Bryan felt the surge within his mind as the entire search protocol program within his workstation uplinked into his mind through the stream chip. He utilized such a cross-link over MassGrid a handful of times before, but only to experience the visual splendor of touring the grid on priority layers only a few dozen men and women worldwide could access. Unlike those previous excursions, this one came with essential precautions, such as the elimination of nanite-based programs designed to record the journey and the inclusion of an aggressive nanite hunter to track down and confuse genetic chasers.
The chasers were his biggest problem. He sat in many overtrials – including the one that morning – in which evidence compiled by the use of chasers clinched the guilty verdict.
It was simple: The signature of each user within MassGrid carried the same genetic imprint found within the stream chip and BluCard. The chasers were designed to react to any movement within the Grid not authorized for that signature.
The chasers were monitors, and it was their presence that made MassGrid so popular worldwide. Without the presence of the chaser “police,” as they were often called, billions of people never would have bought into the stream chip concept.
Now Bryan had to employ a weapon few people knew existed to counter the weapon he used to bring hundreds of frauds to overtrial. It was a dangerous strategy – even at his security clearance, there were no guarantees of success. He knew of no one on the planet who had a free pass through all of MassGrid. As long as he kept clear of the chasers, do sufficient damage to force a delay in the shuttle’s launch, he would be fine.
He entered. The holographic cube before him transformed into a representation of MassGrid that few humans ever saw.
Bryan found his mind's eye hovering over a city of endless towers of light, their vermilion and aqua twinkles hurtling at devastating speeds up and down. But it was the latter course that was pivotal: All those lights were nothing more than individual signals relayed from within Dome's own localized microwebs to their ultimate link on the MassGrid, and that's where Bryan was headed.
“Traverse Grid. Destination: IG Subgroup Caribbean underports.”
He moved quickly now, hurtling down into this confused network of light towers and conduits – a maze of interfaces through which most of Dome's 4,000 employees accessed the Grid each day – and then emerged through rivulets of overlapping white beacons of light to see the Grid in all its beauty. Crystalline hexagons laid flat, stretching out far beyond the horizon, a never-ending quilt that had joined the world together more intimately than ever before.
He jumped into a hexagon, and there was a milky splash all around him, and then he accelerated as he was whisked through creme tunnels that held the sheen of a good polish. This MG tunnel was quite active – he passed thousands of red shadows, most of them moving in opposite directions through the hexagons - but this was, after all, a segment of MG that was accessible to public links. Like any good highway in the early evening, this one was quite busy.
The problem for Bryan was coming up in a matter of seconds, when he would enter into areas where even his unauthorized penetration was considered a criminal act. This would have been much easier to accomplish had he been able to go directly through the PAC's own microwebs and enter the orbital shuttle's onboard systems via the Barbados facility's computers. Unfortunately, PAC policy dictated that all remote microwebs in the protectorates such as Barbados be isolated from the main grid. From its inception, the PAC established a policy that for its own defense, it would not create a security net linking all its sensitive facilities. A violation of the net, it reasoned, would put the PAC's operations in jeopardy. It was a reasonable presumption; but for Bryan, damn inconvenient.
As Chief of Domestic Security, he had full access to most of these remote microwebs. But those were the locations he knew about officially before today. Had he known the sequencing for entry into the Barbados facility, it would have been a simple matter to actually disengage a key component of the shuttle's Sprintjet boosters and get out before anyone noticed. Reality, however, meant that he had to take the indirect approach. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't guaranteed and it wasn't nearly as effective.
The process was hairy and required precision maneuvers past the security blocks and genetic chasers within the IG Group, an entertainment Subgroup provider that beamed all general broadcasts into Barbados. The IG Group had a complicated microweb, more a colossal convolution of cubes and conical towers than the elegant light towers that made up the PAC's central microwebs. Bryan realized this was because, as an entertainment provider, IG was delivering signals not only to a variety of cultures but languages and educational levels as well. It took him almost 10 minutes to sort through the maze of options and to isolate all links to the exact latitude and longitude he spelled out to his nanite hunters, which pushed aside security blocks up to Mark 5 and hurried him through to avoid the genetic chasers.
When he saw the signal that could carry him to his target, Bryan took a deep breath and engaged a “leech” program not terribly unlike one that had gotten a man tried and executed just that morning.
He engaged a unique matrix program he earlier created deep in the system, a closet so tiny the standard security sweeps would overlook it had it existed in the public domain. He ordered the program to attach itself to the IG Group’s signal much like a skater grabbing hold of the back of a truck, getting a free ride for a few blocks, then letting loose once reaching his destination.
“Trans-down and follow,” he whispered to the program, and his mind's eye took a giant dive into the IG's microwebs and grappled onto a blue shadow, which immediately tore loose from its mooring along a conical interface and darted out onto MassGrid. This piggyback maneuver was itself punishable by death, but Bryan had seen no sign of chasers, and he was confident his nanite hunters would keep them at bay long enough.
