The Armageddon Effect Page 9

  “Thanks, John. I’ll swing by tomorrow.” Intrigued and perplexed. I walked out the door and headed to the restaurant. I came back from lunch an hour later only to find the rock shop had a sign over the main door. “Closed.”

  I left work with the rest of the software team around five. The November skies darkened early with the short daylight hours and cast long shadows across the high mountain valleys. The sun was already down by the time I reached Waldo Canyon for the drop into Colorado Springs.

  # # #

  United States Cyber Command: Location - Restricted

  Just past midnight, Corporal Ruth Jamie sat at her monitor, eyes fixed, as subroutines collected network details from sensors at ninety nuclear power facilities around the nation. As a nuclear infrastructure monitor, her duty was to identify network attacks on the computers of the nuclear facilities powering America’s energy grid.

  While all reactor systems were self-contained, she monitored air-gaped sensors positioned near the network cables that sniffed data traffic in real-time.

  These sensors sat on a separate crypto-wireless network that broadcast to tuned satellites. The satellites linked to the U.S. Department of Defense Information Network, the DoDIN over the embedded “Orange Net.” The always-on, virtual private network channeled through the DoDIN and directly to the servers at U.S. Cyber Command and her computer.

  Corporal Jamie was alert, yet just a bit bored. The system had so many levels of security, a stray data frame was more likely to get lost in the labyrinth of network channels, rather than be assaulted by intruder code.

  Most of her shift was given to ancillary tasks. Monitoring subroutines kept watch over her networks.

  Nearby, other staff observed various infrastructure monitoring equipment while watching the real-time network attacks on the wall-sized display.

  The transparent curtain showed a world map, with network probes that looked like hypersonic missiles, streaking from attack node to target. Only the most dangerous network attacks around the country appeared there.

  Corporal Jamie had just sipped from a fresh cup of instant coffee when a soft alarm tone sounded on her computer and a small red flashing circle appeared at the Wolf Creek reactor facility near Burlington, Kansas.

  Setting down her coffee, she began verification diagnostics. She tripped her status button to red, an alert for her supervisor.

  Seconds later, status was verified; unidentified intrusion packets penetrated the isolated reactor cabling system at the Wolf Creek nuclear facility.

  With mounting alarm, she watched as unidentified packet traffic flooded the reactor rod actuator circuits. From training, she knew those circuits controlled the lifting and lowering of the spiders; thin rods that controlled the fission reaction rate of the reactor. If the spiders were pulled out, the fission reaction would go critical, resulting in a meltdown and pressure explosion of the water-shrouded nuclear core’s cooling system. She knew containment structures and redundant safety systems would contain the radioactive fallout. Unless. After a flurry of keystrokes, she noted the redundant safety systems were reported offline.

  In a controlled panic, Corporal Jamie sent alerts to Wolf Creek Administration, Kansas regional nuclear incident response teams, Burlington local police, and a host of federal agencies. Her supervisor, Captain Williams, arrived within moments of the alarm. Jaws clenched, he watched over her shoulder.

  Network packet analysis scrolled on her screen and gave the contents of the attack data. The detail was mirrored on the wall-to-wall screen. The command center grew quiet as situation awareness swept the room. Every tenth packet had a partial text payload. It read “Tainted Flaeme.” Profane expletives erupted from contractors huddled around monitors. Nearby officers stood tense and grim. Like tracers on a machine gun, the text packets were aimed directly at the seething, high-energy neutron storm inside the reactor core.

  At the Wolf Creek facility, blaring klaxons and flashing red beacons came to life as local police, SWAT, and incident response forces grabbed their gear and mounted up to get to the facility. The wail alerted the communities of Burlington and New Strawn, a scant few miles away.

  All hell broke loose at U.S. Cyber Command as the word went out that a U.S. nuclear facility was under cyber-attack.

