Oracle's Hunt

by A. Claire Everward

  “Very well,” he began, when the door to his office burst open.

  “We’ve got a security breach,” IDSD’s head of security said, his face ashen. “Another one.”

  The beeping sound was insistent and broke into some dream Donovan forgot as soon as he opened his eyes. He fumbled in the darkness and found his USFID phone.

  “Agent Pierce, this is Nathan, Lieutenant Commander Walker.”

  Donovan was instantly awake.

  “We have a situation here.” The liaison was being carefully vague, Donovan noted, and he suddenly had an idea what this was about. “We would appreciate your coming here, to IDSD Missions.”

  Donovan sat up, ordered the lights on and looked at the bedside clock. Four in the morning. Rubbing his eyes, he got out of bed and went to the shower.

  Chapter Eleven

  The security agents at the IDSD gate cleared Donovan through immediately. Security was high here, higher than he remembered from his last visit, and even then it had been substantial. But then with the perpetrators of the data center break-in still at large, it was the way things were everywhere these days. He followed the agents’ instructions and drove through the modern complex—artificially lighted in the predawn darkness—to the visitors’ parking lot of the missions building. He’d been here before, but never to IDSD Missions. This was the most restricted area in the huge complex.

  The security system tagged and identified him as he approached the building’s entrance, and the doors slid open before him. A security agent waited for him on the other side, and escorted him to an elevator bank. On the top floor, the agent didn’t get out of the elevator but was replaced by Nathan, who was waiting for Donovan just outside the elevator doors.

  He walked into the hushed space and looked around him with curiosity. The last time he’d been to IDSD, he was on an official visit with USFID’s director in the IDSD Diplomacy building. Where that building spoke of plush comfort, designed to cater both to the diplomatic corps employees who were far away from home for long stretches of time and to IDSD’s guests, this floor and, as he could see from the glass elevator on his way up, the entire structure, was a state-of-the-art affair, somber and efficient, and, he would wager, with close to if not unlimited funding.

  In the section of the top floor he was in now, a number of people, all uniformed, worked in the open space, even at this hour. In front of him, beyond the open space workstations, the floor was cut across its entire width by what looked like a reinforced opaque glass wall, the wide double doors in its midst closed. A low-hued security light flashed back and forth above the doors. Not at all subtle, this light was meant to be noticed.

  This was where Nathan was leading him. When they approached the wall, Donovan heard a soft beep, although he could see no visible sensors, and the doors slid open silently. He was certain this level of security would take them into nothing short of a TAC, as it did at USFID, and was surprised when instead they entered another open space, spanning, he estimated, the greater part of the floor. Here the tension level was higher, and so was the efficiency. The center of the spacious area was divided into a number of partially enclosed workspaces, several of which had what seemed to be designated teams working in them, most uniformed, a few not. Donovan thought he heard a range of languages, though nothing coherent—the place was designed to enclose the voices of each team within its own workspace. He peeked into the nearest one and saw comfortable workstations. He noted that the people inside, a small group engaged in some sort of a discussion around two semi-spherical holoscreens running what looked like floor plans and simulations, were officers from different IDSD military branches, and two were Joint European Command air force officers.

  Nathan beckoned him, and led him right, across the width of the floor, and then left, skirting the workspaces and coming to walk along a window wall that encompassed the floor’s entire length. As he walked beside the liaison, Donovan took in the entire floor, now extending to his left. Far on the opposite side, beyond the workspaces, he could see a series of transparent walls with doors in them, each leading to a spacious office. Each of these offices had an external space with a small conference table in it, and beyond it a fully tinted glass divide, with a door to an inner office. Some inner offices were open, others closed. Immediately to the right of these offices was a large conference room.

  Nathan indicated and he turned his gaze ahead, to a large office with an aide’s station in front of it.

  “That is Vice Admiral Scholes’s office,” Nathan said. “You’ve already met, of course, so to speak, the day of the data center break-in.”

  Extending to the left of the vice admiral’s office and to the right of the conference room on the other side, the walls continued uninterrupted up to a wide, heavy-looking door, with an armed uniformed giant standing before it.

