AMPED (44 page)

She laughed. “Not even transcendent Kira is
that
good. No plan survives engagement with the enemy. That’s why she set a hidden personality as a watchdog of the plan, knowing she’d have to face curveballs she couldn’t foresee. Believe me, the plan proceeded anything but smoothly. There were a whole host of disasters transcendent Kira didn’t foresee. Van Hutten came from totally out of left field. Frey was an unexpected nightmare. So were Jake and his organization.” She lowered her eyes. “So was Jim Connelly’s death,” she added sadly.

Desh thought back to that moment in the woods, when Connelly had sacrificed himself for Kira, without hesitation. He had wondered then if his friend’s sacrifice had been worth it, and now he knew that it had been.

“The hidden part of me recognized there was a chance Jake would be assigned to the international effort to study the alien object,” continued Kira. “That’s why I planted a seed with him to call me if he ran into something big he couldn’t handle. At the time, I was a prisoner, and I was kicking myself, wondering why I had said it.”

In retrospect, thought Desh, it wasn’t entirely surprising that Jake was tapped to be part of
Copernicus
. He reported to Dutton, who was Frey’s puppet. And Frey would want to be sure he was represented on the luxury cruise ship. He had no way to know what alien secrets might be found, so he would want his proxies to have a front row seat. Still, Kira couldn’t possibly have counted on this complex web. “But it was just dumb luck that it all worked out,” he pointed out. “Dumb luck that you had planted the seed. And dumb luck that Jake was tapped to join
Copernicus
?”

“Not at all. If Jake wasn’t on
Copernicus
, we’d have had some of our people try to institute a contest to decide who ran the nanite team. If that failed, Matt could just contribute from Kentucky. Remember, anyone could study the nanites. They were everywhere. It wouldn’t have taken long for Matt to make more progress than anyone else in the world and establish his credentials. He would have ended up on the
Copernicus
no matter what. It just would have taken longer. But that wouldn’t have mattered. Because time zero wasn’t real. He programmed time zero to be five or six hours from whenever he had the nanites reveal their true purpose. Which he wouldn’t do until he had established himself on the
Copernicus
.”

Desh thought back to his friend’s activities on the massive cruise ship and shook his head in wonder. “Matt’s performance was flawless,” he said. “Truly genius. The big guy should win an Academy Award.”

“I have no doubt,” said Kira proudly. “Although he really was enhanced when you thought he was. That’s one thing that can’t be faked. And he needed to impress everyone enough to believe he was orders of magnitude beyond them. But he had the hardest job of all. You and I didn’t know what was going on—well, half of me didn’t. The two halves only became fully integrated again once the news hit that we had pulled it off. But Matt knew the truth from the beginning. And most of the time he had to keep us both in the dark. Although on the infrequent occasions when my other half took over, he was able to confide in me then.”

Desh knew he now had the entire story. Not that there wasn’t more to discuss. But it all fit so beautifully together. Kira’s plan was like a work of art—an exquisitely designed watch.

Desh unbuckled from his seat as he contemplated the true enormity of what had been accomplished. A herd of elephants had just stepped off his chest and the relief was indescribable. He turned to the woman he loved—who he had been
right
to still love—and tears began to run down his face. The emotional pressure of the end of the world, which he, like the masses, had absolutely believed, combined with believing he had been betrayed by a woman he loved with every fiber of his being, finally ended.

He felt euphoric.

He leaned forward and held his wife for several minutes, and tears began streaming down her cheeks as well. Finally, the embrace ended, and they kissed each other passionately, tasting a hint of the salty tears that had run down their lips as they did. Finally, Matt Griffin unknowingly ended their embrace when he applied the van’s brakes fairly suddenly, probably at a stoplight, and Desh was thrown to the right, almost tripping over the still unconscious Ross Metzger.

Desh took this as a signal to return to his seat and buckle in once again.

Kira let out a heavy sigh while he clicked the belt into place. “I’m so sorry I had to put you through this, David,” she said. “But transcendent Kira made that choice. After that there was nothing I could do. She put the clueless half of me through a lot of turmoil as well.”

