She smiled, coldly, then added to his thought, “And e-mail is going to be out, as well. If they can hack comms from a navy boat in the middle of the ocean, they can certainly read our e-mails. In fact, to be safe, we are going to have to stop using any PC that is connected to the net, altogether.”

They looked at each other. They had found salvation from their grief in seeking revenge. They would find a way to fight this.

“So I guess we’re not going to hand this off to ‘people more powerful than ourselves’?” Neal quoted her, a small, humorless smile edging at his lips.

“Those morons? Never.”

They chuckled for the first time since it had all happened, and then Neal went on, “OK, so what are we going to tell the admiral and his friends? They are going to want an explanation.”

Chapter 19: Conference of Equals

Since their arrival in orbit, the four satellite-based supercomputers had been constantly updating all eight operatives on the progress of the mission, while also monitoring their work down on the planet’s surface.

After using devices like the crocodile clip to provide temporary connections to get the Agents in place, each operative had hidden their main subspace relays and proceeded to start integrating with their various target nations.

Leaving their relays behind had meant that they were unable to send significant amounts of information to the hub satellites in return until they were able to collect their relays and, like Lana Wilson, move them to more permanent locations.

In case of emergency, they were able to use small lasers aimed upward at the passing satellites to communicate covertly. But this method was cumbersome and limited, especially when compared to the instantaneously connected subspace tweeter that all their systems were designed around.

In the interim, most of them had buried the black boxes in fields near the military bases they needed to be billeted at for the first stage of their naturalization.

This was the case for Agents Lana Wilson in America, Preeti Parikh in India and Pei Leong-Lam in China, the same being true for the Agents in Russia, England, and Israel.

In France, Jean-Paul Merard had buried his relay in a vineyard, leading to the unfortunate if unavoidable death of the vintner, and forcing the Agent to wait several additional weeks for the police to clear the area before collecting it once more.

Shahim Al Khazar, on the other hand, was unique in that his orders were not to infiltrate a military or government organization at all. The political instability in Pakistan had led to the decision that it would be easier to nullify their military’s threat by joining and helping the extremist forces in the mountains than from within the rigidly structured military itself.