Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4) (23 page)

Booker took a deep breath. He’d conducted a long list of operations over the years, ranging from delicate to blatant, nuanced to forceful. Some had been trivial in that they involved only money, and a few had been what he referred to as “fate of the world” missions, but rescuing Cira was more than all of them. Everything. The sweet little girl could be blind for life, or she could die, but beyond those risks, this undertaking marked the final stage of the end.

However it turned out, the Foundation and Booker would be locked in a daily battle as the countdown ticked off what days remained until the Phoenix Initiative sliced into humanity.

“Everything,” Booker whispered to the photos adorning the wall of people he loved who had yet to be born. “
Everything
.”

Booker checked in with Huang, who would be, as usual, running various technical interference schemes meant to thwart the advantages of their enemies. EAMI was a powerful tool, but far less reliable and practical than certain “old-fashioned” maneuvers such as hacking into INU networks, utilizing satellite backdoors, and creating electronic diversions. Huang was a master of all those methods.

BLAX, the elite division within Booker’s private AX army, would handle the operation. The ultra-trained commandoes known as “BLAXERs” and their BLAX-commander had already read the orders on their Eysen-INUs. This would be his final contact before the action erupted. He communicated across Booker-owned satellites.

“We are nine minutes from strike.”

The BLAX-commander and Booker could both see the progress of the incoming American Dark-Star team. It was a total dark ops scene, raid-ready CIA and NSA operatives trained and armed in the most sophisticated tactics and weapons joined to one of the Navy’s three best SEAL units. Together, they were twenty-one men known covertly as “Dark-Star.”

The BLAXERs totaled forty-nine, but Dark-Star was only part of their problem. Between the Fiji police presence and Foundation soldiers, there would be another forty opponents, and although they could go into the girl’s hospital room window, the only way to safely take the patient out of the building was through the crowded corridors and entrances teaming with adversaries. Mission Impossible.

The BLAX-commander had wanted to wait for another BLAXER team, but time had run out. The Dark-Stars would be a terrible addition to the nightmare. Booker knew many of his men would not make it out of Fiji alive, but this was it. Everything.

“Are the charges all confirmed and ready?” Booker asked.

“Affirmative.”

Booker looked at the timer. Seven minutes. “I’ve got one last chance to slow Dark-Star.”

The BLAX-commander knew the delay, if successful, would only buy the BLAXERs another minute or two, but that could make all the difference. “Six minutes.”

All cameras in the hospital would go down as soon as they killed the power and backup generators. They scanned the current status of every potential threat once again, debating whether to keep the power on for two reasons: one, it would give them vital views and logistical data during the strike, and two, it would save the lives of several dozen innocent patients who would certainly die without ventilators and other power-dependent life-saving equipment.

In the end, however, they deemed the power too risky to leave on. None of the Foundation soldiers or police would have night vision capability.

At three minutes out, with their final orders and plans made, Booker cut communications with the BLAX-commander. There would be no way to stop the strike now.

“Everything,” Booker repeated quietly. A moment later, he smiled as he received verification that one of his aerospace engineers had been able to successfully alter the feed from the satellite that Dark-Star relied upon for tactical field data. Like most spy satellites, it was manufactured by one of Booker’s companies. The NSA would be able to realign and shift to an alternate satellite, but it would hold their landing time back at least ninety critical seconds.

His team would have almost three minutes inside the hospital before Dark-Star arrived. It could be all they needed. BLAXERs wouldn’t be able to evacuate the girl in that short amount of time, but they might be able get her close to the ground level. The plan called for a back door, lower-level exit, because Dark-Star would have the helipad and two roof levels occupied.

Booker watched the feeds coming in from the hospital security cameras and checked the time. The final thirty seconds felt like an hour. He could only hope the doctors had been able to follow the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute’s protocols. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about how the Judge would react to his betrayal, but he knew this move could easily lead to a new kind of war.

A war of Spheres.

Savina’s assistant explained, in code, that he’d been forced to betray her to the Judge, but he did manage to get word to his friend who was still working on her message to Booker. She believed her assistant, and now wondered that if they did get through to Booker, whether she should still meet him, or if that would even be possible now that the Judge had her under constant guard. Savina decided she’d deal with it in the unlikely event that she ever heard from Booker.

In the meantime, the search for a passage to the other Sphere required every bit of her attention. A link, a scrap, a hint, any shred of data, all they needed was a direction which could lead them to Rip’s Sphere. In the beginning, when they didn’t know any other way, “freeform,” just going where the Eysen led them, had been the way to discovery. It was still used the majority of the time, leading them to constantly new areas.

