[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) (65 page)

The joint chiefs and the rest of the room had taken the president’s lead and listened to Admiral Hamilton and the White House science advisor as they explained the next stage of their plan. As the opinion of the room had swung in their favor, they had eventually agreed that the launching of the shielded GBMDs was, if not desirable, then at the very least a valid next step to take when the scale of the threat was laid before them.

The admiral had not been surprised when, once the president was convinced, the hardest thing had not been mobilizing the rest of the joint chiefs, but holding them back. With one satellite even then flying over the western US, they had wanted to launch immediately and then wait for the next two to come around in order to fire on them as well. It had even seemed like they might get their way until the colonel had stepped in, producing a piece of the superconducting material they had used for the missile shields. He had conducted a brief demonstration of the shield’s phenomenal properties with the drill he had brought for just this purpose, and the room had been silent as the unscathed plate was handed around the table.

His demonstration was followed with an explanation of how thick the satellites’ version of this plating was, compared with how few of their missiles were clad in the alien armor. It had served its purpose, and the joint chiefs had agreed to the more concerted effort the team had planned for.

Preparations for the next phase were not limited to the US, though. As the other members of their pan-global conspiracy waited through the seemingly endless hours of respite before the main battle, one of their ranks was getting his way by far more nefarious means.

* * *

John Hunt knocked on the captain’s cabin door with one hand, his other holding a tray with a cup of hot chocolate steaming happily. For the marine guard stationed permanently at the captain’s door, this was the hardest time of the day. It wasn’t that he had a sweet tooth, per se, but the smell of that chocolate getting delivered each evening was simply torture. Why didn’t they give that stuff out to the ratings? I mean, they got hot chocolate, but it was out of a sachet. The captain got the real thing.

John looked at the guard and smiled wryly. Poor guy, you wouldn’t want what’s in this mug, trust me. But still he smiled at the marine and gave the man his best ‘woe is me’ eye roll. The barked order to enter came through the metal cabin door and Lieutenant Hunt followed it. Captain Prashant always liked to keep people waiting for a second to establish his control over the situation, even when those people were bringing him his daily dose of the only vice he really allowed himself.

“Your mug of chocolate, sir.” said Hunt, setting the mug in its holder on the captain’s chart table.

“Where is Ensign Grimes, Lieutenant?” said the captain, asking after his usual aide-de-camp.

“Minor problem with a spill on his uniform, sir, I offered to step in.” John replied, smiling angelically.

“Very well, leave it there.” said the captain, waving John away.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” said Hunt.

“No.”

No, thought John, after you drink that hot chocolate there most certainly will not be anything else. John stepped quickly away down the thin corridor that ran from the captain’s cabin to the bridge. Dropping the tray behind some piping, he took the stairs down to the master’s cabin and checked on him. Snoring away, and his whiskey was finished, good, that was him out for the night as well.

For the next thirty minutes, he made his way around the ship. He had been careful to drug each of the senior officers and warrant officers that ate separately from the rest of the crew in their own mess, and now he had to check and see if they were all sufficiently disabled. For the crew he had not needed to be so subtle. There were two seatings for dinner for the bulk of the ship’s complement, served each side of the change of watch. The watch that currently manned the ship had eaten earlier, before their watch started, while the other had eaten just after they had gone off duty.

As the crew ‘on deck’ started to falter and pass out, the off-duty crew still had a groggy twenty minutes before their liberal doses of flunitrazepam kicked in. Basically John had given the entire ship a rufie. Standing on the bridge now, John watched as each crewmember started to flag. He walked around catching them and laying them on the ground. Deactivating their stations and the ship’s controls as he went. As the comms guy passed out, John reached over and flicked the kill switch on the ship’s radio and its intercom, disabling them both, and then entered in a kill code that he had programmed in weeks beforehand. The ship’s comms were now utterly disabled, its regular pings to the Admiralty back home now going off automatically via the same viral subroutine that made any other form of communication to and from the ship temporarily impossible. They were cut off.

