Ode To Defiance Chapter 23

18

Charity Gala

“If not you, then who? If not now, then when?”

― Hillel, first-century Jewish scholar

Matt found himself hosting Dash’s meeting in a conference room on the High Flight deck of the

Helios

. He arrived as the meeting was supposed to start.

Gina sat at the head of the table. Other than her, the room was empty.

Matt looked at her in puzzlement. “So it’s just you and me, and presumably Dash? What’s the topic for our meeting, anyway?”

Gina shook her head. “Dash said she might not be able to make it. Said to start without her.”

Matt nodded. “OK. Ahem. I still don’t know what we’re meeting about.”

Gina slaved the monitor embedded in the table to her tablet. 3D diagrams rotated slowly beneath her finger. “She wants to talk about this—a new fleet of custom-built cargo capsules. And a bunch of satellites like this one. And a few more boosters.”

Matt looked at the CAD models. “OK, I can see how each of these would work, but I don’t understand why.”

Gina explained Dash’s prediction for how the next attack would occur and her plan for stopping it.

Matt shook his head. “We don’t know that that’s how the next attack will go. We don’t even know there’ll

be

another attack.”

Gina just stared at him, the way she always stared at him when he was being stupid.

Matt grumbled, “OK, there’ll be another attack. And it makes sense that the attack will be like this.” He waved his hand across the models of the new systems. He sounded forlorn. “Honey, SpaceR can’t afford this. My God, it would set us back years! The charges against the company, the board—they’d throw me out in a heartbeat.”

Gina scowled. “The next attack will probably succeed in doing what the Black Rubola almost did: it will kill eighty percent of the people on Earth. If eighty percent of your customers die, how exactly is that going to impact your bottom line?”

Matt bit his lip. “Even so, if I started a crash development effort on this, I’d be thrown out before the first capsules and satellites came off the line. Nothing would see deployment.”

Gina smiled. “But you’d do it if you could, right? And for the sake of keeping its customers alive, the board would agree to taking a hit, right?”

Matt rolled his eyes; he always knew when Gina was about to spring a trap. “I suppose so.”

Gina kissed him hard. “I love you so much.” She tapped on her phone. “Amanda, come on in.”

Amanda Copeland, clearly wearing her title of Chairman of the Board of the BrainTrust Consortium, entered briskly. Gina explained the plan. Amanda took a deep breath. “The Consortium has gotten used to this kind of problematic outlay of funds on behalf of our customers in defense of our long term profits, at least sort of. We can pay for part of this.”

Gina pulled out her phone and dialed the next victim.

Dawn Rainer stopped at the doorway when she saw the people Gina had with her. She raised an eyebrow. “Why do I suspect we’re meeting about something bigger than the status of our isle ship manufacturing business?”

Gina blushed. “I’m so sorry to blindside you like this, but it’s pretty important.”

Dawn looked at Matt and Amanda again, then surmised, “This is about the bioterrorist, isn’t it? Khalid. Nobody wants to lose eighty percent of their customer base. Or the vendors we buy from, for that matter.”

It didn’t take long to get Dawn on board. Her family owned a controlling interest in their business, so Dawn had no worries she’d be kicked out. She did offer one dry observation. “Just so we’re all clear, there’s no way at all of getting our money back on this. We don’t dare try to negotiate with outsiders before we deploy lest Khalid find out, and there’ll be nobody we can coerce into paying afterward since it’s a one-off.” She frowned in disapproval. “We’ll be supplying a public service.”

Gina didn’t lie. “Afterwards, when we distribute the actual vaccine, we’ll be able to recoup some of the losses. But yeah, let’s face it: we’re doing this because someone must, and only we can.”

Lenora Thornhill, Qi Ru, Chen Ying, and Fan Hui teleconferenced in from the Fuxing archipelago representing Oceanic Mining Unlimited, the first major corporation founded on the Fuxing. Things went smoothly until Fan Hui objected, “This is all very well, but we shall require a few concessions to agree to it.”

