Crow's Gambit, page 20
part #1 of Sylphan Revelations Series
“Okay, this is what I want you to do. Get on the bus and stay on it. Turn off the tracking on Gloria’s phone and your own if you still have it. Try not to draw attention to yourself and stay calm. I will meet you at one of the bus stops.” After a few seconds, he added, “Don’t worry. Gloria is tough. She’ll be okay. Now go.”
Cassie followed his instructions and got on the bus. Pulling out both phones she tossed them into her bag. There was no way to be sure the tracking was off. Her bag, however, had an embedded copper mesh that acted as a Faraday cage. The contents of the bag had been Grandpa’s idea. The construction had been hers.
Cassie rode the bus for over fifteen minutes and past several stops. There weren’t many riders this time of night, but she was very aware of the AI cameras transmitting her image to who knew where. At the next bus stop, the door opened to Dale standing on the sidewalk, next to his car. Cassie quickly got off. Without a word, Dale put her in the passenger seat and got back in. It wasn’t until they were speeding down a back road that he looked over at her.
“Are you hurt? Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“No, I’m okay.” Her adrenaline was fading and now Cassie felt an overwhelming urge to curl up in a small ball and go to sleep. “Do you know how Gloria is?”
Dale glanced over at her. “They took her to the hospital. She’ll be in surgery soon, but they think she’ll be okay. On the other hand, the police have determined that the three ‘intruders’ who attempted ‘armed robbery’ are all dead.”
Three? There must have been another one somewhere Gloria had stopped.
“How did Gloria even know? I triggered the silent alarm, but they shut down the system.”
“It was probably on just long enough to send a signal to her.” He looked over at her again. “That townhouse was selected for you because Gloria lived in the same development. She would have only been a couple buildings away when she got the alarm.”
“She saved me.” Cassie’s brain finally started to process the events of the last hour. “One of them came upstairs after me. She stopped the other two downstairs from coming up after him.”
Cassie remembered the image of the dead man lying on the ground with her knife in his throat. She turned pale and had an urge to vomit.
Dale was too focused on the road to notice. “You did good Cassie. Those three were well trained and specially equipped. Any time you get tired of flying for Darrow, you can work security for me.”
Cassie heaved a heavy, shuddering, sob.
“Go ahead and rest. You’re safe now.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Back to Crow Research. It’s the most obvious place for them to look for you, but it’s also the most defensible if they do.”
Cassie wanted to argue, but she also didn’t have any better ideas. Crow Research was like a fortress in some ways. Leaning her head back against the seat, she closed her eyes and let the wave of exhaustion take her.
Chapter 32
IT WAS LATE MORNING before Cassie fully woke again. She remembered arriving at Crow Research to be whisked into the building. There had been a doctor waiting to check her for injuries and treat her wounds. Bala had shown up and helped get her cleaned up then changed into another set of clothes. They had placed her in a spare executive office on a cushioned leather couch and tucked a blanket around her.
When she finally woke and rolled over, the room started to spin. She started to scan the room trying to figure out where she was, her heart rate picking up.
That’s when she noticed Walt, sitting in the chair next to the couch, coffee cup and a book in hand. “Relax. You’re at Crow Research. And there’s enough extra security outside this room and around the building to protect the president of a small country.
Walt took a slow sip of his coffee. “Not your run of the mill Taser packing security guards either. They aren’t wearing identification, but you can tell they’re military or ex-military and they’re packing some serious firepower.”
She blinked once, twice, and then exhaled.
“How are you feeling?”
Cassie tried to answer and found it hard to get a sound out of her throat. It was sore and slightly swollen. Walt handed her a cup of ice water. “The doctors said your throat and larynx are bruised. They gave you something for the pain and swelling but you shouldn’t try to talk much for a while.”
“What are you doing here?” She finally managed to croak out.
“We all took turns watching over you last night. First Bala and then Neil. I just made Wang leave an hour ago. He’s quite fond of you.”
“Gloria?” Cassie croaked.
“She’s alive. Still critical, but she’ll recover. Twenty stitches to the face, a couple cracked ribs. Oh, and a bullet to the chest that punctured her lung. Apparently when she got the alarm she ran for your place before putting her vest on. She’s tough, though. She’ll pull through.” Walt stood up. “And on that topic, I’ll ask again: how are you feeling?”
She did a mental check of her body. Aches and pains, but everything seemed to be working. Her soul might take more time to heal though. “I’ll survive,” was all she said.
“Good. Feel up for working?” Cassie’s expression was one of blank incredulity. Walt held up his hands in a calming, wait gesture. “I know you’ve been through a lot.”
Gee, you think?
“But we’ve found something.” Walt’s eyes twinkled. “I think it might take your mind off other things.”
She considered it for a moment. Yes, work would distract her from the image of the man on the floor. Finally, she nodded.
“Great. Your ideas are panning out, but I’d like to see if you have any more out of the box thinking to help explain what we’re finding. Do you need something to eat first?”
