Virus Attack (19 page)

Trojan dashed over to him and pulled one of Toby's hands free. Her grip was excruciating—but the pain was forgotten as he looked past her. She frowned and followed his gaze. Pete was crouched, inverted, on the booster rocket above them.

He grinned wickedly and made the funniest comment of his life—which was lost to the wind and roaring engines—before hurling an ice ball at Trojan. It hit her cape and bounced off, but it was strong enough to
make her lose her balance. She dropped and found herself hanging from the opposite side of the delta wing from Toby.

Toby felt his grip weakening, but he knew if he could just hold on, his friend would come to his rescue. Then the entire shuttle vibrated and a series of explosions sounded.

The rocket booster had been jettisoned.

With Pete still clinging to it.

Toby watched Pete's face grow smaller as the booster peeled away, poised against the curving planet, falling back to earth.

His attention was torn back to the shuttle's nose as air friction caused it to glow. Then flames erupted across it and, seconds later, across the wing edge he was clinging to. He felt a stab of pain as the flames flickered across his hands. He wondered why the power that was keeping him alive at such oxygen-depleted altitude was not insulating him from the heat. The pain was so intense that he was forced to let go.

Toby fell.

He watched as Trojan slipped from the wing too and vanished beneath the folds of her cape, which disappeared into nothingness.

The roar of the wind deafened him, and his back took the brunt of the air pressure. He saw that the shuttle was now a flaming dart accelerating away,
powered by its three orbital maneuvering system boosters on the rear.

Toby felt an odd sense of calm. He was so high that he would be falling for several minutes before he hit the earth. Their mission had failed.

He rolled onto his front; whatever shielding power allowed him to breathe and survive the g-forces was still active, as the air did not rip out his lungs as he fell. He kicked forward, intending to fly and find Pete before they landed.

Nothing happened.

He tried again, but there was no glimmer of him being able to control his descent. Now feeling panic for the very first time, Toby realized that his powers of flight had also abandoned him.

Pete was angry that they had failed to stop the shuttle—he had been calculating a plan just as the Energia rocket had detached and ruined everything. He watched the shuttle helplessly as he fell away from it, riding the booster toward the ground.

He had seen enough shuttle launches on TV to know that a parachute would be deployed to bring the booster, and himself, safely to earth. He only cursed his luck that Basilisk had slipped through his fingers.

Pete took in the rare view from such a high altitude.
It was only then that he noticed something else in the sky. Pete had to concentrate hard, but he was sure the dot was either Trojan or Toby. The shuttle had been traveling so fast that the figure must be miles away. Without pausing to think, Pete leaped from the booster and soared effortlessly through the air.

He willed himself to fly faster, aiming ahead of the falling figure to intercept it. He decided that if it was Trojan, he would just let her fall. His conscience reminded him that the fall would splatter her. But before he could dwell on any more macabre thoughts, he identified the figure as Toby and wondered why he wasn't flying.

Pete matched pace with Toby, who looked like a parachutist.

“Great view, huh?” It was lame, but it was all Pete could think of to avoid talking about their recent defeat.

“Fantastic!” Toby screamed. “Wish I had a camera with me.” He stared at Pete, who didn't seem to get the danger he was in. Toby prompted him. “Well?”

“What?”

“Aren't you going to ask me why I'm free-falling?”

“Quickest way down?”

Toby bit back a curse. Now wouldn't be the best time for the friends to fight. “No, Pete. I've lost my powers. I can't fly.”

“Ah … that's a big problem.”

Toby felt like punching Pete, but restrained himself. “So, a little help? That would be … wonderful.”

The expression on his friend's face reminded Pete that this was a potentially fatal situation. The ground was beginning to form real definition, with roads and railway tracks becoming visible. Luckily they could still see the vapor trail left by the Buran shuttle, leading to Mission Control.

Pete swooped under Toby, as if he were about to offer him a piggyback ride.

“Grab my shoulders and hold on.”

