The Altreian Enigma (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 2) Read online

  Heather ignored the question and asked her own. “Unnecessary?”

  “You’ve cloaked this facility and the housing area, and erected stasis fields. I don’t think any bad guys are going to fast-rope out of a helicopter and take us by surprise. They could drop a nuke and it wouldn’t even give us sunburn.”

  Despite how he hated to see Heather and Janet at each other’s throats, Mark forced himself to shut up and listen. Their conversation held something just beneath the surface. A solution lurked at the edge of his consciousness, a dancing firefly that stayed just beyond his grasp.

  “Look,” said Heather, “we’re both tired.”

  “No. You’re tired. I’ve been sitting on my ass wishing I had something besides make-work to take my mind off Jack. Family visits aren’t going to cut it.”

  Suddenly everything crystallized in Mark’s mind. They had thought that they understood how the Altreian headsets had altered Heather, Mark, Jennifer, and Robby to fulfill the vacant Second Ship crew positions.

  But they had been wrong about Heather’s role. Her headset hadn’t been designed to be worn by a starship captain.

  He slapped his hand down on the table, turning two sets of angry eyes on him.

  “I know what’s wrong here.”

  Before they could speak, he rose to his feet and leaned down to place both hands on the table as he gathered his thoughts.

  “We only thought we knew what the four headsets we found on the Second Ship did to us.”

  This unexpected statement pulled puzzled expressions onto both Heather’s and Janet’s faces, but neither of them interrupted him. He focused his gaze on Heather, drinking in her beauty, mind, and soul. So driven.

  “It’s been gnawing at me for a long time, but it wasn’t until just now as I listened to you and Janet that it clicked. You’re not supposed to be the commander or the strategic planner. Your special augmentation is mathematical, specifically, short-term probability. Not calculating the future. Trying to apply your talent to planning is what has been draining you. Don’t you see?”

  Heather frowned, but he continued.

  “There was no captain position on the Second Ship. It was a scout ship designed to carry four small crew members. The imagery Robby pulled from the Second Ship’s database showed that the AQ37Z had four small gray-skinned crew members and one tall fellow with red-and-black-mottled skin and gills on the sides of his neck. That guy was its captain, and he stayed with that ship. I’ll bet you anything that he’s still on board in one of the suspended animation cylinders . . . unless Jack killed him.”

  He watched Heather’s eyes widen as her probability calculation told her he was correct.

  “Of course,” she said. “Why didn’t I see it?”

  The last of the anger melted from Janet’s face. “I think there’s plenty of blame to go around. I’ve had my head up my ass. Now that you’ve finished the mathematical and equipment-design work, your best skills are being wasted here.”

  “Worse than that,” said Mark, “you’ve been burning yourself out trying to calculate the whole world’s future. I need you with me out in the field, seeing what’s about to happen in our local operating environment. That’s what worked when we took down the Stephenson Gateway, and that’s the only way we’re going to take out this one.”

  Heather shook her head. “I can’t do that. Somebody needs to do the strategic planning and run our operations from here.”

  Mark turned and looked at Janet. “Do you really want to get back in the game?”

  “Are you offering me command of this operation?”

  “You’re the most qualified of any of us.”

  Janet shifted her gaze to Heather. “What about you?”

  Heather paused, her eyes going milky white. When they returned to their natural brown, she nodded.

  “If you want it, it’s yours.”

  For the first time since the day that Jack had told them about his dream, Mark saw Janet smile, although this one left him cold.

  “Okay then. Let’s get to work.”

  The crackle and pop of the pine logs in the fireplace was drowned out by Heather’s rising moans as she moved atop Mark’s naked body on the thick rug covering the hardwood floor. Beneath her, his sweat-coated skin felt like a damp satin sheet stretched over rippling muscle. Mark’s undulating form writhed in her embrace, his hands grasping her hips so powerfully that she thought he might break her. But as her lips and tongue sought his, she didn’t care.

