XGeneration 7: Dead Hand (XGeneration Series)

by Brad Magnarella

  Jesse clapped his shoulder, sending Scott stumbling down the tunnel. He found his footing and soon spied the amber halo from Shockwave’s headlamp. His progress was impressive.

  Scott activated his own headlamp and studied the walls of the tunnel. They appeared compact enough. Shockwave had assured him his tunnels would hold to a depth of two hundred meters. Fortunately, they would only be descending to half that. Scott checked the reader. Fifty meters and falling.

  “A couple of degrees to your right,” he shouted above the pulsating waves. He consulted the compass as they veered. Accuracy would be more crucial the closer they came to the silo. Until then, he just needed to keep them generally on course. “That’s good!”

  “Got a little problem,” Shockwave called over his shoulder.

  Scott’s sternum stiffened. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Minion,” he said.

  “Minion?”

  “When I return, she wants us to get married.”

  Scott relaxed. Seemed an odd thing to be worrying about now.

  “Or engaged, anyway. That way they can’t move us to different states.”

  Scott caught his thoughts shifting to himself and Janis. Was that a tactic they might consider? Despite that the air in the tunnel was cooling, the thought made his face flush.

  Need to concentrate, dummy.

  “Let’s steepen the angle a little,” he called.

  Shockwave complied but kept talking. “Don’t get me wrong, Minion is a sweet girl. She has a way of softening my crueler edges. But marriage? We’re only sixteen, for God’s sake. I don’t know that I’m ready for a lifelong commitment.”

  He had a point, Scott thought. But what about him and Janis? After everything they’d been through in the last two years, Scott felt they were older than their sixteen years. Old enough to make that kind of a commitment, though? He considered the practicalities. With the money they had earned as Champions, they would be able to buy a house, pay for college…

  Focus, focus, focus.

  He consulted the digital device. They were almost to the correct depth, but they’d veered off course again. “Need to start leveling out here,” Scott called. “But let’s tack right, another five degrees.”

  “How far to the target?” Shockwave asked.

  “Another two-fifty,” Scott answered, glad to be back on task. “We’re halfway there.”

  And making great time, he thought.

  “Has Janis brought that up with you?” Shockwave asked.

  “Brought what up?”

  “Marriage?”

  She hadn’t, but something in the way she had held his face that morning, stared over his eyes, kissed him goodbye, told him she might be open to the idea—a thought that would have laid Scott flat only two years earlier.

  And just like that, a new fear seized him. An anxiety-ridden certainty that, yes, when they completed their mission, when he returned to Oakwood, he, Scott Spruel, was going to propose to Janis Graystone.

  Holy crap.

  Scott’s earpiece vibrated with Jesse’s voice: “Something’s happening, chief.”

  He pecked Shockwave’s back with a pair of fingers to tell him to stop blasting.

  “What is it?” Scott asked in the sudden silence. But even as he formed the question, a sound from Jesse’s end was taking terrifying shape in his helmet—the bruising cries of a Klaxon alarm.

  Oakwood

  Janis felt Scott’s panic. Something was happening. Something had gone wrong.

  She unspooled the length of hair she’d wrapped tightly around her finger and stood from the console. She paced the bunker’s main room, eyes closed, trying to home in on just what had gone wrong. But all she had was an insistent feeling of panic, like a cycling alarm.

  Please be okay, Scott.

  Tyler joined her at the back of the room. “Did you get a message?” he asked quietly.

  When Janis realized he was referring to the mission-failure message, she shook her head quickly. “No, no, nothing like that.”

  She peered from Tyler to the others. Erin, who was thumbing through one of the bunker’s outdated copies of Reader’s Digest, appeared as unflappable as ever. But Janis knew she would have to tread carefully with Minion, who was watching her and Tyler with eyes still pink and tear-swollen from that morning. If Scott was in trouble, so was Shockwave.

