Isle of Man (The Park Service Trilogy #2) by Ryan Winfield Read Free Book Online Page A

whitecoats.”
    “He’s not upset about the seals,” I say.
    Jimmy shakes his head and mumbles: “What in the hell’s wrong with you people?”
    “I’m sorry,” the professor says, “I didn’t mean to ...”
    “Let’s just see if we can control the drones,” Hannah says.
    The professor hangs his head and approaches the panel of controls, mumbling as he types commands into the keyboard. “I didn’t mean to upset anyone. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Holy shrimp in the sea, there’s nobody stupider than me.”
    Red letters pop on the screens:
    COMMAND POST DEACTIVATED
SITREP MONITORING ONLY
    “Oh, piffle!” He slams his hand down on the keyboard. “No good. No good at all.”
    “We’re locked out?” Hannah asks.
    “It appears so, young lady,” he says. “Flood triggered the emergency system. Just as Radcliffe planned it to, I’m sure. The command and control lines are severed.”
    “What does that mean?” I ask.
    “It means that the drones are now operating autonomously with their own internal software systems. They’ll continue to execute their mission. All we can do is watch.”
    “How many can there be?” I ask.
    “Many thousands of them,” the professor answers. “We’ve substantially increased the fleet over the years to cover more ground as ... well, as populations thinned.”
    “Don’t candy-coat it,” I say. “You mean as you killed more people.” The professor nods, apparently untroubled by, or at least unwilling to refute, my statement. I continue, “They can’t possibly run on their own forever, can they? How long?”
    “No,” the professor replies. “But they can operate in the theater for many years. The drones have solar skins and electric engines, and they’re loaded with enough traditional munitions to perform many hundreds of kills each. They have backup lasers that are of reduced effect but can still incinerate a biped from quite a distance. The ships will last even longer.”
    “Can we use the drones here to target the other drones?”
    “We might see what’s left in the hangar,” he says. “But when Eden caught fire they flew most of them as a precaution. And even if there are any left, and even if they’re salvageable, I doubt we could launch them with the system on lockdown, let alone program a new mission.”
    “What about the submarine then?” I ask.
    “Research vessel,” he says. “The weapons on board are strictly defensive. We didn’t bother maintaining the fleet of ballistic submarines we found here, and they’ve long since been scuttled ... them being of little use in targeting ... ,” he pauses to look at Jimmy, “... ahem, well you know.”
    “But there must be some way to wrestle back control of the drones,” I say. “Some way to reset the system, maybe?”
    The professor covers his eyes with his fingers as if reading something written there. He inhales a long, deep breath, and when he removes his hands his bushy eyebrows are raise above wide, staring eyes.
    “We might try reloading the mastercode.”
    “What mastercode?” Hannah asks.
    “The software that runs the system,” the professor says. “But we’d need to get it first.”
    “Okay,” I say. “Where is it?”
    “In the basement.”
    “There’s a basement here?” Hannah asks.
    “Not here,” he says.
    “Then where?”
    “Holocene II.”
    “That’s perfect,” I say. “We need to free them anyway.”
    The professor jolts back so fast he bangs his head against the wall.
    “Free them?” he asks, rubbing the back of his head. “What in the name of science has gotten into you?”
    “Nothing’s gotten into me,” I say. “It simply isn’t right to keep them imprisoned down there.”
    “But they’re happy,” he says, a confused look on his face. “They have everything they need. They even have Eden to look forward to. Or at least they did. You can’t take their ignorance away from them. What right have you? You can’t burden them with the reality of their