by Stephen Moss
Neal saw he would not win this argument tonight and changed tacts, saying in a calmer tone, “Very well. But as you say, we should use ‘every asset our disposal,’ and maybe we could discuss ways the unique assets at our disposal might be of use in this situation?”
He held Terence Cochrane’s icy stare, and eventually the man took a deep breath, allowing reason in with the air, the acquiescence spreading through his veins and eventually softening his officious expression.
“Of course,” said the British man eventually, “I am sure Admiral Hamilton and I can help communicate any ideas you have to our grateful governments.”
The room settled a bit, Ayala smiling without humor at the passing of the moment. Neal looked at her first, as she expected, and she was ready when he said, “OK then, I would like to hear ideas from each of you about how we can best support the effort to get better eyes on Russia. Ayala, seeing as you have a better handle than most on this, maybe you can start?”
Ayala got her thoughts in order and then began, “The truth is that in order to gain a better understanding of what is happening here we need a long-term solution. The assets that were originally lost in the Moscow coup three months ago took years to get into place, some of them had been on the ground for decades. Nothing we can do will replace that kind of network overnight, which may go some way to explaining the … mixed success of our colleagues in MI6 and the CIA with reestablishing a clear line of sight into Russia’s movements.
“So the issue is less how to help build a strong intelligence network, and more that need for information, any reliable information, now.
“To that end I would like to propose something more intrinsic. Two key things have changed recently that give us options that the original builders of our spy networks in Russia did not have. Firstly, our relationship with Russia is no longer dependent on even a modicum of diplomatic or economic cooperation. In fact, it is probably more strained now than even at the height of the Cold War. With that in mind, information gathering methods that would have been diplomatically untenable in peacetime are now back on the table. Covert incursion, over-flying Russian airspace, all these have become options again.”
The two admirals did not like the direction this was going, but knew that it was best to listen, and even relay the suggestions from this group than attempt to shut them down here and now.
“The second thing that has changed is you,” Ayala said, nodding at Quavoce, “your arrival has, among many things, brought a series of technological advances that I imagine can aid us as we look to infiltrate the New Peoples’ Federation.” she said the title with all the derisive sarcasm it begged for.
“So, gentlemen, what does this mean?” Ayala then said, “For starters, I would like to suggest upgrading existing satellite networks with higher grade equipment. Using the facilities here at SpacePort One, the process of getting new equipment into orbit should be relatively easy.”
Neal’s expression at this could only be described as a scowl as he clearly thought about the delays to his many programs. Programs essential to the building of Earth’s fledgling defense systems.
Seeing his disquiet, Ayala took on a conciliatory tone, “Now Neal, I know that upgrading Earth-facing information gathering mechanisms is not part of our plan, but I can work with Madeline, Birgit, and their teams to minimize the impact to our schedule. Given the scale of Russia’s actions, we cannot deny the possibility they could put a far greater strain on our ability to execute to that schedule anyway, if we do not do something to rein them in.”
Neal nodded at this, begrudgingly, clearly deep in thought, but he did nod, and Ayala went on, “Next, I would like to propose that a series of small teams, four to six Spezialists each, at most, be sent to Russia in order to gather information on how they are maintaining such strict control there. Maybe also to connect with any organic resistance force that may be trying to reestablish some form of democratic process.”
The room entered another conversational drought, desiccated by the dry moods of all present. At best the two admirals could be said to be nodding politely. Neal took the floor, “Though I take great issue with taking up cargo capacity on elevator runs with this work, I cannot deny the logic behind such a plan. As for the thought of sending in small recon teams of your shock troops, or Spezialists, as you call them, I must say that seems like the very least we can do.”
He looked at the two admirals, knowing they represented the more tractable end of the immovable bureaucratic objects he was trying to motivate to action. And as he continued, he was not, in fairness, putting too much stock in his ability to convince even them, “Too much time has passed since we have had a reliable information source inside Russia, and I don’t see how we can wait any longer for national agencies like the CIA and MI6 to get a real handle on things.” He paused for breath, and the room waited while the two sides faced each other.
Ayala, Barrett, and Quavoce watched them. It was the age-old adage: the irresistible force versus the immovable object. But in this case one would prove tractable, if reluctantly, and anyone who knew Neal well, or the team of spies, officers, Agents and scientists who had been with him since the beginning, could see all too clearly that it was not going to be him.
When Neal spoke again, it was with all the calm and diplomacy of a lifelong ambassador.
“Were this to be approved, the obvious thought is to use some of your security force for the job, Ayala. Though as I think about it, I worry about their tools falling into the hands of whoever is behind all this. That leads us to a more conventionally armed force, though I fear they would suffer the same fate as the plethora of assets our political allies have already sent in there.
“We could, I suppose, send in John and Quavoce to reconnoiter the situation.” said Neal, as if thinking aloud. The room all turned as one to the present representative of Neal’s pair of potent pals, and Quavoce met their gaze with a patent willingness to wade knee-deep into any shitpile deemed necessary. Everyone in the room, including the admirals, seemed to consider for a moment how useful the two men’s abilities would be in this situation.
