Читать книгу Dark Star - Don Pendleton - Страница 13

The Computer Room, Stony Man Farm, Virginia

“How’s it going,” Price asked, placing a hand on Aaron Kurtzman’s shoulder

“What? Oh, hello,” Kurtzman grunted, glancing up briefly. “Everything is fine. So far, so good.”

“Why are you watching the Weather Channel?” Price asked.

“It’s a wild idea I’ve come up with, and I’m trying to see if it works.”

Grabbing the hard-rubber rims of the wheels on his chair, the man rolled himself away from the workstation. “Meanwhile, Akira is doing a global search for any information on theoretical X-ship designs, while running support for the teams, getting them government clearance, forging diplomatic immunity, erasing their flight plans…the usual stuff.”

Both at the same time? Turning her head, Price glanced at the young man sitting at his workstation, chewing gum and listening to rock music. He appeared to be daydreaming, but the mission controller knew from past experience that she’d have to shoot the hacker to get his attention, nothing less would penetrate his iron wall of concentration.

“Fair enough,” Price said, almost smiling. “I just saw Hunt outside the staff room. He mentioned a slight problem. So what’s the delay with Carmen? We helped develop the firewalls that Interpol uses, so she should be able to access their files at will.”

“Normally, yes,” Kurtzman replied. “But an X-ship landed on the main file room of Interpol. Their master computer isn’t crashed, the damn thing is half melted. Millions of data files are gone forever.”

“What about the off-site files?” Price asked. “Those should have been safe.” Every major corporation kept a duplicate set of important documents in a secure location miles away from the master files, just in case of a fire or corporate espionage. Governments did the same; the NSA kept their backup files at Menwithill in the UK, while M-I5 kept their files in Minnesota, and so on. Only the Farm did not use that standard safeguard, but it was the sole exception.

“Yeah, the clever bastards got them, too,” Kurtzman growled, his face becoming hard. “And you know what that means, Barb.”

“Interpol has a mole,” Price muttered. “A traitor working for the, as the President calls them, Skywalkers inside the organization.”

“Or else the hacker for the people behind the X-ships is an absolute wizard at tracing encoded signals.”

“Is that possible?”

The man shrugged. “Anything is possible.”

“Okay, I just read the FBI reports on Blue Origins and Armadillo Aerospace,” Akira Tokaido announced. “Both companies are nowhere near a functional SSO ship. The only useful information the FBI got is that the X-ships have to be singles.”

“What does that mean?” Price demanded curiously. “Hand-built or something?”

“No, the ships only have one control system,” Tokaido replied. “Take a NASA space shuttle, for example. Those have a complete backup system for everything. In case anything goes wrong, it can continue to fly without loss of performance. On some of the critical systems, there are even three or four backup versions. Control board, air recycling, teleflex cables, fuel lines, everything but the engines, toilet and crew, comes in a minimum of three.”

“I see, and that adds a lot of weight,” she said, chewing over the new information. “So the Skywalkers took out everything not actually needed for flight, which massively cut the weight of the X-ships.” She frowned. “No, this doesn’t work, because they also have armored hulls. Wouldn’t that equal out the same weight as before?”

“Not really. The armor is mostly just heat-proofing, the few hardpoints are an ultralight composite,” Kurtzman stated. “But they would still need the microwave boosters to put them over the top.”

“Which is killing the crews. That beggars the question, do they know, or not care?”

“Unknown.”

The woman started to pace. “Okay, if the X-ships have no backup controls, then if we damage one at all, even minor damage, it’s down for the count.”

“Absolutely. But you’ve seen how fast they are,” Carmen Delahunt said. “Combine that raw speed with their stealth technology, and these things are damn near invincible.”

“But not invulnerable.”

“Oh no, a standard LAW should be able to blow them out of the sky. But you have to hit them first.”

“All right, if speed is an issue, then how about using a PEP?” Tokaido asked out of the blue. “That might do the job.”

“What is a PEP?” Delahunt asked from behind the VR helmet, her body language showing the woman’s puzzlement.

“A Plasma Energy Projectile,” Kurtzman translated. “And no, don’t ask me why the Army calls a laser weapon a projectile. I have no idea.”

“Yes, I have heard about that. The weapon is a highly advanced form of a deutronium-fluoride laser about the size of a refrigerator,” Hunt Wethers added from around his pipe. “But it weighs a lot more, about five hundred pounds. However, with special bracings, it can be mounted on the side of an APC, or even a Hummer.”

“So what does it do?” Price asked impatiently. “I know the Army had lasers that could blind people all the way back in Vietnam, but those were declared illegal by the UN, and banned worldwide.”

“No, this is a real weapon,” Kurtzman stated. “It kills. The beam cycles so fast that anything it hits becomes superheated into a plasma and explodes.”

“They do what?”

“Explode. Let me tell you, it’s a hell of a blast. Roughly the equivalent to a 40 mm grenade. Only the PEP can chew its way through even tank armor, just by staying focused on one area. The laser is fast enough to take out jets, but strong enough to kill tanks, maybe even sink ships, who knows?”

“The Pentagon planned to deploy them in a few years,” Tokaido said smugly. “But I managed to locate a couple of working prototypes at the Pickatinny Experimental Weapons Lab in Pennsylvania, and had them assigned to us for field testing.”

“Excellent!” Price said, exhaling. “Send one here, and one to the…no, send both of them to the White House.”

“Both?” the man asked in surprise.

“If a SOTA military laser suddenly shows up in the middle of a national park, what would you think?”

“I wouldn’t think anything,” Kurtzman snorted. “I’d know for a damn fact that was the location of a secret base. Okay, fair, enough, they both go the White House.”

“However, we still have to find the X-ships to destroy them,” Tokaido added. “They move way too fast for us to respond. We need to be waiting at the target, before they arrive.”

“We have to beat the men,” Delahunt added, “not the machines,”

“Exactly.”

“Unfortunately, we have no idea where they are going to hit next,” Price said.

“Barbara,” Kurtzman stated, “the impossible can be done.”

“With a little bit of luck,” Price amended. “And so far, our luck is registering at just below zero. We call the terrorists the Skywalkers because that Brazilian shuttle was their first target, but in truth, we don’t know anything about these people. Are these attacks religiously motivated or political? What are their ultimate goals?” She turned, and started for the door. “Hell, we don’t even know their real name yet.”