by Frank Carey
"Yes, sir."
"I love it when a plan comes together.”
"Yes, sir."
###
Shenda beat on the door then waited for someone, anyone, to dare open the hatch. She waited, but nothing happened.
"I think they're ignoring you," Aerith mentioned as she rummaged through a stack of magazines on the table. "Oh look, the Ballroom Special Edition of League Entertainment Weekly!"
"Really? Really! You're going to just sit there and read magazines while we're kidnapped?"
"Well, they have books on the shelf over there. I think one of them is Asimov's Foundation. I've always wanted to give it a try..."
"Uhhhhhh!" Shenda yelled, as she stomped her feet. She looked around for something to break. "How are you so calm?"
"Cats," Aerith replied. "Dad's cats include a puck thrower. I have no doubt we're tagged. They'll find us."
"I hate this," Shenda yelled as she beat the door one more time.
"Hey," Aerith said as she got up and took Shenda gently by the shoulders. "What's wrong? You're shaking like a leaf."
"I... I don't like being separated from my sister and brothers. I get the shakes."
"Okay, okay," she said while rubbing Shenda's upper arms, calming her. "Take deep breaths. What do you normally do in situations like this?"
"Being kidnapped? Oh, I usually bake cookies..." She stopped and laughed. "Truth be told, I've never been in a situation like this. I've never been separated from Christa and the morons for more than a few minutes."
"Never? Really?"
Shenda nodded. "Never. I'm the prime sibling. I'm supposed to take care of them, protect them, and I can't do that if I'm here and they're there."
"Look, if it helps, Dad won't let anything happen to your siblings. He's protective that way."
"Did he mean all that stuff about taking our place?"
Aerith nodded. "Oh yeah. You saw his file. Everything in there is true."
"But he wasn't always like this, was he?"
"No, he wasn't and that other part of him is out there in the cabin with a bunch of mercenaries. We'll be fine as long as we stick together and watch each other’s backs."
Shenda took a deep breath before sitting down. "You're right. Dad, Mom, and the sibs are on the case. We have nothing to worry about." She grabbed a gossip rag from the pile and opened it to a story about some starlet. "Now, if only someone would walk in, so I could kick their ass. You know, take the edge off."
The door opened and Atmar walked in flanked by two guards. "Ladies, I see you have settled in. Can we get you anything?"
"A baseball bat and a catcher’s mitt?" Shenda replied.
"No ball?"
"I'll make do."
The two mercs immediately put themselves between Shenda and Atmar. They both made a show of taking their weapons' safeties off.
"Can't take a joke, can you, Big Guy? By the way, they keep calling you Loki. Don't they know your deep dark secret?" Shenda asked all innocent like.
"They don't care. I pay in cash. I could call myself Lenora, Queen Mother of the Elves, and they'd still put a bullet in your head if I ordered them to."
"I see Dad got all the couth," Aerith said, while her eyes burned with hatred for what was contained in Atmar's synth body. "Mind telling us how Royce missed when he shot you?"
"He didn't. Your uncle is fast, but SpecPro was faster, but enough about me. I just stopped by to tell you we’ll be arriving at our first destination in a few hours. Once I finish a few errands, we will proceed to our primary destination, a system containing a planet known as Ith."
"Ith? Never heard of it," Aerith said, a little confused.
"Yes, and the elves, humans, and dracos that live there want it to stay that way."
"Elves and humans? Have you lost your mind?"
"No. You see, back in the day, there were two ships launched to escape the horror of Nochmar. One went to Ventos Prime and the other went to Ith. I guess Ith was more conducive to life for all three species which had called Earth home."
"Three species? What the hell are you talking about? There were two sapient species on Earth when Atlantis blew—humans and elves!"
Atmar held up three fingers and made a loud buzzing noise. "I'm sorry, but you don't get to go to the bonus round. There were three. Call if you need anything. Tootles," he said as he exited the room with the guards following close behind.
