System Seven (42 page)

The thought proved
more breathtaking than the flight.

Faster.
The dome grew longer. The GPS digits showed almost three thousand miles
an hour. The shoreline fell away and open sea claimed every horizon, enveloping
him in a solitary portrait of watery nature. Clouds slipped into view only to
be pierced and passed through, flickering by in strobe fashion. The GPS
vibrated and changed to the next checkpoint, an estimated ten minutes out. A
slight turn southeast towards Russia....

He pressed a button to
read final ETA. Less than two hours at this rate.

Mom, I really hope you can see me now.

• • •

By the eighth hour
behind the console, sleep always became a problem. No matter how much rest the
night before, the eighth hour dragged like a walk in thick snow. Right between
lunch and the end of the shift, the black hole of sleepiness beckoned, numbing
every sense.

Following routine,
Sergeant Kislyako stood and stretched. Whoever invented the twelve hour shift
needed to be shot. He wasn’t old enough to remember the days of six hour shifts
and vodka and women at lunch, but he’d heard stories. Someday he’d retire and
have all day to himself. He’d never look at a screen again. Ever. The radar
station at Severny Island could rot further into hell and he’d not care. One of
the most useless duties imaginable. Like America would ever really launch
missiles?

He eyed the new black
boxes recently installed in the racks by the young shchenoks.

“You’re lucky to have
a job, Daniil. Fucking computers taking over everything.”

He sat back down and
ignored his sore legs. He adjusted the scan range and bit his tongue doing a
double-take at the screen: a single faint return, moving at missile speed. He
increased the radar’s intensity, narrowing it by three measures. The altitude
was too low. Either a stealth craft or a new missile of some kind.

He cursed and picked
up the red phone, more awake than he’d been all year.

• • •

“There! Good, get
closer. Focus. God damn… Oscar, how fast is he moving?”

Overseer calculated
and responded. “
Estimated speed is three-thousand miles per hour at eight thousand feet.
”

“Heat signature?”

The view switched to
thermal to reveal a vague, localized heat with none trailing. “How is he
pulling
that
off?”

The commandeered
American spy satellite followed the bender’s flight as he approached land.
Director Tomov sat back in his chair, juggling implications.

“Send in the riders, I
want a track on him
now
. Get AGTs on
his tail, maybe they can lock on and provide guidance for the riders or vice
versa.”
Or they can ram the fucker
.
“Issue stand down orders through the Russian defense ministry, flag it as
equipment malfunction and get Oscar in there to make it real. Make sure the
U.S. gets word, too. Black out all satellites in his path, current or future.
He’s headed for Tokyo. Open a channel to the demo team.” He looked on in private wonder at the man in
flight. “Zoom in.” The image revealed no propellant signature, no structure or
engines of any kind. Only a parachute.

Orders issued, the
control room fell silent. All eyes stared at the screen.

• • •

The doors to the NRO
satellite operations room burst open. Heads whipped around.

An Air Force major
shouted, “Everybody out, now, now, move! You!” He pointed to a wide-eyed
satellite operator. “Stay put. Move people,
move!
”

The facility
commander, General Fagan, and a civilian entered the room accompanied by two
Security Police officers with hands on their side arms. The lieutenant in
charge approached, questions forming on her lips. The major put up a hand and thumbed
her to the exit. The guards followed her out and closed the doors behind them.

“Stay seated.” The
major instructed the lone operator. “What’s your first name, soldier?”

“Patrick, sir.”

The major handed him a
piece of paper. “Can you find this, Patrick?”

The twenty-four year
old from Los Osos, California, scanned the paper. Coordinates, heading, speed,
altitude, size – less than two meters? Time stamped three minutes prior. He cleared his throat. “I can try, sir. I’ll
need to access–”

“Do it!” General Fagan
barked. “Whatever it takes.”

“Yes, sir!” He worked furiously at the console, entering
override codes spit out by the major, displacing scheduled controls until he
locked onto MISTY-4, an NRO satellite passing over far east Asia nearest those
coordinates. A control directive failed – the screen came up black.

“Shit,” he muttered,
intensely aware of eyes on him. He decoupled, relocked, and reissued the
control directive but still got black.

He turned. “Sir,
either that’s equipment malfunction or we’re being blocked.”

The general exploded.
“Blocked? Who the hell can block us? That’s our fucking satellite!”

The civilian asked,
“You’re patched over SDS?”

“Yes, sir, SDS.”

“Switch to Milstar,
SDS-2 class. Pick the nearest one. Good, now use the K band downlink to reach
the Misty on the diagnostic port.”

Patrick hesitated.
“That would require line of sight calculation–”

“No, it doesn’t. Arrow
down to the last menu item. Press ALT and SHIFT together and press the number
six key on the keypad.”

Several new menu
options became available.

“There, option S2S.
Sat to sat.”

“Wow.” A list of
satellites appeared. “We want 186.”

A minute later, the
link completed. A diagnostics menu filled the large screen. “I’m in.”

“Now use the Config
menu. Access.... Multilink Protocol.... fourth item down, Override Options.
There, disable the Force Override option. Now, go back to Access. Security...
Diagnostic Password. Change it to something, just double damned don’t forget
it. Good, save it. Now, back out, switch to SDS and attempt control of the
Misty.”

Whoever he was, the
guy knew his shit, Patrick thought. But who had locked them out? He recoupled,
locked, and issued the control directive. The room lit up brightly from an out
of focus image of mountains on the screen.

“Someone’s been
looking at this target, coordinates are in line. Give me a second to catch up.”

Twenty seconds later,
he found the projectile and established a track lock. He zoomed in on the
target, onto the–

“Patrick, what you see
is beyond top secret. Which means you
don’t
see it and this never happened. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes, sir. I
understand.” He dared look again, his heart pounding.

