On the screen, the action intensified, the soldiers pinned down beside what Donovan could now see was a structure of half-broken walls, no roof. The helmet cam’s wearer rose and peeked through a gap in the wall he was near and Donovan saw men, far too many, closing in on them. Not soldiers, it looked like, not in uniforms, although at least some were wearing tactical vests and their guns were certainly heavy duty, and one of them was down on one knee, setting up a portable rocket launcher, Donovan managed to see before the soldier crouched back down. The tension in Mission Command was high, and he heard someone behind him exclaim, the sentiment echoed by others around him. He looked at Scholes, but the vice admiral shook his head and indicated for him to remain silent.
“This has been unraveling for a while,” he said quietly. “And as bad as it looks, it’s not over yet.”
Donovan had seen, had been in enough such situations in his past. It was over all right.
A movement to his left, and a figure moved into view. He sat up, surprised. It was Lara Holsworth. What the hell was she doing here? She obviously belonged, the way she walked over to stand facing the screen, the way both officers running the mission until now moved back, the way Mission Command fell silent in anticipation. She turned her head, and he saw that she had a headset on, a slight one with a mic near her mouth. Her next words had him stand up in surprise.
“Master Sergeant Giles, this is Oracle.”
Donovan took a shocked step forward, but a security agent moved in the darkness and positioned himself before him, without saying a word. Donovan stepped back, and Scholes pulled him back down to sit, his expression grim. Donovan turned his eyes back to the woman now standing alone on the operations platform.
On the screen, the soldier she was talking to reacted, his gaze sweeping around, trying to take in the threats surrounding his men. “Oracle? Oracle, we’re in a bit of a fix here, can you help us?”
“You’ll make it to your kid’s birthday tomorrow, Finn,” she answered calmly.
On the screen, the master sergeant’s eyes focused. “On your command,” he said with a calmer voice.
Donovan saw her nod a little. Clever, he thought, even as she spoke quietly.
“Stay down, stand by,” Oracle said.
A fast set of commands then uttered expertly, confidently, and all views on the screen shifted, reorganizing. More helmet cam views were added, along with a satellite feed of the soldiers and their immediate surroundings. As Donovan watched, she stepped back and took it all in, for a moment, only a moment, before she began issuing orders, directing the soldiers where to go. The satellite feed showed the movements of their pursuers around them, but then Donovan realized that her orders were coming first as the pursuers moved on the screen. Split seconds before, then seconds, then longer, in effect increasingly anticipating what the pursuers would do. It can’t be, he thought. There must be a satellite delay, she must be getting the information on her headset. Except that the satellite feed data was, as indicated on the screen, in sync, while her orders were now being given before the pursuers even moved, putting the soldiers an increasing step ahead of those searching for them.
She led them away from their pursuers, away from the walls that had served as their interim cover, through sand dunes and sporadic low brush, until the helmet cams showed two amphibious transports coming toward them on land. Finn was ordering his people to board them when a bright laser point appeared between the soldiers and the amphibians, then another, both moving toward the transports. Except that a fraction of a second before that an aerial view appeared of two armed enemy drones from above, a satellite view swooping down beside it, and Donovan barely had time to register what he was seeing before the new views showed both drones explode in the air. On the ground, the laser points disappeared. The aerial view hovered while the satellite view distanced itself again, and the screen was once again dominated by ground views in which the soldiers boarded the transports that then proceeded to move back through a barren beach Donovan didn’t recognize the location of, and into the water, chatter indicating that they were being met by the ship.
From the moment she stepped in and took over the mission, until the moment the amphibian transports were safely away, and the fighter jets she had directed to swoop down and bomb the site all the way to the beach and along it did just that, then rose up again to provide multiple escorting views of the amphibians from a growing distance above, the amount and complexity of the data and visual feeds she requested and received from whatever sources she was working with and her apparent manipulation of these were staggering, and the orders she issued were precise and unfailing. What he was seeing, he realized, was humanly impossible.
And yet there she was. Oracle. Lara Holsworth. No computer, no artificial intelligence, no weapon, no technology.
Lara.
He realized he was still staring at her when the last satellite view switched off, making way for the IDSD symbol that had already replaced all other views and data, and he heard people talking around him, relief in the air. Lights came up, though dimmed, and he saw Lara take her headset off, then rub the back of her neck to clear the tension away. No one approached her, no one but a young man with an aide’s insignia who took the headset from her hand and put a bottle of water in it, which she accepted absently.
Putting his hand on Donovan’s arm, Scholes motioned him to remain where he was, then stood up and took a step toward her.
“Oracle,” he called out.
She turned around.
And saw Donovan. Her brow furrowed slightly, and then, to his surprise, she nodded slightly, as if resigned. She looked at Scholes, who said something to her, his voice quiet, his hand on her arm. She nodded again and walked away from Donovan, saying nothing. He wanted to follow her, but Scholes stopped him, and he watched as she walked out, the young aide beside her. He thought about the effort, the weariness in her eyes. Considered what it was like for her, what she had just done.
