by Gini Koch
Fortunately, I’d been prepared for this handoff. “I’d like all bases and facilities to remain on high alert. If we have Field teams out, I want them brought in unless they’re dealing with a superbeing. In which case, they need to contain it as fast as possible and get back to a base.”
Superbeings weren’t nearly as common as they had been, in large part because we’d taken the ozone shield down on Alpha Four, and in other part because we’d eliminated the in-control Mephistopheles superbeing. That Mephistopheles had been joined with Ronald Yates was just the kind of fun that we associated with Centaurion got to have on a regular basis.
“What about other threats or the return of missing personnel or communications?” Jeff asked me quietly. “Who will personnel report to in case you’re not available?”
Resisted the urge to hug him. He wasn’t asking because he was curious. He was asking in this way to ensure I covered all the leadership bases. He’d been the Head of Field for over a decade, after all. And he’d been training me, in that sense, since we met.
“Advise the Embassy immediately of any other threats identified,” I shared in my Official Giving Orders Voice. “But barring an immediate threat such as fire and the need to evacuate a facility, don’t take action without it being approved by me, Richard White, or Rajnish Singh.”
Got a lot of shocked looks for that one, other than from White and Raj. Christopher opened his mouth. I put my hand up and he shut it.
“I want as complete a roster of missing personnel as possible. We have a lot of people who went to Dulce today who aren’t there normally. If you can’t verify that someone’s where you think they should be and can’t reach them to verify their well-being, that information needs to be sent to us immediately. By the same token, should personnel presumed missing turn up, let us know that immediately as well.”
Time to shoot for the rosy outlook. “The moment anyone establishes contact with either Dulce or Home Base, or any individual known to be at either location, determine situation as fast as possible and advise the Embassy immediately.” Okay, so not rosy so much as hopeful. Whatever. “Let’s keep calm, carry on, figure out what’s going on, and stop it. Embassy out.”
“You’re back to just the Embassy Complex, Ambassador,” William said.
“Great. I need a team to assemble so we can head to Caliente Base. We’ll gate over there, then take jets to see what’s going on at Dulce and Home Base.”
“What do you mean ‘we’?” Jeff asked.
“I mean me and the rest of the team I’ll be taking. Which won’t include you.”
“Then you’re not going,” Jeff said firmly.
Everyone in the room gave him the “really?” look. “She’s the Head of Field Operations right now,” Chuckie pointed out. “Kitty essentially has to go lead whatever action she wants to initiate. And she’s right—you, as a representative, can’t go.”
“You have to act like nothing’s going on, Jeff. So that our enemies don’t know for sure that we’ve figured out that something is wrong.”
“Something’s more wrong, Kitty,” Stryker said. “We’re being hacked.” As he said this, all five of them, even Omega Red, leaped up and started pulling plugs out of the walls and flipping switches.
“The Embassy?” Chuckie asked.
“All of Centaurion Division,” Stryker replied as he and the rest of Hacker International continued to run around the computer lab hysterically.
Raj and White both zipped out of the room, Tito right after them. Decided not to ask where they were going. Hopefully to pull plugs out of walls and such.
“I think it was triggered by the search for personnel,” Ravi added as he leaped over a desk and yanked two computer towers out of the wall. Henry, Big George, and Omega Red were working on getting the big servers unplugged. We had a lot of them, though.
But happily Raj appeared momentarily on screen, then suddenly all the machines in the room were clearly turned to the “off” position.
“William! Send me to all bases again.”
“Go, Ambassador.”
“This is Ambassador Katt-Martini. We’re at DEFCON Bad. Everyone unplug everything electronic and computer based—our system is being hacked. Pull the stuff out of the wall if you have to, turn off any Wi-Fi or Bluetooth devices, get off the ’net at the fastest hyperspeeds possible, whether humans are watching you or not.”
“Reports coming in, Ambassador,” William said. “All bases are affected, including NASA. Determining extent of damage now.”
“Take me off the all-speak or whatever.”
