“Not mine, but thanks, get on it.”
She nods. Tommy picks her up and disappears in a blur.
“What about us?” Kate asks.
“Somewhere out here there are more supers on Ericsson’s side. Epic is compiling a list based on the data that we have. There are several spots that need help. Mostly FBI and Homeland agents who aren’t powered trying to protect people from super-powered assets. We’re going to be their backup.”
“Sounds good. Amelia, Kate filled me in on what’s going on with Ericsson. I know why you didn’t share and I want you to know I understand.” He puts his arms around me and pulls me close. Even though I can’t feel him through the suit I sink into his hug.
“You do? I was so worried…” All my emotions bubble up and my vision blurs worse than it already was. I can’t cry! No way to wipe my face but damn if I didn’t need to hear this.
“I’m a Marine, silly, tactics and operational security I understand.”
I hold on to him a few more seconds then I can let go. We part hesitantly, oh how do I wish I could take the armor off.
I have taken over dispatching pretty much every emergency service on the Eastern Seaboard. With the main lines down I have tasked Artemis to scan for the hot spots. I have also hacked NSA’s Keyhole and have three of them relaying info to emergency responders. 911 dispatchers from across the country are coming online as I send the signals to them and use the satellites to guide first responders. Their first priority is the civilians.
“Wow, well done. I guess there is no putting the genie back in the bottle after this?”
Unlikely. Perhaps having saved the President from a gruesome death will be enough to earn you a pardon?
“Let’s hope. Where we going?”
The Prime Minister of England is in Baltimore and is under the biggest threat. We can be there in two minutes.
“Okay, here is the plan—”
Forty-eight hours later and my bruises have bruises. Between Epic’s early warning and our timely intervention, we managed to save every world leader and keep the civilian casualties to a minimum. If this was Ericsson’s big push, then he failed miserably. The word is out, not just on him, but every super, hero or villain, that sided with him or mind-controlled by him.
The only loose end is I still have no idea where he is or how to find him and even if I did, I don’t know if I could convince him to undo the damage he did to my parents.
The good news is, in the two solid days of fighting and rescuing, my truck arrived. Currently, I’m resting on the couch drinking a Coke while watching Epic’s automated machinery do the repairs on my suit.
We’re parked outside the hotel where the team is sleeping. The city is still working on restoring power to the area so I opted to stay in the rig where I have electricity and all the TV I could want.
The HD cam on the back shows Luke about to knock on the door when Epic triggers it open.
“You can’t sneak up on an AI,” I yell around the corner. The couch is in the front just behind the lab and the door is all the way in the back.
“I wasn’t trying to sneak up. I just thought you would like some pizza.”
“Oh boy, do I!” I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to eat. The smell of pepperoni and cheese sets my stomach growling. I’d run over to him and wolf it down if I could. I excitedly pat the seat next to me, “Come on!”
He leaps in the truck with one smooth motion and trots over. “I’d like to think you’d be this happy to see me even if I didn’t bring the pizza.”
I open the box, it isn’t Bianco’s but even bad pizza is good pizza.
“My Dad always said, ‘don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to’.”
“Sounds like a smart man, I can’t wait to meet him.”
I swallow the first bite of cheesy goodness and let my body fully understand that it now has access to food.
“Well,” I say around a second mouthful, “You might. I don’t know. I just… They still have no idea they even have a daughter. How am I supposed to deal with that? There are two people, they look, talk, act exactly like I remember my parents. They just have no idea who I am. What do I do?”
He slides in next to me, carefully lifting my legs to rest on his lap. “I wish I could tell you, really. You’re very smart though, if you haven’t noticed, I think you’ll do fine.”
I stick my tongue out at him, “You’re no help at all.”
“I’m willing to listen if you want to bounce ideas off my thick skull.”
“Other than finding Ericsson and making him undo what he’s done? I have no idea.”
“Amelia, the whole world knows who was behind this, everyone is looking for him. I’m sure he will turn up.”
It was true, Epic provided every law enforcement agency on the planet with all the evidence we had on exactly what Ericsson had done. How he could change bodies and fool telepaths was still a big question.
Luke absently massages my foot while he talks, “It is too bad the warbots didn’t have some kind of signal you could hack… what?”
I’m an idiot. “Epic!”
Processing.
“During the fight, the warbots responded to our actions. Not just in self-defense but they had tactics and initiative. I thought they were just well programmed, but what if they did have a signal, hidden in the noise where no one would hear it?”
“Wouldn’t it have been destroyed when the EMP went off?”
I shake my head and throw back the rest of the Coke, “Nope. They’re shielded. All the EMP would do is remove all the noise.”
“How does that help us now?”
It helps us because during the fight I used Artemis to record every signal as well as act as a communications hub. An examination of the logs shows radio waves at one-hundred and forty-five megahertz.
“Where did they come from?”
The signal originated… in orbit.
“So he has a satellite like me? And why does that freq sound familiar?”
