Terminal Point Part 27

"Pressure plates," Threnody said, pointing at the platform through the view window. "If they're removed without the codes being entered, an alarm is triggered. Lucas said there's always a team of Warhounds on standby ready to teleport in. Considering the state of the world right now, we don't know if they actually would, but we can't risk it. Nathan can't know we're stealing the bomb."

"Great." Novak unsealed his gloves and freed his hands. "Never thought we'd be repeating history."

"For a hacker, you lack imagination," Kerr said. "Lucas is making history, not repeating it."

"Says you." Novak stared bleakly at his task. "This ain't right."

"Stop arguing and get to work. We don't have much time left. We aren't teleporting out and we need to be finished before our pickup arrives."

Novak reached for the controls attached to the work terminal. He pulled out a hard wire and attached it to the neuroport in his left wrist. Taking a deep breath, he opened himself up to the inevitable, inspecs flickering in the back of his eyes as code flowed through his brain.

PART SEVEN.

Temporal.

SESSION DATE: 2128.07.10.

LOCATION: Inst.i.tute of Psionics Research.

CLEARANCE ID: Dr. Amy Bennett.

SUBJECT: 2581.

FILE NUMBER: 627.

When the doctor enters, Aisling is standing in front of the machines, staring at the monitors and the data that moves across them in sharp lines; high peaks and deep valleys dictate who she is. She has one hand pressed against a vidscreen that shows her baseline, the graph far more skewed than a human's.

"Aisling, please step away from there," the doctor says.

"Don't worry. My power isn't the kind that affects machines." Aisling slides her fingers over the baseline reading. "That one isn't born yet."

The doctor takes her seat at the table, and Aisling calmly returns to her own. The wires trail behind her and brush along the ground. She climbs onto her chair and looks at the camera instead of the doctor.

"You know I'm right, Ciari."

"Please focus, Aisling," the doctor says. "Let's stick to what's important."

"She is important. They all are down the years, so long as they listen."

The doctor glances up at her. "Will it change anything, these people you dream about?"

"They aren't dreams," Aisling says, scowling. "They're real. And things will change if they listen."

"What if they don't?"

Aisling shrugs. "There are lots of ways this could end, but I chose to only see one."

THIRTY-FIVE.

SEPTEMBER 2379.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.

Did Gideon make it onto the s.p.a.ce shuttle?

Nathan felt Dalia wince at his telepathic demand, the psi link in her mind an overused ache that she couldn't block or ignore. Sharra's s.p.a.ce shuttle launched hours ago with all pa.s.sengers accounted for, according to the manifest. By tomorrow morning, they'll have reached the Ark.

You're certain?

Yes. We've been launching s.p.a.ce shuttles all day, but we only have one ramp and only so much s.p.a.ce to house people, even if it is temporary. I've transferred all the Warhounds you've sent me into priority boarding, but that's all I can do right now. How many more should I expect?

Half of my Warhounds haven't even left their posts yet. There are supplies and other things that are important to gaining control of Mars Colony that we can't leave without. By tomorrow, you should have close to a quarter of those left behind.

Are you sure that's safe? Dalia's thoughts shook with exhaustion and fear. Nathan clamped down tighter on her mind.

As you said, the government has only one launch ramp and little safe s.p.a.ce in Paris for everyone. The launch is going to take days and it's going to be messy. There will be s.p.a.ce shuttles still available.

Of course, sir.

Nathan cut the connection, his attention refocusing on the half dozen uplinks spread across his work terminal's vidscreen. Human field controllers loyal to the Serca Syndicate by deep mindwipes and Warhounds whose duties weren't quite done yet waited patiently for his commands.

"Where were we?" he said, bringing the meeting back on track.

It didn't take long. Twenty minutes later, he was cutting the uplinks, the vidscreen going blank. Nathan got to his feet and paced over to the window wall behind his desk, looking out at the dark London skyline. The view was familiar, committed to memory long ago. Back when he was a child, he thought London would remain his home. That he would die here, young and seemingly human, but that was no longer the case. London would only exist in his memories and Nathan found he wouldn't mind forgetting it.

Rioters still fought on the streets surrounding the city towers. Their attacks against the government and registered humans hadn't abated, were in fact becoming more violent with every hour that pa.s.sed. Shuttle launches to Paris were scheduled to continue for the next few days. It was enough time for everyone not on the colony list to come together and fight for rights long denied them, but it was a fight they would lose.

The world population of highly educated people was dwindling at an alarming rate, with registered humans fleeing Earth for a tenuous promise in the stars. The remains of society would struggle to pick itself up, if anything was left after the first year of abandonment. The brain drain the World Court had engineered would cripple those left behind. Perhaps not into extinction, but close enough that the rot in the world would win. The rioters were protesting their oncoming deaths. Nathan thought it a futile action.

The computer chimed, alerting him to an incoming uplink. Nathan turned around to see that it was tagged with an emergency code. He went over to his desk to accept it. Erik's face filled the vidscreen, pale and frantic.

"Nathan," Erik said. "The neurotrackers failed."

The words froze Nathan, disbelief twisting through his thoughts. It was swiftly followed by a rage that tunneled his vision, and Nathan had to work at showing fear instead of fury. That's what Erik would expect from him, in the guise Nathan lived with. "Did you use the master override?"

"Do you think I don't know how to put down a dog? We can still track some of their positions, but they aren't all dead."

"Explain yourself."

"Ciari was here." The woman's name fell from Erik's lips like a curse. "She had some asinine offer that they could save us if we stayed. She didn't die when I issued the ma.s.s termination order and was teleported out before we could shoot her. We know that a few hundred Strykers died in the Americas and some here in The Hague, but all the rest were showing live signals on the security grid before we lost contact. I doubt any of those Strykers are dead."

