Virago One: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 2)

by John Triptych

  “And now we have the Virago that can beat them all,” Stilicho said. “Jesus, this arms race is out of control.”

  “If the Air Force had their way a hundred years ago, they would have had a fleet of fifty Orion ships in space by now,” David said. “They pressed hard for it, but the president during that time canceled the whole program, and the country went with NASA chemical rockets instead. It’s one of the great what-if’s of history.”

  A series of lights were soon visible in the air above them. A tilt-engine VTOL aircraft suddenly appeared in the night sky, hovered over the concrete pad for a short minute, then landed on it. No sooner had the vehicle’s turbofans shut down when the side door opened and Trevor Ledwidge leapt out onto the tarmac. Errol was already close by and got over to him first, shaking the National Security Councilor’s hand before gesturing at him to follow. Stilicho and David ceased their conversation and walked up to them.

  Ledwidge shook David’s hand before giving the corporate troubleshooter with a wary look. “So you’re Stilicho Jones,” he said, extending his hand.

  Stilicho shook it. “Mr. Ledwidge. Glad to meet you.”

  The president’s adviser frowned. “I’m not sure whether to thank you or to order your arrest. From what I’ve been told you have reason to believe that a fugitive spy for the Chinese has teamed up with a Russian computer expert to perhaps steal our top secret weapon?”

  “I believe so,” Stilicho said.

  “And it seems you came to this conclusion by the use of a highly illegal AI, one that was banned by all the UN member states. And it was pushed through thanks to your boss here,” he said, pointing at Errol.

  “I guess you can say I’ve fought fire with fire,” Stilicho said. “Let’s face it. The reason why we’re talking here right now is because you know this threat is credible.”

  Ledwidge nodded. “So what do you propose, Mr. Jones?”

  “I would suggest you allow me to keep using my AI until these people are neutralized,” Stilicho said. “Once that is done, you have my promise I will delete the program for good.”

  “Alright,” Ledwidge said. “But I will have someone with you at all times to keep you in line. What’s the situation now?”

  “There’s two NASA agents on their way to Argus Base,” Stilicho said. “You need to give them full access to find the perpetrators in case they’re already there.”

  “Very well,” Ledwidge said. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah,” Stilicho said. “If I’m right, I want a full pardon from the president. All my frozen assets are given back to me, with interest.”

  Chapter 16

  Tyler Dvorak leaned forward while grinning. “I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”

  The man sitting opposite to him inside the aircraft cabin had a military haircut, and the suit he wore didn’t seem to fit his bulky frame. “John Zimmerman.”

  “Okay, I got it now,” Tyler said sheepishly. “I’m sorry about that, I got a lot on my mind.”

  “No problem,” Zimmerman said. He happened to be the special agent for the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations and was serving as their official liaison. He didn’t have time to pick his best suit, and now they were in a military helicopter flying over the Southern California desert to assess the situation at Argus Base.

  Darian Arante was sitting beside Tyler. She continued to stay quiet, her thoughts full of speculation as to how they were going to find Herbert Eng Wu and Vlad Utkin. Zimmerman had met them at the helipad and gave them a short briefing of the facilities at the Argus Range, just as they were taking off. The base itself had maximum security, and Zimmerman had been skeptical as to whether these suspects could possibly have gotten inside. Nevertheless, Darian demanded a meeting with whoever was in charge, and they were scheduled to meet General Luther Tobias once they landed.

  The helicopter pilot’s voice was heard over the intercom. “We have begun final descent. Landing at Argus Base in two minutes.”

  As soon as the helicopter touched down, Zimmerman unbuckled his seat belt and opened the side door of the aircraft. The three of them quickly exited the helicopter and walked briskly towards a short-haired woman wearing battle fatigues and had a pistol strapped to her hip holster. A small group of Elite Guardsmen were nearby, fully decked out in their battle gear.

  The Air Force officer shook their hands. “I’m Lieutenant Shaker with base operations. I’m to escort you to General Tobias. He’s currently in the Ground Control Room. Please follow me.”

  Zimmerman walked alongside of her as they descended down the stairwell. “Did you order a lockdown of the base?”

  “I’m sorry, Agent Zimmerman, only General Tobias or the president can order the lockdown,” Shaker said. “The general has been informed, and he has not yet given any specific instructions at this time.”

  Tyler cursed under his breath. Darian reached out and squeezed his elbow to calm him down as they kept on walking.

  Kate Sturgis leaned over the console while staring at the numbers on the wall-mounted screen in the computer room. It was all Greek to her. “How much longer?”

  “Give or take, another hour just to be sure,” Herbert said.

  Kate looked at her watch. She had already sent a coded message to Ganz to get the skinsuits into the astronaut preparation area and wait for them there. Kate also updated the status of the fuel situation over to Colonel Ruthven. Now she had to think of a plan to get over to the Launch Building without arousing suspicion.

  Vlad continued to type using his interface glove. The architecture of the AI suite astounded him. There were codes in the programming that he would have never thought up. “Okhuyet! This is incredible! This master code for AI cannot be put to words. It almost as if I touched God’s…”

  His words were interrupted when a complete stranger suddenly entered the room. He wore an ACE Corp lab smock, a steaming mug of coffee in his right hand. “Hey, who are you people?”