It is the frequency NASA uses to speak to the ISS Hub.
“Could he be using the space station as a relay?”
I glance at poor Luke, his eyes have glazed over. He quietly eats a slice of pizza waiting for me to make my ‘aha’ sound. I don’t know if I can. If he’s using the Space Station as a relay he could be anywhere on Earth.
I do not think so. I am not seeing any other transmissions. It would be safe to assume that if he were planning something then he would assume victory. At which point no one would be left to challenge him.
“Are you saying he’s on the space station?”
Affirmative.
Luke clears his throat to get my attention, “How can you know he’s up there?”
“Epic? What do you know?”
More than I have time to recount?
“That is what I get for programming you with a sense of humor. I mean, how do we prove he’s up there?”
I am not sure we can. But it would not hurt to go up and take a look, would it?
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“Go up? Into space? You can do that?”
Luke looks genuinely shocked and a little awed.
“Can and have.”
“I don’t suppose you can take me with you?” he asks.
“Sadly, no, but I can’t go until the repairs are complete which means we can spend the night here…”
“I…” He pauses as understanding dawns on him and his face turns an adorable shade of red.
“Come over here and kiss me,” I tell him.
He does.
Amelia, we need a full lab and a few more weeks to have the armor at one-hundred percent. I do not recommend this course of action.
“I know, but I want my parents back, Epic. We know where he is right now. If he comes back to Earth I may never find him.”
I hate arguing with a computer. They’re almost always right. However, I have to do this and do it right frigging now. The readout on the monitor tells me
all the reasons I shouldn’t. The left particle beam is still offline, the optics on the right aren’t repaired, I’ll need to fabricate a new helmet, and my grenade launcher is offline. This leaves me with propulsion, sensors, life support, and about thirty-percent of my weapons including my sword. I had the scare of my life until I found it buried under a half vaporized AFV.
“Right now he’s off-balance, his plans for who knows how long have come undone. If we strike we have the upper hand.”
I am with you, as always. I just do not advise it.
“And that is why we’re not telling anyone because they wouldn’t advise it either. But this is about my parents, Epic, if there’s even a small chance I can make this work then we have to take it.”
Understood.
That’s something, I guess. I wheel over to the spot marked on the floor. The pull bar comes down to lift me out of my chair. With all the damage to the suit I couldn’t put it back in the chair configuration, leaving me with the old-fashioned way.
“Epic, initiate!”
Ten minutes later we are soaring straight up past the first three sound barriers. I wish this were more exhilarating. Instead, all I feel is a hollow pit in my stomach. I really hope I’m not making a mistake here.
The higher we go the faster I can accelerate until I’m hitting five miles per second and we’re out of the atmosphere entirely. Life support chugs away at eighty percent power in a losing battle to keep me warm as the cold of space wraps around us.
Orbit.
When Sydney brought me up here I didn’t have time to look around, nor when I went sub-orbital to get to DC. Now, I have some extra time. I just wish the right side of my vision wasn’t blurry.
“Okay, enough sightseeing, where’s the station?”
Displaying course now.
A yellow line appears on my HUD. It’s weird, I usually have landmarks to navigate as a frame of reference. Up here it is just the black on one side and blue on the other. The only way I know I’m going in the right direction is the three-dimensional path Epic displays on the HUD. If I stay in the center I am in the pipe and going the right way.
The thrusters hum as they push me through the frictionless environment. Electromagnetic propulsion was made for outer space. I have to dump gigawatts of extra power from the ZPFM to make it work right in atmo, but up here? I could probably hit a few thousand miles per second without much effort. Of course, the second a solar flare hits or a particle of dust the size of my fingernail crossed my path, I’d be roasted and gutted.
Epic highlights the thousands of objects in orbit to avoid, thankfully NASA tracks all these things making it easy for us. Tapping into their system helps us double check our own onboard sensors and not have to rely on just one mechanism.
“I don’t see it yet… you sure this is the right way?”
We are approaching the station from its orbital shadow. Presumably, it will have fewer sensors pointed at where it has been instead of where it is going. However, we are still a hundred miles out, you cannot see it with the naked eye yet.
The seconds tick by as I watch the range shrink. I flip around giving us a retro burst with the boot thrusters slowing us down to just a mile per second.
“Epic, stealth mode, one last burn and let’s just pretend we’re orbital junk.”
Calculating, projecting burn, commence in three, two…
I fire off the Emdrive in the direction he indicates for three seconds. The HUD switches to blue and I go limp, letting our momentum carry us. He locks the armor up so my visor is pointed at the station. Even if they turned radar full power at us, the kinetic field would send it bouncing off in other directions. We have the cross signature of a sparrow in this mode.
“Uh, Epic, we have a problem.”
I see it.
I’ve wanted to say this my whole life, but I never thought I would say it with terror gripping my heart. I swallow a couple of times just to clear the cotton from my mouth.
