CyberSpace: A CyberStorm Novel (Cyber Series Book 1)

  Selected Praise & Reviews

  MATTHEW MATHER

  “BRILLIANT...”

  —WIRED Magazine on Cyber series

  “Mather creates characters you've instantly known your whole life.”

  —BOING BOING editor Jason Weisberger

  “Relentless pacing…bombshell plot twists.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Dreaming Tree

  “Terrifying because so plausible.”

  —Washington Post bestseller Steven Konkoly

  “Michael Crichton reincarnated.”

  —New York Times bestseller Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  “Not only a great thriller, but a wake up call.”

  — FBI Special Agent Brent Watkins (retired)

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  A sincere thank you to everyone who helped make the Cyber series a reality, to all the fans who did early readings and to my editor Maya Merrick, but in particular I would like to thank:

  Barry Matsumori

  Vice-President, SpaceX (former)

  CEO, BridgeSat

  Brent Watkins

  FBI Cyber Investigations

  Special Agent (retired)

  Richard Marshall

  Global Director of Cybersecurity

  US Department of Homeland Security

  Also by Matthew Mather

  DARKNET Standalone Novel

  Part of the CyberStorm universe

  ATOPIA Three-book completed series

  Part of the CyberStorm universe

  NOMAD Four-book completed series

  Science Fiction Book of the Year award winner

  POLAR VORTEX Standalone Novel

  Now in development as a limited TV series

  Published by Pallas Publishing.

  Copyright © 2020 by Matthew Mather ULC

  All rights reserved.

  CyberSpace is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and event and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission (except for short quotations used in book reviews or articles).

  isbn // 978-1-987942-13-2 // e-book

  isbn // 978-1-987942-14-9 // paperback

  isbn // 978-1-987942-19-4 // hardcover

  first edition

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  PROLOGUE

  LIGHT FLICKERED THROUGH smoke cascading down the rolling Kentucky hills that climbed to meet West Virginia. The sun rose blood red over the Appalachians as a hot wind blew in from the southeast. The air sweltering and acrid. Burned my nostrils even through the soaked bandana across my face.

  Not more than a mile away, flames licked the treetops.

  The sky was literally falling. Spacecraft burning up in the atmosphere.

  A slow-motion disaster was grinding mercilessly across America. Across the entire planet. All at the same time. Soon people would be going hungry. Natural disasters going unchecked, power failing, food supplies running out. The world’s militaries on the trigger edge of disaster.

  We had one long shot to maybe stop it all, to save everyone, and here I was driving a broken old tractor across a dusty corn field through the eye of a firestorm.

  With the weight of it all on my beaten down shoulders.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE FLICKERING SILVER beast exploded from the water in a muscular convulsion, twisting through the blue Louisiana sky before crashing back in the shallows near a stand of seagrass.

  “Fish on!” I yelled.

  Chuck buckled the gimbal belt, then clipped the kidney harness and straps to the reel lug under the fishing rod. Propping his left hand, the prosthetic one, under the rod, he used his right to operate the reel. He grunted as he strained to take the weight.

  My eight-year-old son Luke danced around behind him.

  “That’s gotta be a two-hundred-pounder!” Chuck hauled back.

  The reel whirred into a high pitch as the fish raced away. Grandma Babet threw the boat into reverse to follow it.

  Keeping an eye on Luke, I sat in the front of the boat with Damon Indigo. Terek, his Ukrainian hacker friend, was proving to be the best tarpon wrangler. He wore VR goggles, which he used to navigate the hunting drones. The center aisle was occupied by six heavy-duty car batteries wired together to recharge the flying machines.

  “Should we be worried?” I said.

  Damon held one hand up to shield his eyes from the sun, his laptop on his knees. “Pretty sure Chuck can handle it.”

  “I mean these attacks. The news said India launched a missile at a Pakistani navigation satellite.” I was halfway through scanning a news story.

  “What would you be worried about?”

  “This reporter says the impact is spraying debris everywhere up there.”

  “Are there new developments?”

  “Hey,” Chuck growled. “Put that away. Be in the moment, not in the Google.”

  “Right. Sorry.” I put the phone down.

  People staring at screens was his pet peeve, and he made us leave most of our devices in the car. The only exemptions were Luke’s iPad and Damon’s phone for the GPS—with strict instructions only to be used if absolutely needed.

  Over the engine’s growl, I detected the whine of the drones.

  I pointed. “There.”

  Two dots against the blue. Terek guided them in.

  “Come around, come around!” Chuck called.

  The tarpon must have taken out two hundred feet of line, which bent around to the right, toward the front of the boat. Babet reversed the engine and we surged forward, but the fish was faster. It skirted a muddy island of grass ahead.

