The Tau Ceti Agenda

October 31, 2388 AD

Sol System; Orlando, Florida

Saturday, 5:35 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

"Marine One is across the bridge from Tomorrowland in the open area in front of Cinderella's castle, sir," Kootie informed his boss. "About two hundred meters that way." Kootie pointed along the walkway that wound around the castle that had for centuries been an icon of American family entertainment.

"Let's move and stay on your toes," Thomas ordered. He stood directly in front of President Moore while Clay sandwiched in behind him. The president held his daughter's right hand, while Sehera held her left. The immunobooster was doing its job and Deanna's arm was mostly healed now.

Kootie took the right flank, and several other agents took up post around them. The group walked at such a fast pace that Deanna had to take several running steps every few walking steps to keep up. She never complained.

Thomas, Abigail has notified me that the bandwidth in the local area has just filled. HQ is still trying to understand what that means. Abigail also says that the signal-to-noise ratio has just gone through the roof, Tammie warned him.

What does that mean, Tammie?

If the SNR has increased within the bandwidth of the LAN, that could only mean that there is an increase in encrypted communication signals within it. Abigail says that the same thing happened when the ride was taken over, Tammie explained.

"Okay, everybody, let's pick up the pace," Thomas said. "Dee, if we're going too fast for you, Clay will carry you."

"I can run faster than Clay, Thomas!" Deanna challenged.

"That's the spirit, honey." Sehera smiled.

The walkway began to wind through some ornamental shrubbery and trees. One of the shrubs had a particular likeness to a certain famous little wooden boy while another looked like a flying elephant. Thomas noticed that the trees directly across from them near Frontierland were beginning to sway as if a breeze were picking up, and then suddenly a hovercar shaped like a magic carpet whirred through the vegetation, scattering leaves and flowering blossoms asunder. The magic-carpet-ride car was large enough to hold two adults in front and in back and most likely used the same type of hovercar propulsion that the Andromeda Invasion ride had used. The large plastic hovercar accelerated way beyond the safety protocol speed it had been designed for, and like a guided missile, it collided with Marine One.

"Everybody down!" Thomas turned and pushed the president to the ground and crawled on top of him, using himself as a shield. Clay and several others did the same for Deanna and Sehera.

The magic carpet crunched like an accordion against the armor of the president's aircraft. The plastic fuselage of the amusement park ride didn't make a dent in the armor, but it managed to push the hovercraft up on one skid from the force of the impact. Marine One fell back on all three skids just as the power pack of the magic carpet ride exploded, sending multicolored shrapnel in all directions. A jagged composite material piece of the carpet's tassel penetrated the neck of one of the men standing guard around the vehicle. The shrapnel entered his neck from the side, ripping through his esophagus and the major arteries. He died almost instantly as a spray of bright red blood glinted in a ray of the rising Florida sun.

The rest of the guards around the vehicle had little time to react. A second carpet zoomed overhead and hit the president's hovercraft again. This time the trajectory of the carpet seemed more calculated, and it swooped down low enough just before impact to sandwich several of the other guards, killing them rather efficiently. The few that survived were hammered by third, fourth, and fifth carpets. Finally, a squadron of slightly larger hovercars shaped like flying elephants with gigantic ears swarmed in from Fantasyland behind them and collided with the vehicle, at once inflicting enough damage to topple Marine One up and over, landing completely upside down on a nearby sidewalk. A final car hit the underbelly, tearing through several power conduits of the vehicle. Sparks and hydraulic fluids spilled out from multiple torn junctions in an array of electric colors and goopy liquids. The electrical system flashed bright white with just enough heat in the right direction to trigger the volatile liquids to flame. The lift began to smolder and then slowly burn. Pieces of the plastic from the hovercars began to flicker from the heat and distort as the surface charred and melted.

"Marine One, do you copy?" Thomas called over the tac-net.

"Roger that. Pilot and copilot are okay but I don't think we'll be able to roll over or to pull out from under this pile of debris," the pilot replied. "We're dead in the water here."

"Hang in there, Marine One. You are on fire and you need to get out!" Thomas replied.

"Negative. We're trapped unless somebody can roll this thing over."

"Damnit!" Thomas wanted to help them, but his priority was the president. He needed his detail for that mission.

"We should try to help them, Thomas," President Moore told him.

