With These Eyes (40 page)

"Send an escape pod!"

The Trooper had no interest in further
disrupting Gene and catching more of his wrath. With an intimidated
"yes, sir'" he dispatched two of his own. To facilitate the launch
of an escape pod through the missile tube, Gene's henchman halted
the progressing countdown. A brief look at the gage for the
mountain's energy storage revealed the rising temperature of the
capacitor well within limits.

Commandos were following their leader's
orders in the armory further up the facility's main hallway. In
preparation for Tasha's demise, a detail of Troopers left hurriedly
with three large crates. Each tightly packed with several dozen
shoulder-mount ground-to-air weapons. Shortly thereafter, the
Troopers arrived in the missile bay where two frog-suited
colleagues were boarding an escape pod. The bullet shaped pod was
entirely comprised of tungsten. The two fighters in the amphibian
attire had barely taken their seats in the center of the vehicle. A
crate landed in each lap and the third installment of weaponry slid
in behind their seats. The pod's hatch fell shut. The other
Troopers cleared the launch track. The pod was guided by wheels
that surrounded its circumference at each end. A low rumble filled
the room as the strange-looking vehicle disappeared into the launch
tube.

Isabelle was still treading water near the
end of the launch tube in a survival dive-suit from Gene's
helicopter. The launch door that laid atop the large metallic
cylinder was hinged to the pipe at its edge. A latch opposite the
hinge held it secure. Isabelle knew from Ryan's instructions there
would be a test-firing. The only chance she saw to get in was when
the door would be opened for launch. Isabelle felt the rumble of
the approaching escape pod. Swift as a mousetrap, the lid on the
pipe snapped open. The escape pod shot out far enough to clear
Isabelle's view and splash down in the distance. The launch pipe
was between her and the violent frog-men. Isabelle swam to the
opening. She had to reach high over her head to grab on to its
edge. The lake had become more narrow and so its level was dropping
much faster.

Isabelle had little doubt it was time to
hurry. She struggled pulling herself up. The air bottles and dive
vest added strain to her already weakened condition when she rose
above the water line. There was no way she could reach the release
to ditch her gear. Like on her obstacle course at home, Isabelle
pulled herself up. Her face had just reached the height of the edge
when an unusually large wave washed her down. The finder of truth
lost her grip where high-velocity hydraulics slammed the heavy
tungsten door shut. It would have cut off her head.

Isabelle watched the Troopers throw a rescue
pack into the water. In seconds, a Kodiak raft inflated out of the
camouflage-colored fiberglass container. The fighters loaded their
rocket weapons into the rubber boat and motored ashore. Isabelle
could do little but watch as the Troopers opened their deadly cargo
and took aim at Tasha and her robotic squadron overhead.

A staff of fire ejected from the back of the
shoulder-mount weapon, signaling the attack on the renegade
rainmaker.

51 A COMMON GOAL

Precisely coordinated, Tasha brought her
squadron around for the third application. She was watching the
twelve colored bands on the radar fade as the condensation she had
caused dissipated. A new image appeared on the screen. With it came
a weapons-lock warning and the yelping of a siren. The first rocket
had made the jet to Tasha's right its target. Within a few seconds,
the powerful weapon impacted the drone in a violent explosion. The
destructive device tore apart the plane's left wing, spreading the
contents of the virtually full tanks in a fiery explosion across
the sky. The resulting pressure wave rocked Tasha's plane as if
slapped by Gene's giant hand. A second explosion ripped through the
other wing, utterly destroying the large jet-aircraft beside
her.

The shrill cry of a peacock echoed through
the lively jungle beneath the celestial chaos. The majestic bird
spread his feathers in a colorful display of virility for a
prospective mate. A glimmering reflection filled the female's eyes
that were quickly torn away from the plumage of entertainment.
Panic-stricken, she flew off, beak-over-talons when the burning
nose-cone from the destroyed airliner barreled into the jungle
floor next to them.

"Sir, we shot one down."

Further below, Gene's Trooper was happy he
finally had a report of success for his nefarious employer.
Embarrassment overcame him with Gene's reply.