Pete felt Toby grip his shoulders so hard that just a little more pressure would have broken a bone. He banked away, and hoped that Toby's added weight wouldn't plunge them both to their deaths.

With no help from the crew, the Buran's computer system put the ship into orbit and Basilisk was finally free to float next to the commander.

“If you do as I say, then I have no problem with you all living out the rest of your lives. Do you understand?”

Commander Mather glanced behind him at his passengers in the payload bay. They had been slumped in their seats since Trojan had dealt with them, but the small monitors that tracked their heart and pulse rates bleeped rhythmically, indicating that they were
alive. The rest of his crew met his glance and gave curt nods.

“Very well,” said the commander. “If it gets you off my ship, what do you want?”

Basilisk reached over to a computer system and typed in a coordinate. “You will bring the shuttle around on this trajectory so that we can intercept a satellite.”

“Then what? You gonna spacewalk over to it?”

“There will be no need for such risks, Commander. Get us close enough so we can communicate directly through the shuttle's wireless network. Then you'll turn us around, and land right back on the ground. All in one piece.
All
of us alive.”

“That's it?” said the commander, perplexed. “You could have done that from the ground.”

“No we couldn't. This is a very
special
satellite.” Basilisk clapped his hands, making a sound like bricks clinking. “Come on! Time is of the essence.”

Pete opened his eyes and saw nothing but dust. Somewhere in the distance he could hear ambulance sirens. He blinked and looked around. He was lying at the end of a thousand-foot trench that he'd just gouged in the earth.

It had turned out that Toby's additional weight did make them lose altitude at a much faster rate than Pete was comfortable with. He had fought hard to approach
the ground at a gentle angle, but Toby had caused them to come in fast.

They overshot the launch complex at Baikonur and soared out into the surrounding rocky hills. At the very last moment, Toby had attempted to create a protective shield around them, but he only managed half a sphere around their feet. Pete had been able to twist around so they were descending feetfirst.

The shield acted like a snowboard as they hit the hillside at almost one hundred miles per hour. It gouged the earth, spitting rocks and debris in their wake. In the final few moments, the shield wavered as the powers glitched—turning the shield into ice that shattered underfoot. They tumbled the last couple of feet, picking up cuts and scratches. Pete was amazed that his glasses had survived.

Toby sat up next to him, dust turning his hair gray. He coughed. “Well, I won't be forgetting that experience any time soon!”

Both boys then broke into laughter, so hard that tears filled their eyes. By the time the base's four-wheel-drive ambulances had traversed the hills, the paramedics were surprised to find two crying, giggling boys. Lorna and Emily were in the back of one of the ambulances. Their concerned expressions immediately changed to ones of annoyance.

“You let them get away!” Lorna fumed.

Toby shook his head, still giggling. “It's not like we didn't try, Lorn.”

Lorna crossed her arms and her lips formed a pout. “Well, now Mr. Grimm is insisting we head straight to Mongolia. You have no time to clean up.”

Both boys stared at each other for the first time—the dust clung to them so it looked as if they'd both been dipped in flour. They pointed at one another and burst into laughter again.

Lorna shook her head irritably.
Boys
, she thought.

It took Commander Mather only a few hours to bring the Buran into a new orbit, and soon their instruments picked up the satellite gently revolving in its geosynchronous orbit; sunlight glistened off its golden heat shields, black solar panels, and the Hero Foundation's logo on its side.

Basilisk had left no calculation to chance, and ordered Commander Mather to bring the shuttle within thirty feet of the satellite. This close they could see it was the size of a van and it looked relatively new. Basilisk remotely accessed the satellite using the shuttle's systems; a function used by authorized crews to wirelessly and directly access satellites. He immediately hit the satellite's own firewall and handed the console over to Worm.

Worm was pleased to have a distraction. Floating in zero-g had made him throw up, and now the back of the payload bay was a no-go area because of the sea of floating awfulness.

