Project Aura

22

The three main engines on the shuttle ignited, spewing flame, drawing their fuel from the external tank. Inside, Eagle Six experienced the familiar feeling as the entire craft shook with restrained power, the entire system still bolted to the launch platform by eight hold-down bolts at the bottom of the two solid rocket boosters. The roar increased as the SRBs ignited. A split second later small explosives cut the bolts and the shuttle began lifting off the launch platform.

Eagle Six was slammed back in his couch as the shuttle accelerated. Sixty seconds after liftoff the pressure reached its maximum, then began to recede. One hundred and twenty seconds into the flight, the two SRBs had used all their fuel and detached, falling back toward the ocean for recovery.

For six more minutes the shuttle’s engines continued to fire, pushing them up, before finally shutting down. The external tank was jettisoned and the orbiter was finally in its basic configuration. There was another burst from the maneuvering thrusters to thrust them into the designated orbit.

Eagle Six unbuckled from his chair and stood. He keyed the intercom. “Begin preparation for EVA in”-he checked his computer screen that held the mission pro-file-“three hours and forty minutes.”

“What happened to them?” Cesar had finished screaming at his security detail. Even though he knew there was nothing they could have done to stop the intruders, it made him feel better. There was no sign of the three in-truders-they’d simply vanished when the strange grenade Valika had thrown had popped. Cesar had felt nothing, although he’d had a moment of doubt when he saw it land under the table.

“The grenade exploded on the plane they travel on,” Valika said. “I don’t know if it killed them, because that wasn’t really them.”

That didn’t make sense to Cesar, but he was thankful nonetheless. “Who do you think they were? I thought Bright Gate was destroyed.”

Valika had been thinking about exactly that question while Cesar ranted at his guards. “Somebody might have escaped from Bright Gate.”

“But don’t they need equipment? Like Souris does?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She remembered the helicopters they had spotted departing the Bright Gate site and told Cesar about them.

“We leave here now,” Cesar ordered. “We’ll meet the ship on its way here.”

Even in his cell in the Hanoi Hilton on the darkest and dreariest of days, after being tortured, Dalton had never known such despair and isolation as he felt now. He didn’t even have the pain from his body to let him know he was alive. He had consciousness, barely, but for all he knew, he might indeed be dead. This might be what happened when a person died, disconnected from their body.

He saw nothing but featureless gray all around. He felt nothing, heard nothing. There was no link to Sybyl, no indication of Barnes or Jackson.

He had no mouth to speak with. He had no idea if he was still in the virtual plane near Saba, or if the explosion had sent him elsewhere.

A part of him simply wanted to let go. He was sure that if he gave up the tight grip he had on his thoughts, he would simply fade away into nothingness. He remembered the pilot who had been brought to the cell next to his, beaten half to death by villagers, stunned by the sudden change from living on board an aircraft carrier to the hell of the POW prison. Dalton remembered how he had held the pilot’s hand all night long, to let him know he wasn’t alone.

And the pilot had died the next day, more of despair than of his wounds.

Dalton held on to the core of his being ever tighter. He had made a promise to himself then and he wasn’t about to give up now. He had promised that day that he would never let go of life like that.

He wasn’t certain he was alive, he realized. But he had feelings and that was enough.

“Are they alive?” Mentor asked, staring at the three bodies suspended in their isolation tubes. The machines continued to function, slowly sending breathing fluid to them.

“The bodies are,” Dr. Hammond said. “But we’ve lost contact with the psyches.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Sybyl recorded a surge on the virtual plane. What caused it is anyone’s guess.”

“Can you bring them back?”

“Not without a connection,” Hammond said. “They’re like the other bodies, the ones we rescued. Still alive but no one home.”

Mentor slapped his hand on the top of the computer. “Goddamn it!”

“I’ll keep trying,” Hammond said.

Linda McFairn had never liked enclosed spaces. The massive opening on the side of Cheyenne Mountain that led down to Space Command wouldn’t be considered small, but it was enclosed, especially as the car taking her passed by the huge steel door that would be closed if the site were ever attacked. She clutched her briefcase tighter as the car descended further into the mountain.

Ostensibly she was here on an unannounced inspection. Given that Space Command was one of the nerve centers for national defense, the Deputy Director of the NSA doing such a thing was not unprecedented.

A one-star general was waiting for her just outside the inner door where the car came to a halt. He opened the door before she had a chance to reach for it.

“Welcome to Space Command, Deputy Director McFairn. I’m General Mitchell.”

McFairn shook the offered hand. “General.”

He indicated they head through the large inner door. “What can I do for you?”

McFairn hesitated for just a second; whether her hesitation was from going into the complex or the task she had to perform, she wasn’t sure, and she quickly hustled after the general.

“Given all the flap over the loss of secrets from Los Alamos,” she said, “I’m making these inspections to check internal security of computer systems. I need access to one of the terminals that connects to your mainframe.”

“Certainly.”

Souris was peering out the side of the helicopter that Cesar had arranged to pick her up at the Colorado Springs airport, where the Lear had landed. They had flown around Cheyenne Mountain and were now hovering over the west side of the mountain. She was seated in the front right seat, the pilot in the front left. The aura transmitter took up the entire back of the helicopter along with the batteries to give it power.

