“Re-route toward Shelf 2,” he grated. “I’m sure I’ll need to have an unfortunate meeting with Central Command about this mess.” He started to turn away and then checked himself. “And make sure the Scrambling Drones are operational throughout the continent. I don’t want any information going out or coming in. Who knows how many more of these damn bogeys there might be?”
The officers jumped to fulfill the orders; the DITV turned and headed back to the lifts that would take him a thousand feet lower to Central Command-whether he liked it or not.
The intruders won’t survive, he told himself, trying to sound reassuring at least to himself. They can’t possibly-not in this frozen hell.
CENTRAL COMMAND
A few thousand feet below, in the Ops Room of Central Command, Blackburn was watching it all. His body was little more than a silhouette against a vast wall that was covered, top to bottom and side to side with holo-screens and projections; he watched every one of them with a tight intensity, closely studying the intruders. Ops gave him a 360-degree view of virtually any part of the ice world. All around him, the walls displayed everything he needed to know about the covert operation of Vector5.
He had arrived from the surface barely three hours earlier and instantly relieved Mathias of duty. Wherever he went, wherever he landed, he was boss; he didn’t need challenges to his authority. He would handle it; they would follow his orders. Woe to the first man who looked to somebody else for permission or advice.
Twenty-five years, he told himself as he watched the strange, iridescent vehicle scuttle into the narrow passage and evade the Crevasse Spiders. Twenty-five years of building, planning, and operation, and never so much as a temporary breach. Now, two serious leaks in the last month.
He hadn’t thought of that before. Two of them-so close together. It made him wonder if there was some connection between Jonathan Weiss’ betrayal and this bizarre machine from…somewhere.
He was standing on a black carbon fiber catwalk that protruded into the huge, circular Ops Room. Fifteen technicians sat below him, monitoring the mega-computers, controlling the entire Vector5 operation deep within the Antarctic ice. He knew exactly what was happening. And he knew who was going to pay.
“Status of the Black Ops team assigned to Roland?” he asked. That decision had been made long ago. The commander had failed to stop the intruders and Blackburn simply wouldn’t tolerate that-if this was his last chance, it’d be everyone else’s, as well. And as with any officer-related ‘disciplinary action,’ he knew it had to happen quickly; there was always the concern that a Vector5 officer might defect to save his life, and Roland was no different. But he knew as well as Blackburn did: he had nowhere to go. Even if he somehow miraculously managed to escape the continent, Vector5’s reach extended to the far corners of the globe, controlling and manipulating information at all levels of society.
Forever secret, Blackburn thought, and smiled.
As he walked back toward the adjacent building to meet with his advisors, he wondered how he could have missed the possibility of a connection between Weiss and the intruder. In fact, he realized, it was quite possible that Simon Fitzpatrick himself, and maybe some or all of the scientists recently reported missing from Oxford, could be part of this-even on board the mysterious vessel. Certainly their whereabouts were unknown; Ryan’s fiancee had been interrogated until they had killed her and knew nothing-or gave them nothing-concerning his whereabouts.
Deep down, something told Blackburn that he had hit on something. This intruder was the team he had been looking for. “It’s them,” he said to himself.
One of his assistants looked up quizzically. “Sir?” he said.
“Never mind,” Blackburn said. His complement of eight officers and advisors followed him to the meeting room to start the debrief.
* * *
It was a long-standing custom: when Blackburn returned to Antarctica, his commanders met with him immediately and brought him up to date. Nothing was ignored, nothing was held back, or that would be the commander’s last meeting. In fact, the debrief itself was more of a checksum for Blackburn than a necessity. He could access any information he needed wherever he was on the planet, any time he chose; he prided himself on knowing every important detail of the vast covert operation at any given moment. But the debriefing did give him valuable insight into just how well-informed and in control his commanders were-and how forthcoming.
At home back in North America, Blackburn led a very deceptive life. He played at being an average mid-level Pentagon official, currently assigned to UNED. No one at either organization knew exactly what his roles and responsibilities were, and no one was privy to his existance in Antarctica. Nobody needed to know. It was Blackburn’s operation-his, and the Committee he answered to, the men he had actually never met.
He leaned back in his well-padded leather chair and studied his command team with deep, piercing eyes. Very little affected Blackburn. He believed in himself with a strength, a ferocity that was intimidating to most. He was rarely questioned, and always, always deferred to.
But today was different. This was the first breach of Antarctica’s security in over twenty years. Someone somehow had managed to enter the ice continent and penetrate the network-his network. And his job-his life-depended on getting to the bottom of it.
Vector5 called a security breach an “incision” for a reason: it was a violation of the body; it was a threat to the operation’s continued health. It was dangerous, and it was expected to cause some pain-to someone.
Just not to Blackburn.
“Commander Roland is on his way down,” were the first words out of his mouth. Everyone in the room knew what that meant. The relief they shared-that this time, at least, it wasn’t them-was palpable.
One of the Ops advisors straightened in his chair. “Sir,” he said, “We believe we can-”
Blackburn cut him off with a gesture.
“Don’t. It’s pathetic. You have no solutions; you-all of you-are responsible for this happening in the first place.” He leaned back again and stared at the blank white walls. “This is what we will do. We will wait for the intruder-the intruders, plural, as it happens-to come to us.”
“But sir,” one of the defense commanders protested, “If they were to somehow penetrate-”
“They will penetrate nothing. There’s no way they can send any signals beyond the continent, and the farther they run from the Spiders, the deeper they go-and the closer they get to us.” He shook his head briefly and tapped the grey tabletop. “No, we will meet them at Shelf 3…if they manage to survive until then.”
“But sir, if I may,” said one of the officers. He tried to stand, saw the expression on Blackburn’s face, and gave it up as a bad idea. He cleared his throat nervously as he retook his seat. “Sir,” he said again, “We still have not been able to locate the eighteen scientists that escaped a few weeks ago. What if…?”
“What if what, Lucas?” he asked the officer very quietly. “Your inability to hold on to operational assets that were in your care is hardly the accomplishment you want to mention at this meeting, is it? It was a failure to begin with…but, I am quite sure, not terribly dangerous. They will run out of rations and freeze to death in the next few days, if they haven’t already.”
Another advisor-my, they’re feeling bold today, Blackburn thought, almost amused-half-raised his hand in a timid bid for attention. “Sir,” he said, “We have reports that several pieces of our old MCs have been dug out of the ice and are probably in the hands of those scientists. The tracker-bugs on them started to fire-for a while, until someone disabled them. So we know-”