With These Eyes

by Horst Steiner

  "Sir, visitors at the entrance."

  The Watch Commander punched up a night-vision image on the big center screen in the lair's control room. Gene's teeth were grinding at the sight of Isabelle, Tasha, Ryan and Tonati, virtually knocking like uninvited guests on the entrance to his secret hideout. In his mind, there was no more stopping his plan. A disruption would truly stand in the way of his enjoyment in the worst manner.

  "Her? Seal the shaft!"

  The Trooper reluctantly replied to Gene's stern order.

  "But sir, that's our only way in."

  A tiny bead of sweat appeared just above Gene's upper lip. The onset of its tremble was interrupted by Gene's angry response.

  "That's why I want you to seal it. And revoke Commander Methusa's clearance, turns out she's a terrorist."

  The Trooper complied and flipped open a little plastic door in his control panel. He pushed the red detonator button that was recessed underneath with the words, "fire in the hole!" Gene's dark grin returned to his face.

  Up top, the loud yell of an alarm horn warned the band of rebels that trouble was coming their way. A hydraulically powered man-hole cover separated the facility's elevator shaft from the outside. A grouping of large boulders around the smoothly sealed opening concealed its existence to possible onlookers. Spaced fractions of a second apart, a series of violent explosions along the length of the shaft caused it to collapse on itself. Pressure from multiple concussions below ground shot the entry's round cover towards the jungle canopy. Ryan was standing closest to the site of the explosion, rather befuddled by all the noise. Tasha looked above his head and saw that like an enormous coin dropped into a vending machine, the heavy metal disk was plummeting directly towards him. She knew there was not enough time to warn Ryan and allow him to step out of the way. Tasha pounced forward, pushing Ryan out of the way and onto his behind. Tasha landed on top of him. The speeding steel plate impacted the hardened ground next to them and bounced over their heads, before it landed beside Isabelle and Tonati. Ryan was stunned. The downed genius looked at Tasha's round eyes to acknowledge he would have been flattened without her help. "Don't mention it," were Tasha's only words to him as she stood herself up to evaluate the situation. Isabelle took note that her pursuer had just saved them both. Something must have changed inside the fearsome warrior for the better. Ryan dusted himself off on his way back to his feet. He quickly saw the problem at hand.

  "That was the only entrance. How are we going to stop the missile now?"

  Tasha presented her usual way of dealing with issues. "All we've got to do is shoot it down."

  Ryan moved so Isabelle and her puma were standing between him and Tasha. He had something to say but enjoyed the safety Isabelle's presence brought him. He looked at Tasha over Isabelle's shoulder and replied, "There isn't a bullet or rocket in the world that can shoot this missile down. Its fast as lightning."

  Tasha responded quickly. "That's right, lightning will stop it."

  Isabelle didn't like what Tasha was thinking. Her idea sounded as sinister as Isabelle would have expected from the woman who had chased her across the globe. There was too much familiarity here for Isabelle. Everything about this moment down to the climate took her back to her childhood in the jungle with her mother Gemma. Because of her mother's research, the two of them would move often. Many times, Isabelle would lay on top of the jungle's thick canopy and watch the clouds. On the days when it rained, she watched long banks of clouds grow from the condensation trails that were left by rows of planes high in the sky. She saw this everywhere but the last village before she moved to Alaska to join her father. Lionel had moved there from Dallas and built his television network across the young state.

  Isabelle found out in her journalistic work later that several climate engineering projects exist in the world and had been field-tested, often over remote areas. It was clear that she had grown up under such tests. Strange that the village with the smell of choji trees didn't have them. Isabelle was sure Tasha knew about such operations. After all, Apophis made everything. She had learned a lot from her talks with Kenshin in Berlin, and her experiences along the way.

  The basic concept of Gene’s photonic weapon was relatively simple. A quantum orb was carried to the target area where a sudden jolt of electricity would create a high-intensity arc across the orb. This process was very much an artificial version of the incident that had occurred in Tunguska. The result would be the release of a high-energy photon wave: light so bright, everything in its path is evaporated, rock is molten. A lightning strike into the missile during lift-off, when it is still a superconductor, would have the same effect.

  Isabelle looked at Tasha with a stern expression. The rebel-warrior's eyes gleamed in the moonlight like the dilated eyes of a cheetah on the hunt. There was no need for Tasha to explain, Isabelle knew what she was up to.

  "Better here than someplace inhabited."

  A family of monkeys was settling in on an adjacent tree to observe the peculiar visitors to their home. The sounds of the jungle around them stood furry and feathered witnesses to Isabelle's counter-argument.

  "This is hardly uninhabited."

  The warrior was once again, functioning on her cold, calculated tactical logic, which had no concern for collateral damage. Tasha's cause was driven by good intentions but her ruthless methods to achieve her goal let little humanity shine through.

  "A lightning strike will cause..."

  Tasha brushed Isabelle off. "I know what it will cause. Most importantly, it will stop the missile."

  Astounded, Isabelle listened to Tasha's battle plan.

