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“Yes. Damocles has entered the final stages.”
“How long do we have?”
“Minutes. At most.”
Rick looked down at the thumb drive in his hand, then up at the roof. “Time to find out if this works.” He broke into a run, ignoring Oles and Dr. Evans as they started throwing theories and speculations back and forth and dashed forward to the building that housed the transmitter on top. Shouting over his shoulder, he cried out to the pair as he vanished inside. “Get the power on to that system! The transmitter won’t work without it!”
Chapter 15
Washington, D.C.
Rick’s heartbeat pounded in his ears as he ran down the hall, the thumb drive containing the text file clutched tight in his hand. He had questions for Dr. Evans about the early warning system, the commands on the drive and so much more but none of it mattered. If Dr. Evans said that a launch was imminent, then it was imminent.
In the back of Ric
k’s mind, pushed there when he started his run for fear that thinking about it would overwhelm him to the point of incapacitating him, sat his family. Dianne, Mark, Jacob and Josie. His four shining stars, lost to him for so long and now just a relative stone’s throw away. Choosing to go after stopping Damocles over returning to them had been a difficult decision, but thinking about it all not mattering if the launch were successful was too much to bear.
So he ran. Leaping over the still-slick bloodstains in the hall from the gunfight that now seemed a distant memory. Slamming his shoulder into the wall as he rounded the corner on a landing. Taking the stairs two, three even four at a time. By the time he burst out onto the roof his already-exhausted body felt like it was going to give up, but his mental fortitude carried him through. It was just about the only thing keeping him standing, but it was enough. For the moment, at least.
From atop the roof Rick was far enough away from the entrance to the opposite building that he couldn’t hear the faint alarms going off, but the panicked body language of Dr. Evans and Oles below told him that the noise was still ongoing. Rick dropped to his knees at the LKN transmitter and popped open the cover, revealing a blank screen. A moment of panic clutched at him, but a cry of joy from down below accompanied a flash on the screen as the device powered up.
“Is it working?!” The shout came from Oles, and Rick stuck his head over the side of the roof and shouted back.
“Yes! It just came on!”
“Well hurry up! This thing isn’t sounding good… I don’t know how long before it dies again!”
Seconds ticked by slower than Rick could have ever dreamed they could as the transmitter’s lightweight operating system powered up. The splash screen appeared, then disappeared, and then he was staring at the menu.
Alone on the rooftop, Rick fumbled with the thumb drive in his hand before he pushed it into one of the transmitter’s data ports. A small symbol of a rotating hourglass appeared in a corner of the transmitter’s screen for what felt like forever before it turned into a green checkmark, signaling that the drive had been successfully inserted, detected and recognized as a valid device.
Rick’s fingers trembled as he pushed the buttons next to the screen, trying to hurry through the menus to get to what he was looking for. Finally, in a sub-menu, there was the option that he recalled from when he had worked with one of the transmitters in the past.
Activate standalone search?
Rick pushed the button next to the option, then confirmed with a second button press. Normally the transmitter would need to be controlled by an external device in order to send and receive signals, but one of the debug options allowed the transmitter to be placed in an “open” mode where it would constantly broadcast a test signal and open itself up for connections from outside sources. While outside connections would have to be properly authenticated in order to connect to the transmitter, Rick knew full well that Damocles had that capability.
With a final press of a button the option was confirmed yet again and small gears inside the transmitter whirred to life. Higher up on its pole a small antenna unfurled, and even higher the small satellite dish began to rotate back and forth, searching for something to connect to.
“Rick?” Dr. Evans and Oles appeared at the door to the roof, both of them panting from the exertion of running up the stairs.
“What are you two doing here? You need to stay by the server, make sure the power doesn’t go out!”
“It’s as good as it’ll get,” Dr. Evans nodded at his companion, “Oles here is better with hardware than he’d like you to know. It’s stable for the moment.”
“Is it… working?” Oles pointed at the slowly-rotating dish atop the transmitter’s tower.
Rick glanced back at the screen and shook his head. “It’s sending out a signal and waiting for a connection at the same time. I have no idea if it’s actually working, though. It’ll be—wait.” The screen flickered so quickly that Rick thought he might have blinked his eyes too slowly and imagined the distortion.
“Wait what?”
“Nothing… thought I saw—wait, there it is again!” The second time he definitely, without a doubt, saw the screen flicker. Dr. Evans and Oles walked over and crouched down behind Rick, all three of them staring at the transmitter’s screen.
“What did you see?”
“The screen flickered, once or twice. But maybe it’s a power surge from the server.” Rick studied the screen top to bottom before shrugging. “Guess I can run a diagnostic while it’s searching.” He pushed one of the buttons next to the screen, but nothing happened. A brief rush of panic seized him before it was replaced with elation. “This… this isn’t working! It’s not working!”
“Damocles is in the system.” Dr. Evans spoke with a broadening smile.
