Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4) (2 page)

Taz, wearing his standard black t-shirt, black jeans, leather jacket, and brown construction boots, boarded one of the Foundation’s many “new generation” private jets twenty minutes after wrapping the meeting with Stellard. A commercial airliner might take him twenty hours to reach Fiji, but the Foundation pilot could make it there in about twelve.

Still too long,
he thought,
but the world is a big place and it takes time to get around. Hopefully the team in the Philippines will get Gaines and Asher long before I reach Fiji.

A beautiful Foundation “travel executive” brought him a drink. They exchanged smiles, and he remembered an encounter with her six or seven months earlier.

Taz attracted women like a rock star. Maybe it was the green eyes, or the short, shaggy dark hair, or the biceps and his “cut” physique. Taz never gave it too much thought, just took the parties when they came. If asked, he might have chalked it up to the heavy gold rings which adorned his right hand, but most of the women would say it was his intense energy, as if he’d just blasted off the screen as the hero in a “save-the-world” action movie. This time, as he took a few swift punches at the air, he’d have to take a rain check on the private party. There was too much work to do.

He checked the time. His people would reach the hospital in Suva in less than five hours. The girl, Gaines’ and Asher’s daughter, was still in surgery. No way they could move her that soon. Taz smiled.

Fugitives should not have children,
he thought.
Gaines has been the target of the greatest manhunt in history. He’s miraculously eluded everyone from the top intelligence agencies for almost seven years. And now he goes and gets himself caught due to a six-year-old’s playground accident
.

Taz read the report on his Eysen-INU. The little girl had been playing, and somehow a game the children called “ribbon tag” became bloody after one child had sneaked in a pair of scissors to cut the ribbons. After a chase and tangle, Gaines’ daughter fell, the open scissors penetrating her eyes.

Every parent’s nightmare
, he thought,
but much more for Gaines and Asher. Even if their daughter doesn’t lose her sight, she’s going to lose her parents.

Another update came in. The NSA and CIA were sending units to Fiji, including a crew from Sydney, Australia—three hours out.
Damn, they’ll beat us! That’s going to complicate things.

He scanned the maps. Nothing closer than Manila.
No wonder they chose Fiji. There’s nothing close enough to threaten them.

He messaged Stellard. They could try to bribe someone in the hospital, or the local police, but doing that long distance was almost impossible. They could work contacts within the US government, but the prize was too great and could not be shared. That also ruled out the Mossad, who were, most likely, also on their way. The final option Taz suggested made Stellard’s mouth go dry. It was too great a risk.

“What happens if the NSA gets them?” Taz asked, defending his proposal. “Or the Israelis?”

“We’ve looked for these two for more than seven years and you want to just let them go?” Stellard said, adjusting the temperature of the space heater near his feet. “We may not ever find them again.”

“I’m
not
saying let them go,” he said, his rings clicking along the side of the INU. One of them was set with a small round sapphire representing his prey—Gaines and the Sphere. “But our only play here might be to tip them off, get them to trust us, use the satellites, and track them. There are only so many ways to escape a small island surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean.”

Stellard understood the stakes far better than Taz did, and knew that the Foundation had enough power that it might be able to pry the fantastical artifact away from the CIA, or even the NSA, but that would be an unacceptably long shot. On the other hand, if Gaines and Asher escaped and Taz followed their every movement, then the Foundation might be able to get the fugitives to cooperate. They’d had seven years to study the Eysen-Sphere; surely that kind of knowledge would save the Foundation’s own scientists an enormous amount of time. Time the Foundation desperately needed as the deadline for launching the ultra-secret future-altering plan known as the Phoenix Initiative was looming. Delays caused by uncertainties in the computer models for the complex operations had been frustrating the Foundation’s leadership for months, and after the Phoenix Initiative, the risks would be even greater. Flawless leadership would be required to guide the world through its greatest transformation since the dawn of modern man.

“What about Booker?” Stellard asked, then mumbled something Taz couldn’t hear.

Taz stared back at his superior’s image, projected from his Eysen-INU. It was a fair question. Booker was not to be underestimated. He also had the resources to track Gaines, and then there were the BLAXERs, the small army he employed, a force that far exceeded the number and skill level of the Foundation’s agents. Additionally, Booker had every advantage due to the enormous wealth at his disposal, much of it derived from Eysen, Inc., his privately held company, which had a market cap of $1.8 trillion. His other holdings were difficult to evaluate, but most estimates pegged them somewhere between $100 and $300 billion. The Foundation had considerable funding behind it, but nothing close to that level.