  "Apophis has a climate engineering facility elsewhere on the island. I will launch the fleet from there and seed an electrical storm." Tasha gestured towards the hidden helicopter. "You can drop me off there, fly out to the ocean and ditch to a life raft. You'll be safe there."

  Ryan was getting nervous. To him, this seemed like the only logical choice. He turned to Isabelle. "You know, the entrance is destroyed. She makes a good argument."

  Isabelle could see in her knight's nervous eyes that he was not going into the cave to slay the fire-breathing monster for her.

  Tasha added, "Do you see a better choice?"

  Isabelle knew she had to stay and fight but she had no weapons, no way in and Tasha offered a solution. All she could do was look Tasha in the eyes without a word to say.

  The warrior continued. "I didn't think so." She headed along the perimeter towards Gene's twin-rotor helicopter when she turned around for a moment to shout, "Come help me get this thing started."

  Ryan gave Isabelle an embarrassed look and followed Tasha's footsteps.

  47 TASHA AND ISABELLE TAKE GENE'S HELICOPTER

  Just minutes later, like the whisks on a mixer, the helicopter's two rotors stirred up the water as the aircraft skimmed across the surface. The woman in the pilot's seat was dimly lit by the moon and the glow of the instrument panel.

  "We're getting to the drop point." Isabelle's voice crackled over the aircraft's talk-back system.

  Ryan's response was full of doubt. "I don't know if this was such a good idea."

  The helicopter's nose tipped up as the craft decelerated abruptly.

  "Too late, time to go."

  Dressed in scuba gear, Isabelle held on to the handrail by the open backdoor. A red light was glowing brightly above her. Ryan and Tonati were keeping a safe distance from the opening and had enough to do dealing with the forces of the helicopter's movements.

  It was Tasha who had taken the pilot's seat. She brought the heavy airship to a precise hover by the lair's launch tube. Its end had been exposed by the declining water level as the turbines were charging Gene's graphite mountain. Without saying as much as good-luck, Tasha pushed a button in the panel above her head. The signal by the back door turned green. Isabelle placed a hand over her goggles and held her mouthpiece in the other. She jumped off the open ramp and landed in the meanwhile shallow lake water near the e
nd of the launch tube. Isabelle came back to the surface to clear the water out of her breathing apparatus and looked towards the helicopter. Tasha was making a turn so she could see down to the drop-point and came to hover nearby. Isabelle glanced at Tasha taking her hands of the stick for a brief moment to grasp the locket by her chest, as if she was seeking strength in its energy. Tasha's eye saw Isabelle's glance. Like a child who got caught, Tasha's face showed anger as her hand instantly returned to the helicopter's controls. Isabelle had found a glimpse of humanity in Tasha's eyes. Unwilling to acknowledge what she perceived as weakness, Tasha blazed off in a cyclone of rotor wash.

  Ryan was amazed at Isabelle. He had warned her not to attack Gene. She had responded with an utter lack of concern in regards to the danger Gene's weapons and personnel posed. The moon was only missing a small sliver from its bright orb and its light made the rushing water of the river sparkle bigger than fireworks. After a few minutes along the effervescent waterway, the helicopter reached the lagoon where Fuji's spaceplane was moored. With the hatch open, Tasha touched down just long enough for Ryan and Tonati to jump off. Tasha and Ryan agreed he'd be best off with Fuji and the ability to reach safe distance with the spaceplane. Their feet had just touched the ground when she blazed off.

  Tasha was busy using the onboard computer. She was sending readiness orders to the ground crew that maintained and loaded the fleet of cloud-seeding airliners at the Apophis Aerospace Works Compound elsewhere on the island. With Ryan's computer override, messages from the cockpit came authenticated as Gene's orders, since the helicopter was his. Tasha's revoked credentials proved of little hindrance so far.

  Moments after typing her commands, a priority message appeared on the screen of the Trooper commanding the ground-support team for the climate engineering project. Most of the crew were busy playing video games on big screens or snacking on a variety of Apophis-brand imitation foods. As soon as the alert from Tasha came in, the men and women of the ground crew dropped every sandwich and game controller they were holding and ran to a pool of buses outside. The remote location of the small isle kept the operation out of the public eye, avoiding opposition by the peace loving people of Madagascar. Aside from developing and flight-testing a multitude of airborne and space weapons, a large portion of the sinister compound housed a climate engineering fleet.

  Different combinations of chemical substances, such as barium or silver salts were developed to create overcast skies, rain or electrical storms, depending on the desired action that would be taken against an area. Gene had developed the tree weapon as a final addition to the program. Often months of unseasonable flooding would be enough to devastate an area of farm or residential land. Regardless of borders, Gene would be able to rebuild with Apophis housing and infrastructure. Desolate farmers would generally gladly accept Apophis seed stock on credit, with no other resources to replant. An entire section of the compound was dedicated to the climate project. A row of hangars housed the fleet of converted airliners. Gene had chosen to use typical passenger jets for his fleet for an important reason: The general population in most parts of the world was accustomed to passenger air-traffic and its frequent condensation trails. Few people were able to discern these from his fleet and the rain-forming trails it left.