“Back to Embassy complex only, Ambassador.”
“Thanks. Now, what the hell? Eddy, how can we be hacked? You guys installed firewalls and all that jazz, didn’t you?”
“The best there are,” Big George shared. “You already had a top-of-the-line system in place when we joined you. But we made it better.”
“We made the Centaurion system impenetrable,” Henry added.
“And our firewalls and defenses are being cut through like a light saber cuts through Qui-Gon Jinn,” Ravi said. He sounded freaked out. This wasn’t good.
“I recognize the signature,” Omega Red said. He sounded frightened. We moved from “not good” to “really scary.”
“Whose is it?” Chuckie asked.
“It’s not real,” Stryker said firmly. “There’s no way it’s real.”
The hackers started arguing amongst themselves while still furiously doing things. I caught some of it, but nothing they were saying made sense.
“Dudes! I want answers, and I want them now. And I want them in this order—can you stop it, how bad is the damage, and who the hell is it Yuri thinks is responsible?”
More hacker snarling but finally Stryker shared. “We can’t stop it. The ‘it’ was a virus that infiltrated our systems, stole our files and then destroyed them.”
“At the root,” Ravi added. “Meaning we can’t get them back.”
“What about backups? Surely we back things up? I mean, I back up my iPod, surely you’ve backed up our systems.”
“We did, all of Centaurion has a massive backup system in place.” Stryker’s voice was clipped. “We’re off the ’net, so I can’t be sure yet, but it looked like all backups were affected, too.”
“How? Aren’t the backups housed somewhere else?”
“Yeah, they are,” Chuckie said. “They’re housed at Area Fifty-One.”
“It gets better. Super duper, so, while we wait to hear what we’ve lost and what horrible things have also been done to our systems, who’s behind this? And I don’t want to hear the ‘it can’t be’ line, because ten minutes ago you’d have said Centaurion Division couldn’t be hacked like this.”
Stryker sighed and, for the first time looked right at the camera in the computer lab. He looked angry and freaked. “It’s a myth, okay? But the myth is that there’s a super-hacker, almost like a hacker god, and he’s responsible for all the really big, insidious hacks that happen. But this one person doesn’t exist.”
“He does exist,” Omega Red said, with more than a hint of stubbornness in his tone. “Because the only one who could have hacked through all of our defenses and into a system that’s more secure than any government on Earth is Chernobog the Ultimate.”
CHAPTER 17
“WHO?” JEFF ASKED, speaking for most of the room.
“I love the names you guys come up with for yourselves.” This earned me a dirty look from all of Hacker International.
“I’m with Stryker,” Chuckie said, eyes narrowed. “Chernobog is a myth. He’s been rumored to have been around since the nineteen-eighties. He’s never been found, never been caught, and never been proven to actually exist.”
“How hard did you look for him?” I asked Chuckie.
“Not as hard as I looked for some things,” he admitted.
“Because Chuck didn’t need to waste his time on a myth,” Stryker said.
“He’s real,” Ome
ga Red said, stubbornness more apparent. “Just because none of you can believe that the best of the best is Russian doesn’t mean he’s not real.”
Raj and White returned. “Systems are unplugged all throughout the Embassy complex,” Raj shared.
“I’m certain we were too late, however,” White added. “At least if the message on any and all active computer screens was indicative.”
“What did it say, Richard?”
“I have no idea, but I’m fairly certain the characters are Cyrillic.” He handed me a piece of paper. There were letters on it, but I didn’t recognize them. Handed it to Chuckie. Who held it up to the camera on the viewing screen that let Hacker International see us. “Someone get this into Yuri’s Braille system immediately.”
Henry did as requested. Omega Red’s expression of stubborn belief went to nova levels. “Chuck, it says, ‘Now you see it, now you don’t.’ I guarantee that’s from Chernobog. It sounds like him.”
“You mean it sounds like someone who wants us to think it’s him would sound,” Stryker said.
Decided to nip the argument I could see starting in the bud. We didn’t have time for Hacker International to go into one of their famous group fights that ended up as group sulks.
