AMPED (30 page)

Desh considered ditching the car but thought better of it. Jake’s men would arrive at the site of the gunshots on foot, with no way to follow. And the car he and Connelly had driven here was off the radar.

Kira seemed on the verge of an emotional collapse, so he kept her talking, getting her to explain van Hutten’s motives. The physicist had thought his fire had destroyed their entire supply of gellcaps. Since the gellcaps couldn’t withstand high heat, even if the safe they were in wasn’t consumed by the fire, he was correct to believe they were destroyed.

But he didn’t know they had another facility. Like Jake before him, he had dealt them a serious blow, but still not a fatal one. “How’s our inventory of gellcaps in Kentucky?” asked Desh.

“Good. We should have plenty to hold us until I can produce more. I made sure each site had enough to carry us through if we lost one of the headquarters. But we’ll have to suspend the west hexads indefinitely.”

Desh nodded grimly. They had been on the defensive and had been taking a beating. They needed to get to the RV, clean up, bury their friend, and join Matt Griffin, who was manning Icarus’s Kentucky headquarters this week—now Icarus’s
sole
headquarters.

David Desh felt the loss of Jim Connelly as deeply as he had the loss of his own father. At least his friend had died a hero. But even as he thought this he realized it might not be true. He had to admit to himself that his wife was now as alien to him as the object hurtling through space. Had his friend sacrificed himself to save a woman who could well be the most important human ever born?

Or had he died to save something else entirely?

42

The small alien ship slipped inside the orbit of Pluto and continued on, inexorably, toward its target. Although decelerating, it was still moving hundreds of times faster than any terrestrial object had ever managed, and it quickly passed inside the orbits of the gas giants of Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter. Now travelling at pedestrian speeds its mass and length had long since been stable to within the limits of terrestrial detection. It was a perfect sphere, approximately nine feet in diameter, still emitting Casimir radiation, although at these speeds it was now only siphoning off a drop of the ocean of zero point energy available to it.

All attempts made by humanity to communicate with the craft in a variety of possible ways were ignored.

Inside the orbit of Mars, the ship began breaking even harder, as every one of the nearly eight billion inhabitants of Earth held their breath.

Would it stop? Fly by? Crash? Would flying pigs emerge?

These questions were moments away from being answered as the ship neared ever closer, tracked by every hobbyist and professional astronomer in the world and thrown up on countless televisions and computer monitors. At this point, Jupiter and Saturn could have jumped to light speed and collided, and not a single telescope would have recorded this event, being otherwise preoccupied.

The ship slid smoothly into low orbit around the third planet from the Sun. Then, undetected by the vast array of instruments trained on the ship, thousands upon thousands of tiny transparent spheres, just a hair larger than microscopic in size, were ejected from tiny pores in its hull with enough force to rain down uniformly across the planet below.

The ship crisscrossed the globe and injected its invisible payload for several hours, and then assumed a perfect geostationary orbit above the Earth’s equator, matching its orbital speed to that of the Earth’s rotation so that it maintained a fixed position above the planet.

Its orbit established, it ejected a metal sphere the size of a large beach ball directly at the Sun, and an instant later the Casimir radiation issuing from the object ceased entirely.

Thousands of different scenarios had been modeled by the people of earth, and this one, in which the ship just parked itself in a stable orbit, had long been considered one of the more likely possibilities. The U.N. had contracted with a private company,
Space Unlimited
, to retrieve the alien craft should this occur, and a terrestrial retrieval ship was launched within hours of the alien ship having established a stable orbit.

All attempts at communication continued to be ignored, but
Space Unlimited’s
ship was not fired upon or hindered in any way. The alien craft was checked for life and for any form of computer or robotic intelligence, but none were found.

