Sean stepped out, patting the helmet. “It’s dry enough. Whenever you’re ready.” At Anki’s glance, he added, “Sorry, but time is short.”
• • •
Director Tomov woke to the sound of the comm. He noted the time.
“Yes?”
“Sir, Gerrit is out and headed for the girl.”
Four minutes later he emerged in the control room. “Initiate priority live-log to the Executives. Are we synched to the cloud? Good. Java, please?” He took the vacant command chair. The touch screen before him updated noticeably with four gold indicators along the bottom – four Executives already linked in.
“Ops, status?”
“A watch-listed revenant led to proxy contact with Gerrit. Signus 5 was tracking the target but was unable to make the leap after contact. Fortunately they achieved a strong reading. He’s going for the girl and her little friend.”
“Excellent.” By the book. No mistakes. “And the boy’s body?”
“G3 has it secured. Riders are standing by at the clinic with the recognition pattern for Austin. Reinforcements have been ordered.”
“Fit the clinic for detonation, fast. I want to level it with a word. Confirm scenario J86 as an option for the region. No mistakes, people. Not one. We make history tonight and it better be the right version.”
“Sir, scenario J86 is enabled as an option. Executive authorization required for execution.”
Scenario J86 was least preferred but if things went that way, so be it. Not his job to be concerned with the outcome; the target’s actions would determine the results, not him. He called up the feed from Signus Alpha. The little island filled the screen. Kaiya sat with the boy, talking to him, soothing him. Under G1 observation since the last hop, she realized they were trapped. As soon as Gerrit merged in, all three could be contained.
“Signus Alpha, confirm your panels are ready.”
“Confirmed, director. Currently twelve linked with two more in briefing, due shortly.”
“Good, because he’s on his way.”
“Bring him in, sir, we’ll bag him.”
• • •
Hurried plans made Noboru queasy. Nothing done hastily ever seemed to go well. Normally there was time for meticulous planning, for crafting an operation like a well written application. All tight code and efficient functions. In this case there was almost no time.
The call came just as he prepared dinner for Kou, the Shitzu he’d adopted from the family two floors down. They were moving to Honshū and could not keep the little rascal. Noboru had made the mistake of holding him on the elevator ride up. Amazing what six floors and a pair of moist, imploring eyes could do. He put the beef mixture in the bowl and left it at Kou’s feet before hurrying to the roof.
Rows of bee hives glowed a milky white beneath the pole lamp. He walked the narrow aisle between them and made sure he was alone before he knelt before one. He slid open the storage door beneath and retrieved the hidden comm link. From a brief transmission, he received instructions. The queasy feeling began upon hearing ‘highest priority’ and deepened at hearing the announced job and timeline. Two hours to deliver a team of two into the defense ministry’s communications building! Third basement!
Asinine! It couldn’t be done! Yet even as he thought it, pieces of the solution began to form. By the time a response was required, he knew two things: he’d received his riskiest assignment yet, and Kou would need a new master if things didn’t go just right.
• • •
Austin stuffed the map in his jacket and closed it up. The last try was better and had done much for confidence. The grid’s potential was at peak response, flowing in line with every intention; pliable, focused and stable. That he was about to propel himself six thousand miles to arrive in Japan’s evening sky wasn’t something to think about – it just had to be done.
Anki and Sean stood aside when Cathbad arrived to see him off.
He clasped his shoulders. Gray eyes spoke concern. “What Johan isn’t considering is how far they’ll go to destroy you both. Pay attention. Be open to me, Sean, and Anki.” He narrowed his eyes. “I wish this weren’t the path but damn it, it is. Be aware, be in tune, and you may just save everybody’s skin. Godspeed, lad.” He stepped back.
Sean clapped his hands once as he came forward. “Remember, take as many breaks as you need but keep them short. You really need to push for speed. Follow checkpoints and wait at the last one. Use the flashing light to guide you in. Once you’re on the roof, an old man will give you instructions. We’ll be monitoring you every step of the way and will guide you as needed. Be open to us. Any questions?”
