Kelly Reynolds saw the two SEALs through the guardian. She fought to open her eyes, to be able to control her lungs and mouth. To shout a warning.
“Are you all right?” Popeye McGraw asked the boy.
There was no answer as the boy came forward, now less than twenty feet away. He was pale and thin, a ghostly stick figure in the chamber’s glow.
“How did you get here?” Popeye asked, his finger still over the trigger, eyes shifting from the boy, to the pyramid/woman, to the unceasing line of robots.
“My parents,” the boy said in a cracked voice. “Please help me.” He held up his hands as he continued to walk toward them.
“Where are your parents?” Popeye asked.
“The machine,” the boy whispered as if the pyramid could hear. He reached out a hand and Olivetti instinctively lowered his weapon and reached forward with his left hand to the boy.
Flesh met flesh and Olivetti cursed, trying to jerk his hand back from the sharp burning sensation searing his palm. But the boy’s hand was like a vise as the nanovirus tore through the child’s flesh and bore in the SEAL’s palm, infiltrating his veins, racing for the brain.
“Get him off me!” Olivetti had let go of his weapon and was trying to peel the boy’s hand off with his free hand.
Popeye had the boy in his sights, his finger on the trigger.
“Get him off!” Olivetti spun about, the boy airborne but still keeping the grip.
The flesh in Olivetti’s arm crawled as the nanovirus swarmed up it, underneath the skin. The boy let go and turned toward Popeye, dead eyes reflected in the glow of the orb.
McGraw pulled the trigger, the rounds smashing the boy onto the floor. Along with the blood, a black stain poured out of the wound and headed across the floor toward McGraw — the nanovirus seeking a new host. Olivetti dropped to his knees, hands pressed against his temples.
“Run!” The voice was barely audible.
McGraw turned, surprised. It came again — from the woman on the pyramid. “Run!”
Popeye turned and dashed back down the corridor he had come in.
The huge doors were wide open, but the light from the chamber could not penetrate the blackness behind the doors. It was not solid, but rather as if the air itself had lost all ability to allow light to travel through it. A straight wall of darkness.
“What is this?” Gergor asked.
Lexina was puzzled. “I don’t know.”
Gergor stepped forward and reached out with his hand toward the darkness. “Don’t do that!” Lexina ordered, but Gergor ignored her. His fingertips touched and he turned to look at her. “It’s not solid. It’s warm. There’s—” A look of surprise passed over his face, which quickly changed to one of terror as the black around his arm turned bright red, spread down the arm, and enveloped him in less than a second. He screamed as skin disintegrated.
Within another two seconds there was nothing left of Gergor but his clothes in a small pile just in front of the once more smooth black wall.
Carefully Lexina knelt and felt the cloth, searching. She found Gergor’s ka.
CHAPTER 11
Equipment check was an integral part of any special forces isolation, and in this instance, it was essential due to the radical nature of the equipment being used. Turcotte and the members of Graves’s team were in the isolation area. Turcotte was toweling off, having just finished his fitting for his TASC-suit.
The suits were in the back of the isolation area getting last-minute updates from the Space Command techs. Each was black, the external material a ceramic polymer that provided protection against small arms up to 7.62 mm. Under the armor, the suit was complex. Battery-powered strips of IPMCs — ionic polymer metal composites — added power, magnifying the wearer’s own strength.
The inner layer was airtight, fitting against the wearer’s clothing and skin. The suit was designed to be used in space. A backpack contained both the computer that operated the various systems and a sophisticated re-breather that could sustain oxygen for over twelve hours. If operating in a safe environment, a valve in the back of the helmet could be opened to allow outside air in.
The helmet was the most advanced part. It was solid, with no visor to the outside world. Flat screens on the inner front portrayed whatever the wearer directed. Numerous mini-cams were on the external armor, from the two where the eyes would be pointing forward to give a normal front view with depth, to ones pointing straight up, down, and back. They were necessary because the helmet fit onto the body of the suit tightly, allowing no movement.
While Turcotte had his doubts about where some of the technology used in the TASC-suit came from, the Space Command people claimed the helmet and control system came out of two Air Force programs. DVI — Direct Voice Input — allowed the wearer to give commands verbally to the computer. This considerably streamlined any process and made use of the suit much easier. The second program was VCASS — visually coupled airborne systems simulator. The helmet screens not only relayed the picture from whichever external cameras were voice-activated, but could also relay information from the computer such as its occupant’s location when in contact with ground positioning satellites. “Scary, isn’t it?” Graves asked.
The immersion in the black tank, then having foam pumped all around his body to get a mold, had been unnerving. The worst part was being unable to move for the period of time it took them to confirm the sizing.
“What about weapons?” Turcotte asked.
Graves led Turcotte over to a table. “We’ve got some kick-ass stuff. This is the Mark 98. It fires a depleted uranium round for kinetic energy impact.”
It was three feet long, a thick cylindrical shape that tapered to the end where the tube was about an inch in diameter. At the other end, there were two pistol grips: one about six inches from the flat base, the other eighteen inches in with a trigger in front of it. The non-firing end ended in a flat plate. The entire thing was painted a flat black.
“You can fire it either attached to the suit arm or detached.” Graves grabbed the two-foot-long cylinder and loaded it into the top of the gun. “Want to give it a try?”
Turcotte picked up the heavy gun and aimed out the hangar doors into the desert.
“You have a laser aiming sight,” Graves said, “that is turned on when you activate the gun’s main power — the switch is there. When you’re wearing the suit, you’ll get an aiming point on your screen that’s one hundred percent accurate.”
Turcotte turned the gun on and aimed at a small boulder on the edge of the runway. He pulled the trigger. There was no report as it fired, but a loud pinging sound. The rock disintegrated as the round smashed into it.
“It’ll go through any body armor made,” Graves said. “High tension, pre-loaded, ten rounds per cylinder. Pulling the trigger releases the spring. The barrel is electromagnetically balanced so that the round goes right down the center, never touching the walls and thus not losing any velocity and staying true to target. That’s why you have to turn the gun on — to charge the barrel and to rotate the cylinder. It fires the rounds as quickly as you pull the trigger, which unfortunately is not as fast as you can pull the trigger. It’s as fast as the weapon will allow. The trigger locks up until the barrel is set. The cylinder also rotates, aligning a new round. You can fire once every second. When the system is attached to the firing arm of the TASC-suit, the suit’s power system will allow you to handle it with more ease than you can here.
“We also have the Mark 99.” He tapped another gun that looked just like the Mark 98. “The only difference with this one is that it can fire a high-explosive round. Better than the M-203 grenade launcher and more accurate. Combine that with the fact the suit can take hits from small arms up to and including 7.62mm machine gun fire, we’ve got a big advantage over the bad guys.”