Psychic Warrior
Page 10
It was a "living" arrangement General Rurik had no doubt Western medicine was capable of making, yet had not done so for the simple reason that no one could see a need for such a horrible existence. And Rurik also knew that the West, because of ethical considerations and the lack of bodies to experiment on had not done the direct brain interface work that Department Eight had spent decades experimenting with.
Working their way from rats to monkeys to humans, Department Eight scientists had fine-tuned their ability to send electrical impulses directly to the brain, mimicking those of the central nervous system. They’d also done the reverse, learning how to pick out the nerve impulses sent out of the brain stem, which gave Feteror the ability to "speak" with the aid of an external voice box and conduct other limited actions through the computer.
That limited ability, of course, was not the key to what made Feteror the Chyort, the demon of legend and mystery who had carried out Department Eight operations for the past decade. The key was the results of the work on October Revolution Island that the lone survivor, Dr. Vasilev, had brought out with him. Feteror's isolated brain, enhanced by the computer, could go onto the psychic plane with power far exceeding anything that had been done before. The computer could produce the harmonics to open a window to the virtual plane and then Feteror, his psyche, could travel there, drawing power from the computer.
Because he lacked a physical body, Feteror could concentrate every milliamp of mental energy on the virtual plane. And he’d achieved something the scientists in Department Eight had only speculated about: he could come out of the virtual plane at a distant point and assemble an avatar, the Chyort, and influence physical objects on the real plane.
How he did this, the scientists were not able to exactly tell General Rurik, much as they had not been able to fully explain the operation of the phased-displacement generator decades previously. Even more mystifying was the fact that they were not able to duplicate Feteror's unique ability. Three other "volunteers" had gone under the knife and been placed in their own cylinders hooked to a similar computer. None had managed to do what Feteror could.
The others had managed some limited remote viewing, but nothing beyond what regular remote viewers could do. Feteror was different—there was no doubt about that. In the end, Rurik and the scientists had only been able to conclude that either Feteror had had some innate ability that they had happened to tap into, or that Feteror's horrific experience just before being brought to Department Eight had changed him in some fundamental way.
The bottom line was, they knew that Feteror worked, and the major concern had been to develop a way both to control Feteror and to protect themselves, the legacy of the disasters at Chelyabinsk and October Revolution Island very much in the forefront of General Rurik's concerns.
A small box, with a blinking green light that matched the one on Rurik's wrist, was on the machine on the other side of the cylinder from the medical machines. This was an advanced computer, again the best the West sold. The box was wired into the master program that controlled all the computer's interfaces with regard to Feteror.
The monitor Rurik wore had a very sensitive pressure pad on the inside, against his skin. It monitored his pulse. If Rurik's heart stopped for more than ten seconds, the light would turn red, meaning that the master computer had "frozen" the cyberlink with Feteror. That would effectively isolate Feteror's brain from both inputs and outputs.
Rurik knew that Feteror did not fear death; indeed he knew that Feteror yearned to be released from his almost nonhuman prison and the only way out was to die, but there was something he knew the Spetsnatz major did fear: the darkness of isolation inside his own brain, with no sensory input coming from the computer, no ability to "leave" on the psychic plane without the support of the computer. Such a netherworld existence horrified even the hardened Feteror, who had experienced two years of such a life while they completed all the surgical procedures, and while Department Eight technicians worked on the programming necessary for the project. Of course, at the time, they had not known that Feteror had been conscious those long two years, screaming into the darkness where he had no voice. Not knowing if he was dead or alive, if he was now in some sort of hell or purgatory, his last memories of the brutal torture he'd undergone in the Afghan village.
Only when they completed the first rudimentary cyberlink had they found out that the major's brain had been conscious the entire time. The psychologists were amazed that Feteror had retained his sanity, but General Rurik was not so sure that Feteror had been sane to start with. As soon as they had gotten Feteror on-line, to demonstrate his power, Rurik had locked Feteror down for another month into the netherworld abyss.
Rurik would take no chances even with a decorated war hero. He knew that his predecessor, on the cusp of his own great success after sinking the Thresher; had died in a mysterious blast at Department Eight's earlier site. It didn't take a genius to look over what they did know and the results of the interrogation of Dr. Vasilev and conclude that the subjects had rebelled and killed their captors to free themselves through death. History would not repeat itself as far as General Rurik was concerned.
There was not only the issue of the human beings they were dealing with, there was also the danger of the equipment. Before the disaster on October Revolution Island, there had been the even greater disaster at Chelyabinsk in 1958 during a weapons test on the virtual plane. There had been no survivors at the test site. But Rurik believed in what he was doing. To get powerful weapons, one had to take great risks.
Besides the cyber-lockdown, Rurik had another ace in the hole, so to speak. The entire complex, buried deep under the ice above the Arctic Circle, was surrounded by a static, psychic "wall" that had only one "window" in it. The window went directly to the cylinder and allowed Feteror his virtual exit to the world, and Rurik controlled whether that window was open or closed. Closing it prevented Feteror from turning and attacking his home base. He could only return to his own physical mind through the window. When the psychic window was closed, Department Eight where Feteror's physical self lay, was the one place where he couldn't go psychically.
