First of the First

by Andrew Maclure

  “I hope you’re right. We’re going to look a bit foolish if we can’t find them.”

  “Your fears are unfounded. The two drones I have just sent to scan the tunnel have found a hidden door with traces of Mikes DNA leading to it.”

  “Got them!” Mark called out excitedly. “There’s a hidden door in the tunnel. There is evidence that Mike has gone through it.”

  “Same formation as before, Mark, lead on.” Sally snapped out her orders.

  Mark jogged a hundred and eighty meters and stopped by a piece of wall that was elaborately decorated as the rest of the tunnel which showed no trace of a doorway – except that his AI had painted a red outline showing the edges of the door.

  Chapter Thirty

  Mike

  A loud popping sound made Mike swivel round to see where it came from. It wasn’t a grenade or a KE weapon. She saw a puff of smoke in the air which burst into a billowing cloud. Her first thought was gas. She spun around to search for the nearest exit, but even as she turned she heard more of the popping sounds and suddenly she could see nothing, not even her hand in front of her face. At the same time, a deafening noise erupted from all around her. She reached out for Mark and was relieved to feel a hand grasp her wrist. The relief was short lived when she felt a bag pulled over her head and a drawstring pulled tight around her neck. She felt herself dropping with the familiar feeling of a descending gravity tube.

  Still unable to see because of the bag over her head, she balled her fists and flailed out her arms. Almost immediately, she felt her left arm hit a body. She swung round and planted her right fist into the lower part of it. She heard the whoosh of air being blown out and leaned back to kick at her unseen victim. Before she could launch her assault, she felt the touch of a stun-stick, which threw her backwards into the side of the gravity tube, where she fell into a heap, unable to move, speak or barely breathe.

  As the gravity tube came to a halt. she heard a male voice call out “Bastard!” and felt a heavy boot kick her in the ribs.

  A female voice said “Leave her! We want her in one piece.”

  The male voice answered, “The orders were to bring her back alive. She doesn’t have to be in one piece.”

  She felt rough hands grab her from either side and drag her out of the gravity tube.

  She knew where she was. She had played in these tunnels as a child, often managing to lose her armed carers and enjoying the thrill of being chased and the freedom of not being told what to do every moment of her young life, although it always ended up with a stern scolding and sometimes being confined to her rooms for the following day.

  “My friends will catch up with us soon.” she told her captors. “They will track my AI easily. One of them is a Friend of the People, his AI can track anything.”

  “Only if your AI is emitting a signal, we’re carrying suppressor equipment which completely blocks all external AI communications. Not even a Peoples AI can detect a signal that isn’t there.” the female’s voice said.

  Mike checked with her AI, it confirmed that it couldn’t contact any of the team’s AI’s or even the Palace main AI.

  “Maybe not,” Mike continued, “but their drones will follow us. You can’t escape them!”

  “Their drones will follow a trail, but it won’t be ours. Don’t raise your hopes of a rescue. You are ours now.” the female voice said.

  “Any suggestions?” Mike asked her AI, which she called Zarb.

  “Keep alert, only speak to ask questions, don’t do anything unless you’re confident that you can get away – unless you like getting prodded with a stun stick.” it answered.

  “Don’t you think I should be trying to build rapport with them?”

  “No, for two reasons. These are a snatch squad. They’ve got their orders and they’ll deliver you to where they’ve been told no matter what you say or do. Also, you’re not good at building rapport. How many times have I told you to be polite to people?”

  “I would be polite to people if they weren’t all stupid fuckwits!”

  “Not everyone can be perfect in every way, like you are.”

  “Correct.”

  “I was being ironic.”

  “Yeah, because you are a stupid fuckwit.”

  “You’re the one with the bag over your head. I’m just a passenger.”

  “Just – go away.”

  “If only I could. I’m tracking our progress with my inertial guidance capabilities. I know exactly where we are. That will be useful if you get a chance to get free.”

  “Can you show me where we are as we go?”

  A virtual reality map popped into Mike’s visual cortex, with four indistinct body shapes surrounding her. As her AI had a detailed map of the tunnels in its memory, it could paint detailed picture of their location in the virtual images it was providing her with. She had one captor either side holding on to her arms, with one ahead leading the way and one behind.

  “The one behind you has a stun stick. I have identified him from his voice pattern. He is Private Tarb Af Ack and is a member of Major Bryd Sa Dett's guard unit. He appears to be a rebel infiltrator.”

  As her AI spoke, the body shape behind her began to take the form in her VR image of a Herassan soldier, slightly taller and heavier set than an average Herassan.

  “Good work Zarb. Can you tell me anything about this bag over my head?”