“I don’t care. Whoever it is has just hacked into what you all feel is the most secure system on the planet. I don’t care who it is, but whoever it is, we need to stop them. It’s easier to call this mysterious hacker Chernobog than He Who Is Scary Evil, so to speak, so let’s just make Yuri happy. Oh, and that was an order, by the way.”
“See?” Christopher asked of no one in particular. “She’s already on a power trip.”
Tito returned at this point—saving me from having to come up with a cutting remark for Christopher—carrying his laptop. “I wasn’t hooked into the system, Kitty, so all my data is secure. I checked.”
“No special message on your screen?”
Tito shook his head. “Just the test results I was reviewing. I checked, and my external hard drive is also secure.”
“Not that I mind, especially not today, but why weren’t you hooked in?” Wanted to ask if Tito was hitting the extreme porn sites or something, and then decided that was probably not a question befitting the current pseudo-leader of the entire A-C population. Score one for learned decorum.
“I’m doing that . . . special research we’ve discussed.” Tito was shooting me the “really?” look.
“Oh. Right!” Memory shared that Tito was searching for what we called the Yates Gene, meaning he was studying blood and DNA from Jeff, Christopher, Jamie, Serene, White, and a few others. As such, his research—the project itself along with the results—was restricted to him, Emily, and Melanie, Claudia and Lorraine’s mothers. Who were also likely at Dulce and therefore in extreme danger. “Good job, Tito. Okay, gang, we need to get our strike team over to Caliente Base pronto. Are the gates working, does anyone know?”
“NASA Base has tested,” William shared. “Gates seem to be in order. However, the agents who tried to get to Dulce via a gate were, ah, bounced back. Alfred decided not to try with Home Base, in part because by then you’d given the order for everyone to stay put, Ambassador.”
“Good, because that bouncing back thing sounds dangerous.” And nauseating. Going through the gates made me sick to my stomach. Going through and then immediately being tossed back sounded like a surefire way to pray to the porcelain god for me.
“They weren’t harmed,” William said.
“Which makes no sense,” Jeff said. “Why would our enemies gently return our agents back to where they started from?”
“Maybe it wasn’t our enemies. Walter had enough time to call me, and he used to run gates at Dulce. Maybe he flipped a switch or something.”
“It’s a good theory,” White said. “One we can’t confirm from the Embassy, however.”
“I’m with you, Mister White. Jeff, you’re going back to work. Enjoy pretending everything’s okay on the congressional floor. Chuckie, you stay with him. Raj, you’re in charge here—coordinate anything that’s actually diplomacy-related with Doreen, and keep me advised of any information. Paul, Amy, Caroline, Magdalena, go join the rest of our little flock in the daycare center.”
Gower shook his head. “You need my help.”
“No, we need to keep our Pontifex, or, rather, one of our most likely targets, safe and sound. Per you, I’m in charge, Paul. You’re on guard my daughter and the other kids duty.”
“What am I going to be doing?” Christopher asked testily.
“Going with me, Malcolm, and your dad.”
“Just the four of you?” Jeff sounded ready to freak out, though Christopher perked up considerably.
“While I’m sure the four of us can handle anything, no, of course not. What do you take me for?”
“I’m going, too,” Tito said. “For all we know, we’re going to need medical there.”
“Works for me. And no, Jeff, before you complain again, that’s not all. William, I believe our royal guests are across the street visiting the Romanian Diplomatic Mission. Can you call them and get them back here, please?”
“Yes, Ambassador. Per Walter’s notes, I should tell them they’re about to go into battle, is that right?”
“You got it.”
“Seven of you still doesn’t seem like enough,” Jeff said, sounding more than a little worried.
“You can’t go, Paul can’t go, Raj needs to stay here, I want Chuckie with you because, news flash, I don’t want this to turn out to be some plan to get you into a position of vulnerability. I’m open to ideas, but I really don’t want to throw Field agents at this until we actually know what’s going on.”
