Never Again Read online

  “Exactly right.” Burt nodded, and stared at the soldier, seeing the man in a different light. This was clearly an officer who had his head on straight.

  “But sir, why do it in the initialization code? Couldn’t you more easily have done it in the operating system?”

  Not able to keep the smile off his face, Burt glanced at the curious soldier. “Peters, that’s an excellent question. My goal here is to not allow someone to get access to the controls. The reason I’m doing this the way I’m doing it is more for paranoia’s sake than anything. I agree that it’d be easier to just make a change to a driver like I did for that network filter I added in the signal room. But let’s just say that, if by some miracle, someone managed to come onto the base and wanted to bypass what I’ve done. They could physically reboot the machine and bypass the control software through several methods. Probably the hardest one to defend against would be if the hacker injected new commands through a dual-ported memory attack.

  In this case I’m adding the requirement for both a retinal scan verification and a thumbprint verification into the XIP code.”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “XIP?”

  “It stands for execute in place. It’s a small section of the initialization code that is running from a read-only-memory area in the hardware and isn’t dependent on the computer’s memory. Basically, the most secure portion of the platform’s initialization is prior to initializing the machine’s memory. With dual-ported memory, hackers have historically been able to inject logic into systems that bypassed some security measures. It’s an old technique, but hard to defend against with software. By doing it the way I am, about the only thing anyone can hope to do is to just take a sledgehammer to the server, which still won’t give them control of the base.”

  Suddenly, one of the soldiers’ voices coming from the remote video device yelled, “Confirmed sighting!”

  “Oh shit,” the lieutenant growled. The other soldiers who’d set up a perimeter around the control room were beginning to whisper when the video from all of the cameras flickered and began broadcasting static.

  “Hey,” Burt exclaimed. A gnawing sense of concern raced through him. “What happened to the video, did something blow up?”

  “No, sir,” said the lieutenant. “They’ve initiated a cloaking operation. It’s blocking any remote signal that could set off whatever they’ve found. However, we should still be able to hear what’s going on.” He raised the volume, and even though Burt couldn’t see what was going on, he heard the sharp orders coming from someone in charge of the patrol.

  “Clear the area. Give me 250 meters, and I mean now!

  “Heller, Smith, and Woods, cordon off the area. Rothfuss, alert the other teams that we’ve got something and call the EOD guys over.”

  The lieutenant explained, “The patrol is calling in our bomb disposal unit.”

  Burt began compiling the computer updates and kept glancing over at the remote video device.

  The tension was thick as some of the soldiers filtered in and out of the room, listening to the chatter coming from the patrols.

  The lieutenant raised the volume for one of the static-filled images and commented, “This is the EOD team’s audio signal.”

  “Hey, Zimmer, what’s going on? What’s the Talon reporting back to us?”

  Burt glanced sideways at the lieutenant. “Talon?”

  “That’s what they call the bomb disposal robot.”

  “Sergeant, it looks like we’ve got a shitload of IEDs packed in a crate. Spectral analysis suggests that we’ve got Cyclotol, roughly a seventy-thirty mixture in the containers, but there isn’t an activation—no wait, I found them. Sir, there’s a bag of piezoelectric igniters, but they’re not hooked up to the explosives yet.”

  Another soldier broke in. “Zimmer, can the Talon safely extract the crate? If so, there’s a crater about two klicks northeast of your position.”

  “Roger that. Talon is lifting the crate now; I’ll follow half a klick behind.”

  As the bomb disposal team transported the explosives to a distant location, Burt listened intently. He replaced the firmware on the motherboard of the server, put the machine back together, and applied power.

  “Sergeant, the crater wall is too steep to navigate, it’s your call.”

  “Zimmer, just back away to the limit of your remote and dump Talon and its payload in the crater. We’ll leave them both behind.”

  “Roger that, backing away.”

