“It’s about time,” drawled a tall dark-haired bespectacled guy who rose to his feet as they entered.
“Your call came over the radio the same time Dan walked in,” Nik said, holding up a hand to ward off what he knew would be a well-deserved rebuke for not arriving sooner. “We’re here, so you can fill us in. Everybody, sorry for the general nature of the introduction, but I want you to meet Tess Beauchamp. I know you were there for the handover earlier this morning.”
Tess gave a brief wave to the room at large. “I’ll come around to meet each of you as time allows. I know you’ve got your hands full right now.” She looked directly at the guy who’d risen as they walked in. “Can you give us a recap?”
“Sure. In a nutshell, we’re fucked,” he said pleasantly, walking out from behind the workstation and extending his hand to Tess. “Ron Zellar, lead programmer and commander in chief of the TESLA Optimists Society.”
“Nice to meet you,” Tess replied, giving him a wary grin as she shook his hand. “So what happened?”
“We went dark. Special effects included watching the external networks shut down like dominoes, one after the other, starting with the uplinks,” he continued in the same calm tone of voice.
“All of them?”
“Yes, ma’am. The lights blinked out, the alarms came on, and general hell broke loose for a minute or two. I heard you sent Dan out to the ground station to make sure it’s not a cable or wiring issue. Thanks for that. We’ve got another guy checking the hardware in-house. But neither backup came on line, which leads us to—”
“What? Neither one? Not even the local one?”
Nik noticed that, for all that forced smile on her face, Tess had gotten a little paler and her voice had gotten a lot quieter since she’d entered the room. He didn’t feel so well himself. Despite all his smart-assery, even Ron was subdued—for Ron. The rest of the programmers might as well have been working in a morgue; there wasn’t a Nerf ball in sight and not one of them was wearing earbuds. The room, which normally exuded an easygoing, lighthearted ambience, was as quiet as a cloister, and there was no levity in the air.
This really is not good.
Ron nodded. “Even the local backup, Tess. Everything has pretty much stopped talking to anything beyond the Pale. The arrays are still on line and we’ve pinged them successfully. Those networks are okay, so is the power system that feeds the arrays. Everything is in sleep mode, which is as it should be, and the tests we’ve run so far indicate they’re alive and well and waiting for action. The habitat’s life support and power systems are also okay. That power blip seems to have been a non-event, but we’re running diagnostics as a precaution, anyway. So it appears that only the external systems have been sucked into a black hole. As far as we’ve been able to determine, everything on the ground is still talking to each other.”
“That’s good,” Tess murmured. “What do you have people doing?”
“Well, Lindy, Fred, and Juno”—Ron pointed to a group that had been huddled around a single monitor when they walked in—“are continuing to test the ground-based systems. Nancy and Francene are trying to re-establish an uplink with one of the birds. Nangpal and Amil are working on the other. And I was just finishing up a game of Minesweeper.” He smiled. “Rank has its privileges.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of being a smart-ass?” Nik muttered, catching Tess’s eye to reassure her that Ron was only joking.
“Not so far.” Ron looked back at Tess. “Actually, I’m reviewing the monitoring logs to see if I can find a clue as to what happened.”
Tess nodded. “Sounds like you’ve got things under control.” She looked around. “There’s a conference room in here somewhere, isn’t there? Could we have a quick chat?”
“It’s over here,” Ron said, gesturing to the back wall of the room. “Is this the part where you tell me I’m demoted?”
Nik frowned at him. “Ron—”
“Not yet,” Tess replied with a smile, walking toward the conference room’s open door. Nik followed them both and pulled the door shut behind him.
She stopped halfway down the length of the table and turned to look at the two men. “Ron, I appreciate your leadership on this—”
Nik wanted to roll his eyes. Corporatespeak will get you nowhere down here. We’re immune.
