"I heard that. And yes, I programmed the patterns for that one myself." St. John then pointed at McCall and added, "And it doesn't stink, Laddie! So now, let's go!"
They walked out of the IT-Center together, down a flight of stairs and then along a very long corridor until they reached a bulkhead at the end.
McCall turned around, trying to orientate himself. This place must be right under the cliffs. Pretty low underneath, he thought.
St. John typed his master code into a terminal and the massive bulkhead opened. It took some time simply because of the immense weight. The bulkhead had a huge diameter as well as density and thickness.
Then, St. John turned around and looked at McCall who still held the bag with the infected picture. "You, and you alone, go in there. Put that thing on the table in the middle of the room, without the bag. Then leave, and leave fast. And you'll have to leave your com and all other devices outside with us while you're in there doing that. Okay?"
McCall sighed. Would it work? He handed over his com, his watch and even his pistol to Beaumont, checking all of his pockets again. Then he walked slowly into the silent room and steadied himself. He grabbed the picture out of the bag, laid it on the table and ran out again. He thought the picture had felt very warm when he had touched it and he was glad to be out of the silent room again.
St. John typed in another code and the huge door began to move very slowly. It was a steady, slow movement of the door toward the closed position, and it seemed like it took forever for the door to finally close completely again.
Then St. John opened a door in the wall next to the bulkhead and guided them all in. It was a complete control room with several screens. One of the screens was on and showed the inside of the silent room and the piece of 'paper' with the picture on the middle table.
"Matthew, please assist me with the scanners." St. John said as he began turning the remaining screens on.
"Of course, sir. What routines do we need?"
"All of them, let's start."
McCall, Beaumont and Lily watched in fascination as the systems scanned the harmless looking picture and revealed its secret. Lines of code and even an x-ray of the picture appeared on the screens. They had found the bug, the Trojan intruder.
Suddenly, Lily Spector blew her nose. It was so loud that everyone jumped.
"Dammit!"
"Yuck!"
"Mon Dieu!"
"What the hell?"
"What? Sorry, you gotta do what you gotta do." She smiled at the men and giggled.
"Hey, Honey," said McCall, "We have to finish this up here first. But soon, I promise, we'll go chase that bastard who stole the Lady Rose."
Lily waved it away, suddenly very calm. "No hurry, we've got time."
The men looked at her incredulously.
McCall said, "What? First you're hysterical, understandably, then you're sobbing, and now we're back to business as usual?"
"He took my Lady Rose!" She ranted, but then continued in a calmer voice, "But he won't get very far. At least not very fast."
McCall shook his head. "Would Lady Lily please explain why, if her Majesty is willing?"
Lily began giggling again. Then she said, „Alright. I've got engine number 2 in maintenance, it's inoperative at the moment. And engines 1 and 3 are only good for maybe..." she looked up, calculating, "280.000 km/h."
McCall gave her a hug and said, "You should have told us earlier."
"Well Mate, I didn't have a chance," as she pointed to the screens, "and this is important now."
St. John grunted something in Scottish and focused on the screens again. "Look at that bastard! It reacted to the scanner's energy and tried to take over all of the systems."
"Do you think it gets its power from them?" Julien asked.
"Maybe, we should..."
A flash from the silent room stopped St. John in mid-sentence. They saw smoke on the monitor displaying the camera feed from the silent room. The ominous picture had self-destructed.
"Sacre bleu! What a clever piece of shit! When it noticed that it could no longer corrupt the systems, it simply destroyed itself." Beaumont's voice had a tone of respect in it. "Whoever created this must be the best hacker I ever met."
St. John's com beeped.
"Aye! What is it?"
"Tower here, Sir, I have Captain Lerille from the La Fleur on the line. Should I put him through?"
"Yes, I'll take that call. Lerille, mon ami, are you there?"
"Oui, listen, we noticed a shuttle started a while ago. Did you manage to bring the rest of the crew up to the La Fleur?"