At that point, Lenora dragged Fan Hui off camera. Everyone could hear the occasional phrase as an argument raged, passages such as, “your family,” “your people,” “the people of China,” “iterative gaming,” and “seat at the table.”

Qi Ru raised an eyebrow at the offscreen battle.

Chen Ying folded his arms on his chest. “We’re in.”

Qi Ru shrugged. “Yeah, good to go.”

When Ben Wilson came in, he looked at the plan, got up and paced back and forth, growled, paced some more, and sat back down. He turned mostly cheerful. “Well, at least I’m in good company.”

Matt found some amusement in the various rationalizations offered by the different billionaires for doing the right thing, but Dmitri Mikhailov topped them all. “I am the world’s premier arms dealer, and here this terrorist is giving away weapons of mass destruction

for free

. I shall do whatever it takes to destroy this lowlife undercutting competitor.” He opened his arms majestically. “Isn’t that what capitalism is all about?”

The last person to enter was Keenan Stull. He appeared in an immaculate three-piece pinstripe suit with a sky-blue tie covered with SpaceR Titan rockets, each alive with the signature whirl of rich colors that was the Titan trademark.

Gina started her pitch, but Keenan waved it away. “Dash gave me a quick brief before she departed.” He frowned. “Before I tell you our offer, I should probably give you some background. Back in the days before the Great Depression, there were periodic panics that threatened to bring the economy down the same way the Depression did. Each time such a panic started, a consortium of bankers led by JP Morgan intervened to prevent the collapse.”

He pursed his lips. “But when the 1929 crash started, the consortium fell apart and refused to act. The Depression pounded them, and the bankers never recovered the glory they’d once had.” His expression turned speculative. “One Nobel Prize-winning economist thought they could have made all the difference. In failing, they destroyed both the global economy and themselves.”

Keenan shrugged. “Old news. We’ll help, but it’ll be a little different.”

Ben, Matt, and Dawn groaned in chorus. Ben spoke for them. “Exactly what are you going to do to us?”

Keenan chuckled. “We’re offering you loans to cover the costs.” As looks of disgust and dismay flooded the room, he held up a finger. “The interest rate will be

minus

two percent for the duration of the loan.”

Amanda squinted at him. “So, for the duration of the loan,

you

will be paying

us

.”

Dawn jumped in. “And you’ll be taking a loss.”

Keenan nodded. “Yes, our losses will be comparable to yours for this charity gala.”

Matt, speaking from his background as a football player with a more or less head-on approach to life, slapped the table. “Why don’t you just pitch in some cash like the rest of us?”

In retrospect, Matt realized it was an odd thing to say, since SpaceR, more anyone else, was pitching in materials and services. Matt thought sourly about how, when there was a rush job, the vendor was supposed to make a premium profit.

These undertakings with the BrainTrust almost never worked out the way they were supposed to.

Keenan shook his head at Matt’s proposal to just throw a chunk of SmartCoin on the table. “Oh, come on now. We specialize in exotic financial instruments. You couldn’t expect us to do it the easy way, could you? Our customers will look at what we did, and while they’ll see just as clearly as you do that we took a loss, they’ll figure it was a clever strategy that allowed us to take a huge profit off-book somehow.”

His eyes turned shiny. “Besides, we’ll show you all how to write this off over multiple years. No reason to take a big charge in the next quarter.”

The last bit sold everyone on Keenan’s offer. Matt perked up a bit as he realized he might not lose his job after all.

Even before the meeting broke up, all the manufacturing ships in all the archipelagos, from SpaceR’s

Helios

to the Prometheus’

Archimedes

, turned their attention to the crash-priority manufacture of satellites and cargo capsules.

As they finished, while Matt stood and stretched to get out the kinks from such a long meeting, he remembered a disturbing absence. “Wasn’t Dash supposed to be here?” He turned to Keenan, who’d mentioned she’d contacted him. “Did she say anything to you?”

