Caprice dropped to her knees, hands pressed against her ears, mouth opened in a silent scream. Foster staggered back, feeling a spike of red-hot pain ripping through his brain. Blood seeped out of his ears, nose, and eyes. Within seconds, he collapsed on the steel plating. The body twitched once, again, and then was still.
With a dead crew, the Warde continued straight on course, cutting across the wake of the other ship and disappearing into the darkness.
The Aura II slowed to a halt. Two Zodiacs were lowered over the side, each filled with a load of cocaine. The rubber boats headed directly for shore. As soon as the boats were clear, the yacht’s engines powered up and it cut a wide turn, heading back to the southeast.
There was no where, no when, no form, no substance. Time and space, the two linchpins of human existence in the real world, were a vague memory, like the taste of an exotic food that he could not recall the name of and didn’t know whether he had really tasted or merely dreamed of.
The entity that was the psychic projection of Jonathan Raisor was trying to form something that he might call self. It was one step worse than that feeling of being between sleep and consciousness, when one was somewhat aware of the outer world, but commands from the brain couldn’t make it through the nervous system to move the body, and the mind, the self, was frozen in place unable to influence the real world. Raisor was having a difficult time connecting the scattered images to form a cohesive thought to even begin to send a command. And where would he send it, with his body frozen in its isolation tube back at Bright Gate?
All he knew was gray, stretching in all directions around him. Even his psychic essence was gray-a formless fog of gray inside a limitless cloud of gray. Where did he end and the outside begin? And what was the outside in this virtual plane? And where was the real world-beyond, below, outside, inside of-with respect to the virtual?
The one thing Raisor’s psychic essence clung to, one overriding emotion, was revenge. This had been done to his sister. His body, like hers, now floated inside an isolation tank at Bright Gate. If he still existed, and there were moments when even he doubted it, that meant she still might exist somewhere on the psychic plane.
The way he was, he knew he could not do what he needed. He had to find Bright Gate. That was one firm thought that echoed in his psyche. But to find Bright Gate, he needed Bright Gate’s power and computer to give him form and substance, and for the ability to move along the virtual plane and then reenter the real world.
He went back to the only thing keeping him from dissipating: He had been betrayed, his power and connection to Bright Gate cut off. As his sister had been betrayed. Revenge was the one thing keeping what there was of him intact, an emotion more powerful than the dullness of the psychic plane he floated in. Without it, he felt that he would blow away, like fog in a stiff breeze, until there would be nothing of him left.
Every so often he sensed something in the grayness. Something or perhaps even someone. But always at a distance, as if avoiding his presence. Perhaps the disembodied psyches of others like him, spirits lost without being able to get back to their bodies; maybe even his sister. Or perhaps Psychic Warriors from Bright Gate, going about their business. But somehow he picked up that these distant presences were something entirely different. And that they sensed him and avoided him deliberately. The remote viewers at Bright Gate had reported such presences from the very beginning of the program.
Like a high-power searchlight, a beam pierced the gray. Raisor turned toward it, willing his essence to move, uncertain if it was possible. He wrapped himself around the hate he felt for those who had abandoned him. For those who had betrayed his sister. He was unable to judge the distance, but almost imperceptibly the beam of light drew closer.
Just as quickly, the light was gone and he was in the gray once more. If he had lungs and a mouth, he would have screamed his dismay, but he could only feel the despair. Whatever it was, the beam was the only change he had experienced in however long he had been lost here.
If it had come once, it would come again. Raisor’s entity had nothing other to do than to wait and be ready. He was a man lost at sea waiting for a life preserver that had come tantalizingly close.
2
Against the darkness of space, a sliver of light appeared as the payload doors of the shuttle Endeavourbegan opening. On the seventh day of an eight-day mission, the crew of the Endeavour had already accomplished all the tasks that NASA had publicly announced for it prior to the flight. However, NASA had not yet told the public that. The press releases issued each day by the agency spread out the announced missions to cover all eight days, allowing the last two days to be used on the unannounced, classified assignments. It was the way most shuttle flights were conducted. Without the influx of money from the Pentagon, NASA would hardly be able to launch a third of the flights that it did. And the last thing the Pentagon wanted was publicity for the missions it assigned to the shuttles.
Each cargo bay door was sixty feet long and fifteen in diameter. They locked in the open position, opening the bay to space. The bay was practically empty, the three civilian satellites the shuttle had brought into orbit with it already deployed.
In the airlock at the lower bottom of the flight deck, a single man was donning an EMUS-Extravehicular Mobility Unit Spacesuit-with the assistance of one of the crew. The man climbing into the suit was not officially listed on the shuttle’s crew; he was known only by the code name Eagle Six. He had boarded the shuttle the night before the launch, hidden among the swarm of workers making last-minute preparations. When the official crew made their way to the shuttle under the glare of TV cameras, he was already on board, ready to go.
Eagle Six was the most experienced astronaut at EVA, extravehicular activity, in the United States, having done twelve similar missions, yet he wasn’t a member of NASA. Officially, he was a member of the National Security Agency, at least according to government records.
Once Eagle Six insured that all the seals were secure, his assistant placed the PLSS-Primary Life Support System-on his back. Once that was working, the astronaut cleared the airlock, sealing the door to the crew compartment behind him. He was breathing pure oxygen now, and would for several minutes. He waited patiently, reviewing in his mind the actions he would be taking. He had learned the importance of being certain of every movement he was going to make before he made it. Space was a completely unforgiving environment.
The pilot, on the upper flight deck, had their target in sight. The first thing he had spotted was the large solar panels. As they got closer he could make out the main body of the long, rectangular satellite perpendicular to the panels. It was dotted with several circular parabolic antennas pointing earthward along with other types of antennas.
With delicate touches on his maneuvering thrusters, the pilot edged the shuttle closer and closer to the satellite, at the same time orienting the craft so that the bay would face it. It was a slow and intricate process, the last fifty meters taking fifteen minutes of tiny adjustments.
When he was done, the satellite was directly “above” the shuttle cargo bay. Inside the airlock, Eagle Six depressurized the bay and opened the door to the cargo bay. He took a moment to look up at the satellite, then turned to his right. In the front, port side of the bay was the FSS-Flight Support Station-which held the MMU, or Manned Maneuvering Unit.