CyberSpace: A CyberStorm Novel (Cyber Series Book 1), Page 2

  I scanned the lowland islands of the bayou and tried to imagine being here during a monster hurricane. Everything would be submerged, all the way to New Orleans. The thought of nothing but suffocating water all the way to the horizon was terrifying. I put it out of my mind. I never really learned to swim properly when I was a kid.

  “Won’t get near here for two weeks,” Chuck said, “even if it does come this way. Average ground speed of a hurricane is ten miles an hour.” It was the sort of arcane detail Chuck would know. “By then we’ll be long gone. And hey, no more internet while we’re out here. How many times do I have to ask?”

  Damon shrugged an apology. “I’m adjusting the image recognition system to key off that last one you found. I’ll set the drones to hover a little further out so they don’t spook the fish.”

  Competing in the Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo was on Chuck’s bucket list. This boys’ trip had been hatched after Damon suggested he could modify the drones he was working on at MIT. He altered their facial recognition systems to look for the telltale signs of huge tarpon laying up in shallow water.

  Drone fishing wasn’t a new idea, but the way we were doing it was.

  We sent one out to hunt and followed in the boat. A second held the bait, attached to the line and rod. The idea was to drop the lure right onto the nose of the unsuspecting fish once the first drone found the target.

  That was the concept. Problem was that the tarpons didn’t like drones.

  “Dad?” Luke had his arms close to his chest again.

  “What?” I tilted my head.

  “Can I play on the iPad?”

  “Look where we are. Out on the bayou in Louisiana. Fishing with drones. You want to use the iPad now?”

  He scrunched his arms in tighter and crinkled his nose.

  I relented. This was a long-fought war of attrition. “Okay, but only half an hour. And no YouTube.”

  “Deal.”

  “Here we go,” Damon announced from the front, holding the drone.

  He released it. The six-legged, one-eyed monster lifted from the front deck and shot into the blue expanse on a blast of air that blew Chuck’s hair back.

  CHAPTER 3

  “THAT’S IT?” LUKE squinted into the binoculars.

  A squat bunker of cement, topped by a white gantry and red-and-white striped crane, hunched a mile away across a flat of grass and sand. The horizon was flat. The SLS test engine didn’t look like much from this distance, less like a rocket and more like an errant bit of an oil refinery.

  In the sweltering heat, Luke and I, Damon and Terek had made the ten-minute hike from the Infinity Science Center back on Interstate 10 out to the test range with a knot of other tourists. Grandma Babet had wisely opted to stay behind in the air-conditioned lobby.

  “That’s the biggest rocket in the world,” Chuck said to Luke.

  “It is not,” Luke protested.

  “That’s what the NASA man said on the tour.”

  “He was telling a fib,” Luke said immediately. “The GenCorp Galaxy is the biggest. Look how small that is.”

  “He’s not wrong,” Damon said.

  The GenCorp headquarters were only a few miles away. Damon had been there twice, he said, as part of a DOD—Department of Defense—contract he was working on with MIT. He joked with a smile that he could tell us what the project was, but then he would have to kill us. A secret, he whispered to Luke.

  Chuck checked his watch. “That’s going to light up in a few minutes. Then you’ll see.”

  “Excuse me? Mr. Indigo?” A young girl and her friend addressed Damon.

  They weren’t more than fifteen or sixteen, both with braces on their teeth and wearing oversized tank tops over bathing suits and shorts.

  “Uh, yeah, that’s me,” Damon replied.

  “Can we have your autograph?” One of them held out a napkin from the science center cafeteria. The other handed over a pen.

  “Sure, of course.” He scribbled his name and a note.

  They took back the napkin, thanked him, and ran back to their friends.

  “That happen to you a lot?” I asked. His fame had grown, even though I knew he tried to avoid it.

  “From time to time. I’m thinking of switching to my middle name to avoid some of it.”

  “You have a middle name?” I was never given one.

  “Vincent.”

  My son watched the girls for a second, but then returned his attention to the test platform. “This is a rocket launch, right?” he asked.