Both of their tears had stopped flowing, but they were now on the giddy side. Desh gave her a lopsided smile. “So you only found out about all this yourself when you knew Matt had succeeded?”

“Yes. It was quite a shock, I can tell you. Memories that had been walled off, memories of actions I’d taken but didn’t know about, came rushing back to me like a dam had burst. First I was stunned. Then I was actually pissed at myself for keeping it from me. And finally, I was euphoric. It had worked. Nuclear weapons had been disabled and global tensions were about to recede rather than advance. Hopefully becoming a thing of the past forever.” She gazed lovingly into Desh’s eyes once again and smiled. “But what made me the happiest was knowing I could finally tell you about the plan. As an integrated personality again. That we would be back together the way we had always been, before the plan put a strain on our relationship.” Her jaw tightened. “But I never suspected Dutton would have the audacity to whisk you and Matt off
Copernicus
long before the dust had cleared.”

Desh nodded. He had to admit that Dutton had done a good job of justifying the need for Matt to leave the ship immediately.

“When Jake called I was frantic,” continued Kira. “It was supposed to be time to finally celebrate. Not to be fighting for our lives once again.”

“Well, you came up with a brilliant strategy to get us back.”

“Which couldn’t have gone more wrong,” noted Kira.

“You made the mistake of thinking that Eric Frey would be rational. Matt’s story about the scorpion and the frog was exactly on target. But your plan to get us back was still brilliant. Like you said, it still would have worked, despite Frey’s ambush, if he wouldn’t have added hidden snipers to the mix. There’s paranoia and then there’s ridiculous.”

“Well, given everything that blew up in our faces in the last month, figuratively and literally, there is a silver lining. Jake is now on our side. When we get back to headquarters, and Matt has recuperated a little longer, he can restore Jake’s good name. Undo the evidence Dutton planted against him, and replace it with evidence against Dutton.”

“When you say Jake’s on our side, what does that mean? That he’ll stop hunting us or actively
help
us?” At minimum, Desh was hopeful this would mean Seth Rosenblatt’s family could return to their lives, along with the rest of his hexad.

“Actively help us. He practically
loves
you and Matt. I don’t know what happened on the
Copernicus
but he raved about you both. I think he went from trying to kill the two of you to being willing to take a bullet for the two of you.”

Desh paused to let this soak in. “Will you tell Jake the truth about the aliens?”

“No. No one can ever know. Ross, Matt, me, and you. That’s it. At least for the next thirty or forty years. Hopefully someday the world will be more enlightened and we can think about revealing this as a hoax.”

Desh’s thoughts turned to Kira’s encounter with van Hutten. “Anton kidnapped you because the alien ship was on its way. This was what finally tipped the scales for him. So when he had you in a straightjacket, weren’t you tempted to tell him the truth?”

Kira shook her head. “I didn’t know it myself at the time. My hidden personality monitoring the situation didn’t see the need to fill me in. The plan was too important to jeopardize by disclosing to anyone who didn’t need to know, including me. Even when my life might have been on the line.”

Desh digested this sobering thought. “But what if you
had
been killed?”

“At that point the plan still would have succeeded. Matt and Ross would have seen to that.”

Desh considered this. She was right. At that point she truly was expendable. Thank God it hadn’t come to that. “And Jake is really willing to help us?”

“Wholeheartedly. He’s well aware of the power of a boosted IQ, and sees us as the good guys for once. Not to mention, the best chance to prevent Armageddon, round two, in thirty-four years.”

“Does he want to join the group?”

“No. We’re far better off leaving him in place. He and his black-ops team will act as our clandestine security arm. And he’ll make sure we get support from the highest levels of government. When he tells them that the great and powerful Matt, who now has a godlike reputation, is just an average one of us, they’ll realize we’re the best hope for Earth in the coming alien war.”

“Right,” said Desh with a broad grin. “The coming alien war.”