"I'm sorry, sir, but that isn't our protocol. We have to protect you first and foremost, and moving out there could be a trap."

At that point the discussion was moot, as a third wave of flying vehicles crashed into the flaming underbelly of Marine One. The impact sent even more fluid spurting from the hydraulic systems, which in turn fueled the already growing flames. Soon, the hovercraft reached a critical flashpoint and burst into roiling orange flames. Finally, it exploded as the ordnance on board must have reached some critical temperature. The explosion flung debris high into the air across the central fountain on Main Street. There was little left of the president's vehicle or the crumpled amusement park hovercars.

"HQ! HQ! This is a full-scale attack alert. The president is under attack and Marine One is down! I repeat Marine One is down! We need immediate backup and extraction. President is in jeopardy!" Thomas called over the net. He pulled one of the other agents from the periphery over the pile to cover the president. Then Thomas crawled forward to make a better assessment of the situation.

Tammie, give me the virtual map of the Magic Kingdom, he thought. A virtual three-dimensional map appeared around his head.

Done.

Now, overlay any free-flying coaster rides and their locations. Can you track them by any means? Thomas longed for his armored e-suit and all the sensors and instruments that had been available to him as a marine. The lidar or the quantum membrane (QM) sensor alone would be enough to track the flying fantasy cars.

I'm not sure how, Thomas. I'll ask Abigail to think about it.

Okay.

Thomas got his bearings straight from the virtual map and from simply looking around the park. They were on the path between Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, between Storytime with Belle and the Cosmic Starlight Café. A quick zoom in on the virtual map showed that Storytime with Belle was in a small amphitheater surrounded by a rock wall. It would be pretty good cover, and they were only about twenty meters or so from it.

Okay, we are moving here! Thomas ordered via the DTM com-net. He had the map highlight the path to all the agents and to the First Family—all but Sehera, that is. The First Lady had refused to have an AIC as long as he had ever known her, but she was good at taking visual and verbal cues. She also wore a dermal ear transceiver. Although she didn't have an AI inside her head, she did have a communication device there.

Move! Thomas ordered, leading the way around the rock wall to the small outdoor theater.

"Groundcrew One, be advised that backup has been deployed. ETA is four minutes."

"Roger that, HQ!"

Mr. President, I think I've figured out a way to track the flying vehicles, Abigail alerted her human counterpart.

How? the president thought to his AIC. She was one of the smartest AICs anyone had ever heard of and had helped him through scrapes that dated back nearly four decades. Moore had learned that when Abigail had advice, he needed to listen to it.

There are several Internet hubs scattered across the park. I'm connected to each of them. Any motion within the park creates multi-path reflections between us and those hubs. I've generated some algorithms that have allowed me to track the motion based on the connection speeds I have with the Internet at each of these hubs. In essence, I'm using the wireless routers of the park like multi-path radars, Abigail informed.

So, you are tracking them now? the president asked.

Yes, his AIC replied.

Relay that info to the security detail, Abigail.

Already did, Mr. President.

Good girl. Give me a DTM view of the park with overlays of the enemy movement.

Yes, sir.

A transparent three-dimensional view of the Magic Kingdom filled his mind with red dots moving in the distance and a cluster of blue dots on top of his location in the map. Moore noticed that the red tracks were more or less setting up a perimeter on the edge of the park's boundaries. Rather than attacking, they were circling like a pack of wolves trapping an injured cow.

Abigail, is Thomas seeing this map?

Yes, Mr. President. They have the multi-path track live now, she said.

"Thomas, give me a gun," Moore ordered his bodyguard.

"Mr. President, we can handle this," Thomas replied, although Moore was certain that the marine knew better than to argue. Moore had a way of getting things done the way he wanted them done. Moore had been in combat with Thomas and didn't expect that there was apprehension on Thomas' part about handing a civilian a gun. It was probably more of an insult to the marine that the president feared that they couldn't protect him and his family.

"Thomas, I understand that you are looking at the same virtual map that I am now. We are outnumbered, and I think there is somebody putting up a no-fly zone around the park. Give me a gun."

"Alexander, are you sure you want to make yourself a target?" the First Lady asked. Some of the times when the president wouldn't listen to his bodyguard service, he would listen to his wife. Some of the times he did, but it was clear that today wasn't going to be one of those times.

"Better me than you," he commented with a very political smile. Then Moore reached out a hand toward his guard.

