Veil (25 page)

“Ummm … um, yes, I believe so. My lab is
almost complete anyway.”

“Ok. You will be hearing from me or from this
person directly within the next two weeks to coordinate a way to
obtain the research from you and provide you schematics.”

Before Ken could respond, the person on the
other end terminated the call. Suren and Ken stared at each other.
Neither of them spoke and Ken shrugged his shoulders.

“Wanna hear it again?” he asked with a
childish giggle and pressed the ‘replay’ button on the base of the
new Tsay home phone.

“You know I do!” she smiled.

They’d spent part of the day shopping for a
new phone. It was one with a speakerphone and recording
capabilities. Suren also called the phone company and requested
caller identification service be added to her line.

“Right—take it away Brock Elsbeth,” Ken
grinned before the playback started.

The abrupt, matter-of-fact tone of the calls
was something he added for flair. He wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as
if Hunter indicated how Brock should conduct himself during the
calls with Suren and Ken. It all had such an air of mystery and
intrigue that it felt right to conduct the calls in that manner.
Hell, Hunter didn’t even instruct Brock not to reveal their
identities or anything like that.

Considering the risks Hunter was taking,
Brock knew it could mean life or death. On top of that, they were
dealing with an already paranoid and resourceful military, so Brock
felt he should move forward with a basic-information and
need-to-know attitude. So, he did. He figured the fact it was so
fun to talk like that was simply a little bonus.

Luckily, during their conversations through
the Terminal, Hunter always told him exactly what needed to be
communicated. Hunter provided Brock the information and instructed
him to create a script for each call with Suren and Ken. Hunter
said he was happy to be dealing with that Tsay guy’s old partner.
Brock looked up more information about Ken after that second call
and indicated to Hunter that the guy checked out.

“Good, well here’s what I need you to say.
You don’t even need him to say anything in return. You’re not
having a discussion. You’re providing information and all he needs
to do is acknowledge it,” Hunter told him during their last
communication.

For that third call with Suren and Ken, Brock
prepared two different scripts, both typed into his computer: one
in case the additional research changed the basic functions of the
device and one for if it didn’t. From what Hunter told him, and it
made sense despite not knowing what the hell the device was, things
would be much easier and smoother if the additions didn’t change
the functionality. Ken wasn’t able to tell, of course, but Brock
held his breath and sighed with relief when Ken’s reply was that
the additions were merely an issue of programming. Brock was a
little uneasy from the uncertainty of Ken’s reply but he didn’t
want to go off-script. He gave Ken the benefit of the doubt.

Twenty minutes after he hung up with Suren
and Ken following their third call, the Terminal program on Brock’s
monitor opened and the cursor blinked.

“GA,” Brock typed.

“No, you GA!” was the response.

“LOL. He thinks the additions are
programming. He already has a lab pretty much ready to go.”

“He thinks? Pretty much?”

“Whatever. Do you want me to call him
back?”

“LOL. So everything went as planned, no
hiccups? Did you tell him two weeks?”

“Yes
,
sir
.
Two weeks
.
Yes
,
sir.”

“I might get used to you calling me sir.”

“Sicko. What now?”

“So now I work with these two
knuckle
-
draggers and get this thing
finished, that’s what.”

“I mean what do I do?”

“You wait, Elizabeth.”

Hunter closed the Terminal connection before
Brock could respond to the juvenile nickname.

Motherfucker
.

Hunter Kennerly gave himself two weeks to
design and build a Veil prototype. Two weeks before he’d have Brock
travel to the District, in order to help him with the next phase of
his scheme. Brock didn’t know about that phase of the scheme yet
but Hunter knew when the time came Brock would be ready,
willing
,
and able. First, came the hard
part: designing the actual Veil device.

The
hardest
part of the hard part was
picturing how the final Veil device would look. In that aspect,
Hunter was in a bind. Once the military accepted the fact that Veil
would never be—could never be—remotely deployed the way they
initially wanted, they stopped caring so much about its design in
terms of portability. Sure, they didn’t want it to take up the size
of an entire room, and they preferred if all its functionality were
confined to a single device rather than external computers, but
they weren’t too concerned with its overall convenience.