"I'm afraid not. That shuttle was stolen." St. John looked at McCall inquiringly, who nodded back. "But the Buster K will take off soon. It can bring your people up to the La Fleur."
"Very good! Do you think this stolen shuttle will be a threat for us?"
"I don't think so, but keep your eyes open!"
"Bien sûr, we will. Lerille out."
McCall looked at the others, "Well, I assume there is not much left to analyze, right?"
"No sir, just ashes." Burke said and waved his hands in the air. "We got some information before it burned up, but it'll take time to analyze that. It was an unusual concept."
"Ok, then I would say, you," McCall pointed at Burke, "and Lily should join us when we go after the Lady Rose. Do you have a gun?"
"Of course, everybody here has one."
"Then get it. We'll meet on the field at our ship. Let's go!"
St. John stayed back for the few minutes in order to secure and shut down the systems and the silent room. Then he followed after the group who had already gone out to the Buster K. He took out his com and called for the remaining crew of the La Fleur to come down to the airfield.
"Julien, is it safe now?"
"Yes Linus," he pulled the doohickey out of his pocket, "should I?"
"Yep, switch it on!"
Beaumont typed his code into the mysterious remote and the Buster K came to life. Taxi lights came on, the ramp came down, the main airlock opened. This time it was operated by the servos.
"Wait, I got to get my gun, too." Lily said.
"But you can have one of ours."
"No Mac, I want mine." She ran towards the city.
"Oh please, do we now have the extended make up hour?" McCall walked quickly towards his ship and had just barely made it up the ramp, when a piece of scrap metal came flying across field and crashed down right where had been standing just seconds before.
Lily Spectors response hadn't done any harm, other than a small scratch in the hull.
Beaumont exclaimed, „Jeez!“ and then chuckled as he followed McCall up the ramp. He heard the noise of forklifts and turned around. The crew members of the La Fleur were down on the tarmac bringing their escape pods with them.
Beaumont sighed, and relaxed a bit thinking about the fact that Lily had said the Lady Rose was a lame duck at moment. They had enough time. He waved at the crew members of the La Fleur. "Bring them up, I hope the escape pods are sanitized by now."
"Don't worry, they've been completely reset. Only the voice control is weird. Has a funny voice now." One of the crew members said, with a name tag that read 'Harper' on his uniform. „It's kind of annoying, but we'll get that worked out as well."
"Oui, annoying,..." Beaumont thought about the new voice on the Buster K and sighed again. Suddenly he heard the sound of helicopters closing in, and at the same time his com started to squeak. But before he could answer, someone started yelling.
"JULIEN! BEHIND YOU!"
Beaumont saw a shadow jumping out of the corner of his eye. He tried to duck but the thing hit him on his shoulder. It knocked him over, and as he was rolling down the cargo ramp, he caught a glimpse of the attacker. It was a spider-ant. And it was rolling down the ramp behind him, but it was able to upright itself onto its six legs very quickly. It stood firmly and focused Julien Beaumont with its eyes.
Julien pulled his pistol as quickly as he
could, but the creature was faster and jumped toward him.
Just as the spider-ant was still in midair, the burst of an assault rifle tore it apart. The dead carcass spilled its blood all over the ramp, spraying Julien and then landing hard on the metal ramp, just a foot away from him.
"Merde!" Julien had just come to his feet, wiping the stinking blood from his face, when Lily came running up the ramp toward him with her gun still smoking.
"Are you ok?" Lily cried breathlessly. At the moment, she was far away from being the crazy punk girl.
"Oui, yes, just full of alien puss, or whatever this is. Merde!"
"What the fuck?" McCall was coming back out of the Buster K and was looking incredulously at the situation.
"A lot of yucky crap 'ere!" Lily said.
"I see that, I heard the commotion. And I just got a call from St. John. They heard the shots too."
McCall picked up his com, "St. John, are there any more of these things around?"
"Be alerted Laddie, the choppers reported one more somewhere. Wait, got word from them, the other one is hiding just 200 yards from your ship. Near the east hangars."