The journey out beyond the PAC's central grid unit and onto the territorial side-branches was swift, and in no less than 15 seconds, Bryan found himself entering a microweb unlike anything he had seen before. It was white – obelisks almost completely camouflaged against the hexagons which passed beneath them – and Bryan knew that leeching onto the web's central computer system was not going to be easy. Somehow he had to spot the uplink conduit, leap off the shadow signal and fire his commands into the facility's central computers and then retreat on the next passing shadow within five seconds. Any more than that, and he knew the chasers would be on top of him. This was ultimately the key to sabotaging anyone on MG: Avoid leaving behind a genetic trace, and you might win. Leave behind even a snippet of your imprint for the chasers to recover, and you have no chance of escape. In a way, Bryan was surprised he had gotten this far without even the slightest sign of trouble.
He spoke in silence across his stream chip and relayed the warning message that he wanted the Barbados facility's computers to receive: Engine 2's AVR matrix had suffered a disconnect in its primary coil link.
That would be enough to keep the PAC shuttle on the ground for at least a couple of hours, maybe more. It was a problem damn hard to confirm and repair without internal inspection procedures.
Traveling at almost light speed, Bryan saw the indisputable junction into a mainframe computer network coming up, and he detached himself from the blue shadow, which was on a very different course toward the unclassified gateways far along the track of obelisks.
He leaped again and fired the commands in one swift motion. He was dizzy, and he felt himself dropping rapidly into the junction. Genetic chasers would be coming en masse, he was certain.
Out of here! Out of here!
And then he turned and tried to run as fast as he could.
25
C
ountdown to Sprint launch at 7 minutes.” When Dr. Adam Smith stepped into the command pod, his surprise was double.
He expected a crowd to gather for this extraordinary moment, but he did not anticipate what appeared to be the ent
irety of SS, sans the dozen or so followers whose responsibilities kept them on the upper platform. The congregation of more than 150 people who were not assigned to this pod did their best to stay out of the operators' way, jamming themselves abreast of each other along the viewing walk or in small huddles within unused cubicles. Most of them looked upward, as the giant viop balloon that normally projected the full diagram of the SS base was temporarily a collection of visuals within the upper platform and inside the Sprint of the mission captain, Janise Albright.
Adam knew each one of them well: Their names, their backgrounds, their goals, the emotions that brought them to SS and kept them here. Their heads turned eagerly toward him, but he did not have a chance to notice the stir his presence brought. Instead, Rand called up to him from the floor of the pod.
“Take a look at this!” Rand said with a broad smile, and he pointed to a viop sphere that showed a transmission of a long, pink streak through the night sky. Adam rushed down spiral stairs, made a beeline for the sphere, masking his confusion with equal excitement.
“What have we got?” He asked.
“A greeting, perhaps. Or a message.”
Michael Straczynski turned from his swivel and chimed in. The sphere resonated above his workstation. “We detected this about 15 minutes ago, sir, but we had no idea what it was. And then we tapped into low-level microwebs at the PAC's Arctic zonal observatory. They didn't have a clue either, but they did confirm the size and distance from Earth.”
“And ...”
“It's more than 2,000 Ks long and 162,000 Ks from Earth at its perihelion to us. That got us to thinking, and sure enough ...”
Adam felt himself ready to chuckle. “I can finish your sentence, Michael. It originates along the exact return course in Andorran's mission specs.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rand placed a brotherly hand upon Adam's shoulder, and they shared a fleeting but knowing glance.
“We thought at first it might be backwash from their IPG, but then,” Michael started, before Adam cut him off.
Adam knew Andorran's engineering systems and protocol specs better than anyone still alive. “No, no. Michael, no backwash. My old friend here,” he turned to Rand, “is right on the mark. This is a greeting. They're saying, ‘Hello, we're here! Look at us!’ The PAC has been jamming their signal, and all they want to do is to let us know they're coming home.”
He took a long, deep breath, winked at Michael, then turned to his followers and raised his voice.
“And now it's up to us to greet them and bring them back to Earth safely. This is more than a message,” he pointed behind him to the sphere. “It's a sign. All through history, unusual and spectacular lights in the night sky have been viewed as proof of everything from the birth of Christ to the coming of the apocalypse. Now, we have to embrace this light in the sky as a symbol that the battles we have fought for so many years are about to bear fruit.”
For a couple of seconds, Adam felt an overwhelming combination of pride and regret surge through his consciousness, and he suddenly found himself searching desperately for the words to motivate and reassure his fellow rebels. The countdown to launch was almost complete.
“I know this journey has been very hard for all of you,” he said, his voice somewhat weaker. “A few of you have been with us for 19 years, and the rest of you have joined us along the way. Thank you for staying the course, for knowing that a day like this would come.
“At this critical moment, there are things which we must all remember. This is and always will be about what we lost and the retribution we seek for that loss. Our husbands and wives. Our daughters, our sons. Brothers, sisters.”
He glanced up to the viop balloon, and he saw inside a Sprint, where Janise was reclined, virtually encased in her tactical housing. “And our mothers and fathers,” he added, and Janise's expression remained blank, focused.
