. “Meteor parties?” he asked. “Did I hear that correctly?” Tia nodded. Ed shook his head.

  “You never did explain how you knew the media center was going to be attacked,” John said, looking at me.

  “I think it’s the medallion,” I replied, as I took it out from under my shirt. “Tia checked it out. Each of the bumps on the medallion resonates at a specific biological frequency. Each body system, like the liver or kidneys, has its own frequency. The medallion has five more frequencies than we have physical body systems. I think the center bump is for our intuition, which is what warned me of the attack on the media center.”

  “That’s handy,” Ed said.

  “What are the other bumps for?” John asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” I replied. “As we figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

  “Well, you saved the lives of a lot of people today,” John said. “Thank you.”

  “I just wish I could have recognized it sooner,” I said. “Then nobody would have had to die.”

  “Some things you can’t stop,” John said.

  “Yeah,” Tia replied. “Like meteor parties.”

  On that somber note, we sat down for dinner.

  * * *