by Mike Kraus
Throughout Nealson’s short speech, he could see that he was getting the attention of the men. Their attention grew until the end, when they finally went from silently listening to nodding their agreement. Once he saw that they were back on his side, he addressed them individually again, taking each one by the arm and looking them dead in the eyes.
“Are you with me?” He asked of each, and each nodded and replied.
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said after the fifth had spoken, “get in the trucks. We’re going to finish this.”
Chapter 14
Washington, D.C.
Outside, in the middle of the tightly-packed buildings on the grounds of the old naval observatory, the shots from Jacob’s pistol sounded as though they were coming from every direction. Rick was the first to move in response to the gunfire, pulling Oles and Dr. Evans down to the ground as he ducked behind the hood of the car. A spray of plastic was accompanied by the sound of arcing electricity as the monitor fell down on top of Rick’s head, a large hole punched clean through the center. Three more shots rang out and Rick heard the server bounce around as shots ricocheted off of the metal backing and one punched through, hitting the drives and causing a loud scrape of metal as the platters ground to a halt.
“Give me the codes!” Jacob screamed again as he slowly shuffled toward the car. Rick ducked down low and watched Jacob’s feet as he approached, trying to estimate which direction the Russian was going to take when circling around. With his rifle sitting on the roof of the car, grabbing it would be a large risk, and one that would likely result in him taking a bullet or two in the process.
“Jacob, please! You don’t have to do this!” Rick glanced over and saw Oles sitting next to him, leaned over and shouting at his former friend. “You can stop this right now!”
“No I can’t!” Jacob yelled back, continuing his slow walk toward the car.
“Jacob, listen to me, please!” Oles was nearly in tears as he continued pleading with Jacob. “The endgame is near. This is about to get a whole lot worse for everyone in the world. You can help us stop it, though!”
Jacob stopped, a few feet from the side of the car’s trunk. Rick took a quick peek up through the windows and saw the Russian standing there, his body swaying back and forth. Dried blood matted his hair and flaked off of his neck as he rubbed a hand across it, and Rick briefly felt bad for him. How he had managed to live through the brutal beating Rick had given him was nothing short of impressive.
“I’m sorry, Oles. If I could stop, I would. My… my family, though…” Jacob choked up, and Rick could see tears starting to run down his face. “They have my family, you know. He does. He took me in, told me that if the Spetsnaz failed or turned, it would be my job to bring the codes back. If I don’t… they die.” A long, deep breath and the shakiness went out of Jacob’s voice. “I can’t let that happen.”
“Neither can I.” Rick peeked out again, seeing that Jacob was focused on the rear of the car, and made his move. He turned and stood up just far enough to reach for the rifle on the top of the car. Metal scraped on metal as he grabbed it, and he pulled it down and got back into cover just as Jacob turned and fired. A spray of safety glass blew over the three men, but Rick didn’t hesitate. He scuttled around Dr. Evans, moving to the front of the car where he got on his knees, slammed his arms down on the hood and shouldered the rifle in a single, smooth motion.
One more shot, louder than the others, rang out. It bounced off the walls of the buildings at the observatory, traveled down the empty streets and petered out as it disappeared off into the sky. Jacob’s form wavered for a moment before he collapsed, smacking his head on the trunk of the car before falling into a heap. The distant returning echoes of the bullet were the only sounds in the observatory grounds for a long moment until Oles finally cried out.
“Damn it, Jacob!” He stood and walked over to his former friend’s corpse, crossing himself and continuing on in a string of Russian that neither Rick nor Dr. Evans could understand. While the words were unintelligible to them, the emotion was clear. Anger, raw and primal, mixed with regret and profound sadness tinged them, permeating into Rick and Dr. Evans and making them both feel what Oles felt.
Dr. Evans slowly approached Oles and put his good arm around him. “I’m sorry. I know you two were friends. It sounds like… like this might not have been entirely under his control.”
Oles shook his head vigorously. “No. He still bears responsibility. It doesn’t matter what they threatened him with… but it was his family.” He shook his head, unsure what to think.
“Whatever there is to figure out, we’ll figure out later,” Rick replied as he stood up and looked at the damage done to the computer systems that had been sitting atop the car. “For right now, we need to decide what to do about all of… this.” The damage that Rick had heard being done to the server was as bad as it had sounded in the midst of the firefight. Shards of hard drive platters were embedded on the interior plastic of the case, rendering them inoperable.
“We can get another system,” Oles replied.
“Do we even need one?” Rick asked, looking at the pair. “The commands are written. You said Damocles will read it off of anything that it infects, right?” He turned and gazed at the nearby rooftop. “The LKN will accept this type of data source. We might not have power, though, with the abuse this system went through.”
“Maybe we do need a new system then, just to power the LKN.”
“Hmm.” Rick scratched his chin. “Let’s pull the dead drives and see if we can get this thing powered on.”
Dr. Evans pulled the plug from the back of the server and they quickly went to work disassembling the device. A few minutes in, as a stiff breeze was kicking up, Rick cocked his head to the side. “You two hear that?”
