Project Aura

20

Valika bid farewell to Gregory, knowing that she would never see him again. She expected he would be on some South Seas island within a couple of days with a new identity, along with the rest of his mercenaries.

As the Lear lifted off the runway at Granby, she was considering whether the mission had really been a failure. She was glad that they hadn’t recovered the Bright Gate equipment and that Raisor was gone. She wasn’t certain she liked the direction things were moving in. Psychic Warriors, being able to appear anywhere out of the virtual plane and take action-she had a feeling that might make her and her unique skills obsolete. It was best to be done with it all.

On a more professional level, she also hadn’t trusted Raisor. She wondered if he was really gone, or if he was able to survive on the virtual plane without his body. It was a question she would have to ask Souris. From her own experience she knew that once someone betrayed what they had sworn obedience and fealty to, the second betrayal would be much easier.

“A helicopter. Now? At night?” Lonsky rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“I’ve got the crew clearing the pad,” Zenata said. “It’s due in five minutes.”

Lonsky stood, his uniform wrinkled. “Do you have it on radar?”

“Not yet. It might be flying low, near the waves.”

Lonsky’s cabin was just behind the bridge, so it only took them a few seconds to make it there. He went left, out onto the wing, which gave him a view toward the rear of the ship. He couldn’t see the landing pad, but he could see the glow, which meant the landing lights were on.

“I wonder what the proper etiquette is,” he said to Zenata. “Should a captain go greet his new owner, or should the new owner come to the captain on his bridge? How does it work?”

“I would say it would depend on what kind of impression you want to make,” Zenata said.

“We have an inbound helicopter on radar,” one of the crew announced. “ETA two minutes.”

Lonsky looked toward the bow. They could see the red and green running lights of the aircraft as it approached. It flew by quickly on the port side, then swung around and disappeared as it landed on the aft deck.

“I think I will meet halfway,” Lonsky said.

“A smart choice,” said Zenata.

“You have the bridge.” Lonsky grabbed the handrails for the ladder that led down to the main deck and swung onto it. He headed along the side of the ship, the massive radar dishes looming above him, blocking out the stars. He saw one of his crewmen approaching leading another figure. Lonsky stopped and waited.

He was surprised to see that the stranger was a woman. He was further disconcerted when she stepped into the light of one of the portholes. Her head was shaved and there were strange marks on it.

“Captain Lonsky, at your service,” he said in English, as that was the language the messages had been transmitted in.

The woman paused and looked at him as if he were in her way. “Captain,” she said. “My name is Souris, Professor Souris. I was sent here to make sure you are ready to receive our equipment. Who is your senior scientist?”

“Tanya Zenata is my-”

“Take me to her. Now.”

Dalton forced Hammond to check everything, making sure the isolation tubes were stable and that Sybyl was properly hooked up. She was slowly coming out of her funk, and these definitive actions were helping. While she, Jackson, and Barnes were doing the checks in the presidential building, Dalton was with Mentor in the operations center building.

“Whose decision is it to bring them in on it?” Dalton asked Mentor, getting back to what he had asked him at the landing zone. “If you’re all that’s left of Nexus, isn’t it your decision?”

“I’m all that’s left of Nexus in the United States,” Mentor said. “There are other cells overseas.”

“But right now, this is an American problem,” Dalton noted.

“It’s a worldwide problem,” Mentor disagreed.

“Originating here in the States.”

The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Hammond, who had just finished running a diagnostic on Sybyl. She was holding up the CD-ROM she had taken from the computer at Bright Gate. Barnes and Jackson entered behind her.

“Before we were forced to leave Bright Gate, I found something in Sybyl,” Hammond announced. “About the first Psychic Warrior team.”

That drew the attention of Mentor, as well as Dalton, Jackson, and Barnes. She put the CD into one of the computers in the ops center.

“What about it?” Dalton asked.

“There were ten people on it,” Hammond said, looking at the monitor. “They spent time remote viewing first, then gradually ran tests with their avatars. All this happened close to Bright Gate. Then they conducted a mission. Professor Souris was the one running the operation back at Bright Gate.”

Dalton glanced across at Jackson, then back to Hammond. “What kind of mission?”

“That it doesn’t say. I only have what Sybyl tracked. The team went over to the virtual plane and then made several jumps. And then nothing. Everyone flat-lined.”

