J Bryan - Dominion

He searched the archive and drew up a chain of texts, images and videolinks focused on al Taba. He picked one of the texts-written words were the most informative, but the easiest to fake-and it swelled to the size of a poster board. The text scrolled automatically as he read.

LUXOR, Egypt-American mercenaries clashed with the cult of Sheik Muhammad al Taba in their home base, the ancient temple at Karnak. In a standoff that continues tonight, the warrior cleric and as many as sixty followers have kept the Atlantic forces at bay with machine gun fire and napalm grenades.

Sources indicate that the mercenaries were sent by Hartwell Services, the private army owned by the American Vice President’s family. According to locals, al Taba may have placed a bomb at a Hartwell installation further down the Nile.

The dateline for the story was two weeks old. Ruppert reordered his search results by date, then selected the most recent item. It was four days old.

After three days of fighting, Atlantic forces captured Sheik al Taba and seventeen of his disciples. As many as two dozen Taba followers are believed dead. Two American casualties were reported.

Hartwell Senior Infantry Coordinator Kurt Brownback, who led the attack, described the fight as a “great victory for the people of Egypt in their quest for democracy.”

Al Taba is the leader of a radical group of heretics who mix Islam with practices of the primitive Egyptians. Local imams denounce his cult as satanic. Al Taba clashed with Egyptian authorities several times to gain control of Karnak, which he calls the “Grand Mosque” of his cult.

The fate of the children who lived in the temple compound is not known. The damage to the 3600-year old temple has not been assessed but is believed extensive.

Ruppert sat back and thought it over. According to the news he’d read to the greater Southern California region, al-Taba was a “terrorist general” commanding an army of (at latest estimate) nearly a million men, with divisions all across Africa. Capturing al Taba had been the entire objective of the invasion of Egypt, according to Ruppert. If it had happened four days ago, it should be all over the nets, even cause for a special parade.

The Atlantic forces had toppled the radical Egyptian regime along the way, naturally, as penalty for harboring al Taba. Ruppert had mentioned this at the tag end of one of his reports about the invasion of Egypt, as if it were a minor and entirely predictable detail, and then it was on to the entertainment news.

The rest of the news had centered on al Taba, the pressing and urgent need to grab al Taba before he seized control of all North Africa. The fact that Hartwell Services had actually seized control of all Egypt did not rate an explicit mention. It was much easier to focus a television audience on capturing a single archvillain, using any means necessary, than to convince them that an invasion of an entire country was necessary. Coverage of the full-scale war could be omitted if you focused the audience on the good-and-evil struggle to capture the one supremely evil individual. At GlobeNet, they sometimes referred to these individuals as the "Devil of the Day."

A metallic squeal drilled into his ears. Ruppert tried to cover his ears with his hands, but the painful noise screamed from the inside of his earphones, not the exterior world.

The digital environment froze around him. He touched the shimmering icons on the control panel floating in the air beside his head, but none of the programs responded.

The environment shattered into a million fragments and Ruppert lost his balance, then fell backwards. He tumbled into an open, dark space. Bright silver skulls snapped at him from the dark, their shining teeth clacking together. The seal of the Department of Terror rose like a monolith before him, ten stories high, then a hundred. The animated, three-dimensional seal depicted a silver bald eagle soaring against a moonlit night sky, breathing fire, shooting lightning from its talons. The eagle’s hooked beak opened, and another painful metallic squeal sounded in Ruppert’s ears.

A cold male voice boomed out at Ruppert: “You are in violation of Department of Terror Code 207-B. Importation of enemy propaganda and unauthorized data. You are under arrest. Now submitting your case to an automated tribunal. The tribunal has ruled you guilty of terrorist activity. Sentencing will be adjudicated by a Department of Terror official.”

Ruppert reached out to bang on his control panel again, but it had disappeared. He tore the video goggles from his head, then peeled the input gloves from his hands.

Every indicator light on the surface of his little computer glowed bright red. He jabbed the power button with his thumb, but Terror had seized the computer and he had lost control.

Ruppert hurled the computer against the concrete wall of the storage cell. It fell and crashed to the floor, but all the little lights still burned. He threw it twice more, than a third time, finally opening a short hairline crack along one edge, but the device was tough and he had no real means of destroying it.

Ruppert lifted the latch on the cell’s garage door, then took a deep breath. Terror men, or whatever police or Guardsmen happened to be available, would likely be waiting outside with their guns high. If he moved too quickly, they would cut him down instinctively.

He eased the door up, hearing every individual clank as each panel slid into the overhead track. He looked out to where he’d parked his car.

No one was here. His car had not even been disturbed. He listened carefully to the night around him-there was music and gunfire in the distance, but nothing happening in the storage complex.

Ruppert hurried to his car, loving the sound of the door unlocking for him. As the door opened, he thought that maybe his precautions were good enough, that they didn’t actually know who’d used the computer, and he could get away clean if he was fast enough.

Then he heard the approaching whump-whump-whump of a helicopter, flying low. He looked up, and a searing white glare enveloped him.

Ruppert felt his whole body turn to ice. He wanted nothing more than to jump into his car and drive, but his arms and legs wouldn’t move. He stood trembling in the light like a stupid animal, staring up at it, giving the helicopter’s cameras a clear view of him as the wind from the rotors blasted his hair back from his face.

Then it was over. The light swept on down another alley of the complex as the helicopter pulled away from him.

The immobilizing fear collapsed into wild panic, and he leapt into his car and drove for the exit gate before the car's door had time to close.

As he chugged north through crushing traffic on the 405, he saw several more helicopters, mostly police, but also one very small black craft with no markings. One of the police crafts lingered above Ruppert’s car for what seemed like a very long time. The helicopter did not address him over its loudspeakers or seize control of his car’s systems, and finally it thundered away without incident.

In his mind, Ruppert chastised himself for his carelessness. He’d paid for the unit in cash, but he should have been prepared to destroy the computer at a moment’s notice. A baseball bat. A simple bucket of water to drop it in. Anything.

Terror would be able to track the computer to the storage unit. The manager might be able to describe Ruppert, though he hadn’t seen him since Ruppert rented the unit. Terror could eventually find one of Ruppert’s fingerprints or hairs. They could crosscheck with the videolog of the police helicopter that had studied him, if it had been the police. There were a thousand ways Terror could identify him if they wanted to go to the trouble.