They exchanged looks. Grady was still irritated at Cotton, but he stopped the video. They both headed out into the hall, where they could see Cotton waving to them from the far end of the workshop.
“What is it?”
“Just come here!”
As they walked toward him, they could see several holograms of live television. Cotton pointed. “It’s all over the news. I had some AIs scanning for any sign of BTC activity, and boy did they ever find it.”
Grady and Alexa came up alongside him. They were gazing up at horrendous carnage in a downtown area.
“Anything about the deputy secretary’s assassination?”
“No, not a peep about that. What you’re looking at is downtown Detroit.”
On-screen a plume of white smoke towered over the city, and aerial images of the streets showed what could only be described as utter devastation—with twenty-story buildings missing their facades, their interiors open to the air, a broad avenue now a deep trench. Hundreds of emergency vehicles surrounded the scene.
Alexa nodded to herself. “Just a few hundred meters from BTC headquarters.”
Grady studied the images. “What happened?”
“Media’s saying it was a sinkhole that killed a few dozen people—some critical infrastructure collapse due to deferred maintenance. Actually pretty clever.” Cotton pointed with some sort of tool he’d been holding. “I’m guessing somebody tried to kick in Hedrick’s front door. Stupid move.”
“There’s no possibility of a sinkhole anywhere near BTC headquarters.” Alexa’s eyes moved from screen to screen. “Perhaps the government tried to retaliate for the deputy secretary of Homeland Security.”
Cotton shrugged. “Well, where’s the wreckage? For that matter, where’s all the rubble from those collapsed building facades?”
Alexa looked grim. “It’s Kratos.”
“Kratos? Don’t tell me they actually built that thing?”
Grady looked from one to the other. “What’s Kratos?”
She met his gaze. “It’s you, Mr. Grady. Your gravity mirror technology writ large. One of the researchers found a way to project the gravity mirror effect over an arbitrary distance—like you saw Morrison do last night. An extogravis, and they put it into a satellite in a geosynchronous orbit at Lagrange point two—twenty thousand miles up.”
Grady pondered this. “You’re saying they have a satellite-based gravity weapon?”
She nodded and pointed to the screen. “It’s why Hedrick was bringing you back from Hibernity. He needed you to improve it. They can reverse gravity in an area a mile across—narrower if they like.”
“Holy hell…” Cotton turned from examining the carnage on-screen. “That’s some technology you came up with. That’s why there’s no wreckage—it all fell into the sky.”
Alexa nodded.
“Sort of explains the chatter on the Web. Kooks there are saying there was a military force that got sucked up by the hand of God. Folks filmed it on their phones, but there wasn’t any cell service—and during the night somebody reached into their phones and deleted the evidence. Wacky, wacky people on the Web…”
Alexa watched the screens.
Cotton nudged Grady’s arm. “Pretty impressive.”
Grady shook his head. “My God—they have a satellite that can level a city.”
“Suck it into space more like.”
Grady walked away, sobered. “I can’t believe what I’ve done. I’ve given these madmen absolute power over us all. And they’ll only become more powerful over time.”
Alexa turned to him. “You didn’t give them anything. They took it from you, and I’m starting to realize that BTC probability models didn’t include themselves.”
Meanwhile, on television, pundits were discussing the long history of urban decay in Detroit, and an infrastructure bill being introduced in Congress to rush federal aid.
Cotton nodded. “Looks like Washington has backed off. Well, Hedrick won’t hesitate to use this power. I expect our government friends will be licking their wounds for the moment. Which probably means they won’t be of much help in springing the inmates from Hibernity, even if you tell them about it.”
Grady looked up. “We need to locate Hibernity. Rescuing those prisoners and getting them safely to the authorities might be the only chance to level the playing field with Hedrick.”
“But for that you’ll need someone willing to receive them. And with Hedrick playing God, they might not risk it. In fact, the feds might turn you over to him.”
Alexa took a deep breath. “We have to decide what we’re going to do. We can’t stay here forever. Hedrick and Morrison will never stop hunting for us. So we’ll need to deal with them sooner or later.”
Grady considered the situation. “How do they control that gravity satellite?”
Alexa shook her head incredulously. “You won’t be able to seize control. It’s an encrypted q-link. All managed by AIs that know where every single piece of BTC equipment is. For the satellite they’ll probably have several q-links as backup, but there will be only a handful of control stations in the Gravitics Research Lab at BTC headquarters.”
Cotton nodded to himself. “That means you’d need to physically access the heart of the place to have any hope of taking control of Kratos.”
“What about destroying the satellite?”
“Pffftt. Good luck with that. It’s invisible for starters—they’ve got a diffraction cloak around it. And they’ll zap anything that gets within ten thousand miles.”
“Cotton’s right; we’d need to get into the very heart of BTC’s control center—and that means through layers of bulk-diamond security walls and robotic weaponry.”
Grady considered this. “But if we could get control of the satellite, we could conceivably hold a gun to Hedrick’s head. He wants me because this technology is fearsome.”
Cotton laughed.
Alexa didn’t laugh. “I might know someone who can help us gain access.”
Cotton raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
“Never mind who. But I need to get back into the building to speak with them.”
Cotton whistled. “Break into the dark tower?”
“You’re the master thief. Can you find me a way in? They’ll have rescinded my access rights, but I know every corner of that facility. I grew up there. And I’m certified in six dozen specialties within the BTC.”
“Yeah, I’ve tried breaking and entering there once before. The place is crawling with robots, surveillance dust, high-energy fields.” Cotton grinned. “I know because I spent the last several years studying it for weaknesses.” He killed the news feeds and instead brought up holographic projections of BTC floor plans.
Alexa looked shocked.
Cotton chuckled. “I knew it was only a matter of time until they tried to whack me. I had a feeling there would be no exit interview either. So I made plans for escape or infiltration at a moment’s notice, should either prove necessary.”
She studied the floor plans, turning the model from side to side. “I won’t ask how you got hold of these. Have you found anything useful?”
“No, I must say, the AIs locked this place up tight—triple redundant systems. Their security is basically perfect—especially when they’re in high alert, which they’ll be in right now. The nanorod walls can stop just about anything, and the EM plasma rippling over its surface is conducting about four hundred gigajoules. That plasma would diffract lasers. There’s really no force short of a thermonuclear explosion that could get through it.”
Grady watched Cotton turn the 3D plans first one way, then another. “That’s not true.”
“What’s not true?”
“That there’s no force that could get through that perimeter defense. Because there is a force that already does.”