by Greg Krojac
“How many of you are there?”
“There’s probably upwards of five hundred of us scattered around the world. Unfortunately, it wasn’t like now when we died. You couldn’t choose your next body. But I’ve managed to locate about two hundred of us living in the UK or Europe. The others could be anywhere. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Michelle spelt out what they were all doing there.
“We both have a common enemy in Marcus. If we help you to retrieve whatever you need it doesn’t mean we’re bosom buddies. Once this operation is over, we’ll probably be living on different sides of the fence again. This alliance is only temporary. We still want to return to the days when nobody knew the truth about reincarnation and life seemed to have more value. You do realise that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I’m not a kid. Despite appearances. But sometimes you have to get into bed with your enemy to fight a common foe. But whilst we need each other, friends…of sorts.”
“So what we’re talking about is an exchange of resources. Since the Illuminati purge on SIMPS, our inside information has reduced dramatically and, although we do still have a small handful of people on the inside, what we do know is mostly out of date. Security has been tightened so much. What can you offer us?”
“We don’t have anyone useful under the age of seven – that’s the age when we Recarns start to remember our previous lives, so we only have first-hand experience up to around 2062. But, thanks to the courage of Peter, Jenny’s twin brother in her previous life, we did continue to receive very useful information about the state of the projects until he was discovered and killed in 2064. He told us that there was a clone who had survived over a year. This must have eventually led to Thomas later transferring his soul to the clone, Marcus. But more importantly for you, we have an intimate knowledge of the layout of various ONP facilities.”
“And you need us because there aren’t enough of you?”
“Not just that. Look at us. We’re a bunch of kids. In fact, we’re a bunch of nerdy kids. We’re not big enough yet to take on a grown up adversary on our own. Plus, if we go with you, people will see us as a bunch of child-soldiers. That’d be very bad PR for One Life. People would think you‘re using us to do your dirty work. You lot are highly trained combat-ready troops. And you’re bigger than us. We need you to help get us in.”
Michelle didn’t entirely trust these children but the additional information would certainly help with any assault on the Illuminati. She thought about asking them what they wanted to retrieve but the alliance had already been agreed in principle by the Businessman and it wasn’t really her place to do or say anything that might jeopardise the agreement. She imagined that the Businessman already knew what it was that was so important to them. She hoped so, anyway. This meeting was more of a courtesy meeting, a face-to-face to show trust and goodwill.
She mouthed silently to Tommy.
“I need one of you kids to help me with something.”
Tommy lip-read her perfectly, as only a ten year old kid who played spy-games could do. He moved his eyes up and down several times to show his agreement. He didn’t know why Michelle needed the help of a child, or what she wanted help with, but he felt that he owed her a favour for putting Trudi out of her misery.
Michelle looked over at Zafar, who was in direct contact with the Businessman.
“Everything good?”
Zafar nodded.
“Code green.”
Michelle acknowledged Zafar’sauthorisation.
“You know, you could have just said ‘yes’. You don’t always have to talk in jargon.”
“I do when the boss is listening.”
“OK. Come on Max. Let’s go.”
The two parties got into their respective vehicles and drove off in opposite directions.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
03:07 Monday 28 October 2069
A final briefing was taking place close to one of The Order’s clandestine main research establishments. Michelle’s assault team consisted of herself and nine others. One of the child Recarns was waiting elsewhere for Michelle; she had expected there to be at least three other Recarn children with them, preparing for the assault, but they were nowhere to be seen.
The child Recarn who had been assigned to help Michelle was Stephen ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, who was average height and build for a ten year old, with blond curly hair, a face that never seemed to stop smiling, and a lust for adventure. He was always getting himself into trouble and was really looking forward to this next escapade. He imagined that whatever Michelle had in mind for him wasn’t strictly ‘on the record’ and that suited him just fine. As long as there were risks to be taken, then he was her man, or rather her boy.
Michelle was in charge of this attack on the research complex, although she would have preferred not to have been. She wanted to be - and intended to be – somewhere else once the main assault was under way. She and Buzz would slip away and take on another mission, one that she was taking for love and not for duty or ideology.
A major problem for Michelle was who she was. She was a heroine, a poster-girl for the resistance movement and what she had planned could well tarnish an as yet unblemished career. She had a reputation for being a brave and efficient leader, who cared about the people under her command, an honest, diligent woman who was trusted both by her colleagues and her superiors in the organisation. Now she was about to put her reputation on the line on an off-piste rescue mission. She knew that nobody was indispensable and, if Caitlin had been killed, she would have grieved and felt the pain just as any other person in similar circumstances, but Caitlin was alive and she couldn’t let her sister stay in that place any longer than necessary, facing the sexual and mental abuse that Marcus was forcing upon her. She had no choice; she was going to rescue her sister and worry about any consequences later.