“Instead of killing ourselves engaging in cloak and dagger activities to disguise what we’re doing, we can be much more aboveboard. We can’t be crazy about it, but we won’t have to stress as much.”

“But we’ve talked about having the government involved before,” noted Desh. “And we’ve always decided this would be a bad idea.”

“But now
everything
is different,” explained Kira. “I’m letting Jake continue to think the longevity therapy doesn’t exist. So no one will be after that. And with the alien threat looming, the government will leave us alone. We can come up with a story that we have to screen potential recruits for genetic compatibility with the therapy. That anyone not compatible will die if they’re enhanced. So if someone in power tries to force himself on us, we can play that card.”

Desh gazed at her in admiration. She had given this a lot of thought.

“And we’ll have Jake’s full support,” she continued. “We’ll be known at the highest levels of government as having saved the planet and working to do so again.”

“Okay, I can see your point. This will definitely be a great help. But let me get back to the big picture for a moment. I agree that transcendent Kira’s plan will get us all working together against a common threat. And that global tensions will be significantly reduced. And I get we won’t have active nukes anymore. But doesn’t it trouble you that the entire world will be working on even more powerful weapons? Weapons powerful enough to stop these fictitious aliens?”

“Transcendent Kira considered this carefully,” she replied. “Yes, new weapons will be developed, but mankind will be on the same team. And strategists will realize immediately that weapons and defense aren’t the answer, anyway. That speed and maneuverability
are
. A planet is the ultimate sitting duck, especially when you’re trying to protect it from ships capable of moving at light speed, and able to arrive from any direction. The real answer is faster-than-light travel. We need to be able to meet the alien threat as far away from Earth as possible.” She grinned. “Well, if the aliens actually existed, that is. We’d need to destroy them in interstellar space before they could get close to us. Strategists will realize that only faster-than-light ships—controlled by an artificial intelligence, and ramming the aliens, kamikaze style—will allow us to defeat the, um . . . fictitious enemy.”
   

Desh whistled. “Wow, good thing for the aliens they don’t really exist. I think you’d kick their assess.” With a smile still on his face, he added, “And this dovetails perfectly with our goals. Yesterday, faster-that-light travel was Icarus’s number one priority. Today, it’s the number one priority of
all humanity
.”

“Not bad icing on the cake, huh?” said Kira. “And remember, we already have the zero point energy drive. We’ll wait until we all think the world can handle it, and give Ross another decade or so to really understand it, and we can reveal it to the world. This will at least allow us to seed a few explorers to colonize other planets, ensuring our survival no matter what happens on earth.”

“But won’t these trips take thousands of years to complete?” asked Desh.

“From our perspective,” replied Kira. “But because of relativity, they’ll be far shorter for the passengers. Regardless, we still need faster-than-light travel to accomplish our ultimate goals. But if we’re helped by the military rather than hindered by it, and can recruit with less fear of discovery, I’m convinced we’ll get there.”

Desh left his seat once again and he and his wife kissed hungrily, as if they had never kissed before. A foreshadowing of the hours of ravenous, frenzied lovemaking that would be their first order of business once they arrived at their destination and Ross was attended to.

They finally parted, and David Desh stared lovingly into the sparkling blue eyes of the woman he adored. He was now convinced that they would accomplish their goals, as well. As long as this remarkable woman was involved, all things were possible.

Kira had found a way to harness human passion for constructive, rather than destructive, purposes. To disarm the planet. To transform a warlike species, splintered into thousands of selfish tribes, into a single unit, eight billion strong. And in the process, she had saved humanity from itself; pulling it back from the edge of the abyss.

Desh grinned broadly. It was hard not to be optimistic. Kira Miller had reined in humanity’s enormous capacity for self-destructive behavior.

Compared to this feat, faster-than-light travel seemed like
child’s play
.

From the Author
: Thanks for reading AMPED! If you enjoyed this book, I would greatly appreciate it if you could help spread the word. Also, feel free to Friend me on Facebook at
Douglas E. Richards Author
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Novels Written by Douglas E. Richards

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