Twenty-Nine

The headset was giving him a headache.

Loki hadn’t awakened this morning expecting to have a prototype holographic interface on his head for the next six hours. The note of finality in Markus’s voice when he met him on the bridge, bright and early, was his first clue it was going to be a long day. They had begun running simulation after simulation based on the scans from the Norseman and the telemetry Daniel had transmitted back.

The headset was still a prototype, projecting an image onto his retinas. It wasn’t calibrated correctly, he noted, hence the headache.

The Norseman command deck was a sparse area with gray metal flooring. The walls, where there wasn’t a hoard of computer equipment, were bare and dark. Markus and Loki sat off to the side of the enormous conference table, adjacent to the cockpit. Since the Norseman was in stealth mode, the windows had automatic shades drawn, and the appearance of the dark seas outside was just a computer display of the exterior. Loki was wearing the virtual reality helmet, immersed in controlling the 3t3s within it, fingers gesticulating as he controlled the ascent of the two drones. Markus watched on a 2D display, commenting sporadically on the action as it progressed. Inside the helmet, Loki could see the status of the two drones he controlled: armor levels, weapons, and defenses.

“We found them. Time to get busy.” Markus was such a cowboy. He had it easy, lounging on the deck and barking orders. Loki was the one who had to attach his brain to the system, feel the electric pulse whirring through his body for hours at a time, have his natural senses subverted and replaced with that which was not real. Though he preferred this virtual world, at least from a conceptual standpoint, it left him drained and aching.

Still, he did it because he was the best, because he was paid well and had access to the best R&D facilities on Earth. He knew, unlike the rest of the crew, how to walk the halls of the virtual world as if he’d been born to it. He understood the systems, and what’s more, he knew how to bring them to their virtual knees. He knew this because he had helped design them.

“Status report,” Markus barked from somewhere to the side. Distractions, people talking to him, asking questions that were pointless. Around him, he knew the Norseman command deck blinked and whirred and beeped like the bridge of some spaceship in a sci-fi movie. If he had designed the thing, everyone would have one of these helmets and would be plugged in all the time. Everything around them would be a simulation, but it would allow for instant access to any ship function.

Why did Rossi and Joon want to sit at a console, looking out a window, when they could don one of these things and have a 360° view of the exterior as if they were floating on air?

It would have been dignified, no flash, all function. But the corporate gods that the Norseman served seemingly demanded flash.

In front of Loki, the Goan fortress was expressed in bits and bytes, overlaid by a grid. The scans revealed a shortcut that would take him right to the center of the building, its heart.

“Making my way to the mainframe. Be there in twenty-six.”

“Thirty minutes max, Loki. Gallery out.”

Markus had to admire Loki’s skill. It always struck him as a little funny to see the short Polish man dressed like a bum, wearing that helmet and gesturing at nothing. He couldn’t deny the man’s effectiveness, however; their past dealings had demonstrated that. Loki was a magician, casting spells in the air as he sat on the deck and making the world—the real world—comply with his every wish. Doors opened for their men in meatspace. Alarm systems malfunctioned. Keypads lit up as a virtual hand, Loki’s, keyed in the codes. It was a beautiful thing.

Daniel reported in via his headset. “Rupinder is doing nothing. I can, however, report the caviar is spectacular.” Gideon shook his head and grumbled. “Fish eggs. You’re eating fish eggs.”

Markus had thoroughly read Rupinder’s dossier. In his opinion, the guy was a bit sleazy, willing to sell the secret to destroy the world if he could find a way to make a buck from it. He was glad Rupinder was about to lose. Big.

“Keep your distance. Hopefully, you won't have to do anything but eat food and watch the wedding.” Talk about a cushy job.

Gideon immediately echoed his thought. “You always get the easy ones.” He leaned over the console, gripping the edge of the blinking control panel with tensed hands, knuckles going white. Five hours in, and just minutes to go.

High above a beach whose waves lapped at salty sand, two 3t3s crawled up the fortress's exterior wall like insects scaling a tower.

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