by Aer-ki Jyr
David took the last of them hand to hand, saving precious stun ammo, and wacked him with his stun stick across the face. The Archon let him fall and kicked aside another shield so he could poke the man laying underneath, remembering that he’d only got a partial hit in on him. When the shield moved to the side a waiting pistol underneath it fired up at David’s silver armor, but it moved aside quick enough that the blue plasma streak hit the ceiling, then the Archon’s stun stick came in and finished off the devious guard.
“Report?” David asked as he poked a few more to make sure they were down.
“I’m in…their security station,” Nathan said. “I’ll have it locked down in a minute or so.”
“Rounding up strays,” Assad added. “There’s a lot of people down here.”
“Have you seen where the strays are headed?” David asked, heading back out into the halls.
“Everywhere and nowhere. I haven’t come across any other exits aside from the dock.”
“Me neither, but let’s not assume. Fill out the battlemap as soon as possible.”
“Already working on it,” Assad confirmed.
David ducked into another processing area, stunning five more personnel that were taking cover behind various pieces of equipment before having to run down 3 more that tried to escape. Several of them pleaded with him to spare them, but he wasn’t in a mood for conversation just yet, nor was he going to take the time to tell them that he was only using stun weapons…so for the time being he went around taking down anyone he saw like some villain out of a horror movie. His victims would have time to sort out what happened later, when they woke up and realized they were still alive.
To date, no other entity, corporate or national, and been able to duplicate Star Force’s stun technology…nor had they offered it up for sale. There had been some discussion on that policy within the Star Force ranks, but it had been decided to keep the technology in-house rather than let it out to the public in the hopes that the bad guys would try stunning some of their victims rather than outright shooting them.
That said, attempts had been made to create stun weapons independent of Star Force…all of which had failed. The energy used wasn’t part of the electromagnetic spectrum, thus it was off the scientific radar of the rest of the planet. Star Force had learned of it from the pyramid database, along with a myriad of other types of energies, and that also was something they weren’t keen on sharing with the public. Star Force had mastered the basic stun energy early on and had been tinkering with it for nearly 400 years, making their stun stick/sword and stinger technology extremely efficient, as well as providing directed energy stun weapons for building security…ones that could run directly off a power grid.
David had been part of a Green Team mission 160 years ago to recover a stolen stun stick from an illicit research facility that had been organized and funded by the Japanese, and though they’d had possession of the item for several months David’s team had recovered it, or rather its disassembled components, along with the data the researchers had been collecting…only to discover they couldn’t make anything out of it, given that it functioned in a field of science that the rest of the planet hadn’t discovered yet.
There were dozens of other attempts to steal and replicate Star Force weaponry, almost always taken from building security forces in spaceports or starports. Every time it happened Star Force would track them down and make a mess of things enough to get the point across that they weren’t going to tolerate being stolen from. That, along with additional penalties handed down to the nations responsible had led to them backing off and surreptitiously using third parties to try and gleam some of Star Force’s weapons technology for their own uses…but they had to do so covering their tracks, for more often than not Star Force found out anyway and put the economic smackdown on those involved.
Nowadays the attempts still occurred, but were always by individuals or small organizations…ones that had more to gain than they had to lose, and ones that were frankly stupid enough to try. The national intelligence divisions from Earth and the various colonies around the Solar System were well aware of the tendency of unannounced, unsanctioned, and unwelcome Archon strike teams popping up randomly inside their territory to chase down what Davis often referred to as ‘mischief’ or ‘misbehavior,’ but they didn’t publically protest, because they almost always had their hands dirty and Davis had no qualms about exposing them publically if they tried to put diplomatic pressure on him.
So there was a fragile understanding that teams like David’s were going to violate territorial borders on a whim, and in exchange Star Force was going to keep those missions quiet…often with the national authorities coming in after the fact to clean up a criminal element that they also wanted brought down. Still, no Archon team had ever been discovered, save for after the fact, and David knew they always had to stay a step ahead of the local authorities and militaries in order to keep themselves safe, for a lot of the nations’ understand hinged on their inability to stop Star Force, and give them the upper hand, even once, and you’d probably see that understanding quickly redefined.
So as David and the others went around the incredibly large subterranean base rendering the security and workers unconscious he began to wonder what the next step was going to be. In the past they’d had tech to recover, or could call in a specialized team to make a quick sweep of a location or confiscate computers and such…but if the water tunnels were the only way in and out they were going to have to do whatever it was David decided on their own.
Davis had wanted the base discovered and exposed, but he hadn’t stated any objectives beyond that…though he had said he thought this was an extensive organization, which meant more than just this one base of operations. That then was their mission objective, because The Silence was undoubtedly going to shut down this operation now that their cover had been blown. Green Team needed to give the Director threads to follow in order to rout out this organization.