Once inside Marcus’s primary research and control centre, the ten man team would break up into three smaller groups, the first of which would head for the main server room and destroy or disable as much of the equipment as possible. The two other teams would head for the cloning and soul transfer laboratories, removing anything portable that looked like it might be useful and destroying any equipment that was too big to remove.
To slip away from the main mission would normally have been an impossible task, but Michelle was fortunate in that she had an ace up her sleeve. Her second in command for this assault, Danielle Morena, was a very family orientated, fiercely loyal, Hispanic woman who was secretly in love with Michelle. The secret wasn’t as well kept as she thought, however, as Michelle was well aware of Danielle’s feelings for her and had actually been tempted to reciprocate her advances on more than one occasion. But now she was about to do something that she found distasteful. In fact, she hated herself for it. Feeling that she had no other choice she took advantage of her colleague’s love for her in order to persuade her to cover for her absence. She didn’t tell Danielle the whole story, just that she had to rescue Caitlin and that she had to do it the same night as the attack on the ONP facility. She knew that there was no way that Danielle would refuse her for she was blinded by both love and loyalty to her commander.
At 03:30 exactly, the assault teams moved forward and took up their position outside the ONP establishment. Both the Illuminati and One Life had upgraded their respective defence and attack equipment since the raid in 2058 that had resulted in the capture of the clone Trudi 002. An arms race ensued, ONP defences being up-graded to detect portable Electro-Magnetic Pulse devices and subsequent versions of EMP devices being modified to counter the improved detection equipment. It was a continual game of cat and mouse, each side attempting to steal a march on the other’s technology. Fortunately for One Life, they had always managed to keep one step ahead of their adversary.
Multiple target EMP devices were put in place, each capable of identifying and disabling one hundred defensive pulse guns. A new addition to their program meant that they were al
so able to interfere with the same number of security cameras, causing them to relay a loop of images of a few seconds prior to the attack, so that there would be no warning of intruders until they were actually inside the building.
On Michelle’s signal, the EMP devices were switched on, and all the pulse guns and cameras were disabled. The ten resistance members zig-zagged their way forward until they arrived at the main entrance. The over-reliance of the ONP security services upon technological solutions was their undoing once again. They foolishly trusted their surveillance and reaction equipment too much, keeping the human security staff inside the establishment’s walls, although it was, to a large extent, a decision that was forced upon them as the defending pulse guns were designed to destroy anything that came too close to the facility, creating an indiscriminate killing-zone where both friend and foe would die. Any visitors to the establishments had to jump through several security hoops to gain admittance and, even then, had to be escorted by specially selected and authorised security staff. These escorts wore armbands which relayed a temporary ‘cancel’ command to the guns when the targeting system of the defences locked on to them. To enter without an authorised companion was to commit suicide. Many lives had been lost in trials until the system was stable enough to be considered useable, but Marcus was never one to abandon technology just because it was costing lives – he simply assigned anybody who displeased him to test the system. Despite various attempts, One Life had been unable to gain access to this technology.
What the One Life assault team did have were disruptor grenades, an extremely new technology that adhered to any material – wood, concrete, metal or plastic – and disrupted its component atoms to the point that the structure vaporised. Anything and everything that was within the user-designated kill-radius of one of these grenades instantly vaporised when it went off.
The ten resistance members made their way swiftly towards the main entrance, stopping about ten metres short of the solid steel door, an entrance that had been designed to withstand the most powerful artillery attack. Disruptor grenade technology was so new that this was to be the first time that it had been used in the field and the Illuminati had nothing to counter it yet. Two of the group darted forward and placed the grenades in strategic positions on the door, armed them with a six second delay, and sprinted back to where the rest of the team were waiting. There was no need to take cover as there was no explosion, unlike conventional grenades, and no danger of shrapnel as the grenades imploded silently, dissolving themselves in the process. The grenades worked perfectly and Michelle and her colleagues watched as the steel simply melted away to leave what appeared to be a fine mixture of rusty soot and iron filings on the ground. Once inside, the teams were faced with six choices of corridor. The Intel given by the Recarn children had told them to expect this and each team knew which corridor they needed to take to reach their respective destinations. Team Red, consisting of Michelle, Danielle, Dave and Matt would head towards the main control centre, and the other two teams, Blue and Green would make their way to the laboratories.
The breaching of the entrance to the establishment had gone without a hitch, but the absence of the door had triggered silent alarms alerting the defensive security forces to an unauthorised presence. Michelle turned a corner, only to have to throw herself back to avoid being hit by a pulse beam. She visibly flinched as it passed millimetres from her left shoulder. She whispered to her colleagues.
“It looks like we’ve lost the element of surprise.”
She gestured to the other three members of her group to fall back twenty metres. Her plan was to draw the security team into her part of the corridor so that the attackers could have a clear shot at their adversaries. Research was under way to find a method of allowing pulse beams to travel around corners but that was still a pipe-dream at the moment. She just hoped that they weren’t also armed with guided bullets, as these could follow a Radio Frequency Identification tag, better known as RFID tags, that, if successfully attached to clothing or armour, was an almost certain death sentence, the smart-bullet being able to home in on its target, irrespective of where the target tried to hide.