  “It’s an altered tempest protocol of some kind,” Corporal Jamie muttered. “Blew right through the Red-Black cryptowall and infiltrated both networks. My God, it’s pumping packets through the blackers! Site sensors are compromised, hostile traffic is on the DoDIN!”

  Nuclear core temperature spiked into the red.

  “Crap, the rods will melt,” someone said.

  The packets stopped as quickly as they had started.

  “Corporal?” Captain Williams said.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Corporal Jamie shrugged.

  As they watched, core temperature cooled. Engineering regained command of the rod-cluster assemblies, and emergency dropped the graphite control rods to full-stop on the reactor. They silently prayed the rods wouldn’t melt. The Kansas power grid experienced rolling blackouts as the energy converting steam turbines wound down to idle. Sleepy state administrators requested temporary emergency backup power from neighboring states. The rolling blackouts continued until dawn.

  # # #

  Lane

  I pulled into the driveway and headed into the house. Having a normal day for once was nice. It seemed like months had passed since the compassion primal dragged me to the Denver vortex. It was only a week ago.

  The crisp air hinted at a cold evening. Dark clouds raced overhead. Snow.

  Phats meowed at me as I came in the door. Monk jumped into my lap on the couch.

  “Do I bury my reactions to everything?” I said.

  Monk purred.

  “Friends are over-rated.” I scratched Monk’s head while Phats jumped up and nuzzled my elbow.

  I rarely thought about myself before the life-event in Denver. Discover who you are being in life, the ad said.

  Pfft. If I wanted to know that then why bury myself in software. Like an idiot, I took the course anyway.

  I defended, like everyone, my crafted image at great emotional expense.

  So, who was I? Without a foundation, I was just here. Existing.

  I’d avoided emotional involvement most of my life and buried mental terrors in fragile constructs of reality that had exploded in the last few days.

  Steve. Did I kill him? Was it my fault all along? Why did I drive so fast that day?

  Confusion replaced certainty.

  Pushing back the taint of fear, I willed courage into bone. Pledging to compassion had brought me back from the edge of insanity. I knew that now. It gave purpose to the endless battles in the dark. Every passing day, I grew stronger. I headed downstairs to the computer.

  Mexican takeout won the cuisine contest. The green chili warmed the soul on a cold evening. Afterward, it was sack time. Owls envy my ability to stay awake, but I knew the real reason: sleep avoidance.

  I woke, aware that I was hovering over the bed.

  Aw, Damn.

  Uncertain what to expect, I floated over to the bed stand and grabbed the astral image of the focus and shield. The dragon medallion was already around my neck. I had decided to keep that close. The handgun in the drawer didn’t have a psionic counterpart.

  Should I make one? How?

  I waited, apprehensive, wondering what near-death activity the primals had in mind for the evening. Nothing happened. I floated up about twenty meters above the roof. A sensation of power emanated from the east. Unlike the cabin, there was no sense of horror, only power. Astral flying had become easy from all the practice. I gained altitude and soared eastward at a good pace. I knew deep down, my space-time fixated brain made everything appear familiar to my frail sense-of-self.

  After a short time, I saw a radiance ahead on the ground. Shooting out from the glow in very rapid compressions, a straight beam of blood-red light extended to a dark set of
buildings across a black lake.

  Begin recording.

  –Acknowledged … recording initiated–

  The thick beam whipped about, a rope of energy. It seemed alive. Bucking. Twisting. A translucent cylinder contained the murky beam and channeled it to the buildings across the still water. A ghostly figure stood on the near shore of the lake. The source of the beam bathed the figure in a brilliant red glow.

  The figure hunched over an object the size of a shoebox. White sparks appeared around the object. A red pattern of solid bars and circles embedded in each forearm collected the sparks and channeled them to the box. Red streaks launched from the box and formed the twisting beam inside the cylinder.

  Closing the distance became harder, as if I was moving against a powerful current. Struggling, I approached to hover within a few meters. The ground wavered and pulsed every time the box channeled a cluster of sparks.

