With These Eyes (32 page)

"Pterodactyl on final approach!"

The announcement from the platoon's pilot was
welcome news for a flustered commander. No one in Tasha’s
militaristic history had managed to evade her attacks like
Isabelle. Tasha's anger towards her was once again competing with
admiration for Isabelle's skills as a warrior. A worthy adversary
was what earned Tasha's respect more than any other quality someone
may have had. It was too bad, Tasha thought, that she had to
eliminate someone so full of skill and beauty. She saw no other
way, though. Isabelle had not only evaded her successfully, but she
was posing an ever-increasing threat to Tasha's very existence. The
pilot followed the night vision and radar overlays on his digital
heads-up display. Before him, the nose-cone perspective of the
stealth jet's approach into the greater Berlin basin. Moments
later, the secret air field came into view. The pilot extended
flaps and landing gear. The roar of the plane's enormous jet engine
was heard by little more than the woodland creatures in the
secluded forest surrounding the airstrip. Invisible to German
air-defense radar and flying without marker lights, Tasha's cloaked
Pterodactyl
touched down on Berlin soil. The pilot at the
digital cockpit remotely taxied the craft towards the end of the
runway. Tasha had arrived and her army of night crawlers swarmed
the airfield. She didn't have a moment to waste. Her orders were
short and concise.

"Prep for immediate dust-off!"

The Troopers in the spy room replied in
unison. "Yes, ma'am."

Once again, Tasha's skillfully rehearsed
orchestra of darkness performed their sinister symphony of vehicle
transfer. Each covert car drove to a prearranged position on the
tarmac. The pilot shut down the thundering jet-engine and lowered
the plane's hatch to the main cabin. The tractor-trailer fuel truck
stopped next to the right wing. Workers who had traveled in the cab
began pumping enough fuel into the plane's tanks to heat a
metropolis. Troopers transferred disguises, weapons and
surveillance equipment from their vehicles into the belly of their
bird of prey. As each automobile was emptied of personnel and gear,
the four men who had arrived with the car carriers loaded them onto
their trucks. The pilot took his place in the cockpit and
immediately worked through his pre-flight checklist. Made for quick
take-off procedures in war-time action, Tasha's troop transport was
ready for main-engine start. Although its output was somewhat
muffled to prevent detection, the thunderous noise from the
powerful motor echoed through the secluded forest. Tasha had taken
her seat behind the surveillance console. The vibrations of the
revving engine welcomed her body like a warm hug from the
technology she loved so much. A smile found its way across Tasha's
angry face. The sights and senses of the kill were all around her.
Tasha wiped her lips. Besides thrust for travel, the running engine
provided the plane with something else she was awaiting: power for
the surveillance console. A wall of spy-screens lit up before her.
On the main viewer, Apophis' satellite tracking network plotted
Isabelle and Fuji's path. After a short analysis, one of the two
Troopers who flanked Tasha brought some more unwelcome news for
her.

"Ma'am, the package is on a direct intercept
with the Madagascar facility."

Tasha felt her throat tightening just as the
plane's cargo door closed with the last Trooper boarding. Outside,
the vehicles were loaded onto the car carriers and the fueler's
hoses were stowed back on the truck. The platoon's ground support
drove off the roll field as the troop carrier taxied to its
take-off position. The pilot lined up the craft's forward direction
with the runway before him. With the dark thunderbird's flaps fully
extended and his left hand on the yoke, the pilot's right hand
pushed the throttle forward to its maximum position. The Trooper's
right hand grabbed the other side of the yoke and his index finger
depressed the switch that activated the afterburner. Instantly,
high-velocity fuel pumps fed kerosene to a ring of spray nozzles
near the engine's outlet. The atomized volume of the combustible
fossil liquid ignited into a blue-yellow flame in the superheated
stream of air. Like slung from a catapult, the supersonic jet shot
forward and quickly went into rotation, the moment when the nose
gear rises off the ground from the lift provided by the wings. A
trail of charred runway marked the travel of the flame that
continued to shoot from the aft as Tasha's winged rocket lifted
into the night sky. The deafening thunder from the wasteful engine
sent the forest's furry and feathered population scattering for
their dear lives.

