Unstable Prototypes

by Lallo, Joseph

  The glass had barely finished settling to the ground by the time the only person standing was Garotte. He climbed gingerly over the divider and helped Winters to her feet.

  "What would you have done if I'd forgotten what 'basement' was code for?"

  "Apologized vigorously and helped you to pick bits of glass out of your hair," he replied, returning to the proper British accent, which seemed oddly out of place coming from his altered face. His breathing was heavy, the exertion taking an extra toll in the high gravity.

  "How did you manage to shut down power and security?" she asked breathlessly.

  "Power and security?"

  "Situation blue. Complete secondary system failure."

  "That was not part of the plan. Not part of my plan anyway. Still, don't look a gift horse in the mouth and all that."

  "How did you break the glass?" she asked.

  "The same way I'll be breaking your cuffs. Careful. Wouldn't want to dislocate a shoulder," he said, guiding her to the counter and doing his best to put the locking mechanism against the surface.

  He climbed to the counter, placed the tip of his cane against the lock between her wrists, and depressed one of the buttons. The same subtle electronic whine sounded, and another clap. Even with the whole of his body weight bracing it, the recoil from his cane nearly lifted him from the ground. A neat hole about the size of a pea was blasted through the restraints, and a somewhat larger one through the counter and floor below it.

  "Who would have thought a breath mint moving at a few multiples of the speed of sound could be so effective a lock pick, eh?" he quipped as Winters pulled her hands from the broken restraints.

  With an impassive look on her face, Winters reached up and grabbed Garotte by the collar, yanking him down from the counter and pulling him off his feet, such that the only thing keeping him from laying flat on his back on a bed of broken glass was her steely grip. She pulled him face to face.

  "Why did you come here and do this? I didn't want to be broken out. Do you understand?"

  "You certainly seemed quick to take out these two gentlemen when you had to."

  "As soon as you raised that cane, the best I could hope for was six months in solitary, minimum. If it is that or an escape, I choose escape, but you had better have a gosh darn good excuse for making me choose it," she said, delivering the replacement expletives with all of the force and conviction of the originals.

  "A group of political or religious extremists with military ties have kidnapped Karter."

  Winters considered the words for a moment.

  "Good call busting me out then," she admitted, straightening him up and fixing his collar, "But give me that cane-gun before you hurt somebody."

  "Gladly," he said, handing it over.

  "When this is all over, I owe you three slaps."

  "Why three?"

  "We'll get into that later. What's the plan?" she asked, snapping instantly into business mode.

  "Well, the plan had been to walk out of here with you under my custody. It had been going rather well until this mysterious blackout, I should add."

  "Yes, well, I'd say that plan is officially beyond redemption. What is Plan B?"

  "I hadn't actually formulated one. I hate Plan B. Its very existence undermines confidence in Plan A."

  Winters pinched the bridge of her nose. "This is exactly why you weren't the one who made the plans."

  "Evidently."

  "Alright, well, we need-"

  She was interrupted by a chirp of Garotte's slidepad. He glanced at it.

  "There has been a security and communication failure in the orbital section of the facility. Potential infiltration. Expect difficulties," he read aloud.

  "Who sent that?"

  "We'll get into that later. I suppose we'll need to get to the shuttle bay?"

  "Yeah. And every darn door along the way is going to be locked. Not even these boys would be able to get them open without power."

  "The cane ought to get them open."

  "Sure, but how many rounds do you have left?"

  "It fires anything that fits down the barrel," he said, stooping and scooping up a double helping of the cubed glass remnants of the divider, "And I'm willing to wager these will be a bit more effective than breath freshener. The cane is armed, so this button opens the compartment to reload, and this one is the trigger. Hold down to charge, release to fire. Longer charge, harder hit. And brace yourself, she's got a hell of a kick."