Michelle sighed with relief to see three defenders come into view. They had naively thought that they would be pursuing fleeing intruders but entered the corridor to see red killer pulses hurtling towards them, giving them no time to escape. The defenders crumpled in a heap on the floor and Michelle ushered her team forward.
“Come on. We have to get into the next corridor – these corners are bloody dangerous.”
In pairs, the group advanced into the next corridor, which was about one hundred metres long and the team would effectively be out in the open until it reached the next corner. There was a temptation to sprint to the end, to reduce the duration of their vulnerability, but then they might run straight into another group of defenders.
They moved briskly but not recklessly along the new corridor, Danielle taking point, ahead of Dave and Matt, while Michelle brought up the rear. Sure enough, after about fifty metres, they saw a group of twelve security men come into view. Michelle put her hand on Matt’s left shoulder.
“Don’t worry we’re out of range at the moment. Danielle… grenade.”
Danielle unclipped a disruptor grenade from her utility belt, armed the weapon, and threw it Frisbee-style at the approaching group. The small disc imploded in mid-air, directly above the enemy, immediately vaporising the entire group, plus a good part of the floor, walls and ceiling. The brief pyrotechnic show that accompanied the implosion – a miniature, fiery electrical storm as the stray electrons tried to force the resultant Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms to recombine into zero-charged molecules – was both fascinating and frightening. Unable to return to their initial state, the atoms reluctantly accepted their fate and settled upon what remained of the corridor structure, the moistness of the film of the resultant human rain softening the torn edges of the corridor. Michelle looked at Danielle, who had never seen such a spectacle.
“And that’s why we don’t screw up the kill-radius setting.”
Danielle moved forward and peered into the six metre wide crater that had replaced the floor of the corridor.
“Instabridge?”
Michelle nodded.
“Instabridge.”
Dave and Matt took what looked like flexible ladders from their backpacks. Each, when unrolled, was five metres long. The gap that the group needed to cross was too long for just one ladder, so the two ladders needed to be linked together. Once connected, Dave twisted the top rung of the assembled ladder and it lost all its flexibility to become rigid, an expanding gel filling the hollow structure and making it so strong that it could have supported a small vehicle. The ladder was pushed across the gap, leaving about two metres resting on the floor either side of the hole.
“Danielle, you cross first and then provide cover for the men. I’ll keep an eye on this side and make sure we don’t get surprised from the rear.”
Danielle deftly negotiated the rungs, not once showing any sign of losing her footing. Dave and Matt followed her, but with a little more trepidation. Once Michelle saw that her colleagues were safe on the other side of the crater, she half whispered half shouted to them.
“Guys, I can hear something behind us. I’m going to check it out. You three go on ahead. I’ll be with you in a minute or so. And before anyone says anything, that’s an order.”
Danielle had expected this. She knew that Michelle had other business to attend to.
“Come on you guys. We’d better do as she says.”
The two men reluctantly followed Danielle down the corridor. It didn’t feel right that the group had split like that.
***
Michelle waited until she knew that her colleagues were definitely following her order and then rushed back to the entrance. The three children that she had met at the derelict factory were crouched down by the wall.
“What are you doing here Tommy? I thought you’d
be sending someone else.”
“I’m the one who found the other Recarn children. Plus, I’d really like to be involved in pissing Marcus Gallagher off. And remember, we look like kids, we act like kids, but we’re not kids. And I’m in charge, so I want to make sure nothing goes wrong. We were a bit late ´cos we had to get these.”
Tommy lifted up his sweater to show a pulse-pistol tucked into his jeans. Philip and Jenny did the same.
Michelle was still finding it a little difficult to reconcile the appearance of these three Recarns with the knowledge and experience that they had.
“How did you get those guns?”
“It wasn’t easy. You should try buying weapons as a ten year-old. But we did it. Plus I’ve got this.”
Tommy fished into his pocket and took out a disruptor grenade, placing it on the flat of his palm so that Michelle could see what he was showing her.
“A disruptor grenade? Where on earth did you get that?”
“You really don’t want to know.”
Michelle had a good idea where the grenade had come from. It was One Life technology. Of course, in due course, the grenades would be reverse-engineered and copied but, at the moment the only source could have been One Life.
“Forget you saw that, Michelle. But remember to execute a security purge when you get back. I can tell you now that there are a couple of weaknesses that need addressing.”
He tucked the disruptor grenade back in his pocket.
“Right we’re off now. Wish us luck.”
The three children scampered through the space left by the atomised door and headed down one of the remaining three corridors.
***
Buzz was waiting patiently in the undergrowth, exactly where Michelle had told him to wait. A rustle in the foliage alerted him to the presence of something or someone and he was relieved when Michelle appeared.
“OK Buzz. We’re going on an adventure. Keep close to me and you’ll be alright.”