Noises signaling danger had been a constant theme since the start of the event, and the mere mention of an odd sound set Dr. Evans and Oles on edge. It was a muffled warble, coming from somewhere close by yet sounding too faint to easily pinpoint the source. The longer they listened, the more confused they grew until Dr. Evans drew in a sharp gasp of air.
“Warning alarm. It’s from the bunker.”
“Alarm in the bunker?”
Dr. Evans was already on the move, heading for the very door that Jacob had emerged from. He moved relatively quickly in spite of his injury, and he paused at the entrance to the building after pulling open the door, a look of panic crossing his face.
“What is it?” Oles’ face began to match Dr. Evans’.
“It’s an advanced launch warning.” He glanced at Rick, seeing the look of confusion. “Certain launch conditions include broadcasts to high-priority stations. The birthplace of Damocles would qualify, without a doubt.”
“How could that possibly be happening?” Rick shook his head.
“Damocles would have left emergency communications alone, so that enemies under attack would have a final chance to surrender.”
“Does that mean…” Rick started.
“Yes. Damocles has entered the final stages.”
“How long do we have?”
“Minutes. At most.”
Rick looked down at the thumb drive in his hand, then up at the roof. “Time to find out if this works.” He broke into a run, ignoring Oles and Dr. Evans as they started throwing theories and speculations back and forth and dashed forward to the building that housed the transmitter on top. Shouting over his shoulder, he cried out to the pair as he vanished inside. “Get the power on to that system! The transmitter won’t work without it!”
Chapter 15
Washington, D.C.
Rick’s heartbeat pounded in his ears as he ran down the hall, the thumb drive containing the text file clutched tight in his hand. He had questions for Dr. Evans about the early warning system, the commands on the drive and so much more but none of it mattered. If Dr. Evans said that a launch was imminent, then it was imminent.
In the back of Ric
k’s mind, pushed there when he started his run for fear that thinking about it would overwhelm him to the point of incapacitating him, sat his family. Dianne, Mark, Jacob and Josie. His four shining stars, lost to him for so long and now just a relative stone’s throw away. Choosing to go after stopping Damocles over returning to them had been a difficult decision, but thinking about it all not mattering if the launch were successful was too much to bear.
So he ran. Leaping over the still-slick bloodstains in the hall from the gunfight that now seemed a distant memory. Slamming his shoulder into the wall as he rounded the corner on a landing. Taking the stairs two, three even four at a time. By the time he burst out onto the roof his already-exhausted body felt like it was going to give up, but his mental fortitude carried him through. It was just about the only thing keeping him standing, but it was enough. For the moment, at least.
From atop the roof Rick was far enough away from the entrance to the opposite building that he couldn’t hear the faint alarms going off, but the panicked body language of Dr. Evans and Oles below told him that the noise was still ongoing. Rick dropped to his knees at the LKN transmitter and popped open the cover, revealing a blank screen. A moment of panic clutched at him, but a cry of joy from down below accompanied a flash on the screen as the device powered up.
“Is it working?!” The shout came from Oles, and Rick stuck his head over the side of the roof and shouted back.
“Yes! It just came on!”
“Well hurry up! This thing isn’t sounding good… I don’t know how long before it dies again!”
Seconds ticked by slower than Rick could have ever dreamed they could as the transmitter’s lightweight operating system powered up. The splash screen appeared, then disappeared, and then he was staring at the menu.
Alone on the rooftop, Rick fumbled with the thumb drive in his hand before he pushed it into one of the transmitter’s data ports. A small symbol of a rotating hourglass appeared in a corner of the transmitter’s screen for what felt like forever before it turned into a green checkmark, signaling that the drive had been successfully inserted, detected and recognized as a valid device.
Rick’s fingers trembled as he pushed the buttons next to the screen, trying to hurry through the menus to get to what he was looking for. Finally, in a sub-menu, there was the option that he recalled from when he had worked with one of the transmitters in the past.
Activate standalone search?
Rick pushed the button next to the option, then confirmed with a second button press. Normally the transmitter would need to be controlled by an external device in order to send and receive signals, but one of the debug options allowed the transmitter to be placed in an “open” mode where it would constantly broadcast a test signal and open itself up for connections from outside sources. While outside connections would have to be properly authenticated in order to connect to the transmitter, Rick knew full well that Damocles had that capability.
With a final press of a button the option was confirmed yet again and small gears inside the transmitter whirred to life. Higher up on its pole a small antenna unfurled, and even higher the small satellite dish began to rotate back and forth, searching for something to connect to.
“Rick?” Dr. Evans and Oles appeared at the door to the roof, both of them panting from the exertion of running up the stairs.
“What are you two doing here? You need to stay by the server, make sure the power doesn’t go out!”
“It’s as good as it’ll get,” Dr. Evans nodded at his companion, “Oles here is better with hardware than he’d like you to know. It’s stable for the moment.”
“Is it… working?” Oles pointed at the slowly-rotating dish atop the transmitter’s tower.
