by Nick Thacker
“Bad idea, jackass,” he yelled, pulling the trigger. The Chinese soldier howled and fell, his foot blown to shreds by a three-round burst. Reggie finished the job when the man tumbled fully into view, then shot another few times into the stairwell to warn the remaining three.
“Cover,” he said loudly to Hendricks, Joshua, and Kyle. “Ben, give me a hand.”
Ben was already at his side, checking Julie to make sure she hadn’t been hit, then moving over to Colson as Reggie worked on Mrs. E.
“It is a small hit,” Mrs. E said through clenched teeth. “But hurts a lot.”
“Yeah, it’ll do that,” he replied. “Here, let’s get you over to the wall.”
“I am fine,” she said. “Get me onto my back so I can fire at them.”
“You got grit, lady,” he said, smiling. “But that’s a terrible idea. Move over.” He grabber her arm and threw it over his shoulder, then heaved himself upward to lift her off the ground. He heard her whimper slightly when her leg moved, but she didn’t complain.
The blood from her wound made the injury seem worse than it was, but he knew even a small gunshot wound could hurt the victim more through loss of blood. “We need to get it wrapped at least,” he said.
“Then wrap while I shoot.”
He nodded, still impressed with her resolve. “You got it.” He raised his voice slightly so the others could hear. “And since you’re not Bennett, I don’t have to remind you not to shoot that thing while it’s next to my head.”
She frowned, obviously not getting the joke.
“I did that once,” Ben shot back. “And you already paid me back for it.”
“Ears are still ringing.”
“How’s she look?”
“She’s fine, but she’s going to need help walking. Colson?”
Ben didn’t respond, and Reggie heard the sound of Joshua firing at the stairwell as one of the Chinese soldiers dared a peek around the corner.
“We’ve got about ten seconds before the entire Chinese army is on us down here,” Joshua said.
“Don’t forget about those ‘roid guards,” Reggie said.
“‘Roid?” Mrs. E asked. Reggie had pulled a small gauze roll from his pack and began tightly winding it around the lower part of her thigh.
“Steroids. Hey, if I see one of them, I’ll ask if they have some for you. You could use a boost right about now.”
Mrs. E forced a smile through clenched teeth as Reggie worked.
“Ben!” Reggie shouted. “Colson? How is he?”
Ben looked up from his own medic work and met Reggie’s eyes. “He’s, uh, well, he’s pretty banged up.”
“From the fall, or from the grenade?”
Ben paused. “Yeah.”
Reggie nodded, working faster. He pulled the bandage under its own loop to cinch it tight, then patted it gently to test it. “How’s that?”
Kyle, Hendricks, and Joshua had moved closer to the stairs, each hiding behind a large object of some sort for some relative cover as they guarded the level. “You need to hurry it up, Red,” Hendricks said. “That ten seconds is up.”
Reggie looked up and saw that Hendricks wasn’t exaggerating. Kyle and Joshua immediately opened fire on the stairs as more Chinese men filed down, the first three soldiers still hiding behind the wall. He could hear their voices interacting, explaining the situation taking place on Level 7.
“A well-aimed grenade would be wonderful right now,” Reggie said, moving over to Ben and Colson. “Any takers?”
“Already on it,” Kyle responded, articulating his words with a short, underhand throw toward the stairs.
They waited, then heard the explosion. It was far too distant, and Reggie knew immediately what had happened.
“They kicked it over the railing and down the stairs,” Kyle said. “Any more?”
No one answered.
“In that case,” Hendricks said. “Keep those guns trained. I can’t imagine they’ll be using the elevator, if it even works anymore, so focus on the stairs. We have the vantage point, but they know we don’t have a way out. We can pick them off all day if we need to, but let’s hope they don’t get cocky with those grenades.”
Reggie reached Ben and Colson and took a look down at the lumpy man on the floor. He was sprawled out on his stomach, his hands under his head.
“It hurts,” he said, his voice wavering.
