[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) (10 page)

But Lana’s relay had not been uncovered by fate, farmer, or mutt, and she now reached down and picked the large object up bodily with her amplified strength. She held it suspended as it vibrated momentarily at sonic speeds, shaking free the remaining dirt and muck from its sides, then pulled her newly purchased duffle bag over it, zipped it shut, and slung it over her shoulder, careful all the while not to place all the heavy black bag’s weight on the wholly inadequate straps of the duffle that now held it.

* * *

Milt Mashford had never become used to the fact that the rugged appeal he’d enjoyed in his younger days had degenerated into a decidedly unappealing lecherousness in his sixties. So when he saw the attractive girl in khakis through the dirty windscreen of his ten-year-old F-150, he assumed he would be able to romance the girl into getting into his truck with him.

Due to Lana’s time constraints, and the amount she still had to accomplish, it turned out he was right.

“Hello there, sailor-girl. Can I offer a ride to a member of our proud armed forces?” he said out of his window as he pulled up alongside her.

Lana did not hesitate; at the very least he could take her back to the train station in far less time than it would take her to get there on foot.

“Yes, that would be nice.” she said, her face breaking into a radiant smile that stood in stark contrast to the blackness of her eyes.

* * *

An hour later, Milt had somehow found himself driving the attractive sailor all the way to what she said was her home some forty miles away on the outskirts of Annapolis. As they had pulled up she had leant over and given him a kiss on his cheek, thanking him for being such a patriot.

He had wanted to place his hand on her leg as they had driven, his lascivious instincts telling him he deserved a little grope for driving her so far. But something in her eyes had told him that it would be a mistake he would sorely regret. In the end he had watched her walk away without even looking back at him, and for want of a better option he had driven off, trying to work out if he had just been played, or even worse, had actually just done something nice for someone other than himself.

As the eye above notified Lana that he had turned the corner she also turned, walking down a side road. While she had been locked away on base for the first part of her training, the orbiting AI had used the peripheral links it could obtain by hacking the wireless airwaves and acquired her a house. It had also set up bank accounts for those of its operatives that were based in developed societies, and established several dummy corporations that it could siphon money to and from as needed. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it had started the long and complex task of establishing a complete and verifiable background for each of the Agents. Lana was now going to be the first to establish a full and permanent land connection for the orbiting platforms, at which point their hacking and data manipulation would be able to start in earnest.

Arriving at the home she now owned but had never seen before, Lana walked up to the door and pressed her finger against the lock. The house was small and wooden, its aging white paint starting to flake along the edges of its slats from too many seasons spent untended. Inside it was little more than a living room and kitchen downstairs and a small single bedroom upstairs, but despite this it had all the things Lana and her colleagues sought.

There were, apparently, keys in the apartment, and in the future she would probably use them. For now, however, she would use the tool that had been built into her middle finger to allow her to open this, or any other lock with ease. Inside her finger ran four fibers that now started to snake through slits in the skin of the end of the finger pressed against the keyhole. They slid into the lock, seeking and finding the interior contours of the barrel and automatically forming themselves to the required shape.

With four independent fibers she could break even the most advanced multi-dimensional locks, but this was a simple deadbolt, and she opened it effortlessly. It would not be so easy for anyone else to get into the house once she left it.

Closing and bolting the door, she went straight to work, unsheathing the black bag and taking it upstairs to place it in an unimportant looking cupboard in the bedroom. The house had been left in a bad state, but she could clean it tomorrow. As the bag was placed on the floor of the cupboard, its own wires started snaking out of its casing. The layout and wiring of the house had already been downloaded from the easily hacked cable company’s database.

Within minutes the wires found their way through gaps in the floorboards to the junction boxes it needed. The black cables latched onto the sockets like vampires on our information network’s proverbial neck, and instantly began to suck. Easily bypassing the simple blocks erected by the cable company to stop illegal usage, the surge of data began to flow through the machine and via its subspace tweeter to eager machine minds above.