  “I’m just a little worried, that’s all,” Janis assured everyone.

  “I feel so stinking helpless,” Minion complained, “waiting here, not knowing what’s happening over there.”

  Welcome to the club, Janis thought sympathetically.

  She wondered whether Minion’s and the others’ feelings of helplessness had become as claustrophobic as her own. The feeling that the bunker’s concrete walls were grinding closer, squeezing the oxygen from the room, making it harder and harder to breathe. Or was part of that claustrophobia coming from the thrumming powers inside her, yearning to be unleashed?

  She winced away from the others as the feeling of Scott in trouble pierced her once more. On the computer monitor, she caught movement. A message appearing.

  No, no, no!

  She darted back to the console. But as her eyes moved over the words, her heart settled back in her chest. Not a mission-failure alert.

  But what exactly?

  > COMMUNICATION REQUEST FROM 4065. ACCEPT (Y/N)

  Janis had no idea who or what 4065 was, but if there was any chance that it related to the mission, she would take it.

  “Someone’s trying to reach us,” she called over a shoulder.

  She tapped the Y key to accept. A series of esoteric letter-number combinations flitted down the screen while the entire console made intermittent grunting and crunching sounds. A moment later, a scratched-up phone receiver on the front of the console began to ring.

  Janis raised a brow to the others, who had gathered around, before picking the receiver up on the second tone. Cold metal pressed to her ear, she summoned her most commanding voice. “Hello?”

  She was hoping beyond hope that it was Scott, that he was calling to tell her they had completed the mission ahead of schedule and were heading home. But the responding voice was older.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

  It took a moment for the voice to compute. When it did, the relief Janis experienced nearly capsized her.

  “Director Kilmer!” she said.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  “Honestly? Not well.”

  She imagined him nodding, tired eyes drawn down. “The burden will be like none you’ve ever known or will likely know again, but believe in yourselves. Your training will carry you through. And believe me when I say I couldn’t be prouder of you all.” Little squibs caught in his voice, as though the message were being scrambled and descrambled.

  “Where are you?” Janis asked.

  “With an agency I can’t name. But we’re monitoring the situation.”

  Janis sat up straighter. “You’re in communication with Scott’s team?”

  Beside her, Minion bounced on her toes and wrung her short fingers.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Kilmer said. “I can’t have anything more to do with the Champions, no doubt the reason for my reassignment here. We’re monitoring the airspace through an uplink to NORAD. Air Defense reprogrammed their satellites to better the chances of picking up cloaked missiles from the Soviet side. There’s no guarantee it will work, but…”

  “But you’ll keep us updated?” Janis cut in.

  “Even better, I’m splicing your bunker into NORAD through our secure connection.” Janis noticed more letter-number combinations scrolling out. “Give it a few more minutes, and you should have an image on the console. If anything launches, you’ll have the information in real time.” Kilmer’s voice descended an octave. “But there’s some promising news coming out, Janis.”

  “There is?”

  “The U.S. is in secret talks with the Sov
iet Minister of Defense. He’s worried about the General’s growing bellicosity and deteriorating mental health. That’s all I can tell you, but it looks good.”

  And it sounded good—better than good—but there was still Scott and the others. She looked up at Minion, who was waiting anxiously, and held up a finger to tell her she needed a moment of privacy. Tyler, who seemed to understand, nodded and escorted the others to the bunkroom.

  “I’m feeling something,” she whispered into the receiver. “I think something’s gone wrong.”

  “With Scott’s team?”

  “Yes.”

  Kilmer took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m not sure there’s much I can do from my side, but I’ll see what I can learn. Maybe there’s information on the satellite over their location.”

  “Yes, please,” Janis said. “Whatever you can find out.” The memory of that morning’s premonition, of never seeing Scott again, shuddered through her. “Good or bad,” she finished.

