Dark Star

CHAPTER FIVE

The Computer Room, Stony Man Farm, Virginia

“How’s it going,” Price asked, placing a hand on Aaron Kurtzman’s shoulder

“What? Oh, hello,” Kurtzman grunted, glancing up briefly. “Everything is fine. So far, so good.”

“Why are you watching the Weather Channel?” Price asked.

“It’s a wild idea I’ve come up with, and I’m trying to see if it works.”

Grabbing the hard-rubber rims of the wheels on his chair, the man rolled himself away from the workstation. “Meanwhile, Akira is doing a global search for any information on theoretical X-ship designs, while running support for the teams, getting them government clearance, forging diplomatic immunity, erasing their flight plans…the usual stuff.”

Both at the same time? Turning her head, Price glanced at the young man sitting at his workstation, chewing gum and listening to rock music. He appeared to be daydreaming, but the mission controller knew from past experience that she’d have to shoot the hacker to get his attention, nothing less would penetrate his iron wall of concentration.

“Fair enough,” Price said, almost smiling. “I just saw Hunt outside the staff room. He mentioned a slight problem. So what’s the delay with Carmen? We helped develop the firewalls that Interpol uses, so she should be able to access their files at will.”

“Normally, yes,” Kurtzman replied. “But an X-ship landed on the main file room of Interpol. Their master computer isn’t crashed, the damn thing is half melted. Millions of data files are gone forever.”

“What about the off-site files?” Price asked. “Those should have been safe.” Every major corporation kept a duplicate set of important documents in a secure location miles away from the master files, just in case of a fire or corporate espionage. Governments did the same; the NSA kept their backup files at Menwithill in the UK, while M-I5 kept their files in Minnesota, and so on. Only the Farm did not use that standard safeguard, but it was the sole exception.

“Yeah, the clever bastards got them, too,” Kurtzman growled, his face becoming hard. “And you know what that means, Barb.”

“Interpol has a mole,” Price muttered. “A traitor working for the, as the President calls them, Skywalkers inside the organization.”

“Or else the hacker for the people behind the X-ships is an absolute wizard at tracing encoded signals.”

“Is that possible?”

The man shrugged. “Anything is possible.”

“Okay, I just read the FBI reports on Blue Origins and Armadillo Aerospace,” Akira Tokaido announced. “Both companies are nowhere near a functional SSO ship. The only useful information the FBI got is that the X-ships have to be singles.”

“What does that mean?” Price demanded curiously. “Hand-built or something?”

“No, the ships only have one control system,” Tokaido replied. “Take a NASA space shuttle, for example. Those have a complete backup system for everything. In case anything goes wrong, it can continue to fly without loss of performance. On some of the critical systems, there are even three or four backup versions. Control board, air recycling, teleflex cables, fuel lines, everything but the engines, toilet and crew, comes in a minimum of three.”

“I see, and that adds a lot of weight,” she said, chewing over the new information. “So the Skywalkers took out everything not actually needed for flight, which massively cut the weight of the X-ships.” She frowned. “No, this doesn’t work, because they also have armored hulls. Wouldn’t that equal out the same weight as before?”

“Not really. The armor is mostly just heat-proofing, the few hardpoints are an ultralight composite,” Kurtzman stated. “But they would still need the microwave boosters to put them over the top.”

“Which is killing the crews. That beggars the question, do they know, or not care?”

“Unknown.”

The woman started to pace. “Okay, if the X-ships have no backup controls, then if we damage one at all, even minor damage, it’s down for the count.”

“Absolutely. But you’ve seen how fast they are,” Carmen Delahunt said. “Combine that raw speed with their stealth technology, and these things are damn near invincible.”

“But not invulnerable.”

“Oh no, a standard LAW should be able to blow them out of the sky. But you have to hit them first.”

“All right, if speed is an issue, then how about using a PEP?” Tokaido asked out of the blue. “That might do the job.”

“What is a PEP?” Delahunt asked from behind the VR helmet, her body language showing the woman’s puzzlement.

“A Plasma Energy Projectile,” Kurtzman translated. “And no, don’t ask me why the Army calls a laser weapon a projectile. I have no idea.”

“Yes, I have heard about that. The weapon is a highly advanced form of a deutronium-fluoride laser about the size of a refrigerator,” Hunt Wethers added from around his pipe. “But it weighs a lot more, about five hundred pounds. However, with special bracings, it can be mounted on the side of an APC, or even a Hummer.”

