The Last Second (A Brit in the FBI #6)(60)
In 2014, she bought her own house, a beautiful chateau she’d purchased and renovated in her spare time near their Lyon headquarters. She’d bought her own sensory deprivation flotation tank as well, and used it nightly to decompress and unwind and report to the Numen what she was thinking, what she was doing. If she was angry about something, they were angry along with her, if excited, they hummed and congratulated her. It was her favorite time of the day. She spoke of the insanity in space, so many satellites hovering over Earth, and they agreed, they hated the noise, the constant interference. She’d wondered aloud, “How can I quiet space so we can speak all the time rather than in my chamber?” And they said, You must find another way. And she knew that, spoke of it all the time to them, but she didn’t know how to do it yet.
She said to them in the blank darkness, “We’re a small company. It’s going to take time. We’re going to have to invent some of the mechanics for this, they don’t exist yet. We have to build, and test, and test some more. Development of this nature takes time.” But she knew the Numen were getting impatient because she was, too. “How do I do this, short of setting off some sort of nuclear blast to take out the grids—eliminate all the wretched noise so you can—” She stopped, whispered, “You were able to get past the stationary geosynchronous satellites. You came to me at the space station. But I see now it’s the space between the Earth and the space station that is too crowded to let you through. I know you are in need. This plan—this blast—it would be simple, really. A nuclear blast at, say, three hundred kilometers would send an electromagnetic pulse through the surrounding atmosphere. Depending on the yield produced by the bomb, the EMP would allow for a rather large area to be taken off the grid. But I have less chance of getting my hands on plutonium than I do moving up the manned program schedule.” What to do, what to do? What? They didn’t want to wait, she knew it.
She told Kiera about the Numen in 2014, her trusted Kiera, who loved her, believed in her, trusted her completely. Kiera was the closest thing Nevaeh had to a friend. She knew Kiera was not her intellectual equal, but she was dead serious about keeping Nevaeh safe, her shadow at all times. Wherever she was, Kiera was close by. Every time she glanced up, Kiera would go into motion, making sure she had everything she needed. Had their relationship bloomed into love? Nevaeh didn’t know, didn’t really care. Kiera made her happy.
After a few years of extraordinary discretion, Nevaeh decided it would be easier if Kiera moved into the chateau. They had separate rooms, and outwardly, nothing changed. Kiera was still her bodyguard by day. Now, she was there for her at night, too.
They dined together most evenings when Nevaeh was in France, and whenever Nevaeh got up to visit the deprivation pod, Kiera stood guard.
She swore nightly to the Numen she was working as hard, as fast as she could, and they listened, always listened. And agreed, yes, she was working hard. But she didn’t see any way to make Galactus’s manned spacecraft program move any quicker. It was already three years behind schedule, simply because the legitimate work was piling up. She sometimes felt getting back to space wasn’t ever going to happen.
It was Kiera who made her revisit the idea about the EMP.
It was a quiet winter’s night, with snow billowing across the estate and a fire roaring in the dining room grate. Over dinner and an excellent bottle of Bordeaux, Kiera unexpectedly began to talk about her past. She was from Ireland, which Nevaeh had known the moment they met, her lilt was a dead giveaway. She’d gotten into close protection because she was good with guns, good in a fight, had a double black belt in karate, and had mastered several other martial art disciplines. But that evening, gauzy with wine, she loosened up and talked more than she ever had, about things Nevaeh didn’t know—about her mother, who was in jail for bombing a supermarket in Kerry. Her father, who was dead by the hand of his rival. Admitted her greatest shame, and pride—her parents had been part of the IRA.
Fascinated, Nevaeh listened as Kiera talked long into the night of the hardships of being the child of freedom fighters. They’d taught her so much about how to survive. How to fight. The many moves to stay ahead of the police, the secret meetings in the middle of the night, of a child tracked and frightened, of the bombs she’d grown up around.
As it turned out, Kiera knew quite a bit about bombs.
Later, in the velvety darkness, as she was twined around her lover, the Numen came to Nevaeh’s dreams. It wasn’t a regular occurrence—they preferred to speak to her in the utter silent emptiness of the deprivation chamber—but in moments of duress or joy, they would appear, their voices great harmonies, merging into a single voice, and she told them about Kiera and how she knew all about bombs, and maybe she could help, and they agreed. Kiera knew about bombs, she could help.
Nevaeh woke the next morning with a plan. And she whispered to the Numen, “If I can’t come to you, then you can come to me. Let me tell you about it and you can tell me what you think.” And the Numen rejoiced and agreed it was the solution.
And that meant she and Kiera had to get their hands on some plutonium.
She could get nuclear material, she could get a bomb on a satellite. And because of Nevaeh’s genius, Galactus’s reusable rockets could take a satellite with the bomb aboard to space, a satellite she could program to be in exactly the right spot in orbit, where it would be detonated at the exact perfect time, forcing a massive electromagnetic pulse through the atmosphere and down to Earth, taking offline both satellites in orbit and the electrical grids across a continent. Everything she needed she could get, including the plutonium.