Starfire Page 24

  Brandt turned an uncertain eye back toward Perez. “I may take you up on that someday.”

  Dr. Linscott sighed loudly. “All three of you are upsetting Jenna and having a pointless pissing contest. Here’s the score as I understand it, Brandt. That’s your name, right?”

  Brandt nodded, bemused.

  “The situation is fairly clear to me. I’m new, so I might get a few things wrong, but Clark can fill in the blanks. You, your father and your daughter all have the power to open up the hatches in that ship. Presumably, this is because it imprinted on your family DNA years ago when your grandfather helped find it.”

  Brandt didn’t look happy, but he nodded again.

  “Things have changed with the Russians,” Dr. Linscott said. “They took out all our eyes in the sky—even the ISS is gone. They did it so we wouldn’t see them launching a ship. That ship is flying with technology they had to have gotten from a wreck like this one—”

  “If I may interrupt, Dr. Linscott,” Clark said.

  They all looked at him.

  “First, I’m alarmed that you would discuss this with uncleared persons. That’s an explicit violation of your contract and federal law—”

  “Come on, Clark. Do you want him to pull out your spleen, or do you want him to cooperate? All your manipulative games only go so far.”

  Clark considered, then nodded, indicating she should proceed.

  “You’ll never get out of here, anyway,” she said, looking at Brandt and Jenna. “I don’t agree with anything that’s happened to you, but I can see it from the government’s point of view. They were crazy to ever let any of you leave this facility. Now that the stakes are so much higher, they can’t risk losing either of you. After all, your father is already gone. They’d never get into the ship again, and it’s their only hope.”

  “Only hope for what?” Brandt asked.

  “To beat the Russians,” she said.

  Brandt blinked. “Are you crazy? This thing doesn’t fly. The engine is broken or something. It has been since my father was a young man.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Dr. Linscott said. “But I think we can change that.”

  Clark stayed quiet for once. Brandt eyed him coldly. He could tell the smug prick was pleased at the transformation that had overcome Brandt as he absorbed this new information.

  “That’s what you meant, isn’t it?” Brandt asked him. “That’s how we’re going to escape this place? By flying out of here in a century-old wreck? You’re all crazy.”

  Jenna spoke up then. “I like the ship. I think it wants to fly again, and I want to fly with it.”

  Brandt wasn’t happy to hear this. He wasn’t happy at all.

  “Dr. Linscott?” he asked. “Can you hold onto Jenna for me for a few minutes? I’d like a private word with Clark.”

  “Sure,” she said, nodding uncertainly. She put an arm around the girl.

  “Let’s have a chat, Major,” Brandt said.

  Clark led the way to his office in the back.

  Brandt watched Clark sidelong. Was that a tremor along his lower jawline? He hoped it was. He wanted to see the guy sweat.

  Just once.

  Chapter 39

  Area 51, Gamma Level

  Underground

  Clark ushered Brandt into his office and shut the door. Somehow, Perez had snuck in as well. Brandt frowned at him, and Perez stared back blankly.

  “You’re guarding him, aren’t you?” Brandt asked. “I hadn’t even figured it out until now. You’ve got to be the lowest-key, weirdest security guy I’ve ever met.”

  Brandt and Clark were across the desk from one another, but Perez sat down in the farthest chair. He leaned back and crossed his legs. It was a bad position to start from, if something were to happen, but it did serve to lower tensions and make one forget he was there. Brandt shook his head and turned back to Clark who was wearing typically his insipid smile.

  “All right,” Brandt said. “You got me in here. You won. But I still want my daughter out of this.”

  “I can’t do it, as I said,” Clark explained. “You and your daughter are essential natural resources. Critical to national defense—even to worldwide security. I’d rather have everyone in this installation die right now than let you leave.”

  Brandt huffed in frustration. He didn’t want to kill everyone—not that he thought he couldn't pull it off. It would be nice to kill Clark, at least. That would bring him some level of satisfaction. Maybe he could ask for that, as the price for his cooperation…

  “I see unpleasant thoughts in your mind,” Clark said. “Let me demonstrate that I’ve dealt truthfully and openly with you.”

  Clark manipulated a computer embedded into his desk. He tapped and slid his fingers over it like a pianist playing a complex piece.

  A video began to play. Clark deftly spun it around so it aimed at Brandt, who looked at it suspiciously.

  The video showed someone walking down a corridor. The camera was one of those point-of-view jobs—as if you were looking out of the cameraman’s eyes. A hand reached forward—an aged hand—and opened a door. The chamber and the ship were revealed.

  “What kind of a—”

  “All shall become clear soon,” Clark said soothingly.

  Brandt kept watching. He was already beginning to suspect what this was. He didn't want to see anymore, but he couldn’t turn away, either.

  The point of view was close to the head—so close. As if the camera were worn on a headband. The man faltered, made a croaking sound. The eyes blinked—

  They blinked. He was looking through another man’s eyes. He knew instantly who it had to be. He couldn’t believe it.

  There was a sound, someone was calling out. Hands reached out and grabbed the stricken man.