  Kate turned and gave him a friendly smile, ignoring Vlad and Herbert’s surprised looks. She repeated the preset line that she had been given by Vlad a few days before. “We’re the IT security team. We’ve been sent over from the Houston branch. They told us to take a look at the firewalls and evaluate it. I’m Sheila, by the way.”

  The man looked at her quizzically. “Prakash Varma, the system admin for the night shift. Nobody ever told me anything.”

  Kate moved closer to him. The door had already closed behind Prakash, so now the external security cameras wouldn’t be able to pick up what was going to happen next. She tapped on her smartglasses. “Here, let me give you a copy of our work orders.”

  Prakash moved over to a nearby table and placed his mug on it. “It looks to be in okay, but I never got word about it at all. This is highly irregular, so I hope you don’t mind that I double check my messages and give our headquarters a courtesy call.”

  “Sure thing,” Kate said. In a split second the heel of her foot smashed into his right kneecap, buckling his leg. As the man fell, Kate delivered multiple blows to the bridge of his nose and lower chin. Prakash was unconscious before his head even hit the ground.

  Herbert turned his head, not used to the sudden viciousness of her attack while Vlad looked on with slight bemusement. The Russian had thought about hitting on her before, but he preferred his women to be the passive one in a relationship, not the other way around.

  Kate knelt down and placed both her arms around the unconscious man’s neck before twisting it. There was a slight, sickening snap as she broke the hapless system administrator’s vertebra bone. Now she had to dispose of the body somehow. Looking up at the other two, she knew they were running out of time. “Okay, we all need to get going. Right now.”

  Herbert glanced nervously at the indicators. “But the ship isn’t fully fueled yet.”

  Kate nodded. “You need to be on it by the time the fuel gauge is full. Head for the Astronaut Locker Room and put on your counterpressure suits. Ganz should be there wa
iting for you.”

  Herbert stood up. “I-I’ve never put on one of those things before.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Ganz will help you,” Kate said as she started dragging Prakash’s body closer to the door. “Vlad, tell me what I need to do to run the bot script you made.”

  Vlad just pointed to a virtual button on the console. “Da, just push that to initiate. Exploit will begin mass deletion of CAIN and datastore in complex. Once that happens, you need to get to Ground Control Room and input this next application which I give you now.” He tapped the frame of his smartglass, sending her a specialized command script to be inserted into the Ground Control computer.

  “Thanks,” Kate said as she tapped the frame of her own device in return, sending the virtual script to all the team members that were in the complex. “Now get going.”

  The three special agents and Lieutenant Shaker met the general at the Ground Control Room. This area had a much higher ceiling in order to accommodate the huge, wall-mounted monitor screens on every side of the room. Only two other Air Force staff members were there, manning a pair of consoles near the main view screen. 3D maps of the Earth and nearby space bodies, along with continuously updated positions of all major spacecraft and satellites were displayed, including their current positions and trajectories.

  General Tobias was in his battle fatigues. He stood up from his command chair and walked up to the three of them. “What’s this all about, Lieutenant?”

  Shaker saluted him. “General, this is Special Agent Zimmerman from OSI, and these two are Special Agents Dvorak and Arante from NASA. They’ve got special clearance to enter the base. Apparently there’s some intel about a possible terrorist sabotage plot that could occur here.”

  The general scowled. “Terrorist plot? That’s absurd. This is a highly secured installation. Only those with proper security clearances are ever allowed into this complex.”

  “General, with all due respect,” Darian said. “I think a former ACE Corp employee who is well versed in fusion engineering has teamed up with a Russian hacker to infiltrate this base. We need your permission to run a search through the entire complex.”

  General Tobias turned to look at Zimmerman. “And what does OSI say about this?”

  “I’ve only been briefed just a few hours ago, general,” Zimmerman said. “NASA is convinced there is an imminent threat.”

  The general turned to one of the airmen manning the com-link station. “Initiate emergency lockdown procedures. No one is allowed to go in or out. Deploy all Elite Guard units and tell them to begin a systematic sweep of the entire base. Start with the administration and personnel quarters.”

  “Yes, sir,” the airman said before typing in a command on his work console. Almost immediately, alarm bells started ringing and the red ceiling lights were activated.

  “General, is it possible to run a check on all personnel who are currently in the base?” Darian asked.

  General Tobias nodded. “Yes, the Security Room is on the next level.” He gestured at Shaker. “Go ahead and escort them over there, Lieutenant.”

  Zimmerman glanced over to Darian. “I’ll work with the general here and stay in touch with you via com-link.”

  Darian gave him a curt nod. “Okay. Let’s go, Tyler.”

  Just as a text message came into Colonel Ruthven’s smartglass, the corridor lights suddenly dimmed before flashing red. A loud claxon reverberated along the corridor as an automated voice was heard. “Now hear this. Argus Base is in lockdown. All security protocols initiated. All non-essential personnel are confined to quarters.”