  It was at that time the video suddenly flickered back to life, and Burt saw a team of soldiers returning from a distant open area on one of the lunar vehicles. He turned to the lieutenant and asked, “Why dump it all in the crater?”

  The soldier frowned. “Normally, they’d blow it up from a safe distance back on Earth, but up here, there isn’t a good safe distance because any explosion could carry shrapnel for miles. Sticking the bombs far away from anything and having them surrounded by steep crater walls is about as safe as it gets, considering the situation.”

  Burt nodded, and as the server turned on, it prompted him for identification. He leaned into the visor for the retinal scanner he’d installed and pressed his left thumb on the fingerprint reader. Within a second, his ID was confirmed, and the server’s administration console was up and running.

  Grabbing the phone once again from the lieutenant, Burt dialed Neeta’s number and listened to the crackling sound of the ring originating over two-hundred-thousand miles away.

  “Hello?”

  “Neeta, I’m about to program in a navigation setting for the Moon. I need your current estimates based on the survey you’re doing for when we’ll leave and the exact angle of deployment.”

  “Hold on, give me a second. Some of the debris at the center has started to move outward and we’re seeing some of the first collisions. The dominos are starting to fall, so that’s good. I’ll send the phone you’ve contacted me with the ICRS coordinates for the multi-hop trip, timings, etc. It’ll be like threading a needle, but assuming we can get up to full power, we’ll all glide past the first wave of crap and then cut directly toward our final destination. Sending you the navigation plot points now.”

  Burt felt the phone vibrate as a message came in. Pulling it away from his ear, he looked at it and nodded. “Got it, Neeta. Thanks again, you’re a life saver.”

  “Of course I am.” Neeta’s voice came across as uncharacteristically jovial. “I’m expecting you to remember that the next time it comes to my yearly evaluation. At the very least, you can get some decent coffee in this place.”

  Burt snorted as he barely controlled a laugh. “Neeta, you’re something else. I’ll see what I can do. Thanks again, and I’ll talk to you later.”

  The phone connection ended, and with a satisfied feeling of a job nearly completed, Burt typed in the prescheduled launch time, direction, and acceleration rates, locking them all into the system’s navigation control system.

  The server accepted the input and Burt, with a final set of keystrokes, locked the workstation and ceremoniously wiped his hands. “Well, I’ve taken care of the unauthorized access issues.”

  The lieutenant nodded and motioned to the other soldiers, “Okay, Doctor Radcliffe is done. The sooner we get our asses back to the transit area and off this rock, the sooner you all get some R&R time.”

  Burt patted the top of the server and whispered a little prayer in its direction.

  “I hope I don’t need to look at you again for another nine or ten months.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Bill Jacobs, the Assistant Secretary of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, crouched next to Dave’s seat and warned, “We’ll be landing soon and I want to make sure you’re straight on the protocols for dealing with some of the other nation-states’ representatives. You’ll be greeted at the airport by Chinese officials and they’ll likely be hosting a welcome dinner in your honor. The mood will almost certainly remain
cordial, and I wouldn’t suggest discussing anything outside of what the president has already publicly divulged.

  “However, tomorrow you’ll be meeting with North Korean government officials, and I can’t stress enough that you can’t leak any of the details regarding what you’ve been working on. They’re a pariah state for a reason, and even I can’t predict what they’ll do from one moment to another.”

  Dave shook his head and smiled politely as the man droned on and on about what he was supposed to do and not do. When the plane banked lightly and the man paused, Dave interjected in a quiet but firm tone, “Listen to me, Bill, and let’s get this straight. I know you’re trying to do your job, but I won’t take my cues on what I will or won’t discuss from you. I’m quite capable of handling myself, and I’ll be damned if I’ll have someone who doesn’t even know what’s really going on tell me what to do.”