  The focus was warm in my pocket but not hot as it had been at the cabin and the firefall. The medallion felt warm as well. The feeling of power emanating from the figure and box staggered me. I was mesmerized.

  I had no idea what was going on, but I’d never let that stop me from being a nuisance before.

  The ghostly figure was below average height. I understood how a cop must feel when walking up on a suspicious character. Was he innocent and minding his own business or plotting some heinous destruction?

  Activate shield

  A faint translucence surrounded me like thin film.

  The focus hadn’t auto-fired. He wasn’t using shadow energies.

  I felt bad about trying to shoot him in the back.

  I directed a thought at the figure.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  The figure jerked straight, and an explosion of the wobbling beam threw him tumbling backward. The blast knocked me out of hover. I sprawled on the ground with my face planted in astral turf. He was quick. He stood and turned toward me. I could feel the heat from his eyes as he rotated the box towards me as well.

  “Who you are?”

  “My name’s Lane, and you?”

  “You need name not. Go or die.” He rotated knobs on the side of the box.

  The thoughts had an Asian feel, as if thoughts could carry a sense of ethnicity. Weird. I wondered what else thought could contain in this psi place.

  I felt confident about the shield’s capability. Climbing to my feet, I just glared at him, put off by his arrogance. Like a gunfighter in the Old West, focus held loosely at my side, slightly crouched, I rocked forward on my toes. Ready.

  The focus would have already fired if it was going to. But he didn’t know that.

  The whole gunfighting-in-the-astral-zone thing was new. I needed something other than harsh language and bravado as a weapon. The Suul’jin shield projected its soft, blue glow around me and now the second layer of protection poured from the top of my head.

  The blast of red energy smashing into my shield confirmed the parley had ended. I skidded back several feet. Watching the bars on the shield device, I noted all five were blue and steady. The attack hadn’t even sent the defensive glow into violet.

  His eyes slitted and his long chin beard whipped about from an unseen wind. He reminded me of Pai Mei in Kill Bill. I brought the focus up to reply with a volley of my own at the arrogant prick before I realized it wouldn’t fire. He wasn’t a shadow minion. The air wavered around him and, with a scowl, he vanished.

  With a thunderous boom the focus fired. It punched through a growing house-sized sphere of dull red-rimmed darkness. What the …

  The beam was much stronger than before, and it blew apart whatever approached. I knew my mind built the psi-construct for me, so the scene seemed more real, but the booming thunder was a new addition. It felt right that the increase in sensory indicators, like a new sound, correlated with an increase in the power of the energy release. Something had tried to phase into the astral and attack me, something shadow-primal-energized.

  That could only mean one thing. The Asian had shadow allies.

  Dancing white lights dispersed along the red beam’s former path like errant glow-bugs. The black surface of the lake, below the sparkling lights, cast no reflections. The ominous buildings on the other side of the lake beckoned. Curious. I floated across to investigate and hovered about ten meters above the nearest building.

  As I watched, my vision shifted. The structure became transparent and fine lines of silver filled the space inside. Rapid pulses of light flashed back and forth down the silvery paths. It reminded me of high-speed movies of cars at night on a city street, millions of cars. I experimented and could control the speed of the pulses, making the whole scene go faster or slower. I slowed down a pulse.

  Binary symbols appeared in long strings. Its encrypted network data slowed down to a crawl.

  If I had some way to translate the data encoding, I could read the data. It was the ultimate network intrusion hack. How could you capture a hacker in the “cyber-psi”?

  Intrigued by the discovery, I altered one byte of data with my mind and it worked! The computer would reject it as a bad transmit. More important, I could change the data.

  I watched the data and saw text embedded. Wolf Creek. This must be the name of the facility. It didn’t ring a bell.

  I pondered the implications.

  The Asian attacked this network. But why?

  The sparks must have been the data he transmitted down the link the box had created.