Tasha had, once again, taken pursuit of her
prey.

Part 3 - Light and Shadow

38 A NEW BEGINNING

Fuji's craft was traveling in absolute
silence. Drag from the thin layer of the ionosphere created a
brilliant glow that surrounded the ship like a halo. Ryan was
keeping Tonati company in the main cabin. The computer genius was
busy analyzing the contents of the thumb-drive Dr. Kenshin had
given him.

In the cockpit, Fuji was sitting next to his
friend. Isabelle was gazing at the world's beauty below. The pain
of the loss of her father was in her eyes. Her hand was caressing
Gemma’s beads. Fuji knew what was on Isabelle's mind. He turned to
her and with a warm smile, he told her the words she needed to
hear.

"It's never an end. Only a new
beginning."

Isabelle shifted her consciousness towards
Fuji to muster a response. Her hand let go of the beads and they
floated up between the two. With pain and a bit of irritation to
being interrupted, she responded.

"Is that so?"

The string of brilliant beads was spinning
weightlessly in the air between them. Fuji reached out and caught
the colorful strand of orbs with one finger. He gently returned
them to Isabelle's hands. The time had come to let Isabelle in on
the secret from which he had protected her all the years after her
mother's disappearance.

"You and your parents see things
differently."

Fuji reached for a plastic water-bottle in a
supply pouch behind the Captain's seat. He broke its seal and
carefully squeezed out a large drop of its contents. The
translucent sphere floated where the beads had been between them.
He continued. "I often think of your mother as a visionary, like
Copernicus in his time. Greatness invites persecution."

Isabelle did not agree. "People don't get
taken out for making discoveries."

Fuji reached for an overhead reading lamp and
turned it on. Its focused beam was directed towards the floating
orb of water. The large drop refracted the beam's light into its
spectrum. It illuminated Isabelle's face in a rainbow of colors.
Fuji was taking the next step.

"Do you know what propels this ship?"

Annoyed that Fuji would think she hadn't
figured this out, Isabelle flicked the drop and it splattered in
all directions. She replied, "a photon engine."

Fuji was proud of his disciple for her
insight and grasp on the world around her. He knew she was ready
for the truth that had until this moment posed a threat to her
existence.

"Then you realize that the engine's output is
light. Nothing but high energy photons pushing this ship."

Isabelle's frustration over her inability to
save Lionel's life was mirrored in her response. She reached for
the throttle in the center console and responded in an upset voice.
"Let's have a little race then."

Fuji placed his hand over hers on the
throttle and persuaded her otherwise. "We'd be crushed by our own
mass. After that we'd turn back into the light from which we were
created." He looked Isabelle in the eyes and continued in a calming
voice. "Your mother and I discovered Quantum Energy. In nature it
occurs as ball lightning."

Isabelle couldn't believe her mentor and
spirit guide would have kept such a vital piece of information from
her when he was the very person who had taught her the importance
of trust. Her irritation with the moment grew.

"Why didn't you tell me about this?"

Compassion returned to Isabelle as she saw
her friend riving in pain from the wound he suffered rescuing her.
His calming voice was taking its effect on her demeanor as she
listened.

“You wouldn't have lived to do anything about
it.”

Isabelle was beginning to understand how
elaborate Fuji's efforts had been to protect her from Gene's wrath.
It was time for her to acknowledge her mentor's sacrifice.

"Tell me how to fly this thing."

Fuji smiled. He knew Isabelle understood and
was, in her own way, telling him not to worry.

39 A SOLAR FLARE LASHES OUT

Sunspot activity occurs in a predictable
pattern. It was a year where solar flares had reached a peak. Along
with the increased level of magnetic disturbances on the surface of
Earth's life-giving star, another factor was contributing to a
period of heavy and frequent coronal mass-ejections of
particles.