“—and I want to thank you for keeping everyone calm and occupied,” she continued, still a little pale but looking as unruffled as if she handled situations like this every day. “I’d like to bounce a thought off you. Nik and I have already discussed it. It’s pure conjecture, and because of that I don’t want it to leave this room. But what do you think about the idea that this isn’t a random failure, that perhaps Greg pulled down the external comms network? That he planted some sort of logic bomb in the system?”
Nik almost choked as Tess calmly did the equivalent of waving a lit match near a fuel dump. Ron had been one of Greg’s most trusted allies.
“Conjecture?” Ron replied. “I’d call it a given.”
Nik stared at him. What the hell? “Why? Greg wouldn’t do that. He knows how dangerous it is for us to be off line.”
Ron shrugged. “Sure he does, but it’s not his problem anymore.”
“So you think—?”
“Don’t try to approach it rationally, Nik. That’s futile when you’re talking about Greg. And I know what you’re thinking, that I was the poster child for Teslan suckupitude for the last two years. I won’t argue, but it wasn’t due to hero-worship. It was more like morbid fascination, like watching a live-action lab experiment. I mean, how else would I have gotten him to tell me that he used to try to get as close as he could to the HAARP arrays when they were firing?”
“He did?”
“Nik, you knew that,” Tess said, frowning at him.
“No, I didn’t.”
She rolled her eyes at him, and Ron asked too innocently, “Oh, do you guys know each other?”
Before Nik could answer, Tess replied easily, “Our time at HAARP overlapped. Go on.”
Ron shrugged and continued. “Anyway, that’s what Greg told me he did and, given the way he operated, I’d say he fried a few dozen mission-critical synapses standing out there in the blast zone, so to speak. To get back on point, there’s no doubt that Greg has a lot of smarts and creativity, but the guy is as twisted as a ramen noodle and has about as much empathy. If he’d had any thoughts about the danger involved with leaving us dark, they would have involved only the danger to his career and reputation if he were unceremoniously yanked out of here and things kept ticking over as well as they had while he was here. It would relegate him to the status of a functionary rather than a visionary—no offense intended, Tess. But the truth is that, from his perspective, the rest of us don’t matter except in relation to him. He’s the sun and we’re merely interchangeable satellites in orbit around him. Classic narcissistic, sociopathic behavior. And that’s why I can easily see him setting a logic bomb in place to knock us off line for a while.”
“Just to make me look bad,” Tess finished.
“Well, you do share a rather, um, colorful history with Greg—”
“You know about that?” Tess asked sheepishly.
“I’m sorry to be the one to break the news to you, Tess, but everyone in the industry knows about that,” Ron replied. “You’re sort of a legend in your own time. So certainly that could have fed into his actions, but how you end up looking would be secondary. His first goal would be to make himself appear irreplaceable.”
“So you’re already on this? You’re looking for a command in the monitoring logs?” she asked.
Ron nodded. “Or a fault. Whatever it is, it’s sure to be well disguised.” He let out a breath. “For the record, everyone out there already thinks this is Greg’s fault.”
“What?” Nik asked.
“Nangpal mentioned it right after the shit hit the fan. No one argued.”
“Is that why you don’t seem too concerned?
” Tess asked. “You don’t think this is critical?”
“Well, it’s critical, but I don’t think it’s a permanent failure. Greg is an egomaniac and an ass, but he wouldn’t destroy the arrays, or the installation, or even the people here,” Ron explained with an easy shrug. “This is his legacy. He won’t ruin it.”
“But it’s in my hands now,” Tess pointed out. “Whatever happens is on my watch.”
Ron shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. He won’t let it tank under you. It would send the message that he left behind something that was substandard, and we can’t have that.”
“For the sake of argument, consider this: that he is a critical component to the operation here and shouldn’t have been removed,” Tess said quietly, meeting Nik’s eyes.
Nik lifted an eyebrow. Damn, I hope you’re wrong.
“Possible, but even Greg isn’t that crazy. We’ll come back on line as mysteriously as we went off. I’m sure of it, Tess,” Ron said.