  Bill opened his mouth and Dave squeezed his fingertips together, motioning the man to shut his mouth. “No, I’m serious. When we’re done, I’ll say you did a fine job and were very helpful, but don’t get in my way or we’ll have serious issues. I’ll look to you to help me get over any cultural improprieties that I’d otherwise not be aware of with the Chinese officials, but that’s the extent of it. Am I understood?”

  With a concerned expression, Bill tried to protest, “But—”

  “Am I understood?” Dave interrupted, and repeated his question with a louder voice.

  The Assistant Secretary’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Yes. I’ll do what I can to make this as easy of a meeting as possible.”

  With a sympathetic expression, Dave clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’m sure you will, but realize that once I meet with the Supreme Leader, not a peep out of you. In fact, I don’t even want you in the room. I know this guy, he can be ... skittish at times.”

  The lights flashed in the airplane as the pilot spoke over the intercom. “We’ve just received clearance from the tower at the Shanghai Pudong Airport. The weather is clear and we should be touching down on runway 17L in approximately twelve minutes. Please fasten your seatbelts.”

  With a curt nod, Bill stood. “Understood. I’ll go take my seat.”

  As he walked to the back of the large plane, Dave noticed Bella returning from the bathroom and winked. “You have perfect timing, my dear. Looks like we’ll soon figure out what Frank has up his sleeves.”

  Bella sat in the plush leather chair situated directly across from Dave and buckled herself in. “I still don’t understand how he could have created something that looks so much like what we saw.”

  With his elbow resting on the arm of his seat, Dave rested his head on his palm and tapped his cheek. “Trust me, I’ve been wondering the same thing myself for the last three days.” He glanced at Bella and explained, “Frank is an odd one. He’s brilliant, or more to the point he’s got some ideas that are sheer genius, but he’s really sometimes very much like the archetype of a mad scientist. If he were a cave man during the Stone Age, he’d have invented a remote control for a TV, convinced that it was revolutionary, which it would be, but have no idea what to do with it. As for what inspires some of his ideas, and how he manages to get them to work, your guess would be as good as mine. Nonetheless, some of those ideas are almost impossible to ignore, this being one of them.”

  Bella glanced out the window as the plane banked for its approach. “It’s so dark down there, I’d have thought we’d see some of the city lights by now.”

  “Almost all of Shanghai is barely above sea level. The entire area has probably been evacuated and I’d wager that the power is mostly all shut off, with the exception of the Renaissance hotel where we’ll all be staying and the Shanghai Municipal Government Building.” Dave scanned the rest of the sparsely occupied commercial jet and he found it somewhat bizarre that there were nearly one-hundred heavily-armed men on the plane with him. All of them served as his escort and protection. Many were fluent in Mandarin and Shanghainese.

  “Is Frank going to be at the same hotel?” Bella asked.

  “I really don’t know.” Dave stared into the darkness of the night and shrugged as he saw the dim hint of the partially powered DefenseNet ring. “We’re not meeting with him until tomorrow morning at the government building. I think they’re taking it easy on us and letting us get a night’s rest after dinner. I just don’t think they realize how little time we have.”

  Hearing the sound of the jet’s wheels being lowered, Dave’s queasy stomach protested. He’d never seen such darkness below him, and couldn’t tell if they were one thousand feet or five feet off the ground.

  The only visible lights nearby were blinking from the plane’s wingtips, and suddenly Dave caught the reflection of what had to be the plane’s landing lights bouncing off of the ocean.

  With the fear of the plane plunging into the water, Dave’s heart raced. He gripped his armrests. Holding his breath, he watched as the flickering light revealed the water getting closer and closer. Just when he felt sure the plane was going to dive into the ocean, Dave felt a jolt as the rear wheels made contact with solid ground.

  Letting go of a deep breath, he collapsed against the back of his seat as Bella smiled, looking as relaxed as could be.

  He didn’t need her to say what she was thinking. Dave knew very well that with the president and the rest of the world’s leaders looking to him to rescue them from certain annihilation, they weren’t about to send him on a flight that they figured would crash.