Because the Sphere reacted to whoever was present, and even more strongly to the person holding it, they would often change their configuration and direct their thoughts into a certain section, question, or idea. Savina had been preoccupied for most of the past year trying to determine how the Sphere managed to read their thoughts eleven million years after its creation.

“How does it know what I’m thinking today?” one of her assistants posed their oft-repeated question.

“The AI program is incredible,” Savina said as the views from the Sphere sliced across the current world. “It knows what we’re looking for. Why won’t it show us?”

It wasn’t exactly a new frustration. For as long as they’d been working with the Sphere, most of the time it would read their thoughts, tease in that direction, go close, but not straight to what they wanted, as if it knew best what they needed or were ready for. Perhaps Savina and her assistants were forgetting to add something to the equation, something they didn’t understand, or didn’t know they’d forgotten.

“It’s the same piece of the puzzle we’ve been missing from the beginning,” one of the assistants said.

“No, I think this time is different. Usually it wants us to give it more, like we’re not taking the final step, but in this case, it’s the one that’s withholding, as if it doesn’t want us to find Gaines. Like the Sphere is protecting him.”

The two assistants shared a glance. They knew Savina sometimes treated the Sphere as a living thing, and she’d been increasingly blurring the lines between science and speculation even before the “swallowing,” as they called the episode when the Sphere had engulfed the lab and cast them all floating in the ether. Since then, Savina seemed to be dipping into the territory of the Inner Movement wing of Booker’s UQP world, where quantum physics met metaphysics.

“What do you want us to do?” she whispered, her lips almost touching the smooth surface of the Sphere, her hands caressing it like a lover. “Show me, please.”

The Sphere suddenly sprayed light into the room, whirling patterns of a thousand disco balls. In seconds, they were floating in another realm, swimming in light and particles and shards of reality. Teardrop-sized worlds spinning, scenes magnified from the heads of exploding pins, dreams dancing within the blink of an eye, whispers amplified from merging passages of time. It was as if they were climbing through a kaleidoscope. At the same time, they had the sense they were somehow still in the lab, as they each maintained the same distance from one another.

Savina laughed. “I’m free! Do you feel it? Do you feel the freedom?”

The assistants could not deny what they felt, although one of them would later say, “It seemed more like a glimpse into the infinite universe.”

“Gaines, are you there? Ripley Gaines, can you hear me?” Savina said, barely above her normal conversational tone. “Whoa!” Savina suddenly shouted. “Did you see that?”

“Who was that? Could that have been Gaines?” one of the assistants asked.

“No way,” Savina shot back. “That . . . I think that was a Cosegan.”

No one spoke for a moment. The man they’d seen, from the shoulders up, had a somber expression, and wore what appeared to be a collarless, white linen top.

“Did you
hear
him?”

“No,” one of them said.

“Did he speak?” the other asked.

“Not with words, not a voice . . . ” Savina said, awed. “But he conveyed a message. He expressed feelings. He changed the molecules in my mind.” She looked around the still spinning room as if hoping to catch another glimpse of him in the dancing light, the rippling, illuminated shadows. “The Spheres were not random artifacts. They didn’t survive by accident, they were
planted
for us. For Gaines and . . . me.”

The room calmed. “What are you talking about?” an assistant asked.

“They told me,
showed
me . . . the Cosegans left
nine
Spheres with the intent that specific people would find them . . . They
knew
who would find each Sphere.”

“Eleven
million
years ago?” one of them exclaimed.

At the same time, the other assistant asked, “Wait,
nine
? Where are the other seven Spheres?”

During the swallowings, the monitoring equipment, including the device that relayed the audio from the lab to the Judge, failed, but as the white noise and static cleared, he distinctly heard, “Where are the other seven Spheres?”

The Judge leaned back in a large leather desk chair and covered his face with his hands. “Impossible,” he moaned. The Judge had long suspected there might be a total of three, and old Church documents hinted there might have been a fourth, but nine?

He phoned Savina immediately.

By the time she felt the vibration of her iPhone, the lab had fully reassembled, as if nothing had happened.
As if we hadn’t been swimming in the light of stars and heard a message sent across time
, she thought. Savina noticed the Judge’s number and answered.

“What just happened there?” he said, not bothering with a “Hello”.

Savina, not surprised he knew, made an instant decision to play it straight and told him everything.

“So you just had a feeling there were originally nine Spheres?”