And wondered why it mattered to him so much.
Once she was gone the lights were turned up, and Mission Command gradually emptied around Scholes and him until only the operators remained, both now on the side farthest from them, talking among themselves. Mission Command was going from critical to low alert. Donovan turned to the vice admiral, who met his eyes with quiet somberness.
“Two years ago, it was Lara who stood right here in Mission Command and guided the alliance’s soldiers into Elijahn’s base. She then directed its annihilation. And as you must have already understood, she had no choice but to do that. It was one of Oracle’s most intensive and difficult missions, in more sense than one.” Scholes paused. “She told me about the incident you were privy to at USFID’s TAC. That was us, we took control of that mission. US Global Intelligence notified us and asked for our help, and Mission Command took over. And that computerized voice you heard was Lara. Her voice is disguised as a computer voice that cannot be decrypted to identify the human voice behind it.” His eyes held Donovan’s. “There is no artificial intelligence. No person behind a machine. It’s all Lara.”
Donovan shook his head in disbelief. Even having seen it, it was still hard to believe. “She would need to be able to . . . God, she would have to have a staggering amount of knowledge, of experience. And those capabilities, what she did. It’s not . . .”
“She gets all the information she needs. As soon as we understood what she is capable of, we began teaching her everything there was to know. Tactics, operations, training, weapons, aircraft, ships, technologies—anything you can think of. Everything, for every ally and for everyone who is not part of the alliance, at every level. Friends and threats alike. Dry knowledge, given to her by the best. Unless there was anything specific she asked to see or experience, be it a gun or a fighter jet or to observe a special ops unit in training.
“And it was enough. From the very beginning she seemed able to grasp the applied side of things just by connecting to the user. To those out there, in the fiel
d. Gradually—and I assure you it wasn’t slowly—she accumulated a critical mass of information and began standing on her own, began pushing for knowledge faster than we could give it. And she developed with every mission. It’s been five years. That’s a lot, for her. Now we mostly just keep her up to date. Anything new—newly commissioned weapons, redeployments, operational forces, anything that could affect the outcome of a mission—it’s all sent to her office.
“And when she takes over a mission, whatever information she needs she gets without delay, and she has access to any person or technology in the field and has command override authority. Mission Command is designed so that she can get to anyone and anything and she invariably has priority. You saw our drone take out their two? She did that. Did you see the visual from it, on her right just under the corresponding satellite view? She likes to keep armed autonomous drones high above and to command them directly, use them to watch or to intervene if she wants to. And those fighter jets? The data she got while she was already working the mission would have told her what was in the air in the area at any moment, and she followed that deployment continuously, don’t ask me how she absorbs it all. And she used them, she simply gave the command directly from here, she can do that if she needs immediate point action. When she sees or anticipates something is about to happen, something no one else has seen yet, that’s what she does. And it works. She is getting better, stronger, more knowledgeable, more capable with every incident.”
“She doesn’t rely at all on a computer, on some sort of computerized intelligence?” It seemed impossible. That much information, in that capacity and at that speed, with that promptness and preciseness of commands and action, all by a person.
“She doesn’t need to. Does it all in that mind of hers. And we’ve had something to compare her achievements with. Pre-Oracle era. And we still do, she’s not on all missions. She’s never used if another configuration can do the job.”
“To avoid burning her out.” This, said earlier by Scholes, now made sense to Donovan.
“Yes.” Scholes chuckled softly. “Funny, isn’t it? For decades, humanity has dreamed of creating a technological intelligence that will integrate human capabilities with computer strength. Instead, we’ve got a superbly capable human with unprecedented spatial and temporal abilities who can operate at a level we haven’t seen before. And I’m not telling you that AI attempts aren’t done. They are. But the fact is that no one, nothing, comes anywhere close to her, to what she can do, and every time we think she has reached her limit, something happens and she shows us something new.”
“What she did now, that goes beyond knowledge, it goes beyond experience, too. Take those away and you’d be left with . . .” Donovan stood up and walked up to the platform, faced the screen. He shook his head in disbelief. “How the hell did she do that?”
Scholes got up and came to stand beside him. “Damned if I know. She just does. Point is, she’s the only one who can. And you haven’t seen the half of it. Where we stop, the best of us, the best people, the best technologies, she takes another step forward and sees beyond it, beyond us all. And no one has any idea how.” He shook his head incredulously. “Oracle. The woman who sees beyond.”
“What you’re describing should be protected. Taken care of and protected. If anyone puts his hands on her . . .” Donovan whirled around, realization dawning on him. “When Elijahn finds Oracle, he finds her. He finds Lara.”
Scholes nodded. “Her name was among those he took in this latest data theft.”
Donovan’s heart skipped a beat. “He’ll kill her.”
Scholes let a breath out, worry evident on his face. “Do you have any idea how many would want Oracle gone if they knew about her? If this guy makes her existence known, they’ll all be after her. And if he kills her himself, he’ll get everything he wants from every one of the people in whose way she’s ever stood. He’ll be their hero.”
