“So now we wait,” Jake said.
Jake paced around the large room. He tried sitting, but couldn’t sit still, so he paced again. Thirty-six minutes later Dr. Franklin spoke. “It’s not working. We’re missing something.”
“What if it’s encrypted, just like the Phoenix Organization’s fractal communication system?” Honi asked.
“Then it would need a server,” Aaron said. “But I didn’t see one in the building.”
“Where exactly is the antenna connected?” Jake asked.
Jake, Honi, Stafford and Aaron ran out of the building and looked up.
“Back corner, opposite the front door,” Stafford shouted.
The four of them ran around the building to the back. A concrete-block room had been added onto the building. They approached with weapons drawn. No one was there. The addition had two steel doors with deadbolt locks on them. Jake used his lock pick set and opened the first door. The soft blue light greeted him as he cracked the door open.
“Same kind of electrical power generator as the relay antenna had,” Jake said. He worked on the second door. When the lock turned he opened the door slowly.
“There’s the server,” Aaron said. “It’s connected to the antenna system through the radio transmitter.”
“The encryption key!” Honi shouted. She ran back into the building and called Brett. Andropov had written the encryption key down in his notes. “Thornton’s computer. Try this as the encryption key.” She read the sequence to him.
“That’s it!” Brett said. “I’m in the system.”
“Find the individual frequencies and the code that allows the encryption system to jump to each frequency. Dr. Franklin needs that information right now.”
“He’ll have it within a few minutes,” Brett said.
Jake, Stafford and Aaron walked back into the building.
“What about the server?” Jake asked.
“We need to get the encryption system out of it first,” Honi said. “Then we can decide whether to leave it up or shut it down.” She leaned in front of the screen so Dr. Franklin could see her. “Dr. Franklin, there’s an encryption system in use for the signal to the satellite. Brett is sending you the details and the code. Can you incorporate the encryption into your transmission system?”
“Very likely. It’s coming in now. Give me a few minutes to set up the program.”
“Come on, come on,” Jake whispered to himself as he paced around again.
Honi intercepted him in his circle around the room. “It’s going to work.”
“You don’t know that. Nobody knows if it will or if it won’t.”
“If it doesn’t work, we’ll have time to try something else.”
“And if that doesn’t work? What then?”
After eighteen minutes Dr. Franklin spoke. “Encrypted program is being sent. I’ll let you know if it works.” Ten minutes later Dr. Franklin said, “We have movement! The bomb is changing its orbit. It’s moving toward the Reflector.”
“I’ll notify General Davies,” Dave said. He slapped Jake on the back twice and shook hands with Honi, Stafford and Ken. “Good Job.”
“Thank God,” Stafford said. “We stopped the solar storm from being created. We’re safe.”
The Special Forces soldiers and the members of the President’s Unit applauded. Jake, Honi, Stafford and Ken stood, deeply appreciating the recognition. After the clapping stopped, Jake turned back to Aaron. “What other programs are on the computer?”
Aaron checked. “That was it. No other programs or files. What were you hoping to see?”
“Member names, contact information, organizational chart?”
“Sorry. It appears to be a single purpose backup computer.”
“Thanks. We’ll take it back to D.C., anyway.”
“Of course.”
Jake walked outside and looked at the stars again. A waning gibbous moon was rising in the east. The night was no longer black, so now the forest trees appeared in shades of medium to dark gray. Two Army Special Forces soldiers and a medic emerged from the forest carrying a man on a stretcher. Jake quickly walked over.
“What happened to him?”
“He’s a Navy pilot,” the soldier said. “His plane was hit by a blast from the saucer. He had to bail out, but at fourteen hundred miles an hour, ejecting from the cockpit is like being in an explosion. They try to wait until the last minute to eject, but those planes fly so fast it doesn’t make a lot of difference.”
“Is he going to make it?”
“This one will,” the soldier said. “But, it’s a race against time. We have to find the others and get them out of the trees before they die.”
“How do you find them?”
“Locator beacon on the ejection seat.”
The soldiers walked over to one of the two functioning Ospreys and went up the ramp.
My God, Jake thought. These men flew those planes right at that saucer. They had to know they were going to be hit, and they would have to eject at that speed.
Another team of soldiers came out of the trees carrying a stretcher, but there was no medic with them.
“How bad is he?”
The lead soldier just shook his head.
This is the human cost of conflict, Jake thought. A group of psychopathic maniacs decide they want to own and control the world, and they are more than willing to sacrifice innocent lives in the process. Then brave people, like these soldiers, and pilots, have to risk their own lives to try to stop an even greater tragedy from happening.
Jake stood and watched as the bodies of fallen soldiers were carried into one of the Ospreys. The people involved in this nightmare would have been given a twelve-hour notice to get into their protective shelters. By then the solar storm would already have been on its way for almost eight hours.
Jake ran back into the building.
“They’re going to send the signal to go to the shelters only after they know the solar storm has been created. The act of leaving and heading for the underground shelter would tell us who is involved. But if the satellites that monitor the sun fail to show the CME as expected, they will cancel the evacuation. We’ll never know who was involved beyond the people we have already identified, and we’ll lose the most important evidence against them. We need to grab as many people as we can when they run.”
“So what are you saying?” Honi asked.
“We have to make it look like the solar storm is actually happening and on its way. That way we can arrest the people who were responsible for this threat. Otherwise, we’re going to miss all of the top-level people. I just don’t know if that’s even possible.”
Honi called Brett. “All that graphics experience you keep telling me about? You’re going to have a chance to prove it. I need you to create the graphics for a solar storm and CME and get ready to blend it into what the sun is doing now. You can use the last solar storm as a pattern. I need it to look like real life, and I need it big. I need it seamless and I need it in four hours. Can you do that?” She nodded and smiled at Jake. “I also need you to locate every satellite the earth has that monitors the sun, identify where they are in their orbits, and what kind of data they send back to earth. Get with Dr. Spencer at the Space Studies Board. You’re going to have to create the data for the other satellites, as well.” She chuckled. “Yeah, I thought you would be, now get to work. I’m going to have to call you back. I’m on a kind of private network right now, so you can’t call me.”