A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) (17 page)

“What?” General Mace looked stunned.

They sat in the debriefing room an hour after they’d returned from Trench
World, and Jordan had just recounted the conversation he’d overheard in the
hallway.

Gin said, “An independent source corroborates it.”

Liv turned to her. It was about time they finally heard her secret
information.

“Up on the roof. I saw two kids, obviously Home Worlders. They were wearing
Discount Mart jeans,” she explained when General Mace sent her a questioning
look. “They said they’d seen demons in Blue Beach. They heard the demons say
that they were going to take down the king’s resistance and then the Wolf was
going to let them have a chance at the DEPOT world. The only king they knew of
was in Trench World, so they went there to watch for the demons to arrive.”

“Is there any chance they didn’t mean this world?” the general asked.

Liv sat up. “There are several other worlds with organizations like ours,
but I’ve never heard another called DEPOT.”

She looked to Trent for corroboration. “There’s a PWDF, a TTF, and a POTA. No
other DEPOT that I know of,” Trent confirmed.

“Actually, I think we can be sure it’s us they mean,” Jordan said. “I doubt
there’s another world with Travel teams that keep encountering the demons, or
fighting with them. They want us to keep our interfering noses out of their
business, so they’re coming after us. They actually said some of them were
already here.”

“If they’re here,” General Mace said, “where are they? We’ve had no reports
of demons.”

Liv said, “They’re obviously keeping a low profile. Somewhere underground,
or remote.”

“Lots of places to hide,” Trent added.

“They’d have to be working with someone here,” Connor said. “They can’t
steal technology without someone telling them how it works and how to make it
for themselves.”

“Yeah, but who?” Trent asked.

Ben said, “Who wouldn’t help an eight-foot-tall bat-winged demon when it
showed up demanding support?”

General Mace turned to Jordan. “Could they manufacture our technology?”

“I think they already are,” Jordan said.

“Blue Beach,” Trent agreed. “They used explosives there. They’ve stolen from
other worlds too.”

“Yeah,” Liv said. “Directly, in the case of Demon Rift. They may have
artificially advanced far beyond their manufacturing capabilities.”

Connor’s expression was grim. “After hearing the ‘negotiations’ today, I’m
inclined to think the demons are on the war-path. That wasn’t a negotiation so
much as a contract to enter into medieval serfdom. Trench Worlders are now
their slaves, and Trench World belongs to the demons.”

“Woolfe is expanding his domain.” Trent scowled at the table.

General Mace turned to Connor. “What would you suggest, Commander?”

“I suggest we take the fight to them. It’s only a matter of time before they
come after us. The longer we wait, the more technology they’ll have to use
against us. We’re still more advanced, but for how much longer?”

“Demons are invincible,” the general argued. “It would be suicide.”

“Then consider this,” Connor said. “Vicious aliens appear on the streets of
New York City in the middle of crowds of civilians commuting to work. They kill
some, maim others, and threaten total destruction if we don’t give them what
they want. Civilians find out that we covered up the Travel program, the
existence of demons, and their plan to invade Home World. The President will be
lucky to escape a lynching.”

General Mace rested his fierce gaze on each of them in turn. “And your
sacrificing your lives won’t change that.”

“Sir,” Ben argued, “we only need to take out Woolfe.”

“He’s behind the push for demon exploration,” Connor said.

“Push is exactly right.” General Mace turned to Liv. “Does your device
work?”

Liv tried not to growl as she answered. Her earlier failures still rankled. “No
sir. But I haven’t had time to integrate the data from our most recent
encounter with Elachai. I think those scans may be key.”

General Mace nodded. “If you can get the machine working, and prove that it
works on demons, you can go to Hell.”

Ben laughed at the general’s choice of words. “Awesome.”

“Is there anything else?” General Mace asked.

There wasn’t.

“Dismissed.”

Liv sighed. “I guess I’d better get to work.”

