Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4) (24 page)

Taz stood on the upper deck of a super yacht belonging to one of the top Foundation billionaires. His cropped hair didn’t move in the gentle breeze, but his hand tightened around a plastic bottle of water, the sun glinting off his gold rings.

Somewhere inside the luxurious, three-hundred-foot floating palace, Dabnowski and the other four scientists, who had authored the papers describing the Cosegan time travel method, were huddled around large monitors. The five brilliant men worked feverishly on their INUs, which were linked via satellite to both the university, and Mauna Kea Observatory networks. It was a race to access and download all the data they needed before the NSA successfully locked the systems down.

The yacht, aptly named
Bright Future
, was cruising toward international waters. Among its many amenities were military-grade anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems, as well as concealed large caliber guns designed to defend against attack. Taz had no illusions that those features, and the twelve Foundation soldiers onboard, could withstand a CIA or a SEAL strike force. Still, he felt better being off the island. The
Bright
Future
also carried two helicopters, as well as a mini-sub that could evacuate eight people.

Finally, a call from Stellard came through.

“Did you hear from Wattington?” Taz asked.

“Yes,” Stellard replied. “There is a SEAL team about to hit the hospital.”

“Get her out of there!”

“I just gave the order, but there won’t be time.”

“Damn!”

“We have the scientists,” Stellard reminded him. “Even if we don’t get Gaines or his Sphere, we’ll have the power to fight back if they manage to change things.” His words trailed off into mumblings that Taz couldn’t understand.

“It’s more complicated than that,” Taz said. “According to Dabnowski, Time-shifting is incredibly complex and risky.”

“I imagine time travel would have to be.”

“It isn’t really time travel though, it’s time manipulation. That’s the trick. It’s not like in the movies where I would go back to some date in 1984 and kill someone or whatever. We’re talking about rearranging subatomic particles in some basically invisible pattern which then has a ripple effect across the cosmos. Across time.”

“But we have the geniuses to do it . . . to change time, no matter what you want to call it,” Stellard said.

“As long as they don’t mess things up, we might save the human race, but if one atom is out of place, we may never exist. No one would ever know we were even here.”

—O—

Gale and Rip stood in the skyroom, reviewing the findings from Hawaii while the Sphere projected in every direction. Rip looked at Gale. “We may have just discovered the key to stopping the Aylantic Foundation, but will we have the time to use it?”

“And do we have enough?” Gale asked. “Or is there still work needed with the scientists? The NSA is going to have the university and the observatories cleansed by this time tomorrow, and all the scientists will be on their way to Washington, or wherever secret places the government maintains for their worst deeds.”

“It’s going to be crazy close,” Rip said. “Somehow we’ll have to get to the observatories. We can’t change time without the help of space.”

Gale was wondering if they could use the time-shift technique to save Cira before the accident. Rip could almost see her mind working.

“Gale, even if time-shift works, it isn’t so precise, at least our understanding and ability to utilize it aren’t, that we’d be able to adjust things before the playground.”

“I know,” she admitted.

“Even getting to the point where we can utilize time-shifting to stop the Foundation is a long shot,” Rip said. He pointed to spots in space that the Sphere was showing where they could start. “Manipulating the future by rearranging particles in the past is a scary prospect, one I’m not anxious to do without some guidance.”

“Crying Man?” Gale asked.

Rip nodded.

“Where is he? Could he somehow be with Cira?”

“He’s a computer program,” Rip said slowly.

“You don’t really believe that.”

“Gale, he’s been dead for eleven million years. I’ll admit the AI work is breathtaking, and that the power of the Sphere to project into and affect the surrounding environment is staggering, but he’s a design element of the Sphere’s user interface, and we’re six thousand miles from Fiji.”

“If he’s not real, then how is he going to protect her?”

“If I understood that, I would know how to answer the five Cosega mysteries and stop the Death Divinations . . . but somehow I simply
know
Crying Man will protect her.”

“
How
?” Gale shouted. “How do you know?”

“Because he told me!”

—O—

In the midst of managing the strike in Fiji, Booker ordered two more actions. The NSA was rounding up his UQP team, and that meant AX and BLAXER units would need to engage with US government agents, and possibly even the US military, in Hawaii.

At the same time, with the preparations for the Phoenix Initiative intensifying every day and the launch date less than three months away, it was urgent that Booker seize their greatest asset. Thanks to Savina reaching out, he now knew her exact location. Huang was already busy trying to break the formidable electronic defenses utilized by the Foundation to monitor and protect their most vital research facility.

