“Why didn’t you bring it back to the mothership?”
Manning was still trying to type in codes using the screwdriver. “By the time we took it off-line from the station’s SATCom system, transported it over, hooked it back up and got it on-line…” Manning didn’t finish the statement as he continued to peck at the keyboard. “I’ve got five of the targets off the matrix.”
Turcotte found it so amazing he almost started laughing. After all he’d been through, to have the planet devastated by a nuclear strike from his own country — and to fail to stop it because they simply couldn’t type in the proper code to stop it in time.
He did a time check. Two minutes.
Turcotte turned toward the side of the module closest to the mothership. He raised the MK-98 and fired his remaining six rounds, tearing a gap in the wall so he could communicate on the local FM band — line of sight.
“Quinn.” “Sir?”
“If we can’t get all the stop codes entered in time — options?” There was silence.
“Seven,” Manning announced.
Eighteen to go, Turcotte thought. No way will Manning will make it. “Quinn?”
“Ten,” Manning was poking with the screwdriver. Turcotte wondered which cities had been saved and which were still doomed as he waited for a response. “Send a new matrix,” Quinn said. “What?” Turcotte asked.
“It’s the quickest way. One new entry instead of deleting all the old entries.”
Turcotte reached forward and tapped the commando’s commander on the shoulder. “Manning, you get that?”
“I got it, but how do I do it? And the nukes will still go off somewhere.”
“Not if you reset to target their own launch sites,” Quinn said. “The data is already there — it has to be in order for a matrix to work. Just turn it against itself.”
Quinn rattled off a series of numbers and Manning pecked at the keyboard. Turcotte floated in the background, feeling quite useless. He checked the time. Under a minute. The seconds clicked off.
Quinn fell silent. Ten seconds. “Quinn?” Turcotte asked.
“It’s done.”
Turcotte grabbed hold and moved himself to the opening he had created. He pushed out of the hatch and looked down at the planet. He could imagine the turmoil on board submarines, inside bombers and launch control centers as crews realized they would be destroying themselves if they launched their weapons. He watched the United States, now almost all in daylight, waiting for the telltale burst of a nuclear weapon exploding as there would be no transit time. Nothing.
It was early morning, a few hours before the sun would come up. Terry Cummings carefully unhooked the various monitoring devices from Kelly Reynolds. Cummings knew that other than the intravenous drip providing nourishment, none of the gear made any difference. The doctors had done all they could and the consensus was that it was a miracle Reynolds was alive and no one had any faith that she would ever recover.
Cummings rolled the bed into the quiet hallway to the elevator. Once on board, she pressed the button for the roof. When the doors slid open, she pushed the bed onto the roof of the center tower of Tripler. Since the hospital was already high up on top of Moanalua Ridge, she had a commanding view of the south side of the island of Oahu. An offshore breeze gently blew across the rooftop. Cummings turned the crank on the side of Reynolds’s bed, raising her frail upper body so that she was half-sitting. The lights of Honolulu were off to the left. The island was still in the throes of recovering from the nanovirus assault but life was slowly getting back to normal. Cummings looked down at Reynolds. Her eyes were closed, the skin taut against her cheekbones.
Cummings leaned over, her mouth near Reynolds’s ear. “Feel the breeze?” She reached down and took the clawlike hands in her own, rubbing the leathery skin. “Do you feel my hands on yours?”
Cummings moved from the hands up the arms, working Reynolds’s entire body, slowly and with great diligence so that when the sun began to rise, she had just finished. Throughout she had spoken to Reynolds, keeping up the conversation as if the other woman were replying. Cummings stretched, then cranked the top half of the bed back down. Focused on pushing it back toward the elevator, she failed to notice a muscle on the side of Reynolds’s face twitch as if the woman were trying to speak. The muscle moved for several moments, then subsided.
Turcotte was actually looking forward to the journey to Mars. It would be an opportunity to rest and recuperate. As far as what would happen when they got to the Red Planet, he blocked thinking about that right now, shutting down his thought projection as effectively as if a steel door had come down through his mind. He was so tired he knew that any plan he came up with at the moment would likely have serious flaws in it.
They were touching down at Camp Rowe, returning from defeating Aspasia’s Shadow — for the last time — a phrase that Turcotte savored. A creature that had led the Mission for generations and haunted the history of mankind had finally been vanquished. It was a victory, a clear-cut one. Yakov was by Turcotte’s side as they went down the main corridor of the mothership.
“One down, two to go,” Yakov said. “Excuse me?”
“The Swarm and Artad,” Yakov said.
Exactly what Turcotte didn’t want to contemplate at the moment. The cargo door slowly slid open and Turcotte paused. There was someone standing by the ramp leading into the mothership, silhouetted by the lights ringing the airfield. A tall woman clutching an old leather briefcase to her chest with an overnight bag at her feet. She had wide shoulders and shoulder-length gray hair.
She extended one hand as Turcotte approached. “Major Turcotte, I’m Professor Leahy.”
“Can you duplicate what Tesla did?” Turcotte asked.
She didn’t answer. She kept her hand extended, until Turcotte shook it. “Yes.”
Turcotte blinked, surprised at her confidence. “You only just saw his lost papers, how—” “Do you want me to make his weapon?” Leahy asked.
Turcotte nodded. Yakov came up behind him.
“Then why are you questioning my answer?” she asked.
Turcotte smiled. “You’ll do well with this gang. Welcome aboard.” He introduced her to Yakov. The Russian picked up her overnight bag and indicated for her to follow him on board. She pointed where several forklifts were lined up, holding pallets.
“I gave Major Quinn a list of what I’ll need. Pretty basic stuff, actually. It wasn’t hard to find. And most of what I brought is material I already had. I’ve been working on Tesla’s coil for over thirty years.”
“Why?” Turcotte asked.
“Because of the potential.” She smiled. “And I was right, wasn’t I? You’ve called, haven’t you?” Turcotte nodded. “Good. Let’s move then. We’ve got a long way to go.”
The Airlia convoy reached the edge of the array. The large vehicles were dwarfed by the pylons arching overhead. They maneuvered around to the one that wasn’t complete and came to a halt. Hatches opened on the vehicles and Airlia piled out dressed in black pressure suits. All the survivors that Aspasia had left behind.
Most began putting together prefab enclosures. A handful walked over to the thick base of the pylon. They looked up. The unfinished portion was far above them, but in the lesser gravity of Mars a half dozen Airlia began climbing up the slightly curving outer surface. As they climbed, others began backing up the tracked vehicles, leaving a space in between which they started covering with a heavy material to form a living area.
Twenty miles away, on the ramp, the last vehicle, the one bearing the crystal, was approaching.