  Because of recent political events, even fewer questioned anything related to air travel since Gene and the government had promised radical and secret security changes. A person questioning the effects of plane exhaust or even suggesting sinister intent on a scale of Gene's activity would be dismissed by the masses as irrational. All these factors allowed Gene to spread his global takeover with little detection or interference. Those who threatened to stand in his way were, in large, eliminated by the flu virus.

  Gene saw fear like a fence around the pasture. It would keep the livestock from running off where it could become a menace, both to its environment and to itself. A herd of cows on the freeway would be detrimental to the flow of traffic and the bovines themselves.

  Great knowledge was proliferated by higher consciousness for all. Instead of utilizing this universal wisdom, the people chose to go to a device in the palm of their hand for information, rather than their mind. A brain devoid of long-term knowledge soon becomes a ghost town that has given way to the smart phone. Gene saw little need to deliver the understanding that would lead to a better life to a community with no occupants. To him, those who chose to leave their thinking to others, have forfeited the right to make decisions that can affect their environment.

  Gene’s spiritual experiences have brought him in touch with the consciousness from which he had drawn the knowledge of quantum energy in an attempt to better the world. This knowledge had to be protected from those who acted out of anger and fear. A single angry outburst and the entire solar system could be destroyed by a individual. That was a risk Gene could not allow. Technology of unlimited energy can only function in a peaceful and enlightened society. This was Gene’s sword of Damocles. The knowledge of quantum energy was working its way into the human consciousness and could not be halted. Darkness, however was still rampant on the planet. Wars had to stop at once or one of the warring factions would surely construct a photonic weapon.

  The events in what once were Hiroshima and Nagasaki stood as grim testament to the reach of human hatred. Gene could not permit something far worse to be unleashed on the universe. The sadness from the destruction of planet Earth would tip the balances of the cosmos into an eternity of darkness. All life in the universe would suffer. Gene had to act fast. To him, the people where like a light with no bulb. No matter how much he tried, the light wouldn’t come on. He was an intelligent man. It made no sense to him to continually stick his finger into the empty and highly electrified socket. It would have been an act of textbook insanity on his behalf to continue the same action that had only brought harm to him. Gene saw little value in keeping a lamp that would destroy every globe granted. Erasing the population of Africa would bring the attention needed to halt the horrendous amount of fighting on the remaining continents.

  Unknown to Gene, several buses arrived at the grouping of hangars that housed the cloud seeding fleet across the island. Like a swarm of ants, support workers busily populated the areas around each plane inside the enormous buildings. Three airliners occupied each of the eight hangars. One plane after another, each hangar's crew filled their aircrafts’ holding tanks with the newly developed and fast-acting lightning mix, comprised mostly of a barium-salt solution. The two dozen airliners of the Apophis Climate Control Squadron had been stripped of their main cabin seating. Instead, rows of cube-shaped plastic tanks had become the jets' lifeless passengers. A network of pipes and pumps connected the tanks to spray nozzles under the wings. A small detachment drove support trucks to the tarmac outside their respective hangars where they offloaded connections for in-ground fuel and power. Inside the cabins, purple liquid was churning as its levels rose behind the opaque-white walls of the holding tanks. The first row of planes was loaded and tow-vehicles moved them to positions near the outside ground crews. Loading continued on the next set of planes inside. The outside crews began the fueling process and connected ground-power needed for the onboard electronics and engine start. Within a short time, all 24 large-body airliners were parked side by side, under the starry sky, loaded and fueling for lift-off.

  48 WHEN TASHA GOES TO THE AIRPORT

  Vibration from the two enormous rotors and the dual-turbine power plant reverberated throughout the helicopter's interior and with it, Tasha's insides. The faint smell of kerosene and the feel of the rotors' force kept reminding the renegade warrior of her training as a commando. The effects of Gene's programming that had been activated had not entirely lost their influence on Tasha's actions.

  Love was pushing some of Tasha’s anger out of her decision-making process. The events by the jungle river replayed in her mind. Isabelle rescued Tasha purely out of selfless love, with no expectations. Tasha had never encountered an individu
al who had shown her affection or earned her favor without incurring a debt that was soon to be repaid. Isabelle had asked Tasha for help, but never used saving her life as a means to extract repayment of the debt of gratitude. This had been Tasha’s way of thinking long ago, but a selfish world had left her bitter and hollow. She guarded her heart. Wearing Kevlar gave Tasha a sense of isolated security, away from all the selfish people.

  Tasha was approaching the Apophis Aerospace Works compound. She was familiar with the layout since it had been part of her job to protect all of Apophis' secret operations. She piloted Gene's executive helicopter directly towards the hangars where the squadron of cloud-seeding jets had been assembled. Her left thumb depressed the transmit button in the control stick. In a militaristic voice, she announced her arrival to the tower. "A.S.W. control this is Apophis-One on priority approach to hangar five-two." She noticed Gene's gigantic jet parked on the tarmac just below. The Goose’s nose-cone was flipped up and the fleet of support planes was parked on both sides.