  A voice spoke, a voice that Brandt knew so well. His father sounded weak. He was on the walkway leading up to the ship. People were around him, supporting him. Major Clark was among them.

  The view spun around sickeningly as his father fell onto his back, staring upward. After a while, the blinking stopped. The dead eyes stared up at a frantic group of people who worked to revive him. Slowly, as the brain died and the retina stopped transmitting, everything went dark.

  Brandt’s father’s last moments had been recorded and documented. This was disturbing to him. He hadn’t been close to the old man for a long time, but still—it was his father.

  He tried to push all that aside and think clearly. This wasn’t the time for emotion and grief. That could come later. He had to think about Jenna. He had to care for the living.

  Brandt looked at Clark. “You were there. You eased him down onto the catwalk. What happened?”

  “An undetected pulmonary embolism. It went to his brain, and he didn’t make it. Sudden, painless. A tragedy for the nation.”

  “Why was he trying to get to the ship?”

  “We can only speculate. Perhaps he wanted to open it one last time. Maybe he thought he could get help from those working there, as it’s always a well-trafficked area.”

  “I saw the look on your face, Clark. You were concerned. That’s not like you.”

  Clark shrugged. “Who can watch a friend die impassively?”

  “You could,” Brandt said with certainty. “My dad was your last key to the ship. Without him, your project was dead. That’s when you started searching for Jenna and me, wasn’t it? You needed us desperately. I thought that if I evaded long enough, you’d give up and back off. But you never did.”

  “We couldn’t,” Clark said apologetically. “We were left with no options.”

  “The voice,” Brandt said quietly. “How did you do the voice that called me on the phone after he was already dead? He must have called me a dozen times after this—more than that.”

  “We have equipment. The implant had been recording for years, and we stored it all. It wasn't long before it recorded a perfect facsimile of your father's voice. Part of our research involved trying to duplicate yo
ur father’s magic touch. We thought that if we could simulate him in other ways, we could enter the ship. Alas, we failed in that endeavor, but our AI had built a profile of your father’s speech patterns, and we wrote a script for it to read to you when we left messages. During conversations, there was a live operator adlibbing the script.”

  Brandt wanted to be furious, but he found his anger had burned itself out. His father’s death had changed everything. He could see that now. He wasn’t going to get out of here. The government had them, he and his daughter. They’d never let them go. They couldn’t let them go. Unless…

  Brandt heaved a sigh and leaned back in his chair. “I can see the situation more clearly now. You should have come clean with me from the start, Clark. You should have told me my dad was gone and that you needed my help.”

  “Would you have offered it?”

  “I don't know, but I’d have been much more receptive. Some of your agents and some of my friends might still be breathing. You screwed up.”

  Clark steepled his fingers. “Let me make sure I understand what you’re saying. Are you willing to work with us now? Are you willing to see this project through to the end?”

  Brandt leaned forward. “All right, here’s the deal: Immunity for me. Drop all criminal charges. Make my record vanish, including with Interpol.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “All right. Now, let’s assume you do manage to get this rock flying. I’ll go with you, because I have to. But Jenna stays on Earth. Under no circumstances am I taking her with us.”

  Clark’s smile had been edging upward for the past minute. Now, he looked quite pleased with himself.

  “Done,” he said. “I would never endanger both of you in spaceflight in any case.”

  Brandt actually believed him.

  Clark stood up and left the room quickly, saying he had arrangements to make that could not be postponed.

  Brandt watched him go. He turned to address Perez, who’d been quietly sitting and listening the whole time. “He’s telling all the guards, snipers and automated guns to stand down, I bet.”

  “Probably,” Perez said. “By the way, that was well-played.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Agreeing to cooperate. That was your only way to stay free.”

  Brandt sneered at Perez. “What do you know about it?”

  “I know about their cells. They’re pretty hard to get out of as they’re surrounded by solid rock. They’d have put you into one of them and kept using Jenna. You’d be an even better lure than ice cream, I bet. ‘Open the ship one more time, honey, and you can see your Daddy tonight.’”

  Brandt glowered down the hallway after Clark. “That’s probably how it would have gone,” he admitted. “I thought seriously about killing him—you know, for the good of humanity. Do you think you could have stopped me?”

  Perez shrugged. “Maybe. That is why I’m here.”

  Brandt snorted and left the office. Perez followed him quietly.

  Chapter 40

  Las Vegas

  Day

  Edwin and Yuki checked out of the hotel room late. They were slightly hung-over. They’d slept in after blacking out the windows and putting into service every do-not-disturb sign and door lock they could find.

  Yuki had enjoyed herself more than she’d expected. Edwin was a nerd—but he was part jock too, and he was definitely a man to be taken seriously in bed.

  Edwin’s state of mind was clear for all to behold. He was smiling and whistling and joking with the hotel staff as they packed up and checked out. Yuki found it almost embarrassing. She smiled. God knew how long it had been since the poor man had been properly laid. It had been a while for her, too. She'd been so engrossed in her work that over the last couple of years, she'd hardly had time to think about dating.