“So what does it do?” Price asked impatiently. “I know the Army had lasers that could blind people all the way back in Vietnam, but those were declared illegal by the UN, and banned worldwide.”

“No, this is a real weapon,” Kurtzman stated. “It kills. The beam cycles so fast that anything it hits becomes superheated into a plasma and explodes.”

“They do what?”

“Explode. Let me tell you, it’s a hell of a blast. Roughly the equivalent to a 40 mm grenade. Only the PEP can chew its way through even tank armor, just by staying focused on one area. The laser is fast enough to take out jets, but strong enough to kill tanks, maybe even sink ships, who knows?”

“The Pentagon planned to deploy them in a few years,” Tokaido said smugly. “But I managed to locate a couple of working prototypes at the Pickatinny Experimental Weapons Lab in Pennsylvania, and had them assigned to us for field testing.”

“Excellent!” Price said, exhaling. “Send one here, and one to the…no, send both of them to the White House.”

“Both?” the man asked in surprise.

“If a SOTA military laser suddenly shows up in the middle of a national park, what would you think?”

“I wouldn’t think anything,” Kurtzman snorted. “I’d know for a damn fact that was the location of a secret base. Okay, fair, enough, they both go the White House.”

“However, we still have to find the X-ships to destroy them,” Tokaido added. “They move way too fast for us to respond. We need to be waiting at the target, before they arrive.”

“We have to beat the men,” Delahunt added, “not the machines,”

“Exactly.”

“Unfortunately, we have no idea where they are going to hit next,” Price said.

“Barbara,” Kurtzman stated, “the impossible can be done.”

“With a little bit of luck,” Price amended. “And so far, our luck is registering at just below zero. We call the terrorists the Skywalkers because that Brazilian shuttle was their first target, but in truth, we don’t know anything about these people. Are these attacks religiously motivated or political? What are their ultimate goals?” She turned, and started for the door. “Hell, we don’t even know their real name yet.”

CHAPTER SIX

Outer Siberia, Russia

The two Dark Star agents shuffled their feet on the frosty ground and shivered in the morning breeze.

The crisp, clear air was bitterly cold, and carried a faint acidic taste of rock dust. Reaching from the dark mountains to a jagged cliff, the desolate landscape was barren and rocky, like the far side of the moon. There were no plants in sight, no grass or trees, not even the slightest touch of green to brighten the otherwise sterile vista.

The man and woman knew there were parts of Siberia that were lush and green, covered with dense forests and fertile fields of wheat, the cities bright and lively with commerce, music and laughter. But not here. Then again, less than a decade ago this section of Russia had been forbidden for anybody to even discuss, much less visit, unless you were a KGB agent, a privileged member of the Presidium or a slave.

Steadily losing the arms race against the prosperous West, the old Soviet Union had been overjoyed to find a motherload of pitchblende in such an isolated area. Hundreds, then thousands, of innocent people were arrested on false charges and sent to the area to slave in the hastily erected mines, many of them freezing to death before starving.

Which was just as well, Colonel Zane Southerland thought humorlessly, stomping his sneakers to maintain circulation. Because the acid fumes used in the process that extracted tiny flecks of uranium from the tons of pitchblende was slowly destroying their bodies. He considered it a much better fate to die from the cold, rather than coughing out bloody chunks of what was once your lungs.

When the mine became exhausted, the Soviets had started to convert the labyrinth of tunnels into an underground fortress, then the government ran out of money, and then out of power. These days, the barbed-wire fences were long gone, the one road smoothed until it once more merged with the shifting dust of the desolate landscape as a modern Russia tried to erase the crimes of the old USSR. Abandoned and forgotten, the uranium mine had been thoroughly wiped from the pages of the history books.

Which should have made it the perfect location for a refueling cache, the colonel raged furiously, buttoning closed his collar. Except that the expected tanks of liquid nitrogen and hydrogen were not there!

Less than an hour earlier he had been warm in South Africa bombing the capital building. Now he was freezing to death, but he knew the attack had been well worth the price. Formerly the head of Internal Security, Southerland had been thrown out of power when Mandela led the revolution. Now a wanted criminal around the world, the colonel stayed constantly on the move, always one jump ahead of Interpol and their ridiculous charges of war crimes. Bah, he had been merely protecting his homeland. He was a hero, not a monster!