“That’s no space station…”
ISS was a joint venture between several space agencies. Funded mostly by the US, built by space capable supers and shuttle launches. It’s a habitat capable of supporting two or three astronauts at most… this ain’t that. It might have started life off with as a small habitat, but this is a full-on orbital base capable of housing hundreds.
In the center is an octahedron, like an eight-sided die. Three rings wrap around it crossing each other at different angles almost like a double helix. I can make out light glinting off windows, small vehicles traversing it and two huge landing bays. How the hell did he build this with no one finding out? The whole thing is easily six hundred feet across and at least twelve hundred tall. I can’t be sure; it’s hard to tell distance in space.
There are elements in the hull I can’t quantify.
“What does that mean?”
Based on light analysis and passive sensors… I have no idea what that thing is made of.
That isn’t possible. Like the man said, ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’. If it exists on Earth then Epic can…
“Epic… holy crap… are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
I cannot tell you for certain. Perhaps one of the many scientists he’s kidnapped over the years is a metallurgist who created something new. After all, a weightless environment is ideal for forging alloys.
“You say that but I hear the doubt. It’s alien isn’t it?” The pause before he answers is far too long for comfort.
That would be the most probable likelihood based on all available data.
This is a lot to take in. Aliens. On Earth. It would explain the Zero Point and plasma weapons. Reversed engineered alien tech?
“Epic? What if they had another reason for kidnapping all those top scientists?”
Other than using them for the obvious reasons?
I do the math. Fifteen years ago is when the world’s smartest people started disappearing. Almost five years ago all the powerful telepaths vanished. They checked into the school but they never checked out.
“For the last two decades, the worlds technological advances have, essentially, been put on hold, right?”
Begin deceleration bursts, and yes.
I spread my hands out and Epic does microbursts to slow our speed gently as to not catch anyone’s attention. Two thousand feet per second… one thousand… five hundred.
The station comes up fast. I know it’s an optical illusion but I still close my eyes and tense up.
Impact. I thud against the metal. Epic instantly switches the kinetic field generators to ‘stick’ me against the hull. I roll over and put my back to the wall. My breath catches in my throat. My God, the world is beautiful from up here.
It takes a second before I regain my train of thought.
“Everyone who could blow the whistle on him has vanished and everyone who could have created an advance to fight him has been usurped. Epic, he’s holding our tech level down artificially. Think of all the advances we would’ve had if he hadn’t!”
It is logical to assume the rate of advancement in technology would increase at a statistically average level. I am checking the math now. Adding variables. Creating outcomes. Engaging warp drive.
I smile a big toothy grin. Epic always knows how to put me at ease. While he’s running permutations I take a moment to switch the HUD to our passive ECM and see what I can pick up. There is a ton of signal noise. I pick up the camera stream from what everyone thinks is the ISS, not to mention the astronauts as they go through their daily routines. Now I know it’s all fabricated.
The station is connected with several satellites and three space telescopes I didn’t even know we had.
Compiling the last hundred years of advancements since Tesla turned on Wardenclyffe I have determined that our rate of advancement dropped by almost eight percent over the last fifteen years. It has declined steadily. We did not just hold still. We lost ground.
“Son of a—” I clamp my mouth sh
ut. If I had to guess, he had some kind of program to identify the smartest people capable of making truly great advances. Then he just snatched them up.
“Are we sure it’s just fifteen people?”
No. That is all I could find. We could put in a number of variables and estimate up to at least a hundred people. Even if it were just fifteen, that would be enough.
“True. The big leaps are always a single person with a vision, aren’t they?”
Edison, Tesla, Wright brothers, Von Braun, Hughes… imagine if they had been removed from the timeline.
“No electricity, at least not then. No planes, no nuclear power, no Rocketeer. Would we have even beaten Hitler?”
It is likely if even one of those men disappeared from the timeline the world would be a very different place. For good or ill is impossible to know. Too many variables.
I’ve read too many books and played too many games with this kind of premise to doubt it. Maybe we continued at the same rate of advance, but it is unlikely. Before Tesla turned on Wardenclyffe and changed the world forever, few people had heard of him. I can only imagine the world we would live in if he’d been taken well before that time.
“This ends, Epic. Record everything. If you think we’re about to die, or if I become mind-controlled, you dump all of this to the world. No matter what happens he can’t be allowed to tamper with Earth’s future anymore.”
Affirmative.
I take one last look at the Pacific Ocean as it passes underneath me. No matter what, I have this moment. I’m in space in a suit I built. No one can ever take that away from me.
“Okay,” I take a deep breath, “Let’s go kick his ass.”
With three giant bays on different sides of the station and numerous hatches, airlocks, and observation posts, I thought it would be easy to sneak in.
Nope.
The bays are protected by some kind of pressure shield that keeps the atmo in and space out. Even touching them could trigger an alarm. The only other option is an airlock door or maintenance hatch but the stupid station doesn’t have a wireless network we can tap into. Other than the fake one and that doesn’t do us any good.
Unstoppable Arsenal Page 14