She shook her head no. Her throat was so sore she wasn’t sure she could swallow solid food anyway. “Just coffee.”
“I’ll have them send some up to the meeting room. Neil is up there and wanted to see you when you woke. Oh, you should also know there was an ... accident ... last night at the Garber restoration center. One of the buildings caught on fire.”
Cassie felt her stomach drop. “The one with the XS-9 in it?” she croaked.
“Got it in one try. The entire building was destroyed. And the XS-9E with it.”
Cassie dropped her head back onto the couch and covered her face with her arm. “So, it’s over,” she whispered, half in relief and half frustration.
“Well...” Walt rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a second. “I wouldn’t exactly say that.”
She wanted to ask what Walt meant by that, but he pointed to a side door before she could. “This office has a private bathroom. If you want to freshen up first, I’ll be waiting outside.”
She nodded. She did want to see how badly she looked and there would be time to clarify his statement.
A few minutes later, Walt walked her up to the conference room. A new security guard walked with them; a few steps behind. His appearance and uniform were disturbingly similar to the men last night. It made Cassie anxious all over again. At the conference room, Walt made sure the coffee had arrived while Neil helped her into a chair.
“Here, let me help you. You’ve had quite the night.” For a moment, Neil glanced at her throat, an expression of worry and guilt crossing over his features. “How are you feeling?”
She shrugged and rolled her eyes at him, an easier response than using her voice. It would be some time before she decided how she was actually feeling. Physically, it sounded like she would heal. Emotionally might take a little longer.
He chuckled nervously at her response and she could smell the alcohol on his breath. She wondered for what felt like the hundredth time how early he had started drinking. At some point, she wanted to ask someone about it.
The guys both took seats at the table and Walt handed her a cup of coffee.
“Let me give you something to take your mind off things,” Neil activated the table monitor and projector. A three-dimensional version of the Earth appeared and floated over the table.
“First, we ran the simulations back in time and eventually managed to get a result with a fairly high confidence level. What I’m going to show you starts just before Net-Day and goes forward in time.” Several thousand black dots appeared around the Earth forming a fuzzy cloud. “These are all the satellites we have reasonable information on. The red dots you will see represent Sylph spheres.”
Cassie watched as red dots started spiraling down from higher orbits. They assumed new lower orbits going in many different directions. As they did the black dots would flare and fade. One by one the cloud around the planet changed from black to red. There was one other difference. The original cloud looked more like a ring around the middle of the planet since the Earth satellites were generally positioned over densely populated areas. The red cloud formed a haze over the entire surface of the planet.
“We have learned two very interesting things from this,” Walt continued. “The spheres have an exclusion zone around them that is spherical in shape with a radius of about twenty-five kilometers. Nothing, manmade or Sylph, comes within that radius. None of the LEO satellites were actually destroyed until they crossed the boundary for one of the spheres.”
“So, the Sylph weren’t destroying mankind’s satellites per se, they were...” Neil started.
“...destroying anything that got too close.” Walt finished. “Before Net-Day the LEO satellites were so tightly packed it wasn’t uncommon for a satellite to have hundreds of passes each day with other satellites less than five kilometers away. The Sylph were simply making room, I guess. We ran the same simulation for the high orbit geosynchronous satellites and found a similar trend except the exclusion zones are much larger.”
“And the second thing?”
With the touch of a couple controls, the hologram shifted to a cross-section view. Several thin layers above the planet where highlighted.
“These layers are unique. They are outside the exclusion zone distance of any Sylph spheres. At least the ones we have observed with Merlin.”
Her eyes got big and a smile spread across her face. “That means...”
“They’d be safe zones.” Neil finished. “They’re thin but if you could get to them you could...”
“Put a drone or a satellite safely into orbit in there,” Walt finished.
Cassie did some quick thinking. It was painful to speak, but this question was too important. “Are you certain enough of their locations to program the autopilot to do that?”
Walt shook his head. “Not with a high confidence. Our information on the sphere’s locations isn’t perfect. We’re not even sure we have all of them in our database now. The only positive thing is they don’t seem to move around. Once they’re on station they stay in that orbit. No changing of relative position and no decay of altitude.”
He changed the controls again and inverted the image. The red Sylph spheres disappeared leaving white gauzy patches that constantly changed shape and size. “What you’re seeing here are the predicted safe zones. You can see most of them are always in flux but here, here, and here,” he said while pointing to three different layers of white, “are thin orbital layers that appear to be completely safe.”
“There’s something else though,” Neil added.
Walt pressed a button and several black dots highlighted themselves in the thousands of red dots. “The simulations confirmed the twenty-five-kilometer exclusion zone for the low earth and geosynchronous orbits. It didn’t for the middle orbits. Apparently one of my assumptions was incorrect.”
She looked at highlighted dots indicating Sylph spheres.
Walt was watching her, waiting.
“I don’t understand,” she croaked out.
“Those dots? I don’t think they’re Sylph spheres.”
Cassie did a double take. She studied the dots again. “They look like Sylph.”
Neil leaned forward. “Exactly what I said.”