"What - do you want a cookie? Keep firing!"
Gene had no interest in hearing another reminder of obstacles, all
he cared about was the launch of his weapon.

Tasha knew Gene's Troopers would continue
their assault on her squadron. Fortunately for her, they didn't
know which plane she occupied. A hit of her lead jet and Tasha
would die. With the death of the fearless warrior would also come
the fall of her mechanical army who followed her blindly. Tasha had
little faith in Isabelle's mission to stop Gene. This meant to
Tasha that with her would stand or fall freedom for all mankind.
Without an awareness that the cause for which she was willing to
sacrifice everything had become the same as Isabelle's, Tasha
pushed the four throttle levers to
full
. She needed all the
lift she could get and the increased speed brought the squadron
into ascent. A pull on the yoke between her knees lead Tasha's
flock of thunderbirds into a steep climb. She passed 20,000 feet
and approached the service range of shoulder-mount weapons when a
second hit took out an airliner far off her left side. A fiery
explosion tore apart the fuselage of the large aircraft. Within the
fraction of a second, a bright-green ball of fire lit up the night
sky and the jungle far below. The concussion rocked the entire
squadron as it climbed past 22,000 feet when a third rocket burned
out just short of Tasha and fell back towards the jungle.

Although strong winds had dissipated much of
Tasha's applications, the cloud stripes spread across the sky in a
thin haze. She brought her dwindling army of flying drones around
for another pass. Tasha had reached safety from the ground fire,
but also left the effective altitude for cloud formation. Like a
squadron of dive-bombers, she raced towards the jungle with her
fleet. A flick of the trigger and her ten remaining jets sprayed
more of their cargo into the atmosphere. A slightly triumphant
smile trying to make its way across Tasha's face was stopped short
when a missile reduced her squadron to nine aircraft. She climbed
back to safety for the next drop. This continued until Tasha was
flying with only one remaining drone. A cloud cover was forming
over the jungle, but not enough to cause a lightning storm. Tiny
beads of sweat on Tasha's forehead mirrored the condensation in the
sky outside. Her odds of being struck by the next missile had
become one in two.

"Sir, mountain charged to capacity."

The Trooper's first announcements of true
progress in quite some time returned Gene to a sense of impending
victory. Strange how Gene’s anger had used his strong sense of love
and turned it around in a devilish game. Gene’s love for the world
was so strong that it drove him to stop at nothing to shield his
dying child from pain. He was getting ready to pull the plug.

Fear and anger made Gene miss Fuji’s profound
fact that only light can extinguish darkness. What little of that
that thought had found its way to his consciousness turned into his
idea of a photon-bomb. His anger over the pain that surrounded him
caused Gene to turn on the very world he loved so much. His only
thought was that humanity was devolving into a grotesque mutation
of a once brilliant civilization. Gene had made a point to visit
digs at all ancient monuments. Most were constructed around the
time when Neanderthal people were overcoming their fear to leave
the cave. The sheer enormity of a construction project like the
great pyramids had been achieved for a sole reason: Even a caveman
could recognize that it would take great knowledge and skill to
construct such monuments. Engineering and trigonometry, language
and writing skills to record and teach such skills were still
aspirations of Gene’s cutting-edge R&D facilities.

Michael’s audience has found history to be
much less entertaining than watching a group of musicians or
dancers join a contest destined to embarrass the artists. Gene knew
that when the people slander art and those who try to add beauty,
art and beauty retreat. Left was a world of suffering.

Gene leaned back in his chair and with a
dramatic voice, he proclaimed, "Begin the cooling process!"

The Trooper at the launch controls touched a
field on his screen marked
4H
Coolant
. Inside the
launch bay, superfluid helium-4 was now streaming from a battery of
storage tanks into the fuselage of the test projectile. The missile
bay's air moisture quickly formed a layer of ice over the thick,
black supply-lines. An eerie fog reminiscent of horror-movie
graveyards wafted across the launch area. Bright blue beams from
turret lights were racing along the walls to warn of a potential
suffocation hazard. Within a few moments' time, the temperature of
the weapon's ceramic body was approaching absolute zero. Launch was
fastly approaching.