Knowing what was in store for Veil, or at
least what he hoped and envisioned to be in store for Veil, size
and portability were things Hunter
had
to consider. Rather
than simply being used for spying and interrogation by the
military, Veil was going to be mass distributed; therefore, design
was a huge factor. Veil would never catch on quickly and spread
like wildfire if it were some large piece of ugly, foreign
technology. No, it had to inject seamlessly into the culture, like
the introduction of a new video game system. A new video game
system was exactly how Hunter began to think of it.

Hunter needed to find a way to direct the
military’s thinking back to size and portability. He had to talk
about it in their terms. He needed to get them thinking long-term
and from the front lines. If Schaffer and Pollock wouldn’t budge,
Hunter knew he still had the attention of the most important ear in
the room.

“Sure, we could make something quickly,
within a few days, hook it up to a mainframe and get you up and
running. Now that I know what we’re dealing with, sure, no
problem,” he smoothly lectured the General. “However, that doesn’t
really do you any good. Hell, you could’ve kept the original lab in
that case. Or simply replicated it.”

The General nodded and pulled down the
corners of his mouth. He couldn’t see where Hunter was going but
still trusted Hunter’s vision more than that of the other two
combined.

Hunter took the cue from General Coffman and
continued.

“You’ve got a unit out in the field. Recon or
what have you. They come across a group of insurgents. There’s a
conflict. The unit assumes control of the situation. Now they have
an insurgent in their possession. An insurgent, right there in
front of them, and he has the exact information the commander needs
to know to keep pushing his unit forward without losing time or
breaking formation. Do you want the commander to have to wait while
the insurgent is transported to a location where Veil is set up and
can be utilized? Or do you want the commander to be able to whistle
at a grunt and signal him to bring over a pack containing a Veil
device that’s ready to be used right then, right there, to extract
the information they need? Because that’s what it comes down to,
General: immediacy. And immediacy in this case requires Veil be as
compact, portable, and accessible as possible. It will be a weapon
of war. As dramatic as it sounds, it could mean life or death. Veil
will become an essential part of every single combat inventory
across the board and, rather than waiting to redesign it for that
purpose sometime down the road, we can deliver that to them right
here, right now—from the very beginning.”

Hunter surprised himself; he was always
pretty persuasive and charismatic but that took it to a whole other
level. He knew what he needed to get across but he pretty much made
up the entire spiel on the spot. He channeled his dad and some
Battlestar Galactica
rhetoric to give it that dramatic and
authentic touch. Wordy, maybe, but it got the point across. And as
an added bonus, he could tell it pissed off Schaffer and Pollock.
Not because they disagreed but because they weren’t the ones in the
General’s face saying it. Everyone in the room knew that was what
mattered
,
because that was what the
General respected.

“So why are we having this conversation?” was
the General’s response. He got up from his chair and walked toward
the door where Schaffer and Pollock stood, both with their arms
crossed.

As he walked out of the conference room, the
General paused long enough to thumb over his shoulder toward Hunter
and bark at the two military scientists. “Do what he says. He makes
you two look like a pair of fucking idiots.”

The General left the lab and before the doors
sealed behind him, Schaffer and Pollock were already headed to lock
themselves away in their separate offices. They left Hunter alone
in his makeshift cubbyhole in the conference room. Although Hunter
wanted the two to be cooperative and on his side as much as
possible, he couldn’t help but crack a grin at their mutual
passive-aggressive hissy fits.

However, he still wasn’t any closer to a
design. All he did was ensure the design lived up to his specific
requirements without drawing any suspicion or resistance from the
two other scientists. In terms of how the end product would look,
he drew a complete blank. Aesthetic design was never one of his
strong suits and at no point did that bother him.

Developing the various technologies
throughout his career was achievement enough for him, and not once
did he put any thought at the outset into how each device would
look or feel. The only reason he ever revisited a design was
because Brock looked so ridiculous in the skullcap with wires
coming out of it that Hunter himself would’ve refused to be seen
with him in public. Best friend on wheels or not.

Hunter knew overall how the device needed to
function. He knew what components, circuitry,
programming
,
and power would be required.
And, as long as Tsay’s partner was correct, the only immediate
changes when they met up would be ones of programming. Hunter
decided the best thing to do was use his lack of expertise in the
design realm as a way to engage the other two scientists enough to
keep them appeased and distracted. With only a little coaxing and
ego stroking, he’d get the two to forget all about the fact that,
once again, he essentially made fools of them. And in front of the
General, no less.

Heh, stroking.

“What?”

“That didn’t really go like I planned,” he
tried to assuage Schaffer as he barged into his office
unannounced.