Starfire

by B. V. Larson

  “Spoken like a survivor. I’ve heard that a Spetsnaz man is the hardest man on Earth to kill.”

  “You’ve heard correctly.”

  Chendev smiled, but his eyes stayed on the instruments. “You are to exit the boat through the lower hatch. You will find the director and escort her back here. She has been recalled to Moscow.”

  That could mean any of a number of things. Lev didn’t care if the director was going to be fired, or shot, or given an award when he got her home. He would do his job regardless.

  “I will escort her back to the boat,” he said.

  Chendev glanced at him. “Not even the slightest curiosity as to why she’s being retrieved so suddenly?”

  “None at all.”

  The captain nodded thoughtfully. “Again, spoken like a survivor. But I’ll tell you anyway. To prove her prowess, she demanded she be allowed to come down here and oversee the project personally. The opposite has occurred. She screwed up down here. She’s shown no progress, and all her efforts have only caused setbacks.”

  “I take it she doesn’t have a lot of friends in high places?”

  “No. She’s done nothing but annoy the veteran scientists. She’s a bureaucrat looking to take credit for the work of others, and she’s become impatient with what she barely understands.”

  Lev shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I will retrieve her.”

  Chendev handed him signed orders from the Kremlin. Lev examined them briefly, skipping the language itself. The only item that concerned him was the signature. It was that of the President himself.

  Lev’s eyebrows shot up. “The matter goes so high as this?”

  “Evidently.”

  The two ended their conversation and parted. Lev watched as Chendev glided his boat into position. The Artifact wasn’t just sitting on the bottom of a frozen sea. It was also ensconced in ancient bedrock. It squatted on the bottom in a natural dark cove, a dark blotch that shone blue with radiation when you got close enough.

  “Visors closed,” Chendev ordered. “Shield the computers and take them off line. Make the final approach manually.”

  Using optical instruments, external lights and soft pings, the crew guided the big ship into position. Burkov left the bridge and headed for the aft hatchway when the vessel shuddered to a stop and drifted.

  Two sailors opened the hatch for him, and he climbed down into the underwater station. Water splashed over him and wet his suit as he made the transition from the sub into a permanent structure. The pressures weren’t perfectly equalized, but his suit should protect him from that. He hoped he could avoid the bends on this mission, but even if that painful reality was in his future he would not let the fact deter him.

  A structure of struts and bulbous underwater modules had been built around a stone formation that resembled a starfish in its shape. The crew inside the station stared at Lev as he passed them by. They did not question him. They did not help him. They must have been tipped off.

  “Where is the director?” he asked the first person in a lab coat who stood directly in his path.

  Startled, the woman pointed to an open hatchway in the floor. “She’s in the core. She’s always in the core.”

  Lev didn’t know the layout of the place, but he knew it wasn’t that large. It consisted of six modules, five spread out like the arms of a starfish, plus one central node that had been drilled down into the black rock of the Artifact and was thus buried inside its central mass.

  He headed for the hatch and climbed down a ladder. He felt sweat tickling his brow. It was hot down here. He couldn’t fathom why, as they were in one of the coldest spots on the surface of the planet. But not down here. In this strange place it was always warm, despite the freezing depths that surrounded it.

  “Madam?” he boomed when he saw a woman who wasn’t wearing a lab coat. She wore coveralls and a radiation suit instead. This concerned Lev slightly, as the interior of the Artifact wasn’t supposed to be radioactive. Only the water in the region was. The Artifact released radioactive water all the time, but the station had been built with heavy shielding. Had this woman taken chances? Had she altered protocols in some way as to allow radioactivity into the station itself? If so, it would go a long way toward explaining her recall.

  The woman ignored him, engrossed in her instruments. Lev stepped up and put a heavy hand on her shoulder. He did not spin her around, but his touch was an undeniable reality.

  “Madam? Are you Doctor Kira Norin? I’ve come with orders from the Kremlin. You’re to be recalled—immediately.”

  “I’ve been expecting you,” she told Lev without even looking at him.

  She turned toward her staff. “Gentlemen,” she said, speaking to the three who huddled in the cramped space. The small chamber was full of instruments Lev could not hope to understand. “It has been a pleasure. I will take my leave now.”

  Lev led the way out, and the director followed him. They climbed through a maze of tunnels and ladders back to the docking point and boarded the submarine.

  All in all, Lev felt the mission had gone surprisingly well. He could almost feel Nika’s touch again. With luck, he would reach his home in St. Petersburg within three days. Perhaps, in an odd way, this escort mission was a boon to him. He would get the best of air travel. No delays would plague him as they so often did when flying out of the Arctic.

  It wasn’t until the submarine cast off and began moving away under power that his hopes faded.

  “Radiation levels are spiking, sir!” the executive officer warned the Captain.

  “Warn the crew. Accelerate at flank speed.”

  They did as he asked, and all the while Lev watched the Geiger counters in concern. They were indeed climbing. Already, it was as if they stood together inside an x-ray machine.

  “We’ll make it,” Lev told the director, meaning to calm her, despite the fact she seemed perfectly calm. “Water is a good insulator. We’ll reach a safe distance before we get a serious dose through our suits.”

