Holdin' On for a Hero (76 page)

“Why west?”

“You’ll understand after I’ve told you everything.”

He made no move to put the car in gear and she reached over to take his hand. “This time I know what I’m doing.” She made her words a promise.

He nodded and started forward. Neither of them spoke for a very long time. She leaned her seat back and closed her eyes. When she opened them she was surprised to find that she had been asleep for almost four hours. “Where are we?”

“Just across the state line in Tennessee.”

“Could we find a place to stop for a while, eat and take a shower?”

“Sure,” he replied after a quizzical look.

A few minutes later she spotted a sign advertising a motel two exits down. At the appropriate exit he got off the highway. It was less than a mile to the motel. Konnor went into the motel office and returned to the car with a key. Driving the car around to the rear of the motel, he parked and they both got out. Konnor carried the two small bags they had brought with them.

The room was small but clean, furnished with a double bed, a table and one chair, a television and a bathroom. Konnor tossed the key on the nightstand and set the bags down. “You want to eat or shower first?”

“I’d rather talk.”

“All right.”

She paced back and forth for a few moments, trying to decide how to start.

“Well?” he asked as he took a seat on the bed.

She sighed and stopped pacing. “I just don’t know where to begin.”

“The beginning is always a good place.”

“Okay, the beginning.” She took a seat beside him. “I guess that would be when Lucas and Andrea were killed in Iraq.”

“Lucas and Andrea?” His eyebrows rose.

“Yes, my parents.”

“I know what their names were. It just sounds odd for you to refer to them like that.”

“Not for long,” she said softly.

“Huh?”

“You’ll understand. Just bear with me. It started with what I told you about Iraq. What I didn’t tell you was that Lucas didn’t die in the explosion.”

His brows came together in a frown but he didn’t speak. She told him about Lucas taking her to Syria and telling her that Andrea had betrayed them. She also told him about going to South America and meeting her real father, Marcus Laserian.

“You mean your uncle?” he asked in surprise. “But he was supposed to have died a long time ago, on some expedition to South—”

“America,” she finished the sentence for him. “But he didn’t die. He faked his death.”

“And your father, excuse me, Lucas told you when you got to South America?”

“Yes.”

“Why did he take you there?”

“To work on the prototype.”

“Prototype?”

“It’s kind of complicated,” she said with a sigh. “Do you want me to continue or are you ready for a break?”

“No, please, go on.”

“Okay.” She closed her eyes and opened herself to the memories.

Lucas untied the bandana that covered her eyes. She blinked in the artificial light. The blindfold was one of the things she really hated. She didn’t understand why it was necessary but he would not let her accompany him to the project without it.

In the beginning she had questioned him about it, wanting to know why he was keeping the location of the site secret from her. He explained that it was for her own protection. If she didn’t know where it was, she could not be forced to take anyone to it.

Senna respected the need for secrecy. Especially now that she knew what Lucas and Marcus were working on. She felt honored to be involved and was glad to have something to occupy herself with. Since discovering that Lucas and Andrea were not her real parents and that Andrea had never really loved her, she had been experiencing times of confusion and depression. When she was there, surrounded by all the equipment and imagining the potential of the project, she could push it from her mind. And yet even that didn’t make her happy. Happiness only came when she was with the man who had been assigned to protect them.

That was another thing she didn’t understand. Why Lucas had agreed to work with the government. In the past he had expressed a strong mistrust for such agencies and organizations. Why he had decided to bring them in was a mystery. Unless it had something to do with Marcus, her real father. He seemed much closer to the government agent than Lucas.

“Are you ready?” Lucas drew her attention from her private thoughts.

She nodded and he gestured for her. As always, she felt a momentary stab of fear. There was something about being hooked up to the machine that was frightening. But it was also exciting and that was what kept the fear under control.

She walked to the center of the chamber, where a raised metal dais stood. There were two panels mounted on opposite sides on top of the dais. These were the control pads, multi-rowed lights of red, blue, amber, green and white. When the prototype was completed it would require two operators.

Mounted on a stand between the two panels were two devices that looked like some type of strange glasses. The eyepieces were opaque, made of a material she could not identify that reflected light like a prism. The frames were rounded out to form a bubble-like curve that projected away from the face. Electronic circuits were placed inside the frames at the center so that when the glasses were worn the circuit panel pressed against the forehead between the eyes of the wearer. Similar circuits were mounted in along the sides.

The glasses didn’t so much sit on the ears and nose, as clamp down to the head. Where the frame terminated, a small protrusion on the inside pressed into the scalp in a slightly painful manner. There were no wires connecting the devices to the dais. They operated without the need of such connections.

Placing her hands on either side of the control panel, Senna leaned forward slightly so that her stomach was pressed against the cold metal of the dais. Lucas fitted the device on her then crossed the room to an enormous station that looked to her like the cockpit of some kind of spaceship.

“Initiation sequence,” he said as he manipulated the controls.

Senna felt a slight jolt, almost like an electric shock pass through her. Images swirled on the inside lenses of the headset and her eyes widened involuntarily.

“Beginning transfer, modules one through eleven,” she heard Lucas’s voice. It sounded like it came from a very long way. A second later she lost touch with reality.

Pausing in her narrative, she got up from the bed and fumbled around in her purse for change. “Is there a drink machine around here somewhere? I’m really thirsty.”

