CyberSpace: A CyberStorm Novel (Cyber Series Book 1)

by Matthew Mather

  I rubbed my eyes.

  “How did Damon meet Terek?” Chuck asked.

  “I thought at MIT, but he said he’s working at the dock.”

  “That kid doing physical labor? A stiff breeze could blow him over.”

  “You’re telling me you didn’t do odd jobs when you were a kid?”

  “I did whatever it took.”

  “Exactly.”

  A pause. Chuck said, “I’m not sure I trust him.”

  “He flies a drone like nobody’s business.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “You don’t think I should leave Luke with him?” I sat upright.

  “That’s fine. I mean, not that.” Silence for a beat. “There’s something about him.”

  “That he’s an immigrant?”

  “Don’t be an asshole.”

  “You’re suspicious of everybody you don’t know.”

  “Whereas you trust everyone.”

  That was true. Lauren often had funny feelings about people that turned out to be right, that this person or that shouldn’t be trusted, but I almost never had that sensation. It was like I was emotionally tone-deaf.

  I blinked and rubbed my eyes again. Were those stars moving overhead?

  Chuck said, “You see that too?”

  There were definitely motes of light floating between the stars.

  “The sun set an hour and a half ago, so we’re getting a reflection at just the right angle. Those are the satellite nodes of your hero Tyrell Jakob’s SatCom constellation. I think there’s…what? Ten thousand satellites he’s launched. Covers the planet in a web. And he’s going to send up double that by next year.”

  “Triple.” Terek appeared from the darkness behind us. “Luke’s with Damon, he’s got him up on stage with Babet.”

  That was my boy. Life of the party. “Triple?” I said.

  “Goddamn sky pollution, if you ask me,” Chuck said. “Astronomers are going nuts. You can’t look into a pristine sky anymore. Billionaires, like I said. Can’t control them. Can’t kill ’em.”

  “Tyrell plans to have thirty thousand satellites in orbit soon,” Terek said. “Three years ago, there were only two thousand operational ones. That was from all the countries in the world, and over a half century of space launches.”

  “And now one billionaire sticks ten thousand up in a year by himself,” Chuck said.

  I whistled. “How do they not bump into each other?”

  “They have thrusters and fuel. But that’s a good worry to have. That’s why I came out here, to show this to you guys. There are multiple debris clouds spreading in orbit now.”

  He handed me his phone. Another article about an anti-satellite attack, but this one featured a headline about Russia demanding that America not intervene in the growing dispute between India and Pakistan.

  “Russia backing up India?” I asked. “Aren’t they usually on opposite sides?”

  “This isn’t about the Indian anti-satellite attacks. The Pakistani military retaliated and hit an Indian communication satellite in geosynchronous orbit. Maybe more than one. They’re reporting loss of communications with other satellites now.”

  Chuck and I stayed in the chairs after Terek went back in. We sat in silence and listened to frogs croak in the darkness.

  “I don’t trust everyone,” I said finally. “Look what happened to you. You lost your hand because of me. Because I didn’t trust what was right in front of my eyes.”

  When a massive cyberattack had crippled New York in the middle of winter, years before, Chuck and I had hidden with our families on the fifth floor of our apartment building in the Meatpacking District. All communications had gone down, even the internet, and then the power and water.

  Eventually, we had to escape the metropolis as it disintegrated around us. We managed to get his old Range Rover out to his cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but that was when the real horror show started.

  After I walked to DC and saw Chinese and Russian military units parked there, I thought the US had been invaded. Even though it turned out they were there to help, all I saw were attackers. My mind refused to believe anything else. I returned to the cabin and we spent a month and a half in total isolation, starving and in desperate need of medical supplies. Damon had finally shown up and rescued us.

  Our friend Tony had lost his life in a shootout with a gang that wanted to steal supplies from us. Before it was all over, Chuck’s left hand had to be amputated. We were lucky, he always said, and he wasn’t wrong.