  As the plane taxied to a nearby gate, some of the plain-clothed agents readied for their departure, and Dave silently hoped that Frank, by some miracle, had something that would be the key to fixing their problems.

  ###

  Despite the presence of at least a dozen dehumidifiers scattered throughout the large conference room, Dave still detected the musty odor of a building that had had its power turned off for an extended period.

  The room was easily one-hundred-feet long and thirty-feet wide, and dominating the length of the room stood a massive table with enough chairs to seat eighty people.

  Dave reached behind him and patted Bella’s leg. He frowned as he recalled the eerie trip from the hotel through the empty downtown streets to the main government building of Shanghai. “It’s kind of bizarre being in one of the largest cities in the world, yet it’s a ghost town. I suppose we’ve both been so busy that there was no way for us to see the effect of the evacuations first-hand.” The pang of guilt he felt over so many millions of people being displaced grew as the emptiness of the government building illustrated how his advice had affected people.

  Bella, who sat next to Dave at the otherwise empty conference table, reached to him and rubbed the back of his neck. “You’re doing this for everyone’s safety. They’ll forever be grateful.”

  With a slight shake of his head, Dave sighed. “I’m not looking for gratitude. I just hope I’m not blamed for the end of life as we know it.”

  A door at the end of the conference room swung open, and the voice of someone yelling in Korean echoed loudly through the room.

  Dave stood as a short, chubby man entered, walking backward, all the while yelling at a harried set of Asian men wheeling a large wooden crate into the room.

  Once the crate reached the conference room table, the men made quick work of disassembling the container, revealing an object encased in thousands of Styrofoam pellets.

  The short man approached the object and brushed the pellets away as the workers bowed deeply and backed from the conference room. Only when the doors shut did the chubby man turn, and Dave couldn’t help but smile at the sight of North Korea’s Supreme Leader.

  Frank smiled ear-to-ear. He walked briskly toward Dave. “My friend, it has been so many years!” The two shook hands briskly, and as Dave turned to introduce Bella, Frank stared dumbfounded.

  “Frank, this is Bella, my wife.” Dave felt odd saying that, since they’d never formally marr
ied, but nothing could have been closer to the truth. He couldn’t imagine life without her.

  Bella kept her distance, which was normal for her, but Frank seemed stunned to see her for some reason. Maybe he’d never seen anyone with red hair? Dave shrugged and quickly changed the subject. “Frank, I studied everything you sent me, and I’ve got lots of questions. But first, can you show me what you brought? It looks exactly like the designs you sent.”

  Frank ripped his gaze away from Bella and nodded excitedly. “Yes, yes. Let me show you. It’s a very good design.”

  As they walked to the far end of the table, Frank pointed at the large metal ball and said, “Let me show you what I have.”

  Dave studied the object as Frank began rapidly describing some of its features.

  The object was about three-feet wide and was prevented from rolling by the wooden base of the crate and the Styrofoam ring it sat on. It uncannily resembled the sphere they’d recently seen at Area 51, only larger.

  Frank pointed to the control panel on the side of the ball and pressed a button. The sphere snapped open, revealing its inner workings. “As you can see, the panel allows you to open and close the engine.” He reached inside the ball and pointed at the finely wrapped flat cables encircling the inner circumference of the sphere. “I have two layers of superconductive ribbon wrapping the interior, one to conduct the power of the engine to the top, and the other to keep the electrical field in control.”

  “Superconductive ribbon? At room temperature? What’s it made of?”

  Frank smiled and puffed his chest out a bit. “An improvement over anything anyone’s ever done. It’s an improved version of stanene, but without the magnetic effects that kill high-current superconductivity. These ribbons should be able to transmit more power than we can ever produce from all of our power plants combined.”

  Dave stared at Frank with incredulity. He had a lot of questions about how such a thing had been created, but if what Frank said was true, it would be an unheard-of advance in the material sciences.