The alien craft was then plucked from its orbit and placed in the cargo hold of the
Space Unlimited
ship, and although no life had been detected, microscopic or otherwise, it was put through a thorough decontamination process—just to be sure. Finally, less than a day after its arrival, the alien craft was brought to the surface and transported to thousands of eager scientists waiting on board a luxury cruise ship flying a U.N. flag, now called
Copernicus
, waiting in the South Atlantic.

43

Desh and Kira joined Matt Griffin at their Kentucky headquarters and there began licking wounds and discussing plans to rebuild. The setbacks had been fast and furious over the past month. When they had been on the verge of recruiting van Hutten things had finally seemed to be heading in the right direction. But now they felt like
Sisyphus, condemned to push a backbreaking boulder uphill, only to have it roll back down whenever it neared the top. Sisyphus had been condemned by Zeus to repeat this futile endeavor for all eternity, but for the Icarus team, just recovering the ground the boulder had lost a single time was a daunting prospect.

The three remaining members of a core council that once had numbered five held a private funeral for Colonel Jim Connelly, a truly great man whose loss cast a further pall on an already battered and discouraged group.

While they kept their heads down for a short time, not wanting to attract any more attention until their trail had grown ice cold, much of the craziness that had gripped the world at the approach of the alien craft was subsiding, and the world was returning to a new normal.

The alien ship had come. Neither God nor the devil had emerged from it. The world had not been destroyed or dramatically altered in any way. No sermons on the mount were issued from the spherical ship. No technology discovered that would transform society. Scientists aboard what had become the most famous ship in the world, the
Copernicus
, had yet to find anything, unable to discover how to even activate the zero point energy drive that had propelled the ship. After finding no electronics or computer guidance and control systems, or the alien equivalent, scientists became convinced that the vital brain of the ship had been ejected into the Sun to ensure alien secrets would be kept.

The ship was scoured inside and out using x-rays, radio waves, nuclear magnetic resonance—basically every wave across the wide electromagnetic spectrum—yet no messages, no hieroglyphics, no images—absolutely nothing—was discovered, not even microscopic scratches. And then everything else under the sun was tried, down to checking for invisible ink, with the same result. What they had was an empty hull of a ship, with a dead and incomprehensible engine, and no brain.

Desh, Griffin, and Kira had waited with baited breath for days, wondering if something would pop out of the vessel, jack-in-the-box style, and demand Kira Miller’s head, or complain that the planet was filled with morons rather than the towering IQs that had beckoned it across spacetime. But this had not happened, which was a relief, especially to Kira, since van Hutten had her half convinced that his analysis was correct.

They continued to check satellite coverage and look for electronic eyes that might be pointing in their general vicinity, as well as check other early warning systems they had in place, but they found no reason to believe they weren’t safe and hidden, at least for the moment.

While Jake was their biggest threat, they would never be able to breathe easily until the puppet master behind him was found and stopped. So Desh threw himself into tracking down the man who had once been called Eric Frey, enlisting the help of Matt Griffin. He loved working with the affable giant, which brought back memories of the last time they worked together on a manhunt. That time they had been trying to find the enigmatic Kira Miller, a woman who had once again become far more enigmatic than Desh wanted to admit, even to himself.

Kira gave Desh and Griffin a description of the sort of biotech equipment Frey would need to reproduce her therapy, including names of private companies that sold DNA synthesizers, and other companies from which he would almost surely order some of the more common cloned genes he would need. Griffin spent five minutes while enhanced and compiled a list of the approximately eight thousand customers who had ordered necessary ingredients.

From there it was just a matter of whittling the list down. Desh interviewed several of Frey’s colleagues by phone to supplement his discussion with Arnold Cohen, and assembled a profile of the man. He was almost sure to own a boat, and subscribe to two or three saltwater and deep sea fishing magazines. Griffin had hacked into police records and had learned that Frey had befriended numerous young boys and had taken them on his boat, a few accusing him of molestation—certainly representing the tip of the iceberg—although all charges were ultimately dropped. A boat was ideal for this type of predatory behavior since there would be nowhere for a victim to run or hide; no one who could possibly interrupt; and no one to hear any screams.
           