She closed her eyes briefly, remembering the image she had been sent, then opened them. “There.” She pointed at a narrow gap between two rock spurs. “Closer,” she ordered the pilot.

As he edged in toward the mountain, she reached behind her and drew out the leads and began placing them on her head, the movements habit. The pilot glanced at her quizzically but said nothing. He had flown numerous flights initiated by a thick envelope of cash and knew better than to open his mouth.

“Hold here,” Souris finally said when they were about fifty meters from the opening.

She closed her eyes, then flipped on the transmitter.

Immediately she could sense the psychic shield inside the mountain guarding Space Command. But that wasn’t her objective. She passed out of her body, her mind floating down on the psychic plane.

McFairn flipped open her metal briefcase. She was in General Mitchell’s own office, the door locked shut. She always appreciated the military mindset where rank was all that mattered. As a GS-16 she technically outranked the general and he was quite aware of that.

It was impossible to hack into the computers in Cheyenne Mountain from the outside, but doing it from the inside was another matter. She connected leads from the computer inside the briefcase to the general’s terminal. Even with access to the mainframe, she didn’t have the code to enter the part of the master computer that stored National Command Authority codes. But because the NSA had devised the “lock” it also had a way to invent a key.

She knew the unlock code, like all other NCA codes, changed constantly on a rotating basis that was also part of the code. Thus, to break in, she would have to find both the base code and change code, and then combine them.

McFairn’s computer had a sniffer program and found the “door” and then began running through thousands of code combinations per second, looking for the right one. All she could do was sit back and wait.

Souris found Sybyl without much trouble, the computer giving off a strong signal on the virtual plane as Dr. Hammond searched to contact the lost team members. Since the Ranch wasn’t shielded, Souris was able to slide into it on the virtual plane and into Sybyl unnoticed. Since Sybyl had been hooked to the power line from Cheyenne Mountain, it was the one weak point in the virtual shield that surrounded the base.

Souris followed the power line into the complex and then into Space Command’s mainframe. The “door” blocking the way into the code section was easy to find, and she began to weave her way through the electronic logjam.

Then she noticed the program running through combinations also trying to get through.

It took six combinations to get through the door, and the computer had five. McFairn edged forward on the seat, waiting for the last one to be decoded.

Souris was in. It didn’t take her long to figure out the unlock code.

A second later the sniffer program broke through and had it also.

Souris had no idea who was running the program, but she reacted anyway. On the way out of Space Command’s computer, she triggered the emergency alert, putting the base on DefCon Four footing.

McFairn has just pulled out the disk with the unlock code when an alarm stridently sounded. For a second she thought she’d been caught, and then she realized what was happening. DefCon Four had been triggered. She ran to the door and down the corridor.

The massive blast door was swinging shut, locking her inside.

Souris had found manipulating the mainframe from inside exhilarating. As soon as the base was secure, she disabled the program to allow it to stand down from the alert footing. Then she disabled the secure communications trunk line on her way out, completely cutting off Space Command from the rest of the world.

The cool breeze on his cheek. Dalton focused on remembering that feeling from the moment he had scattered Marie’s ashes.

He felt it again. The gray gave way slightly with a tinge of red. Then it was gone.

Dalton concentrated. There was something, someone close by. He felt the breeze once more. He reached out to it.

“I’ve got something,” Hammond announced.

“What?” Mentor was hovering over her shoulder. “I’m boosting power,” Hammond said.

Dalton felt the connection, grabbed on to it like a drowning man to a lifeline. As he raced back toward the Ranch, there was a presence next to him, doing the same thing.

He couldn’t spare the energy to reach out to it, to find out who or what it was.

Then he was inside his frozen body, his mind still with access to the virtual plane. He felt the power come back into him from Sybyl.

“ Dalton and Jackson are back,” Hammond said. “I’m bringing them out.”

“What about Barnes?” Mentor asked.

“Nothing.”

On her way out, Souris paused inside of Sybyl, contemplating the changes that had been made since she left Bright Gate. She saw what Jenkins had done, the modifications to the computer and the programming.

As the connections with Sybyl grew stronger, Dalton could sense Jackson. He was on the virtual plane inside of the Ranch, watching as Hammond began the process of bringing his body back. He knew he’d have to go back into his brain shortly, but he wanted one last chance to figure out what had happened.

“Are you all right?” he asked as he searched the virtual plane for the third member of their team. “I think so.”

“Where’s Barnes?”

“I don’t know-” There was a pause, then her voice came back. “Someone else is here. In Sybyl”

He immediately picked up the presence she was referring to. “Hold!” he. sent to Hammond, but the link through Sybyl wasn’t strong enough. He could feel the virtual world slipping away from him. With a desperate effort he “lunged” toward the foreign body. His virtual essence careened into the other and he was overwhelmed with a flurry of images and emotions; shining through it all like a beacon was the fact that whoever or whatever the presence was, it had just come from out of Space Command’s mainframe and had the unlock code for the MIL STAR retransmitter.

As that startling piece of information resounded in Dalton ’s consciousness, the virtual world faded away and he was back in his own mind, inside his body.