  Ruthven cursed. He could hear the audible noise of all nearby door locks being engaged automatically. This meant that they would have to use security codes in order to get through each entryway from now on. He looked at Vince Lawson who was walking beside him. “Vince, head for the spacecraft right now and do a status check on all systems. I need to do something.”

  Lawson had a surprised look. “Where are you going, Colonel?”

  “Listen,” Ruthven said. “I just got word from our allies that someone has to initiate a release sequence from the Ground Control Room. If I don’t make it back to the spacecraft, you need to power up the forward gauss guns and blow a hole at the launch pad canopy, otherwise you won’t be able to take off without damaging the front end of the Virago.”

  Lawson shook his head violently. “I’m not leaving without you, Colonel.”

  Ruthven clutched his old friend by the elbow. “It’s an order, Vince. You have to launch, with or without me. When you’re up there, you know what to do.”

  Lawson looked down on the floor. “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, head for the spacecraft right now. The rest of the team should be nearby. Go!”

  Ganz’s smartglass was linked via CAIN as he crouched behind a stack of boxes. The entrance to the Ordinance Bay was open, and the video surveillance cameras were giving him a full view of the entire area. He continued to cycle through several live camera streams, hoping to get a glimpse of the others in his team.

  Sure enough, he noticed Vlad and Herbert sprinting rapidly towards the access corridor for the Launch Hangar. Just as he was about to stand up and rendezvous with them, the camera feed on his right frame showed a squad of Space Command Elite Guardsmen making their way along the main loading dock, searching for intruders.

  Activating his throat microphone, Ganz keyed in on the encrypted com-link the team was using. “Vlad, Herbert. Hold up. There’s a contingent of MPs in the loading dock.”

  The Russian’s voice on his earpiece had a mixture of exhaustion and nervousness. “What do we do?”

  Ganz shifted to another camera until he got an overhead view of where they were at. There was a concrete divider to their right which provided the perfect cover for them. “Get to the concrete wall to your right, and stay behind it. Don’t move until I tell you to.”

  He saw the two them sprint towards the one and a half meter wall and they quickly ducked down behind it. Using his device, Ganz began to cycle through the AI menu. Vlad Utkin did his job well. Ganz could practically control every aspect of the base just by using the virtual console on his smartglasses now. He had already run continuous loops on the surveillance recordings that were being transmitted over to the security office, which meant that the soldiers monitoring the complex had no idea as to what they were up to.

  When Kate informed him that they would be delayed for hours because the ship had to be refueled, Ganz made the best use of his extra time by setting up a number of contingencies that he could deploy once the alarm was sounded. He had plenty of time to study the layout of the nearby buildings, and with access to CAIN, he could unleash a deadly arsenal of traps for the troops that were now searching for them. The loading bay was fully automated, with various robots doing much of the mundane work of transporting materiel to and from the internal launch bay. Since the Ordinance Depot was situated nearby, Ganz could also access quite a number of dangerous munitions. With most of the soldiers now inside the loading bay, he activated two scripts in the AI command interface while cycling through the video feed for the best possible angle.

  The overhead camera showed the lead elements of the Elite Guard moving along the lower platform of the cavernous building. Numerous container pods and forklifts were strewn about, and each soldier was making sure that any potential hiding place was thoroughly checked out. Without warning, a side door swung open. A heavy lifter bot, with its box-like torso and servo-powered limbs came out, momentarily startling the soldiers, who first trained their weapons at the robot before looking at each other in confusion. One of the NCO’s walked over to the bot, which carried a medium-sized container as it seemed to move along a predetermined task, and attempted to give it a command. The robot ignored him as it continued to walk briskly towards the largest concentration of soldiers in the squad. Two of the soldiers started laughing at it, while a third airman stood in front of it in an attempt to portray himself as an obstacl
e. The moment the robot got to within a two meters, Ganz pushed a small button on the upper right frame of his smartglass.

  The box that the robot was carrying instantly exploded, the shockwave throwing body parts across the cavernous loading dock. The sound of the blast reverberated out into the compound as the fire alarms activated. Screams as well as shouting could be heard soon after. One soldier staggered out of the smoke-filled dock, his right arm torn away. There were at least four people on the ground, one was missing a head.

  Ganz keyed in the microphone again. “When I say go, both of you run as fast as you can across the alleyway and get into the Main Launch Building. Okay, go!”

  Vlad and Herbert were somewhat disorientated from the blast, even though they were more than fifteen meters away. They both stood up and ran over to the front of the Main Launch Building. Ganz used his command sequence to open the door for them and the two men sprinted inside. Ignoring the distant cries for help coming from the loading dock, Ganz stood upright and moved slowly towards the building’s side entrance, using the AI console to begin activation of the blast doors that would encase the entire structure against further entry from the outside bays.

  Chapter 17

  The Security Room was located in the command portion of the Main Launch Building. When the explosion ripped through the loading area, the six people in the small room looked at each other in surprise.

  “What was that?” Darian Arante said. Along with Tyler Dvorak, she had been standing behind four seated Air Force technicians as they were observing the surveillance feeds on more than a dozen monitor screens in front of them. Lieutenant Shaker had already left the room to coordinate with perimeter security.