A look of dismay crossed Keenan’s face. “I don’t have any more of an idea than you do.”

Ben voiced the obvious question. “What could she possibly be doing that is more important than this?”

Normally, Ping would have fidgeted in Dash’s lab until she found an excuse to leave Dash to her toys, but these days she hung out even in the lab, as if afraid that if she left Dash alone too long, she would cease to exist. Or more likely, she feared that if she left for a moment, Dash would get killed by another of Khalid’s assassins.

Ping did depart from time to time to engage in a new round of frenzied rehabilitation, not merely to regain her former skills, but to go beyond her previous best. During these times she always took either Wolf or Aar along as her practice target, leaving the other behind to stand guard over her friend.

Ping was determined to be ready when the time came to act. In the meantime, she prepared.

Dash also prepared in ways very different from Ping’s, ways that mystified even the most dedicated onlooker. She prepared for battles such an onlooker could not even imagine.

Unsurprisingly, this frustrated Ping more than a little, leading to a nearly constant stream of questions, most of which Dash answered happily if a bit obscurely.

At this moment, Dash was working with three test tubes whose contents looked identical. Ping blurted, “So what’s in the tubes?”

Dash answered the way she answered most questions these days: in a grim tone. “Three different DNA samples. One each from Khalid, Sabaah, and Uwais.”

Ping gave this some thought, then scratched her head. “OK, so you got Sabaah’s DNA from the blood on my blade. Where’d the others come from?”

Dash poured one tube into another tube with a brand new fluid straight from the CRISPIER. She pulled on a pair of goggles and looked at the result. “Excellent.”

As she worked with the second DNA sample with another vial of a different fluid, she answered Ping’s original question. “Khalid’s DNA was remarkably difficult to track down, considering how long he lived among us, but with a little behind-the-scenes help, Agent Ballard was able to retrieve a sample from the sewage system underneath his shower.”

Ping waited a moment for more, then prompted, “And Uwais?”

Dash stood frozen for a moment, then whispered in a much darker tone, “All unwittingly, Astri got a sample for me.”

Ping decided not to push for more data on that one.

Long before digging into work with the test tubes, Dash had called in a team of rocket scientists—real rocket scientists, from SpaceR, from the

BrainTrust University

, and from the

Dreams Come True

. They were almost as mystified by Dash’s requests as Ping was, but they set to work, and CAD images and simulations of new hardware came to life. They stopped by from time to time to work out kinks as the evolution of the new vehicles and systems moved forward.

She put another team of molecular chemists to work on yet something else. Her explanation was almost as obscure as the directions. “The next epidemic will be delivered at hyperspeed. We must be able to counter it without even knowing its makeup.”

Ping guessed, “A general-purpose virus-killer?”

Dash shook her head. “Don’t I wish. We must rather exploit the greatest invulnerability that Khalid’s viruses now share.”

Ping shook her head. “Didn’t you mean, ‘the greatest

vulnerability

?’”

“If I’d meant that, would I not have said it?”

Another time Dash sat in her office making obscure phone calls while Ping played with her jade Ganesha statue. She called SpaceR and told them to hold the Stealth Titan, and explained she would pay the fee to keep it permanently on hot standby “until events require its launch.” She called the Geology department and had an even more impenetrable discussion that involved subterranean shock waves.

Ping couldn’t contain herself. “I’m afraid to ask what you’re doing.”

Dash closed her eyes and smiled. “One thing Chance said while I was in hiding was true. I

had

been working to understand how Colin Wheeler thinks.” She frowned. “Khalid’s skills in anticipating and preparing for the future are terrifying. Ever since we discovered his true identity, I’ve been working to perceive his deepest nature, to anticipate him even as he anticipates us. I am doing my best in hopes that it will be enough.” Her shoulders shuddered. “If we had Colin with us, this would be much easier, but that part of Khalid’s plan came off as intended. We must step up our game.” She licked her lips. “Step up or perish.”