Booker took his eyes off the drama in Fiji just long enough to send every available BLAXER in the vicinity of northern California on the most critical mission of his war against the Foundation. His final instructions to the woman leading the mission were, “Get the Foundation’s Sphere and their top physicist. The physicist is even more important than the Sphere, so if it comes down to a choice between them, make sure you bring Savina.”

From the skies above Fiji, BLAXERs rained down with propulsion-assisted packs, hitting their targets within inches. At the same moment, in a precision-timed maneuver, two advanced military BLAXER helicopters landed in the parking lot. The forty-nine men stormed the hospital in a blistering assault.

Booker had ordered the use of pulse shots, penetrating pellets coated with an activated serum which caused instant paralysis. Another advantage, aside from limiting casualties, was that the shots dropped the opponent instantly, and therefore removed the threat of an injured combatant still doing damage. The pellets could be lethal if they hit the wrong area, such as the eyes or mouth, or if the pelleted person had certain other health issues, or was on specific medications, but most would recover within twenty-four hours.

Doctors, nurses, and other staff dove for cover. A few patients caught in the corridors were inadvertently shot. Somehow, a small fire started in one of the nurse’s stations. There seemed to be more police than their intel had shown. The sound of automatic gunfire echoed down the corridors, mixing with a deafening chorus of screams, alarms, and military commands.

The BLAX-commander led one of the seven units, each made up of seven “Specialists.” The police and Foundation soldiers put up a surprisingly strong fight. Unlike the BLAXERS ammunition, the incoming rounds from the police and Foundation soldiers were live and deadly. Six BLAXERs were lost on the ground level, three more killed on the roof, and five on the floors in between.

Booker watched, wishing he’d had more personnel in the fight. Dozens of simulations had shown it was going to be a hard victory, but they’d already lost more than twice as many BLAXERs as expected at this point. Dark-Star, now less than two minutes out, would bring “hell, fire, and death.” BLAXERs, engaged in a standoff on the heavily defended floor which housed Cira, had to move.

“Get the girl and get off that floor,” Booker yelled, but the BLAX-commander could not hear.

The BLAXERs each wore full body armor, but the Foundation soldiers were picking them off, nailing headshots as if using magic bullets. Booker had tried to apply Eysen-Sphere technology to military hardware and arms, but it had not been easy. It seemed the Cosegans had no physical weapons, but in the modern era of war and violence, with a little imagination, he had found applications that could help his private army.

However, watching the accuracy with which the opposing soldiers shot, he wondered if the Foundation had made better use of the Sphere’s secrets, or perhaps theirs had different resources.

“How the hell are they getting those shots?”

He didn’t understand why the electricity was still on either. Something must have gone wrong. The cameras didn’t cover a crucial part of the basement where an unknown group of Foundation soldiers were located. The Unit put up an incredible fight and forced the BLAXERs to use portable exploding plastics, or PEPS. Ten more BLAXERS died getting to the secured hospital utilities area.

Forty-five seconds until Dark-Star. Already the BLAXERs numbers had been nearly halved. Booker wasn’t sure they had enough left to withstand the elite forces. He watched, on a larger screen, as satellite images showed three incoming and highly armed choppers. Two touched down on the two roofs, a third landed on the lower helipad. Booker checked the distance to the BLAXERs’ waiting helicopters.

This could end in a dogfight in the air
, Booker thought
. That is
if
we get lucky enough to have anyone left to escape the building
.

As the Dark-Star fighters entered, all electricity in the building was shut down. Blackness instantly strangled the hospital, turning it into a cave. The Dark-Star men immediately donned NVGs, night vision goggles, and stormed forward. BLAXERs engaged them at every entrance. Pockets of Foundation soldiers and police who had not yet been neutralized by the BLAXERs also returned fire, but in the gloom, without NVGs, they were completely blind, stumbling over bleeding and lifeless bodies, dodging a dizzy tangle of bullets, choking smoke, and clipped orders.

With the shield of darkness, Booker’s people made progress on Cira’s floor and were now only one room away. There was a chance they could still survive this, but Booker could only gauge their progress in abstract estimates and by following random piercing lights emitting from various equipment hanging off the BLAXERs. He grew frustrated that the lights were still off, but not because he couldn’t see them. The electricity had been a key part of the plan, and was set to be one of their best weapons.