  44

  Dead Hand site

  For a swimmy moment, Scott thought he was going to pass out. He stumbled against the wall of the tunnel that felt as though it had shrunk to the diameter of a cocktail straw, the unrelenting call of Klaxons cycling through his earpiece. It was Jesse’s voice that brought him back.

  “Still there, chief?”

  “Uh, yeah.” The tunnel grew out again as the muscles in Scott’s legs seemed to redefine themselves. He tested them. “Yes,” he said with more purpose. “What are you seeing up there?”

  “Lot of activity around the site,” Jesse answered. “Like someone poked it with a stick. Alarms. Red lights.”

  “Anyone coming our way?”

  “Not yet.”

  “We must have tripped something,” Scott said. But what? “Give me a minute.”

  He ended the connection and studied their location. Still a hundred meters from the silo…

  Something struck him.

  “We need to get closer,” he told Shockwave, “fast.”

  Shockwave nodded without question and resumed blasting. Scott steered them by degrees, using the depth reader and compass. He felt the cool hiss of oxygen increase inside his helmet. When they had arrived to within ten meters of the silo, Scott had him stop.

  “What’s going on?” Shockwave asked.

  “I should have confirmation in a few seconds.”

  Using his helmet to channel his powers, Scott focused into the impacted earthen wall ahead of Shockwave. He reached until he found what he thought he might.

  “Seismic sensors,” he told Shockwave, “installed in the silo’s concrete to detect nuclear strikes. Only they’re picking up the tremors from our little tunneling expedition.”

  Scott penetrated the sensors’ electronics and zeroed them out. He then shot along the wiring to a circuit to the alarm center. He opened the circuit, severing the connection. Though he couldn’t hear them, he imagined the Klaxons winding down. He studied the circuit more closely. Blowing it would trigger an alert. He decided on a subtler approach, recalibrating it so as not to go off beneath a certain threshold—one their tunneling would remain well beneath.

  “We’re only ten meters away,” Scott said, returning to his body. “Take it slower from here, like we practiced. A foot at a time.”

  He checked in with Jesse to ensure the alarm had been deactivated and the site was settling down. Thumbs-up on both counts.

  “How are we doing for time?” Shockwave asked over his shoulder.

  Scott tilted his headlamp down to his watch. For the first time it hit him: they were not only ahead of schedule, but within thirty feet of mission accomplish. Thirty frigging feet! That was like walking from his bedroom to his garage. A euphoric feeling of triumph pumped through him.

  “Really, really good,” he said.

  The Kremlin

  “General?”

  Dementyev struggled from the depths of a tar-black sleep, coming to with a gasp.

  “General?” the voice repeated.

  Dementyev sat up straight. The lights of his sleeping chambers were on. Someone was standing beside him.

  “What is it?” General Dementyev asked thickly.

  “Your emergency phone has been ringing, sir,” the uniformed assistant replied.

  “What time is it?”

  “Quarter to three in the morning.”

  Dementyev pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his night shirt and blew his nose into it. He inspected the knot of phlegm, expecting to find it squirming with black worms. He couldn’t see them, but they were there. Inside the phlegm, inside him. They had been put there by the West, perhaps slipped into something he’d eaten. His kitchen staff had been compromised, he decided. He would need them taken to one of his gulags for interrogation.

  “Sir,” his assistant repeated. “The call is from Strategic Rocket Forces.”

  For the first time, Dementyev realized the phone on his bedside table was ringing—and likely had been since before he’d awakened—the red bulb at its base igniting with each shrill tone.

  “Leave me,” Dementyev ordered.

  His assistant gave a curt salute and departed. Dementyev sat on the side of his bed and lifted the receiver.

  “Da?”

  “Head of RF reporting, General.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “At zero two forty this morning, the sensors at P-2427 detected low-level seismic activity. However, not from a missile strike. I repeat, not from a missile strike. Likely from a tremor. The Department of Hydrometeorology is attempting to triangulate the epicenter.”

  “P-2427?”

  “The Dead Hand site, General.”