“But you just said that if nothing had gone wrong—”
“I know it’s not logical. It isn’t meant to be; we’re talking about Greg and a whooping case of narcissitic personality disorder. Everything revolves around him. He took everything—every criticism, however slight—as a personal attack. So, if nothing had gone wrong, it would have belittled him. If things went catastrophically wrong, it would reflect badly on him. Either scenario would make him crazy. Crazier. It’s all about image with him. So he has to scare us and test you, and maybe even do something to come to our rescue just to put you in your place, you saucy wench.”
Tess couldn’t hold back a laugh at his unexpected finish, but she recovered quickly. Nik wanted to roll his eyes again.
Being a little obvious, are we?
Ron looked at Nik as if he had heard the dark thought. “Speak up, Nik. You’re chief general advocate for the devil.”
Nik folded his arms across his chest and glared at him. “Thanks for giving me a chance to get a word in edgewise. I agree with what you’ve described. I don’t have anything to add.”
“I do,” Tess said. “Until a few hours ago, I hadn’t seen Greg in years, but it was obvious when I spoke with him privately that he’s changed. In this instance, I don’t think the term ‘crazy’ is an exaggeration.” She paused and looked at Ron, then Nik. “You can call me paranoid or overly cautious or whatever else crosses your mind, but I think we need to consider that he might have gone over the edge and is out for vengeance. If that’s the case, whatever happens next will be much bigger than a comms blackout. And possibly more dangerous.”
“And it will look like you’re at fault,” Nik added, watching her face.
She gave him a small, tight-lipped smile and nodded her head. “Of course. It wouldn’t be any fun for him if it didn’t.”
Nik looked at Ron. “What do you think?”
Ron hesitated, then nodded slowly. “It’s a good point. Far-fetched, but plausible. If he’s finally snapped, it would be important to him that everyone knows exactly where to lay the blame—”
“So shall we agree to treat the blip and the blackout as Phase One?” Tess asked, looking from one man to the other.
“Yes.” Nik looked at Ron, who hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
A sharp knock on the door interrupted the conversation. Nik, being closest to the door, pulled it open.
One of the programmers, Lindy, stood outside, pale and clearly in a state of mild panic. “Ron— I mean, all of you need to come out here. The phased array is powering up. It’s not on the schedule and no one here gave any commands.”
Nik wondered if Tess and Ron had the same sudden tightness in their chests. There was only one way an array could power up: if three people with the proper authorization gave the “go” command. One had to be either Ron or himself. Another was Tess. The backup alternate couldn’t do any thing alone.
Without a word, Nik, Tess, and Ron left the conference room.
* * *
Tess kept her imagination clenched as tight as her jaw as she returned to the large work space. The tension level was running higher than before, and the only sound was the furious tapping of keys. Several new people had materialized in the sandbox.
She followed the programmer, who had introduced herself as Victoria Lindquist—known as Lindy—to a workstation with twin monitors. One showed the stats for the phased array, some numbers ticking over slowly and others flashing so rapidly as to be incomprehensible.
“Does it usually power up this fast?” Tess asked.
“Never. It drains the system. We always power up more slowly,” the other woman said. “This has to be some sort of override.”
“Okay. First thing you need to do is get Dan Thornton back into the installation. He’s out at the ground station. I don’t want him out there if this thing is going to fire.”
As Lindy began talking in low tones on her walkie-talkie, Tess straightened and glanced around, trying to spot Nik. He was in a huddle with a few of the people she’d met earlier. Ron, likewise, was speaking with a group of his developers. Tess looked back at Lindy, meeting her eyes, which were wide with controlled fear.
“He’s already on his way back.”
“Good. You were one of the hackers, weren’t you?” she asked, and watched the woman’s face take on a wary expression.
“I’m sorry?”
“You hacked when you were younger, right? I thought I saw it in your personnel file. There are a few of you with that background. You’re one of them, aren’t you? You hacked a Russian—”
Another layer of tension crossed Lindy’s face as she nodded. “That was me,” she said quietly. “It was a long time ago and all the charges were dropped. What brought it up?”