Like every other important military asset actively deployed around the world, the
Dauntless
had been a hive of activity that day, responding to the events in Pakistan and Russia. Now John raced around the ship, checking key stations and making sure open systems were shut down as the officers and ratings that usually tended them collapsed slowly to the floor. He also shut off ovens and cooking ranges in the galley, deactivated and set the engines to idle, as he ranged all over the ship watching its officers and crew collapse.

As he finally ran toward the ship’s weapon control center, he came across two frightened sailors. They had been off duty but they had gone back to their station to collect some magazines they had left behind. They had found the crew unconscious and been unable to wake them. Since then they had found several other people asleep. But even as they spoke John could see they were starting to flag as well, their eyelids drooping and their speech starting to slur. But he didn’t have time to argue with them. He cut them off, and told them he needed their help.

“You,” he said, pointing at one of them, “get to the bridge immediately, wait there for me and make sure it is secure. Don’t lock the doors, but make sure no one comes or goes without the orders of a senior officer.” He waited for the man to react, but he was clearly already struggling to stay awake, as was his colleague. He watched them a moment, mildly sympathetic, and then changed his tactics.

“You know what, I order you both to sit down … right here.” They both looked at him and the relief on their faces was palpable. Mumbling their acquiescence, they lowered themselves gingerly to the floor. They were asleep by the time their arses touched the cold steel.

At the lightest possible dose John had doled out, he estimated he had about three hours. Any of them who had eaten a larger portion at dinner might be out for closer to six or seven. Longer than that and they would be in danger of cardiac arrest and possibly even paralysis. That was not desirable, but it was also unavoidable.

He came to a halt in the weapons con and stepped inside. John approached the main control board and noted the flashing red light on the console. The weapons officer had been proactive and diligent. Clearly he had sensed that he was unable to stay awake and had reacted accordingly. Unable to maintain his station, he had activated the ship’s alarm and locked his console. If the ship’s communications had still been active, a warning would even now have been sounding at every Admiralty outpost in the world. Only the captain and first lieutenant knew the code to unlock the weapons console. Not even the weapons officer knew it. That way, if he thought he was going to be coerced into activating the ship’s weapons systems, he could remove himself from the equation by activating the alarm.

Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for humanity as a whole, John had long since hacked the captain’s personal files. He had learned the code and now he pulled the weapons officer out of the way and reinitiated the console. It had to be reactivated on the ship’s bridge as well, but first John pulled the launch key from officer’s neck and inserted it into its sacred slot.

Next he placed a small device he had co-opted from his own supply of tools and gadgets. It could loosely be described as a servo, not wholly dissimilar from one found in a remote control car, only it was a little more capable than that. While it was, in fact, one of the stupidest robots you would ever have the pleasure of meeting, it was still phenomenally flexible, versatile, and only an inch tall. And it was strong for its size. It had three limbs, each with three knuckles, and a pincer at each end with rubberized sides. It could grip, open, climb, twist, and do pretty much anything you could imagine an inch-high robot doing, as well as quite a few things you probably couldn’t. But most importantly, it could do all these things remotely, acting as an Agent’s eyes and fingers when they couldn’t be there in person.

Setting the small drone next to the key, he opened a mental link to it and instructed it to grip the key with one of its pincers and brace its two free legs so that it could turn the key on his command. Then he ran from the room, wrenching the door shut and bending its handle sharply so that it would stay that way. That should stop any person who was somehow still awake on board from interfering. Stepping over the two sleeping sailors sitting in the corridor, he ran to the nearest staircase and started to ascend to the bridge once more. His internal clock told him he had one hour. Good, he was ahead of schedule. He only hoped the GBMD system was ready too.

