He was surprised to see that the stranger was a woman. He was further disconcerted when she stepped into the light of one of the portholes. Her head was shaved and there were strange marks on it.
“Captain Lonsky, at your service,” he said in English, as that was the language the messages had been transmitted in.
The woman paused and looked at him as if he were in her way. “Captain,” she said. “My name is Souris, Professor Souris. I was sent here to make sure you are ready to receive our equipment. Who is your senior scientist?”
“Tanya Zenata is my-”
“Take me to her. Now.”
Dalton forced Hammond to check everything, making sure the isolation tubes were stable and that Sybyl was properly hooked up. She was slowly coming out of her funk, and these definitive actions were helping. While she, Jackson, and Barnes were doing the checks in the presidential building, Dalton was with Mentor in the operations center building.
“Whose decision is it to bring them in on it?” Dalton asked Mentor, getting back to what he had asked him at the landing zone. “If you’re all that’s left of Nexus, isn’t it your decision?”
“I’m all that’s left of Nexus in the United States,” Mentor said. “There are other cells overseas.”
“But right now, this is an American problem,” Dalton noted.
“It’s a worldwide problem,” Mentor disagreed.
“Originating here in the States.”
The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Hammond, who had just finished running a diagnostic on Sybyl. She was holding up the CD-ROM she had taken from the computer at Bright Gate. Barnes and Jackson entered behind her.
“Before we were forced to leave Bright Gate, I found something in Sybyl,” Hammond announced. “About the first Psychic Warrior team.”
That drew the attention of Mentor, as well as Dalton, Jackson, and Barnes. She put the CD into one of the computers in the ops center.
“What about it?” Dalton asked.
“There were ten people on it,” Hammond said, looking at the monitor. “They spent time remote viewing first, then gradually ran tests with their avatars. All this happened close to Bright Gate. Then they conducted a mission. Professor Souris was the one running the operation back at Bright Gate.”
Dalton glanced across at Jackson, then back to Hammond. “What kind of mission?”
“That it doesn’t say. I only have what Sybyl tracked. The team went over to the virtual plane and then made several jumps. And then nothing. Everyone flat-lined.”
“Where did they jump to?” Jackson asked.
“It doesn’t say exactly yet. They were all together. Somewhere…” Hammond scrolled down. “Somewhere in Asia. China maybe. Or India. Wait a second. Okay. I’ve got their planned jump points. The last one they checked in at was Mount Everest. Right on top.”
“ Mount Everest?” Dalton considered that. “And then?”
“Then they made one more jump close by and they all disappeared.”
“What happened to the bodies?” Jackson asked.
“ Souris had them removed from the isolation tubes. As soon as she took them off of Sybyl’s support, they all died. All signs of the team members were removed. She attempted to remove all material from Sybyl about the team. Did a pretty good job of it actually. It’s taken me all this time just to learn this. And then she left the project and they brought Jenkins in, telling him the new team he was given was the first team.”
“So what was that team looking for?” Barnes asked. “Any ideas?”
“ Mount Everest.” Jackson was thoughtful. “That’s where the Droza were.”
“And maybe still are,” Dalton said. He faced Mentor. “Tell them.”
Mentor hesitated.
“We are now Nexus,” Dalton told him.
“ ‘Nexus’?” Jackson repeated.
“If you don’t tell them, I will,” Dalton said. “I’m not lying anymore.”
“You’re under orders,” Mentor said. “You don’t-”
“A piece of paper shown to me in the dark by a man who’s dead now,” Dalton cut him off. “I know for sure I swore an oath to defend this country, and right now I’m seeing a threat and I think my fellow soldiers here need to know what’s going on in order to fight that threat.”
“All right,” Mentor snapped, his first display of emotion since Dalton had met him.
As he briefed Jackson, Barnes, and Hammond on what he had already told Dalton, the sergeant major tried to put the pieces together. When Mentor was done, Jackson was the first to speak.
“It all fits. The Priory and the Mithrans have been fighting for ages, but since each is on a different plane, it hasn’t amounted to much.”
“And now we’ve managed,” Dalton said, “to break the barrier between the virtual and real with our technology. No wonder they’re fighting over HAARP and Bright Gate and Aura.”
Hammond was shaking her head. “My God. Do you realize what you just said? Our technology. It isn’t our technology. It’s technology we’re making for them. For the Priory. They were behind Souris from the very beginning, weren’t they?”
Mentor shrugged. “We don’t know. We were late catching on to the significance of the work she was doing, and Bright Gate and HAARP were already established before she defected.”
“ ‘Defected’?” Dalton snorted. “Don’t you think the Mithrans recruited her? So they could have access to the same technology the Priory was using? The Priory invented Bright Gate and sent that first Psychic Warrior team to try to attack the Mithrans. They must still be located somewhere in the Himalayas. In Shangri-la, or Shambhala, whatever you want to call it,” he added, glancing at Jackson.
“And the Priory lost,” he continued. “The first Psychic Warrior team was wiped out. So the Priory cut its losses and its interest in Bright Gate, realizing Psychic Warriors couldn’t defeat the Mithrans on their own plane, much like we couldn’t stop Chyort on the psychic plane. So they shifted their emphasis to HAARP.”
“But what good is HAARP?” Barnes asked.
Hammond answered. “If HAARP can uplink through MILSTAR and then transmit down worldwide, they can destroy everything-and everyone-on the psychic plane. And, most likely, everyone in the real plane who isn’t shielded.”
Barnes held up his hand, like a schoolchild. “I’ve got a question.”
They all turned to him.
“Who’s our enemy? The Priory? The Mithrans?”
That brought a moment of silence as they all considered the question.
“Maybe that’s the wrong question,” Dalton said. “I think we should consider both groups our enemy simply from the fact they ain’t us and both sides seem to have no problem killing people when it suits their goals. It appears that both Aura and HAARP kill people when activated. If either goes worldwide through MILSTAR, the results will be devastating.
“I think right now we need to figure out who the most immediate threat is and focus on that.”
“Let’s deal with the Ring first,” Jackson said. “They killed those Special Forces men and our people at Bright Gate. We can deal with HAARP and the Priory after that.”
“The shuttle-” Mentor began but stopped.
“What about the shuttle?” Dalton asked.
“The Columbia is launching tonight with the last MIL-STAR satellite on board. Once it deploys, MILSTAR will be operational worldwide.”
“And?” Dalton prompted.
“Eichen had a code built into the last satellite so that it couldn’t be used by HAARP.”
“Then HAARP’s not an immediate problem?” Dalton asked.
“As long as they don’t have the code.”
“And where is it?”
Mentor pointed to the wall. “Next door in Space Command. Secure inside the DefCon Four targeting and launch authorization computer. No one can get into that computer from the outside.”