“If he doesn’t know we’re converging on Fiji—” Taz began.

“Don’t be a fool,” Stellard interrupted. “Booker knew before you did.”

“He can’t win them all.”

“I can’t think of any he’s lost.”

“Then he’s due,” Taz persisted. “It doesn’t matter. We don’t have many options here. You decide. Let the CIA get him, or follow them. Which is riskier?”

“Which is
smarter
?” Stellard tended toward caution, while his protégée more often played with the devil.

If there had been time, Stellard feared the Eysen enough that he would have used the Foundation’s contacts within the US military to bomb Fiji into oblivion. An operation like that would take weeks to put into place though, and the obvious fallout would make that kind of bold strike impossible until they were closer to the Phoenix launch date. Still, nothing less than the future of the human race depended on either capturing or killing Ripley Gaines.

Booker Lipton set down his five-nut herbal smoothie, answered his scrambled phone, and listened while Rip Gaines blasted a string of obscenities.

“Are you through?” Booker asked calmly, only after Rip paused to breathe.

“Are you going to authorize my return to Fiji?” Rip shouted.

“No way, Rip. That would be suicide, and you know it.”

“Cira and Gale are there!” Rip insisted breathlessly. “I’m not going to leave them to get captured, while I run away. My daughter, Booker, my
daughter
!”

Rip thought back to the time the Sphere had shown him his death. By then he’d been used to the Sphere’s giving exact weather forecasts months in advance, including earthquakes and other natural disasters. He’d routinely seen world events such as worker’s strikes, plane crashes, fires, elections, and other seemingly minor events, long before they happened. The problem was, he didn’t know how to control it. He couldn’t get back to the places where he saw those events, or to the point that had given details of his death. But while there, he’d had a choice.

Did he
want
to know how? Did Gale want to know her date? Cira’s?

Gale had declined, thinking it would weigh on her too much, and both decided they could not bear knowing Cira’s. In the end, Rip didn’t want to know the cause of his death, but he’d noted the date and memorized it, right down to the exact second of his final breath. Now he wished he’d found out Gale and Cira’s dates as well. Then he would at least know . . .

It wasn’t safe to take out the Sphere while on the run, but as soon as they reached El Perdido, he decided he would immediately go deep into the swirling universe of the Eysen.

“Kruse and Harmer are with them in Fiji,” Booker said. “You know they’ll get them out safely.”

“What was the security breach?” Rip asked. They hadn’t told him about Cira’s accident. The BLAX agents accompanying him to Hawaii had only said that there had been a major breach and he could not go home.

“We don’t know exactly,” Booker lied, “but Foundation and CIA agents are en route.”

“I need to talk to Gale.”

In the years since the discovery of the Eysen-Sphere, Rip had occasionally felt as if he lived in another world, another time, or perhaps what could be more accurately described as another dimension. Gale had managed to keep him grounded, but she also walked on the fringes of reality when exploring the Sphere. Cira, more than just a daughter, had been their anchor to the present day. Without her joyful presence, they certainly would have been consumed by the depths of the ancient Sphere long ago.

“You know it’s not safe to contact Gale now. We’re in an exit. No communications.”

The constantly rehearsed evacuation plans and the numerous contingencies to deal with imminent dangers and blown covers were collectively known as “exit.” The procedures had been memorized, the steps meticulously designed. Their lives were at risk, and only by perfectly following every procedure of the exit could they hope to survive. Rip understood.

“Damn it, Booker, if you’re lying . . . If Cira and Gale are not safe and waiting for me when I get to the rendezvous, I’ll never forgive you. I’ll shut down the Eysen, and I swear . . . ”

Rip owed everything to Booker, and definitely the last seven years of his life, but he also knew that the trillionaire lied easily, and that he would mislead anyone whenever necessary to achieve his goals.

Rip finally voiced his greatest concern.

“Are they still alive?”

“I assure you that Gale and Cira are very much alive. We’re taking care of them. Just get to the rendezvous and everything will be all right.”

“No, it won’t. They know we were in Fiji. The NSA will track everything in and out of there for the last year. They’ll trace me to Honolulu, and they’ll run down every boat or plane leaving Fiji from yesterday on until they catch us.” Rip’s voice shook with anger and fear. “The NSA will probably be at the rendezvous before I get there.”

