“There’s a fire! Listen, there’s a fire, what do you want me to do, burn up?”
“A fire?”
“See the smoke! A fire!” Danny pointed.
“Oh, okay, sorry.” The guard ran off to help fight the fire.
Danny limped away.
#
Wiley had his laptop sitting on his knees, screen open and displaying a page in the USFMC online distribution catalog. The page was titled: SILICON GARBAGE BAGS, Unit Prices and Sizes, and had a list of figures below. Aaron and Savina sat on each side of him in folding chairs, watching the screen. They were silent, waiting. A moth flew around in the tent, banging again and again into their lantern.
“Would someone please kill that bug?” Wiley said.
Suddenly the screen on his little laptop computer filled with garbage; jumbled letters, numbers, and symbols in no pattern whatsoever. Wiley keyed a couple times, and the screen cleared then filled again.
“Is that here or there?” Aaron asked.
“It’s not us. It’s coming in over the link.”
“That’s it, then. He set it off.”
“Okay, let’s cut.”
“What happened?” Savina asked. “What did Danny do?”
“He scrambled the Sacramento mainframe so that we can tap into the data line while they’re too busy to notice.” Wiley tapped on the laptop’s keyboard. “Okay, your program is up, Aaron. It’s now or naught.”
“Now. Let’s do it.”
“Okay.” Wiley set the program running.
Savina watched, waiting. Nothing seemed to be happening. “Is it working?”
“We don’t know yet,” Wiley said. “The tapper has to warm the optic cable to a certain temperature before it splices in. It has to warm up, cut through with the megalink, and bond itself without screwing up the alignment of the individual fibers. That’s fifty-thousand fibers at least. If just one of them gets so out of alignment that the megalink can’t burn a channel through, they’ll not only be able to tell their line is compromised, but they’ll also know exactly where we are.”
“In other words, if this doesn’t work we have to get out of here fast,” Aaron told her.
“When will we know?” Savina asked.
Aaron glanced at Wiley. “Good question.”
“Yeah,” Wiley said. “And one we’ve been asking ourselves for quite some time now.” He glanced at the screen, and pointed out blinking words to Savina. “It’s burning channels through now. This is going to take about ten minutes. JTV in LaLa Land is trying to reestablish contact with Sacramento but Sacramento is down. If Sac goes back online before the megalink is done they might know we’re here. Orrr … they might think they’re still having trouble because of Sac’s problem.”
“We want them to think the EMP blast in Sacramento was a terrorist attack,” Aaron told her. “We don’t know if they’ll assume that or not.”
Savina didn’t ask what an EMP blast was – it sounded awful.
“What else would they think it is?”
“A diversion, which it was.”
“In which case,” Wiley said, “they’ll be looking for exactly this kind of thing.”
“Oh.” Savina was beginning to understand.
Minutes passed. Wiley, watching the screen, said, “Uh-oh.”
“Sac’s back?” Aaron said.
“Yes. They recovered fast. Our AI kicked in.”
“You guys have an AI?” Savina asked.
“Small one, not conscious. It’s for programming, mostly.
Right now it’s attempting to simulate a out-phasing.”
“A what?”
“It’s trying to convince LaLa and Sac that they’re still having problems.” He looked tense. So did Aaron.
“Savina, we’ve got a job for you,” Aaron said. He motioned for her to follow.
They stepped outside the tent and walked by starlight to the jeep. He opened the back hatch and rummaged around, pulling out a pair of military-grade spotters. He held them out to her by the strap.
Savina took them, put the strap around her neck. “What should I look for?”
“Anything. Anything that’s coming toward us at all. Can you climb one of these oak trees?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, be careful. Let us know if you see anything.”