  A spasm shook his body, carrying her to a pinnacle of ecstasy higher than she had ever experienced. With all her enhanced senses, Heather tried to stop time but only managed to slow its passage, dragging out the sweet bliss until it seemed that she would burst into millions of glittering crystal shards.

  When the moment finally passed, she collapsed limply atop him, his gasping murmurs merely a pleasant buzz in her ear, unintelligible. As the smell of their sex filled her nose, she felt herself relax into his arms beneath the dancing shadows cast by the fire. Then Mark pulled a blanket over them, and Heather, who had not slept in years, let the sandman carry her away.

  U.S. Senator Freddy Hagerman strolled in front of the Jefferson Memorial, his umbrella protecting him from the drizzle. As it often did, bad weather exacerbated the ache that radiated out from the spot where his artificial leg connected to the stump of his left thigh. Right now that weather was exactly what he wanted, driving the vast majority of tourists inside, guaranteeing him the privacy he needed for this call.

  Despite how often he swept his Senate office for bugs, he didn’t trust it or his Watergate apartment for any truly sensitive discussion. Neither did he trust his phones. But the one in his jacket pocket was different. A button on this phone allowed him to select between its subspace communications or quantum-entangled modes of operation. Although both were absolutely secure and untraceable, the subspace mode gave him access to the network within the secret Smythe facility, while the second connected directly to Heather’s cell phone, wherever she was.

  Truth be told, he had no idea where the Smythe operation was located, and he liked it that way. As he was well aware, torture could make anyone talk. Well, almost anyone. Eight years ago, the NSA had failed to break Mark, Heather, or Jennifer while they held them in their supermax interrogation facility known as the Ice House. But Freddy had no such faith in his own ability to avoid spilling his guts.

  The investigative report that had won Freddy his second Pulitzer had cleared the names of Mark, Heather, and Jennifer, along with those of Jack Gregory and Janet Price. Unfortunately, more-recent events had returned them to the top of the FSS, FBI, and Interpol most-wanted lists.

  As the official founder of the nonviolent Safe Earth movement, Freddy himself was under constant suspicion. If not for his public popularity, he probably would have been arrested for suspicion of supporting the Safe Earth resistance, the movement’s violent offshoot that Mark and Heather had spawned after they had been forced into hiding.

  He stopped beneath a group of Japanese cherry trees and pulled the Smythe phone from his pocket. Although he had had the phone for several months, this would be only the second time he used it. Freddy stared down at the mobile, wondering at his reluctance to press the button that would connect him to Heather Smythe. As much as he liked her and Mark, they were perhaps the most dangerous people on the planet, and any closer association with them would very likely get him killed.

  He sighed. Ah shit!

  This afternoon, two of the finest cyber-warriors in NSA history, Dr. Eileen Wu and Jamal Glover, had hacked their way past Freddy’s firewall and left a message on his office computer, one that only he would understand.

  Your lucky marble asks . . . want to play a game?

  No, he didn’t. But the question hadn’t been intended for him. Rather, it was directed at the only people who were capable of playing the kind of game that Eileen and Jamal were talking about.

  The riddle had two distinct references. The lucky
marble told him who the message was from: Jamal and Eileen. After all, he had given them the beautiful iridescent marble he received from Mary Beth Riles, the wife of the deceased NSA director. He had carried the trinket in his pocket for years until Jamal and Eileen had identified it as the holographic data sphere that had gotten several people tortured and killed. Freddy was glad to be rid of it.

  The second part of the message was a question that came from an old movie about a computer AI that wanted to play global thermonuclear war. Since all four of the big nuclear superpowers were members of the United Federation of Nation States, such a war wasn’t likely to happen. Therefore, the question referred to an even greater potential cataclysm: the activation of the wormhole gate under construction by the UFNS in Germany. The message was a warning, one that required that Freddy put Heather in direct contact with Jamal and Eileen.