Other than the fact that it required tremendous amounts of power from the nuclear reactor, Rurik didn't know how the psychic wall worked, but he didn't care. That was the job of the scientists. However, the wall had several interesting side effects that they'd discovered quite by accident. The wall was generated outward by lines surrounding the mountain; the lines were connected underneath SD8-FFEU through small tunnels. The field, as far as their recording instruments could tell, extended about two hundred meters into the air above the station, projected by steel towers built around the perimeter. Nothing living could go through that wall. They had first noticed the bodies of birds and small animals in the first days after the wall went up. Rurik had been interested and gotten a prisoner from the gulag. He'd turned off the automatic, conventional defenses that surrounded the base, and had the prisoner walk up the side of the mountain, into the psychic wall.
The effect had been startling. The second he hit the slightly shimmering wall, the man had grabbed his head, collapsed to his knees, and begun screaming in a high-pitched voice. Blood had streamed through his fingers, then his body had jerked upright, held in that position for a few seconds, then collapsed.
Rurik had had the wall turned off and the body recovered for autopsy. The doctors discovered that the structure of the man's brain had literally dissolved.
Another side effect, not so beneficial to security in Rurik's opinion, was the fact that once the psychic wall was turned on, they could no longer communicate with the outside world. Radio waves would not pass through. Even their best shielded cable and telephone lines would not function.
They kept the psychic wall on all the time for protection. It was breached only for two reasons: one was to make the twice-a-day radio contact with GRU headquarters outside Moscow; the second was to open the window to allow Feteror out or to bring him back in.
Besides the psychic wall, there was another special aspect to FFEU that made it unique and more secure. Because they weren't totally sure of the exact nature of what they were doing and its great value to the national intelligence structure, the entire complex was physically guarded in a most unique manner.
A complex set of weapons, ranging from machine guns to air defense heat-seeking missiles, was layered around the complex and controlled not by human hands, but by a computer. The targeting computer was hooked to a series of sensors that watched across the spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet. Anything that approached the base—or tried to get out of it—would be spotted and targeted automatically. And once the guardian system was activated, there was nothing anyone inside the base or outside could do to stop it. The base would effectively be isolated. The system automatically came on whenever Feteror was "out." This prevented Feteror from using any outside comrades to try to break in, or from subverting anyone inside to help him.
Despite the strong security measures, one thing did worry Rurik, though, and that was why he had worn the path in the rug every time Feteror was "out." And that was that the scientists couldn't exactly tell him how Feteror operated. They knew he could remote view and come out of the psychic plane in his demon form, but they also suspected he was capable of much more. But Feteror had not exactly been forthcoming over the years as to his capabilities, and an uneasy truce existed between Rurik and Feteror. The latter got the information requested, but there were limits even Rurik could not push him beyond. In return, there was much Feteror could not get from his captor.
What also bothered Rurik was that he didn't know where Feteror went when he left SD8-FFEU. There was no way of tracking him on the psychic plane. That task was something that Rurik had the scientists working on.
Right now a red light was flashing from the top support beam that ran from the floor on one side, to the roof, around to the floor on the other side of the semicircular room. It was a visual signal to everyone that Feteror was out. Besides not knowing exactly what Feteror was capable of and where he was, another thing that disturbed Rurik was he didn't know what Feteror's time sense was. Just as the time spent being cut off in the virtual world inside the cylinder seemed like forever to Feteror, Rurik had to wonder how time in the virtual world outside of the cylinder seemed.
Rurik was startled out of his ruminations by a junior officer approaching.
"Sir, we received some intelligence from Moscow in the last communiqué." A young lieutenant held out a piece of paper.
Rurik took it and read. The GRU counteragent who had infiltrated the Oma group had been found dead in a park near Kiev, along with a GRU colonel named Seogky.
The condition of the bodies was most strange. Seogky had had his eyes torn out and died from a brain hemorrhage. And the counteragent had been cut into two pieces. Rurik crumpled the paper. The filthy Mafia.
Rurik knew Seogky. The man worked in Central Files in GRU headquarters in Moscow. What did the Mafia want from Central Files? Correction, Rurik thought as he reread the message, what did the Mafia now have from Central Files?
He looked up at the red flashing light and frowned.
Chapter Eight
"What's wrong?"
Dr. Hammond was focused on her computer screen, not the isolation tank that Dalton was pointing to.
"We're having some trouble." She leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. "Sergeant Stith, this is Dr. Hammond. Focus on the white dot."
"What kind of trouble?" Dalton demanded. He was dressed in his fatigues, over an hour out of the isolation tank and still feeling the shakes.
Stith's body spasmed, bending at the waist until his head, encased in the TACPAD, was almost touching his knees.
"Get him out of there!" Dalton ordered.
"We can't right away," Hammond said. "Sergeant Stith, this is Dr. Hammond. You have to focus on the white dot." Her hand pushed a button on her console.
Raisor was behind her, watching. Dalton walked to the front of her console. "Get him out."
Stith suddenly jerked upright his legs and arms spreading as wide as they could go, slamming against the side of the isolation tube.