  She dumped out the breath mints and dumped in some glass, then clicked the compartment shut and took a few test shots at the wall. When she was comfortable with the firing characteristics, she raised the weapon and popped a shot at the red emergency light, scoring a direct hit. As she opened the compartment to top off the load of glass, she began to rattle off orders. "We'll take the first two doors to the left. Should lead to a service corridor. Narrow, fewer doors. From there we'll head out into the administration building, then straight through to the hangar. I'll lay down cover fire, you get a ship running. I hope you've got something with a faster-than-light drive up there."

  "That I do."

  "Alright, then we get in the shuttle, we pray that the security failure holds until we manage to dock, then we get to your ship, get out of here, and you get your slaps. Try not to kill anyone. These men are just doing their jobs. And for goodness sake, let's not start a riot, and let's not let anyone but us escape. These people are here for a reason."

  "Duly noted."

  "What's the codename today?"

  "I've been using Garotte."

  "Again? I guess I'll go with Silo again, then."

  "Just like old times," he said with a grin, snatching a pair of the stun rods and giving them a quick twirl.

  She took a deep breath, clicked the cane compartment shut, and nodded. "Move out."

  Chapter 16

  From time to time, one may hear the term military precision. This usually brings to mind images of troops marching in perfect step, or perhaps doing weapon drills in unison. Impressive, perhaps, but not the sort of thing that inspires awe or admiration. Those who feel that way, however, should know that what the term really refers to is the battlefield behavior that all of those synchronized exercises were conceived to facilitate. Garotte and Silo as they worked their way through the prison's halls were a textbook worthy example. With seldom more than a syllable exchanged between them, actions were assigned and performed. While Silo perforated a lock, Garotte distracted and disabled a guard to buy her the time to do so. Emergency lights were destroyed to provide the cover of darkness, hallways were declared to be clear if they were, and a few quick applications of a stun rod emptied the ones that weren't. In most instances they were through a section of the facility before the guards, who were still grappling with the chaos caused by the total power and security failure, even knew they were there. When they approached one of the secondary entrances to the shuttle hangar, Silo stopped him.

  "Alright. If I'm right about their procedures, the hangar is going to be packed to the gills with guards. Did you check out the layout on the way in?"

  "Six emergency oxygen masks on every alternate support column, three secure munitions chests. One in each corner and one in the center," Garotte said, taking the cane from her and topping off its supply of crushed glass.

  "Those chests will be loaded with anti-vehicular weaponry to take out rogue shuttles in the event an escaping inmate makes it that far. We'll need to confiscate or destroy the contents of all three chests if we are going to have a chance to escape. And we'll need to clear the hangar of guards."

  Garotte tapped his foot and twirled a stun rod in thought, the sounds of utter bedlam echoing through the halls around them.

  "Refresh my memory. The atmospheric pressure on this planet, lethal?" he asked.

  "No. But the atmosphere is unbreathable."

  "Right, so, we pop the door, you provide covering fire, I grab an oxygen rig for each of us. I take cover, you blow the lock
on a munitions chest and as many oxygen rigs as you can. I get a gun, I offer cover fire, you get a gun. We strap on oxygen, then blow the hangar doors. No more breathable atmosphere, no more oxygen rigs, mandatory evacuation. They'll have to manually apply the internal emergency doors to keep the facility from losing its oxygen. They're locked in, and we're all alone in the hangar with the doors wide open. Sufficient?"

  "Sufficient," she nodded.

  She put the cane to the door lock, pulled the trigger, and the plan began to unfold. The pair moved like interlocked gears, each step and every motion leading smoothly into another. A gathering of guards, still startled by the sound of the disintegrating door lock, scrambled for cover as the sonic booms began to erupt from the bizarre makeshift weapon. Garotte sprinted to a pillar, pulled down three oxygen masks and tanks, and tossed one of them high into the air in the high-roofed chamber. Silo spotted it, shifted aim, and neatly punctured its edge with a shot, sending the canister rocketing dangerously around the room. In the brief window of distraction it caused, she turned and fired at the chest nearest to Garotte. He wrenched it open hoisted out a weapon that looked like a rifle with an eating disorder. On a normal planet he would have had trouble carrying it. On Manticore it was practically immobile, but he managed to heave it onto the chest's edge, slap in an ammo clip, and pull the trigger. A wild spray of dark red energy bolts lanced through the air, just barely over the heads of the nearest guards.