Diab, surrounded by friends and family, waved to the latest mini-isle ship to sail from the

Archimedes

manufacturing ship. The

Aceso

, named for the goddess of healing, was a pharmaceutical production ship headed for Europe. It would take station with the SpaceR port ship until it was needed.

No one doubted it would be needed.

He looked around the ocean at the other half-dozen mini-isle ships to come off the assembly line, most filled with additional Palestinian refugees, friends of friends of friends. Having watched the departure of the

Aceso

, they would all now head back to their agricultural reef to continue the harvesting.

The mini-isle ships in Diab’s archipelago southwest of the Prometheus fleet were no longer just residential. Diverse businesses had sprung up, as Ciara had predicted. The most successful by far was the cell phone factory. They had leased the rights from the

WarenHaus

to manufacture older Intel chip designs, a right that the

Warenhaus

had leased from Intel.

In the wake of the repeated epidemics, in order to quell popular discontent, the autocrats of Africa had once more taken refuge in an old trick they had started using in 2018 in response to Ebola: they had shut down the Internet and cell phone infrastructures so people could not tell each other the truth about what was happening and complain about the government’s incompetence in responding. This did not reduce the people’s anger. In fact, it increased their anger. But angry people in isolation do not overthrow their beloved dictators.

So throughout Africa, people seized eagerly on the new cell phones from Diab’s offshoot of the BrainTrust, desiring both to use the unblockable Starry Night cell system and to avoid using a phone that governments could eavesdrop on. Via Starry Night, popular communications about the plagues and about many other things adversely affecting the government’s preferences flourished.

Indeed, the African autocrats discovered that, having shut off all forms of digital communication in their nations, the people now had far better communication with each other than the government did with its armies and other enforcement organizations. The armies hastened to procure phones from Diab’s archipelago as well.

Meanwhile, Lenora on the Fuxing fleet had licensed the plans from which the Aceso had been built. He understood that their progress had been remarkable—their ship could already produce pharmaceuticals, though no one had taken the time yet to hook up the engines.

So Diab’s people were doing well. And when the next plague hit, all over the world at once if the predictions from the BrainTrust experts were true, his people, through the manufacturing abilities of the

Aceso

, would do their part to prevent the slaughter as soon as the

Chiron

delivered the next vaccine. Who knew, they might even make a profit—doing well by doing good.

Uwais’ and Jam’s journey was long and dusty. Perhaps the pinnacle was the encounter with a sandstorm, which half-buried their truck.

At last they arrived at…well, Jam wasn’t quite sure where. It should have been the Town on the Edge of Nowhere, except she’d already been to the Town on the Edge of Nowhere in northern China. Could there really be two? Or more? She had trouble grasping it.

They rolled to a stop outside a bazaar, Unlike the last bazaar where she had killed someone, this one seemed filled with tourists. She girded herself to refuse to slaughter all these carefree, laughing, ridiculous travelers.

As she watched the bazaar over Uwais’ shoulder, someone tapped on her own passenger-side window. She snapped around, knife in hand.

Sabaah stood there, laughing as gaily as the tourists. “Let’s get something to eat, then be on our way home.”

Jam hid the knife. “Home?”

Uwais leaned over. “I told you, we’re going to see Khalid.” He pursed his lips sadly. “I don’t suppose you would consider getting rid of the burqa, would you? I understand you took it to impress us, but Khalid is not like that. You have such a pretty face. Khalid deserves some beauty in his life. Please believe me.”

Jam considered the request. “May I go into the bazaar and buy a suitable scarf?”

Matt was sound asleep next to Gina when the buzzing of his phone was accompanied by a ferocious pounding on his door. The two of them leapt up as one person, pulled on robes, and charged into the foyer.