  “An engine test firing. No launch.”

  Luke handed the binoculars back to Chuck and scrunched his nose. Unimpressed. This was also the look he gave me when he wanted to go off by himself.

  “Why don’t you go play with some of those kids?” I pointed at a group of children about his age who were chasing each other around a wooden jungle gym near the waiting area.

  He pouted. “I don’t know them.”

  “Go and introduce yourself.” I was a bit of an introvert. I wanted him to feel comfortable talking to people. It was important. So I pushed him.

  “Okay.” He waggled his head. “To infinity and beyond!” He made a rocket ship blasting off out of one hand and followed it toward the kids.

  “I’ll watch him,” Terek said to me.

  He and Damon wandered off behind Luke.

  After mooring the boat at a wharf at the Port of New Orleans the night before, we had stopped right under the Mississippi Bridge at Dino’s Grill for some shrimp and jambalaya. This morning, we’d met back at our hotel on Frenchmen Street for the drive up to the Stennis Space Center, the biggest rocket test facility in America.

  Chuck had driven down from Nashville in his Jeep, but when we got into it that morning, the thing wouldn’t start. He had it towed to the garage around the corner, and then we all took a taxi out to Grandma Babet’s. All six of us had packed into her beaten-up ’82 Monte Carlo, with Luke balanced on my knees in the back.

  We’d driven out of New Orleans, eastward past Lake Pontchartrain, over the Pearl River delta, and into the State of Mississippi itself.

  The Space Center was just on the other side, but in the hour drive both my legs had gone to sleep under the weight of my eight-year-old son. Not that long ago, he was a baby. Now he knew when NASA was telling lies.

  Chuck and I stood in front of the chain-link fence and waited for the rocket test firing.

  “We need to hitch a ride with Russia to even get into space,” Chuck said.

  I replied, “Isn’t GenCorp sending up manned missions now?”

  “Billionaires are almost worse than Russians.”

  “You have something against Russians? Because they’re hacking our elections?”

  Chuck rolled his eyes. “Has your Uncle Senator brainwashed you?”

  “You don’t think they are?”

  “I’m sure we’re messing with theirs, too. We even mess with our allies’ elections—the last estimate I saw is that we’ve interfered in half of all the democratic elections around the world since World War II, and even more when it comes to undemocratic places. This is an old game, not a new one.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “Within bounds, it’s the norm. It’s our job to keep them in check, and vice versa, but there’s a big difference between that and basing a critical part of our national defense on Russia. They’re still our biggest adversary. I agree with your wife’s uncle on that.”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  Six years earlier, I’d put my entire family in danger when I hadn’t been able to see what was right in front of my eyes. I’d been blinded by my prejudices. Chuck had paid the price. His hand had been amputated as a result of the chaos and misunderstandings.

  Chuck chewed on his lip. “I’m still not convinced what happened in New York back then was a big accident.”

  “Not everything is a conspiracy.”

  “These days it is. Seriously. Think about it.”

&
nbsp; It was my turn to roll my eyes.

  “And it’s getting worse,” Chuck continued. “Real conspiracies. Like Snowden. And as Luke said, that right there”—Chuck pointed through the chain-link fence—“isn’t the biggest rocket in the world. The world’s most powerful rocket is owned by Tyrell Jakob, a billionaire who controls half the internet and most of the space over our heads.”

  “Careful what you say about my hero.” I was joking. Sort of.

  I had been promoted to partner at my venture capital firm in New York. I wasn’t an ex-entrepreneur or a financial wizard, but I did have a talent for helping people get stuff done. We had branched out from social media investments into robotics and artificial intelligence, and Tyrell Jakob was the shining entrepreneur-in-armor on a hilltop we all admired.

  Damon reappeared from watching Luke and latched his fingers into the chain-link fence. “I’ve met Tyrell a few times, at their HQ over here, and when he came to talk at MIT. A nice guy. I’m still in touch with people at GenCorp.”