  On cue, Silo took full advantage. She made her way to the chest, pushing the cane into his hands and shouldering the heavy weapon with an emasculating amount of ease. One steady shot was fired at each remaining cluster of oxygen masks, causing a satisfying burst of fire and shrapnel with each hit. As she fired, Garotte strapped an oxygen mask onto her face, then onto his own, and finally took a few cane-shots at a trio of the more courageous guards. Silo took advantage of the cover fire to flip the heavy weapon to fully automatic, shift her aim to the primary hangar doors, and unleash. Each bolt of energy took a huge, molten bite out of the door, revealing the pale light of the weak midday sun on the icy concrete slab outside. Within a few moments of perforating the air-tight seal, an alarm with its own reserve power supply began to sound, and a similarly isolated force field flickered into place to stop the oxygen loss. Two quick bursts of fire at the field generator put an end to that. Frigid, unbreathable air flooded the hangar, causing what few guards remained to run for the safety of the interior doors, shutting and sealing them.

  "Bloody hell it is cold. I'd forgotten about the cold," Garotte grumbled, stamping his feet and rubbing his hands together before investigating the security he would have to override to gain control of a shuttle.

  "Oh gosh!" Silo exclaimed, dropping the gun into the chest and snatching an oxygen rig from the one remaining set before dashing off toward the center of the hangar.

  "What's the problem?" Garotte asked, quickly taking up the cane and scanning the area for threats. After a moment, he realized the problem.

  A single guard remained, a fellow unfortunate enough to take a chunk of an exploded oxygen canister to the calf, sending him to the ground. In the panic of evacuating the hangar while under fire, his partners had failed to notice him. From the looks of it his lungful of good air had given out, leaving him heaving great gasping breaths that would do him no good at all.

  "Hold still, hon," she instructed, holding him flat to the floor with one arm and slipping the oxygen mask onto him, "Breathe slow now."

  The guard, who from the looks of him was one of the newer additions to the staff, slowly stopped struggling as the desperate fear of suffocation was replaced by relief. As his wits slowly returned, Silo continued to hold him down, tugging at his pockets and equipment as she did.

  "You alright? You breathing fine?" she asked, checking his eyes and his pulse. "Yeah, you look good. You're alright, hon. That fragment didn't hit anything important. Next time get to the door quicker, okay?"

  He nodded slowly, his mind finally picking up where it left off before the madness had begun. At the precise moment he realized he was face to face with a prisoner in the midst of an escape attempt, he heard the click and beep of a set of restraints locking onto his wrists.

  "Those boys will be out here to get you in just a bit. You'll be fine," Silo assured him.

  "Good job spotting the downed man," Garotte said, "Grab the authentication badge, would you?"

  Most of the high risk equipment in a given facility these days was access controlled via biometrics. Fingerprints and eye scans were incredibly secure, and since it was fairly difficult to accidentally leave your hands and eyes in your other pants, the means of access were always available. The method was not perfect, though, and it was in places such as this that the primary difficulty became obvious. Guards wore face masks and gloves, meaning they would have to at least partially remove their equipment every time they needed to unlock a door. There were ways around this, but almost all of them involved reintroducing the same security risks that biometrics were meant to solve. In Millbrook, a combination of key codes and wireless badges were used. The badges were simple enough to steal. As for the codes?

  "This young lady had the kindness and decency to save your life, my boy. I'd say that the least you could do is let her know your access code," Garotte said.

  "I... I can't do that," he stammered.