Aerith was stunned. "That's not possible."
"What's not possible?"
"Thousands of years ago, elves and humans ruled Earth from an island-city called Atlantis. There was a coup-attempt led by an elf named General Nochmar. During the revolt, a refugee ship was sent out to a colony world we call Ventos Prime. Right after they left, Nochmar was captured and Atlantis destroyed, sending earth civilization back to the Stone Age. All the elves left on Earth died, leaving the humans to repopulate the planet. Meanwhile, a plague killed the humans on Ventos Prime, while sending the surviving elves back to their own version of the Stone Age. It took thousands of years for the two peoples to come back together." Aerith sat down on a chair and curled her legs under her, while steepling her fingers under her chin. "Now, according to Atmar, there was a third sapient species, one similar enough to humans and elves not to be detected in the fossil record on either Ventos Prime or Earth."
"Is that why humans didn't know of elves or elves know of humans?" Shenda asked.
"Our skeletons are too similar to European forest dwellers to pick-up the differences. It would take a DNA scan to detect the difference. Look at us. We’re elflings, a perfect fit of DNA from two different species."
"So, it's possible that what slime ball is saying is true?"
"Yeah, it's possible. A find like this, though, would set the history world on its ear."
"How do you know so much about Atlantis and this Nochmar guy?"
"Elf history is a hobby of mine. As for Nochmar, I met him a while back. Not the best of times."
"You're kidding, right?"
Aerith shook her head while mouthing a silent, "No."
"Okay, when we get out of this, you've got to tell me everything."
Aerith gave her the thumbs up before both of them turned their attention back to their magazines.
Chapter Five
Ciara Devlin, Operations Director of the Cube, hit the ground running. By the time she walked over to join Queen Losira and Harmon at the back door to the south wing, she had coordinated the efforts of local, Royal, and OffSec agents.
"Your Highness. Harm. And you three are?" she asked the three sibs.
"Ciara Devlin, Losira Irithyl, meet Bobby, Christa, and Torren, my children."
Both women snapped their heads around to look at Harmon in shock.
"You forgot to tell them, didn't you," Christa admonished Harm.
"Well, yeah, I guess I did."
"Harm adopted us," Bobby said as he shook hands with Ciara and the Queen.
"And now his doppelganger has kidnapped our sisters, Shenda and Aerith," Torren added.
"Oh, and the three of us and Shenda are identical elfling quadruplets..." Christa said as Torren nudged her. She rolled her eyes, "but Torren is the prettier one."
Torren smiled.
Ciara just looked at them while Losira and Harm linked. "Look, not to sound like a hormonal fifteen year-old," Christa said, "but I would really like the rest of my family back."
Losira released Harm’s hand and took Christa's. "As would I," she said. "Welcome to the family."
Ciara shook her head. "So, Atmar is alive and in a body. Wonderful. Any idea what he’s up to?"
"Yeah, and I don't think it has anything to do with me."
"Why?"
"He had me dead to rights, yet he only took Aerith and Shenda. He mentioned borrowing Shenda, so I'm betting he needs either her or one of her siblings to do something for him."
"Do what?" Bobby asked. "We're just teenage elflings."
Harm thought for a moment.
"Losi, when you ran the kid's DNA did you do it in-house or through an outside lab?"
"You mean the tests you forgot to tell me were for kids you were planning to adopt?"
"Yes, those tests."
"Outside lab, but I've worked with them for decades."
He looked at Christa. "One hundred twenty-eight bit encrypted line. Can it be monitored without the security daemons being spooked?"
"Yeah, easy-peasy. We spoof the input and output daemons so that they think nothing is lurking between them, but you knew that."
"Which means Atmar knows it. Can you write a lookey-loo routine to scan both InterWebs in real-time, starting with segment connecting the DNA lab with Losi's lab?"
"Sure, but why me?" Christa asked.
"Atmar doesn't know you, but he knows me. He'll be waiting for me."