Opening the door, they found Dash standing patiently as Ping prepared to batter the barrier until it broke free of its hinges.

Dash led them to the bar, where they all stood around as Dash pulled out a phone.

The phone was on an active call, but all they could hear was muffled voices as if the phone were wrapped in cotton.

Dash pointed at the phone. “Colin’s.”

Matt once again found himself falling behind the understanding curve. “Colin’s phone? What are you doing with it?”

Dash looked away, out the giant window in the living room to the open sea. “Colin prepared for this—for the day he might not be available. When his computers realized he was gone, they unlocked his phone and gave me his library of contacts. All the people all over the world who might be willing to do him a favor.” She paused. “I’m still digesting all this information, what it all means.” Her nose twitched. “This number does not belong to anyone in Colin’s lists of contacts.”

Gina peered closely at the screen. “A BrainTrust phone. So we can’t even figure out where they are, much less who they are.”

Ping answered with absolute confidence. “It’s from Jam. She’s sending us a message. She’s found Khalid.”

Dash continued for Gina, “And you’re right, neither Ping nor I can find these people.” She stared at Matt. “But the CEO of SpaceR can.”

Matt backed away from the bar waving his hands. “Oh, no. I’ve already spent a considerable amount of time and energy fighting off Agent Cameron Ballard. The privacy of our customers is sacrosanct.”

Gina went to him and took his hand in hers. “Just one customer. Who, if they were here, would tell you to violate their privacy just a little bit if it meant saving their lives, their families, and their whole communities.”

Matt closed his eyes and sighed heavily. “Don’t make me regret this.” He called a number, described the situation, and waited.

Finally he turned to his audience. “The phone’s anonymous, so even I can’t tell you who’s there. But I know

where

they are.” He shook his head in amazement. “They’re in Timbuktu.”

Minutes later the Black Titan roared into the sky. It departed on a well-publicized course to take it sub-orbitally to the SpaceR spaceport ship off the coast of Europe, but unbeknownst to anyone trying to watch the behavior of the stealth craft, it dropped its cargo into a steep descent over Western Africa on its way.

The cargo screamed through the atmosphere on a collision course toward Timbuktu before unceremoniously exploding, spewing its contents into a vast circle around the ancient city. A fine mist, essentially invisible and undetectable without special equipment, descended to the ground.

After ordering the launch of the rocket, Dash stood for a moment in Matt’s home, her head back, her uplifted eyes flicking back and forth across the ceiling as she mapped out possible futures. At last her eyes fell to focus once more on Matt. “You have another Titan ready to launch?”

Matt frowned. “There’s only one Black Titan.”

“A regular Titan will do.”

Matt nodded crisply. “Gotcha covered.”

Gina and Matt coptered Ping and Dash out to the

Heinlein

. As they watched the two blast off for the Prometheus archipelago, Gina hugged Matt tightly. “Can you think of anything else we can do?”

Matt hugged her back, then pulled out his phone once more. “We can send backup. I can’t help believing they’ll need it.”

Ping kept the pedal to the metal on her favorite stealth copter as they flew north from the topmost tip of Benin, where they’d stopped for gas at a tiny village with gasoline sold in liter-sized glass jars from the store that also sold off-brand cola and counterfeit gummy bears.

Dash pulled out the goggles she’d fiddled with when she was working with DNA from Uwais, Sabaah, and Khalid. She strapped them over her face and started twiddling dials.

Ping glanced at her with irritated bemusement; she was tired of Dash acting as mysterious as if she were, well, Colin. “Hey, girl, what’s with the goggles?”

Wonder of wonders, Dash attempted to give her a straight answer. “I’m looking for the fluorescent signatures of the men we’re following.”

Well, that was not quite as straight an answer as Ping had hoped for. “They have fluorescent signatures?” She felt a moment of alarm. “Do we all have fluorescent signatures? What does that even mean?”