The major reached for
the nearest STU phone. The civilian asked, “Where will that trajectory take
him?”

Patrick tore his eyes
from the screen to run the calculation. “Over a desolate section of Russia.
He’ll pop out in the Sea of Okhotsk in... ten minutes at that speed. On to New
Zealand if he keeps going.”

Further zoom allowed
for a detailed view of the flyer. Two small tubes, no jet pack or other means
of propulsion visible.

“Borden here.
Confirming stand down. Repeat, no threat.” The major hung up and looked over at
the operator. “Patrick, you have family?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“I see. That’s good.
Again, this never happened.”

Patrick replied
carefully, “No, sir, it most certainly did not.”

• • •

With the backdrop of
the Milky Way galaxy framing it, MISTY-4 hung in apogee, the longest stretch of
its high elliptical orbit, conveying imagery back to NRO receiving stations via
relay satellites. For previous spy satellites apogee meant downtime; MISTY-4
utilized gen-after-next optic systems that allowed for continuous high
resolution focus from an apogee twenty-five thousand miles distant.

In a split-second
event, a black blur struck the twelve-hundred million dollar satellite and sent
it hurtling like a pinball into outer space, its solar arrays and antennae
flailing from a smashed core.

• • •

Austin slowed over the
western edge of a shoehorn peninsula jutting from Russia’s mainland into the
Sea of Okhotsk. He descended vertically through the gloom of dusk, steering
between trees until his feet touched spongy earth. He released the grip of
flight – vertigo from the sudden stillness nearly toppled him along with the
wind. A thousand feet above the sea, atop a steep quarter mile slope to the
beach, he stood surrounded by wilderness.

The GPS marker read
‘rest b4 last CP’. The two hour flight hadn’t taken much out of him – though
imagining the rescue had. If the element of surprise remained his, things would
go much better. If not, the
hell-in-a-hand basket effect would surely apply. Johan had started this but
wasn’t the one in line to do the real dirty work. Thoughts of having to kill
people only turned his stomach tighter. For Kaiya, though, he would do it.

He pulled off the
helmet. The zigzag route over land had been exhilarating, especially the
mountain peak flybys. He took a seat at the base of a moss-covered tree and
looked out over the sea. To the far right, distant lights of a city lined the
horizon, a twinkling coast. Everywhere else water met the horizon in a
beautiful but desolate union.

Watching the sky
deepen in the west, he could pretend the world wasn’t topsy-turvy. For a moment
it was a beautiful planet, devoid of confused people, empty of power struggles
and unchecked greed. The sphere was just a home, a firm and stable place in the
universe, created for life with such varying beauty that even a lifetime wasn’t
enough to appreciate it all or very well. In that pretend place, the questions
were gone, the truth self-evident. Humans were meant to
be
here, together in peace.

Reality crashed the
vision. Instead of just
being
, they
had the Comannda. Led astray, corrupted, set up for failure, taken advantage
of. Thousands of years’ worth of growth, stolen from humanity early on.

The magnitude of his
place in history struck again –
I am part
of what can change it.
Half of the Change, up against a system so powerful, so prolific and advanced it had
kept itself hidden for centuries. Instead of surging with confidence, he shrank
in retreat to the small, comfortable world he’d left behind. Kaiya stood in the
shop the night Johan broke into InterGen, an angel in the flesh surrounded by
technology. He imagined her sitting alongside him at a campfire, content after
dinner, talking of anything and everything. A walk to the lakeside and a bit of
stargazing–

He shook it off.
Stop dreaming. Man up. Make it happen.

He pulled out the
printed notes and his penlight. The boy’s room was on the top floor, the fifth,
with a north facing window. He looked at the photos. Rip out the window,
neutralize guards, sweep up the boy. IVs? What else would he be hooked up to?
Breathing tube? It could be complicated. Speed would matter. He checked the GPS
and looked through the five programmed locations where he could safely drop the
boy off. Having options was good.

He noticed the wind
had died down and a calm pervaded the woods. Nature drew his attention, basic
life flowing from the insects, animals, and the trees themselves. For long
moments he dwelt in the space, feeling it, being felt by it. The world was
alive, down to the smallest elements, reactive and in some manner intelligent.
How else could his thoughts result in the grid changing like it was? The
observer impacted the observed – in a way more sophisticated than most
scientists could imagine. Whatever secrets lay at the core of Raon seemed to have
roots in Saoghal. It was all very designed, entwined and dependent, like the
inner workings of a Swiss watch.

Time.
There wasn’t much of it. He stowed his notes and stood to stomp off the
cold. Intention flowed and was met by the warming of his feet. Again it felt
like standing on the border of a dream.

“Okay.” He put the
helmet back on and checked the GPS. Over sixteen-hundred miles left. Potential
rose and with it, excitement.

“Time for me to fly.”

He couldn’t help but
think,
I should have brought music.

With a few quick, deep
breaths, he leaned forward into the grid and lifted from the ground, back into
weightless flight. He descended over tree-tops to the shoreline then shot
outward to skim just above the sea. For a time flying low and hidden felt good
but he needed speed at altitude. He shot upward in an arc. Thrill coursed and
his heart pounded against his lungs. For a moment he dared envision a future
beyond the danger – a glimpse of what he could become.

The next thought was
of Icarus and the sun.

• • •

“Problems, sir. Still
no reacquisition of Austin and Signus reports Eden approaching. Pattern is
stable.”

Director Tomov looked
up. “Where is Gerrit?”

“No data, sir.
However, Signus impressions indicate between one and two hours until contact
with Eden in their current state.”