  Over seventy thousand people had lost their lives in that disaster.

  “It’s not your fault,” Chuck whispered. A cicada buzzed in the distance. “I know it’s been weighing on you, Mike, but you did right.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  I never talked about this. Not ever. At the time, we were so happy to be alive, and afterward, I felt ashamed. More than ashamed. I clenched my jaw. Maybe it was the booze, but I wiped away a tear with the back of one hand.

  Chuck didn’t look at me. He stared straight up and said softly, “You remember those people you saved, when that hospital shut down?”

  Images swirled. Freezing darkness. Tunnels of snow. Swinging bags of liquid on IV poles. “I remember.”

  “And all those people you brought into our apartment? That was you. Saved a lot of lives, Mike, you should be proud. You’re setting a good example for Luke.”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  “Exactly. You didn’t waver. You got on with it.”

  A wind rustled the treetops.

  I said, “Is it happening again? I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  This war between India and Pakistan. These things had a way of spreading like a contagion. What was happening up there? I watched the bits of light move between the stars.

  “I’m so tired.” I wanted to go to sleep right there. Wake up and have everything be back to normal. Maybe it would.

  “Whatever comes, Mike, we’re going to get through it. Together.” Chuck sat upright and looked at me. “Our grandfathers fought in world wars, got out of boats in front of machine guns on beaches like Omaha, but these new disasters that grip the world? These are the wars that we fight now, in this future that our grandparents couldn’t even imagine.”

  “Is this your fight song?”

  “Get up, you lazy slug. We got some fishing to do tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I HUNTED FOR my prey across the undulating sand.

  “See anything?” Damon asked. “Let the tool do its job. Don’t overthink.”

  A flash of sunlight blinded me. Sweat trickled down my back. I paused to get my bearings, the air stagnant and metallic with the smell of cut bait. The weapon tilted left and right. I pulled back to gain some altitude.

  Luke yanked at my pant leg. “Dad! Dad! Over there.”

  “Where?”

  “You’re too far.”

  “I’m coming b—” I was halfway through giving in when the display lit up.

  An angry red box stutter-flashed around the target in the display of the goggles strapped to my face. I zoomed in for a better look, and there it was: a clear oblong shadow beneath my target’s glittering armor.

  “I got a lock,” Damon said. “I’m bringing the other drone in. Don’t do anything—”

  “Damn it.” The target turned and looked right at me.

  With a flick of his tail, the silver king sailed away under the cover of seagrass.

  A fat orange sun lounged on the horizon and spit fiery color onto mackerel-striped vapor trails high in the stratosphere. Huge thunderheads threatened on the horizon.

  “You suck at drone fishing,” Chuck said to me.

  “What’s that saying?” I asked. “Red sky at night? Sailors’ delight?” I eyed the storm clouds warily.

  “We best get going in,” Grandma Babet said.

  “You guys got the drones stowed?” Chuck asked Terek and Damon.

  When they both nodded, he sat do
wn in the captain’s chair, made sure everyone was secure, then started the boat. He asked for Damon’s phone and opened the map app. “Babet, is Bay Dosgris this way or that?”

  Even with the GPS, the bayous were a maze inside a puzzle wrapped up in mud.

  Grandma Babet stood and began pointing, but Chuck offered her the controls instead. She immediately turned the boat into a different channel.

  “We find Lake Five,” she explained, “go up Bayou Saint Denis into Cutler and then the Dupre Cut, follow that all the way into the Mississippi herself.”

  Chuck handed the phone back to Damon. “Your GPS is out.”

  Damon checked and rechecked his phone. “Maybe busted when I dropped it yesterday?”

  “Or got too hot?” Terek said. “You left it out in the sun.”

  “There’s no internet, either.”

  “Don’t you use the SatCom constellation?” Chuck waved his left hand at the sky. “Isn’t that supposed to work anywhere on the planet?”

  “It was fine this morning.”

  I sat next to Damon.