  “That’s our Mission Command,” Nathan said in answer to Donovan’s question. “It’s the best in the world. And this entire part of the floor is our war room. From here we handle high-risk missions and crisis situations worldwide.” He indicated the opposite side of the floor. “That’s our war-conference room, or war-con, as some of the aides have gotten used to calling it over the years. It stuck, I guess. And beside it on the left are the criticals.”

  At Donovan’s frown, he explained, “The people who determine the go-no go and to a great extent the success of the missions. Critical Mission Experts Renard, Edwards, and you’ve met Holsworth.”

  Donovan halted in surprise, and turned to look again toward the offices on the other side. “Critical mission expert . . . ?” Some things clicked in his mind. More questions followed. He glanced at Nathan. It struck him that the liaison was being unusually forthcoming. In fact, Donovan was not being treated like someone who had been consistently stonewalled in the past days.

  “Critical how?” He ventured to see just how forthcoming Nathan would be. They were now standing before the workstation of the vice admiral’s aide, but Donovan’s attention was still on the three offices on the other side.

  “Ah, well, that’s a whole other clearance level. This designation is as such for security purposes. I’m sorry.” He raised his palms up in a peace offering as he caught the glare in Donovan’s eyes. “It’s not my call.”

  “So you can’t tell me what she does here?”

  “Ms. Holsworth? Let’s just say she . . . manages missions at their critical end. Yes, that’s it. Anything more, that would be Vice Admiral Scholes’s to say.” Nathan turned away quickly, deflecting further questions. “And here we are.” He nodded to the aide, and they were immediately ushered in.

  Inside, Scholes stood up and greeted Donovan with a firm handshake. “It’s good to meet you in person, Agent Pierce. I appreciate your coming here.”

  Donovan acknowledged with a nod. The big man before him was clearly worried and was not making any attempt to hide it. Neither did the blond, lanky and right now very pale man introduced to him as the head of IDSD Security, Carl Ericsson, or the one he already knew, Evans. Something had certainly happened to change their approach to his investigation. And to him.

  “Allow me to get straight to the point.” Scholes sat down heavily. Tiredly, Donovan thought. “We had another security breach last night. This time here, at IDSD.”

  “Obviously, we cannot be accessed from the outside, other than from other IDSD branches or with certain IDSD IDs. So they took one of our people. One of my people,” Ericsson said, enraged.

  “Carl,” Scholes said quietly, and the man nodded, breathed in, and turned to Donovan. When he spoke again, his tone was controlled.

  “One of my senior security agents never came on shift last night. We have a strict protocol, and the team we dispatched found him dead at his home, the place ransacked. By then his ID had been used to remotely access our administrative system. Normally we probably wouldn’t have known it—it was done cleverly, whoever did this even changed the login time to reflect entry during the agent’s last shift—but obvio
usly now we knew to look, and knew what to look for. Anyway, they got in. And they might have managed to get more, but the new security protocol we’ve been implementing since the break-in restricts all authorizations until this thing is over. Although I’m thinking they got exactly what they wanted.”

  “Which was?” Donovan prodded.

  Ericsson threw a look at Scholes and sighed. “A list of certain people present at IDSD Missions on the date of the raid on the base in Chad, and on two other dates.”

  “Two missions that their search for Oracle found during the break-in,” Donovan guessed.

  It was Scholes who responded to that, without hesitation. “Yes.”

  “You said certain people.”

  “People in certain positions, with certain titles, backgrounds—the little that this security agent’s authorization level allows to view—and clearance levels. Attendance dates, too, specifically the dates of the missions in question, but not only those. For safety purposes, the safety of these people, we need to assume Elijahn thinks one or more of them are the people he’s looking for.”

  Donovan leaned forward. “So you’re certain it’s Elijahn.”

  “We’ve found no other incidents that fit, certainly not as well,” Ericsson said.

  “And the fact that one of the dates in question was of the raid on his base does seem to support that.” Donovan chuckled mirthlessly. “And you already knew he was after someone here, didn’t you? And this data theft, he’s trying to identify a specific role here, isn’t he?”