"Copy that!" He looked at Beaumont and Lily, "Ready to go on a hunt?"
Beaumont was still wiping his face to get rid of the smell of blood, as he came slowly around a corner between the hangars. He saw that McCall was already at the other end of the alley, and Lily had taken up a sniper position on a cargo ramp at the end of the same alley.
Beaumont was guiding McCall, "Linus, you are almost on top of it, be careful"
McCall stood on a crate and had his rifle at the ready to aim at anything that might jump out of the shadows. The two choppers had risen above them and held their position now at about 1000 feet so they could scan the area. They had the creature on their scanners and reported its position to the tower. It seemed to be hiding behind a cargo lift.
"Shit, we are getting into each others firing range, mon ami!"
"I hear you, Linus. I see something over there." No sooner had Beaumont said that, than a big, dark brown shadow jumped out of the structure of the cargo lift and began charging McCall.
McCall opened fire at once, but the thing was faster. It jumped over him and dashed toward Lily's position.
"LILY, SHOOT,SHOOT,SHOOT!" McCall yelled and jumped down, hitting the ground hard, while Beaumont took cover behind the cargo lift.
Lily opened fire on full auto, but only managed to hit the spider-ant a few times. It wasn't seriously injured. Now it came racing towards her, and her rifle went dry. Lily started running down the alley, with the creature closing in behind her.
McCall raced behind the thing, trying to reload his M16 at the same time, but he failed and had to stop for a moment. Beaumont was running and passed by McCall, firing his Trimaster. He got a few hits on the back of the creature, but it wasn't slowing down at all.
Lily was still running. She could see the end of the alley and the buildings only 10 meters away. She could hear the hissing of the creature and imagined it just behind her with the bullets hitting it.
Then, she reached the corner and took a sharp turn to the left. The Spider-ant wasn't that quick, skidded and fell down in its attempt to follow her around the corner.
Beaumont fired his entire magazine into the creature as it fell to the ground. It twitched, hissed and tried to get to its feet. But the final bullet he had fired into its head put it down for good.
Beaumont and McCall, still running, reached the creature, panting, and with their rifles aimed. But it was dead.
McCall looked over at Lily. "You ok?"
"Yes, no, I mean, shut up!"
"Yep, sounds like you're ok, hon." He helped her up and she hit his shoulder. And then giggled.
"Ouch, please find another spot!"
Now she tried to kick him, which he avoided by turning away. So she hit him again on his shoulder.
He grabbed her around her body and held her tight. "Stop it with the hitting, Cockney!"
But she just giggled again and McCall then realized that he had mistakenly grabbed one of her breasts.
Beaumont tried to ignore the goings on and spoke into his com. "Tower, St. John, was that all of them? Are there any more around?"
"Negative, so far. Those were the only ones the choppers located."
Beaumont looked up, saw the two helicopters circling the area. "Ok, let's meet at the Buster K. We got work to do." Beaumont turned his com off and looked at McCall, who was still trying to calm Lily down.
McCall said to Beaumont, "Yeah, we should get going, let's give the crew mates of the La Fleur a lift and then go after the Lady Rose."
He looked down at Lily who was now holding his hand against her breast. "Enough Hon!"
"Aw, come on..."
"Sheez, we have work to do. Let's go."
They went back to the tarmac where the Buster K was parked and saw the crew mates of the La Fleur waiting at the lowered cargo ramp. McCall felt a sting through his spine when he saw that. Nobody had thought about sealing the ship. Beaumont recognized the look on his face and said, "It's ok partner, I sealed the inner airlock before we left."
"Thank you. I didn't think about that."
They saw St. John and Matthew Burke coming over from the Tower, while the choppers set down nearby.
"Good job, you rascals. Are you okay?" St .John was seriously worried about them as he looked them over.
"I just want to know if there are any more of them." McCall growled.
"Let's ask the crews from the choppers about that." St. John suggested and waved them closer. McCall and Beaumont turned around and noticed four crewmen in flight suits approaching them.