“I’ll check.” He stepped in front of her as she started for the door. “But first, let me get this straight. Lucas and Marcus were working for some government organization, building some kind of prototype, and to do this everyone had to think they both were dead?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what organization they were working for?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Could I get something to drink first?”

He frowned but turned and left the room. Senna sat down and thought about how she was going to tell him. There were certain things that he was not ready for but she wasn’t sure how to keep those things from him. He returned with two soft drinks and gave her one. She opened it and took a long swallow.

“Thanks,” she said with a smile.

“Let’s get back to my question.” He opened his drink and took a seat on the bed.

“The prototype,” she said, steering the subject away from the government and to the device itself.

“Okay, let’s start with that. Just what was this prototype?”

“A weapon.”

“What kind of weapon?”

“Something that shouldn’t exist.” Her voice took on a hard edge.

“Could you be more specific?”

“Basically it’s an electro-plasma emitter that is equipped with a three-level sensor system and a matter data pattern converter.”

“A… You want to try that once more?” he asked in disbelief.

“Sounds like science fiction, doesn’t it?” she asked, understanding his reaction.

“Is it?”

She shook her head. “Let’s start with the sensors. There were three subsystems, S1, 2 and 3. S1 was a long-range optical and wideband EM scanning sensor. Its capabilities included a wide-angle scan that could be used for automated mapping functions.”

“Mapping functions? From a stationary position.”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what exactly?”

“From a stationary orbit.”

Konnor’s eyes widened. “Go on.”

“Subsystem 2 was the short-range, high-resolutions optical and EM scanning system. It was equipped with spectrometers and quark resonance scanners for detailed geological structure analysis. S3 was also short range. These were quark resonance scanners that were arrayed in clusters. They were designed for gathering detailed biological data. Essentially they were optical, chemical, and genetic analysis sensors that were programmed with life-form analysis software that is capable of determining the gross structure of a life form as well as the chemical and genetic composition.”

“Wait!” Konnor interrupted her. “At the risk of sounding rude…that’s crazy. What you’re describing is some…something from a science-fiction movie. Those things are not possible by today’s technology.”

“You’re right, by the current level of Earth technology they’re not. But this isn’t Earth technology. Not even close.”

“Are you telling me… No, don’t answer that yet. Finish telling me about the prototype.”

“Okay, all of the scanners are active devices that are capable of gathering data at speeds equivalent to the speed of light. There is an enormous amount of instrumentation, far too much to list everything but the primary ones are the long and short range EM scanners, the field-stress sensors, the EM flux sensors, the imaging and distortion scanners, the genetic analysis scanners, the imaging array and the molecular imaging scanners. How it all works together is fairly simple. It is basically a staging system. Once sensory information is in system memory in stage one, stage two may be activated and so on.

“The next system of major importance is the matter data pattern converter. In short, without having to go into quantum theory, the way this works is scanners are used to pinpoint a target. The MDPC, the matter data pattern converter, is equipped with its own scanners that confirm the data from the sensory system and lock onto the target. Then the molecular imaging scanners activate and a subatomic matter data pattern conversion beam is created within the matter conversion array along with a data pattern matrix. The beam is directed and matter within the target area is essentially reduced to a data pattern. This pattern can be held in the pattern buffer of the system for up to six hundred seconds before degradation begins. Within that length of time the data pattern can theoretically be reconverted to matter.”

“Theoretically?”

“Well, as far as I know, the MDPC only works well with such things as inanimate objects—you know, rocks or tables or things like that. There were some problems with electronics. They didn’t work after reconversion.”

“What about biological material?”

“To my knowledge that was never attempted.”

“But would it work?”

“To be honest I don’t see how it could.” She paused to finish her drink then tossed the empty can into the trash.

“Why?”

“Well, aside from the fact that the reconversion pattern might not duplicate the original precisely and end up with a deformed or incomplete entity, I don’t think it’s possible to reduce a human spirit into a data pattern. If, as some think, we are more than a collection of our parts, more than the mental activity of our minds, then what would happen to that intrinsic part that cannot be seen or touched? In other words, once the body and mind were reduced to a data pattern and in essence ceased to exist, what would happen to the spirit?”

“That’s too deep a question for me.”

“For both of us,” she replied.

“You said something about an electro-plasma emitter. What is that exactly?”

“Death,” she said flatly then blew out her breath. “It’s basically a transmitter. You know what a transmitter is, don’t you? A device that generates and amplifies a carrier wave, modulates it with a signal, and radiates the resulting signal from an antenna. Well, that’s what the emitter does. The targeting computer verifies data from the sensor system and locks onto a target. At that point stage one commences and energy is released. This energy is in the form of subatomic particles that have the ability to liberate nuclear forces within a specific class of superconductive synthetic crystals.

“The emitters are arranged in arrays of three hundred and are supplied by redundant energy systems from the electro-plasma system. When the command to fire is received, the EPE flow regulators guide the electro-plasma though a series of magnetic gates and irises into the pre-fire chamber where the energy is amplified and passed to the EEDS or the energy emitter discharge system.

“If authorization is received from the final gate, the magnetic containment is opened and the energy beam passes through a multi-faceted crystal. The beam exists through one or more of the facets.”