Rick glanced back at the screen and shook his head. “It’s sending out a signal and waiting for a connection at the same time. I have no idea if it’s actually working, though. It’ll be—wait.” The screen flickered so quickly that Rick thought he might have blinked his eyes too slowly and imagined the distortion.
“Wait what?”
“Nothing… thought I saw—wait, there it is again!” The second time he definitely, without a doubt, saw the screen flicker. Dr. Evans and Oles walked over and crouched down behind Rick, all three of them staring at the transmitter’s screen.
“What did you see?”
“The screen flickered, once or twice. But maybe it’s a power surge from the server.” Rick studied the screen top to bottom before shrugging. “Guess I can run a diagnostic while it’s searching.” He pushed one of the buttons next to the screen, but nothing happened. A brief rush of panic seized him before it was replaced with elation. “This… this isn’t working! It’s not working!”
“Damocles is in the system.” Dr. Evans spoke with a broadening smile.
“Sure seems that way.” Rick tapped his fingers across the buttons in a futile effort to get a response from the transmitter, but none was forthcoming. “But now what? Shouldn’t it have read the commands and disabled itself?”
“Just wait,” Dr. Evans patted Rick on the shoulder, “its first priority is infection. Once it’s secure in the system then it’ll move on to scanning all the data. After that it’ll sabotage the system in a way that makes the most sense based on its instruction sets before it tries to use the system to replicate itself. I’m betting it’s either still ensuring that it has full control over everything bef—ha! See!”
Dr. Evans jabbed his finger at the screen as it flickered again, then turned off. It snapped back to life a second later, white text scrolling fast across a black background. The text was gibberish to the human eye, though, a mix of binary and seemingly random ASCII characters and Rick raised an eyebrow. “Is this a good thing?”
“It’s performing a deep scan of the system. All it has to do is hit the thumb drive and it’ll disable itself.”
“The operating system on these is pretty small. Couple of gigs at most. Shouldn’t take Damocles more than a few seconds to scan everything, right?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Dr. Evans nodded.
Rick sat, staring at the screen for over a full minute before looking over at Dr. Evans again. “You sure those commands were right?”
Oles and Dr. Evans exchanged another glance. “They were precise; we’re sure of it.” Oles replied.
“Indeed.”
“So why’s it not working?”
The trio stared at the screen, the jumble of characters still flying across, each of them consumed with their own private doubts and worries. Oles, over whether he had somehow inadvertently messed things up. Dr. Evans, over whether every single line was given and typed in correctly. Rick, over his family, and wishing that—if the end was going to come—then all he wanted, more than anything else in the world, was to be there holding tight to them until the fire and flames ripped them apart.
Beep.
The sound was soft, created by the tiniest of integrated speakers inside the transmitter and designed primarily to help technicians working on repairs and to give audio feedback on buttons being pressed. Rick opened his eyes and stared at the screen, bright and regular again, no longer the wave of symbols but instead containing a line of text that was the sweetest and most satisfying thing he could have ever imagined reading.
Broadcast in progress. Please stand by.
Chapter 16
The Waters’ Homestead
Outside Ellisville, VA
“Over there! Behind the trucks!” Frantic shouting is followed by the swift fire of shots, followed up by return fire.
“I see him!”
“I need him suppressed or else I can’t get an angle on the other one!”
“Augh!” A scream accompanied by the shattering of glass.
“How bad is it?!”
Jason slid down the wall next to the window he had been shooting from and held a hand to his upper arm. “Just grazed me; I’m fine!”
Rapid, unending fire continued to pour into the upper windows o
f the house as Mark crawled across the floor to examine Jason’s wound for himself. Delays in the fire only occurred when individual assailants needed to stop and reload, and even then there were still at least three or four who were firing nonstop.
The attack had come the next morning, just a couple hours after Tina had awoken. She was still pale and weak, but her breathing had improved and she was able to instruct Dianne in the proper medications to give and how to redress the wound without risking more air leaking into her chest cavity. Jason had just finished up a long-overdue and extremely welcome hot shower when the roar of engines made him abandon his towel as he leapt around, pulling clothes on over his still-dripping form.
The pair of trucks that roared down the driveway ignored the gate and the boards with nails entirely, the lead truck ramming through the gate and both trucks popping all of their tires as they screamed across the traps. Nealson had no plans to make an escape—he would either triumph or he would not be leaving. It was as simple as that.
“Stop playing around and shoot them!” Dianne roared up the stairs at Mark and Jason as she charged through a hall, sprays of shrapnel and bullets whizzing past her. She slid to a stop near the kitchen window and looked over at Sarah, who was cradling Tina in her arms as she tried to move the injured woman and the two younger children to the basement door. “Hurry! Get them downstairs quickly!”
“I’m trying!”
Dianne put her head back against the wall and closed her eyes as the storm of fire continued to rain down on the house. They had been expecting an attack from Nealson—it was foolish not to expect one—but one so ferocious? That was the surprise. The last time, when he had taken all of them except Tina, Jason and Mark, their attack had been coordinated and calculated. This felt completely different, like all Nealson wanted was to use brute force to try and bring the entire place down around them.