“Dozens if I stopped to think.”
“Then Godspeed, Austin.” Sean shook his hand. “And watch out for the AG units.”
Thoughts of antigravity ships made his stomach spin.
Anki stepped in and hugged him tightly. “Be strong. You’re the Change. Make them wish they’d never messed with Mother Nature.” She was right – they had done just that. Anki touched his cheek before stepping back.
He slid on a thermal mask followed by the helmet. After fastening the straps he paused to face the three. In that moment, the two druids and the empath felt as close as family.
“Am I clear?” The bràthair would scan to be sure the hills and skies held no observers.
After a moment Sean nodded. “Clear.”
He imagined a grand exit and knew it would work. Intention turned to reality: the grid folded in closely, braced him, and like a slingshot flung him upward. In a flash he became a dot in the morning sky then vanished from sight altogether.
“Holy living hell,” Cathbad muttered, craning to see.
Sean nodded. “He’s got it now. The Change, indeed.”
• • •
Ryota finished covering his legs with warm sand and patted it down. Buried up to his waist, he appeared content and resumed staring at the storms pressing in from all sides. For the first time wind blew in the tropical dreamscape, introducing cooler air. The sun hung overhead in its usual place to light the tiny island despite the approaching gloom.
Kaiya walked along the water’s edge looking for something unique in the clouds, anything to take advantage of. After three slow laps, she found nothing. Control had wilted long ago. What little she had left she clung to in the hopes it might matter in a crucial moment, like when the storm fronts collided at their island. They would, she felt it.
She returned to Ryota and put on a smile. “You look comfy. A sand blanket.” He looked up. She tapped her temple. “Smart, very smart!” He seemed to understand.
The wind gusted stronger, a reminder time was short. They’d worn her down all too easily. Her initial burst of creativity had freed them but it hadn’t taken long for them to retake her. Weak. Before this, the idea of lucid dreaming belonged to Psych majors and coffee house beatniks. She couldn’t have imagined the reality of it before. The people who tried to save Mac had to know about this dream world. She’d expected them to try a rescue, yet saw no evidence of one.
She looked directly up, shielding her eyes from the sun and the too-perfect blue sky. What was beyond sky in a dream? What space did a dream occupy? Dread suddenly became more than just a feeling. The winds whipped harder, growing persistent. The towering black clouds loomed closer, converging in the counterclockwise flow of the wind.
Everything was closing in. Everything was going to end.
She knelt next to the boy and patted him on the back, receiving more comfort than she gave. He wasn’t suffering from the same panic – only a sadness beyond his years. Helpless to do anything, she thought of digging in next to him.
Inspiration struck, though admittedly weakly.
“Ryota, you are very smart. We need to dig a hole.” It was all she could think of – to do nothing was madness squared. She dropped to her knees and began furiously swiping the sand aside. She squinted hard at the wind-whipped grit.
“Close your eyes, Ryota!”<
br />
He watched her through slitted eyes before climbing out to help. Already the sand in the shallow hole was more moist, better to form a burrow to escape the coming storm.
“Thank you, Ryota, you understand me! Yes, here, dig. Dig a big hole. Wider – there, good. It will be our safety cave. Safe is good, yes!”
Somehow believing made it more likely so.
• • •
Eight thousand feet was the sweet zone as breathing came easy and the distance to the earth proved breathtaking. The Norwegian coastline slid by on the right, backlit by early dawn. I’m flying, through the sky.
He stayed focused and tuned, scanning for anything in his path. Confidence grew with every passing moment. The GPS fluctuated but read just over a thousand miles per hour. The symbiotic nature of the connection with the grid grew. The sense of expenditure and recovery evened out, as if he were both giving and receiving energy in the quantum process. Gratitude for the gift was unavoidable just as was the pure, uncut amazement at flight.