  The dragon pendant blazed a blinding red on my chest when I modified a byte in the data stream. Changing real data required a lot of energy it seemed. Yeah, that was consistent with the device’s information that enormous amounts of energy were needed to affect real space and time from the astral realm, the cyber-psi.

  As I hovered around the series of buildings, I saw one large domed building which contained a whirling cube of multicolored pulses. The cube radiated a polychromatic nova of light and power. Continuous violent mini-lightning flashes erupted within the cube. As I watched, the intensity of the radiance weakened. A large pipeline of surging light ran to the east and disappeared into the twilight. There was little else I could do at the facility. The radiance had subsided to a mild glow. I headed back to Colorado Springs, anxious to find out where and what “Wolf Creek” was.

  # # #

  Colonel Li

  In the dark parking area, on the west shore of the reservoir between Burlington, Kansas and the Wolf Creek nuclear facility, a brooding Asian man stiffly walked back to his RV. In his hands, he cradled an odd laptop. It had no keyboard. Instead, six skin-adhesive electrodes came out the back panel. Each pin plugged into a small input jack on his forearm that looked like over-sized freckles.

  Loud klaxons from the nuclear facility across the cooling lake blasted their warning into the night. He climbed into the RV. Eyes twitched in subdued rage as he pulled out of the parking area heading to Highway 75.

  # # #

  Lane

  I got up and prepped for work. It had snowed. Not a lot by Colorado standards, just a dusting of a few inches. The crystalline air charged the sun-washed morning in twinkles that bathed snow-covered lawns. The frigid Caddy took urging, but the engine thundered to life, blasting a cloud of sooty exhaust into the morning air. After several moments the shuddering engine lessened to the smooth, even rumble of hot oiled rods and pistons. Extra gouts of oil splashed on my blackened driveway as the gaps in the engine seals closed.

  Out on the main roads, the asphalt was plowed and salted all the way to Woodland Park. Farther into the mountains, the snow had been heavier, over a foot in some places and still snowing according to the weather station. Chain warnings were up in the mountain passes.

  It was Friday. First order of business, after the end-of-week meeting, was to look for Wolf Creek on the Internet. There were ski resorts, recreation areas, golf courses, real estate, but nothing fit the bill until Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Consortium jumped out at me.

 
“Oh my God,” I whispered and grabbed a map.

  There was a lake next to the facility that confirmed the location. The Asian had hacked a nuclear reactor site. The Burlington local newspaper mentioned a late night test of the warning klaxons at the Wolf Creek facility, followed by a routine, scheduled shutdown of the reactor for fuel rod cycling. The site administrator apologized to the local community for the brief noise disruption, citing the sirens were meant to be muted and not at full volume for the test.

  Yeah, right, no need to alarm the locals by telling them you were moments away from a full radiation breach and core meltdown.

  For a moment, I thought about telling the police. No. They would put me in a small padded cell and lose the key. I needed to know more about what the hell happened before going to the authorities.

  # # #

  Colonel Li

  On the top floor offices of the Daesu Bionics building, downtown Beijing, Wu Chin regarded the white-bearded man before him.

  “What happened, Mr. Li?”

  “A psi walker rode the gangfeng.” Mr. Li stood with his hands clasped behind his back and legs apart.

  “You were not able to manage the situation?” Wu Chin’s hardened glare reduced most executives to nervous twitching.

  “He possessed an artifact of power. I could not touch him,” Mr. Li replied.

  “Thank you, Mr. Li. I will pass your report on.”

  Mr. Li bowed and, with the subtle movements of a trained dancer, appeared to teleport to the office door.

  The corporate offices of Daesu Bionics rode high on one of the tallest buildings in Beijing. Bustling executives and support staff stepped out of the way and bowed low as the enigmatic Mr. Li strode to the high-speed elevators. Five steel and glass elevators ringed the cylindrical tower which looked like an impossibly tall Titan rocket. Deep in thought, Mr. Li stepped into the ten-man, glass-faced metal box hung by maglevs over an eight-hundred-meter drop. The elevator shot towards the ground far below.