Before I could take another breath, we had more people with us. Princesses Rahmi and Rhee, from Beta Twelve of the Alpha Centaurion system, or, as I preferred to call it, the Planet of the Pissed Off But Getting Happier Amazons.
Rahmi and Rhee had been sent to us during Operation Sherlock and, without ACE around and with the unrest we’d sort of been told about in the Alpha Centaurion system, we had no idea of how to send them back. So they were living with us, which was fine for all concerned, because it never hurt to have two of the best warriors in the galaxy hanging around waiting to be of service.
All the Amazons were shapeshifters. In their normal forms, the princesses looked like all the rest of their clan—limbs slightly elongated for humans, larger and more muscular build, larger oval violet eyes, spiky hair, and really badass attitudes. Rahmi was a brunette and her younger sister Rhee was a blonde, but otherwise, it was clear they were sisters, and Queen Renata’s daughters.
However, we required that the princesses look like humans while they were with us. This wasn’t a hard request for any shapeshifter to achieve, but over the past six months they’d altered their looks just slightly and now had chosen to look like a combination of their mother and, per everyone else in the Embassy, me. It was flattering in a really weird way, but I’d gotten so used to weird over the past few years that it barely registered on my Weird-O-Meter.
The princesses weren’t alone, however. Adriana, the granddaughter of the Romanian Ambassador and his wife, was with them. Adriana was a pretty girl, but she was also being trained in the old ways of the KGB by her grandmother, Olga, who was a former operative and a literal fount of knowledge. I was particularly appreciative of this, since Adriana had saved my life during Operation Assassination.
“Grandmother said I should go along to help,” Adriana shared, proving that, as always, Olga likely knew what was going on, or at least some of it.
Adriana was dressed in her form of butt-kicking clothing—cargo pants, long-sleeved T-shirt, Doc Martins, and backpack, carrying who knew what, but all of it likely good for covert operations—all in black. In other words, she fit right in with the A-C Color Scheme of Choice.
“Awesome, Olga rocks and glad to have you along. I’m calling this team good because I want Len and Kyle staying with Ja
mie. Jeff, can you handle your part, as in, go off and pretend nothing’s wrong?” The man couldn’t lie, but hope liked to spring eternal.
He heaved a sigh. “Yes. I’ll be monitoring you. I’ll know when things go wrong.”
“When? They could go right, you know, Mister Polly Positive.”
Everyone other than the princesses snorted laughter. “While you race off into danger without me, I’ll see if I can come up with when, if ever, things have gone right all the way through a situation,” Jeff said, sarcasm meter heading toward eleven.
“Glad you’ve got a new hobby. My team, let’s get the eight of us to Caliente Base, get our people, and kick some bad-guy butt.”
CHAPTER 18
GOWER TOOK TITO’S LAPTOP and escorted Caroline upstairs while Chuckie called Cliff and told him to cancel coming to the Embassy and instead meet up with Chuckie and Jeff at the Capitol.
Rahmi and Rhee went and got their battle staffs, which looked like the lovechild of a javelin and a light saber. Sadly, they only had one each. Dulce had been working on making replicas, but hadn’t yet been successful, possibly because we didn’t have the right materials on Earth.
Amy and Nurse Carter came with us to the basement to say goodbye to their men. A-Cs tended to keep the gates in their homes and such in the bottom floor, preferably the basement, if one happened to be available. Either that or in a bathroom. Or both. Aliens were weird. But again, this was now down on the low end of my Weird-O-Meter Scale.
The Embassy’s gate was indeed in the basement. We also had a stationary floater gate in the computer lab, which was less of an oxymoron than you might think. I still felt that there had to be another gate, a hidden one, somewhere in the Embassy. But no one had found it, and even Chuckie thought I was just being a crazy paranoid about it. But my gut said there was another gate, and my gut also said that I needed to find it before our enemies used it against us.
However, now wasn’t the time. While the two White couples did their goodbyes, Jeff pulled me into his arms and held me tightly. “You know I’m not happy about this, baby.”