  Freddy stared through the drizzle at the domed and columned white monument to one of the United States’ founders. Then, beneath the weeping cherry trees, he lifted the phone and dialed.

  When Heather opened her eyes, she saw bright morning sunlight streaming through the living room window, amplified by its reflection off a foot of snow that covered the ground beyond the enfolding stasis field. The sounds of rattling pans from the kitchen and the smell of frying bacon told her that Mark was in the midst of preparing breakfast. She yawned, rose, and walked back to the master bedroom to get ready for this new day, feeling a sense of well-being that she couldn’t explain.

  After all, the world was a screwed-up mess, and they were no closer to stopping an impending alien invasion than they had been yesterday. But somehow, having turned over operational control of the effort to Janet had lifted a load that freed her mind and gave her a renewed sense of optimism. Or maybe it was last night’s wild romp. Didn’t matter. For the present, life was good and she was determined to enjoy every minute of it.

  That good feeling lasted almost until she reached the kitchen table, interrupted by the ringtone from her QE phone. She had embedded sixteen different quantum-entangled switches within its specialized circuitry, the twins of those switches residing in other phones that had been distributed to key players in the Safe Earth movement around the globe. She glanced at the caller ID, which displayed a picture of Freddy Hagerman.

  So much for her leisurely, low-key breakfast.

  She sat down, pressed a button, and set the phone on the table.

  “Hi, Freddy. I’m here with Mark. I have you on speaker.”

  “I’ve been contacted by someone you two are going to want to meet.”

  As Freddy didn’t bother with the niceties of an intro, Heather immediately focused her attention. A glance at Mark, settling down beside her, said that he felt the same way.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “You remember Admiral Jonathan Riles, the former NSA director.”

  “Sure. Jack and Janet worked for him when the whole Rho Project mess began. He was one of the good guys.”

  “Yeah. That’s what got him killed.”

  Mark broke in. “So what does this have to do with Riles?”

  “It’s a longer story than I want to stand around in the rain telling. Let’s just say that I ended up with a trinket from a box of Admiral Riles’s things, given to me by his wife, Mary Beth.”

  “Didn’t she kill herself a few months ago?” Heather asked.

  “Yes, but only to avoid being tortured to death by those who were looking for that trinket. The police and the press missed that part of the story. Two others were brutally murdered before her, a top NSA analyst named Levi Elias and an ex-NSA hacker named Carolyn Brown.”

  Mark whistled softly. “Some trinket.”

  “It turns out that I was wrong about that. It was actually an exceptionally sophisticated holographic data-storage device designed by a medical-device billionaire named Steve Grange. A dozen years ago, Admiral Riles sent Jack and Janet to retrieve that device. I don’t need to tell you that things got bloody, but they retrieved it. The president was so convinced of the danger posed by what it contained that he ordered the device destroyed. But that never happened.”

  Heather felt a lump form in her throat. “So Janet knows what’s on it?”

  “You’ll have to ask her. I don’t want any part of it. But the reason I am calling you is because I gave it to three other former NSA employees, Dr. Eileen Wu, Dr. Denise Jennings, and Jamal Glover. This afternoon, they hacked into my computer and left a message that said they needed you to contact them.”

  Her perfect memory provided the data on two of the three individuals mentioned. She had never met either of them, but Jamal Glover had been the subject of an extensive article in the Business Times last year. One of the finest programmers in the world, his high-speed trading software had made many fortunes for the investors in Jim McPherson’s Maximum Capital Appreciation Fund. As for Dr. Eileen Wu, eight years ago, at the age of nineteen, she had been one of the NSA’s top computer forensic specialists. That was at a time when Mark, Heather, and Jennifer were being interrogated inside the NSA’s secret supermax facility known as the Ice House. The reminder left her cold.

  “How do we reach them?” Mark asked.

  “The last I heard, they had linked up with the Mexican president, Manuel Suarez.”

  “Good,” said Heather. “He’s a reliable Safe Earth member.”