He touched the computer screen and allowed the electrons forming his fingers to zip into the system. Once inside it was a simple case of blindly probing the software until he was allowed through into the satellite's operating system. He gritted his teeth at the pain.

When he closed his eyes, Worm could see the flow of data, like tiny cars flying through aerial roadways as they transferred data to and from ground stations. Basilisk had tried to explain he was seeing a rare and wonderful thing called “cyberspace”—an electronic realm few people would ever actually see.

Once Worm was done, he brought the satellite's firewall down, leaving it wide open to attack. Now it was Viral's turn. He had to create a virus that would not affect the shuttle's own systems, but would hitch a ride on the data pathway Worm had just opened and override the satellite, holding it in limbo until either he or Basilisk chose to bring it back online.

The virus had taken some planning and concentration to create. Viral had always known he could interact with protein threads and DNA strands within nature, enabling him to create the most devastating viruses ever seen on the planet. It was only at the end
of his teens that he realized that, with a bit of effort, he could manipulate electrons to form malignant computer viruses. His very first one had successfully crashed the world's stock market computers, sending global economies tumbling. The only drawback he had with his powers was that the viruses—whether physical or digital—were so destructive that they only had a life span of a few minutes before they tore themselves apart.

“Hurry!” grunted Worm. The pain in his fingers was becoming unbearable and he thought he was going to pass out.

“Okay, first code's going in.” Viral transferred his electronic bug with nothing more visible than a spark between his fingers and the screen.

Basilisk stared at the screen. The first part of the virus would ping the Foundation servers. The answer he got back would contain the location of the Foundation Headquarters—secret information that would be stored on the satellite, inaccessible from the ground.

Coordinates flashed up on the shuttle's screen. Basilisk laughed out loud.

“We have it! Well done!”

Viral grinned, revealing his stained teeth. “Easy. Now I'll insert the malware code to bring down their physical defenses.”

The villains were so wrapped up in the operation
that they didn't notice Commander Mather give a small gesture to his crew.

Viral was conjuring one last strand of contamination when the pilot unclipped a small metal medical kit. He brought it around with such force on the back of Viral's head that he was struck instantly unconscious and spun head over heels to the back of the payload bay, splashing into the floating vomit left by Worm.

Worm opened his mouth to speak but felt a strap loop around his fat neck and tighten to choke him. Rebecca Syms was behind him, her knee in the small of his back and screaming with exertion as she throttled the villain. With his concentration lost, the communications with the satellite were severed, with only part of Viral's code having seeped through.

Basilisk spun around and glared at Commander Mather, who threw a punch straight at him, but it didn't even faze the villain.

“You've made a terrible mistake, Commander.”

Commander Mather didn't listen—he braced himself against the control panel and used both feet to boot Basilisk in the chest. On earth, Basilisk's immense strength would render him immovable by any normal human. But the weightlessness robbed him of his advantage. Basilisk shot into the payload bay like a bullet. Rebecca Syms followed suit with Worm, tossing him into Basilisk.

The zero-g environment had given the normal humans an edge over the supervillains. Irenus Markov hit a button, and emergency decompression doors closed across the payload. The Russian's hand hovered over a button marked “airlock,” but Commander Mather stopped him.

“Markov, no! You'll jettison the passengers if you open the airlock. I need you to prepare for reentry
now
!”

The crew took their seats without question.

Basilisk was furious, but he had to contain his outrage, as he risked blowing a hole in the side of the shuttle if he blasted the partition. That would depressurize the entire ship, suck the oxygen into space and kill them all. The lack of gravity meant they could not detect if the shuttle was moving, but a slight tremor through the fuselage indicated the boosters had ignited.

Viral was still unconscious as Worm and Basilisk argued over strategies for breaking through the bulkhead door. Everything seemed too risky; this was one situation where their superpowers proved completely useless. At least they had the Foundation's location, and some of the code had been transferred into the satellite, hopefully damaging it enough to stay off-line.