  "If you do, I'll stop," Garotte said.

  "Stop what?"

  "This."

  He leaned hard on the injured calf. After an agonized scream, the guard spat out a seven number sequence.

  "Many thanks, my boy. Now, you do realize that if this is the lock-out code, I'm going to have to come back and do that again."

  The guard flinched. Garotte pivoted his foot over the injured calf again.

  "8-8-3-4-3-6-7!" the guard squeaked.

  "That-a boy. When this is all over, grab yourself a copy of 'Mental Focus and Discipline' by K. Jennings. Excellent introduction to interrogation resistance techniques. You could benefit from a few chapters of 'The Science and Application of Deception' by C. Lightman as well. It'll help you get rid of that flinch," Garotte advised.

  "Don't feel bad, hon. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," Silo said gently, grabbing him by his collar and dragging him along behind her. "You're Willis, right? You usually work the east wing. Do me a favor, Willis, when you take your smoke break, do it all the way in the stairwell. I could smell it in my cell."

  "You know, for an improvised plan, that really went quite well," Garotte said as he causally applied the code and the badge, opening the door of the nearest shuttle, "Only one casualty, and really, we'll chalk that up to learning experience for our boy here. Minimal collateral damage. Getting into and out of the orbital section might be a bit of a task, but all things considered I'm quite pleased with..."

  A low, distinctive sound drew his attention to the badly damaged hangar doors. What he heard sounded like a small hovercar idling, or perhaps a shuttle craft at a great distance. What he saw was a sleek, somewhat curious looking space ship hovering just outside the doors. It was nearly as large as the mobile home-sized Armistice that had brought him here, but was sporting a full complement of weaponry. An alphanumeric designation on the nose had mostly been worn away, but just visible were the letters NX.

  "Spoke too soon..." he remarked, before turning and crying, "Cover, now!"

  Garotte dove behind one of the sturdy support columns, followed by Silo and their unwilling guest. An instant later, a salvo of powerful energy shots lanced into the hangar. The mounted guns of the attacking ship swept back and forth, punching holes in the hulls of shuttles and carving deep divots into the rear wall.

  "Who the heck is that!?" Silo yelled.

  "That would be a representative of the group responsible for taking the inventor! Unless I've missed my guess, they are responsible for the power outage as well!" Garotte replied.

  "If they're terrorists, then I'm not pulling any punches," she proclaimed.


  Silo took advantage of a brief lull in the barrage to roll to the still intact weapon chest and withdraw the heavy rifle and a pair of clips. When no followup attack came, she reached in and pulled out a second gun, placing it on the floor and shoving it with her heel toward Garotte. With considerable effort, he managed to raise it enough to be useful.

  "You've got the better cover. On three, let her loose," Silo recommended.

  "Will do," Garotte said, turning to the restrained guard beside him. "You'd better hope your superiors didn't cut any corners on their firepower, my boy."

  "1, 2, 3!"

  With all of the strength he could muster, Garotte raised the rifle and fired a few shots at the ship. Never before had he been so relieved that energy weapons had virtually no recoil. The bolts passed through the space that had previously been occupied by the hangar doors, but before they reached the ship, a faint blue shimmer of shield dispersed them.

  "No good. We're going to need to find a way to hit it harder than that!" Garotte managed before the ship started to return fire.

  He ducked further down behind the support column, itself behind a shuttle. The vehicle and structure combined managed to keep the ship's weapons from turning him into a cloud of embers. Another thirty seconds of continuous bombardment reduced most of the contents of the hangar into mangled twists of molten and scorched metal before a fizzling pop indicated that something had gone horribly wrong with the plasma cannons. Had Garotte and Silo taken any less care in their choice of cover, they would have been killed halfway through the barrage. As it was, the two partners and the restrained guard were occupying two of the only undamaged patches of floor. Garotte and Silo remained perfectly silent. The downed guard did not. Finally Garotte pulled him face to face.