Yeah, I bet Randy’s hired guns couldn’t accomplish that on their best day.
“Let’s see how you’re wasting our taxpayer dollars.”
Peyton downloaded every document he could get his hands on. He could browse them at his leisure later.
“I’m too damn good at this. It’s almost not fair.”
Osiris meowed in response.
“Yeah, glad you agree.”
After twenty minutes, an alarm chimed on his computer.
“Shit, what now? Randy’s boys coming back at me?”
Nope. It was someone at the DOD. Someone was backtracking his connection through his proxy servers, but it would be another fifteen minutes before he had all the files.
“Okay, so they have a few good IT guys after all. Come on, download faster, damn it.”
Lily walked up behind him, a spoon dangling from her mouth and the last of the ice cream in her hands. “What’s happening?”
“Shit’s breaking out all over.”
Several more proxy servers fell to the trace despite Peyton’s redirection, but he still needed twelve minutes. The counter-hacker was closing on him far too swiftly.
“Faster, faster, faster. I can do this.”
Peyton terminated all other running CPU processes except the downloads and killed all other bandwidth usage in the warehouse network.
The trace had made it through eighty percent of his proxy servers with ten minutes still required.
Peyton gritted his teeth. “Fuck you, DOD White Hat. You didn’t win. I still got a bunch of files, and you didn’t identify me.” He terminated the connection with only two proxy servers between him and detection.
Lily leaned over and studied the screen. “That was close, wasn’t it?”
“Too close. Now let’s see what we got. I hope it’s something good and not a bunch of boring spreadsheets.”
“Shay, you need to see this right now,” Peyton yelled from the office.
The tomb raider grumbled, “This better not be some slasher movie that’s emotionally scared you. If you don’t want to see it, stay on the safe sites.”
Peyton sighed. “It’s nothing like that. I pulled a bunch of files off a DOD server when I was looking into your symbols. I couldn’t get them all without being caught, but I still managed a good haul.”
“Okay, now you’ve got my attention. Find anything interesting?”
“He’s been very busy,” nodded Lily.
Peyton nodded and grinned, then stood and motioned to the chair. “I just spent a couple of hours going through the world’s most boring encoded budget spreadsheets.” He made a face. “The government sure loves their budgets.”
“That doesn’t sound interesting, so why I am here?”
“Yeah, but then I found a summary document for the project all the budget crap’s related to.” He pointed to the screen. “Check this out.”
The tomb raider sat and started reading aloud. “Existing human- and machine-intelligence-based translation resources are insufficient to translate the ideographs identified on the stone. Extensive investigation and cross-referencing have confirmed that the symbols have no links to any extant or extinct Earth-based writing system, either ideographic or phonographic in nature.”
An image of a stone appeared beneath the first few sentences. The shape looked different than the stone in Mexico or Michigan, but many of the symbols matched.
“That’s three of them,” she murmured to herself.
“Three stones?” Lily asked.
“Yep. This one, the one I found, and one the Professor wants me to find.”
“Oh,” said Peyton.
Shay continued reading. “Our consultations with Oriceran experts confirm the symbols have no links to any extant or extinct Oriceran-based writing system, either purely representational or related to extra-dimensional or so-called magical processes.” Shay blinked and looked up. “Holy shit.”
Peyton bobbed his head. “Keep reading. It gets better.”
“Spectrographic inspection of the relevant recovered artifacts confirms isotopic content that is not consistent with a terrestrial origin. Metallurgical and magical analysis lends further support to a non-terrestrial origin.
“In coordination with the findings of PROJECT HOUDINI, our recommendation is to apply additional resources to the translation and decoding of the symbols. Without better knowledge of the semantics of the symbols, we are unable at this time to establish if this likely-extraterrestrial writing is linked to a civilization or group of civilizations that may present a possible threat to the safety of Earth and the territorial integrity and safety of the United States.”
Shay shook her head and looked up at Peyton. “That’s pretty heavy-duty stuff.”
Peyton bounced on his toes a few times. “That’s the government basically admitting they have alien writing and don’t have a damned clue what it means.”
“Sounds like it, but what’s Project Houdini?”
The researcher shrugged. “No clue. I can’t find a reference to it in any of the other documents. I haven’t checked online. Whatever it is, it’s locked down pretty tight. I think I got really lucky on this one. Some guy just left a few ports open when they shouldn’t have.”
Shay rubbed her chin. “At a minimum, this shit proves I’m not crazy. That stone is alien.”
“This is weird magic, even for me,” said Lily.
Peyton sighed. “Damn it.”
“What’s wrong? This is a good catch! You did a great job.”
He shook his head. “But it also proves the government can’t translate it, and they might be throwing millions of dollars at it. What hope do we have?”
“Don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. I’m thinking we’re gonna have to find out more about this shit sooner rather than later.” She laughed. “Guess you stumbled onto something big by spotting that shit about the missing tomb raider.”
Peyton looked stunned. “I did, didn’t I? I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“Way to go, Peyton.” Lily patted him on the back.
They really are getting to be like family, thought Shay.
Her phone rang.
“Speak of the Devil,” she murmured.
Peyton looked confused. “Huh? Is it the dead tomb raider?”
“Nope.” Shay held up a hand. “What’s up, Professor?”
“You need to come to the pub,” he replied.
“Sure, I can meet you tomorrow.”
“No. Now.”
Shay blinked. “What?”
Smite-Williams took a deep breath before continuing, “You need to come right now. It’s about the job. Make sure you come alone. If you don’t come tonight, I’ll be forced to make other arrangements.”
Shay pushed into the pub and marched straight toward the Professor’s
