Alan Foster - Cyber Way

Moody ignored him. “Can you shut it down from up here? Can you turn it off?”

“This is Security, not Engineering, but—”

Moody, Ooljee and Grayhills were already on their way out the door. Central Engineering was a short sprint down a side corridor. The skeleton operations crew on duly there was careening toward panic.

Telltales and readouts glowed like ornaments at Christmas time. Every screen in the room was brazen with stats that refused to be ignored. Techies fumbled with spinners and boards like clumsy children suddenly handed complex puzzles.

A tall woman in her fifties fluttered from one station to the next, waving her arms wildly like a sandhill crane in the throes of its mating dance.

“Don’t give me that,” she was shouting at a harried member of her staff. “You can’t power that up without going through here!” Turning, she noted the arrivals from Security. “Do you people have any idea what is happening to my accelerator?” Moody recognized her tone, familiar to him from endless wiretap transcriptions.

“Just an idea,” Ooljee told her.

“Well, you have to stop it. Now. Immediately.”

“You can’t?” Moody asked her.

She started to snap at him, then caught herself. Maybe it was his attitude, maybe his size. “What do you think we’ve been trying to do?” A hand flailed in the direction of the nearest console and its baffled operator. “Everything is powering up, nothing is shutting off, and our backups and fail-safes might as well be out for repair. And what is that noise outside?” Even within the room the invaders’ eerie chorus made itself known, though it was in danger of being drowned out by the rising whine of machinery coming on line.

“He is using the web.” Ooljee glanced through the window at the corridor beyond. “That must be how he is bypassing this place.”

“So we can’t stop him?”

Grayhills stepped forward. “Apparently not from running the accelerator, but I don’t see anything to keep us from pulling the plug.”

The chief engineer glanced sharply at her. “Don’t you think we’ve tried that?”

Grayhills stood her ground. “Sometimes a switch isn’t the best way to deactivate a recalcitrant device.”

Moody and Ooljee left in a hurry, gathering up the NDPS corporal and two plainclothes on the way. Grayhills eyed the engineer.

“What’s your current study setup?”

The woman hesitated, then replied laconically, “We’ve been working with Z-particle collisions, but that was two weeks ago.” She forced herself to look back at the screens. “Why would anyone want to take control of the unit? There’s nothing on line, no experiment to run.”

“Maybe the man we suspect of causing this has another use for some runaway protons.”

The engineer shook her head violently. “A Moebial toroid accelerator doesn’t work like that. You don’t just fire it up and dispense protons like candy!” Her nails dug into her palms. “All this can do is ruin some very expensive machinery.”

“I don’t think that’s what he has in mind.” Grayhills studied a readout.

“Then what does he have in mind?”

“I wish I knew. I wish I knew,” she muttered.

“Outside, by the south end of employee parking!” The corporal led the way as they exited the building. One of his men jogged anxiously alongside.

“Sir, if we’re gonna disconnect lines, we ought to have somebody from APS do it. They’ll have a truck and authorization.”

Moody glared back at him. “Son, we can’t wait for the local utility company to show. Our job right now is to keep the man we’re after from making use of this facility.” He looked at the corporal. “I’ll take full responsibility.”

“You can’t,” the younger man declared. “You’re from out of state.”

“When your boss wakes up, tell him I insisted. Tell him I threatened you, if you want. It’ll get y’all off the hook.”

The corporal nodded somberly. They could worry about it later. He’d seen too much already to argue with the two cops who’d flown in from Ganado. If they thought it necessary to shut down the power to the accelerator facility, he’d damn well help them to shut it down.

The column of heavy-duty concrete power poles ran from a comer of the main building along the southern curb of a large parking lot. Like a spider clinging to its nest, the transformer attached to the last pole spun a net of heavy-gauge wires into the facility.

“What now?” The corporal looked at Moody.

The detective reached into his coat and removed his pistol. Bracing himself, he took careful aim at the transformer. The NDPS plainclothes who moments ago had voiced reservations as to this course of action backed away.

“Oh, no. I am not taking any part in this.”

“No one is asking you to.” Ooljee drew his own weapon, pointed the barrel at the transformer.

“This is unauthorized destruction of university property,” the man added weakly. He glanced at his superior, who shrugged.

“Tell it to the dead guy in the basement.” Moody jerked his head at the building. As he did so, something caught his eye and he lowered his gun. “Jesus Mary.” His companions turned with him.

The entire structure was enveloped in a pale, nacreous effulgence redolent of St. Elmo’s fire.

Clouds were gathering overhead, much more rapidly than clouds had a right to, even in this part of the world where sudden, violent thunderstorms were commonplace. As they stood watching numbly, rain began to fall; a steely, freezing mist. The temperature in the parking lot was not falling: it was fleeing.

“Too much time talking.” Ooljee grunted, whirling to take aim with his gun.

His first shot missed, the second struck one of the insulators atop the pole. Moody stood next to his partner, firing steadily and methodically. One insulator after another exploded under the impact of the high-power shells. Spitting sparks, lines began falling to the pavement.

“That should do it,” Moody murmured as the last cable fell from the smoking, crackling transformer. He turned.

The installation still blazed as if it had been doused with phosphorescent paint. If anything, the diffuse, boreal light was brighter than before.

More significantly, the internal lights had not gone out.

Moody eyed the corporal accusingly. “There’s an in-house generator, comes on in emergencies!” He had to raise his voice to make himself understood above the brisk wind which had sprung up around them. It drove the cold mist sideways into their eyes and mouths.

The officer shook his head, using one hand to keep his cap steady.

“Goddamn him!” Moody glared at the building as if it were personally responsible for the present situation. “He’s getting power from somewhere !”

“The web.” Ooljee turned and started back toward the building. “This is no good: we have to find him."

Lightning fractured the sky. Thunderstorms were common in Florida, but Moody had never seen one of this intensity coalesce so fast. He did his best to keep up with Ooljee and the others.

The corridor that led to Engineering was deserted. All nonessential personnel had long since fled the structure or been evacuated. Lights gleamed everywhere, though they flickered with each flash of lightning. Machinery hummed smoothly, defiantly. Moody felt like a puppet, and didn’t like it.

Gaggii was here somewhere. They would find him, he thought grimly. An instant later he was reminded that their man hadn’t come alone.

There were three of them, loping up the ramp from the first subterranean level. Big, fast, and snarling all the way, their eyes burning like shards of a bad dream. One managed a good snap at Moody’s face before the pins from Ooljee’s taser decussated its field, sending it flaring into oblivion. The detective had time to note that their attackers had no odor.