When the cold grew bitter, he imagined a warm bubble of air and one formed. He pushed harder until the speed indicator rose to two thousand miles per hour. He crouched to look behind. The warm bubble leaked like exhaust into the cold air, forming a contrail – just like in the first dream at Kaiya’s apartment except it wasn’t purple or made of curiosity. Here, it was an arrow pointing to his passage. Moments later, the contrail dissolved, the dome hardened to contain the warmth. He couldn’t help but recall Edward’s words about joining with the creator at the far end.
The thought proved more breathtaking than the flight.
Faster. The dome grew longer. The GPS digits showed almost three thousand miles an hour. The shoreline fell away and open sea claimed every horizon, enveloping him in a solitary portrait of watery nature. Clouds slipped into view only to be pierced and passed through, flickering by in strobe fashion. The GPS vibrated and changed to the next checkpoint, an estimated ten minutes out. A slight turn southeast towards Russia....
He pressed a button to read final ETA. Less than two hours at this rate.
Mom, I really hope you can see me now.
• • •
By the eighth hour behind the console, sleep always became a problem. No matter how much rest the night before, the eighth hour dragged like a walk in thick snow. Right between lunch and the end of the shift, the black hole of sleepiness beckoned, numbing every sense.
Following routine, Sergeant Kislyako stood and stretched. Whoever invented the twelve hour shift needed to be shot. He wasn’t old enough to remember the days of six hour shifts and vodka and women at lunch, but he’d heard stories. Someday he’d retire and have all day to himself. He’d never look at a screen again. Ever. The radar station at Severny Island could rot further into hell and he’d not care. One of the most useless duties imaginable. Like America would ever really launch missiles?
He eyed the new black boxes recently installed in the racks by the young shchenoks.
“You’re lucky to have a job, Daniil. Fucking computers taking over everything.”
He sat back down and ignored his sore legs. He adjusted the scan range and bit his tongue doing a double-take at the screen: a single faint return, moving at missile speed. He increased the radar’s intensity, narrowing it by three measures. The altitude was too low. Either a stealth craft or a new missile of some kind.
He cursed and picked up the red phone, more awake than he’d been all year.
• • •
“There! Good, get closer. Focus. God damn… Oscar, how fast is he moving?”
Overseer calculated and responded. “Estimated speed is three-thousand miles per hour at eight thousand feet.”
“Heat signature?”
The view switched to thermal to reveal a vague, localized heat with none trailing. “How is he pulling that off?”
The commandeered American spy satellite followed the bender’s flight as he approached land. Director Tomov sat back in his chair, juggling implications.
“Send in the riders, I want a track on him now. Get AGTs on his tail, maybe they can lock on and provide guidance for the riders or vice versa.” Or they can ram the fucker. “Issue stand down orders through the Russian defense ministry, flag it as equipment malfunction and get Oscar in there to make it real. Make sure the U.S. gets word, too. Black out all satellites in his path, current or future. He’s headed for Tokyo. Open a channel to the demo team.” He looked on in private wonder at the man in flight. “Zoom in.” The image revealed no propellant signature, no structure or engines of any kind. Only a parachute.
Orders issued, the control room fell silent. All eyes stared at the screen.
• • •
The doors to the NRO satellite operations room burst open. Heads whipped around.
An Air Force major shouted, “Everybody out, now, now, move! You!” He pointed to a wide-eyed satellite operator. “Stay put. Move people, move!”
The facility commander, General Fagan, and a civilian entered the room accompanied by two Security Police officers with hands on their side arms. The lieutenant in charge approached, questions forming on her lips. The major put up a hand and thumbed her to the exit. The guards followed her out and closed the doors behind them.
“Stay seated.” The major instructed the lone operator. “What’s your first name, soldier?”
“Patrick, sir.”
The major handed him a piece of paper. “Can you find this, Patrick?”
The twenty-four year old from Los Osos, California, scanned the paper. Coordinates, heading, speed, altitude, size – less than two meters? Time stamped three minutes prior. He cleared his throat. “I can try, sir. I’ll need to access–”
“Do it!” General Fagan barked. “Whatever it takes.”