  Their silence confirmed that he was on the mark. “He wants to find whoever gave the orders on the mission that destroyed his base,” he continued. “He really does want revenge.” He was thinking aloud now, following what he knew. He wanted them to hear it, deny or confirm. Damned if he was going to let more people die because of further stalling. “And he would want to get his reputation back. Otherwise it would all be for nothing, wouldn’t it? He needs something that would get him back on track. But that would mean he thinks whoever he is after is someone who could get him what he needs, after his last failure. Someone who matters enough to you, to all of you. Someone the elimination of whom could hurt all of you in a way that would help him get what he wants.”

  He paused. They were all looking at him attentively. “Someone—or is it something? I raised an assumption when I spoke to your Lara Holsworth. A far-fetched one, I know, but she didn’t deny it. Now I hear that she is a, what was it, critical mission expert? A rather obscure title for someone whose function at IDSD has so far remained hidden from me and who works in your war room. That’s usually how it is for people with top clearance, which she obviously has. So I’m guessing she would have the necessary authorization to know exactly what I was talking about.”

  He shook his head. “That technology, that AI I talked to her about exists, doesn’t it? You’re not using only people to watch and guide missions here, in, what was it Nathan called it, the best Mission Command in the world, are you? You’ve managed to attain active computerized mission participation. Maybe even a computerized mission coordinator. Not autonomous, not entirely, so there’s a person involved, it’s more of an AI-human collaboration of some sort, right? And Elijahn can’t get to the AI, so he’s looking for the human, for whoever operates it or controls it or works alongside it in missions, or whatever that person does in your little project, and who had used it to destroy his Chad base. And he thinks that by killing that person, he’ll cripple your ability to use the AI, probably for a long, long time.”

  The eyes that bore into Scholes’s were not accepting anything but the truth now, and all of it. “That’s Oracle. That’s what it is, isn’t it? A technology, an unprecedented achievement that all of you, IDSD and the allies, are keeping hidden. One of a kind. It is, isn’t it? You’ve got your own little weapon that’s getting in the bad guys’ way, destroying them, and now this particular bad guy wants revenge on it so badly he’s willing to do anything to get to it. And you’re so busy keeping it hidden, protecting it, you’re getting people killed.”

  “One of a kind, that’s certainly true,” Evans said in what Donovan actually thought was incredulity, and Scholes sent a silencing look his way.

  “Yes.” Scholes addressed Donovan. “And no. Yes, Oracle does exist. But no, it’s not a weapon, and it’s certainly not here to destroy. It’s here to save lives. That’s its primary directive.”

  “That’s how all weapons start, and it’s always part of their designation, isn’t it? Save the lives of the innocent. But they kill on the way,” Donovan said evenly.

  “Oracle won’t kill unless it has to. It is activated only when a critical mission hits a dead end and the good guys—to use your terminology—are about to get caught and killed. And in the past, that’s exactly what happened. Since Oracle, it happens a lot less. In fact, there are many things that happen a lot less thanks to it.”

  “An AI that makes the decision not to kill unless it has to. That can prioritize based on sentient parameters. Or is that the person behind it? Whoever our bad guy is looking for? Man and machine working hand in hand?”

  Scholes and Evans exchanged a look.

  “Oracle,” Scholes continued, not giving a direct answer, wanting to make sure Donovan understood first what Oracle was, “is also used for diplomatic missions gone wrong and for civilian rescues. Under IDSD, it is used by all allies, for varied missions, all critical. We’re also increasingly involving it in mission planning, we’ve learned that doing so decreases the number of missions that go wrong. Less people get hurt. Less people die. We haven’t had Oracle for long, but it has already made a hell of a lot of a difference. We’re still learning where we can use it and how we can help it achieve its best without . . . burning it out.”

  Donovan frowned. Scholes really wanted him to understand. It was almost as if this was personal for him.

