“That’s an engagement ring?”
“Yeah, wise ass. Maybe I should castrate you and we can smuggle the flash drive out in your new ball sack.”
“Take it easy,” Joyce said. “Dr. Lara, use the ring finger on the right hand… it’s only a twenty-four hour inconvenience… she’ll manage.”
Jessica eased herself onto the rubber table top and laid back, looking up at the underside of half a dozen six-foot-tall sickle-shaped transformers.
Dr. Lara prepared a syringe. “I’m going to give you a few injections for the pain, then administer a local anesthetic. Dr. LaCombe, if you’d start the I.V.”
She winced at the cold spray preceding the two numbing injections, her heart beating rapidly as Joyce inserted an I.V. tube into a vein in her left forearm.
She glanced at the face of a large wall clock as the antibiotic drip entered her bloodstream.
It’s 04:17. Only two hours and forty-three minutes before I get… to… go… home…
Joyce watched as Dr. Lara engaged the transdimensional bubble around Jessica’s right hand. “The vortex will prevent any bleeding when I remove the finger… like… so—”
Joyce found herself turning away as he clipped off the digit.
“Are you squeamish, Dr. LaCombe? You should have seen what our teams went through when we were amputating the limbs off street people. The remains we left buried in the desert still give me nightmares.”
Using a probe, he positioned the flash drive beneath the flexor tendon connecting Jessica’s right hand to the fourth finger’s lower joint. “As you can see, I’m going a little lower so she’ll still maintain a bit of flexion in the—”
The detonation shook the Dulce complex, rattling the fluorescent lights mounted in the ceiling.
Dr. Lara looked up, his focus momentarily broken. “What was that?”
“I don’t know. It felt like an earthquake.”
A second tremor shook the subterranean facility; the disturbance followed a moment later by a deafening siren and whirling yellow lights.
Joyce felt the blood rush from her face.
“What the hell is going on?”
“That siren is a warning. Strategic Command is about to go into a full alert.”
“What would—”
“I have no idea,” she yelled, ripping off her surgical gown, “but you need to finish up without me. If we go into a full alert, anyone not wearing a Zebra badge or higher will have exactly sixty seconds to vacate the facility before they are shot and killed… and that includes my son!”
General Thomas J. Cubit climbed out of a transport tube, his hair and clothes disheveled from having been “vacuum-flushed” twenty-two stories out of his suite. “Christ, I hate these damn things… speak to me, gentlemen.”
“Sir, one of our ARV’s is hovering above Dulce Mountain firing low level scalar bursts at us.”
“Who’s piloting the craft?”
“According to the duty roster, Captain Joshua LaCombe is the pilot—”
The lights blinked off and on as another scalar shot penetrated the complex’s electromagnetic shielding.
“—only the ship’s computer isn’t getting a DNA match. The co-pilot is listed as Captain Jeffrey Allen… only I can’t even get a corroborative history on him.”
“Somebody get me a goddam headset and connect me by thought-wave.”
“General, three visiting Council members are demanding to know why Strategic Command hasn’t gone on full alert.”
“There are civilians with young children living here; I’m not about to give an order that leads to marines shooting kids.”
“Sir, Zeus-2 will be in firing range in seven minutes.”
“General, we have a pit crew loading an interceptor drone onto an elevator platform. ETA for launch… under sixty seconds.”
A tech arrived with a headset, offering it to General Cubit who snatched it from him and powered the device on.
This is General Thomas Cubit. Would the pilot or pilots of the ARV firing upon our facility please identify themselves.
Just me, General Cubit. Small world.
Shariak? My God… you actually made it through the rabbit’s hole.
“General, ARV-2 is on the platform. ETA for launch is twenty seconds.”
Adam, listen to me — I’m on your side… we were the ones who selected you. There’s an ARV interceptor drone ready to launch. You need to hit us with a Level-Six EMP… quickly!
The powerful electromagnetic pulse passed through the subterranean complex at near light speed, shutting down the electrical grid, reducing the Dulce facility to emergency power.
Good. That should shut down power to the lifts and buy us a few minutes. Shariak, how did you acquire the ARV?
Someone put out a TWEP on me. One of the would-be assassins was a counter-intelligence agent at OSI. Her boyfriend arrived aboard the ARV… apparently they had plans to sell a ZPE unit. The boyfriend shot the pilot… the pilot vaporized the boyfriend.
Do you know their names?
The pilot was LaCombe. The OSI agent was Kelly Kishel; her boyfriend… Chris Mull.
Colonel Johnston… you bastard—
“General, are you able to communicate with the pilot?”
“Yes. This was an unannounced test of the EMP Shield. Stand down warning.”
Shariak, I know who issued the TWEP order and I’ll handle it. Get the hell out of here before the Air Force arrives or a Zeus satellite vaporizes you.
What about Jess?
She’s safe… she’ll be heading back to D.C. today.
Why me, General?
MAJI’s silent majority is making a move against the ruling fringe element. The movement selected twelve potential access points to release zero-point-energy. Each access point was assigned an escort.
And I was yours?
No. Jessica was mine. You were Barbara Jean’s.
Jess’s mom?
Never mind that now. Implanted in the fourth finger of your fiance’s right hand is a flash drive with schematics for three different ZPE generators. Get it to Greer; he’ll know what to do with it.
What about the ARV?
Crash it or ditch it. Zeus was designed to target and destroy any vessel crossing over into our physical dimension. There are already three of them in orbit… one is moving into firing range as we speak!
The forward view screen suddenly zoomed into space, focusing upon a rectangular object…
Recognizing the killer satellite, Adam quickly engaged the ARV’s Delta configuration, slipping the ship into transdimensional space.
41
Jessica gazed out of the first-class passenger window at the autumn sky. Dusk bled over the darkening city in crimson and purple, the lights of Dulles International Airport beckoning to the east.
Her mind drifted back three thousand air miles and fifteen hours ago…
She had found herself stumbling down a dimly lit corridor illuminated by yellow emergency lights while strangers in lab coats raced by. Her mouth was dry, her right hand felt strange, and someone had taped a gauze pad to her left forearm.
Twenty minutes later the power had returned, along with the memory of being prepped for surgery.
A security guard escorted her back to the women’s lockers. Stripping down, she was weighed and searched by a female attendant, then sent through the showers to the other side. Locating her locker, she dressed, and at 6:37 a.m., rode the elevator up to the Maglev train station on Level-9, her packed bags already there along with eight other techs, all of whom seemed excited to be going home.