  The director met his eyes for the first time. She seemed troubled. “I don’t think so,” she said. “What must come, must come.”

  The needles kept changing, moving into the yellow and dipping toward the red.

  “Chyrot voz’mi!” the Captain cursed. “We’re doomed.”

  He turned a baleful eye toward the director. “How could you have done this? Don’t you know you will fry with the rest of us?”

  “I’ve done nothing,” she said stiffly. “Pilot your boat, commander.”

  Chendev snarled at her and turned away, shouting more orders. Lev looked around. The crew was worried, grim-faced. The radiation levels continued to climb.

  Lev bared his teeth. He looked at the director, who seemed like the only one on the boat who was calm. What did this person know? What had she done? Chendev seemed to believe she’d caused all this.

  Things went from bad to worse, and the radiation levels were now intolerable. If they hadn’t been wearing suits, they’d be permanently damaged. Lev sensed it was only going to get worse. His mind raced, and he sensed he had little time to act if he was to change his fate.

  With a sudden movement, he grabbed the director and dragged her from the bridge. She squawked in surprise, quite possibly never having been mistreated before in her life. None of the others on the bridge cared what he did. They fought their instruments and shouted information to one another, intent on survival.

  He dragged her aft, below decks, to the reactor inside the engine room. She complained, but he paid her no heed. She bit him and cursed him, but his hands were like iron, and his gloves were thick. He barely heard her.

  In his mind, he could see Nika’s face. She was younger than Lev, and she turned heads whenever they walked into a shop together. He wasn’t ready to let go of that memory or a thousand others.

  Shoving a shocked-looking engineer out of the way, Lev climbed into the reactor with water sloshing around him. A bluish glow came from the hot steaming rods v
isible at his feet.

  “So this is your plan?” the director demanded. “To burn me before the others? To cook me within this ship’s boiler before the rads outside can do the job? You’re insane, Lieutenant!”

  “It is you who are insane! You released something as we left, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. But it had to be done.”

  “Why?”

  “You would not understand. The signal will be sent. That’s all that matters.”

  “A signal? Sent to where?”

  “Out into space. Out to wherever this Artifact is truly from.”

  The radiation spiked viciously at that moment. The boat’s engineers had gathered to look at them inside the reactor chamber. Their expressions were baffled. They thought they were seeing two mad people committing suicide—but it was they who died first.

  A spike of gamma radiation burned through the ship. Despite the submarine’s shielding, every member of the crew was burned to death. Their bodies smoked as particles shot through them, killing them within seconds.

  Only Lev and Director Norin survived. They were inside the most shielded portion of the nuclear powered sub. The lead-lined walls had been designed to keep radiation in, of course, rather than out, but they served the purpose equally well in reverse. This had been Lev’s plan, as it was the only way he could think of that would keep him and the director alive—at least for now.

  When the spike died away and radiation levels returned to normal, the only two living souls on the boat were Lev and his startled companion.

  Chapter 5

  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California

  Afternoon

  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had been in continuous operation since 1952. It had opened as an offshoot of the older lab in New Mexico—Los Alamos National Laboratory—and both labs were famous for essential research in the development of nuclear weapons. Lawrence Livermore was supposed to be the “new ideas” lab and had initially created advanced warhead designs for missile systems in the fifties and sixties.

  In the nineteen seventies the lab’s mission shifted somewhat, becoming less focused on weapons research. Development of experimental computer systems became the goal, and many milestones were reached.

  The lab was funded by the U. S. Dept. of Energy, but it was managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration. The atmosphere on site wasn’t quite what one would expect. The place looked like a university campus and had at one time been run by the University of California. Employees operated in a manner not unlike research professors at large universities. It was like being a government worker and a university academic, all rolled into one.

  Dr. Yuki Tanaka was one such employee. She felt at home on the campus-like lab grounds, but it hadn’t always been that way. She’d interned at the labs as a graduate student from U. C. Berkeley. Like many students, she’d struggled with money issues and had pretty much “sold herself” to the labs to complete her master’s program. Finding that she liked the work, she signed on permanently and continued her studies, eventually earning a Ph. D. in robotics.

  Yuki had been recruited by the lab to work on experimental robotic designs. The daughter of immigrant parents who had settled in Santa Clara, everyone in her family was involved in tech work. Yuki’s specialty had gone beyond the norm, however, as she wasn’t satisfied with programming apps for cellphones or video game consoles.

  Initially, there hadn’t been a strong military focus to her work, and that comforted her somewhat. So many of the robotics people at the labs worked on aerial drones and the like.

  Her work was different. In front of her, swimming in a thirty thousand gallon tank of saline, her proudest achievement was performing as designed. The B-6 was a snake-like robot with a segmented body. As she watched, it wormed its way over obstacles strewn upon the bottom of the tank. Yuki couldn’t help but smile as she watched it wriggle and pause to absorb input from its surroundings. Right now, it was linked to a larger land-based computer and was therefore significantly more intelligent. It could, however, perform in a more basic capacity when cut off from any external CPU power.

  “How’s your sea-drone doing, Yuki?” asked a voice at her side.