The connection complete, Lana began extracting some other devices from the black box’s various compartments: a thick disc like an oversized hockey puck, a vial, a reel of cable, and a black block the size of a dishwashing sponge. When she was done, she placed the first device, a thick, flat, black disc, on the inside of the cupboard’s single door and closed it. As the door latched closed the disc shot out six arms, each armed with a small but very sharp claw, which imbedded themselves in the frame around the door and then latched themselves to the door itself, locking it securely in place. The door could now only be opened by someone hacking it apart with an axe, but in the unlikely event that happened the disc would turn its six razor-edged hooks, effective in wood, devastating in flesh, to a far more brutal purpose in order to defend the bag within.

Walking to the bedroom’s one window, Lana then placed a small dab of liquid from the vial on each of its panes of glass. Spreading from each drop, the glass began to turn opaque, blocking the view from prying eyes. More importantly, the reaction also began to harden the glass to something close to the strength of sapphire crystal.

Lana then extracted a length of the wire from the reel she had taken from her bag and laid it around the outside of the window, walking away after she had joined the ends of the wire together. As she walked down the stairs the wire started to sizzle, reacting with the caulking around window and turning first viscous, and then into an extremely hard glue around the frame, even as the spreading opaqueness of the glass blanketed to each pane’s edge. She proceeded to do the same with each of the bottom floor’s six windows, using the final part of the wire to seal the back door shut. She then returned to the upstairs cupboard, the disk protecting it forewarned of her approach, and rolled the still half-full vial under the sealed door to the waiting black box to be reabsorbed into its interior.

Coming back down the stairs, Lana opened the front door and used the malleable but impermeable tips of her fingers to unscrew the bolts holding the door lock in place there. Sliding out the old mechanism, she replaced it with the final device she had taken from the box upstairs. The small rectangular black box molded itself to the slot as she inserted it, taking the place of the vastly inadequate manual lock as the guardian of the house’s only remaining access point. Unlike the passive tools she had used to seal the rest of the house’s windows and doors, this device would actively monitor the only remaining access point to her ‘home.’ It would vet any key that entered the lock it now controlled, and would prove surprisingly stubborn should an unwanted guest attempt entry, becoming ever more violent in proportion to any intruder’s vigor.

Along with its six-clawed friend attached to the inside of the closet door upstairs, it would be more than capable of defending the house’s now hard-working contents against all but the most ardent attack.

* * *

Marie and KC stood at the bar and took a deep breath: this was going to hurt. Looking at each other once more for reassurance, they each dropped a shot glass of unpleasantness into their pint glasses, turning their innocent beers into boilermakers.

“Down the hatch.” said KC.

“Fuck it.” replied Marie, and they both started drinking.

“Wow”, said Marie, grimacing, after slamming her now-empty glass on the bar.

“Ugh.”

“That was disgusting.” she shook her head, trying to clear it.

“I know,” said KC, “fabulous isn’t it!” They both laughed, wiping their eyes and mouths, and turned back to the dance floor. They looked at their friend Latesha who was getting very amorous with the man that had given them the money to buy the boilermakers, mostly so that he could get Latesha on her own.

Four of their male trainee counterparts were looking on from across the dance floor, commenting on the girls while trying to appear nonchalant. When the girls waved at them, they smiled, laughed, and turned away with feigned coolness.

“Amateurs.” said KC.

“Well, we did say we wouldn’t pee in our own bathwater,” said Marie, “now what about those two civvies by the door.”

KC was busy checking them out when her mouth dropped open in astonishment.

“Get the fuck out.” she said in awe, still staring over Marie’s shoulder.

“What?” said Marie and looked back at the two men. She was trying to figure out what had KC so shocked when she saw the ice queen herself walking across the dance floor. Lana Wilson, looking shockingly attractive, was strolling toward them.

“Evening, girls.” Lana said as she came up to them.

