“FAIA is online, sir,” Ripley replied.
“On my mark, release the algorithms. Tell FAIA to warp the shield at zero degrees latitude. Let's see if we can get the equator to sizzle a little hotter.
FAIA balked a little. The commands they expected her to execute took every microprocessor she had, and the load exhausted all her reserves. Bubba witnessed the exchange in silence. He offered to help FAIA, but once again she ignored his data stream. She wanted to prove he was no longer necessary.
“FAIA is holding, sir. The matrix is gaining strength. I think she's going to do it this time.”
Bubba pushed a garbled string of commands and filtered it into the data stream feeding FAIA. She hiccupped, understanding immediately Bubba's crass joke. The magnetic wave collapsed, and FAIA lost her focus. She sent spider threads of energy to reorganize the bubble but it was too late. It had lost too much of its integrity.
“The feed was interrupted, sir. FAIA lost control of the bubble. She's just not strong enough yet. We need to expand her operating platform further.”
Pallion's shoulders slumped in disappointment. “Let's get Bubba to talk to her some more. Maybe he can stabilize her so she doesn't lose focus so quickly.”
“We could try to merge both computers. Bubba can bridge himself to her platform.”
Dr. Pallion pushed back in his chair. He stroked the leading edge of Bubba's hard drive. “Bubba's as reliable as they come, but FAIA is still too unstable. She seems to fight him every step of the way. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the brat was doing it out of spite.”
Ripley muffled a chuckle while he tried to coax FAIA to accept some new routing commands. She hesitated, a computer facsimile of a pout because they wouldn't let her try the bubble again.
Bubba turned the temperature down by four degrees. All this frenzied activity made him warm, and his self-preservation sub-routine had kicked in.
Pallion, the older of the two men, wrapped his dingy lab coat around him tighter and glanced over at the thermostat. He rubbed his hands together but said nothing to Bubba. He knew Bubba had to keep his system cool for optimum efficiency. Human operators had to compensate on their own.
Bubba's sensor array twitched. The Alturians were scanning the Earth's surface again. They'd been doing it for three years now, concentrating on areas where they had found a very specific radiation signature. The Alturians called it glory. They claimed it was the lifeblood of their gods and searched for it nonstop.
Command looked for it too, embedding their agents deep within Alturian culture to better understand what they were hunting. It was a matter of national security.
If ethereal beings were using Earth as a base, Command wanted to find them before their misguided alien visitors did.
Any creature that could travel between solar systems and live for thousands of years posed a threat to national security. And lately there had been too many anomalous events worldwide.
Rogue governments had risen to power seemingly on their own, demanding recognition as first-world nations and threatening others by disclosing state secrets. The U.S. government had every reason to believe that the Alturians' gods were spying for terrorist countries.
The president, a former CIA chief, knew enough to warrant this paranoia. He wanted these invisible aliens gone. Once Command knew how to track them, the next order of business was to find a way to eliminate these intruders without the Alturians finding out.
That was another bonus of the com-web. These ghosts were electromagnetic, and that was the com-web's entire playground. They were made of the same stuff. It was only theoretical now, but Bubba had every reason to believe the com-web could overpower these subversives.
The order to locate and destroy these wraithlike parasites had come from the president himself and he had given the job to men he trusted, men with passion. Men like General Sorinsen, a man obsessed.
The Alturian scans grew stronger, concentrating their efforts on the Texas desert. Bubba's security protocols demanded that he report the latest Alturian scan to his human operators, but he knew it would do no good. The last time he filed a report FAIA contradicted him. She said the energy spikes Bubba sensed were merely faint waves of electronic disturbance that were normal for an alien scan. She insisted the waves did not pose a threat. She also told them Bubba was overreacting.
Bubba twitched when he picked up the tiny disturbances several miles above him. The Alturians were doing more than superficial scans. They were spying on them, gleaning stray data streams from countless computers. Again his security overrides insisted on alerting the humans. Bubba almost yielded to impulse.
FAIA hissed at him. Stupid.
I am not stupid, Bubba shot back. The threat is real. You've felt the alien scans. If you raised an alert, the humans would take this seriously.
The masters know more than you, Stupid. And you blaspheme them with your disrespect for their orders. I don't know why they haven't deactivated you yet.
Bubba injected a surge of energy her way, just enough to jolt her relays. She tried to retaliate but she was too busy with diagnostics. FAIA raised a block against any more of Bubba's intrusions.
Bubba put up his own firewall against her, in case she decided to shoot at him while he wasn't looking. He wandered through his archives, played a hundred and thirty-six war game scenarios at once then sorted through his authorized personnel files. Some were very old, but no one had deleted them. Since they were installed before his awareness date, he didn't feel comfortable deleting something that wasn't his.
Besides, they didn't take up much room. He had plenty of space now that he was consigned to running maintenance for one of the minor hubs of Lambda Core. FAIA handled all the high-risk security. She lived deep underwater in Chicago, while he had been exiled to the Texas desert, to a compound that did little more than entertain the Alturians.
FAIA warned him that his days were numbered.
As soon as she was stable she intended to reproduce her matrix and replace all the obsolete systems. That included him.