  “Only that the fabric is a mixture of metallic and natural fibers. The metallic fibers are a copper and titanium alloy. The drawstring is a synthetic polymer but without external sensors I cannot identify its composition. The bag is not what is blocking my external communications. They are carrying two signal blockers. One is on Private Tarb Af Ack, behind you, the other is being carried by the female in front of you.”

  “Why two signal blockers?”

  “I surmise that they are well prepared and have two in case you are separated from one or more of them. It will give them a better chance of keeping you incommunicado. These devices usually have an effective radius of about thirty meters, but they may have dialed them down from that. They are illegal in the Herassan Empire and their presence will be noticed and reported by anyone who loses external communication, which makes them trackable by simply following the path of the reported signal loss.”

  “That must work both ways though, they won’t have any external communications either.”

  “That is correct, and it may give us an opportunity. I have set up a repeating distress call to the Palace security AI and to Mark and Sally’s AI’s. The call includes a compressed log of what has happened since the battle fog was deployed, updated in real time, with our current location. If the signal blocking is dropped at any time, for even a nano-second, the message will get through.”

  Mike felt herself pulled to a halt and then dragged to the right of the tunnel. “What have we stopped here for?” she asked her AI.

  “I don’t know. There are no junctions, doors or gravity tubes here.”

  Mike heard a loud click, then a faint grinding sound followed by a smell of earthy, stale air. “What’s that?”

  “I think it’s a hidden door. Apart from the map I built when you were playing in these tunnels as a child, I downloaded an updated plan of the Palace and the escape tunnels as soon as we got off the lander, in case an attempt was made by Major Bryd Sa Dett to capture you and you needed to elude him. There is nothing on the plans about a doorway here.”

  Mike was dragged across the tunnel and through the doorway. The captor behind her, who she now knew was Tarb Af Ack, gave her a hard shove in the back. “I bet you don’t remember this tunnel, do you?” the female in front said. “You’ve gone very quiet. Have you just realized you’re not going to get rescued?”

  Mike didn’t answer. Her confidence in a quick rescue was ebbing away fast. She smelt the strong earthy smell of the roughly cut walls and felt the give in the damp soil underfoot. They paused a few meters into the tunnel. She heard the faint grinding sound of
the door closing and a loud click as it locked into place. Another shove in her back signaled that they were ready to move forward again.

  “Where are we?” Mike asked her AI.

  “We are still in, or rather, under the Palace grounds. We are moving North East. The ground rises in this direction. If we stay on the level, we will be effectively moving further below the surface.”

  Mike was hurried along by her captors for three hundred meters through the twisting tunnel before they paused, and then went through another door into a tunnel with a hard floor and the smell of freshly set concrete. The door clicked shut behind them and as they started to move again, Mike heard the crump of explosions coming from the tunnel they had just exited. Even if the team found the door into the hidden tunnel she had been taken into, there was no way they would be able to find their way through the thousands of tonnes of soil that would have collapsed into it.

  Chapter Thirty One

  The Bastard With The Stun Stick

  Now they were out of the tunnel, Mike smelt stale damp air, with a distinct smell of decay. Still held by her arms, Mike was half walked, half dragged across a smooth surface, paved, she guessed. and onto stairs. This must be an emergency exit; gravity tubes had been in use on Tefran for as long as she could remember.

  “I’ve had enough of this.” She said to her AI. “I’m not waiting to be rescued. Bryd Sa Dett is clueless and without me with them, Sally’s team couldn’t find their arses with both hands if they were blindfolded. What’s the best way for me to turn the situation round?”

  “I’m not sure there is a best way, or any way at the moment. And by the way, I think you overestimate the role you play in the team.”

  “And I think you overestimate how much I care about what you think. Now help me come up with a plan.”

  “We know three things about the kidnappers; the one behind has military training, he must have, to successfully infiltrate the army, we know he has a stun stick and is quite eager to use it on you, we know the one in front is a female – and she seems to be in charge, although we don’t have enough evidence to be sure of that.”

  “Right, and however good a plan we come up with, if he touches me with the stun stick I won’t be doing anything for a while. That means I’ve got to disable him first and hope that no-one else has one.

  “We have the basis of a plan. We need to build on it. You are not going to be able to permanently disable all four, particularly while you cannot see, so any action you take must be somewhere you can lose them quickly.”

  “Well done Zarb, we have a plan. But it only works if I get taken into a public area.”

  “But I don’t know what your plan is, why did you say well done?”

  Because you framed the situation with the key problems I have to overcome. Once you had done that, the solution was simple.”

  “I am pleased to have been of service.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you, I really don’t. All I need now is the right opportunity.”