“We tried to double check with optical telescopes and with Merlin. From the little we can detect, yes, they look like Sylph spheres. Of course, the Sylph spheres just look like dark smudges anyway.” Walt smiled and wagged his finger at Neil. “But none of the simulations work if they are included. They don’t move or interact like Sylph spheres.”
“A different type of Sylph object?” Cassie asked.
“It could be,” Walt answered. “But there is another possibility.”
Silence settled over the table. “We think they’re ours.” The words seemed to soften as Neil said them. “Man-made.”
Confusion rocked her brain. Was that even possible?
“My suspicion is they are within one of the thin safe layers. Except,” Walt rubbed his chin. “There are some missing.”
Walt rotated the projected image. “There aren’t any records of satellites in these positions before Net-Day. However...” He tapped a control and several additional red blinking dots appeared on the projection. They traced out red orbital lines around the planet. “There is a record of things in these nearby orbits. Only they aren’t there now.” He leaned back in his chair and studied the diagram. “Based on our data it should be all or nothing. Why did only some of the satellites survive in this region?”
“And if there is no record of those,” Neil indicated the black dots, “what are they?”
“Why don’t you just ask them?” Cassie looked from Walt to Neil. She made a rolling, keep going, gesture with her hands.
“You mean if they are man-made, try to ‘ask’ with something? Like a status update?” Neil shook his head. “Well, even if they are leftover satellites, we don’t know anything about them. Their command codes or operating systems.”
“I thought you two used to design these things,” Cassie protested, her voice cracking as she raised it and making her wish for more of those painkillers Walt mentioned the doctor prescribing her. “The system would be twenty years old. Hack it!”
“She has a point.” Walt looked toward Neil. He raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question.
“All right.” Neil pulled himself upright. “I’ll see what I can pull together.”
Walt turned back to study the projection tapping his lips with his finger. “Of course, there is another way to know for sure. We could go look at one.”
“Which brings us back to where we started,” Neil interjected. “Can we use these safe layers for the XS-9?”
“That last one looks a little high for the XS-9 to get to but the other two would be useable.” Walt scratched his chin. “Assuming you could get to them through the lower layers of Sylph spheres first.”
Cassie ran her hand through her hair. “But we don’t have an XS-9.”
“As another smart scientist once said, I like to believe there are always possibilities. I’ll go check on some of them.” Neil left them alone in the conference room with that enigmatic statement.
Chapter 33
WALT SMILED AT CASSIE then deactivated the projection. “I hear Harvey and Joe have been busy. They retrofitted several dozen drones to repeat your acceleration tests with varying parameters.”
“In just over a day?” Sometimes it was hard for Cassie to conceptualize the resources available to Darrow.
“Harvey and Joe know their areas and when you have the resources of something like Darrow Industries backing you just about anything can be achieved. Besides, Joe feels guilty about leaving you alone at the concert. He’s actually working for a change.” Walt leaned back in his chair and took a sip of coffee. “Your intuition was particularly good. We’ve always used the triad theory to explain the Sylph targeting—mass, altitude, and velocity. While I wouldn’t go as far as eliminating velocity just yet, it’s clear the factor we should have been focusing on was acceleration, or rather length and direction of acceleration. We’ve found some particularly useful results.”
Cassie smiled and motioned for Walt to continue.
“I’m sure you can guess what they are, given your drone flight the other day,” Walt began. “If you accelerate directly toward the Earth at one G or less, you’re fine, like any ballistic object. In any other direction, you can only accelerate at moderate amounts for tiny instances, but you can do it over and over to build velocity. At least up to a point. I suspect there may be a high end to that past which the drone would still be destroyed.”
Cassie nodded in agreement but felt the need to point out who had discovered that fact first. “Per Mr. Hodson’s data.”
“Correct, but no one had been able to see the bigger picture in the data. Hodson, and everyone else who has looked at that, didn’t make the connections. You did.”
“I’m sure he would have noticed it.”
“Don’t be so sure. Contrary to what he thinks, Hodson’s usefulness isn’t in analysis. He does have his uses with the Senate committee though. He crosses all the t’s and dots all the i’s. His reports are the epitome of government efficiency.”
“Which is a polite way to say he has no imagination or sense of innovation?”
“Noticed that did you?” Walt chuckled. “If he did, we’d all be in trouble. Darrow tells me he’s on the Navy’s payroll. Regardless, he is good at correlating the data.”
“I suppose.” Cassie was curious about the Navy comment. The time didn’t seem right to ask about it though.
“Anyway,” Walt continued. “We’ve been doing more drone flights to refine your theory. The team ran flights varying over a range of parameters. Acceleration magnitude, length of acceleration, time between accelerations. Even how close to vertical you must be for free fall to be safe. It should be possible to tune a control system but...”
“But what?”
“They can’t get the drone AI to do what you did. They’re still a long way from getting the XS-9 to stay alive long enough after takeoff, so none of this matters. There’s some missing element. Something you intuitively understand.”