  Barbs of suspicion sprouted in Dementyev’s head. “A tremor?”

  “Yes, that is what early indications—”

  “Idiot!” he spat.

  “General?”

  “That was no tremor. It was the American superhero team. They’ve come! They’ve penetrated our border! They’re at the site!”

  “Superhero team?” the man repeated, his voice thick with skepticism.

  Dementyev’s worms flipped and seethed. “Listen to me, you swine. Put the site on alert, call in reinforcements, close the roads, begin a radial search. Do you understand me? I want the infiltrators found and destroyed!”

  “Yes, General,” the man answered.

  “One more thing.”

  “Sir?”

  “Is the Dead Hand fully operational?”

  The man’s voice caught. “I believe so, sir.”

  “I did not ask for qualifiers!” Dementyev barked. “Is it fully operational?”

  “Y-yes.”

  Dementyev slammed down the phone. He showered, combed his black hair sharply to one side, and dressed in his ceremonial military uniform. In his office, he turned the dial on a safe set in the back wall. From inside the safe, he withdrew a suitcase and placed it on his desk. He thumbed the correct four-digit combination, then stood looking down on the titanium exterior. Today—July 4—would cease to mark American independence. The Soviet Union would claim the date from the nuclear ashes, along with its place at the world’s helm.

  The worms in his head whispered in agreement.

  General Dementyev cannoned open the lid.

  Dead Hand site

  Scott’s shovel blade scraped concrete. He stopped and checked his device. The distance to target read 0.00 m. They had arrived, and smack on the bull’s-eye. Scott could feel the massive computer humming in his cells. Only a wall of four-foot-thick concrete separated them.

  He clapped Shockwave’s shoulder. “We’re here,” he whispered. “Great work.”

  Carefully, Scott scraped the dirt from a one-square-foot section of concrete and collapsed the shovel. He placed the shovel in his bag, swapping it for a small, battery-fueled generator that he stuck to the wall with a pair of gel-coated electrodes. Designed to conduct a low-level current through the concrete, the generator would ease Scott’s access to the computer.
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br />   “All right.” He took a breath and closed his eyes. “Here goes.”

  “Good luck,” Shockwave whispered back.

  Scott’s consciousness spread over his helmet’s circuitry, concentrated to an infinitesimal point, then burst into the current infiltrating the concrete. A moment later he was inside the Dead Hand’s giant computer, electrical bits of data marching in every direction.

  Scott took a moment to make order of the confusion. He went back to his training, itemizing the subtasks in his mind:

  1.) access the software for the command missile,

  2.) reprogram the software to send out a disabling instead of an enabling command, and

  3.) upload the doctored software to the missile itself.

  Three steps and he was out. Mission accomplished. If and when the command missile launched, it would corrupt every nuclear silo across the Soviet Union. Not only would the U.S. be safe, the Soviet Union would be made helpless. Cold War over. Miller time.

  Whoa, cowboy, he thought. You’re not even at step one.

  As he eyed the outer layer of security, a snatch of Gabriella’s voice from an early training session came back to him: “Remember, Scott, inside the system it’s all machine language.”

  Indeed.

  It took him all of twenty seconds to penetrate three layers of security. From there, he quickly located the computer’s databases and flipped through the thousands of software files until he found the one he wanted. He reviewed the files again to be sure. Yes, just the one file.

  Step one complete.

  He dissected the file, seeing how the pieces of code fit together. A smile twitched over his lips. Nothing he hadn’t seen before. He spent the next minute reworking the code—switching variables, altering values, inserting bits of code he’d preprogrammed and stored in his helmet. He pulled back to assess the whole, crunching the sequence in his head.

  He double-checked his work, then pumped a mental fist.

  Step two complete.

  Now it was just a matter of uploading the doctored software to the command missile. However, another layer of security stood in his way: a six-character code. Like picking a lock chamber, he thought smugly.