Chapter 13
Axel Smith
Carmichael stood outside the technician’s room, trying to decide whether to knock on the door. Axel Smith had always unnerved him.
Nobody knew anything of the superb technician, not even the Director, and the Director knew everything about everyone in the Order. When Smith arrived at the Order’s headquarters, he looked for all the world like the antagonist in that one ancient Sci-Fi movie—Sun Battles? Wormhole Fights? Star Wars, that was it—full-body black clothes, full-face mask, black cape, even a voice changer. Smith had been bold in his approach of the headquarters: he seemed to walk through the entire security system as easily as one might step around an obvious tripwire. The sentries tried to gun him down, but all of the turrets suffered simultaneous technical failure. Smith was untouchable. Smith was brilliant.
He had walked directly up to the intercom, had buzzed for the Director, and had said, in his gravelly, modified voice, “I’m applying for head technician.”
He had been immediately admitted to the Director’s office.
They had stayed in the office for hours. Nothing seemed to be getting done…until the power shut off. Everything in the tower had just died—phones, computers, holojectors, elevators, everything. It lasted for about twenty minutes, and then everything returned to normal. Smith and the Director walked out of the office, the Director obviously infuriated, Smith still wearing his expressionless mask, and walked to the thirteenth basement level, where everything electrical was monitored.
The next day, the former head technician, a subdued, scrawny man named Wilson, had been sent to Chamber, and Smith had replaced him. Every member of the Order feared and respected him; anyone who could frighten the Director that badly and not suffer his wrath was a force with which to be reckoned.
Hence, Carmichael’s hesitation. That, and the startling similarity between the respective intellectual prowesses of Smith and—
Carmichael’s line of thought was suddenly cut short when Smith’s deep voice spoke from the intercom outside his office door. “I know you’re there, Commander, and I know you don’t come down here just to chat. Although, God knows the scenery practically makes conversation in and of itself. Don’t you agree, Commander?”
Carmichael sighed inwardly. Smith’s unnatural sarcasm was probably his most distancing trait. “May I come in?”
“But of course, my dear Commander. You are always welcome here.”
Carmichael winced, then opened the door.
The main tech area was nothing special, just six rows of computers, three on each side of the door, with the testing area directly in front of the door. Carmichael hurried to Smith’s personal lab; he wanted this over with.
At first glance, Smith’s lab seemed to have a strange, looping paint job. On closer inspection, however, the loops were actually scribbled blueprints, formulas, and expressions. It made Carmichael feel he was in the home of a psychopath. Sometimes, he felt like he was right.
Smith sat at his desk, tinkering with metal, boxy object; his attempt at Drake’s so-called “FIR Traveler”. He always stayed long after all his inferiors had left to go to sleep. Not for the first time, Carmichael wondered if the man actually slept in his lab. Smith’s ever-present black, voluminous cloak billowed out behind him, fluttering in the breeze of a silent fan.
“May I help you?”
“It’s more of a matter of, will you accept a gift that should help your work along immensely?” Carmichael held the blueprints out at arm’s length.
Smith looked the plans over, then nodded approvingly. “They’ll do. You’re dismissed.”
For the second time that day, Carmichael rushed out of an office.
As soon as Carmichael left, smith spun in his chair to face his holojector screen. He ran a scan of the physicist’s documents, then began dragging and dropping equations into place, for the design of a scan of the planet’s surface for the otherworldly radiation released at the site of Drake’s lab. The Director was of the opinion that the release was due to the lab’s demise, but Smith knew otherwise. He knew that if he had a device capable of teleporting him from danger, even if it was unrefined, he would have gotten the hell out of there. If such a device was still in beta testing, it would surely leave behind a mark. Smith now had the means to search the entire planet for that mark.
Finally having entered the proper formula, Smith set the search radius to the United States and executed the program. A few minutes later, the scan was complete. A single, faded spot of red lay on the translucent blue partial globe: the location of Drake’s laboratory. Smith held his pinched fingers over the spot and spread them out, causing the map to zoom in on the still-fading radiation point.
As he watched, however, the spot suddenly flared up, glaring in his face. Smith flinched back, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily. He could only come up with one logical explanation: the doctor had come home.
Smith sent an alert directly to the Commander, thinking, I hope you know what you’re doing, Natey….