"Oh hell." Thomas shrugged. "Agent Browning, give me your railpistol."

"Sir?" the short muscular female agent kneeling behind the brick lamppost at the edge of the amphitheater replied.

"Now." Thomas held eye contact with the president.

"Yes, sir." The agent reached behind her and pulled a pistol from her waistband holster and tossed it over to Thomas. "Good thing I carry a spare," she said, and reached inside her skirt and patted the railpistol in her garter for comfort. Instinctively, she also checked the extra M-blasters strapped under her cleavage armor.

"Here you go, Mr. President. With all due respect, sir, don't use it unless you have to. No need to make a target out of yourself." Thomas handed the pistol to President Moore.

"Thanks, Thomas. What's your plan for getting us out of here?" Moore asked.

"I say we take cover here and wait for the backup. Three minutes away by now." Thomas checked his watch.

"This is good immediate cover, but I'd prefer someplace less exposed," the president added.

"Thomas, we could make a dash for the Starlight Café," Clay replied.

"Very well, let's make a move down the street to the restaura—" Thomas started but flinched as he was interrupted by railgun fire spitapping into the brick wall above their heads. He reflexively pushed the president back down and covered him.

"Thomas, where the hell did that come from?" Moore scanned the map in his head for red dots, but all the red dots were in the air and not in the direction of the railgun fire.

Abigail, what the hell is going on?

One moment, sir. I didn't think about ground movement. Let me adjust the algorithm . . . there.

"Holy shit!" Moore gasped as the map flashed red dots all around them. Whatever was controlling the flying vehicles of Disney World had also commandeered the robot theme park creatures. Moore pushed Thomas up enough so that he could see over the pile of bodyguards. About one hundred meters across the river and farther down Main Street were railgun-toting cowboys and cowgirls, several aquatic creatures, and two aliens from Andromeda. "Thomas, we're being flanked! Get the hell off of me."

"Sir." Thomas reluctantly rolled off the president and took a knee very close to him. If things got bad, Moore suspected that the marine would probably try to tackle him and forcefully cover him. The thought sort of tickled Alexander, since he was far bigger than the marine, and following that long, horrific day on Mars, the president had made it a point to keep in really good fighting shape. Of course, Thomas knew this since he had been the one the president had been sparring with on a regular basis.

"Look over there, toward Mickey's Toontown Fair and also back toward Tomorrowland. The robots are hemming us in here." Moore crawled toward the wall of the amphitheater entrance to get a better vantage point. The theme park creatures were surrounding them. "How the hell did they get armed?" the president pondered.

"This is like a nightmare gone nuts," Sehera added as more railgun fire pitted the brick wall above them. "At least they're not very good shots."

"Good shots or not, it only takes one lucky one to ruin your day," Clay warned—a lesson he'd learned several times over from his combat experience on Triton and Mars.

"Thomas, I don't know about you, but I don't like getting shot at, even if they can't seem to hit a bull in the butt with a base fiddle." Moore raised his pistol and released several hypervelocity rounds over the wall at the robots to emphasize his Southern euphemism, which he topped off with a few choice nonpresidential phrases. One of the rounds separated a toy soldier's right arm from the torso with a shower of sparks, and the red and white robot subsequently shut down, standing in place. The other robot theme creatures continued their advance. An advancing line of Halloween monsters, godmothers, sprites, pixies, animals, aliens, cartoon characters, and even dead presidents pressed toward them, firing automated HVARs as they plodded along.

"Well, what are y'all waiting for?" Moore asked the agents. "Shoot the damned things."

"You heard the president, fire!" Thomas ordered.

The security detail spread out along the perimeter of the Storytime with Belle amphitheater and started to pick targets. As hypervelocity rounds penetrated the robots, they typically would shut down. The theme park robots had been designed for lifelike realism, not for combat, and so the redundancy systems were not designed to withstand having major parts of their circuitry gutted by railgun bullets.

What the robots lacked in toughness, they made up for in numbers. More than seventy strange Disney characters marched toward them from all different directions, one after the other, and there seemed to be no end to the supply of them. The president and his guards would take an advancing line of them down, only for it to be followed by several more. The scene was as abstract as anything out of the old zombie movies from centuries past where the undead just kept coming in wave after wave.

Abigail, where is the evac team?

Less than a minute away, sir.

Just in case, Abigail, you might alert our backup plan.