“Some small shrapnel, from what I can see,” Ben said. “Otherwise, burns and scratches. He’ll be fine, but…”
“But he’s a wuss,” Reggie snorted.
“I’m right here,” Colson said.
“You disagree with our assessment?”
“It — still hurts.”
“Talk to me after you’ve been shot,” Reggie said. Here, at least clean it off.” He unscrewed the cap of a water bottle and began pouring it slowly over the man’s back. Colson tensed his body, but to his credit stopped complaining.
“You married? Ever had a girlfriend?” Reggie asked as he worked.
Colson shook his head.
“Then knock it off. You don’t know real pain.” He looked up and winked at Ben. Ben just smiled and shook his head slowly.
“Give him a break,” he said. “He’s still got to help us find Mr. E’s data.”
“Fine. Okay, buddy, what next? Head down to the lower levels?” Reggie asked Colson.
Colson stretched out a bit, testing the wounds on his back. His shirt was ripped in many places, and now wet and covered with blood, but he shifted onto his side and eventually sat up. The process took far too long for Reggie, but he did his best to give the out-of-shape man some space.
Colson shook his head, realigning the glasses on his nose. “No, if we go now, they’ll just follow us into the vents, right?”
Reggie was surprised he hadn’t thought of that. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. They’ll just pick us off once we’re all inside.”
“So then we need to stay and fight,” Colson replied.
Reggie scoffed. If it was anyone else, he would have believed the sentiment. From Colson, it seemed a little hopeful. At least it’s an effort.
“Can you do anything from here? Any of your computer voodoo from your old desk?”
Colson looked over at his workstation and saw that it had survived the grenade blast.
“Not really. I can probably hack in, eventually, but I won’t be able to copy anything over remotely. We’ll need to manually hardwire a connection into the machine, which means we still have to get down there. Or at least one of us does.”
“Just one of us?”
“Well, preferably we all go down together, for protection and stuff,” Colson said. “But technically it would just take one person to get to the right mainframe and plug in a USB drive.”
“Wait,” Ben said. “You’re kidding me. This supercomputer has a USB port?”
Colson looked at Ben as if he was from another planet. “Mr. Bennett, you do understand that USB means ‘Universal Serial Bus,’ meaning it’s a standard protocol for data transmission?”
“Well, I, yeah, I guess. It just seems like a pretty insecure feature.”
Colson shook his head. “It’s built into the hardware, but the OS we’ve created reprogrammed its firmware to be read-only. Meaning it was used to install or import data, but it won’t write to disk. We’ll have to bypass that or write a script that reverses that setting, which I think I can do. The IT security here would be all over something like that, but something tells me they’re off today.”
“Got it. So we’ll stick a thumb drive into it and then wait for the transfer to complete?”
“Ben, this isn’t a Mission: Impossible movie. We need to think through this a little more.”
Ben and Reggie waited. Reggie couldn’t help but feel like the man sitting on his butt in front of them was relishing the opportunity to have the upper hand.
“I can probably whip up a script to reinstall the original drive firmware, since I’ve g
ot a fully-working USB port on my own machine up here, but since I won’t be down there, we’ll also have to write something that can grab the right data — whatever that is — and copy it to the drive.”
“Wait,” Hendricks shouted. “You won’t be down there?”
Reggie was surprised he could hear their conversation. “Yeah, you’re the only one who knows how to do this, man. You have to go.”
Colson was already shaking his head again. “No, that’s the thing. It doesn’t actually make sense. We can’t all go, which means there will be people up here to protect me while I work. I can do it, I just don’t know how long it will take. But if I then have to go down there, that’s another hour or so until we get to the mainframe on Level 9.”
“He’s got a point,” Ben said.
“I know he’s got a point,” Reggie said. “Doesn’t mean I like it.”
“I’m with Red,” Hendricks said. “What other options do we have?”
“We could split up,” Ben offered.
