56 | FULL-FRONTAL ASSAULT
“Well, that’s it, then. We’re fried,” Dodge said. “She’s beaten it.”
“There’s one thing we haven’t tried,” Sam said, staring at the neuro-headset hanging off the desk by its cable. “What if we went neuro? Went in all guns blazing and went for the jugular. Full-frontal assault.”
“No way,” Dodge said. “You stick that neuro-headset on your noggin and she’ll pass your brain over the bulk-eraser, say thank you very much, and spend the rest of the day playing ping-pong with her jumbo jets.”
“Not if we went in without the browser,” Sam said.
Another explosion from outside rattled the door.
“You’re stark ravin’,” Dodge said.
“Think about it,” Sam insisted. “We go in to do battle with Ursula, and it’s not a fair fight. She can see the whole of the network—she is the network—while we go in with four-sided blinkers on. All we can see is the tiny window that the browser allows us to see. How can we fight her when we are fighting in the dark wearing a blindfold with just a pinhole through it?”
“There’s a reason for that,” Dodge said. “Neuro-connecting without a browser would be like trying to download the entire Internet onto a laptop computer. Your brain would explode without any help from Ursula.”
The door to the control center was flung open, and Jackson burst in, a radio held to his ear, his face streaked with blood.
“B-2 bombers are in the defensive zone. We estimate three minutes to bombs-free. When’s this virus of yours going to kick in, guys?”
“It ain’t going to happen,” Dodge said.
“We’ve got to go neuro,” Sam said. “No browser, just freeboard right into the Internet.”
“You do, you die,” Dodge said.
“Either way, same, same,” Sam said. “Let’s at least go out fighting.”
“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Jackson shouted. “We have less than three minutes before a nuclear holocaust!”
Dodge said, “We’re trying one last thing. If it works, you’ll know about it. If it don’t … well, you’ll know about that too.”
His fingers were already flying across the keyboard. “We need to leave the core transmission systems open,” he said. “Just shut down the protocol stack to prevent the execution of the browser DLLs.”
Jackson turned away and fired at something out of sight.
“Whatever you’re doing, do it now. We can’t hold them any longer!” he said.
Three soldiers joined him, aiming and firing their weapons out through the open door of the control room.
“Let’s give it a burst, then,” Dodge said.
Sam reached for the headset, but a viselike grip caught his arm.
“I was talking about me, not you,” Dodge said.
Sam said, “But …”
Dodge had already taken the headset and was pulling it down over his head.
“But nothing,” he said, and plugged it in.
The effect was instantaneous. It was as if he had stuck a wet finger into an electrical outlet. In a way, he had. Except it was his brain, not a finger. And it was not an electrical outlet. It was the entire neuro-network, millions of brains all intertwined, plus the vast database that was the Internet itself.
Dodge’s body jolted as if under a massive electrical shock, and his eyelids began to blink, impossibly fast. His eyes rolled back in his head, showing only the whites, and his mouth fell open, emitting a harsh gagging sound. His fingers splayed outward, bending back on themselves like the branches of a small tree in the wind, and his hands brushed feebly at his head, uselessly scraping at the headset with the insides of his wrists, trying to unseat it.
Sam reached for the plug but it was already too late.
Dodge’s head fell forward, cracking on the front desk of the control panel. His eyes slowly rolled back to center, and the stretched tendons in his body began to relax. The horrible gagging sound stopped also, for which Sam was grateful. It was a hideous, stomach-turning sound.
Dodge sat on the chair, slumped forward onto the desk, his breathing barely discernible. Blood from a cut on his head ran red fingers across the biohazard tattoo on his forehead.
“We’re getting an unload signal.” Jackson still had the radio to his ear, and his voice was frantic. “Oh my God, they’ve opened the bomb bays.”
There was a sudden explosion by the doorway, and one of the soldiers was lifted bodily and hurled backward by the blast, flying across the room behind them.
Sam snatched the headset from Dodge’s lifeless form and jammed it down harshly over his own head.
“Bomb release, bomb release,” he heard Jackson scream, far, far away. “Multiple inbound nukes!”
Sam shut his eyes.