  She turned, startled. As was so often the case, the person beside her seemed to have materialized. She’d been unaware of his approach. She often became so absorbed in her work that daily routines, and even her surroundings, were forgotten or ignored.

  “Oh, hello Shane. Didn’t see you there. The B-6 is doing fine. It will pass everything on the list within two months.”

  Shane gave her a knowing little smile. “You might not have that long. The PI is calling for a budget justification session.”

  Yuki blinked in confusion. “I wasn’t informed.”

  Shane flashed her that smile again. “You sure? Is your phone on silent again?”

  She dug in her purse and pulled it out. Three texts, two phone messages. The PI had made several attempts to contact her. She licked her lips.

  “I must have had it on silent,” she lied. The truth was she’d been oblivious. She got that way while watching one of her creations in perfect motion.

  “I figured. That’s why he sent me down here to find you.”

  “When is the meeting?”

  “Today. Now, in fact. You’re late.”

  Yuki’s face felt flushed. “But…couldn’t they do the meeting without me? The whole team doesn’t have to—”

  “Yuki, there is no ‘they’ in this case. As I understand it, no one else has been invited. Good luck.”

  Shane reached out his hand and gave her upper arm a tiny squeeze. She allowed the contact, making no complaint. She wondered, not for the first time, if Shane had a crush on her. If he did, he hadn’t communicated his feelings very well. There was nothing unusual about that at the labs, however. Poor social skills were almost an occupational requirement for scientists.

  Shane left her, and she turned back to the tank. Thinking fast, she stepped to the monitors and downloaded the last fifteen minutes of live video feed from the tank’s cameras. She needed ammo if this was a budget meeting. It might not help, but it couldn’t hurt. After initiating the transfer of the data to a flash drive, she tapped into the control system, disconnected her snake-like robot from the main server and set it free, forcing it to determine its own path without outside help.

  The robot froze for several seconds, drifting to the bottom. It was trying to reestablish the link. The cameras were recording, and Yuki felt a tickle of sweat under her blouse.

  Finally, the robot gave up and began thinking for itself. It wriggled its tail and swam upward again, getting off the bottom and beginning to survey its surroundings. Cut off, it moved more slowly, more deliberately. It didn’t have that perky intelligent look anymore. Instead, it was more ponderous and thoughtful. Approaching a cylinder that was on its mission path, a piece of concrete pipe that was two feet in diameter and twelve feet long, the robot paused.

  Yuki stared and chewed her lower lip. This wasn’t part of today’s proposed testing, but she needed a win. In all engineering endeavors, recent measurable progress was the best defense against accountants looking for a program to cut.

  The robot finally stopped screwing around and swam into the dark pipe. A period of perhaps thirty seconds passed, during which the segmented robot vanished entirely.

  It was taking too long. Yuki sighed and almost reached out to cut the feed. She’d have to delete this portion and only show the previous footage. It wouldn’t show any advancement, but at least it wouldn’t be embarrassing.

  But then, even as her hand slid forward to the control console, the robot’s flat, cobra-like head poked out of the far side of the pipe. That end had been buried in the muck at the bottom of the tank, purposefully blocking it to make the exit more difficult.

  Yuki smiled as she watched her robot escape the trap unaided. It was no longer wriggling and swimming. Instead, it had dug into the bottom mud and u
sed tiny shovel-like blades there to push itself forward. The head came through, then the sleek black body followed. Triumphantly, the bot arched up and swam away, mud drifting from its undercarriage in clumps.

  She downloaded the final clip and hurried to the PI’s office.

  TA-94’s Principal Investigator was Dr. Phillip Haas. He was a thin man with a slight German accent, and he wasn’t accustomed to waiting. When Yuki finally arrived, he gave her a sour glance.

  “I think it would reflect well on all my staffers if we respected one another’s time, Dr. Tanaka.”

  “Sorry,” she said, feeling herself flush. “I was completing a vital new step in my research. I’ve had a breakthrough. Would you like to see the results?”

  Yuki held out her flash drive hopefully. Haas did not take it.

  “There’s no point. The B-6—that is finished.”

  Yuki’s heart sank. This was it. Her funding had been cut. She took in a breath, ready to argue, but Haas spoke first.

  “I don’t know what they want. I don’t like it. I want you to think about refusing.”

  Her expression shifted from defensive anger to confusion.

  “What?” she asked.

  “These black-ops people,” he said, shaking his head. “They think they’re the only ones that matter. They think they can come in here and order the rest of us around. It’s not like we’re at war or anything. The Mideast has been quiet for months, and Russia hasn’t invaded any of their satellite states for more than a year. The black-ops people talk about national security, but I think they just do that to get their way. You know, the way an ambulance driver might switch on his flashers and honk to get to lunch a little faster.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dr. Haas.”

  He tossed her a printout and leaned back in his chair, sighing. She read the orders. They were from the Dept. of Energy. She’d been reassigned to a project code-named Seahorse. That was all there was on the page.

  “Seahorse? What the hell is Seahorse?”

  “It’s bullshit, that’s what it is,” Haas said with conviction. “They’ll probably have you flying drones over Yemen within a week, daring to call it research.”