  “This cloud of debris from the anti-satellite attacks, isn’t it dangerous?”

  “It’s not a good thing, but there’s a lot of space up there. And I mean a lot of space.”

  “So we shouldn’t be worried?”

  “There’s a strong possibility the debris might hit other satellites, and from what I’ve heard, authorities are taking defensive actions. It’s not time to panic. And I have to say I’m impressed.”

  “By the defensive actions?”

  “That the Pakistanis were able to hit a satellite in geosynchronous orbit. Nobody’s ever done that before. Russians must have supplied the hardware, but even then…targeting something at that distance. Getting into orbit means going hundreds of miles up and moving at eighteen thousand miles per hour, and imagine if all that is this.”

  Damon illustrated with an inch gap between his left thumb and forefinger.

  I said, “Okay,” but didn’t quite understand.

  “Getting up to geosynchronous orbit, compared to that, is like this.” He held his right hand a foot above his head. “It’s almost like a moon shot. In terms of effect, though, it’s better. Less stuff for any wreckage to hit up there. The Pakistanis are retaliating tit-for-tat against the Indians for hitting their first geopositioning satellites. Better than them firing nukes at each other.”

  The boat slowed.

  “I don’t normal-wise come out this way.” Babet scanned the horizon as though she was trying to get her bearings. “Not sure if that’s Wilkinson Bayou or Mud Lake. That GPS still not working?”

  “That’s definitely north.” Chuck pointed helpfully at ninety degrees from the setting sun.

  Babet said, “You know how many ways we could get lost out here?”

  “I honestly don’t want to.”

  Babet got us back. The boat’s engine growled into high gear as we cleared the narrow waterway and pulled into the main channel, with the Mississippi Bridge and the Port of New Orleans visible in the distance. Past 6 p.m. and the sky was overcast. The thunderheads pulled closer from the southwest and obscured the setting sun.

  A mountainscape of multicolored containers lined the northern shore of the Mississippi, their blocky peaks silhouetted against the glittering skyline of New Orleans beyond. The jet boat fought the current of the turgid brown river flowing against us. We passed the French Quarter, and Babet pointed out the neon-topped Harrah’s Casino.

  Dusk. Huge floodlights illuminated the water and docks.

  “This is the biggest bulk cargo port in the world,” Babet explained. “The Ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans are the biggest in America. Eighty thousand ships come through here ev’ry year. Day and night, it never stops.”

  Babet swung the nose around to clear a rusted metal platform. “I’m going to park us under the bridge five minutes up river.” She deftly navigated our tiny boat between two container ships, their hulls a yawning metal canyon above us. “Everything controlled by GPS these days. The ships, the cranes, the boxes.”

  Forty years of service at the port had earned her special privileges, like mooring her friends’ pleasure craft downtown.

  Terek was taking pictures of the port facilities, but now awkwardly clambered to the back and sat next to Luke and Chuck. Luke, of course, still had his nose in the iPad. I thought of taking it away, but then what? He’d bug me till I gave it back.

  “Dad?” Luke said. He saw me looking at him. “I’m hungry. I have to pee.”

  “I’ve got half a KitKat,” Terek said.

  Luke took the offered chocolate. “How much longer?”

  “Almost there, I promise.”

  Something didn’t feel right, but I wasn’t sure what. A tingling sensation crept along my arms. A taste like pennies in the back of my mouth. The air was still, the humidity almost palpable. Was it the storm clouds?

  They towered angrily, high into the sky.

  I shifted in my seat, turned to inspect the city.

  Lights flickered on in the office towers in the sudden gloom. Hovering aircraft dotted the middle distance as they lined up for approach at Louis Armstrong Airport. Everything was normal.

  Except.

  “Why aren’t the port cranes operating?” I asked nobody in particular.

  Babet maneuvered the boat between two container transports as she headed for the dock.

  The waterway was quiet.

  Almost deserted.