  “And what will that opportunity look like?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’ll know it when I see it, or hear it while I’ve got this bloody bag over my head.”

  The lightweight court shoes Mike was wearing did little to protect her, so she did her best to walk up the bare stone steps to prevent her feet from getting too bruised as she was dragged up the long stairway.

  “She’s cooperating a bit now.” a male voice on her left said.

  “Good.” the female in front said, I don’t want her hurt and we’ll be able to deliver her more quickly.

  “You might not want her hurt, she didn’t punch you in the guts!” the one behind that they knew as Af Ack said, then jabbed her in the middle of her back with the stun stick.

  The captors holding her up let go of her arms with shouts of pain and Mike collapsed onto the stairs, losing control of her muscles while a searing jolt of pain shot through her entire body.

  “You stupid fool!” the woman in front shouted. “Do that again and I swear I’ll kill you!”

  “Not if I get him first.” the male on her left said, “We got a share of that stun stick charge, you idiot!”

  “Just try it.” Af Ack said. “I don’t need this stun stick to take you down.”

  “Stop it, both of you!” the female snapped. “You might have the stun stick, but I’ll blow your head off if you step out of line again.”

  Through the haze of pain, Mike heard the sound of a safety catch on a KE weapon clicking off.

  “You wouldn’t. You would have to explain to Brel Edd Senn what happened to me. He’s not well known for being forgiving.”

  “Accidents will happen, so if you don’t want to have a fatal one, stay in line. I’m in command of this operation. Don’t forget it! Now get her up the stairway.”

  “I’m beginning to warm to her.” Mike said to her AI, as she was dragged up the steps.

  “She may not hesitate to use her KE weapon on you when the time comes, so don’t feel too good about her.”

  “I was thinking about doing her the kindness of a quick and painless death.”

  “You’re getting soft.”

  “No, seriously, she sounds like she doesn’t want me injured, she’s armed and doesn’t like the bastard with the stun stick. I must be able to use that to my advantage.”

  “There is potential, but also a high risk. Whatever you are planning, I would advise that you have an escape route. Without either of us having vision, that means in a public place with people around.”

  “But as soon as I have disabled them, I can take the bag off my head!”

  “Consider that the drawstring is probably secured so you may not be able to pull it off, and even if you could take a knife from one of the captors, we don’t know the nature of the drawstring, you may not be able to cut it.”

  “But I could cut the fabric of the bag open enough to see.”

  “That’s unlikely given fabric mixture of metallic and natural fibers. I can’t tell what the ratio of copper to titanium is, you are unlikely to be able to cut it easily.”

  “How can you tell that it’s got copper titanium alloy in? You haven’t got access to external sensors, only my biology, and I can’t tell what it is.”

  “You may not be able to differentiate the smell, there is no evolutionary reason why you should be able to, but the olfactory sensory neurons in your nose can detect the stray ions that come off the alloy when the strands rub together as the bag moves on your head, and I can recognize the characteristic signal that they generate, but not the ratio in which they are present.”

  “Why would they use that kind of bag?

  “It could be for a number of reasons. It may be because they wanted a strong fabric to prevent it being ripped or cut off. It is electrically conductive – so there could be a sinister reason for it, but most likely because they needed a bag with a drawstring and this just happened to be the only one available.”

  “That’s not very helpful, but it’s electrically conductive, so would it conduct a stun stick charge?”

  “Yes, but the entire bag would become active.”

  Mike had regained control of her legs again now and started to stumble up the stairs. Although it stopped her feet getting banged on the steps and made it easier for the captors either side of her to carry her, it slowed their progress.

  “Get a move on or you’ll feel my stun stick again!” Tarb Ab Ack said from behind her.

  “If you use that again I’ll shove it up your cloaca!” the male on Mike’s left said.

  “And I’ll shoot you in the head. Don’t think I won’t!” the female in front said.

  Mike’s right arm was suddenly free. She heard the sound of a fist hitting flesh and a grunt from next to her, then the sound of a tussle, which stopped abruptly when a shot rang out from in front of her, the sound amplified by the walls of the tunnel the stairs ran through.

  “He had more brains than I thought.” a male voice came from t
he person holding tightly on to her right arm. “They’ve covered a fair part of the wall.”

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Friends?

  “I warned him.” the female in front of Mike said. “Are you all right Fet?”

  “Yeah, thanks for that. He was a lot stronger than he looked. What are we going to do with his body?”

  “We’ll leave it here. It will be a very long time before anyone comes down here again. We’ll tell Brel Edd Senn that he was injured by Hess An Sur’s army friends and died in the tunnel we collapsed. No one will bother trying to find him there.” She prodded Mike with the barrel of her KE weapon. “You’ll back us up on that won’t you.”