  Chuck angled the rod around to follow it. “Clear the way!”

  With the fiberglass shaft held high and bent almost ninety degrees, he made his way toward the front of the boat to keep the line from going under. The drones whirred twenty feet overhead. Terek still wore the VR goggles as he attempted to bring them down.

  I held out one hand to keep Luke in the back while I leaned out of the way.

  “Chuck, are you sure you know what you’re do—”

  Head still up, Terek swept one arm around to grab a descending drone. Hi
s elbow caught Chuck square in the temple. He staggered sideways and let go of the rod to brace himself as he fell. The next instant, he shot forward. Jerked like a dog’s toy as the huge fish pulled. He crashed into Damon, who flipped face-first onto the deck.

  Chuck disappeared over the edge.

  I instinctively reached to grab him, but Damon hit my legs and splayed me out as I lunged forward. Luke squealed. I shoved Damon aside and scrambled to my feet. Was my son overboard? Tangled in a rope? My eyes scanned.

  Found him. Luke was in the back of the boat. Eyes wide. Arm waving.

  “He’s over there,” Grandma Babet said. “Ev’body keep calm. Everything’s okay.”

  I followed Luke’s gesticulations. Everything was definitely not okay.

  A surging brown shape broke the surface ten yards from the boat. Chuck gasped for air before going under again. One hand appeared and flailed through a churning swell that accelerated away from us. A thought flashed—I could jump in after him. But then I’d need saving as well.

  And what about alligators?

  Babet hit the throttle and the nose of the boat tipped up.

  The rolling bump of water over Chuck crested. He appeared from the muck as he was dragged into the shallows. He struggled to his knees, his prosthetic hand dangling. A stringy mass of seaweed was slung across his shoulder. As he pulled the fishing rod from the mud with his right hand, it twitched.

  “Let go!” I yelled.

  He fumbled with the strap attached to the reel. A violent tug on the rod and he lost his balance. He flopped into the slime, then jerked ten feet forward and splashed straight back in.

  I lost sight of him behind a stand of cattails.

  Babet gunned the engine. We roared toward the small island, then swerved around the other side. Flat brown water crawled through a canyon of bald cypresses.

  “Send the drones out,” I heard Damon say behind me. “Give me the controls.”

  “Chuck!” I called.

  Babet turned down the throttle and we drifted into the channel in silence.

  “What happened?” Terek had the goggles off by now.

  Damon was already sending one of the machines whirring high to search through a thicket of eucalyptus. “Did anyone see him?”

  Luke cried little sobs. Wrapped his arms around my leg.

  “Over here,” called out a wheezing voice.

  We all turned.

  And there he was. Waist-deep in lily pads next to a gum tree on the next island. Covered in mud from head to foot, blood streamed down Chuck’s face, but his teeth shone white as he smiled and waved.

  Chuck called out, “Still got it on,” and pulled back on the rod.

  He slid forward, stumbling into the sludge again.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE CATHEDRAL OF the low country sky arced blue and cloudless over islands of scrub brush. A single gull squawked and hovered in a breeze that riffled the bayou water. Three of us sat in the back of the ten-seater jet boat—me, my son Luke, and our old friend Chuck Mumford.

  Damon and Terek sat in the front, adjusting the drones for the next hunt. Damon’s grandmother, Babet, was in the captain’s chair in the middle, patching up a nasty cut on Chuck’s forehead.

  I said, “You’re a crazy sonofabitch, you know that?”

  Chuck grinned gleefully. “Show me the pictures again.”

  I held up Damon’s phone. There was Chuck, chest-high in seaweed and holding a seven-foot tarpon up with both arms. The phone’s screen was cracked. It must’ve happened when Damon was thrown to the deck.

  “Bet you that was two hundred.”

  “You could have drowned.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “Or been attacked by an alligator.”

  “None here mean enough to bite me. Anyway, I’d give them this.” He held up his prosthetic left hand, now strapped back on. “I’m Captain Hook.”

  “I can’t believe that didn’t break.”

  “Better than my real hand.”

  “You don’t need to say that.”

  Chuck smiled. “When life gives you lemons.”

  “That was so cool!” Luke was all smiles again.

  My son was terrified when Chuck had disappeared, but now it was the best thing he’d ever seen. Me too, maybe. I convulsed into a belly laugh, the last of the stress leaking out.

  “Haven’t seen you do that this whole trip,” Chuck said.

  “All it took was seeing you go ass over teakettle.”

  “Glad to be of service.”

  “I almost jumped in after you.”

  “Yeah, ‘almost’ being the operative word.”

  We released the fish after catching it, which disappointed Luke. To make up for it, we’d taken pictures of him with the big silver king. Messaged them to mom.

