‘Right.’ Dan stood and gestured towards the screen. It came to life and he quickly navigated to one of the main news-feeds, in which Jeff saw an aerial view of the ocean. The water was foaming for kilometres around, while a headline caption suggested they might be witnessing an undersea volcano. An inlaid satellite image revealed that the disturbance was taking place a few hundred kilometres north of the Mariana Islands, nearly halfway around the world.
‘It’s already started,’ said Jeff, that sick feeling getting worse.
‘I figure we’ve got no more than a couple of weeks before it’s all over,’ said Dan. ‘You’ve seen the way the ASI and military have been building up reinforcements all around the Florida Array. Training exercise, my ass. They’re trying to tell us the increased security is because of some hijack, but I figure our glorious leaders are going to evacuate themselves to the colonies before things turn really nasty. The last thing they need is us finding proof that they were the ones responsible for all this before they have a chance to make their getaway.’
Jeff swallowed. ‘I guess it’s too late to talk to the press.’
Dan nodded. ‘Even if we did, we’d only be making ourselves easy targets. And we’d have no way of proving what we know – not unless we can find some way inside those encrypted files. You still have your copy of them, right?’
Jeff gave an involuntary glance towards the rear of the cabin. ‘It’s somewhere safe.’
‘Uh-huh. I hope so.’
Jeff rotated his coffee mug between both hands. ‘You really think they’re going to try and take over the colonies by force?’
‘What else are they going to do? Ask them for refugee status?’ Dan barked. ‘Fat chance of that. They’re going to want to run things themselves, and their job’ll be that much easier if they can find a way to convince the people out there they had nothing to do with the end of life on Earth.’ Dan stabbed at his chest with a finger. ‘But we’re the ones who can tell them all what really happened. We’re witnesses to the greatest crime in history. So we’ll make our own escape, and stop these bastards in their tracks.’
‘Escape where?’
‘To the colonies.’
Jeff sighed and put his mug down. ‘You’re not thinking logically. How could you possibly get inside the Array, and past the ASI’s own cops if they’re out looking for us?’
‘I know people in the Florida Array, and up at Copernicus,’ said Dan, his expression fervent. ‘People I trust. They can help us get through safely.’ His hands tightened into fists, his expression intent. Jeff was reminded of a deer standing poised in the long savannah grass, ready to take flight at the first sign of danger.
‘You didn’t say whether anything’s happened to Farad. The files are useless unless he managed to find some way to crack them.’
Dan shook his head. ‘I tried getting hold of him, but he seems to be completely offline. Even if he’s okay, I couldn’t begin to tell you for sure where he is.’
Jeff wondered if that didn’t make him the most sensible out of all of them. ‘He’s on Newton, visiting family – or that’s his cover story, anyway. What if we can’t warn him before the ASI locate him?’
Dan regarded him bleakly. ‘Then we’re screwed, unless we can find a way to hack the database files ourselves. That’s not to mention the risk we’d be taking if we actively went looking for him. We could wind up making it easier for them to catch us, as well as him.’
‘There must be someone else we could send the files to, who could help us?’
Dan sighed and shook his head. ‘Remember, the files are stored in an intelligent format.’
‘Lucy mentioned something about that, but I didn’t quite follow it all.’
‘It’s a compression technology that automatically transmits an alert back to its point of origin whenever it’s sent through any kind of network. And if it doesn’t have explicit permission to be transferred on that network, it tells the ASI exactly where it’s been and where it’s headed, making it even easier to track us down. And assuming we just went ahead and forwarded the information to a news agency or anyone else, there’s a chance the whole package might erase itself if they didn’t use the correct decryption method. That’s why we’re keeping our copies strictly offline.’
Jeff nodded, embarrassed now that he hadn’t paid more attention at the time.
Dan’s expression grew more contemplative. ‘But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t maybe still find a way to break that encryption, if there was someone we know much closer to hand, someone we could trust. I was thinking about Olivia, as a matter of fact. She’s a network-security consultant, isn’t she? Would she be able to do it?’
Jeff felt himself stiffen. ‘I don’t want Olivia involved in any of this.’
‘We’re
Jeff felt a sudden, desperate need to be with her. ‘It’s not that simple. We were supposed to spend time together after I got home. Instead I barely stopped by long enough to tell her I was going to disappear for a while, but I couldn’t tell her the reason why. I mean, the less she s, the better, right?’ He had tried to assure Olivia that he would explain everything once the time was right, but even as he’d spoken the words, the look on her face had told him how very inadequate they were. ‘Maybe we could just wait and see if Farad tries to get in touch before—’
‘No.’ Dan shook his head firmly. ‘The longer we wait, the more chance that whoever caught up with Lucy and Lou will find us as well.’ He gazed pointedly at Jeff. ‘I had an easy enough time finding you, so how hard do you think the ASI would find it?’
Jeff stared at him, mute with shock.
‘Exactly.’ Dan nodded, half to himself. ‘Your UP can be traced with a court order. Every time you buy something, or rent a car or anything else, your contacts know where you are and when you were there. Same goes for me. All the ASI have to do is prove sufficient cause.’