Glancing over a shoulder, the colonel stepped closer to the hulking transport, savoring what little heat there was coming off the rapidly cooling engines. In spite of the hostile weather, Southerland was dressed in only a lightweight, camou-colored ghillie suit and sneakers, with a Webley .44 revolver strapped about his waist, but no spare ammunition. Although they operated at maximum efficiency, the X-ships consumed fuel at a prodigious rate, and weight was a matter of prime concern. His teams carried only what was necessary for their next mission, and nothing more.

Although a relatively short man, Southerland was solidly built, appearing to be made of only muscle and bone, similar to a closed fist. His hair was cut in a severe military style, and there was a long scar on the left side of his face that marled the left eye to a dull white orb. Long ago, while questioning a traitor, Southerland had felt pity and offered the chained man a glass of water. It had been gratefully accepted, then smashed against the stone wall, the jagged edge slashed across his throat and face.

Knocking aside the makeshift weapon, Southerland had grabbed the prisoner around the throat and squeezed until the bones cracked, killing the man on the spot. Which was probably exactly what the rebel had hoped for in the first place—escape from the brutal torture to reveal the location of a hidden weapons cache. The doctors at Johannesburg had offered to repair the scar, but Zane refused, preferring to keep it as a grim reminder to himself to never again offer another person mercy.

“If only we had some fuel,” Southerland muttered, scowling into the distance. “Where are those fools?”

“Just arriving now, sir,” Sergeant Davidson said over the comm system. The pilot had stayed in the control room of the X-ship to monitor the pressure in the fuel tanks during refueling.

“And look what the idiots are carrying,” Major Theodora “Zolly” Henzollern drawled, lowering her binoculars.

Standing well over six feet tall, the major was a Nordic beauty with soft, curly blond hair that cascaded gently to her shoulders. Diagnosed as a sociopath as a child after burning her parents alive, Henzollern was sent to an insane asylum, but escaped as a teenager and roamed the streets robbing rich tourists, until being caught and forced to join the army.

In boot camp, her special talents were soon discovered, and the young woman was promptly put to work in the underground torture rooms for the Ministry of Defense, then into the field as a counterinsurgent for the Ministry of War, and finally recruited as a personal bodyguard for the legendary Colonel Southerland.

Seemingly impervious to the cold, Henzollern was also wearing a ghillie suit and sneakers, but carried a wide assortment of weaponry. A coiled garrote hung from her shoulder epaulet, an Italian stiletto was sheathed at her hip, an American switchblade knife tucked up a sleeve, and a French police baton was holstered at the small of her back. Holstered directly in front of her stomach was a brand-new, Heckler & Koch MP-7 machine pistol. Larger than a standard Colt .45 automatic pistol, the superfast HK could fire 950 rounds per minute, creating a wall-of-lead effect, the oversize clip containing 4.5 mm rounds of highly illegal, case-hardened steel penetrators that were capable of going straight through NATO-class body armor.

“Air tanks,” Southerland stormed, clenching his fists. “Those are conventional air tanks, not liquid air containers!”

“Yes, sir, they are,” she replied, brushing back her riot of curls with stiff fingers, her hand brushing against the coiled, plastic garrote on the way down. “It seems that O’Hara was right. He said not to trust these people. Guess the little bastard was correct.”

“So it would seem,” the colonel stated, forcing open his hands and clasping them behind his back in a martial stance.

Bouncing and shaking at every irregularity in the rough ground and coughing blue smoke, the battered old truck came to a rattling stop only a few yards from the colonel and major, smack in the shadow of the huge X-ship. Turning off the sputtering engine, the incredulous driver was unable to look away from the gigantic ship, but the fat man in the passenger seat seemed unimpressed. A missile was a missile; they were all the same. Big, noisy and expensive. Merely toys for governments, and not a proper weapon at all. Ivan Kleinof had made his fortune in the mean streets of Prague, Minsk, and finally Moscow with only an ice pick, nothing more. Even the old KGB had been afraid to cross the path of Icepick Ivan, the red czar of the Soviet underground.

“Greetings, my friends!” Kleinof boomed in a deep bass voice as he climbed down to the ground. “I have your shipment. Where is my money?”

“Inside my ship,” Southerland said woodenly. “But I don’t see my shipment. Is it hidden among those useless tanks of compressed air? Or perhaps it is lashed under the bed of that…well, let’s call it a truck, shall we?”

The smile vanished from Ivan’s face, and the driver behind the wheel put his hands out of sight below the dashboard.

