Lady Grace & the War for a New World (Earth's End Book 2) (4 page)

5

Veronica straightened her hair and put on the expression she wore for public appearances. Quickly adjusting the focus of her computer’s camera, she broadcast to the top frequencies from Jeremy’s list.

“Hello, people of the golden planet. This is Veronica Edgarton of the planet Earth,” she said into the microphone. She used the famous Veronica Edgarton voice, which had conquered almost the entire male gender and made her a broker in world power. Her cultured, upper-class voice was something that only a thousand years of genetics and upbringing could create.

“I want to thank you so much for taking care of my son, Jeremy Edgarton, and his friends all these years. You were so good to respond to his pleas for help and lift him and his friends to your world.

“I’m afraid I have a request of my own. As you know, we’ve had a nuclear war here and have lost the planet that we knew.
I’m
in a desperate situation.

“I’m in a bunker close to the north pole with seven dead bodies. It’s not very pleasant, I must tell you. I have enough supplies to last for a while, but my husband’s son could break in at any time and make off with me.

“I ask you to look into your hearts and hear a mother’s plea. Reunite me with my son … please.”

She dropped her voice and leaned closer to the screen. “I need to be very frank with you. I’m terrified that the general’s son will find me.” Anguish crept into her voice and onto her face. “He’s always fancied me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as a concubine to a sexual pervert.

“So please, please, take me to my son. I have two storage containers here that are filled with things we’ll need to start a new world. If you could transport them with me, I would be more grateful than I can say.” Tears of desperation and fear sparkled in her blue eyes.

“Signing off,

“Veronica Edgarton.”

She set the machine to rebroadcast her message every half hour. Then she went into the first storage container and made herself a nest just inside the door. She fell asleep and dreamed of Jeremy.

Veronica awakened in a panic and clawed her way out the container’s door. The bunker’s cement interior greeted her. The golden planet had either received her message and decided against helping her. Or they were still making up their minds. Or—they didn’t get her message.

She stared at the screen, studying the frequencies Jeremy had used. Using a simple statistical program, she graphed their distribution. The graph was a bell-shaped curve, rising in the middle with the most popular addresses and tapering to tag ends on both sides. She’d sent her message to the middle range of coordinates, the ones Jeremy had used most. Why didn’t it work?

Veronica sucked in a breath. What did she know about the way her son programmed? Jeremy never made anything easy. Everything he wrote was encoded and password protected. Had she used a password to enter his computer and download his data? No. Had she used a password before using the data and sending her message? No again.

She’d opened “Jeremy’s Computer” assuming that it was what it purported to be. Would her son ever put confidential information into something so obvious? No. She was lucky the file hadn’t been booby-trapped, destroying all the data because of her unauthorized usage. She pulled away from the console, horrified. She might have ruined her only hope of escape.

Veronica also knew that if Jeremy didn’t want someone to get into his files, they wouldn’t be able to. He could create algorithms that only a genius could break. If he was being sloppy, he might write code that an intelligent person could crack if he or she was lucky.

She gasped as she remembered the worst. He built lockdowns into all of his work. Someone trying to break into one of his systems would find themselves locked out with three incorrect tries. Or fewer. When the machine locked down, only Jeremy would be able to open it.

Her heart pounded as though a frantic bird was trying to break out of her chest. Her hands grew icy. She looked around the cement bunker, eyes moving from the steel doors enclosing the corpses, to the computers, storage units, and weapons bays. Panic threatened to overwhelm her. She had one chance left. Veronica wanted to scream and throw herself on the floor.

Suck it up, soldier. The voice came from inside. She stiffened and pulled herself erect. Do the job you trained to do.

Veronica wasn’t in the general’s bunker because she was beautiful and a great lay. The general could have chosen thousands of women with those qualifications. It wasn’t because he loved her so much. He didn’t love anything.

She earned her place by working for it, by beating teenagers and women in their twenties and thirties. Beating the crap out of them on training courses and martial arts fields. She had been included in the cryogenic chamber with the general because she was the best.

Veronica walked to the cabinets at the far end of the computer lab. Eight superbly conditioned athletes had entered the bunker. Except for Zhanna, all were commandos. They expected to be confined to the bunker for an unknown time after awakening, and expected to use it for a home base for longer than that.

The cabinet doors swung open, revealing a recess jammed with gym equipment. She pulled out a long platform about seven inches high and set it in the aisle between the bays containing the frozen bodies. She selected two ten-pound dumbbells, gripping one in each hand.

Facing the wide part of the platform, Veronica stepped up with her left foot, following it with her right. Down with the left foot, then down with the right. She pumped the weights when her feet went up, lowered them when she stepped down.

Up left, up right; down left, down right. One, two, three, four, arms bending and straightening with each repetition. Two, two, three, four. Three, two, three, four. As time passed, she increased her speed, feet slapping the step.

Fifty
, two, three, four… .
Eighty
, two, three, four.

Her pace slowed as her leaden legs rebelled.
Ninety-one,
two, three, four.

Ninety-two
, two, three, four.

Her legs trembled and her biceps would barely straighten and contract. Sweat rolled between her breasts and ran down her face.

All she could do was a lousy ninety-two. She could hop up and down that step for hours before their cybersleep. She was in shape to do exactly nothing.

The voice kept giving orders. Working out curbs anxiety. Let your subconscious solve the problem. What would Jeremy do? Just hold that thought. Don’t try to solve it. Move it. Move it, Veronica!