"There's an interface problem," Hammond said. Her fingers were flying over the keyboard.
"Who has control?" Raisor asked.
"I don't," she said. "Yet," she added.
"Is he locked into Sybyl?" Raisor asked.
"We haven't completed pass off," Hammond replied.
"If you don't have contact and Sybyl doesn't," Dalton demanded, "then who does?"
"Sergeant Stith." Hammond pushed the red button. "You have got to focus on the white dot."
Stith's body was twisting. His left arm jerked hard, slamming into the glass with a sound that reverberated through the chamber. The arm jerked back in an unnatural manner.
"Oh, shit," Barnes exclaimed as a sliver of white poked out of Stith's forearm. "His muscle spasms are breaking his bones! He's got a compound fracture." A slow swirl of red spread into the embryonic solution.
"Get him out of there now!" Dalton slammed his fist on top of the console.
"We can't pull him out," Hammond said. "He's breathing the liquid mixture and his body has been cooled. He'll die if we pull him out.”
"He'll die if he stays in there," Dalton said as Stith spasmed again, this time the uncontrolled force of the muscles breaking his left leg, the misshapen shape of the thigh indicating the damage.
"Damn it," Hammond said, reading something on her screen. "He's vomiting the breathing mixture. Some of it must have gotten into his stomach."
"Sergeant Major!" Sergeant Monroe had grabbed a fire ax. He stood ready next to the isolation tube with his teammate, the ax looking like a toy in his massive hands.
Dalton turned to Barnes. "What do you think?"
"Breathing, bleeding, and broken," Barnes said succinctly.
Dalton knew exactly what he meant. The three priorities when treating a wounded man. And Stith was in bad shape on all three.
"Get him out now or we will," he told Hammond.
"All right, all right." Hammond shoved her keyboard back. She threw several switches. "I'm warming the embryonic solution as fast as possible and extracting the liquid mixture from his lungs."
Dalton stood in front of the isolation tube, next to Monroe. “Take it easy, Pete," Dalton said to Monroe in a low voice.
Dalton reached up with his hands and placed them on the glass, feeling the cold stab into his palms. "Hang in there, Louis. Hang in there."
"His lungs are clear, but he's not breathing oxygen," Hammond said. "His nervous system isn't responding. I'm forcing oxygen in and keeping his heart pumping with the microprobe."
“Too slow," Monroe muttered, lifting the ax.
Dalton reached under his fatigue shirt and pulled out his nine-millimeter pistol. He stepped back from the isolation tube, aiming.
"What the hell do you people think you're doing?" Raisor was running down from behind the console.
"I'm going to break this goddamn thing!" Dalton yelled. "Pull him out or we get him out our way. Now!"
"He's still too cold!" Hammond protested.
"He's not breathing!" Dalton yelled. He shifted his aim from the glass to Raisor.
The CIA agent stared at Dalton's eyes for a second. Raisor wheeled toward Hammond. "Do it."
Hammond slammed her fist down on a lever. With a hum of motors, the winch began reeling in the nylon strap that was attached to Stith's harness. The body came up out of the tube, dripping embryonic solution. Hammond pushed on the lever and Stith swung over the ground, his body twitching.
Dalton holstered his pistol and had his arms up. With Monroe, he caught Stith's body as it came down. Dalton could feel the chill. "Get this thing off him," he said, pointing at the TACPAD.
Hammond was kneeling over the b
ody. She spoke to herself as she worked. "Extracting cryoprobes." She pressed a small button set on the outside of the TACPAD.
"Hurry!" Dalton yelled.
"You can't take it off until they've fully retracted. You’ll break them off." Her hands kept moving, hitting another button. "Extracting thermocouples."
Hammond reached down and slid the microprobe out of Stith's chest. With Barnes's help, she pulled the TACPAD off his head.
Dalton leaned over and ran his fingers through the sergeant's mouth. They came out dripping blue fluid.
"Shit," Dalton muttered. He leaned over, locked his mouth onto Stith's, and blew. Nothing. He threw Stith over his knee, face-down. He slammed into the man's back with both fists. A large pile of embryonic fluid gushed out of Stith's mouth onto the floor. Dalton hit him again, then put him on the floor on his back. Dalton breathed into his mouth; this time the sergeant's lungs came up.
Barnes was across from Dalton, feeling for a pulse. "Nothing," he said, then pushed his fist down onto Stith's chest. He began compressions in ratio to Dalton's breathing.
Dalton fell into the rhythm. In between Barnes's compressions, someone draped a blanket over the body. Dalton pulled up for a second and looked into Stith's face. It was blue. He slid the eyebrows up. The eyes were open and vacant the pupils dilated. He bent back down and continued.
"He's gone, Sergeant Major. He's gone." Barnes had his hand on Stith's neck. "He's gone."
The words were a litany, slowly sinking into Dalton's consciousness. Finally he paused in his breathing and looked up. Barnes shook his head.
"He's gone. Fifteen minutes and no oxygen. Even if we brought him back, he'd be a vegetable."
Dalton's head snapped back and he glared at the younger medic, causing him to step back in surprise.