Suddenly, the building lit up like a sports stadium at night. The BLAXERS, expecting it, had already removed their NVGs a second before. The Dark-Stars, caught by surprise, froze as their NVGs bloomed out, going completely greenish-white, leaving them lost and without vision. Dark-Stars staggered momentarily into ambushes. They tore off their NVGs, but a few seconds later the place went completely black again. In the confusion, the BLAXERs took out a third of the Dark-Stars.

They repeated the “light show” several more times with a seemingly random count that only Booker’s men knew. In the process, BLAXERs managed take Cira’s room. A helmet mounted camera showed Booker the most important child in the world. Each BLAXER had memorized the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute’s protocols, and one of them used precious seconds to determine if they’d been followed.

“I’m no doctor,” he said to another BLAXER, readying the bed to move, “but as best I can tell, they have her all set to go.”

“Let’s do it,” the other said, figuring that blind or not, if they were going to get her out alive, they were already out of time.

The light shows continued, effectively rendering the Dark-Stars NVGs useless. They brought down five more on the way to the ground floor, timing their elevator ride with the intermittent blackouts.

The lobby was a toxic turmoil of fumes and fires. Enough light came from the flames that survivors from all three sides could see enough to fight effectively. BLAXERs and Dark-Stars wore gas masks, as the air was further poisoned by canisters of tear gas introduced by the police, and some sort of sleeping gas by the Dark-Stars. The final Foundation soldiers fell, and in a combination of luck and strategy, the last six able-bodied BLAXERs burst into the night air and darted as fast as they could push Cira’s bed toward their waiting chopper. Three more were picked off by pursuing Dark-Stars before they made it into the air.

Booker had been right. The Dark-Stars immediately sent an Apache attack helicopter after the BLAXER’s chopper.

The Judge discovered it wasn’t just the SEAL team coming in after Cira. It didn’t take long to figure out that the third force present in the Fiji hospital belonged to Booker. He put in a call, surprised when Booker actually took it.

“You think you can just betray the Foundation?” the Judge demanded.

“If the Foundation could protect the girl you’d agreed to trade for Gaines, I wouldn’t have needed to send in my forces. Gaines is safe. You need to learn how to protect your assets.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“I don’t give a damn what you believe,” Booker replied. “If you can’t live up to your deals, don’t blame me.”

“We’ll see about that,” the Judge said, ending the call. He immediately contacted Stellard. “Do not let them take that girl out of the hospital alive.”

“Just to be clear, you want her terminated?” Stellard asked.

“Kill her!”

—O—

The Judge then contacted Taz aboard the
Bright Future
. Normally, he wouldn’t have spoken directly to an operative, but everything was flipped around. Because of the developments with Dabnowski, Taz was handling Hawaii while Stellard oversaw the battle in Fiji.

“Is it real, what they’ve written in these papers?” the Judge asked tersely.

“These are all Nobel laureates, the best in the world. They all believe it’s possible.”

The Judge smiled for the first time that day. He didn’t know for sure if their Sphere had the same “DNA” map of the universe, which they’d need, to find the precise points where it would be possible to manipulate time, but he assumed it was in there somewhere, and that Savina could find it.

He ordered more people to Hawaii. Keeping the
Bright Future
safe was critical if the Phoenix Initiative was to preempt the apocalyptic prophecies of the Sphere. The initial idea for Phoenix had come to him one night while sitting up with his two-year-old son, who was not sleeping well.

His wife had read about a method to help kids sleep called “wake to sleep.” Waking him prior to his normal nightly waking time would somehow break the pattern and allow him to sleep peacefully through the remainder of the night.

The Phoenix Initiative took the wake to sleep principle to a radical extreme. By engineering a controllable plague, the Aylantik Foundation could choose what portion of the population died, and when they would die. Wake to sleep, just like Phoenix, was about controlling the crisis. After the Foundation-created plague, the survivors would go peacefully into the night.

Out of the ashes, a single government could be created to rule the survivors. With Earth as a single nation, and the massive reduction in population, the Phoenix Initiative took care of the Death Divinations—climate change reversed, no war, and all of humanity would not be lost. The chosen would survive.

The Judge knew most would see it as dangerous, even evil. “When we’re talking about the end of all human life on the planet, it doesn’t matter if we have to kill a few billion to save the rest of us,” he’d told the secret committee who had approved the Phoenix Initiative. “There is no other choice.”

The fact that they would profit and end up ruling the new world, although certainly not their objectives, was merely a pleasant perk.