  No response yet, but it was still the middle of the night in Hong Kong.

  Luke asked, “Aunt Babet, can I feed the sharks?”

  My boy scrunched his face up the way he did when he wanted to do something but wasn’t sure if he should. With both forearms held tight to his chest and his shoulders hunched inward, he pointed one guilty-but-hopeful finger at the mess of barracuda guts on the cutting board at the back of the boat.

  “Call me grandma, ev’body else do.” Babet’s gravelly Cajun accent drawled the words out. She glanced at me.

  I smiled, and then nodded. Why not? I asked, “There aren’t really sharks here, are there?”

  “Does the pope poop in the woods?” Chuck joked.

  “The pope does what?” Luke’s nose crinkled. “Poop?”

  “Uncle Chuck is being funny.”

  “Yeah, funny looking.” Luke giggled, his eyes going wide.

  Chuck laughed and grabbed him to tickle his ribs. Luke shrieked and dodged away.

  “Round the bayou,” Babet said, lowering her voice so Luke wouldn’t hear, “more likely a gator get you.” She then turned to Luke and said loudly, “You go ahead, but you make sure to hang on tight with one hand. Always, you understand me?”

  “Deal.” Luke’s chin wagged up and down, his gap-toothed grin widening.

  On our flight from New York yesterday, his front right incisor had finally come out, the new tooth below it button-like. Almost all the kids in his class already had adult teeth, so he was happy to be joining that crew.

  I was lucky to get a buck when I was a kid, but I’d slipped a twenty under his pillow at our hotel in the French Quarter. The tooth fairy was everywhere, I told him in the morning, and he was still young enough to half believe me.

  Luke took three steps to the back, picked up some fish entrails, and peered over the side.

  “Hey, what did Bab—” I paused. “What did Grandma Babet tell you?” I waved my empty beer can in my son’s direction and squeezed illustratively, lightly crushing the aluminum shell.

  “Right.” Luke took hold of a side rail, planted both feet like a quarterback—just like I taught him—and sent the first gooey chunk into the drink.

  He looked back at me.

  I gave him the thumbs up.

  Just like I taught him, I thought to myself and laughed. As if I were some kind of sports authority. I was always the kid that was picked last for teams in high school, and I didn’t want that for Luke. We played catch, and I enrolled him in rugby. We got as much open air as we could.

  Coming on this trip was part of that. I wanted him to do stuff outdoors, get out on the water, all the things I didn’t get to do when I was young.

  This expedition was important, I had explained to Lauren. It was a chance to see Chuck and Damon, and it would give Luke new experiences. My son was even more excited about it than I was. My wife gave us permission, but made me promise not to do anything stupid.

  “Nice shot, Legook,” Damon said.

  I gave him a puzzled look. Why did he keep calling my son Legook? Had to be the tenth time he’d said it already.

  Damon smiled back at me, seemingly not ready to divulge, and asked, “Hey,
guys, are we going to try more fishing?” Our tech wizard was hunched over in the front of the boat, a towel draped over his head to create a tent where it was dim enough to work on his laptop.

  Terek sat next to him. He said he was twenty-three, but he looked like a teenager with his giant mop of brown hair. Tall and lanky, he was probably six-two but less than two hundred pounds. His smooth skin was as pallid and lily-white as Grandma Babet’s was dark and leathery.

  He’d apologized about a dozen times after we’d hauled Chuck in, but the kid was still in shock. More affected than Chuck, that was for sure.

  The young Eastern European was busy slathering on another layer of fifty-SPF sunblock. “Maybe we call it a day?” he said. His arms were a burnt shade of angry pink.

  “I say we go again,” Chuck countered.

  My friend was now sprawled out on the back seat, beer in hand, body and clothes still caked in mud. In the four years since he and his family had moved to Nashville, he had become increasingly laid back. Permanent two-day stubble and shaggy hair. The bandage across his head completed the pirate look.

  The persistent twinkle of mischief in Chuck’s eyes hadn’t changed a bit, but I couldn’t help stealing glances at his left hand. The prosthetic. He said he didn’t even notice the difference anymore, but I got a twinge of guilt every time I saw it.

  Damon lifted the towel covering his head. Five-eight, he was more my height, but looked short next to Terek.

  Where his grandmother had ebony skin, Damon’s was more olive, his features almost Chinese. His father was Asian, he said, without adding more. I didn’t pry. I knew his mother passed when he was young. Grandma Babet had raised him.

  Damon said, “Hurricane Dolly is category five now. It’s going to brush past Martinique.”

  “Should we be worried?” I asked.

  “Not unless you have a villa there,” Chuck said.

  Damon said, “The track looks like it will come into the Gulf.”