“Lana.” said KC in greeting.

“We thought you had done a runner after the way you walked off. Where did you go?” asked Marie.

“Had to run some errands … and to get some new clothes.” said Lana.

“Yes, so we can see,” they said, eyeing her striking figure, clad now in a one-piece black dress that did not run much past the tops of her thighs.

Lana turned and surveyed the room. She’d originally had no intentions of joining them tonight, much as Marie and KC had suspected. Not that she had actually been invited, of course. But when she had uploaded her report for analysis by the satellite-based supercomputer it had come back with some recommendations for her. It was virtually impossible to plot and codify the social workings of any complex society from without. However, with weeks to monitor and learn, an understanding of the behaviors and customs of the various nations the Agents were infiltrating was building that would be essential to the operatives’ success. It was based on this ongoing analysis that Agent Lana Wilson had been informed that she should consider a more involved approach to not only her seniors, but also her peers.

It had been clear, based on the insults and comments made to and about Lana that she was not connecting with them, and this had to change. It had also been noted that she had a powerful tool at her disposal that she was not yet using: her looks. First things first, connecting with peers.

“I need a drink.” Lana said as she turned to the bar, “What are you two having?”

“Hey, you’re behind girl, we just had boilermakers.” said KC, expecting Lana to balk at the idea.

“OK then. Hey! Sweetcheeks!” Lana shouted at the bartender, thrusting out her chest, “I’ll need a round of boilermakers for me and my fellow soon-to-be-officers here.”

“Whoa, we just had one!” started Marie, but Lana held up her hand.

“Fair enough.” and turning back to the bartender again she corrected, “I’ll be needing you to line up
two
of those bad boys for me, please.”

The bartender stared, then shrugged, and continued pouring. KC and Marie glanced at each other, KC mouthing “Really?” at Marie. Dropping shots into two of the four glasses, she handed one each to Marie and KC, then dropped two more in the remaining beers and picked them both up herself.

Facing her cohorts, she smiled, then downed the first of her two pints in one swig. She held a straight face for a moment, then decided it was best to ham it up. “Yuck, that
never
gets easier!” she shouted, cringing.

“Atta girl!” shouted KC, “We didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Yeah, well, what about you two?” she said, putting down the empty glass and raising her second.

“Oh, it’s on!” laughed Marie, and they all began drinking.

Ten seconds later the other two were doubled over, laughing and coughing at the bitter taste. Lana looked from one to the other with cold calculation, unfazed by the drink.

She broke into a smile as they straightened up. “Now,” she said, “where is that Lieutenant Hamilton? He was supposed to be here, and he is cute.”

The other two stared at her again. She was actually pretty cool, it turned out. But her black eyes were already busy scanning the room for Lieutenant Chris Hamilton, who happened to be the son of the powerful Admiral Hamilton. The purpose of all this fraternizing was to start building a network, and, she had decided, she should use all tools available to her to do so.

Laughing with his friends in another part of the club, Lieutenant Hamilton had no idea that his night was about to take an unexpected turn. Agent Lana Wilson was, of course, an amateur in the art of seduction and lovemaking. But she was also absolutely open-minded, very attractive, and inhumanly supple. It was not easy to make a man obsessed with you in one night, but Lana was, quite literally, like no woman Chris Hamilton had ever met, and he would find her quite intoxicating.

* * *

While Agent Lana Wilson was ingratiating herself with the natives, the orbiting platforms busied themselves with their newfound freedom. Nearly 90% of all the world’s business, government, and military data is available over the internet, if you have the tools to get at it. The orbiting satellites had tools in abundance, and they set to work logging, tracking, and sorting through the reams of data that was finally coming available to them.

They were methodical, and they would work tirelessly, without pausing to virtually blink. But because of the way the world’s communication systems worked it was inefficient and sometimes impossible to access all international data from one location. They also knew that if they attempted to access anything close to the volume they planned to review through one location it would set off alarm bells all over the world.