Gene's big company merger and his planned
attack on humanity had been scheduled around a date on which
several of the solar system's planets aligned in a straight line
with earth. This would create a great gravitational pull, which
facilitated increased particle streams from the sun. Sunspots are
enormous gaps in the sun's magnetic field, which is a fundamental
element in supporting its structure. Solar particle-radiation is
generally contained in the star's body by its magnetic field. Holes
in its fabric permit the turbulent radioactive particles and ions
under the surface to escape and travel across the solar system.
Often these emissions would interfere with earth's radio
communications and electrical grid. Power outages in New York City
and Canada during the last period of increased sun-spot activity
served Gene as inspiration for his deeds of darkness.

A few days prior, a large sunspot had formed
facing earth and opened a gateway for a massive particle ejection
from below the surface of the sun. Like a bullwhip, an accumulation
of subatomic and ionic particles flung out and sent a stream of its
contents racing towards Earth before its lion-share collapsed back
into the star's coronal surface. After crossing the orbit of
Mercury and Venus, the high-energy volume of matter entered Earth's
magnetic field. This combination of magnetism and electricity was
the source of Northern Lights, which occurred in the outer layers
of the ionosphere.

Back in Spitsbergen, the sky became engulfed
in aurorae borealis, much brighter and stronger than Isabelle had
witnessed on her recent trip to the seed bank. The frosty landscape
turned eerily green. The unusually heavy ionization of Earth's
upper atmosphere tore the thin air apart on a subatomic level.
Nuclei of gas atoms were bouncing off each other, separated from
their orbiting electrons. The frequency of the influx of solar
radiation matched the natural oscillation of the air molecules and
atoms. This made it impossible for the nuclei to reattach their
missing electrons, so they sought out the next best particle to
which to bond. Suddenly a mass of nuclei stuck to each other. This
increased the subatomic
weak
and
strong forces
- the
qualities that hold matter together - to the point where they were
able to draw in the rogue electrons they lost in the process. The
result was an enormous super-atom, the size of a basket ball.
Ball Lightning
formed, the phenomenon that had been the
pivotal subject of Gemma's research and Fuji's and hers ensuing
discovery of an unlimited energy source.

One of the properties of this occurrence was
its strong affinity for electricity. As soon as the luminous orb
had formed, it shot in a straight line towards Spitsbergen's
oil-burning power plant that laid in the distance below. The large
transformers at the head of the town's power grid presented the
strongest electromagnetic field on the entire island and drew in
the orb. As it approached the generating station, it passed over a
powerful device, the ground-fault detector. This mechanism was
designed to shut down the power grid instantly, should a
transmission line break under the stress of the Arctic conditions
to avoid electrocution of anyone on the snowy ground. This was a
frequent event in the cold of the polar region and the device was
more sensitive than most in the more tempered parts of the
globe.

Just the mere fraction of a second later, the
power plant's feed was cut off and the ball lightning crashed into
the now cold high-voltage transformers. The power-disconnect had
saved the lives of everyone on the island.

Almost a century prior, the forest of the
remote Siberian area of
Tunguska
had not been so lucky.
Similar conditions had created ball lightning, stemming from solar
wind and heavily ionized air during an electrical storm. The
short-lived orb had descended into the mountainous forest and its
intensity began to fade. Just before it was about to disintegrate,
a bolt of regular lightning was drawn in by its electromagnetic
field. The strong current tore apart the orb's structure in a
photonic detonation. The pure energy stemming from this
matter/anti-matter reaction set free a wave of high-energy photons
in every direction in the form of light, followed by intense x-ray
radiation.

Plants and animals in the air and on the
ground in the immediate vicinity were evaporated at the speed of
light. The mountainous terrain functioned as a shield and prevented
further spread of the destructive wave of energy across the land.
The concussion from the detonation was so great that seismic
stations around the world registered the ensuing pressure wave
rounding the globe twice. Had the orb been at its full intensity at
the time of the detonation, it would have released enough energy to
destroy the entire solar system.