Dash gave her a relaxed laugh. “I’m so sorry. I’m trying very hard to keep my head full of Khalid and Colin. Forgive me if I seem a bit disconnected.”

Ping gripped her shoulder, still enjoying the firm sense that Dash was alive, if not altogether here. “Don’t sweat it.”

Dash amplified on her explanation. “Anyway, one of the things I’ve done with their DNA is create molecular factories that can detect and identify their unique DNA fingerprints.” Her head lolled back as if visualizing the factories in operation “When they detect the DNA, they start reproducing, and at the same time, they start throwing off molecules that will fluoresce at a specific frequency.”

Ping thought she saw part of where this was going. “Let me guess. That pod you blew up over Timbuktu was full of these factories for detecting and fluorescing.”

Dash nodded. “Even if they’re zooming away in a car with the windows rolled up, I believe that enough skin and hair will be thrown out to cause a glimmer of the light. Our best chance of detecting it will be at twilight and in the hour or so thereafter when the background light is low but the fluorescence hasn’t started to fade.”

Ping looked out the window at the setting sun. “So it’s pretty much now, or wait until tomorrow evening.”

“Very much so.” Dash tapped her goggles, then sat up very straight as she stared off to the starboard side. She banged the goggles in a sort of helpless attempt to fix them.

Ping watched this with concern. “What’s wrong?”

Dash pointed down. “I think there’s something wrong with the goggles. I’m picking up the frequencies for Uwais, Sabaah, and Jam down there.”

Ping didn’t even ask about Jam’s inclusion in the DNA sampling; Dash had probably gotten it from Ciara, who no doubt had raided Jam’s cabin and taken it from a hairbrush.

Instead, Ping peered in the direction where Dash said she could see a trace. Ping gasped.

Before the sun disappeared, she saw long, neat rows of solar panels.

She heeled the copter over and headed for the power array.

Dash asked with alarm, “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

Ping answered grimly. “There’s nothing wrong with your goggles. I just figured out who Khalid is. Some benefactor indeed.”

Ping landed using her own goggles: infrared night vision goggles, the best the BrainTrust had to offer. The panels showed up faintly as they cooled rapidly in the first moments of near-darkness. She was not surprised to see one human outline coming toward them.

She pulled off the NVGs, popped the hatch, and yelled, “Quraish!”

Moments later Ping was introducing the keeper of the panels to Dash.

Quraish bowed ever so slightly. “Even here, we’ve heard of you. You cured the Blue Rubola, correct?”

Dash sounded embarrassed. “We had a large team of very smart people working together on it.”

Quraish nodded gravely. “Of course. Still, you make a most fitting companion for the empress.” He coughed, then hurriedly corrected himself. “I mean, Ping.”

Ping gave him a short laugh. “It’s fine, Quraish. I’m not here to harm anyone.” Then, realizing, she was indeed here to harm someone, she went to the point. “I need to see your benefactor. I’m thinking his name is Khalid. Is that right?”

The moon was bright enough that Ping could see Quraish’s eyes widen in surprise. “It is indeed.”

Dash put her hand to her lips. “Oh, my.”

Ping figured she’d investigate a claim from the last time she’d seen the young man. “Dash, according to Quraish, these solar panels are not here for power, although his people do use the power to the extent possible.”

Dash scanned the solar field. Her eyes widened. “Of course. He’s planning to bring back the rain.”

Quraish’s eyes seemed to grow even larger. “How did you know?”

Dash pointed between the panels and the sky. “Once a desert landscape sets in, the sands in the harsh light of day heat the air, which rises and dissolves the clouds. So once the rains are gone, rain cannot come back again.” She sighed. “Back in 2018, they ran the first simulations that showed that, if you planted a vast enough field of solar panels, the panels would soak up enough energy to disrupt the heating of the air, so clouds can once again form and deliver rain.”

She pointed to the area. “The field is not yet large enough, however.”