In the control room, Gene was pleased to hear
the Trooper's announcement. "Hull temperature now 1.4 Kelvin.
Weapon has reached superconductivity. Magnetizing track." The
Trooper touched a couple of panels on his screen and the wheeled
carriage retracted into the launch track. Accompanied by a low hum,
the missile now hovered over a magnetic field. This was to be the
proof that Gene's weapon had been calibrated properly to reach its
target area. Anxious to find out, he gave the order.

"Fire!"

The Trooper depressed the red
launch
button in his panel. Lights throughout the lair dimmed momentarily
from the track's enormous power drain as the huge projectile
rumbled forward into the launch tube.

Isabelle was still in the water at its
opening. The heavy metal door at the tube's end flung open.
Isabelle knew she'd only have seconds to make her move. She reached
for the release buckle and dropped her air bottle and breathing
apparatus to the shallow lake bottom. As soon as the metal
dive-gear hit the rocky ground, the track's magnets slammed it
against the tube's exterior wall. The force of the magnets would
have killed Isabelle, had she still worn the diving gear. Too fast
to see, the dummy missile shot out of the pipe's open mouth and
towards the outer atmosphere. A trail of condensation and fog was
all that bore witness to its brief presence. This was the moment
the young journalist gone super-hero had been anticipating so
patiently. Isabelle's hands reached up to the edge of the cylinder
of concrete and metal that was still emitting fog. She felt the
sting of the cold as some of her fingers touched the sub-zero
trails left by the projectile. She felt like she had hung onto a
red-hot piece of metal. The cells in her fingers were dying from
the extreme cold. There was no time to adjust the grip. Isabelle
pulled herself up and over the edge as fast as she could. A few of
Isabelle’s thoughts shifted. This might give her the chance to
avenge the loss of her parents and stop the attack on the world.
There was nothing inside at all to grab for support. The launch
door above her flung shut. Like a manifestation of Gene's iron
fist, the heavy slab of metal swatted Isabelle on her behind and
launched her into the darkness below. Slightly dazed, she regained
her bearings just before the track bent towards its horizontal
portion. In an attempt to land upright, her right foot caught the
last part of the curved section and snapped sideways. Isabelle's
other foot set down on the pipe but wasn't strong enough to catch
all her velocity from the accelerated fall. Her head crashed into
the opposing side of her self-imposed trap.

Isabelle was left unconscious and with a
dislocated foot in the barrel of the world's worst gun.

52 MORABI DISMISSES GENE'S MISSILE

Even in a nation that is peaceful like
Madagascar, the launch of a missile from its soil would not go
unnoticed. At the main island's defense headquarters, General
Morabi was sitting at his desk, in front of a pile of surveillance
equipment and high-tech weapons. The island-nation's military
leader was wearing a set of headphones attached to a listening
device. He was carefully pointing its tiny laser at the airman on
duty who was observing several radar screens. He heard little but
the beating of the soldier's heart until his deafening announcement
brought a painful expression to Morabi's face.

"Sir, radar detected an unidentified blip
lifting off from one of the smaller islands!" He pulled the
headphones off and with his ears ringing, the General probed for
more information on this unusual announcement. The airman
specified, "Radar signature and speed match nothing in our files.
It..." he hesitated for a moment as he could feel Morabi's eyes
pierce the back of his head, then he continued. "It doesn't even
look like it was made out of metal. I could only think of one thing
that travels this fast."

Morabi had chosen the military because in a
peaceful nation such as his, there would be little excitement in
his career. The day had been anything but the relaxing calm to
which he had grown accustomed. The enjoyment of his new toys was
severely hindered by the airman's statements.

"Are you reporting a flying saucer? Because
if you are, you might find yourself cleaning the latrines for the
rest of your enlistment."

"No, sir."

Both men went back to what they had been
doing without giving Gene's speeding missile another thought.