Isolated in international waters, Frey could apply a carrot or a stick, intimidate and cajole, and use the entire arsenal of tactics employed by those who preyed on helpless children throughout the ages, including threatening their lives if they ever told anyone what had transpired.

Of the eight thousand or so customers who had purchased necessary biotech equipment in the right time frame, only about two hundred and thirty were boat owners. From there, knowing the types of clothes Frey had liked to buy, wine he liked to drink, performances he liked to attend, books he liked to read, and so on, they were able to narrow the list in short order. An enhanced Griffin checked out the few remaining names and identified Frey immediately: he was now Adam Leonard Archibald.

A month after Frey had supposedly died at his own hand, Archibald had bought a small, but well equipped, San Diego biotech company with cash. Since this purchase, the company had made several breakthroughs, and was now contemplating an IPO that would value it at twenty times what Archibald had paid.

And while the enhanced version of Frey could plant data in computers in ways that were untraceable by the best human experts, the enhanced version of Griffin was able to unravel his efforts in no time. The real Adam Archibald had passed away eight years earlier. Frey had taken his name and social security number, and had rewritten history in computers around the world, creating college degrees, work experience, and even dental records that could stand up to the highest level of scrutiny. He had grown a beard, had surgery so he wouldn’t need his glasses, and added a toupee of thick brown hair where balding brown had been before. But while these physical changes were enough to fool an ex-colleague if he passed them on the street, his wide nose, weak chin, and shallow face were a dead match for Eric Frey—as were his habits.

Desh had flown to San Diego, Kira’s old haunt, to spy on this Archibald to learn as much as possible about him and attempt to discover who he was working with. But after five days, Desh had been shut out. Archibald/Frey had developed electronic technologies that nullified the bugs and homing devices Desh planted, which wasn’t possible since they made use of technology undetectable by anyone on earth, a further confirmation that Archibald was indeed Eric Frey.

Desh could continue surveillance and hope he got a lucky break that would provide a handle on Frey’s network. But he had to weigh the probability of success against the probability that Frey would learn Desh was on to him and go to ground. In the end, the decision was obvious.

It was time to act.

44

Desh waited patiently inside the shower of the guest stateroom of Frey’s multimillion-dollar yacht, the
Codon
. The craft was spectacular. Frey had moved up in the world since he had purchased his last boat, but access to Kira’s gellcaps could do that for you.

The
Codon
was a sixty-foot triple-decker that, despite its size, had sleek, aerodynamic curves that screamed speed and agility: a racing boat scaled up ten-fold. The cabins were elegant and decadent, resembling nothing more than the sleeping quarters of European royalty. Desh was sickened by the thought of what was certain to have taken place on this magnificent ship. If anything, Frey’s dramatic increase in wealth would make him even more of a predator than he had been in his previous life.

Desh had arrived early enough to avoid being seen by the few marina residents who called their boats home. After silently inspecting every square centimeter of the upper decks of the
Codon
, and disabling a red and black jet ski, he had picked a lock and hurried below, out of sight from any awakening eyes. He had gone over the rest of the boat just as carefully as he had the outside decks, finding nothing that had caused him any concern. No alarms. No surveillance equipment. And no means of leaving the ship other than swimming.

Now Desh was sitting as comfortably as he possibly could on the floor of a shower, reading one of the eBooks he had downloaded to his phone the night before. He finished the first book and had started on the second when he heard noise from above

Frey had finally arrived for his scheduled outing. If Desh’s intelligence was correct, the man who had become Adam Archibald would be alone on this excursion.

Before long the boat began to move slowly as it cleared the dock and harbor. After five minutes, Frey opened the throttle and the huge ship darted forward. Desh waited another ten minutes and exited the shower. He pulled a military style stun gun from his pocket and walked soundlessly across the cabin.