“Where did they jump to?” Jackson asked.

“It doesn’t say exactly yet. They were all together. Somewhere…” Hammond scrolled down. “Somewhere in Asia. China maybe. Or India. Wait a second. Okay. I’ve got their planned jump points. The last one they checked in at was Mount Everest. Right on top.”

“ Mount Everest?” Dalton considered that. “And then?”

“Then they made one more jump close by and they all disappeared.”

“What happened to the bodies?” Jackson asked.

“ Souris had them removed from the isolation tubes. As soon as she took them off of Sybyl’s support, they all died. All signs of the team members were removed. She attempted to remove all material from Sybyl about the team. Did a pretty good job of it actually. It’s taken me all this time just to learn this. And then she left the project and they brought Jenkins in, telling him the new team he was given was the first team.”

“So what was that team looking for?” Barnes asked. “Any ideas?”

“ Mount Everest.” Jackson was thoughtful. “That’s where the Droza were.”

“And maybe still are,” Dalton said. He faced Mentor. “Tell them.”

Mentor hesitated.

“We are now Nexus,” Dalton told him.

“ ‘Nexus’?” Jackson repeated.

“If you don’t tell them, I will,” Dalton said. “I’m not lying anymore.”

“You’re under orders,” Mentor said. “You don’t-”

“A piece of paper shown to me in the dark by a man who’s dead now,” Dalton cut him off. “I know for sure I swore an oath to defend this country, and right now I’m seeing a threat and I think my fellow soldiers here need to know what’s going on in order to fight that threat.”

“All right,” Mentor snapped, his first display of emotion since Dalton had met him.

As he briefed Jackson, Barnes, and Hammond on what he had already told Dalton, the sergeant major tried to put the pieces together. When Mentor was done, Jackson was the first to speak.

“It all fits. The Priory and the Mithrans have been fighting for ages, but since each is on a different plane, it hasn’t amounted to much.”

“And now we’ve managed,” Dalton said, “to break the barrier between the virtual and real with our technology. No wonder they’re fighting over HAARP and Bright Gate and Aura.”

Hammond was shaking her head. “My God. Do you realize what you just said? Our technology. It isn’t our technology. It’s technology we’re making for them. For the Priory. They were behind Souris from the very beginning, weren’t they?”

Mentor shrugged. “We don’t know. We were late catching on to the significance of the work she was doing, and Bright Gate and HAARP were already established before she defected.”

“ ‘Defected’?” Dalton snorted. “Don’t you think the Mithrans recruited her? So they could have access to the same technology the Priory was using? The Priory invented Bright Gate and sent that first Psychic Warrior team to try to attack the Mithrans. They must still be located somewhere in the Himalayas. In Shangri-la, or Shambhala, whatever you want to call it,” he added, glancing at Jackson.

“And the Priory lost,” he continued. “The first Psychic Warrior team was wiped out. So the Priory cut its losses and its interest in Bright Gate, realizing Psychic Warriors couldn’t defeat the Mithrans on their own plane, much like we couldn’t stop Chyort on the psychic plane. So they shifted their emphasis to HAARP.”

“But what good is HAARP?” Barnes asked.

Hammond answered. “If HAARP can uplink through MILSTAR and then transmit down worldwide, they can destroy everything-and everyone-on the psychic plane. And, most likely, everyone in the real plane who isn’t shielded.”

Barnes held up his hand, like a schoolchild. “I’ve got a question.”

They all turned to him.

“Who’s our enemy? The Priory? The Mithrans?”

That brought a moment of silence as they all considered the question.

“Maybe that’s the wrong question,” Dalton said. “I think we should consider both groups our enemy simply from the fact they ain’t us and both sides seem to have no problem killing people when it suits their goals. It appears that both Aura and HAARP kill people when activated. If either goes worldwide through MILSTAR, the results will be devastating.

“I think right now we need to figure out who the most immediate threat is and focus on that.”

“Let’s deal with the Ring first,” Jackson said. “They killed those Special Forces men and our people at Bright Gate. We can deal with HAARP and the Priory after that.”

“The shuttle-” Mentor began but stopped.

“What about the shuttle?” Dalton asked.

“The Columbia is launching tonight with the last MIL-STAR satellite on board. Once it deploys, MILSTAR will be operational worldwide.”

