Chapter 49
“Your pre-dinner commentary has blown up worldwide,” Omega said when we were back in the hotel.
“Good. They need to wake the fuck up,” I said.
“Quite, quite,” Omega said in a perfect British accent. “Yet there is much backlash from the Humans First people. They immediately called for humanity to hunt you both down.”
“Maybe their leadership should die in their sleep?” I said.
“Craig!” Vesta protested.
“Three of them just did,” Omega said. “Your warning was valid.”
“Omega!” Vesta called out.
“It was not me, little sister. The three individuals highest ranked in the organization just froze to death in their beds, their partners lying next to them untouched.”
“Only an elemental could do that,” Vesta said, shocked.
“Exactly. Now, as to the administration’s actions, I have found the first clandestine shipment of enriched Uranium 235 here on Earth. It has been stored in a defunct missile silo in Utah.”
“Shouldn’t we intercede?” Vesta asked after shaking off Omega’s casual reference to the death of three people.
“Yes, which is why we are chatting,” Omega said. “I could obliterate the facility, but that wouldn’t give us all the players and their methods. Instead, I would like to remove the enriched uranium and replace it with depleted uranium, at least until I have all the links in the supply chain.”
“And you need me to apport the enriched out and depleted in?” I guessed.
“Exactly. The enriched material is stored in a very sophisticated container that shows signs of Adversary design. If Vesta can open a portal to the silo, you could step out, apport the enriched out and the depleted in and get out before anyone is the wiser. I have microdrones inside all levels of the silo monitoring all personnel, so timing will be easy.”
“When?” I asked.
“Now is ideal.”
“What do I need?”
“Nothing. We will lock onto my drone by the containment vessel, Vesta will open a portal to it, you step out, apport material out, depleted in, and step back through. One of the drones in this suite is lead-lined.”
A basketball-sized drone hovered in from the bedroom and opened its top to reveal a silver-gray cube about six inches per side.
“This is sixty-eight kilograms, or approximately one hundred and fifty pounds, of depleted uranium. Would you have any difficulty apporting this?”
“No. Weight isn’t a factor. Just size,” I said.
Ten minutes later, I stepped out into a cold room. Lit with institutional lighting, it had a polished gray concrete floor with a glass box eight feet tall, all inside a vast, dark chamber whose ceiling was twenty feet overhead.
There was quite a bit of sophisticated gear in the glass box room, but pride of place was held by a distinctly alien-looking device that had a circular disk of black metal for a base and another disc of curved metal for a top but no sides.
It just floated, motionless above the base, a cube of silver-gray metal underneath it. It hummed slightly.
“No guards in vicinity and you are standing in the one gap in camera coverage,” Omega said through my internal nano. “Do not move your feet, as your usable space is only two feet square. You will need to apport the cube at the exact same time you apport the new one in.”
The basketball drone with the depleted uranium floated through the portal. It slowly opened its top, revealing the depleted uranium block.
“Like Indiana Jones, right?” I asked internally.
“Better than Jones,” Omega answered.
I carefully touched the basketball drone and moved it with a fingertip until I could see both cubes at the same time.
In effect, I lined both up so that when I held up my hands, side by side, thumbs touching, they each were partially obstructing both cubes in my vision.
I had done some fancy dual maneuvers, pushing and pulling objects at the same time, but this one would be by far the trickiest.
I put everything out of my mind, treating this like I was taking a long distance shot with a rifle. There was no brain, no heart to lock on to, just two cubes. A deep breath, let half out, and pull the mental trigger.
A shimmer. Just a slight shimmer in the alien container. “Done.” Omega spoke behind my skull. And then a tiny orb shot from the top of the Adversary-built containment unit, bounced off the open lid of the basketball drone, and slammed down into the interior with a tiny tink of sound.
The room brightened, the drone shut silently and shot through the portal, and I did not need Omega’s Move to get my ownself through.
Standing in the hotel suite living room, I stared at a wide-eyed Vesta, who was zipping the portal closed even as she looked at me.
The suite’s wall monitor showed the interior of the silo chamber, a view from a micro-Omega drone in watch position.
Visible security cameras rotated freely, scanning every inch of the glass room but after a moment, they stopped and the lighting dimmed.
No alarms sounded and no one came to check.
“What the hell?” Vesta asked, turning toward the basketball.
“It would appear we have a stowaway,” Omega said, appearing in avatar form. He leaned down to look at his own drone and the top of it went transparent, showing the cube of Uranium and a tiny silver orb the size of a pea, hovering above the cube.
“Hmm, more like a messenger,” Omega amended. The microdrone suddenly projected a beam of light through the transparent wall of the bigger drone and a hologram appeared in the open air above it. A human head and face… living human face. My mother.