*
         
*
         
*

Liv went to work. She barricaded herself in her office, wracking her brain,
going over their test results again and again, trying to fit the pieces
together to get her machine to replicate what Elachai was doing.

The problem was, she needed a tremendous amount of energy focused very
specifically on a certain function in the brain. And she somehow needed to code
the weapon for the kind of command she was giving.

That wouldn’t be too hard, she supposed. She could just set some kind of
dial on the side to target a specific function.

But how did the machine focus only on those cells performing that function
at that time? Cells and functions in the brain were diffuse, spread out, and
cells performed multiple functions and worked in parallel. There was no cell
that worked exclusively at one function, and there wasn’t a way to
differentiate them in the first place. She’d have to get it to recognize a
particular mix of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides used or produced in only
those functions.

That was doable, she supposed.

Then, the major problem: how to make the cells respond. The machine would
have to integrate higher brain centers too, so the suggestion of the
gun-wielder could be accepted.

But the real problem was that burst of energy, the extremely brief but
enormous charge that would basically wipe the cells, letting her manipulate
them. It was why her tests kept failing. She couldn’t use electricity, because
that passed through all the cells. Radio waves were too diffuse, and not
powerful enough. She needed to set off a nuclear charge in only those cells…

She sat up, her mind lit up as if struck by lightning. She pulled up her
simulation and started typing. However, she wasn’t a computer programmer nor a
weapons engineer. She picked up the phone. “Hey, Gin? Sorry to bother you. I
need your help here.”

Gin sounded bright and perky, like always. “I’m on my way.”

She made the same call to Trent, who answered as quickly, “Be right there.”

It was already almost end of shift, and they probably had things to do, but
her team was always there for her. Thoughts of Jordan tried to intrude, but she
didn’t have time now. Still, she wished there was a reason to call him in on
this. She wanted to see him.

Even though you were going to dump him
tonight?

She squirmed a little at that. It had been her original plan, but the day
had drained her of her resolve. She wanted to see him, feel the particular calm
that only his presence brought.

Gin walked through the door, having beaten Trent since her office was only
four floors away on twenty-three, while he had to come down all the way from
eight. “Hey, what’s up?”

“I’d rather wait to tell you both at the same time.”

“Both? Trent?”

“Yeah.”

Within seconds, he arrived.

“Hey. Sorry to keep y’all after shift.”

Gin grinned. “What else do we have to do?”

“I was just going to go home and watch the UFC championship,” Trent said
with a shrug. “It’s DVR-ing. No big.”

Liv smiled. “You guys are awesome. Okay, here’s what we need.”

*
         
*
         
*

Jordan walked into the DEPOT Friday morning and went looking for Liv. She’d
been busy on her brain modification research all day yesterday and he’d barely
seen her. He’d tried calling her house last night, but she hadn’t picked up. She’d
worked Wednesday night through, and now he was pretty sure she hadn’t gone home
last night either.

There were really only two places she could be.

He started at her office and found her typing frantically at the keyboard. When
he knocked on the door jamb, she didn’t even look up, so he just walked in.

“This sort of behavior is only decent in Gin,” he said.

She literally jumped in her chair. “Oh, Jordan! You scared me. I was buried
in this.”

“In what?” He took a seat on the edge of her desk where he could see the
monitor, which displayed the schematic for her brain gun.

“Gin and Trent helped me make some modifications. I’m just testing the last
recalibration to see if it will work…” With that, she hit a key and sat back to
let the simulation run.

She stared at the screen, holding her breath in anticipation. Her intensity
sucked Jordan in too, and he watched the screen raptly.

The computer gave a fussy little beep and a message flashed up:
Simulation fire success
.

Liv leapt out of her chair with a whoop. She grabbed him and hugged him
hard. He grinned and held her, but she pulled away almost immediately and did a
little hopping dance next to her desk, punctuated by a looping wandering song
that went something like, “It works! It wo-orks! I-it works! It works!”

Either she was drunk or extremely overtired. “Liv, when did you last take a
break?”

She stopped dancing to look at him. “I haven’t yet.”