As David made his way through the facility he monitored the others on his battlemap, seeing more and more floors being added to the updating schematic until everything had been filled in. There were no exits leading up from the upper portion of the base, no other tunnels dug through the rock, just the waterways, though there was no way of knowing where the others led unless they could find a schematic inside the base.
“Damn it,” Assad said over the comm. “Computer terminal’s been wiped. It’s completely dead. Some type of emergency purge function.”
“Nathan, circle back to the dock. See how many boats got away.”
“Already been through there once. I counted 2 missing.”
“Anyone seen any more stragglers?” David asked.
“Not for a few minutes,” Assad answered as he searched room to room looking for a functioning computer.
“I’ve got a couple of stunned bad guys in a very nice office,” Nathan reported. “And it looks like one of their laptops is still working.”
“Hang onto that,” David urged. “Did either of them have a plasma pistol?”
“One did.”
“Pull it apart and tell me what you see.”
Nathan looked around on the floor until he saw the weapon up against the wall where he’d kicked it out of the way underneath a large gator head mounted to a finished wood plank.
“Standard magnetized barrel,” the Archon said, detaching the pieces much like one of their own weapons would break down into, though the design was different. “Loading chamber, magazine, trigger assembly. Doesn’t appear to be a power pack in the weapon. The barrel must be permanently magnetized inside a sheath.”
“That’ll eat it out eventually,” David commented as he picked his way through another factory, this one where they were making plasma ammunition shells.
“I don’t think this one has been fired…ever,” he said, checking the mag. “Full rounds, 10 total.”
“Disposable barrel?”
“That’d be my guess.
If this is a knockoff of one of our weapons, they sure dumbed down the design. Looks more like they knew how ours worked and mixed the principle with the construction of the heavy models the Americans and Russians use, with the power cell replaced by the rounds.”
“I’m looking at the ammunition assembly line now,” David said, still on the lookout for roaming personnel. “Weak stuff, but they’re making a lot of it.”
“Did you take a hit?”
“Barely scratched the armor. Thermals must be lower than normal. Actually, this looks like a weapon built for flesh.”
“Soft targets?”
“That’s the feeling I’m getting,” David said, working his way out of the ammunition factory and into a short connective hallway to another production line.
“Security?”
“Civilian maybe…no ballistics either.”
“These weren’t made to come after us,” Nathan said, reassembling the pistol without the mag inside, which he laid on top of the very ornate desk one of the men was ‘napping’ on, still sitting in his chair.
“They don’t have a chance against us,” David said unnecessarily. “But there are others they can exert influence on. Davis said they’ve been around for a long time, and having some quiet muscle to throw around at key points in the system where we’re not looking over their shoulder could be useful.”
“Even more so if they’re packing plasma,” Nathan added, referencing the unanimous national bans on the weapons aside from military applications. Many nations had outlawed firearms entirely, while some still permitted bullet weapons. Star Force protocol banned travelers from carrying firearms through their transit network, save for individuals with passes. On Star Force colonies the general citizenry was forbidden from owning/purchasing/carrying firearms and most bladed weapons, though former security/military members were permitted passes to carry/own Star Force sold weaponry, given that they already had extensive training and experience with the weapons.
All the personal weapons were itemized and registered with the security division wherever the individual resided, with a lot of individuals carrying stinger pistols out of habit, just in case they came across trouble or security needed backup. A few non-experienced citizens were also allowed to carry weapons, but only after going through long training programs that most didn’t have the fortitude to make it through. Carrying weapons was a privilege on Star Force facilities, one that had to be earned, and many countries had adopted a similar approach to their laws.
The Americans had not, but they still outlawed the ownership or production of plasma weapons, which was probably why The Silence had gone to such great lengths to establish this facility, giving them a quiet, secure location to build as many as they wanted, just so long as they could keep feeding the base the raw materials it needed. Then they could ship out the finished weapons via trucks and distribute them across the planet or off…though they’d have to go through non-Star Force transport lines to smuggle the weapons through, unless they were really, really good at it.
“I’m going to keep searching,” David said, coming into a factory that apparently made the security shields The Silence’s troops were carrying. Several had dumped off the finishing end of the line, apparently before the entire unit had shut down, and David could see a few stacked on top of each other, but hovering in place where they should have touched. He grabbed a couple of them and pushed them together, feeling a slight resistance that indicated they were magnetically active…which he knew was a defense against plasma weapons.
“Assad, keep nosing around and keep an eye on the docks, we don’t know what else is down those other tunnels. Nathan, wake up one of your guests and start asking questions. And by the way, their shields are magnetized, so maybe they are playing a bigger game here than roughing up some civies.”