  “Yes, he is,” said Freddy. “I’ve met him several times. He’s a fine man.”

  Heather glanced at Mark and nodded.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “We’ll sit down with Janet and figure out what we want to do about this. Anything else bothering you?”

  “Nothing worth standing here getting soaked,” Freddy said. “I don’t need to tell you to be careful, but I will.”

  Heather felt the tension in his voice. “Will do. Now get back to that warm Senate office of yours before you catch a cold.”

  Freddy harrumphed and hung up.

  She caught Mark’s eye. “Let’s go see Janet.”

  He shook his head. “It’ll wait a few minutes. Let’s eat these eggs before they get much colder. It might be the last home-cooked meal either of us gets for a while.”

  Heather paused, then nodded. She had the feeling that he was right: 96.375 percent probability.

  CHAPTER 30

  Dr. Eileen Wu looked up from her workstation as Jamal Glover walked into the newly upgraded computing center that had been set up in the bunker beneath Los Pinos, the fortresslike Mexican presidential residence in the Chapultepec Forest. His footwear, with the black-and-white spats, sounded almost like tap shoes on the panels of the raised flooring that provided access to the cables and wires routed underneath his feet.

  Eileen had to admit that Jamal looked fabulous in his 1920s-style suit, his white-banded black fedora pulled low across his brow. She hadn’t believed that there was anyone better at hacking than she was, but Jamal might contend for the title.

  That thought disconcerted her. At thirty, he was four years her senior, yet she felt like the older one. She knew that it was his razor-sharp wit that made her feel like this, something that had never happened before. She was Hex, the Caltech hacker legend who had become the NSA’s top computer scientist at the age of nineteen. Yet, at twenty-six, she somehow felt inferior to this man.

  He winked at her as he walked by. “Glad to see you’re still here this morning, Hex. I thought you might have defected to a more important project.”

  “More important than trying to save Earth?”

  “Hey, I hear there’s an opening for intergalactic savior.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Good to know. It would get awfully lonely down here by myself.”

  She watched as he doffed his hat, hung it on the edge of a monitor, and sat down. He swiveled his chair away from her to power up his workstation, bringing the semicircle of monitors to life, their glow creating a reflection halo from his shaved scalp. That thought almost pulled a laugh from Eileen. There were ma
ny things that Jamal Glover was, but a saint wasn’t one of them.

  The fact that neither of them had visited the surface in the months since they had arrived here would have horrified anyone except for computer geeks like her and Jamal. Despite comfortable bedrooms, a workout facility, and a computer center, their accommodations were essentially one big isolation chamber that kept them safe from those who relentlessly hunted them.

  Their presence here was one of the most closely guarded secrets within the Safe Earth resistance. Until a few days ago, that secret was known only to President Manuel Suarez, his chief of staff, and Freddy Hagerman. A small number of the household staff served the cyber-specialists their meals and provided cleaning and maintenance services, but they had no idea who these important guests might be.

  But Jamal’s message to Freddy had added a few others to the list of those in the know, namely Mark Smythe, Heather Smythe, and Janet Price. Until now, there had been no need to inform the movement’s leaders that two former elite hackers for the NSA had volunteered their services to President Suarez in return for his protection. They had known all along that this kind of protection came with a cost, one far preferable to the kind of death their colleagues had suffered.

  Jamal’s voice pulled her thoughts back to the present. “Any word on when Janet will be arriving?”

  “No. She has managed to stay fully under the radar of any of the UFNS intelligence services.”

  “Pretty impressive. Sounds a lot like us.”

  “If we were at the very top of the UFNS most-wanted list,” said Eileen.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get there.”

  “Ah. Can’t wait for that.”

  Jamal flashed her a smile just as Dr. Denise Jennings walked into the room, her iron-gray hair tied back in its usual tight bun. At seventy, she retained her sharp mind, but the pressure of life on the run had clearly taken a toll on her health, something that betrayed itself in her recent weight loss and the way her hands trembled.