“You were here all night again?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” She beamed at him. “But it works!” She clapped her
hands.

“Wow. Now I know why you don’t drink.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Are you going to bring it to General Mace?”

“Yeah. Soon’s I get this down to R & D.”

“Do you need any help?”

“Sure! Gin said it was too big for a disc. Y’all wanna hook up the laptop
while I save all this to the backup server?” The words were almost
bake-up suvuh
.

“Boy, your accent gets strong when you’re tired.”

“Thanks, home skillet. Y’all gonna help me or what?”

He laughed and mimicked her accent. “Yes ma’am.”

She appraised him with a smile. “That was pretty good. Apparently you speak
Southern Georgia too.”

“I’ll add it to my thirty-two other languages.”

Jordan grabbed the laptop from the counter she’d indicated, and looked at
the mess of wires sitting next to it. “You didn’t use all of these, did you?”

She looked over at them. “No clue. Gin did that part for me last time.”

“Great idea.” He headed over to the desk and dialed Gin’s office. It rang
seven times before he hung up. He tried her cell and reached her on the first
ring. “Speak.”

“Hey Gin, good morning to you too.”

“Hey Jordan, what’s up?”

“Liv needs your help in her office.”

“I’m almost there now.”

She hung up on him and walked through the door. Liv clapped her hands. “It
works!” She started a little shuffling version of her previous bouncing dance.

“Finally!” Gin’s expression said she knew Liv was punch drunk and exhausted,
but clearly Gin was simply amused by it.

“We need to get the information to R & D,” Jordan explained.

“Ah. Then you do not want to use that,” she said, indicating the laptop
Jordan still held.

“We don’t?” Liv asked.

“I’ll just go get my laptop, shall I?”

“Why not the laptop?” Jordan asked.

Gin smirked. “Trust me. You want something with the capabilities to transfer
a giant program with all of its attendant files and support programs intact
from one machine to another. That machine is not it. Let’s just say I’ve made a
few…modifications to mine.”

Jordan set the laptop down as Gin breezed out of the room. They heard her
say, “It works!” in the hallway, and then Trent walked in. “Nice job!”

From Trent, that was lavish praise. Liv flashed her smile again, but with
less exuberance. Apparently, she was running out of that fast. Jordan vowed to
himself he’d get her home as quickly as possible.

Liv called General Mace’s office, and when she hung up, reported, “He wants to
see us as soon as we’re done with R & D.”

Gin returned in minutes with her laptop and connected several cables to the
back of Liv’s machine. She set it down and typed rapidly.

Within minutes, she snapped the machine closed and disconnected the wires. “Did
you alert General Mace yet?”

“Yeah, he wants us in the briefing room ASAP.”

“R & D first,” Trent said.

“Then let’s go.”

Jordan followed the others to R & D. He didn’t come here much, given
that his areas of expertise were more theoretical. They dropped off the
information for a bunch of excited weapons techs, Gin again connecting her pad
and apparently downloading the whole program into a new machine.

“We’ll get right on this,” one of the techs promised.

Trent said, “I’ll be back after the briefing to help out, if I can.”

The tech nodded absently, already crowding in with the others to watch the
simulation run.

They trooped back to the briefing room and found Connor and Ben already
there with General Mace.

Liv reported her findings, which took a very short time, even considering
the fact that she kept looping back to things she’d already said, and then
forgot several key points which Gin and Trent reminded her of.

When she’d finished, General Mace asked, “Did they say how long until they
have a working prototype?”

“No, sir,” Trent answered, “but I’d expect it to take only a few days. They’ve
had all the parts and materials on order for several weeks now, anticipating
the final configuration.”

“Commander Bryant, Lieutenant Farthing, and Dr. Jameson, you get working on
testing plans. We have to know that it works on people, but we also have to
test it on demons. The rest of you can get back down to R & D and help them
with it.”

“Sir,” Jordan said, “Liv’s been awake for more than two days straight now. And
she hardly slept the night before.”