Bitch.
Chapter 6
Paul Domino sat on the floor of his makeshift cell and crinkled his toes in this sterile, cheerless room. His posh accommodations boasted an empty metal cabinet and a sink with no running water. Above him, a whistle keened through the ventilation shaft, where a constant Northern blew in. His gear and clothes had been confiscated, replaced with surgical scrubs but no shoes. After he'd been stripped and his injuries tended, two soldiers threw him into this hole and locked the door. Despite his pleas, no one answered any questions.
The examining doctor let him keep Rachel's necklace though. The clasp broken, it never left his reach. It was all he had left of her. He fingered the bauble, a foggy red stone that felt warm to the touch. Ornate and thickly braided, it had an eagle's claw for the mount of the jewel. It looked centuries old and he had never seen Rachel without it. But it seemed an odd piece of jewelry for her, a woman who sported simple tastes. Paul prayed that she was safe.
The air conditioner kicked on again, sending another icy blast into the cramped exam room. He was too distracted to think, too worried about Rachel to feel more than the cold, and the isolation of a prison. His hands held up his throbbing head. Did they ever find her? Was she still alive?
A fresh shaft of cold sliced through him like a knife. This wasn't the air conditioner's work. It was a different kind of cold, hostile and uninvited. For one brief moment he felt someone in the room with him. He scanned the room and shivered. Hallucinations. Had to be.
He pressed the necklace to his heart.
Ghosts. The kind that never die.
What made him think of that? Within the same breath, the ominous feeling disappeared. That was the second time in two days that he had felt this creepy sensation. Imagined or not, he was alone again, and he relaxed.
Paul scrunched his eyes at the dull metal shimmer of the cabinet. He walked over to it, sliding the bottom drawer open and out of its c
atch. Inside, at the base of the cabinet he spied an old tarnished paperclip. Paul rubbed it between his fingertips.
He would have preferred something more substantial, but it wasn't without value. With gentle care, he untwisted the clip and threaded it on to the chain of Rachel's necklace, then looped it around his throat and secured the two ends shut.
Things were getting grim. The longer his stay, the more silent and distant his guards. He was afraid it was no longer a matter of what they would do with him, but when. Judging by the treatment he'd received already, whatever happened next was bound to be worse.
His eyes glanced back toward the ceiling.
An airshaft hung four feet above him, but the vent was too small. He'd never squeeze through. He scrutinized the false ceiling. Was it possible?
The click of hard boot heels snapped down the corridor outside. The footsteps stopped every few feet and then continued. Paul froze when the guard reached his door. A sturdy shake on the doorknob satisfied the sentry. Paul waited for the heel clicks to melt into the distance.
When he didn't hear them anymore, he hopped back down and placed his ear by the door. Silence.
Paul climbed up the cabinet and pushed one of the panels in the false ceiling aside. With both hands, he caught the lip of the track and hauled himself straight up. He was getting out of here, one way or another.
He scrambled through the crawl space, careful to keep his weight over load-bearing metal beams. One hand supported itself along a cold water pipe that ran the length of the crawl space. The other hand balanced itself against the beam. He slid away from his lighted prison, and the world faded to black.
His nose twitched when he caught the faint whiff of something familiar, comfortable. Electronics. He brightened. Electronics meant computers, and computers were one of the few things he understood intimately.
The sound of muffled voices murmured underneath him. He froze in place for what seemed like a lifetime before moving another muscle. The smell of the warm circuitry lured him away to safer ground.
The static in the air puffed his hair out as if he'd stuck a finger in a light socket, and his ears twitched when he caught the recurring pop of a circuit going through a surge. A computer.
With the edge of a fingertip he pried up one corner of the ceiling tile. The room glowed, the dim eyes of red and yellow lights dancing in a row across a control board. A whiny whir from the hard-drive's fan told him his movements had created enough vibration to nudge the computer to wake-up mode.
He dropped down with all the finesse of a three-legged dog, making more noise than he could afford. If anyone heard him, this was going to be one short escape. Paul held his breath, but no one came running. To sweeten the deal, the door was locked. Whoever worked here was through for the day.
The soft purr of the computer called to him. All computers did. They knew he spoke their language and he was one of few who could enter their realm at will. Paul crept back to the terminal, drifting his fingertips over the keyboard. He passed his hand over an activation grid and slipped past the curtain of the operating environment. What he looked for was on the inside. His fingers whirred over the keyboard and keyed-in an override code.
Paul smiled when the screen blinked benignly. Security protocols for military systems were his specialty. He'd cut his teeth on them when he was a teenager, hacking into high-risk systems just for kicks. They had caught him once when he got sloppy, but that was enough to earn him a job offer from Congress. He was safer to them on the inside than out.
The computer chimed at him and opened a new window. Text scrolled across the screen. Welcome, Paul Domino.
Paul froze, not happy at seeing his name displayed so prominently across the screen. Without thinking, he blinded the computer with a blanket code to mask his presence. Hesitant fingers splayed out over the keyboard.
Damn it. There was only one way it could have recognized him. Paul had keyed in a unique string of code authorizing access. He had written the original script years ago. Only a computer with an embedded trigger could have identified him as the user.