“All of us know the pain the ECs inflicted upon us,” he continued. “The murders for which they are responsible. For Arvas.
“Carry these memories with you into this battle, for it is what will center us, bind us until our fight is done. But remember also the reality. We will not change the world tonight. Any fight to alter the ECs and their policies will be a long, difficult and thoroughly unpopular struggle. But once we are able to reveal to the world not only what the Andorran has accomplished, but the EC plan to destroy it, then we will have our first degree of credibility.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Adam saw movement within the otherwise immobile crowd, and he glanced upward, along the spiral steps toward the viewing walk. Samuel Raymonds stood just inside the entryway for a moment. Then the man who presumably should have been on duty at the upper platform, shook his head and turned, left the command pod. Adam made a mental note, but did not allow it to alter his train of thought.
“We will undermine the good name of the ECs,” he continued. “We will make life uncomfortable for Council President Travert. And I believe very deeply, that others who have been silent will then come forward. Colonial advocates who survived the purges, or perhaps even those within the ECs who know the truth about Arvas. And then, in time, the chorus of free men who seek to go beyond the confines of the ECs and return to space will themselves become an enemy too strong to be silenced.”
And then Adam felt a surge of exhilaration.
“For it is, ultimately, our right of self-determination that is at stake. Remember this night: April 3, 2144. Remember this night as the beginning of history.
“And the beginning of the end of the pain.”
Out of the silence, scattered cheers. Then claps. The cheers expanded, and the applause thickened.
He turned to his old friend Rand, who nodded and whispered, barely audible over the ruckus: “Nice job. I do believe you've set the tone for the night.”
Another voice, however, rang out not only within the pod but throughout the base. It was the voice of the Sprint flight controller – a short, stocky man who reclined at a workstation under a canopy of viop readouts.
“60 seconds to launch.”
The applause ended, and the crowd turned its collective eyes to the viop balloon overheard. The interior shots of Janise's Sprint disappeared, replaced by every possible angle from within the upper platform. The ceiling to the giant cavern, which was ragged rock that matched the dirty brown hue of the rounded walls, began to retract from above the two Sprints.
Adam realized this “60 seconds” was unlike any that swept past him in 19 years. It seemed as if all that work – and the countless frustrations and defeats – had built to this. Finally, they were reaching out for victory.
A single minute. That's all it was.
“60 seconds,” he whispered, his words inaudible.
He appreciated how history could be pared down to single minutes such as this. Minutes where decisions are made, courage is found, and action is taken. Minutes where desperation evolves into hope, death into life, and the old into the new.
A minute where everything we believe can change.
A single minute ...
A single, fateful minute in our lives ...
26
J
anise Albright felt the significance of this minute as well, but she did not allow the pain of her past or the reality of her future to cloud the precision leadership she knew was essential.
“Manual checklist complete. Engaging SVFs,” she announced to her crew. The Strategic Vioptric Field suspended over each of the Sprint's six soldiers dropped and locked into place – a long, black mechanical spider with a series of multihued viop ports and tactical schematics lowered its six bowed arms around the flight chairs and clamped to junctions beneath the edge of each chair. As the arms snapped into place, the cabin's soft white panels of light dimmed, and the SVF displays cast shadows of red, blue and yellow upon each of the crew, who were now locked into their flight chairs at a 20-degree recline until the moment of landing.
>
“Dance1 to Dance2,” Janise proceeded without emotion. “Cross-link tactical interface on the SVFs and stimulate grav-flux regulators 2.7 standard GRs. Back-check that your auxiliary wv.scan is online and engage auto-sequencing on launch matrix.”
“Dance2 to Dance1, we copy that,” responded the husky voice of a man easily 15 years the senior of Janise. “All automated systems are engaged and we are showing 10 seconds to full retraction of silo. Awaiting your go, Captain.”
She studied the schematics dangling above her face before speaking to her pilot. “You have the helm, Mickelsby. Take us out of here.”
“Yes, Captain. V-thrusts engaged.”
She could not see out the tiny strip of window at the bow of the Sprint, but it didn't matter.
Play the cards and damn well enjoy the game!
She remembered the man who uttered those words in her presence 13 years ago. It was the first sergeant she had after her transfer to the Dallas Divisional Corps of the Front Guard. A man called Brenn Fuller – for all she had been able to tell, the last of the old-time, grizzled, cigar-chomping, skirt-chasing, beer-chugging military lifers. A leftover from the old U.S. Army Rangers and a derelict of a soldier. And until Janise learned the truth about her parents and thought she might find a career in the Front Guard, she found a hero in Sgt. Brenn Fuller.
He taught her how to be fearless, how to smell the blood of the enemy, how to be a killing machine when the time arose. And how to block out consequences when in the heat of battle. How to play the cards and damn well enjoy the game.
She was confounded.
Why am I thinking of you now?
She knew the answer, but wasn't ready to acknowledge it. Instead, she wiped it away – along with the image of Brenn Fuller.
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