  After a brief lunch, they took their rental car out into the desert following 95 northward. The change in the landscape was dramatic as they drove up the highway. Las Vegas was an anomaly out here. The city was a bizarre growth of steel, light and asphalt in the midst of what was really a bleak moonscape.

  They passed through Indian Springs after about an hour. Edwin pointed a finger at a sign that said “Amargosa Valley.”

  “That’s where you turn off onto 373. Death Valley is just an hour away once you get there. Head south on 373, and you’ll hit the California side real quick.”

  “Death Valley,” Yuki said. “I believe it. This place is a blast furnace.”

  “Death Valley is the hottest spot on the planet. Regularly hits a hundred and thirty in the summer. You’re right here on Hell’s borderland, with a front row seat.”

  Yuki shuddered slightly. She was from the coast. She’d never lived more than fifty miles from the ocean.

  “We’ve gone from the coldest spot to the warmest,” she said. “Why can’t you and I find a nice cool forest or ocean to visit?”

  Edwin chuckled and shook his head. “That’s not the way of things when you work black ops contracts for the government. They like to hide what they do in places like this, where no one will bother to look.”

  “Edwin, about last night,” Yuki said after the conversation lulled.

  Edwin’s hand rose up to stop her. “Don’t need to say it. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. That’s the law out here.”

  “No, that’s not exactly what I was going to say,” she said, frowning. “I mean—well, I don’t know what kind of relationship I want to get into right now. We might be reassigned any day to separate locations.”

  Edwin didn’t look at her. “Would you prefer it that way? Apart, I mean? I might be able to arrange it.”

  “No, not at all!” she said quickly. “Look, Edwin, have some confidence. We had a great time last night, and it might happen again. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t expect us to get married or anything right off.”

  “Darn. Now what am I going to do with this ring?” He fished in his pocket while Yuki watched in horror.

  At last, he pulled out an empty hand and chuckled.

  “Gotcha!”

  She slapped his shoulder and rolled her eyes.

  Sometime later they pulled up to an exit with a lot of warning signs about unauthorized persons and imminent prosecutions. They took the exit, passing through gates manned by unsmiling guards, and drove on into the desert.

  They traveled over an odd landscape. There was a mostly deserted town named Mercury, then a lot of craters where the government had originally set off nuclear tests.

  “Plenty of radiation left over out here.” Edwin said. “They call it safe, but I’m closing the vents and speeding up if you don’t mind.”

  “Be my guest.”

  They left the testing area behind and traveled into near-nothingness. The land was rugged, full of rocks, hills and sand.

  “Most of Nevada is federal land,” Edwin said. “Over eighty percent of it, actually. They do what they want out here. For the last few decades they’ve done a whole lot of nothing. But the old bases have been reopening and getting more active lately. Area 51 is said to be pretty much hopping with newly hired contractors.”

  “Makes me wonder what’s going on.”

  “Me too.”

  After a long drive, they reached the base and were allowed through after even more intense scrutiny.

  “Man, these guys are serious,” Edwin said.

  They were hustled out of the car, separated and searched. The guards ran mirrors under the car, circled it with dogs several times and demanded fingerprints from both of them.

  “Are they always like this?” Yuki asked in a whisper.

  Edwin finished signing yet another statement swearing to his harmless state of body and mind, then turned to her. “I haven’t worked this site before, but when I told one of the guards we were down from Barrow, he told me they had an ‘incident’ of their own here earlier today.”

  Yuki’s heart began to race. She felt a little sick. It was just nerves, she told h
erself. How could terrorists, or whatever they were, get all the way down here?

  “Is the country under some kind of attack?” she asked Edwin.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s either that, or we’re a pair of the unluckiest sad-sacks ever born.”

  Inside the hangar, they were met by a strange man who introduced himself as Major Clark. Yuki noticed that he was a pretentious man with a precise manner of speaking.

  On the way down to what he called Gamma level, he apologized to them for any inconveniences they may have suffered getting to this place.

  Clark ushered them into a pair of separate rooms. The doors clicked shut, and Yuki knew right away that something was wrong.

  She couldn’t hear the outside world anymore. It was as if Clark and Edwin were a thousand miles away. She knew instantly that if she couldn’t hear them, they couldn’t hear her.

  She rushed to the door, finding it locked. She hammered on it, howling for Edwin, but he couldn’t hear her. That friendly lump had missed this one. She could see him through the portal-like window. He was walking away, chatting in his folksy way with Clark. She watched his lips move, but couldn’t hear a word. He didn’t look back.

  She watched as he was walked into his own cell on the opposite side of the long corridor and ushered inside by that phony, Clark. The door shut, and it didn’t open again.

  Clark turned away and walked toward the big doors at the end of the corridor calmly, as if this was all part of his daily routine.

  Breathing hard, Yuki stared with wide eyes. Her breath fogged up the window. Maybe locking people in here was part of Major Clark’s routine.

  What the hell had she gotten herself into now?

  Chapter 41

  Area 51, Gamma Level

  Underground

  Jackie was stressing. The rest of the team had already knocked off for the night—but not her. Until recently, she’d been a scientist working in industry, which wasn’t an easy, low-stress job to begin with, but this was different. This was worse.