“He told me.”

“The imaginary man?”

“Look, Judge, I am not going to argue about this. I’m telling you what happened. If you don’t believe me, tell me this; do
you
believe in the future we’ve seen in the Sphere?”

“Where are the other Spheres? Have they survived?”

“I don’t know,” Savina said, annoyed she had not been granted the time to process what she’d just been through. “We’re going back in and I’ll let you know what we find.”

“Savina, you know how close we are to the Phoenix launch,” the Judge said. “If there are more Spheres out there—”

“I know, Judge. I know! We’ll find them!”

Rathmore quickly showered and changed into a spare set of clothes from his office closet. While walking back to the situation room, he imagined all the ways he would get back at Barbeau. The first was to see Barbeau subjected to the kind of questioning that came with lots of physical contact and pain.

“That guy is worse than the criminals he’s protecting because he was trained and sworn to protect,” Rathmore muttered to himself.

Murik couldn’t help but laugh at the story of Barbeau and the whiskey. “Gotta be careful who you choose to drink with,” he said. “Seriously though, you should go back there right now and kick his ass.” He chuckled, taking another bite from a sandwich. “I’ve got things under control here.”

“Do you?” Rathmore asked, perusing the big screens. Russia and China seemed to be at about the same level as when he’d left. The plane was still nowhere on any tracking or satellite feeds. The SEALs, however, were just landing, and Rathmore anticipated some good news for a change.

“We’re looking good in Fiji,” Murik said.

“How are the arrests going in Hawaii?”

“Just getting under way.”

Rathmore pointed back to the hospital. “What are they doing?” he asked, motioning to a group of Foundation soldiers pointing skyward. “It looks like they’re expecting us. Are they?” He shot a glance at his team of leech trackers.

“Data on Fiji is flowing.”

“Damn it! How are they getting the data out?” Rathmore shouted. “Find those holes, now!”

“Expecting us, or someone else?” Murik said, alarmed. “Who is that?” He stood up, abandoning his sandwich. “Zoom in there.” He indicated a spot in the sky above the hospital. “That’s not us,” he said sharply.

Rathmore checked the time. “We should have already been there. Where are we? Who’s that?”

“Sir, the Dark-Star team had a communication glitch with the satellite,” a technician said. “They lost some time, but it’s all good now.”

“All good?” Rathmore asked. “Then who in the hell is
that
? A downed satellite, another crew incoming… a hundred dollars says Booker is going for the kid.”

“Damn,” Murik said.

“What else do we have nearby?” Rathmore shouted. “Get something in on this. How far out are we?” And then silently, tensely, under his breath, he offered the ultimate solution. “We have to kill Booker Lipton.”

Murik glanced at one of the smaller screens, which showed two of the core UQP physicists being picked up by agents in Hawaii. In spite of the turmoil in Fiji, Murik allowed a slight smile. He knew the agents personally, and hoped that before the mess in Fiji was cleaned up they would have all twelve of the scientists who were most intimately involved with the Sphere. He glanced back at Rathmore, still completely engrossed in Fiji, and suppressed his smile.
Fiji is not a welcome development, but it does make a nice diversion,
he thought.

“Could this all be a diversion?” Rathmore asked.

Murik had a sick feeling Rathmore was onto him. “What?” the CIA agent asked, giving nothing away.

“Russia. China. The entire US government is completely focused on the Russian-Chinese border, the Sea of Japan, the South China Sea . . . Everyone except us. Well, even us to a point,” Rathmore corrected himself. “Could Booker be powerful enough to arrange that?”

Murik sighed in relief and picked up his half-eaten sandwich. “Booker has more than a trillion dollars. He’s a country unto himself. I’d say there’s an excellent chance he’s involved in the conflict. I mean look at this.” Murik motioned to a large screen filled with BLAXERs landing at the hospital.

Rathmore nodded and called Tolis King, the head of the NSA’s Veiled Ops. After updating his boss and assigning an analyst the job of connecting Booker to the conflict in Asia, Rathmore looked back at the monitor filled with empty ocean, the one next to it showing empty sky.

“Give me everything we have on EAMI,” he said to the woman who had initially raised the possibility that Eysen Anomaly Matter Interference could have been used. “Show me every theory on how Booker could make a plane evaporate. Gale Asher didn’t vanish. She’s either still flying on one of those original courses, or she’s landed in a place where we can find her. Booker can’t make a runway disappear.”

“Actually,” the woman said, “he might be able to do more than that. I think he could make an entire island invisible.”