“It impressed me. A lot. Still remember how to do it?”
A slow grin gave Tess the answer she was looking for. “I could give it a go.”
“Forget that. I want you to give it all you’ve got. Find whatever is in there that could override the system and disable it. I want you to power down that array, and make sure it can’t go live again unless we tell it to.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lindy said, sliding into the chair.
Tess walked over to Ron and interrupted him with a pat on the arm. “Would you do the honors?”
“Nangpal Thompson, Amil Patel, and Pam Webb,” he said, gesturing to the group he was speaking with. “Juno Blasi, and Jonah Teeter are in the back. Nancy Hagymasy and Debbie Huckfeldt are over there near Lindy. There are others, but they’re not here right now. This is Tess Beauchamp.”
She nodded at the group. “Nice to meet you. I’ll look forward to getting to know you a bit better after this fire’s out and we’re back on line. I’ve told Lindy to throw everything she’s got at regaining control of the array’s power system. The same goes for all of you. If you’ve got a black hat in your history or ever wanted to wear one, put it on. I want you to get into every system—I don’t care how: hack, crack, brute force, whatever it takes—and prop the door open. I have a bad feeling that even though we’re not locked out of many systems right now, we may be soon. I want to avoid that. Give it your best,” she said, making eye contact with each person in front of her. “I’m looking for speed, not elegance.” She glanced at Ron. “I’m going to assume you don’t have any problems with this.”
“Let’s do it.”
“Good. Keep me posted.” She left his side to join Nik. She’d met most of the scientists he was speaking with after her speech that morning. That seemed like days ago. “What’s the latest?”
“Not so good. The command sequence for the array is right here. He didn’t hide it,” Nik replied.
“And that’s a bad thing?” she asked.
“It is, because we’ve never seen it before,” one of the other guys in the group—Etienne—offered. “Not outside of a test bed.”
She leaned forward to study the code on the screen. She knew instantly that it was sloppy; the syntax was dense and clumsy, which was
very unlike Greg’s way of writing. Beyond that, it was just confusing, like reading a book in a language she barely knew. A few strings here and there looked familiar, but on the whole, it made little sense. Tess straightened and met the Frenchman’s eyes. “Do we know what it’s going to do? Where it’s aimed?”
“I’m not sure,” he said with a Gallic shrug. “The code is so convoluted and—”
“I can see that, Etienne,” Tess said, interrupting him. “What I want to know is, if the array fires according to these command parameters, what is it capable of doing? Go out on a limb. I won’t hold it against you.”
The Frenchman was quiet for a moment, then gave another shrug. “Well, the general command flow follows the usual sequence for beaming into the Schlüchthofen band. But the intensity profile is strange and the capacitance settings are higher than anything I’ve seen at TESLA before. I’d guess that he’s trying to cause a spontaneous recombination of ionized particles in the Schlüchthofen band,” he said, referring to a recently discovered, extremely narrow, extremely potent ribbon of the ionosphere capable of producing magnified internal reflections, which meant it functioned much like a fiber-optic cable when certain frequencies crossed it. The signals became trapped within the layer’s boundaries and would increase rather than attenuate as they bounced around the world. After a pre-set elapse of time, one of the other transmitter sites would send a paired beam into the same band, allowing the internally reflected beam back out so that it could do its work. Or damage.
Tess felt her heart stop for a split second, then thump erratically in her chest. She looked at Nik. “That means whatever action he’s going for is geomagnetic,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Let’s not be coy, Tess. It means an earthquake,” he replied, his dark eyes shuttered against any hint of emotion.
CHAPTER 13
Off the coast of the Mexican state of Michoacán, deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, the earth began to tremble. A powerful but short burst of energy pulsed against the tectonically fragile Cocos plate, rocking it and causing it to slide harder and faster beneath the North American plate. The deep oceanic trenches that snaked along the long western coastline of the Americas shook, their vulnerable walls and volatile hot spots responding to the motion with underwater landslides and lava flows.
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