“No,” Joshua said. “That’ll just give us less protection up here. If we can get away with sending only one of us down to 8, they won’t know any of us are missing. That’s our best bet — sneak in, sneak out, back up here.”
Hendricks nodded, then fired at two Chinese men who had decided to make a quick break into the level. They were quickly gunned down, and Kyle and Joshua poked up above their cover to make sure the ambush was over.
“Right, okay, that makes sense. We send one of us outside, then down to the server room to plug in the USB stick. Then — what?”
“Then we wait for the transfer to be complete,” Colson said, a supremely satisfied look on his face.
“Just like a Mission: Impossible movie,” Ben muttered under his breath.
CHAPTER FORTY
Julie
“OKAY, COLSON,” HENDRICKS SAID. “YOU get started on that script. Juliette and E can help. Julie, that work for you?”
Julie was already on her feet, helping Colson stand up and make his way across the room to his computer. “Sure, but there’s something else,” she said. “We’d still have to wait for these scripts to be written. Otherwise we’re sending someone down there with a useless empty USB drive.”
Colson stopped and considered this. “Yeah, you’re right. Okay, well, then what do we do?”
“Can we set up an ad-hoc network?”
Colson’s eyes grew wide as he understood her meaning, leaving the rest of the room in the dark about the meaning of their cryptic conversation. “We could, but it wouldn’t reach down there. But we could test the LAN connection. There’s never been an Internet connection on it, and there definitely won’t be any outside connections allowed on it right now, but we shouldn’t need access to the Internet, just intra. It is the fastest way to transfer files locally…”
“And if we can just get a laptop to take down there, we can plug in the drive to one of its USB ports, wait for the script to finish, then connect to that network. The script will be ready to go and all we’ll need to do is write it to the USB disk and plug it into the mainframe.”
Julie thought Colson was going to turn and try to high-five her, but — thankfully — he refrained. “Okay,” he said, “that works. It’s even better. There’s really no way to take down the ethernet connectivity without ripping out wiring, so we should be safe. It’ll be much faster, too, since we won’t have to all wait up here until we’re finished.”
He logged on to his computer, finding it just as they’d left it hours ago, and navigated to a command prompt window. “I’ll do it as a shell script, then write that to a text file. I think I can put it in an autorun executable wrapper, so whoever has to deliver it just plugs it in.”
“Hey, who is that, by the way?”
Julie turned to see the rest of the room except for Kyle, Mrs. E, and Joshua looking at her.
“Who’s going down?”
“Well, besides me, I guess the next-best option is Mrs. E. But she’s…”
“Yeah, she’s out,” Hendricks said. “Reggie, Joshua, Kyle, you’re the best shots here, so we’ll probably need you to stay back. We should be able to hold the fort for an hour, as long as they don’t have anything bigger than grenades. Bennett’s our guy.”
Julie felt her heart lurch. I knew it.
“Yeah, that’s what I figured your vote would be,” Ben said.
“Not a vote,” Hendricks said.
“Also what I figured.” Ben was already swinging his pack around to check supplies. He pulled out some of the larger objects, then dumped the rest on the floor. “There’s a lot of water in here, but I’d love maybe a jetpack or something. At least so I don’t have to —“
“You’ll have to rappel,” Hendricks said.
“Come on,” Ben said, “this is getting ridiculous. If I’d have just done a little more target practice back in Alaska, I’d be a better shot and could stay up here.“
“And I’d still make you go,” Hendricks said. He lowered his rifle and stared directly at Ben. “You’re the best man for the job, son.”
Julie felt a welling of pride at the same time her heart sank once more. He’s doing this, she knew. He’s going to go outside, in Antarctica, without a jacket, on a reckless mission against two trained armies.
Ben looked at Julie.
She shrugged. “You think I’ll be able to talk you out of it?”
He tried to smile, but she knew it was about as comforting to him as it was for her.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Ben
IT FELT GOOD FOR BEN to hear Hendricks’ faith in him, even though he wasn’t convinced it wasn’t a suicide mission. Actually, he wondered if the entire ordeal here was a suicide mission. As he worked though the items in his pack, the overwhelming feeling of impossibility set in.