Half a Light year away, onboard the USS Colin Powell
Colonel Frank van der Meer hit his fist down hard onto the console. "This is ridiculous! Life support is online, the helm is functional, but the damn engines are stuck. How the hell is this possible?"
The computer officer, Major Winterer, just shrugged. "We checked everything twice and we've been going over it again and again during the last two weeks. We simply don't know. The system is somehow corrupted. We have to assume it's been hacked from the outside."
"Great, I feel so much better!" Colonel van der Meer was getting more riled up while Winterer was trying to adjust the engine controls again.
Suddenly Winterer noticed something and uttered, "Wait! I've got something on the scanners!" Winterer was pointing at one particular screen, where a bright blinking spot had appeared.
"What's that?"
"I don't know, it was active for maybe two seconds. And look, now it's gone. But the location is recorded." Winterer said as he continued to type. Then he tried to activate the main engines, as he had been trying to do for the last two weeks. "Got it!" He yelled, "Deck 2, sector 11!"
"Wait, what?" Van der Meer looked bewildered, "that's in my quarters!" He turned around and gestured to the armed guards. "Jones, Rabinovitz, follow me!"
They hurried out of the bridge, followed by Winterer who grabbed some equipment from his workplace.
Van der Meer recognized that Winterer had brought a multi-scanner. That was a device that could detect any type of electric impulses and digital systems, active or inactive.
They avoided the elevator of the ship and took the emergency stairway down. When they arrived at Van der Meer's cabin, he unlocked the door to his quarters, and they slowly and carefully entered, looking from side to side. Winterer activated the handheld scanner and, while looking at the screen, searched the entire room. Then he raised his hand with the scanner and focused the scanner on a picture on the wall. "That, over there," he yelled and pointed at the picture.
"Ridiculous, that's just a picture!" Van der Meer was shaking his head.
"Look, here, Sir! The reading …" Winterer locked eyes with his superior. "That's not an ordinary picture, it's a digital circuit!"
Van der Meer rushed forward and ripped the picture of the Faberge Egg from the wall, and looked bac
k at Winterer. "Ok, if you're so sure, what should we do?"
"Throw it out of the airlock, now!"
Before anyone could say anything, Van der Meer had already rushed out of the room and ran down the corridor. He spoke into his com.
"Bridge, open the inner airlock closest to my position. Wait for my command to open the outer airlock."
"Roger Sir. 20 meters to your left is the next airlock, awaiting your command."
He saw the bulkhead rising as he came closer. As he reached it, he put the picture gently on the floor inside. Then he backed up and pushed the button to close the inner bulkhead.
"Bridge, inner airlock closed, open outer one now,"
"Without evacuation? Just explosive decompression?"
"Yes! Do it now!"
The outer airlock raised into the hull and the remaining air rushed out violently taking the notorious picture with it. At the same time a lurch was felt throughout the ship.
"Holy shit! What was that?" Van der Meer asked through his com.
"Uh, well Colonel, at the same time that the airlock blasted the picture out, all of the controls came back to normal."
Van der Meer smiled now. "Son of a Bitch!" He thought he knew who was responsible for this. "Ok Bridge, copy that. But we still have to sanitize our systems, get on it right away."
"Yessir, we're already working on it. Bridge out."
Van der Meer started walking back to his quarters. Now he was more confident that they could neutralize the traitor.
Chapter 9: Fly me to the silent moon
The Buster K was en route, searching for the Lady Rose now. They had brought the crew of the La Fleur back to their ship and, while searching for the Lady Rose, decided to go on to a silent military station. Burke was with them, because he knew the interior of this installation.
"Are you sure it's ok?" McCall asked Beaumont.
"Oui, it's all ours. I did some modifications to keep the backdoor locked."
McCall let out a relieved breath.
It would be a long flight. Crazy Cockney Lily had settled into one of the jump seats and was snoring while the two pilots were looking for a signal from the lost ship.
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