The Veiled Threat (25 page)

With the first successful hack, alarms went off in two different places on the base. One flared to life within the complex the spy had successfully infiltrated. The other lit up lights and sounded a warning deep inside an island on the opposite side of the lagoon.

Blinking away sleep, a graveyard shift tech for NEST put aside the magazine he had been perusing, sat up straight, and gaped at the impossible reading that was beginning to appear on the monitor in front of him. Still half asleep, the technician knew there were only a few suitable personnel with whom he could consult about such a reading. Together with the key NEST operatives Kaminari Ishihara and Captain Lennox, Optimus Prime, Ironhide, and Salvage were somewhere in far northwestern Australia, while Technical Sergeant Epps and the Russian scientist Petr Andronov were busy hunting Decepticons deep in eastern Peru in the company of Longarm and Knockout.

The tech weighed his remaining options. Among
Autobot allies only the injured Ratchet and a few recent arrivals were presently on station at Diego Garcia, and there were no humans on the base who’d had personal contact with Decepticons. He studied the readout on his screen more closely. There was nothing to indicate that this constituted an incursion by the Decepticons.

His initial anxiety gave way to curiosity and a calm professionalism. Every other alarm (and there were many) remained silent. There was only the single interrupt, and according to the alert it was occurring at the server station for the main military base across the lagoon. Though some unavoidable exchange of information took place between the base servers and NEST, the latter’s essential information was isolated by the best firewalls humans and Autobots working together could devise. He allowed himself to relax.

Surely it wouldn’t hurt to wait a couple of minutes. If the interrupt continued, then he would assume the responsibility of rousing his superiors and alerting them to its existence. If it went away, he could reasonably assume that the problem had been resolved by those charged with handling such matters: his counterparts across the lagoon. The cause of the alarm interrupt might be nothing more than a software failure or an electrical fault. Or they might be running a test over there. If he set off the technical equivalent of a fire alarm and it turned out that nothing was amiss, he would never live it down.

Sure enough, only a moment or so later the interrupt cleared and server integrity was fully restored. He smiled to himself and picked up his half-finished magazine. In a crisis the kudos are reserved for the
one who doesn’t panic. Maybe tomorrow he would get in touch with his opposite numbers across the lagoon and learn the details.

The service technician who burst into the server room was accompanied by two armed soldiers. Unlike his unperturbed colleague who was presently unwinding across the water, this tech specialist was anything but relaxed. Behind him, the two armed guards headed in opposite directions so that if necessary they could bathe the entire room in a withering crossfire. As they hurried into position the tech tentatively approached the console from which the distress call had been sent. That alarm was silent now, but moments earlier it had been very real.

Something
had happened in this room. An incident had occurred. Though its duration had only been a couple of minutes, the tech was determined to learn what had caused it. Unable to satisfactorily resolve the inherent contradictions by using his own console in another part of the complex, he had commandeered the two soldiers on his personal authority.

Search scopes panned back and forth across the server chamber but found nothing. Neither did the tech as he approached the console whose integrity not one but two alarms had assured him had been violated.

He checked the panels, one after another. Telltales glowed according to programming; lights were dim, off, or flashing as required. Everything appeared to be in working order, nothing seemed to have been disturbed.

Was that a screw missing?

Peering closer, it was impossible to tell if the cover
above one particularly sensitive section had been disturbed. But if that was the case, then who had done the disturbing? Looking behind him, he checked the positions of the two soldiers. One gestured positively, then the other. The server room was clear. But the missing screw and the possibly dislodged security panel continued to unsettle the technician. He hesitated, ruminating on what he had not found.

Reaching a decision, he reached across to a panel of an entirely different nature and slapped his palm down on an oversized red button.

The spy was trapped.

Surprised by the ferocity of the alarms that were sounding and flashing all around him, he found himself caught in a corridor before he had managed to retrace his steps even halfway to the room where the water intake–discharge valve that he had employed to access the facility was located. The obscenely squishy sound of running human feet reached him and was growing rapidly louder.

He commenced on a speedy survey of the immediate vicinity. There was a room off to his left. Penetration scanning revealed a chamber full of consoles and chairs. Doubtless the chairs would soon be occupied and the room packed with sensitive equipment—it would be among the first to be checked. On his right was a much smaller chamber containing batch chemicals and manual devices of the most basic kind. The door on his left was secured and locked. The one on his right did not boast a lock of any kind. His decision was a simple one.

“Blue squad, deploy to the left,” the running warrant
officer barked. “Green squad, to the right. Yellow, secure the hallway!”

Several dozen grim-faced soldiers spread out. Locks were activated and doors wrenched open. Rifles and scopes swept room after room from ceiling to floor. The corridor itself was rapidly given the all-clear. While yellow squad moved on to the next building their comrades embarked on a more comprehensive security scan of the server complex.

Nothing was left to chance. Ventilation ducts were investigated, air-conditioning pipes checked, every piece of furniture moved, turned over, and closely examined. Not a space was overlooked in which a cockroach could hide.

Corporal Wallace stood back and raised his AR-15 while two privates advanced on the next door down the hallway. One grabbed the handle as his comrade prepared to fire on anything moving inside. At a nod from Wallace the soldier yanked the door open, stepped back, and raised his own gun. The muzzles of the three automatic weapons pointed at the interior of the room. As with the previous areas they had cleared, nothing stirred within this one.

Stepping forward, one of the privates began to shove brooms, mops, big buckets of detergent, and packages of dry cleaner aside. He was down to the last one when something in the utility sink caught his attention.