There’s no way this is going to work.
He shuffled the smaller objects around — lighter, miniature first aid kit, batteries — and reached for the mittens. He had removed the thick, reinforced gloves back on the barracks level, but was happy to see an alternative now. Mittens, he knew, were a better option anyway. They wouldn’t provide the dexterity of fingered gloves, but keeping all the fingers together would allow for more body heat transfer. He slid them on to test their fit, then continued his work.
A few stray gunshots fell into the room, but he didn’t turn around. The Chinese force outside the door still hadn’t grown in numbers or increased their attack, which meant they either thought the American group was contained well enough or their teammates were busy elsewhere. For the moment, Ben hoped the security force at the station was capable of keeping the other enemy occupied, at least until he returned from his own mission.
“Hey, you’re going to tell me what to do down there, right?” he called out.
Julie answered immediately. “We’re already working on it. You’ll have to take this laptop with you, but once you’re down there, just connect to the network we’re creating by plugging into a network port on a wall or computer somewhere.”
“Okay, what does a ‘network port’ look —“
“And then you’ll need to make sure the computer’s seeing Colson’s up here, by checking the incoming connections, and —“
“Jules,” Ben said. “Slow down.”
Julie paused, then discussed something with Colson. Both were still hovering over the terminal, Colson frantically typing and grunting while Julie pointed at the screen and made her own comments. She finally turned back around to Ben. “Okay, got it. We’ll have a text document with the instructions for you open. It’ll be on the screen when you open the laptop.”
Ben stared blankly at her.
“The ‘screen’ is the skinny top part that lights up.”
Ben rolled his eyes. “Thanks. I’m concerned about the rest of this operation, though. You sure I’m the right guy?”
“Not at all,” Julie said. “If I were Hendricks, I’d just make us all run into the hall and let the Chinese tear us ap
art.”
“You’ll be fine, Bennett,” Hendricks’ gruff voice announced. “The more you worry about it, son, the more likely you are to fail. Just accept the mission and lean into it.”
Lean into it? What kind of leadership psychobabble is he trying to sell to me?
Ben was about to argue when he realized that for some reason he felt better. I am the right person for this.
Every time Ben’s resilience and grit had been tested, he’d surprised himself and everyone around him with his ability to overcome. He had been pushed past his limits, thrown into situations he still couldn’t understand, and had come out the other side victorious. Damaged, with plenty of bruises, but victorious nonetheless.
He had retrieved the mittens, skull cap, and hand warmers from the backpack, disappointed to find that there was not much else that would keep him warm and protected from the elements in the small bag, but not surprised. They had dumped their heavy outerwear in the barracks, assuming they would be spending the remainder of their time in Antartica inside the station.
“Fine. I got this. But one more thing: Colson, what about the heater? You said the air running through the duct was really hot.”
Colson didn’t even stop typing as he threw his response back to Ben. “Not super hot, but yeah — pretty hot.”
“And I’m supposed to crawl through the duct toward the heat source? How’s that going to work?”
Colson seemed confused for a few seconds as he allowed the distraction to pull him away from his work. He pondered the question, then turned around. “Oh, yeah, well I thought I could try to deactivate the source for a few minutes.”
“Just a few minutes?”
“Any longer and we’ll all freeze. I can push it to maybe ten minutes, but it’s the only generator for the entire station.”
“Great,” Ben said. “And how will you know when I get back?”
“We’ll know when you open the laptop, and then when you close it again,” Julie said. “The connection will be terminated, so we’ll know you’re about to climb back up and get into the vent.”
Colson was nodding along. “I’ll take the heater offline again twenty minutes after you shut the laptop, again for ten minutes. It’ll drop the station’s temperature quite a bit, but it’ll just be a bit uncomfortable for an hour or so afterwards.”