I've already done that, Mr. President.

"Thomas, I'm running low on ammo, and there has to be more than a thousand red dots on the map!" Alexander checked the clip readout. The little green light displayed the number seventeen. Judging by the many fairy-tale creatures directly in his line of fire and across the river in front of them, the president knew that there were many times that.

"Here, sir," one of the other agents replied, handing him a clip.

"Thanks." Moore nodded at the young woman and then went back to firing his weapon. With each shot, he carefully chose a target from the virtual projection in his mind, and then he raised and fired, more often than not dropping an attacker. So far there had been no casualties in their group, other than those at the Marine One site. The robots seemed to have a problem aiming their weapons at range, and Moore and the bodyguards were keeping them at bay for the time being.

Somehow, whoever was controlling the theme park rides and robots had good intel, because the red dots of the flying vehicles began shifting formations and scattering into less of a sentry pattern and more into an attack pattern. The red flying forces in the virtual map in Moore's head scattered across the Disney World footprint, and in every single case they stayed in groups of two.

They're flying with wingmen, Moore thought to his AIC.

Amazing. It does appear that way, sir.

They must have detected our evac team. Abigail relayed the information to the agents in order to protect them and then continued to monitor the local wireless traffic for further leads.

"Thomas," Moore called to his bodyguard over the M-blaster and railgun noise.

"Yes, sir?"

"Do you have a plan if our backup can't stabilize the situation?"

"I'm working on it, Mr. President, but I don't think it will come to that." Thomas looked upward and nodded toward a squadron of Marine FM-12 strike mecha zooming in from overhead. "I doubt there are enough flying elephants in the world to overpower a squadron of marines in fighting mecha!"

"Semper fi, sir," Clay added.

"Oorah," the once Major Moore replied. But then again, all marines knew that there was no such thing as a former marine.

"Keep your head down, Dee," Sehera scolded her preteen. The girl was so much like her father that it was all Sehera could do to keep her from trying to run out and kick one of the advancing robots in the crotch. Sehera kept her body on top of her daughter and wedged between the rock wall and the sidewalk on the back side of the amphitheater as far out of the action as they could get—which amounted to about three meters behind the others. One of the bodyguards stretched over the two of them with her weapons drawn but not firing. The president had ordered them not to draw attention to themselves.

"Listen to your mother, Miss Alexander. Now is not the time for you to be thinking of any action movie heroics," the agent reinforced the First Lady's scolding and emphasized the similarities between Dee and her father. "It would only take one hit from one of those railgun rounds to do a little girl in."

"That's not stopping Daddy! I want to help. I hate just hiding here like a coward."

"You're not hiding like a coward, Dee," Sehera said. "You're taking cover like a wise person should."

"I can shoot. Give me a gun. I wanna help like Dad. Why does he get to help and we don't?" Deanna squirmed against her bodyguard and her mother's grip. The twelve-year-old was most definitely her father made over. Sehera could hear the railgun rounds ionizing the rock wall all around them. There were strange-looking robots marching toward them and flying overhead shooting at them. Most twelve- year-olds would have been frightened out of their minds beyond reason. But Sehera frowned and kissed her daughter on the forehead, knowing that Dee was pissed off and not scared—just as Alexander had been so many years ago as a POW when they first met.

Moore had been tortured nearly to death and beyond what any human being should have had to endure. The only thing he had been afraid of then was dying before he could get up and impose vengeance upon the bastards who had been inflicting the pain upon him. Once Sehera had managed to help him escape, he didn't leave the Martian desert to return home; instead, he gathered his wits and a whole lot of ordnance and returned in a wake of Hell and damnation. The Separatist soldiers at the encampment far outnumbered him, but they didn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of stopping him.

Sehera could see that same look on her daughter's face. Dee would have her vengeance for ruining her one and only trip to Disney World. And Heaven help the poor bastards if she ever got loose on them.

"If Dad can do it, so can I!" she resounded defiantly.

"Sweetheart, you will stay put and do what we tell you, and that is enough of that for now. The Secret Service is here to protect us."

"Then why is Daddy fighting?" The tone in Deanna's voice rang true. The three of them looked across the theater benches to see the president rising to fire a handgun several rounds and then duck down for cover behind the rock wall.

"Because, Dee, he is Alexander Moore." Sehera hung her head. There was just no other explanation that would suffice.