  “That may be,” Chuck said, “but putting that much power into the hands of one person? You think Russia is bad? Greedy rich people are worse. At least Russia has rules we can understand.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true anymore,” Damon said.

  “It’s about to start.” Terek appeared with Luke on his shoulders.

  My son waved at me, a hot dog in his hand.

  “I hope you don’t mind. He wanted one,” Terek said.

  “How much do I owe you?”

  Terek waved me off. It was okay.

  “So, you have a daughter as well?” Terek asked me.

  “Olivia,” I replied. “Antonia Olivia, but we use her middle name. My wife, Lauren, is in Hong Kong on a business trip. She’s a lawyer. Big conference on international relations.” I liked telling everyone who would listen. Guess I was proud. I had a feeling Lauren’s career would be taking off soon. “Olivia is staying with our family in Washington.”

  “Senator Seymour, right?” Terek said. I must have looked puzzled about how he knew this, because he added, “Damon told me. The one that’s on TV all the time? The one leading the Senate investigations into the Russians?”

  “That’s right. He’s my wife’s uncle. So, I guess Olivia’s great-uncle or something. Lauren’s mother, Susan, is in Washington for September.”

  This trip conflicted with Lauren’s conference, but her mother had volunteered to take Olivia for two weeks. Susan was staying with her brother, the senator, at his Virginia estate.

  “My wife and I just moved to Washington,” Terek said.

  “Government job?” About the only reason someone would move there.

  Chuck asked, “Haven’t you been down here with Damon all summer?”

  “That’s right. Babet helped me and my sister get jobs at the Port of New Orleans this past summer. I came down to spend time with her.”

  “You work at the port?” I had assumed Terek was doing his PhD at MIT, the same as Damon.

  Damon held up his phone. “Have you guys seen the latest?” He flicked through the news on his phone. “That hurricane is the biggest they’ve ever recorded in the Atlantic basin. Huge tornadoes in the Midwest again. And fires everywhere. More in California—”

  “There are always fires in California.” Chuck could see where this conversation was going.

  “Not before global warming. Not like this. Start of September, and we’re already at the fifth named hurricane of the season. Record temperatures everywhere.”

  “The planet has been much warmer before. It’s natural. It changes all the time.”

  “This isn’t natural,” Damon said, “not this time.”

  “You’re saying humans aren’t natural?”

  “Fires in the Arctic? That’s normal? There are fires all over Siberia right now. And look at this. A huge forest fire in Appalachia, across West Virginia. That’s near your cabin.”

  “That is unusual,” Chuck admitted. “But forest fires are nature’s way of regaining balance.”

  “Until your cabin burns down.”

  “If that gets anywhere near my place, you can be sure I’ll be drafting all y’all to help me cut fire breaks.”

  “Speaking of fires,” Damon said. “India and Pakistan are heating up. Over a hundred were killed in clashes in Kashmir yesterday. And Mike, look at this.”

  I took his phone and read: “India launches second anti-satellite attack, destroying another Pakistani navigation relay. Cloud of wreckage spreads around the equator.”

  “A second one?” I passed the phone to Terek. “I didn’t even know Pakistan had satellites.”

  “Hardcore,” Damon said. “Not even low Earth orbit. That was a hit at MEO, sixteen thousand kilometers up. Russia and America are screaming at them to stop, but nobody wants to get involved in a shooting war. They’re talking trade sanctions. Like that will do anything.”

  “MEO?”

  “Medium Earth orbit. That’s more than two thousand kilometers, but less than geosynchronous. A lot of delta-v to get up there.”

  “Delta-v?” My tech-speak was levels below Damon. “Change in velocity?”

  “Need a lot of it to get out to that orbit.”

  “They better watch it.” Terek handed the phone to Chuck. “Russia is supplying weapons to Pakistan now. Missiles, the whole thing. They’re even sending up the first Pakistani astronaut.”

  “Cosmonaut, you mean,” Chuck said. “A nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan—a hundred warheads on each side—would push the planet into a nuclear winter for ten or twenty years. That would stop your global warming. Kind of a solution, if you think of it like that.”