On the bridge he sat and waited. Once the Weapons Console Key was turned in unison with the Command Key he now held, John could operate all the systems he needed directly from here using programmed viruses he had implanted long ago. But like everyone else, he now had to wait. If they did not take out all the remaining hubs in their next attack, then whichever was left would have a mandate to return fire. Its presence obviously revealed, it would not only release the viral pathogen they knew was coming, but also bring its laser systems to bear on any and all military targets it could before it was also destroyed. Thousands would die, hundreds of thousands, under its blistering attack. So John knew he had to wait for the Americans to launch, or allow the satellites to pass overhead unhindered until they were in place once more.

The irony was that the only way he would know if the Americans had launched would be because the AI satellites would tell him. So he sat and he listened. He listened to reports and information that the AI and his fellow Agents were supplying while they were within range of the now broken chain of satellites around the planet. He listened to Lana’s accusations of treason as she documented them formally. She was now accusing Shahim as well, which was interesting, but she was also accusing Mikhail of being an accomplice. Oh dear, that was nearly half the group, and Mikhail was from an Empire that was, historically, one of Princess Lamati’s greatest allies. But then, John thought, so was Lord Mantil, the personality that possessed the body of Agent Shahim Al Khazar.

John sympathized with Lana with a smile. I guess you just can’t find good help these days, how will the universe’s genocidal maniacs survive, he thought.

While waiting for confirmation of a launch from the US, John also listened to the latest reports from Agent Preeti Parikh as she made her way through Pakistan toward the last place Agent Shahim had been spotted. John frowned a little at the thought. That should be interesting. He had little against Agent Preeti, but she was one of them and he did not spare her too much pity as he thought about what she was walking into. That said, he had faced a surprised Agent once before, and while that element of surprise had been enough to clench victory for him, it had still been a far closer fight than he would have liked.

* * *

Fires still burned in the remnants of Peshawar Army Base as Preeti Parikh drove up. She had ‘borrowed’ a Pakistani officer’s uniform and now she walked through the base with a flashlight, searching for her missing colleague. She answered questions and shouts from the other soldiers patrolling the base in perfect Iranian, which was, interestingly, the most common language in western Pakistan. She was carefully making her way closer and closer to the bunkers and silos in the northern part of the base. They were the last place that Shahim had been seen, but they were also under incredibly heavy guard, and she was having to navigate through the maze of tank groups, machine-gun emplacements, and artillery teams that now surrounded them. After several laps walking in ever decreasing circles around the silos, she had finally made her way to the inner cordon. This was the innermost perimeter around the silos, and there was no way she could just walk passed it. Searching her databases, she came up with a name.

“Good morning, Sergeant, I am part of General Abashell’s team. He is expecting me.” They all knew the reputation of the general, and immediately set to locating him. The man was a legend, but more than that he was a veritable asshole and known for his furious temper. They didn’t even know he was here, but in the confusion after the attack, every unit in the vicinity had responded. It had been a mess, but they had secured the area. It was a little late, perhaps, as the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, in fact, six of them were, but there were ten more HATF-VI on the base, and they did not intend to lose track of any more of them.

As various junior officers inside the complex scrambled to locate a general that wasn’t even on-site, Preeti feigned impatience, eventually stepping up to the guard and saying, “Well, have you found him yet?”

The guard shook his head and was about to speak when she carried on, “Incompetent man, find him and tell him that his daughter Sowmya is here.”

The man balked. The only person more feared than General Abashell was his daughter. She implicitly carried with her all the power of her formidable father, and was not without considerable military experience and standing herself. Waiting a moment, she assessed the affect she’d had on the poor man and then said, “Fool, I will find him myself.” and she pushed passed him into the inner base.

On any other day the guard would have known which senior officers were and were not on-site and no amount of posturing would have convinced him otherwise. But this was no ordinary day, and the guard post, in fact the entire inner perimeter, had only been reestablished a few hours ago. So Preeti’s practiced impudence overrode the guards’ hastily given orders and they looked after her with a mix of fear, shock, and confusion as she walked into the silo complex.