Quraish gasped. “That’s just what Khalid said.” He looked down at his feet. “Not that I understood it any better this time than last.”

Ping grasped his shoulder. “I don’t understand Dash half the time either, so don’t sweat it.”

As she squeezed Quraish’s shoulder, she became concerned. She looked him up and down, sharply. “Have you lost a lot of weight? I remember you were a skinny thing, but now—”

Dash was also scrutinizing him at this point. “Early-stage malnutrition. Have your crops failed?”

Quraish stepped back, waving his hand and shaking his head. “No, nothing like that. Our fields are richer this year than last.”

He swept his hands in a world-girdling gesture. “Our benefactor—Khalid—has prophesied that the next terrible wave of devastation to sweep the land shall be survived only by the devout, who must have demonstrated their faith by intense fasting. He has given us very strict dietary rules to follow until the devastation passes over us. We are storing all the grain we are not using, and look forward to the feast after we have been saved.”

Ping looked quizzically at Dash. “Any idea what that means?”

Dash’s shoulders sagged ever so briefly before they straightened once more. “I have no clue. Try as I might, he is still ahead of me.”

Ping changed the subject. “Quraish, where does Khalid live?”

Quraish took another step back. “He told us never to follow him, and to tell no one if we found out.”

Dash spoke urgently. “For the sake of all humanity, we must see him.”

Quraish nodded. “Of course. The coming of the end times, one of his favorite topics when he teaches the Quran.”

Ping could just bet that that was one of his favorite topics. She stifled the roar of rage she felt. “Quraish, as empress I must see him. I must see him before the end times begin.”

Quraish wavered, but in the end, he yielded to the empress card. He pointed to the north, and a little east. “I do not know where, but his home is in that direction.”

Dash nodded. “It lines up with the fluorescence.”

Ping now grabbed Quraish by both shoulders. “Thank you. The whole world owes you a debt of gratitude.”

Ping and Dash leapt back into the copter and soared toward their new destination.

Dash looked back at the solar field and spoke as if in a dream. “He’s right, you know.”

Ping asked in exasperation, “Who? Quraish?”

Dash shook her head. “Khalid. It’s so like him. He was working to bring life back to this place even as he was working to bring death everywhere else.” She sighed. “After we deal with him, we must finish this project of his. The Sahel shall be made to bloom again.”

Ping rolled her eyes. “And just how are you going to pay for it?”

Dash frowned, then smiled. “I’ll ask Ben for ideas. One way or another, we’ll finish this. It will make a fitting legacy for a man who cared so passionately about humanity’s future.”

At least, Ping thought, Dash was referring to Khalid in the past tense, even if Ping couldn’t for the life of her understand the rest of Dash’s perspective on the bastard.

Ping flew as Dash gave directions, changing course ever so slightly back and forth as the fluorescence guided them.

All too soon Dash started muttering, “We’re losing the fluorescence. If we don’t find them in the next few minutes, we’ll have to wait till tomorrow evening.”

Ping bounced back and forth in her seat, trying to make the copter go faster.

Suddenly Dash pointed, “There! I see Khalid’s signature as well. He must have come out to greet them!”

Ping veered in the new direction.

Dash gasped. “Cell tower! Land the copter! Land it now!”

Ping growled as she obeyed Dash’s command to hit the deck. “Why do we care about a blasted cell tower?”

“He can use the cell tower to detect us.”

Ping spluttered, “What are you talking about? This is a stealth ship. You can’t see it at all.”

Dash chuckled. “Exactly. When we fly between towers, we create a shadow and the signal drops. It’s like a black plane on a clear night occluding the stars.”

Ping growled. “So he knows we’re here?”

Dash replied, oddly cheerful, “Oh, yes.”

A low warning tone echoed off the walls of all the rooms in Khalid’s compound.

Sabaah pricked up his ears. “That can’t be her, can it?”