“Jeez, these things are everywhere. Did it crawl up the drain?”

Gripping his rifle firmly, Corporal Wallace stepped past him. The muzzle wavered. “What the hell?” He shook his head in disgust. “Nasty things. They’re
everywhere on this island. My wife found one in the toilet the other day. Damn thing wouldn’t flush, either.

“All right, that’s enough, this room is clear.” Wallace shut the door to the janitorial closet. “Move on to the next!”

Left behind in the closet, the spy remained immobile lest another chattering organic unexpectedly open the door. The babble of calling voices and pounding feet soon faded into the distance. Taking no chances, he remained inert and in camouflage mode all the next day.

Late that afternoon a slow-moving unarmed man entered, removed some cleaning materials, and noticed the small red crab in the sink. Being a gentle soul, and not wanting to kill it, he scooped the crab up with his dustpan and dropped it outside.

That night, after conducting a thorough scan, the spy carefully but quickly made his way back to the fence. Once outside the compound perimeter he worked his way silently and unseen back to the edge of the lagoon. Wholly submerged in the water, a dark shape was waiting to collect him.

Greetings were heartfelt but kept to a minimum. The recent passing of Beachbreak had cast a pall over everyone at NEST. Conversation was low-key and formal—except between two of the soldiers, who hailed each other as effusively as soldiers who have recently survived combat always do. Their reunion was unreservedly informal despite the fact that one of them was an officer and the other a noncom. One of the two generals in the conference room frowned at the unbecoming fraternization but said nothing. As the men who had more experience than anyone else working with Autobots and fighting Decepticons, Lennox and Epps were immune from the typical petty annoyances that usually distinguished such protocol.

As for the massive figure of Optimus Prime, he sat patiently in the much larger Autobot assembly chamber on the far side of the conference room and waited for the humans to conclude their customary salutation ceremonies. It was not necessary for any of the other Autobots to be present, as Optimus supplied them with a simultaneous real-time broadcast of what was taking place. As he waited for the conference to commence he shifted his position slightly, his immense metal feet grating softly on the concrete
floor. Humans were adept at many things, he knew. Unfortunately, from an Autobot standpoint wasting time was one of them.

“If you would all take your seats, please?”

By now the woman standing to one side of the wall screen was familiar to everyone present. For her part Ariella regarded each of them silently until the conversation finally subsided. Responding to her gesture, the screen came to life and the lights in the room dimmed. On the screen a series of images began to flash by in rapid succession. Lennox recognized those that had been recorded by Optimus and the other Autobots who had been with him in Australia. Some of the pictures that documented the ferocious confrontation that had taken place in southeastern Peru were new to him. As these appeared, Epps emphasized several of them by flashing his fellow soldier an appropriate hand gesture.

Stealing a glance at Kaminari, he saw that she was wholly intent on the information that was being displayed and commented upon by Ariella. In contrast with the Japanese scientist, Petr Andronov was looking down at his lap while he fiddled with a small but gaudy shell. Lennox shook his head in bemusement. He
knew
the Russian was hearing and absorbing everything Ariella was saying. It was well known by now among the staff at NEST that the Russian could effortlessly concentrate on more than one subject at the same time. But would it hurt the man to lift his head up and look up at the screen once in a while?

“Let me say,” the woman with the steel spine was telling those who had assembled in the conference room, “that I and everyone else at NEST is relieved
and delighted that all of you have returned safely, and that the Decepticon threat has been further diminished through your stalwart actions. But while the danger has been reduced, it has certainly not been eliminated.”

“Indeed.” Optimus’s deep voice boomed from where he sat in the expansive chamber off to their left. “So long as Starscream remains at large neither Autobots nor humans can ever rest or be completely at peace. While we have dealt most satisfactorily with a number of his followers, there may be others here on Earth whose presence has yet to be revealed.”

Ariella nodded and turned back to the wall screen. Employing supple hand gestures, she called up a new series of images. Lennox leaned forward intently. While the subject matter was immediately recognizable, all but a few locations were not. Ariella continued.

“Your recent encounters have led to the assumption that a rogue element of Decepticons, working independently of Starscream, have been trying to acquire extensive terrestrial sources of energy. In keeping with an understandable desire to carry out their activities outside the view of NEST, the locations of these sources have become more and more obscure. The Decepticons sought to make use of unexploited hydrocarbon power in the deep Amazon and potential nuclear energy in remote northwest Australia.”

“That won’t happen anymore.” Kaminari sounded completely confident. “Now that we know what they’re after, we can anticipate their next move.” She looked over at Lennox, who nodded back politely.

“To a certain extent that is true,” Ariella agreed.
“While our network of surveillance satellites keyed to detecting Decepticon transmissions continues to expand its coverage with each new launch, there are still gaps and interrupts in our coverage. There are many hiding places on the Earth’s surface, and we cannot keep a satellite above every potential energy source.” As she spoke, the screen behind her supplied images that underscored her words.

“But we
can
maintain a watch on the sites most likely to tempt them. Unlike Kariba–Cahorra Bassa, hydroelectric sources like Itaipu or Grand Coulee draw hundreds or thousands of onlookers daily. Those large dams that do not receive such large numbers of visitors are now under constant scrutiny. Oil and gas facilities such as those in the Middle East, Siberia, and even offshore Brazil are the focus of several of our satellites as well as on-site attention. Needless to say, every operating nuclear plant on the planet is already equipped with an extensive security system. In addition, undeveloped uranium deposits are now subject to regular checks.” She looked around the room as the screen dimmed.