“How the hell . . . she’s out there, she lives right there next door to me, in plain sight! Didn’t you think to—”
“Did you manage to find her?” Scholes cut him off.
“No,” Donovan had to admit.
“And back there in my office, you just proved to us how well we’re hiding her. Even you were sure Oracle was a technology. You never would have thought a person was doing all this. You saw what we do, all of us, you saw how we hide her.”
“There seem to be quite a few people who know.”
“What, the people you saw in here? Or in the war room outside? The captain? The soldiers she’s just saved? These were IDSD and Joint European Command special forces, by the way. She’s worked with them in the past. Those who need to be aware of her existence because of their position or what they do, those whose path crosses Oracle’s, they know. But every single one of them is aware of her importance, and of the need to keep her existence confidential. Those in the field want themselves and their peers to have a better chance of coming back home safely on their next mission, and they were all either themselves or had friends saved by her. And those who plan, decide, oversee—they are all too aware of the influence she has on missions, on whole operations, and on the work the alliance does. No one takes her existence lightly, and everyone wants her safe.”
He sighed. “Five years, the circle of people who know about her grows, and yet the secret is kept. You know it can be done. We protect her. We began to use the critical mission expert title at IDSD because it helps conceal Lara among others with this title, and it explains her clearance and excludes the need for her code name to be used. We even talk about Oracle like it’s a thing, an it, not a person. And thanks to the voice we use for her, not everyone who speaks to Oracle knows who she is. Some are still sure it really is an advanced computer, like you yourself thought. We’ve created a wall around Oracle, and we consistently separate Oracle from Lara.” He chuckled bitterly. “And then this damn freak accident happens and a drone fails to self-destruct like it’s supposed to, and now we’ve got Elijahn, of all people, after her.”
Donovan took a step toward him. “With everything she does, everything she knows, is she able to protect herself, to physically protect herself?”
Scholes shook his head, but Donovan realized he didn’t need the answer. Considering his own training, he would have recognized if she was. “You need to protect her.”
The vice admiral sighed. “It’s not that simple. For one, Lara has never cooperated with protection. She wants to live her life, and one of her conditions for becoming Oracle was that she would be allowed to live outside the protected IDSD complex. She allows us to approve the place she chooses to live in and to run her home security, but that’s it. And if you think about it, that’s the best cover Oracle can have. If she disappears now, with Elijahn watching, with her on his list, he’ll know she’s behind Oracle. And with both Lara and Oracle disappearing, many others who have no business knowing will know it, too. And then she’ll be hunted by more than just Elijahn.”
“So no protection at all?”
Scholes smiled.
Donovan nodded. “Cameras?”
“We’re piggybacking on municipal and law enforcement cameras. And we have a designated drone, way, way above her house. If needed, we can use our satellites to watch her, too, there’s a standing order for that. She would kill me if she knew, by the way. As long as she doesn’t ask, she doesn’t know. So please don’t tell her. And we can track her phone, laptop and car, of course, and that she’s aware of.”
Impressive, Donovan had to admit. Not enough, though, for him. “But if anything happens, you can’t get to her in time.”
Scholes looked at him.
Donovan chuckled. “So that’s why I’m here.”
“That’s a part of it. The fact is that with what you now know about Oracle, you’ll be able to understand Elijahn better, his motives. This might help you find him faster. But,” he continued, “yes, I’m also hoping you’ll help me keep an eye on her.”
“He
lp you.”
Scholes glanced at the dark screen, shook his head. “Donovan,” he said, surprising the younger man by speaking informally. “I brought Lara here, you know? I did. Even before I fully knew what she could do, before she herself knew. And I haven’t regretted it a moment since. The things I’ve seen her do, the lives she’s saved, that woman is a damn miracle. And it takes a toll on her. She goes right into the battlefield with them, she’s as much there as they are, sometimes for days on end, and she knows them, she knows everything about them and she puts all of herself into saving them, and you saw, didn’t you, you saw her eyes? It takes everything she has. Their lives are in her hands, and every time someone dies, every time one of them doesn’t come back home, part of her dies with him. And it’s not only them, every time she has to give a kill order, destroy, even though she knows it has to be done, that it would save lives, every single time it breaks something inside her.
“We called her in, you were there in her house, I know, talking to her when we called her in for a mission—that was yesterday, and it was over only a few hours ago, and this one, the one you just saw, it wasn’t even hers, it was something that wasn’t supposed to go wrong, but it did, and you saw how she just jumped in to help. And on the night of the break-in she was here too, you know? While this damn Elijahn was out there trying to find her so that he could kill her, she was here for four days, most of them she spent in here, in Mission Command, and then a mission she wasn’t scheduled for went wrong and she’d intervened in that one too, one of yours, do you know? A US special mission unit ran into trouble, in the last moment it was, and she saved them, they would have been killed if not for her. And she will never stop, don’t you see? Even now, when she is being targeted, she won’t stop. She knows what she does, and she knows she cannot be replaced.” The big man sat down, shook his head.
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