“And?” Dalton prompted.

“Eichen had a code built into the last satellite so that it couldn’t be used by HAARP.”

“Then HAARP’s not an immediate problem?” Dalton asked.

“As long as they don’t have the code.”

“And where is it?”

Mentor pointed to the wall. “Next door in Space Command. Secure inside the DefCon Four targeting and launch authorization computer. No one can get into that computer from the outside.”

“Then it’s safe for the time being,” Dalton noted. “Unless there’s someone on the inside of Space Command who has been corrupted by the Priory. I think we need to destroy the code to insure that HAARP is never used.”

“Unless,” Jackson said, “you really believe the Mithrans are our enemy also. In which case destroying the code destroys our best weapon against them. If we fine-tune HAARP, we might be able to target just the virtual plane.”

Barnes sat down, exhausted. “Great. We’re back to square one. We don’t have a clue who we’re really fighting.”

“We know where HAARP is located, right?” Dalton asked.

Mentor nodded. “I have the location.”

“And it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, so I would say it’s not a priority target since they can’t access MILSTAR,” Dalton continued. “But we don’t know where the Ring is or where the Aura generator is located. I’d say Dr. Souris and the Ring are our priority right now. What do you have on the Ring?” he asked Mentor.

“They’re led by a man called Cesar. The other main leaders of the drug cartels are members. Cesar’s been very hard to locate. He hasn’t been seen in public in almost ten years, which led us to speculate he is no longer in Colombia, but has relocated.”

“But one of the other drug cartel leaders might well know where that is, right?” Dalton said.

“Right,” Mentor confirmed.

Dalton looked at Hammond. “How long before you can send us over?”

“Everything’s running,” Hammond said. “As soon as you are ready.”

“All right,” Dalton said. “We’re going to Colombia. It’s time for some payback for the Special Forces team and for the people at Bright Gate.” He turned to Mentor. “What do you have on this Ring organization?”

In reply, Mentor sat down at one of the computers. “We can access the Department of Defense secure Internet via that, tapping through Space Command.” He logged on and quickly searched while the others gathered round.

“Not much,” he finally said. He brought up a picture. “That’s Hector Cesar, but as I said, no one knows where he is.” He accessed another page. “That’s Naldo, one of the inner circle. The DEA does have a location on him.”

“I have an idea,” Dalton said.

Souris was back on Saba after her initial visit to the ship and had immediately hooked into the computer, disappearing into her other world after telling Cesar it would take about six hours for the necessary modifications to be completed on the Yuri Gagarin. Cesar was supervising the movement of other equipment out of the command post and on the treacherous trip down the volcano to the airfield. He paused when Souris started and opened her eyes, returning to reality without having to be called.

“There is a problem,” she announced.

“And that is?” Cesar asked.

“The retransmitters on the MILSTAR satellites have to be unlocked with a special code.”

“Do you have the code?”

“No.”

Cesar waited but when she said nothing, he asked the inevitable question: “Where is the code stored?”

“The American Space Command in Cheyenne Mountain. It’s shielded on the virtual plane.”

“How do you know this?”

Souris smiled. “There is a spy among the Americans.”

“A spy? Who? Where?”

Souris didn’t answer, closing her eyes to retreat back into her alternate world.

Cesar walked up to her and lightly slapped her on the cheek. Her eyes flashed open. “Can you get the code?”

“There might be a way.”

Dawn was less than an hour off and the launch two hours past that. Spotlights illuminated Columbia on the launch pad, allowing the thousands of people who were gathering to watch to see it. A gantry stretched from the launch tower to the shuttle waiting for the crew to board shortly. Four bolts in the bottom of each of the solid rocket boosters secured the entire flight system to the launch platform. The astronaut with the code name Eagle Six was already on board. He had checked the payload, insuring that the satellite was secure. After NASA’s unbelievable mistakes with the various Mars probes, he left nothing to chance. Now he lay back in his launch seat, a set of

headphones relaying to him the various communications come out of launch control:

“T minus three hours. The count has resumed. Perform T-three-hours snapshot on flight critical and payload items. Initiate LOX transfer line chilldown. Verify SRB nozzle flex bearing and SRB nozzle temperature requirements. Activate LCC monitoring software. The next planned hold is at T minus two hours. Go for flight crew final prep and briefing.”