Uwais brought up a display of their sensors. “Whoever it is came in a stealth copter. Can’t see for sure that they’re heading to us, but…”

Jam, whose face was now uncovered but who had been looking away when the alarm went off, turned to them. “Let me get my knife.”

Khalid shook his head. “All in good time.” He looked dreamily at a blank wall. “It is she, but she will not come directly here.” He frowned, puzzled. “But she wouldn’t have come yet if she didn’t already have a plan for…”

He sighed. “I don’t know what she’s planning. Try as I might, she is ahead of me.”

Dash hopped out of the copter and opened the storage compartment. She pulled out Ping’s batpack and handed it to her. “Ping, your pack feels light.” Last time Ping had carried it, she’d had a parachute, among other things. “What all have you got this time?”

Ping shrugged. “It’s mostly empty this time. I’ve only got my standard gear. You know, rope, baling wire, duct tape.”

Dash had pulled out her own lumpy backpack while Ping was talking and strapped it on.

Ping was about to ask what all Dash had in her pack when Dash reached into the compartment again. “Two for you and two for me,” she said as she handed Ping a pair of the metal rods she’d brought from the geology department on the

BTU

.

Ping was about to ask Dash what they were going to do with the sticks when Dash drove one into the ground a short distance from the copter. She pressed a button, and the tip she’d just driven in started spinning and digging deeper.

Ping decided to ask the question anyway. “What’re these for, anyway?”

Dash gave her a wide grin in the nearly full moonlight. “Geology experiment.”

Dash’s gaze turned dreamy as she stood, pondering and planning. Then she walked into the distance, talking on her phone.

Ping caught up with her as she finished. Dash snapped the phone shut.

The metal rods had straps; Dash put her remaining one across her body, the strap running from her left shoulder to her right hip. Ping loaded her pair off opposite shoulders, giving her some symmetry.

Dash turned north, then stopped. She stared at the stars.

Ping whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“This is our last chance to think deeply. We must defeat Khalid before we arrive. If we try to defeat him in the heat of the moment, we shall surely lose, for then he will have outplanned us.”

The moment passed, and Dash started trotting. “Let’s go.”

Ping caught up with her. For a while they ran along in silence. Finally Ping had to observe, “You’re holding up better on the running than I would have expected.”

Dash whispered between breaths, “I’ve been secretly training with Colin, running through the archipelago four times a week.”

Ping gurgled with laughter. “Secretly? You think the two smartest people in the archipelago can go running through all the ships without someone noticing?”

Dash objected, “But we’ve been avoiding the main promenades.”

Ping continued to laugh for a long time as they trotted along.

They had planted the second stick and trotted a fair way when Dash spasmed to a stop.

Ping backpedaled and came next to her, ready to grab her if she fell.

Dash shuddered. “I know his next plan.”

Ping put a hand on her shoulder to try to comfort her.

“He’s going to tie the virus to fat cells. People suffering from malnutrition will barely experience the symptoms of the disease, although they will become carriers. But the wealthy parts of the world will suffer the effects of a virulence that makes even Black Rubola look like a pale imitation.”

Ping whispered in horrified awe, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Dash slowly straightened up. “It’s brilliant in its own way. Even in the nations that stand forever on the brink of starvation, this will wipe out the elite—the corrupt and vile politicians, dictators, and oligarchs. And of course, it will leave the nations Khalid hates the most, from America to Israel, effectively wiped clean of human life. Western civilization will cease to exist.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then leaned forward into a run.

Khalid stopped pacing for a moment and gazed unseeing at the ceiling in wonderment. “I know her plan. She’s going to play my people off against each other.” He laughed. “Clever girl.”

Jam had already traded her usual clothes for a set of black tights. She swung her blade. “Not as clever as this is sharp.”

Khalid’s tone now matched Jam’s. “This is going to be more difficult than I’d planned, but we will prevail.”

All four of them chorused, “Allahu Akbar.”