But then Neal shook his head, “No, without more information on what we are facing, I simply cannot risk you two in there.” The room looked disconcerted by what this implied, and Quavoce made to make his and John’s willingness to help out clearer, but Neal waved him down, and the general stepped in to reinforce the point.
“I agree, Neal.” said Barrett, “With Mikhail Kovalenko and Pei Leong-Lam still at large, we must assume that they are at the core of whatever dysfunctional power base has developed in Russia. That said, of course, I can also see a way in which that fact works to our advantage as well.”
Ayala looked puzzled, and Neal quirked his head in curiosity, then sat back, leaving Barrett to explain further. “Well, if we assume that the remaining Agents are at the heart of this, then the danger of equipping an incursion team with our latest equipment is mitigated, as the Russians could not realistically learn anything from our people or their equipment that Mikhail or Pei could not already teach them.”
“Yes, Barrett, you are absolutely right,” said Neal with a deeper satisfaction than even he had expected, “Which means we can … and should send in an advance party armed with the tools necessary to get the job done properly.”
“Gentlemen,” he said now to the most senior men in the room, “if you would pass this offer, actually this request, up your chains of command, I would greatly appreciate it.”
They nodded, and they would indeed pass it on, even if they both harbored reservations about the wisdom of such action without proper military oversight.
“Meanwhile,” continued Neal, “Ayala, if you haven’t already, can you please draft plans for the missions should they be approved and submit them to this group for review. Please include recommendations on incursion points and sortie routes.”
She nodded. She already had just such a plan in its infancy, and was busy picking out the best operative
s to lead it in her mind.
“Now, to the next point.” Neal took a breath, and then pressed on, the room waiting to hear his next thoughts. “It seems wise in the face of such events to start escalating efforts to equip all our forces as fully as possible. I know Amadeu and his team have been making good progress on the spinal interface, and we have been waiting to build some of the more complex machines John and Quavoce have provided us the designs for until we had the software we would need to use them. Well, I fear we can wait no longer to start pushing here. I will talk to Amadeu and see what can be done to up the tempo of our efforts with Minnie and her development of the AI progeny we are going to need. I will also order my other teams to prioritize completion of the Resonance Dome.”
The room was particularly intrigued by Neal’s offhand reference to the Resonance Dome. He was referring to the massive resonance chamber that was going to be used to build such huge devices as the Skalms, already infamous among those few people who had seen the designs. Admiral Hamilton brought voice to this curiosity, “The Resonance Dome,” he said, treading carefully in the face of Neal’s instantly wary look. “I cannot say I do not appreciate the need to keep its location secret, even from the bulk of the taskforce here at Rolas, but maybe it is time that those of us in this room knew where the first Dome is being constructed?”
Neal stared at him. With support from America beginning to dwindle under the duress of its internal injuries, and Europe ever more fearful and distracted by Russia’s posturing, it had taken everything he had to maintain the force strength around Rolas necessary to ward off any attack by Pei, Mikhail, and whoever’s strings they were pulling.
But the Dome could not be built here as well. It was simply too big. The operations already in place at Rolas were already too all encompassing and widespread. To add to that the massive, acre-sized dome and its ancillary power sources would have been all but prohibitive.
But that had not been all. Even with all the defenses they had put in place around Rolas, it was still not impregnable. Nothing was. They had built a mesh of gunpowder and lead that would tear any attacking force to shreds, and they’d had to. You could not hide a cable into space. The entire ground site had a 50,000-mile-high arrow pointing straight at it.
But, if the impossible happened, if an attack succeeded, they could, in theory, rebuild the elevator. But Neal knew that given what he had been forced to promise, beg, and cajole in order to get this far that they could not rebuild the Dome. Not in his lifetime anyway.
For the Dome represented the biggest investment the combined allied nations had made to date, by a massive factor. So much, in fact, that Neal had been forced to hide its true expense from even his closest friends and allies. No one but he knew what he had done in order to secure the hundreds of tons of gold required. India alone, the world’s biggest single consumer of gold and one of Neal’s biggest contributors, believed itself the presumptive owner and controller of the Dome once it was complete, as did America, Europe, Japan, Brazil, and South Africa.
It had been, at its heart, a con, one that would eventually be discovered. A loan mortgaged on the back of the space elevators spectacular success, and on countless promises of power, influence, and technological supremacy. They had given much in return, believing they were each the majority contributor, but even India’s massive contribution had, in fact, been only a fraction of the whole. And the negotiations had been moot anyway. Neal never intended to give over control of the Dome, not under any circumstances short of an improbable victory over the coming Armada, maybe not even then.
He faced the room and they sat in silence, waiting for his reply. They wanted to know. How could they not? So much depended on the Dome. And it was not even going to be the only one. But it would be the first. And it would be the only one on Earth using earthbound resources. The second would be built using the materials they hoped to glean from Asteroid 1979 va, and as such was more than a year away, at least.
“Yes,” he said, with a deep inhale, “the Resonance Dome. You know why I have kept its location a secret. Even the team working on it doesn’t know what they are involved in, and has been sequestered until its completion anyway. It has …” he paused a moment, looking for the words, “… posed some problems in getting it completed, but it has been worth it, of that I have no doubt.”