  None of the buzzing activity of tugboats and barges we had seen every other time we’d been here, and that had been on the weekend. Today was Monday. The work week had just started.

  “Babet, is today a holiday?”

  “Only for me.”

  The boat engine whined into a higher gear. We surged forward. The gap between the massive hulls of the two ships we passed between seemed to narrow.

  “Why are none of the port cranes operating?” I repeated.

  Babet replied in a terse voice: “They always be operating.”

  I looked behind me. “All those ones there aren’t moving.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Mitchell, but we got other problems right now.” Her voice ratcheted up, became quick and panicked. “Ev’body hang tight to something.”

  “What’s goin—”

  We were moving at almost full speed, maybe thirty miles an hour. Not fast in a car, but very quick on water. Chuck grabbed Luke with his left arm and gripped a handhold with his other. I managed a half-turn before Babet threw the boat into reverse.

  A clashing screech erupted.

  The towering walls of metal above and around us tore one into the other, crushing together around our tiny boat.

  With my right arm I tried to grab my seat, but I jerked forward as if a giant had grabbed my neck. I rammed sideways into the console and became airborne, my feet lurching over my head as I flew out into open space over the water.

  CHAPTER 6

  LAUREN MITCHELL HOPED her husband wasn’t doing anything dumb.

  The clock beside her bed read 6:14 a.m. That meant it was—she did a mental calculation—5:14 p.m. back home? That’s right. The boys should be off the water by now. Hopefully not in it.

  Coffee in hand, she got up from sitting on the bed and nervously pulled back the curtains of her hotel room at the Sheraton. Three stories down, at street level, a double-decker tourist bus growled around the corner from Salisbury Street onto Nathan Road, the main thoroughfare through Hong Kong.

  The orange blob of the rising sun reflected in the windows of the Peninsula Hotel straight across the street. To her left, the dusky waters of Victoria Bay were visible past the waterfront parks, with the hills of mainland China lining the horizon.

  She took a sip of her coffee.

  Not that Mike usually did stupid things, but he and Chuck had a way of getting themselves into trouble. Which was fine, Mike was a big boy, but now their troublemaking included her baby boy, Luke, who was out on the fishing trip
with them. She sighed and exhaled, counting to five. He wasn’t a baby anymore, Luke kept telling her, he was eight.

  Eight.

  They grew up so fast. A little man now.

  She had never been away from her kids for more than a weekend their whole lives. Olivia, her daughter, was five, but already displayed a rebellious independence. Just like her mother. She loved her nana, though, and Lauren’s mother doted on her little granddaughter. They spent a lot of time all together now, Lauren and her kids and their nana, more time than she had ever spent with her mother.

  It was nice, but sad, too.

  Lauren’s father had died two years earlier. His death was an immense shock to her tight-knit family. They’d come together, though, and Mike had been great. They moved from their small apartment in Meatpacking to the Upper West Side near Columbia University, into a place with an extra bedroom. The granny quarters, Mike joked. He really had been great.

  Maybe that’s why he’d suggested she go on this trip. Go out into the world, stretch her wings a little.

  When her firm had asked if anyone wanted to go to Hong Kong for this conference, she knew part of it was her uncle—Leo, the senator—pulling strings in the background. Now that her father was gone, Leo took on a little parental responsibility. She felt like he was gently grooming her for a political career, and who knew? America still needed a woman president at some point.

  Mike had encouraged her to go. Nana could take Olivia to stay at the family estate outside Washington with Lauren’s uncle, he had said, and he would take Luke fishing with Uncle Chuck.

  Really, she thought Mike wanted to hang out with Chuck and Damon, but she also knew he wanted to give Luke some experiences he’d never had as a kid, like going off to the outdoors and doing something exciting.

  She smiled.

  Which was great. She enjoyed coming here, if she was being honest, but that didn’t mean she didn’t think about her kids every second of every minute she was away from them. Two days she had been gone, and she would be back in five. At least she hoped she would.