“Will do,” Nathan said, walking over to the desk and pressing his forearm against the bare neck of the man slumped over in his chair and held it there, letting his armor’s stun-neutralizing material slowly suck out the residual energy from the man’s body.
7
“Now that is a strange feeling,” the white-suited man said as he blinked his eyes and cleared his head as he woke up bleary with his senses seeming to creep back into alignment.
“Hello,” Nathan said, pulling his arm off the man’s neck and walking around to the other side of the desk and looking down at him from behind his silver helmet, “my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
The suited man looked up at the Archon, seemingly unphased by the threat. “Quite possibly, though I don’t recognize the name.”
“Or the movie, apparently,” Nathan said, tapping an armored finger on the desk in between them. “Let’s recap. Your facility is in our control. Your security teams have been neutralized. You’re not escaping. There are a lot of unconscious people around for me to chat with, but you were the best dressed so I decided to start with you. Shall we have a chat or should I return you to dreamland and try someone else?”
“I have no illusions of escape, Archon, and I’d much prefer to spend the next few moments awake, if you don’t mind,” the slightly aged man said, leaning back in his chair casually as if he was in control of the situation and not Star Force.
“Name?” Nathan asked, getting a weird vibe from the man.
“I am simply known as Agent.”
“Wrong color suit for that…and you’re missing the sunglasses.”
Agent reached inside his jacket, pausing his hand and glancing at Nathan for permission, then he pulled out a pair of opaque white-lensed glasses that he slipped onto his face, matching the color of his suit as well as hiding his eyes from view. “Better?”
“Why the suit and not the uniform?” Nathan said, realizing this guy was willing to play the word game. He switched off his helmet’s external audio and switched to transmission mode. “Heads up guys. Keep an eye out for reinforcements. Got a talker who’s overly confident.”
“Higher intellect is rewarded with better style,” Agent said, glancing at the other man in the room and his thick, dull grey uniform.
“And an office,” Nathan added.
“A necessity more than a perk, given my position.”
“Which is?”
“I organize and coordinate this facility.”
“Did,” Nathan pointed out.
“As you wish…I did run this facility. By the way, the laptop will be of no use to you. I already deleted the contents.”
Nathan glanced at the open screen situated out of arms reach from the man but still on the desk. “And that would be?”
“A false cover while the purge continues. I imagine that by now all the linked data systems within the facility are also quite useless.”
“Something you don’t want us to see?”
“Many things,” Agent admitted. “I must congratulate you on discovering and infiltrating this facility…well, discovering it anyway. The infiltration wasn’t subtle and gave us time to clean up, though you certainly didn’t have trouble breaking through security. Star Force is rather good at such things, despite espousing a peaceful agenda, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I don’t recall Davis ever describing us as pacifists…”
“Perhaps not, but whether directly or indirectly you put forth the message of peaceful coexistence while hypocritically building up by far the largest military in history. Well, Human military anyway. How goes the alien war?”
“We’re keeping them off your doorstep well enough. You’re welcome by the way.”
“All the while keeping this system under your thumb. Is that going to become your justification now?”
“We don’t need justification. We’ve got the big guns, remember?”
“Might makes right?”
“Right requires might,” Nathan pithily answered. “After all, if we’re not around who’s going to catch clever murders of college students?”
“Ah…that. Yes, a major blunder. One that I’d
hoped we’d covered. Sloppily, I will admit, but I didn’t think you’d be able to track it back to us. How did you locate the entrance, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“What’s the purpose of this facility?”
“Illicit weapons production, obviously,” he answered, expecting a return gesture.
“You didn’t take into account the habitual movement patterns of the students when you dumped the bodies. Who was the fall guy?”
“A loyal associate. So, we placed the students where they shouldn’t have been and you backtracked their movements to…?”
“A makeout nest.”
Agent blew out an annoyed breath. “Of all the things…”
“The other tunnels?”
“You didn’t really expect us to have only one entrance? There’s only so much cargo traffic we can cover at each site, and this facilities requires a great deal of continuous supplies in order to remain operational.”
“And with them comes armed security to retake the facility?”
Agent shook his head slowly, reminding Nathan of the agents from the Matrix, save for the white coloration. He had the same eerie calm demeanor about him. “I have no illusions that Star Force now owns this place. What it becomes is entirely up to you. The moment you discovered it, it ceased to be of use to us.”
“Who is us? An organization of this size has got to have a name…or should I just call you SPECTRE?”
“Of course we have a name. And given your victory here I suppose you deserve at least that much in recompense. You may call us The Word.”
“Oh, that begs an explanation,” Nathan said, still standing and looking down on Agent across the desk.