Savina nodded, and watched as he turned and walked toward the tent. He assumes I know how to use these, she thought, holding the spotters. Maybe it’s because I didn’t ask? She liked their feel, they were light and fit her grip; she turned them on and put them up to her eyes, looking toward the stars. The stars were so bright it was startling. The spotters began picking out the man-made objects it could identify, and locked in on certain ones so that when her hands wavered it held the image true and steady. One image changed from a star to an oblong sliver object. Glowing letters identified it as an O’Neal cylinder. Jeeze, she thought, this one’s a lot more powerful than Dad’s.
Savina climbed one of the bigger oaks near the tent, pulling herself up branch by branch until she was up near the top and clear of most of the leaves. Putting the spotters to her eyes she looked to the north, toward Zone Sacramento. She saw a pretty view of distant lights, but nothing was coming at them. The lights sparkled and shimmered like candle flames.
She looked to the west, toward her home zone, and thought about Dodd. Somewhere out there on all those lights was Dodd’s apartment building. One of those lights is the street light in front on his corner. I’m sending you a psychic message, she thought. Can you hear me? I hope so! I love you!
She smiled. Oh the thoughts I’ve been thinking about you. You would be shocked!
She looked to the south, scanning slowly. The spotter picked out all moving objects with brackets, indicated the direction of travel and, occasionally, identified the actual object. A whole cluster of objects flashed. It indicated they were coming dead-on.
Wiley called up to her. “You can come down now,” he said happily. “The tap is complete and they didn’t notice a thing.”
Savina told him about the lights. “There’s five of them, and they’re coming at over Mach four.”
Wiley cursed and started yelling for Aaron. Savina continued to watch. In the enhanced view she could see amazing details. A new readout in red stated “ETA 00:03:47” and was counting down.
She yelled out the new information, which agitated the two hackers even more. Aaron was starting up the jeep as Wiley threw equipment into it. It sputtered and rattled for a moment, then settled down to a low rumble.
“Has it identified them?” Wiley yelled up.
“It says, ‘CT-969 Military transport and four Spinner 522
wingless fighters.’”
“Holy shit! Savina, get down here, we’ve got to be out of here now!”
Savina began her climb down. She was frightened, but there was no sense of panic. She grasped every limb and made every foothold secure, being careful, keeping in mind that a fall might not kill her but could easily abort her child. There was a tightness in her stomach and electricity running through her veins, and it felt good. Four Spinner fighters would be strafing this area and troops would be dropping by parachute, and she had less than 3 minutes to get away. I’m having fun, she thought. This is fun. She couldn’t believe it.
She dropped from the last limb and landed lightly, then ran and jumped into the jeep. The jeep tore off to the west, heading for more cover. Two minutes later they pulled to the lee of a gutted house and stopped. Wiley took the spotters from Savina and jumped out.
“Are we safe, here?” Savina asked.
“Not really,” Aaron said. “They can track us by the warmth of our tire tracks. It’s just that they’d be less likely to strafe an area this close to the city.”
“I see ‘em,” Wiley said. “They’re not slowing. They’re not losing altitude.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure about that. Who knows what they plan on. They could drop a bomb for all we know.”
“We’re not out of range of a purple.”
“They wouldn’t drop a purple around here,” Wiley said. “No way. All the damage to the crops? They wouldn’t do it.” He lowered the spotters, walking back to the jeep. He was smiling.
“What?” Savina said.
“We’re stupid. We’re sitting on a straight line between LaLa Land and Sacramento. They passed right by, heading for Sacramento.
We’re paranoid idiots.”
“Better than dead paranoid idiots,” Aaron said, then laughed.
Wiley got back in. “Well, I guess we can celebrate now.” He turned to Savina. “If you think it’s okay for your little one, we’ll pop a bottle of champagne.”
“I think the baby could handle a little,” Savina said. “Just a sip.”
Aaron turned the jeep around and they headed back.
#
There was a loud clunk and Dodd awoke with a start. There was light but all he could see was something black, and his eyes wouldn’t focus on it. The black opened like a giant door and Dodd was looking at blue sky. Orange punk-resurrection style hair and a old rough-hewn face eclipsed the sky, staring down at him.