“Get ahold of yourself, Rip. I’ve kept you safe for seven years. There is a plan in place, just follow the damned procedures.”

Rip thought about Booker’s priorities; the Eysen-Sphere, the greater good. Sacrifices could be made.

“You’ll sacrifice Gale, or Cira, if need be, to protect the Sphere,” Rip said.

“I don’t deny that,” Booker replied. “You know what’s at stake. But I don’t have to. Trust me and we’ll get through this.”

Rip remained silent, realizing no other options existed. Even if he
could
get away from his BLAX escorts, he didn’t have any money, not that that mattered. The NSA, CIA, Mossad, or the Foundation would pick him up in a matter of minutes if he broke cover.

However, there was one possible escape route. During their years in Fiji, he’d had to go to Hawaii a number of times. Although Booker paid to have a decent lab built in their island house, the real Eysen research was done at the University of Hawaii. Booker had funded a major archaeology department as a cover and to facilitate Rip’s continued work on the Sphere. He’d covertly brought a group of the brightest scientists in the world—contractually sworn to secrecy and subject to AX monitoring—to help analyze the Sphere, utilizing the most sophisticated equipment available, some of it actually derived from plans contained within the Sphere itself. Booker also had a team at the university using data obtained during those sessions to further electronically dissect the original Eysen in order to continue to improve the mass-produced INU models, which had recently been reduced to the size of a softball.

Rip thought about donning the elaborate feature-altering disguise he used to get in and out of Honolulu.
If I can somehow get back to Hawaii, I’ve got contacts there that I can trust. Someone will help me. Maybe there’s a way
 . . .

But there were too many ifs, too many unknowns.

How will I even find Gale and Cira now that they’re on the move? No, I better stick to the plan. Booker will get them to the rendezvous, or else I’ll shut down the Sphere.

“I discovered a long time ago that it’s usually not a good idea to trust people who say ‘trust me,’” Rip finally said. “But I also know that trusting you has always been the right path.”

Booker thanked him. After the call, the trillionaire immediately pulled up a screen and checked on Rip’s daughter, who was still in surgery. Cira could easily die, but even if she lived, the price would most likely be permanent blindness. Rip would hate Booker for keeping that from him, but before he could tackle that unpleasantness, he still had to save her.

Booker’s AX and BLAX armies already had dozens of personnel in Fiji, plus Harmer and Kruse were on the scene. Every minute that passed meant teams of agents from at least four different adversaries were getting closer to converging on the hospital. Without the opportunity to arrest either Ripley Gaines or Gale Asher, they would all want their daughter. How was he going to prevent them from taking a helpless six-year-old?

The tragic timing of the accident, which forced them to run again, could not have been worse. Rip, now completely distracted by the fate of Cira and Gale, had already been facing down a ticking time bomb, the Foundation’s Phoenix Initiative. Unlocking the Sphere meant more than discovering the wonders of the universe or fantastic technological advances, it held the fate of all of civilization.

In the years since the discovery, Rip and Gale, along with Booker’s corps of top scientists, had been racing to prevent the future shown in the Eysen-Sphere and prophesized by an earlier Sphere-holder known as Clastier. What originally seemed like ample time had quickly closed in on them as the Sphere proved mind-bogglingly vast, as in containing
all
of time and space, and had been growing increasingly more unpredictable. “It’s impossible to tame,” Rip often said.

They had cracked enough of the Cosega Sequence—the Sphere’s computer-like boot-up process—that they understood basic navigation and much of what they saw. However, the Sphere’s complexities seemed to grow constantly, always outstripping their capacity to master it.

“Something is missing in the Sequence. Another way of looking at it, or another layer,” Rip had said years earlier when he presided over the first secret meeting with Booker’s scientists. He and the others had become convinced that if they could uncover more about the origins of the Cosegans and the Sphere, they could find that missing key.

The Sphere’s stunning views of the world had convinced the scientists that the future, and humanity’s existence, were doomed unless they could discover how to use its power to change the planet’s destiny.

The pressure weighed on everyone involved. Two of the scientists had already committed suicide in the face of overwhelming odds at stopping it—a chain of events, already underway, which would lead to the culmination of the three
Death Divinations
: A super plague that would kill billions, irreversible climate destabilization, and World War III.