"And you think he won't see me."
"Damn skippy. I've read about some of your work. I am very impressed."
Torren leaned over and nudged his sister. "He's impressed!"
She turned and cuffed him then looked at Harm. "Got it. I need access to a terminal and some help."
"Come on. You can use the one in my ship," Losira said. "Boys, you're with us."
"Cool!" Bobby and Torren said as they fell in behind Losira and Christa.
When they were out of sight, Harm turned to Ciara. "How is it my doppelganger is still alive? I thought Royce incinerated him at the Cube."
"So did we, I swear,” Ciara said. “Special Projects division gave up all data on the experiments they performed on you, and there is no mention of Atmar surviving Royce’s blaster bolt.”
“Muntz must be behind this. Where is he now?"
"On the lam. He was censured by OffSec, but he escaped custody. We're looking for him. Do you think he has something to do with this?"
"No, not directly, but I think he has something to do with the synth body Atmar is using to get around. It's good work, not what you’d get from a bootlegger. I thought I was looking in a mirror."
"I've got a team working on it as we speak. So, you don't think this has anything to do with you?"
"No. I'm pretty much the last guy Atmar wants to see."
"Why?" Ciara asked as they walked toward Losira's ship.
"Over the years, I got glimpses of his experiences. It's as if he left pieces of himself behind when he vacated my body. I think he's afraid that he'll die if he kills me. I saw fear in his eyes when he held that gun on me."
"Are you afraid of him dying?"
"If he hurts my kids, I will personally send him to the next realm, even if it means I have to escort him personally."
Ciara stopped him, as he put a foot on the ramp leading up into the ship. "Harm, I know you don't trust OffSec..."
"No, I don't, but I trust you implicitly. You are closer to me than Marta or any other member of my family. When you say you and your people have nothing to do with this, then I know I have nothing to worry about."
"You mean that?"
He nodded. "You were there for me at the Cube, and you've been there ever since” Sadly, you've been the only one. Now, shall we go see what my precocious children have found?"
###
Losira stood behind the three new additions to her family and watched in awe as they sifted data like some kind of organic supercomputer. Starting slow at first, they increased speed to where Losira couldn't keep up. She wondered if this is what an early life with her brother would have been like.
As the three worked, one then another would turn to her and ask a question out of the blue.
"What do queens do," Bobby asked as he routed data through traffic analysis routines. She told him, then he returned to his task.
"What's Major Royce like?" Torren asked. She told him. He told her he had read all of Royce's books. It was as if they were multitasking.
"Found something," Shenda said, while routing data to the Queen's personal holoprojector. A globe of Ventos Prime appeared. Gold lines appeared and spread around the globe. "That's the Ventosian InterWeb." Hundreds of green dots appeared. "Those are the primary nexus routers which route data traffic around the globe." Half the green dots turned purple. "Those are routers infected with the spoofer worm. Now, let's run the diagram forward in real-time starting a year ago. This is at a speed of one day per second." At first, there were no purple dots, then one appeared, then ten, these moved through the system with green dots turning purple, then back to green while other green dots turned purple for a day or two before returning to green."
"They never stay purple long enough for the security scans of each router to find it," Harm noted as he walked over to stand behind Christa. "Somehow, Atmar was able learn the scan schedule."
"I thought it was random," Ciara said as she watched the progression.
"It is, but he has found a way to predict the randomness."
"Is that possible?"
"Yes, it is," Christa said. "Random is in the eye of the beholder. Certain random number generators repeat themselves after N-iterations. The bigger N is, the better the generator, but bigger N's mean more storage and storage costs money." She stopped when she saw her sibs watching her slack-jawed. "What?"
"You're doing fine," Harm said as he patted her shoulders. "Honestly, I don't think I would have picked up on that. We need to see what those worms are looking for. Can you isolate an infected router?"
