Ruban knew all this already, of course. Subhas had explained the practical implications of the formula to him and Simani during their meeting on Emancipation Day, if not all the technical details. But as the doctor spoke, he couldn’t help but feel his heart hammering in his chest, his blood buzzing with anticipation in his veins at the thought of having such a weapon in his hands. Of holding it between his fingers as he drove it through the heart of an attacking Aeriel, watching the creature crumple at his feet like a discarded rag doll.
Glancing sideways at Ashwin, he saw that the younger man had gone a little green around the gills. Well, he supposed even seasoned fighters could sometimes be made uncomfortable by cold-blooded descriptions of graphic violence, and the Zainian was barely more than a kid, for all his secret Aeriel-killing techniques. Turning his attention back towards the doctor, Ruban frowned. “Everything isn’t going according to plan, is it though, Dr. Visht? The Supreme Court itself has ordered the IAW to look into the rumours of an impending Aeriel attack on SifCo. It can’t all be nothing,” he said, deliberately goading.
Visht snorted. “Oh please. People who say these kinds of things are half-witted idiots that don’t know what they’re talking about.” He stood up and walked over to one of the wooden chests, withdrawing a jingling bunch of keys from one of its drawers. Walking back to his table, he chose one of the keys and used it to open the bottom right drawer of the desk. When he straightened once more, Ruban saw that the doctor had a small black disk in his hand, a little under the size of his palm. This he put on the table before his visitors, leaning back into his chair with an air of satisfaction.
“This is the disk containing the formula. And if it were to be stolen or destroyed – which is very unlikely, considering our security measures – I daresay we would face some minor problems, a little delay in the inevitable, perhaps. The formula will still be there. It is stored, in fragments, in various locations and systems across the country. It would take some time to reassemble all of that and start work once again from where we left off, as this is currently the only full copy of the entire formula in existence.
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“But the thing is, even if somebody did manage to steal it, this disk would be less than useless to the thief. The formula in it is buried under layers upon layers of encryptions and codes, created by different programmers working for various organisations across the world, most of whom had no idea about the existence of any of the others. Only about five or six people at the topmost echelons of the government and of SifCo itself have the key to decrypt even part of the code. And the thief would need at least two of them to cooperate with him in order to recover anything of value from this disk. Now, short of a hostile Aeriel takeover of our government within the next few months, I don’t see how that could happen. Do you? So, you tell me, Mr. Kinoh, why would anyone go through that much trouble to get their hands on what will essentially be a useless scrap of metal outside this building?”
Before Ruban could answer, however, a searing flash of lightning cut across the stormy sky outside, followed by an ear-splitting crack of thunder. As the trio looked out of the window, momentarily distracted, a fireball from the heavens seemed to crash into the smaller west wing of the facility, escalating into a deafening explosion followed by the horrified screams of those in the vicinity.
Before he could even properly register what was happening, Ruban was on his feet, running towards the exit, his sifblade in his hand. As Ashwin rose to follow him out, Dr. Visht called after them, his voice fearful: “Is it Aeriels?”
“Yes,” Ashwin replied.