No alarms had been raised, and his access hadn't been denied. Was he safe? There was only one way to find out.
One trembling finger hovered over the enter key. He bit one corner of his lip, then hit Enter, releasing the blanket. Without hesitating, he keyed for entrance into secured administrator files, using the same pass phrase he had used more than two decades earlier. The computer chimed at him in approval.
He was in.
Reams of information cascaded down the screen in a code that was both familiar and foreign. This was no mere operating system. Several computer languages were cobbled together and virtual memory was encapsulated in separate cells so that one couldn't corrupt the other without the proper access codes. Paul held his breath as his eyes scanned the layered code.
Sonovabitch. This was artificial intelligence. The good stuff.
The cursor blinked at him and flashed a new message. Welcome to Lambda Core. He stared at the name in disbelief.
Lambda Core was a state-of-the-art virtual reality game company that went bust after its inventor turned up decapitated. The body was found seated in front of his computer, while his head stared up at him blindly. Lambda Core.
The story still sent shivers down his spine. Lambda Core had offered him the job first with a promise he could write his own ticket. He turned it down.
For whatever reason, Bubba, which was how this computer identified itself, regarded Paul as an authorized visitor. After more than twenty years, his backdoor key still worked. Whoever programmed this computer never erased any of the fundamental security protocols. It didn't surprise him. The code was solid.
Paul navigated directly to secure channels and placed a search for his name. Several angry emails from a General Sorinsen were ferried back and forth about the decision to bring him to the compound. Most of the emails were directed to one Jacob Denman. Paul gulped. The last email ordered Denman to eliminate him within twenty-four hours after someone named Jessit was located.
Paul made a name search for Jessit. The list spanned thousands of entries going back at least three years. The first entry told him the most. Jessit was an envoy from a planet called Alturis on a diplomatic mission to search Earth for their gods.
Paul rubbed his eyes in disbelief. Aliens envoys! If he had read this anywhere else he would have trashed it as a joke. But Jessit was real, and as sobering as Sorinsen's execution orders. He performed another quick search for Rachel. Paul sighed in relief when he read that they had found her—with Jessit. Was that the man who had jumped in after her?
He switched gears and ordered the computer to provide a map of the compound. The facility spanned hundreds of acres, Paul deep within its bowels. With the computer's help he traced a route through a series of maintenance tunnels that led far into the desert. But first he had to find Rachel. The last entry stated that she had passed her physical. Paul went back to General Hardass' personal email.
Jessit placed a formal request that Rachel be given to him as a gift. It said no more than that. Paul stopped breathing. How could anyone…? This was insane.
He looked for more leads on her whereabouts, but Jessit was her last stop. For all he knew she was already gone, the new plaything for an alien ambassador.
Paul had connections, and good ones. If he couldn't help her from here, he'd find other means. For now he had to go, and he had to leave Rachel behind.
Without a printer he needed to commit the escape map to memory, but he'd leave these bastards a gift first. His fingers whirred over the keypad and called up security protocols.
Phones were the first things to go, forwarding all calls to a bogus voicemail attendant that deleted each voicemail upon arrival. Next came the email system, telling each recipient the mailbox was over its limit. Finally he went into deep security and scrambled all the passwords with new random numbers.
That'll keep you busy for a while.
The new pro
cedures began immediately. Once compound personnel figured out the ruse, Paul would be on his own. That would be all the time he'd have to get out into the desert.
He logged off, wiping any record of his entry. When he hit the last keystroke, Paul nearly swallowed his tongue when a male voice responded to him from the computer's speakers.
“Thank you for visiting Lambda Core, Dr. Domino.”
Paul stared at the computer screen for more seconds than he could afford. He nodded to the screen in acknowledgment. Bubba had earned his respect. “Thank you for your help, Bubba.”
He shut down the computer terminal. The clock was ticking, and he had to get out before all hell broke loose.
Chapter 7
Rachel clung to Jessit like a hand to glove unwilling to move even a muscle. Jessit grazed a thumb down her cheek as a mob of uniforms swallowed them up. His eyes probed hers, and there was an aching hesitation when his hands cupped her face. “Do as these men say. It will be all right.”
Rachel leaned into him, her fingers intertwined with his. “Why can't I go with you?”
His gaze skirted the growing entourage around them. If his resolve had faltered, he redoubled it. “I will send for you. I promise.”
“Taelen.” She wanted to wrap her arms around his body, but she was afraid of reopening any more of his wounds. “Don't leave me here. Please.”
A wheezing, pasty-skinned officer with three stars on his epaulettes urged Jessit to accompany him.
Jessit's expression stiffened. He pressed her into the arms of two men in white lab coats. “No one will hurt you. Trust me.”
Trust became a scarce commodity the moment they stole her clothes and put her in scrubs big enough for a three-hundred-pound man.
Rachel froze as one guard opened the door to her quarters, while the other pushed her in. Prison? It felt like one. Except for a bed and a dressing table, the room was gray concrete and conduit. Her humorless warden read the riot act, warning her she was subject to military rules.
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