He looked at them. It was difficult for him to trust them, even them, such was the depth of his vulnerability here. He was so close. Once it was done, and once the first Skalm was complete, he would have the ability to truly defend the secret site.
“I can tell you it is nearly done. And I can tell you that once it is, I will reveal its location to this group. But other than that, I am afraid I cannot go further, not yet.”
He looked from one to the other, dwelling perhaps a moment too long on Ayala. He was no fool. It was hard for him to believe that, even with all of his precautions, he had managed to evade Ayala’s curiosity on this. But her skill was also her promise. If she could be relied upon to have cracked his network somehow, then she could be relied upon to keep it quiet as well, for the very same reason.
They talked further. They discussed the secret of the Dome’s location as a matter of course, politely courting Neal to concede it, and perhaps occasionally calling on their governments’ contributions as reason for their need to know. But Neal had refused requests to oversee or at least visit the site from far more important people than these men. No. He must remain absolute. Nothing else was more important.
As they eventually filtered out, hands shaken, confirmations of action items exchanged, Ayala turned to Neal and locked eyes with him. They did not speak. She was telling him that she knew, that she knew his secret, and had for some time; and that she knew what he wanted her to do. They could, indeed, wait no longer to move on Mikhail and Pei. It was time to go to Russia. They nodded and parted.
Chapter 28: Nick at Night
The predawn air was cool and invigorating. Nick and Malcolm had started moving again not long after midnight. They had left the remote spot where they had parked to get some sporadic sleep, and cautiously driven the last few miles to the coast.
They had kept their headlights off, the nationwide curfew that had been imposed being both a curse and a blessing. For it allowed them to pass unbidden through sleeping towns, but left them hopelessly exposed if they were spotted from above.
They were close now, so close that it was better to risk a bit more driving at night rather than delay their escape another day. After the first couple of days spent carefully navigating the area surrounding the capital, they had begun their long, dangerous journey toward the Caspian Sea.
They had been flooded by mixed emotions at the sight of the first small fishing towns that dotted the shore of the Turkmenbasy estuary. For it was a long, shallow waterway, and none of the tiny boats that fed these tiny towns would be able to make it across the great sea that lay ahead.
So they had been forced to bypass these small communities and their barely seaworthy fishing boats, continuing on in constant fear, on toward the large town of Turkmenbasy itself. To the first town that truly sat on the coast of the vast Caspian Sea.
The great sea had once been the stuff of legend, indistinguishable to the burgeoning kingdoms that bordered it from an ocean, such was its breadth. It would be thousands of years until the first great empires had grown large enough to see that it was, unlike its oceanic counterparts, entirely landlocked. But even without link to the world’s great oceans, the Caspian remained a sea that divided the continent, from Russia to Iran in the north and south, and from Azerbaijan to the former Stannic nations in the west and east.
It was the largest lake in the world, but the wars and political intrigue that still plagued its bordering nations made it as fraught with international tension as any patch of water short of the Mediterranean. Now it was the fishing boats, plying their trade on the salty waters, which were at the heart of that conflict. They sought sturgeon and its famous unborn pr
ogeny for consumption and export. Russia and Iran may have cornered the international market for caviar, but their neighbors caught and consumed it as much as any Caspian fisherman did, and Nick and Malcolm had driven long and hard to get to the capital of Turkmenistan’s fishing trade.
Now, with the first light of dawn penetrating the night’s blackness, they clambered across a muddy bank to a small, wooden rowboat, the mud chilling their shins and filling their boots. Racing against the night’s dissipation, they helped each other into the tiny boat and shoved off into the night, grabbing oars and paddling for one of the large fishing boats anchored in the small harbor.
There was a relatively modern passenger and train ferry between Turkmenbasy and the far port of Baku, in Azerbaijan. Ordinarily lacking any stringent security, this would have been Nick’s first choice to get out of the country, but Ayala’s orders had expressly marked this as one of the ‘known’ routes, and all things known had become anathema since given Russia’s newfound and bloody efficiency.
So they rowed out to the huddle of fishing boats in the bay and climbed aboard one, kicking the small boat away into the last of the night. Someone would no doubt be heartbroken to find their small but precious rowboat gone from the shore in the morning, but that was not high on Nick and Malcolm’s list of concerns.
They were dirty, three days’ sweat trapped within their thick bulletproof vests, their shoes filled with tidal mud and all the stench of a long flight across a once friendly nation, now suddenly filled with enmity. And now they were in the last, but by no means least dangerous part of a journey, with more than enough opportunities to die still ahead of them.
Despite the terrifying trek they had undertaken, though, they had also been faced with a host of wonders as well, for they had glimpsed the beasts that hunted them, and it had shaken them to the very core.
Lying in silence in their car during the seemingly endless nights of their three-day flight, they had seen the strangely shaped fighters as they flew over the towns. They had seen the speed with which some sliced across the sky. Then they had watched in fear and amazement as others moved slowly and deliberately over various towns the two men had hidden in along the way, like circling hawks hovering over cowering prey.
