Lady Grace & the War for a New World (Earth's End Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

used the famous Veronica Edgarton voice, which had conquered almost the entire male gender and made her a broker in world power. Her cultured, upper-class voice was something that only a thousand years of genetics and upbringing could create.
    “I want to thank you so much for taking care of my son, Jeremy Edgarton, and his friends all these years. You were so good to respond to his pleas for help and lift him and his friends to your world.
    “I’m afraid I have a request of my own. As you know, we’ve had a nuclear war here and have lost the planet that we knew. I’m in a desperate situation.
    “I’m in a bunker close to the north pole with seven dead bodies. It’s not very pleasant, I must tell you. I have enough supplies to last for a while, but my husband’s son could break in at any time and make off with me.
    “I ask you to look into your hearts and hear a mother’s plea. Reunite me with my son … please.”
    She dropped her voice and leaned closer to the screen. “I need to be very frank with you. I’m terrified that the general’s son will find me.” Anguish crept into her voice and onto her face. “He’s always fancied me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as a concubine to a sexual pervert.
    “So please, please, take me to my son. I have two storage containers here that are filled with things we’ll need to start a new world. If you could transport them with me, I would be more grateful than I can say.” Tears of desperation and fear sparkled in her blue eyes.
    “Signing off,
    “Veronica Edgarton.”
     
    She set the machine to rebroadcast her message every half hour. Then she went into the first storage container and made herself a nest just inside the door. She fell asleep and dreamed of Jeremy.
     
    Veronica awakened in a panic and clawed her way out the container’s door. The bunker’s cement interior greeted her. The golden planet had either received her message and decided against helping her. Or they were still making up their minds. Or—they didn’t get her message.
    She stared at the screen, studying the frequencies Jeremy had used. Using a simple statistical program, she graphed their distribution. The graph was a bell-shaped curve, rising in the middle with the most popular addresses and tapering to tag ends on both sides. She’d sent her message to the middle range of coordinates, the ones Jeremy had used most. Why didn’t it work?
    Veronica sucked in a breath. What did she know about the way her son programmed? Jeremy never made anything easy. Everything he wrote was encoded and password protected. Had she used a password to enter his computer and download his data? No. Had she used a password before using the data and sending her message? No again.
    She’d opened “Jeremy’s Computer” assuming that it was what it purported to be. Would her son ever put confidential information into something so obvious? No. She was lucky the file hadn’t been booby-trapped, destroying all the data because of her unauthorized usage. She pulled away from the console, horrified. She might have ruined her only hope of escape.
    Veronica also knew that if Jeremy didn’t want someone to get into his files, they wouldn’t be able to. He could create algorithms that only a genius could break. If he was being sloppy, he might write code that an intelligent person could crack if he or she was lucky.
     
    She gasped as she remembered the worst. He built lockdowns into all of his work. Someone trying to break into one of his systems would find themselves locked out with three incorrect tries. Or fewer. When the machine locked down, only Jeremy would be able to open it.
    Her heart pounded as though a frantic bird was trying to break out of her chest. Her hands grew icy. She looked around the cement bunker, eyes moving from the steel doors enclosing the corpses, to the computers, storage units, and weapons bays. Panic threatened to overwhelm her. She had one chance left. Veronica wanted