  “Okay, let’s say I understand its importance.” And he did, if only because of the way Oracle had been protected by everyone, even at the expense of a crucial investigation that they needed solved without delay. He still had no concrete idea what exactly Oracle did at the Chad base raid, but Scholes’s description of what that technology was, what it did, what it was achieving, its depiction as something that reached everywhere, had its hands, so to speak, in everything, making a difference like perhaps nothing else could, was only adding to what he had already understood the more his investigation had progressed—that hiding it just might be the right thing to do. Although he wasn’t going to tell them that at this point. He still had his investigation. And he still had no idea what he was doing here.

  He looked at Scholes thoughtfully. “Why is it so important to you that I know about Oracle—no, that I understand Oracle, now?”

  “Oracle isn’t just important, Agent Pierce. It is one of a kind, indispensable, and irreplaceable. To all of us.” Scholes sounded almost desperate now. He took a deep breath. “As for why now, well, simply said, Elijahn is getting too close. And so you are here because we need you to understand what Oracle is, why it has to be protected. We hope that by telling you about it, you might be able to help us do that more efficiently than we have so far allowed you to.”

  Donovan raised his eyebrows.

  “Yes, I know we’ve been standing in your way. But please understand we thought that’s what we had to do to protect Oracle.”

  “Fine. So Oracle is important. It must not be destroyed. But what about the person behind it? That’s who Elijahn will get to. That’s who he was looking for in this last data theft, remember? Is this person even important to you? Do you want to protect him too, or are you just afraid that if Elijahn will take him out you won’t be able to use your precious Oracle?” Donovan was angry. He’d had enough.

  Scholes took a mental step back. It would, he realized, be best to just show him. He walked around his desk to his office door. “Please.” He indicated that Donovan should follow him. When Donovan didn’t budge, he said, “Oracle has been c
alled to a mission that has escalated. If things go the way it looks, it will be required to intervene.”

  Donovan wanted to argue, but he was curious. He wanted to see this thing that was the focus of everything that had happened. And there was something in the man’s eyes that made him stop.

  Scholes wasn’t just worried. He cared.

  Chapter Twelve

  Following the vice admiral, Donovan turned back to look at the others, who stayed behind.

  “Nathan isn’t cleared,” Scholes said, “and my head of security still needs to deal with this latest data theft. And Evans, he’s been here all night working with Ruth—Larsen, you two have spoken—taking apart the drone data on the Chad raid. We’re all, as you can imagine, working on this on our end too.”

  He led Donovan toward what Nathan had called Mission Command. Only when the armed security agent moved aside did the heavy door slide open. Donovan followed Scholes inside, then slowed down, astonished. IDSD’s Mission Command was impressive in every way that mattered, and he had seen enough TACs to compare it with. And right now it was also dark, and very active.

  At Scholes’s urging, he came to sit beside him, in the front row of the half-packed room. Rows of seats stretched to his left and right, and sloped up all the way to the wall behind him. On them sat mostly uniformed men and women in combat and non-combat roles and of varying ranks. A mix of IDSD, US military and Joint European Command, he saw. The entire length of the wall before him was covered with a multipurpose holoscreen, and under it stood an operations platform that stretched the length of the screen. Both on its right side and on its left stood stations for system operators, which he assumed were there to help operate Oracle.

  Right now the screen was in two-dimensional mode, and was split into multiple smaller ones, displaying different views of a rough sandy terrain. A mission was in progress, or the aftermath of one, it seemed. Whatever it was, there was trouble. A uniformed man whose insignia Donovan couldn’t see was standing on the left side of the operations platform, talking to the operator at that end, and an IDSD mission coordinator stood in its middle, speaking to the captain of the warship whose image was on the screen beside his. In the earpiece Scholes had given Donovan, he heard the chatter, bordering on urgency now, as the mission coordinator told the ship’s captain to hold the transports, he couldn’t get the men to them, and in the background he heard someone shout they were under fire and realized this was coming from the screen, where a helmet cam view appeared, blurry, its wearer running, then stopping, crouching down beside a low wall. As whoever had the helmet cam on turned his head Donovan saw several others around him, combat soldiers in full gear. Under attack, the intermittent sounds of gunfire clearly heard. Beside him, Donovan heard Scholes say somberly, “Looks like we’ve got a live one for you, Agent Pierce. Unfortunately, right on time.”