“Yes, sir!” He worked furiously at the console, entering override codes spit out by the major, displacing scheduled controls until he locked onto MISTY-4, an NRO satellite passing over far east Asia nearest those coordinates. A control directive failed – the screen came up black.
“Shit,” he muttered, intensely aware of eyes on him. He decoupled, relocked, and reissued the control directive but still got black.
He turned. “Sir, either that’s equipment malfunction or we’re being blocked.”
The general exploded. “Blocked? Who the hell can block us? That’s our fucking satellite!”
The civilian asked, “You’re patched over SDS?”
“Yes, sir, SDS.”
“Switch to Milstar, SDS-2 class. Pick the nearest one. Good, now use the K band downlink to reach the Misty on the diagnostic port.”
Patrick hesitated. “That would require line of sight calculation–”
“No, it doesn’t. Arrow down to the last menu item. Press ALT and SHIFT together and press the number six key on the keypad.”
Several new menu options became available.
“There, option S2S. Sat to sat.”
“Wow.” A list of satellites appeared. “We want 186.”
A minute later, the link completed. A diagnostics menu filled the large screen. “I’m in.”
“Now use the Config menu. Access.... Multilink Protocol.... fourth item down, Override Options. There, disable the Force Override option. Now, go back to Access. Security... Diagnostic Password. Change it to something, just double damned don’t forget it. Good, save it. Now, back out, switch to SDS and attempt control of the Misty.”
Whoever he was, the guy knew his shit, Patrick thought. But who had locked them out? He recoupled, locked, and issued the control directive. The room lit up brightly from an out of focus image of mountains on the screen.
“Someone’s been looking at this target, coordinates are in line. Give me a second to catch up.”
Twenty seconds later, he found the projectile and established a track lock. He zoomed in on the target, onto the–
“Patrick, what you see is beyond top secret. Which means you don’t see it and this never happened. Do you understan
d?”
“Yes, yes, sir. I understand.” He dared look again, his heart pounding.
The major reached for the nearest STU phone. The civilian asked, “Where will that trajectory take him?”
Patrick tore his eyes from the screen to run the calculation. “Over a desolate section of Russia. He’ll pop out in the Sea of Okhotsk in... ten minutes at that speed. On to New Zealand if he keeps going.”
Further zoom allowed for a detailed view of the flyer. Two small tubes, no jet pack or other means of propulsion visible.
“Borden here. Confirming stand down. Repeat, no threat.” The major hung up and looked over at the operator. “Patrick, you have family?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“I see. That’s good. Again, this never happened.”
Patrick replied carefully, “No, sir, it most certainly did not.”
• • •
With the backdrop of the Milky Way galaxy framing it, MISTY-4 hung in apogee, the longest stretch of its high elliptical orbit, conveying imagery back to NRO receiving stations via relay satellites. For previous spy satellites apogee meant downtime; MISTY-4 utilized gen-after-next optic systems that allowed for continuous high resolution focus from an apogee twenty-five thousand miles distant.
In a split-second event, a black blur struck the twelve-hundred million dollar satellite and sent it hurtling like a pinball into outer space, its solar arrays and antennae flailing from a smashed core.
• • •
Austin slowed over the western edge of a shoehorn peninsula jutting from Russia’s mainland into the Sea of Okhotsk. He descended vertically through the gloom of dusk, steering between trees until his feet touched spongy earth. He released the grip of flight – vertigo from the sudden stillness nearly toppled him along with the wind. A thousand feet above the sea, atop a steep quarter mile slope to the beach, he stood surrounded by wilderness.
The GPS marker read ‘rest b4 last CP’. The two hour flight hadn’t taken much out of him – though imagining the rescue had. If the element of surprise remained his, things would go much better. If not, the hell-in-a-hand basket effect would surely apply. Johan had started this but wasn’t the one in line to do the real dirty work. Thoughts of having to kill people only turned his stomach tighter. For Kaiya, though, he would do it.
System Seven Page 34