She pulled out the portable bench press, then hooked the pulleys to the wall for the lat pulls. Last to come out were the body bag and gloves. She’d work on target shooting later. They’d planned well, building a superbly engineered compact gym to keep killers busy.

Using the bench, she started out pressing one-quarter of the weight she’d been used to, then adjusted that down to one-tenth. She was useless. Worse than useless.

Work it, Edgarton. Keep going.

Veronica used the bench press and free weights until she fell to her knees. She crawled to the storage container and flopped inside. She’d managed her anxiety, but no answers had come. The golden planet hadn’t responded to her message. She hurt everywhere, foreshadowing the pain that would come tomorrow.

The next day’s muscle aches were exactly what she’d expected. Any movement exacted a price. Compared to how she’d felt in field training, it wasn’t so bad, except that her workout barely would have counted as warm-up on any commando course. She forced herself to her feet and to the computer bay.

“I have no idea what to do,” she said looking at the graph she’d generated the day before. Nice bell-shaped curve, fat in the middle and tapering out on both sides. So what? Where was the good data? She went through the computer, file by file. Found nothing using the amount of memory required to store a whole computer’s contents.

Don’t try so hard, soldier; let the answer float to the surface. The voice in her head gave orders as she ate her army rations and sipped purified water. Let all your faculties work.

Get back to work, Edgarton. Pick it up. She began again, stairstepping with free weights. The most effective cardio exercise for a small space. She did 120 before collapsing onto the floor.

Get up, Edgarton. Do you want to die down here? Pick up those feet! Move!

Then she was transported back to the training course in Russia, feeling the mud and sweat. She’d trained for a year, her last year on Earth. Knees pumping, feet hopping, she’d run across fields laced with live land mines. Sparred with killers. Rappelled down mountains. Parachuted in Siberia, Africa, and Guam.

She’d used every kind of weapon from hand-held missiles to garrotes. Learned more about computers than she thought possible. Piloted a ship and flown a plane.

And then she had put on a ball gown and brought the general to his knees with her loveliness. None of her competitors could do that.

She had one disadvantage.

“I know I’m forty-one,” she’d told the general when she convinced him to take her into the bunker. “But women in my family have healthy babies into their fifties. Look.” She had shown him the records. “I can repopulate the Earth better than those little girls.”

She ended up frozen next to the general, the prototype female of the new age.

You won, Edgarton, but it’s not over. Where did Jeremy store the data? She paced in front of the computer, kicking a trash container in frustration.

A trash container? She flew to the keyboard, double clicked on the trash and went through the items it contained. The contents of Jeremy’s computer were in the trash, stored in a huge file labeled “Hermitage Academy.” Simple but very effective. She never would have looked there. Where were the frequencies to which he’d broadcast? Under “Letters to Mom.” The file had a mish-mash of numbers. That had to be it, but how could she interpret the mess?

She ran a couple of statistical programs, resulting in something interesting: another bell-shaped curve like the one she’d produced from the data she’d found originally. She compared the two diagrams.

Shit! Shit! Shit! They were the
same
diagram. All of her work had brought her no closer to a solution. Why was he so damn secretive?

Furious, Veronica stalked off to the gym locker and set up targets at the end of the bunker. She pulled out one of the air pistols.

She aimed the gun carefully and squeezed the trigger. Perfect. She’d been a markswoman since childhood. Her father liked to hunt. He taught her to shoot. She took another shot, and another. Another. Again.

When her fingers were so tired she could barely unwrap them from the pistol’s grip, she collected the targets. Round concentric circles. She noticed the lower half of the circles. They formed smiley faces. Lower in the middle than each side. The opposite of the bell-shaped curve formed by Jeremy’s frequencies. Inverted bell curves. Her eyes widened.

That was it! Jeremy had reversed the number of times he’d broadcast to each location. The frequencies he’d used most were not those stacked in the middle of the bell, they were the outliers! That was perfect Jeremy.

She went to the computer and flipped the distribution of the data she’d created. Another bell-shaped curve appeared, this one showing completely different most-used coordinates. That’s why she hadn’t heard from the golden planet. They didn’t get her message.

Now all she needed was the password so she could broadcast. She had one try left before the computer locked up.

She sprawled in the opening to the storage container, defeated. What would Jeremy use as a password? He liked funny things, or enigmatic things. People. Friends. Places.

Would he use Hermitage Academy? His school. No. He hated it. Henry Henderson. Maybe. Henry and Lena had cared for him since birth. Would it be Henry and Lena? Or H. Henderson? What about Arthur? His driver/bodyguard Arthur Romero was a good friend. Jeremy might use his name. The estate? Piermont Manor? Would he use that?

Chaz Edgarton—his father? No. Jeremy hated him. How about the general? He
really
hated him.

Get up and move, Edgarton. Move. Work it. Jump. She pulled out a jump rope. Taggety, taggety, taggety. The rope ticked away the cycles. It flew over her head, under her feet. Taggety, taggety, taggety. She did tricks, crossing the rope before her. Behind her. Taggety, taggety. The sound echoed from the bunker’s cement surfaces.

A smile came to Veronica’s lips; she was really good at jump rope. She’d shown off in front of Jeremy a few times. His eyes had opened wide and he smiled, unable to believe that his mother could do anything athletic. He’d looked at her with love on those occasions, so different from his usual suspicion.

It came like a flash—
her
name was the password. She was the most enigmatic thing in Jeremy’s universe. He loved her and hated her, wanted to be close to her and couldn’t stand being around her. Veronica Piermont Edgarton.

Veronica took a deep breath and set the machine to broadcast her taped communication to the new coordinates. A password box came up.