“What are you babbling about, old man?” Kleinof shot back. “That is exactly what you ordered, a hundred thousand yards of oxygen and hydrogen, and right on schedule, too!”

“No, you’re over an hour late,” Southerland replied, bending his head slightly forward like a bull about to charge. “I order a hundred thousand gallons, not yards, fool, and those are compressed air cylinders, not liquid air tanks! Don’t you know the difference?”

“Bah, all oxygen is the same.” The man snorted, waving a hand to dismiss the claim. “My people stole these from a hospital. It is the very best oxygen and hydrogen. I should charge you more, so such quality, but a deal is a deal, eh?”

Pursing her lips, Henzollern noted the numerous splatters of blood on the outside of the air tanks, but that did not concern her. How these people got the fuel was not important. Only that they had brought the wrong stuff.

“As you say, a deal is a deal,” Southerland said, turning sideways. “And you have reneged on it completely.”

“What? I don’t know that word…renig?”

“Renege. It means to fail,” Southerland said calmly, turning his head slightly. “Zolly, please kill these idiots, but don’t hurt the truck. We may need that later.”

Suddenly grinning, Henzollern whipped forward the MP-7, the weapon firing into the cold ground, it stitched a path of destruction straight into Kleinof and up his body. Caught in the act of pulling an ice pick, the criminal’s face took on a strange expression as he broke apart and toppled to the ground in segments, wisps of steam rising from his internal organs.

Snarling a curse, the driver jerked up a pump-action shotgun and fired, but Southerland and Henzollern had already separated, and the hail of buckshot rained harmlessly off the hull of the X-ship.

As the driver worked the pump, Southerland came out of the roll on one knee and fitted the Webley, a foot-long lance of flame stabbed from the barrel. A hole appeared in the windshield of the truck, and the driver jerked backward as he sprouted a third eye. Moving his mouth as if talking, he convulsed, and the shotgun discharged, blowing a hole in the floorboard. A rush of pink gasoline chugged out of a severed fuel line, the cool liquid hissing as it hit the hot exhaust pipe. Southerland and Henzollern retreated quickly as there came a whoof from under the truck, and a few seconds later flames engulfed the vehicle, setting the corpse ablaze and licking out from around the hood. Keeping their distance, the man and woman waited until the shotgun shells cooked off from the heat, the random spray of buckshot finishing the job of shattering windows, flattening a tire and blowing off a door before stopping.

“Pretty,” Henzollern whispered softly, watching the growing conflagration.

Casting a glance at the killer, Southerland holstered his weapon and touched his throat mike. “Davidson, did you see?”

“Yes, sir,” came the crisp reply. “And I’ve already worked out the calculations. We can travel about fifty miles on what is remaining in the auxiliary tanks and fuel lines. But after that we’re dead on the ground.”

Unacceptable. Whipping out a cell phone, the colonel tapped in a long number, then listened carefully for eight clicks as the call was relayed twice around the world via satellites.

“Yes, Colonel, was there trouble?” Eric O’Hara said as a greeting.

Southerland detected a faint sneer in the hacker’s voice and accepted the unspoken reproof. He had been wrong, O’Hara right. He couldn’t fault the man for feeling smug. That was only human. But if the hacker had said anything out loud, he would have killed him.

“We need an alternate source for fuel,” Southerland stated bluntly, looking over the barren landscape. There was nothing in sight but mountains and rocky desert. “Is there anything we can use within fifty miles?”

“No,” came the prompt reply. “But I’ll guess that Davidson did the calculations for a crew of three. If only two of you go, that’d extend the range to a hundred fifty miles and…” There came the pattering of fingers on a keyboard. “Okay, there is an air processing plant only seventy miles away. Here are the coordinates.”

As a string of numbers flowed across the screen, Southerland tapped a button to lock them into storage.

“They will have enough liquid oxygen and hydrogen to fill the main tank halfway,” O’Hara finished. “I’ll divert the local police, and do what I can to pave the way. But expect some resistance.”

“Understood.” Southerland snapped closed the lid of the cell phone. Tucking it into a pocket of the ghillie suit, he touched the throat mike. “Davidson, come down immediately. You will stay here while I do an emergency fuel run.”

“Sir?” came the puzzled reply.

“The ship can’t fly far enough to obtain fuel with all three of us, and I go nowhere without the major.”

Still watching the fire, Henzollern stood a little straighter at those words, but said nothing out loud.

“Of course, sir,” Davidson replied hesitantly. “I’ll…come right down.”