  “Except for the hundreds of millions dead,” Damon replied.

  “I’m kidding.”

  Luke frowned his serious look. “Daddy, what’s a nuclear exchange?”

  “Uncle Chuck is joking.”

  “Is he always joking?” Luke asked, his frown deepening.

  “And look at this,” Chuck added, reading something on Damon’s phone. “India is denying they launched the attack.”

  “Really?”

  “But our military has confirmed that the launch came from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sriharikota Island, near Chennai.”

  An air horn sounded. Three long blasts. A quiet descended over the tourists. Everyone turned to the gantry in the distance.

  I thought about getting Luke down from Terek’s shoulders, but before I had the chance, a billowing cloud shot out from the cement test range, a jet of flickering brilliant white against the darkening azure sky. Crickets chirped quietly as the exhaust thunderhead blossomed to dwarf the gantry.

  The accompanying silence to the visual violence was surreal. A full three seconds passed before the ground beneath our feet shook in a low rumble, followed by an ear-splitting roar that thundered and engulfed us in its fury.

  Luke’s eyes went wide as his hands shot to his ears.

  Not unimpressed now, huh?

  I smiled and stuck my fingers in my ears, too. But I couldn’t help wondering: A cloud of debris spreading around the equator?

  CHAPTER 4

  A HOWLING BASS rhythm propelled me through the saloon doors, the music a living thing that flowed around me on a beer-and-sweat-soaked eddy of air. Together we merged with the swirling humid saltwater breeze outside. I stumbled across the exterior landing, then slid down the stairs and onto the grass.

  With one finger stuck in the ear opposite my phone, I said, “Everything is fine!”

  Lauren’s voice on the other end said, “Isn’t it too late for Luke,” then cut out for a second. A moment later, I heard: “Up?”

  “He’s loving it. Dancing in front of the band.” I checked my phone. It was 9 p.m. here, so 10 a.m. in Hong Kong. “How’s the conference?”

  She said something I couldn’t understand. Too garbled on her end, or too many whiskeys on mine.

  “I’ll still be meeting you in Washington next week?” I
asked.

  That was the plan. I’d fly up with Luke and meet her and her family. Then Lauren and I, together with the kids, would drive back to New York.

  She replied, “You’ve got my flight information?”

  “Of course. What about all this stuff with India? What are they saying over there?” I cleared a tangle of people chatting outside and found a quiet spot. “Lauren? Hello?”

  I checked my phone’s screen. The line had been disconnected.

  Chuck had followed me out. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Lauren called, but my reception is bad.”

  “I got full bars. Want to try mine? I just talked to Susie and Ellarose and Bonham.”

  I shook my head, no, I didn’t need his phone. Lauren had to get to her meeting anyway. I said, “Bonham is talking already?”

  “He’s four.”

  “Really?”

  “You need to visit more.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Where’s Luke?” Chuck asked.

  “Inside, with Terek. They’ve taken a shine to each other.”

  “Take a load off?” Chuck found two wooden Adirondack loungers at the edge of the gravel driveway, a hundred feet from the entrance. Far enough to feel private.

  I slumped into the chair next to him. Exhausted. Vacations wore me down.

  Chuck said, “Amazing place, huh?”

  “New Orleans? I love it.”

  “I mean this place.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the clapboard building we had just exited. Blues Night at the 100 Men Hall. It was a thirty-minute drive from the Stennis Space Center further into Mississippi to this unassuming structure. It was little more than a shack in the modest gulf-front town of Bay Saint Louis.

  “This is the oldest remaining structure of the Southern Chitlin Circuit,” Chuck said. “You know that? The last of its kind.”

  “Sounds like you.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  I stretched out and stared up into the sky. Almost completely dark out. No moon, no streetlights. One lamp over the door to the hall, but the bulb was burned out. Nothing but a dense field of stars overhead, which seemed to shift as if there were grains of sand between them.