Nathan felt his fingernails bite into the palms of his hands. "I'm to a.s.sume your version of using a panic switch is to uplink with me? What do you think I can do about this problem?"

"Your family created this d.a.m.n technology and sold it to the world when psions were first discovered. I'm hoping you have an override that can fix this problem. You Sercas don't give up anything for free."

It was a rather astute a.s.sumption, even if Nathan couldn't outright acknowledge the underhanded way his family functioned. Moving to his seat, Nathan kept his attention on the uplink.

"What are your plans right now, Erik?"

"If you can't give us a way to kill the Strykers, then the World Court is leaving tonight for Paris. We aren't safe anymore if the Strykers decide to rebel and come after us."

"Like the rest of the world?"

"Don't act like you won't be joining us on that shuttle, Nathan." Erik frowned, weariness pulling at his mouth. "Why are you still in London anyway?"

"My Syndicate requires a firm hand to wind it down on such short notice. I'm waiting to hear from the Athes."

"You'll be waiting a long time," Erik said flatly. "The city towers in Sapporo fell. Sydney is dead."

Nathan tapped his fingers against his desk. He'd been so focused on transferring the contents of the seed bank and his Warhounds that he missed the news coming out of j.a.pan. "When did this happen?"

"Within the last few hours."

"I hadn't heard. What about Elion?"

"He's still in Paris. I don't know if anyone's informed him of his grandfather's death. If they haven't, Travis will when we arrive."

"When do you expect to leave?"

"Right now, if you have nothing to give us."

Nathan stared at Erik in silence for a long moment, weighing his options. "I may have something."

Erik let out a deep breath, mouth twisting, despite the relief seeping into his eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"

"My family guards its secrets the same way the World Court guards theirs. We're just better at it. I'll take a shuttle and be at The Hague soon to see what can be done."

"We'll await your arrival."

The uplink cut off and Nathan leaned back in his seat, grinding his teeth, free now to let his true emotions show. He had no doubt that Lucas was behind the failure of the neurotrackers. His son knew the intricacies of the technology, both its strengths and carefully guarded weaknesses, just as well as he did. Releasing the Strykers from the chains that had bound them since their emergence after the Border Wars meant the Silence Law was void. His family's genetic secret was fair game now, and if Ciari was in The Hague, Nathan only had one option left to him regarding the World Court.

He had no qualms about taking it.

Again, Nathan found that the hard decisions were left to him. He didn't regret the decisions that had let him live this long, to see this happen. The only thing he regretted was his family and the way he couldn't use his children to further his own life. Being born a Cla.s.s I triad psion meant his body was just looking for a way to kill his mind. Dying was slower for him than for most psions because of his social status, but he could no longer expect that to hold true.

Gideon was on his way to the Ark, safe from Lucas's machinations, but also out of reach of Nathan. Lucas, Samantha, and Kristen were hidden somewhere on Earth, fighting for a goal that Nathan didn't understand. The one thing Nathan wanted, he could no longer bargain for, not with the neurotrackers disabled and the Silence Law broken. Jason Garret was out of reach now unless Nathan opened his own mind and used his powers to their absolute limits to find the Stryker. The effort would surely kill him.

Nathan wasn't that desperate.

He reached for the controls on his desk, fingers skating over the touch panel. The uplink came through in an instant. "Ready my shuttle."

THIRTY-SIX.

SEPTEMBER 2379.

THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS.

Erik stared at the security feed monitoring the defenses surrounding the Peace Palace. He couldn't see the streets beyond the wall, they were so crowded with people. Quads on the perimeter were all that existed between them and the fury of a people that the government hadn't deigned to save.

The Strykers were gone, the World Court's dogs having fully slipped their collars for the first time in 250 years. The bitterness, the fear, was difficult to cope with. The only people left to protect them were human, and there was no guarantee how long the military would continue to believe the lie that they would have a place on the Ark to guard the new world on Mars Colony.

"I think it's time we leave," Travis said, eyeing the vidscreen from where he stood with a cl.u.s.ter of other judges. "Enough of those chosen have heeded the transfer orders. If any are left behind, then their failure to keep to the schedule is on them. We gave enough warning for people to muster out. It's not in our best interest to remain any longer."

"I'm inclined to agree," Nathan said. He stood beside Erik in the courtroom before the judicial bench, both men focused on the security feed. "There is nothing I can do about the neurotrackers, not after what fail-safes my Syndicate had didn't work. The last of the inventory from the seed bank is being put on a shuttle right now for a launch. The entirety of the supplies left to us will be safely out of reach. The most essential part of this plan is safe."

"They can't be safe if we're missing half of what we were charged with keeping track of," Erik said. "It makes me wonder what happened to those missing supplies. It makes me wonder who betrayed us. The Strykers shouldn't have been able to get free."

"I did warn you, Erik. Our attempts at ownership weren't enough over the years if this is the result," Anchali said from where she sat on a chair, both hands resting on top of her cane. "They bypa.s.sed our control and this is the result of our failure to keep them leashed."

"We had humans working all throughout the Strykers Syndicate. We had monitoring systems in place that infiltrated not only every psion office but their own bodies. This should have been impossible."

"Impossible or not, why haven't they tried to kill us?" Cherise Molyneux demanded. "Reports have come in from all over the world that Strykers left their posts guarding the city towers and retreated to the streets, taking half the military with them. They haven't murdered the people who held their contracts."

"Yet" was Anchali's sharp retort. "Their timing, I must say, was perfect. Unfortunately, we don't have the time or the means to track them down and kill them, and thus our only option is retreat."