"Sure," she said as she typed commands. "There’s one in the castle's basement server room. I've cloned it to a backup and isolated it, but with faux data being fed into it by a test server."
The jaws went even slacker. "Christa smart!" Torren said in his best Neanderthal.
"Brain hurt," Bobby added.
She cuffed them both.
"OK, you three," Harm said in his stern voice. "Christa, can you determine what the worm is looking for?"
She typed. A series of symbols appeared above the holotable. Losira walked over and looked closer. "DNA. Computer, compare displayed DNA with sample from Aymar, Shenda."
"Working..."
"Losi, your computer sounds like Royce," Harm noted.
"What can I say," she said, embarrassed.
"DNA of Aymar, Shenda contains one hundred percent of displayed DNA fragment."
"Computer, compare DNA strand to known elf-human hybrid samples. What is maximum percentage match?"
"Working. Thirty-eight percent."
"Sample size?"
"Three million samples."
"Compare to human."
"Eighteen percent, two hundred million samples."
"Elf?"
"Twenty-two percent, seventy million."
"My God," Ciara exclaimed. "Talk about a needle in a haystack."
Losira looked closer at the fragment. "Computer, magnify segments twenty two through thirty-seven," she asked, referring to about a thousand DNA pairs
"Working..." The small section increased in size.
"Identify species, please."
"Unknown, though similar pairs exist in both elf and human genomes."
"Parallel evolution?"
"Possibly. Further study is indicated."
Losira sat back while the kids gave her a worried look.
"Are we OK?" Bobby asked.
"What? Of course, you’re OK. This part of your DNA is dormant. It’s just that it didn't come from an elf or a human. It came from something else, something similar, yet different."
"And Atmar has risked revealing himself to find a match for it. Christa, any idea where the data goes when the worms find something interesting?"
"Let's see..." She typed more commands into the terminal. Then more commands. "The damn thing is fighting me. I think it knows it’s been made."
Harm reached into his pocket and pulled out a yellow ball with a smiley face on it. It was about the size of a ping-pong ball and made of hard plastic. "Try this," he said as he handed it to her.
Christa gasped. "Where did you get this?" she said with a reverence reserved for re
ligious relics.
"Don't tell anyone, but I make them in my shop."
Christa's jaw dropped as she placed the ball on the console. Tiny tentacles came out of the ball and embedded themselves in the terminal's polished surface. Christa typed in some commands and results flowed forth on the screen like manna from heaven. She looked at Harm and said, "You so rock."
"Thank you. Keep the ball, it may come in handy."
Ciara leaned over and whispered, "I thought you stopped making hacker balls."
"I have. I still have a few lying around."
"Is that what I think it is," Losira asked as she stepped closer to Harm.
"Yep, a blast from the past."
"Well, your daughter now worships you."
"What can I say? I know how to make my kids happy."
"Dad, I think I know where the data is going," Christa announced.
"Show us," he replied.
The globe returned, but this time there was only one purple dot. "This is from the route map stored in this router and subsequent routers along the data path. The starting point is here in the castle," she explained. "Atmar tried to mask the path, but the hacker ball made short work of it."
"What's inside that thing?" Torren asked."
"A level-four quantum computer with 8TB of fast-RAM. We have a similar one down in the basement. It functions as a backup for the mainframe," Harm explained.
Ciara shook her head.
"What? You've got three of them at the Cube."
"We do? And I'm only hearing about it now?"
"It must have slipped my mind. Keep going, Kiddo."
A line emerged from Castle Atlantea and ran across the surface of the globe to another router, than another, then another. Eventually, after maybe a hundred iterations, it stopped at a point in an area marked "Tantamount Plateau." Christa brought up more starting points, and like the first one, the data ended up at the same point in the Tantamount Plateau. "A normal trace would have stopped at around fifty path iterations. Atmar is good," she said.
"He was always the better hacker while I preferred the smuggler side of things. Sorry, Losi, but your twin is a miscreant."