“Pathetic,” Dick whispered.
“Noble, you mean,” Dragos countered, glaring at Dick. “They are more human than you are.”
The Chiroptera gave out a short screech and fluttered across the ceiling past us finally coming to hang from the ceiling just outside the elevator. Dick gave out a small and completely hilarious cry of alarm as they did. I walked over to where Ezra stood checking and rechecking his gear.
“Good thing I always have to carry food with me now,” Ezra said, wiping the tears from his eyes.
“Yeah, you were awesome with those guys,” Taylor said hugging Ezra.
“They’re Type One, like me. They don’t want to kill anyone, they just want to protect their own,” Ezra replied.
“Were there more? Are these the only ones who survived?” Taylor asked.
Ezra’s looked very grim for a moment then headed down the corridor. We rounded the corner and found three Chiroptera wrapped in sheets lying along one side of the wall, their tactical harnesses and blades laid on top. Taylor gasped and looked up at me horrified.
I hoped I wasn’t responsible for this somehow, that Dick was lying, and I wasn’t the one who had engineered all of this. Even if I had been trying to do something altruistic, the fruits of which could have had unintended consequences. Whatever it was, I hoped it was worth all the suffering and loss I’d seen so far.
We proceeded to a checkpoint outside a vault door. We had almost traversed the full length when a turret dropped down from the ceiling. It fired a single bolt of powerful energy that missed the mark only because Dragos pushed Taylor and me down to the floor. As the turret began to charge for another blast, Ezra rose and opened fire causing the device to spark and jitter before falling to the floor in a heap.
I looked back, hoping Dick hadn’t had the sense to get out of the way. No such luck. He stood there pressed against the wall and white as a sheet. He looked down the hall with the rest of us at the massive hole burrowed in the wall beyond.
“They were serious about keeping folks out of here,” Taylor remarked as she regained her footing.
“Looks like there were three more of those turrets that could have dropped, but that was the only one hooked up to emergency power. If we’d attempted this before the shutdown, we’d have been dead,” Ezra said turning and looking up at the ceiling.
Sitting down at the terminal outside the vault door I began trying to find a way to bypass the security. From what I could see right away, the door normally would only open on a schedule with a timed lock to correspond with the delivery of sensitive contraband. I needed to trick it into thinking it was time for a delivery.
“Taylor, I need you to try to reach out to the onsite AI and see if you can convince it to accept a delivery into CGG secure lockdown,” I said standing up from the terminal.
“Okay,” Taylor said taking my place.
She rested her hands on the keyboard and went silent for a moment.
“She is Mechanic?” Dragos asked, looking back over his shoulder.
“Sort of,” I replied.
Taylor turned and looked back at us, blinking away the digital reality she’d just been interacting with.
“The artificial intelligence in charge of the facility is a crotchety old man,” Taylor said as she rolled her eyes. “He says I don’t have the clearance to make a request and that he wasn’t certain he could open the vault door even if I did. Apparently, the facility is on emergency power right now.”
“He tell you anything we didn’t already know?” I asked.
“He’s lonely,” Taylor replied.
“Does it want anything we can give him?” Dragos asked.
“I’ll ask,” Taylor said turning back to the terminal.
Almost a minute went by before she turned back around.
“He doesn’t want to stay down here and continue running an empty facility. He wants us to pull his sentience core from the server and take him with us. He wants to be somewhere there are people,” Taylor replied.
“Where would we take him?” Dragos asked.
“Your sister’s transport would probably benefit from a grateful artificial intelligence,” Ezra replied.
“Tell him this is a deal,” Dragos replied, nodding.
After a few moments, the vault door slowly rolled open along with every other hatch and door throughout the facility. All of the terminals went dark and the emergency lighting dimmed slightly as the facility lost the principle source of power regulation. I stepped into the vault and saw several keypads across dozens of burn boxes.
Checking the schematics I found the right box and set about attempting to discern the code. I could enter the code as many times as I wanted. It was only if I tried to open the burn box without entering the correct code that bad things would happen. I put my ear to the box and began working the keypad furiously, but I couldn’t hear a single tumbler or bolt move or even twitch.
“I need one of the Chiroptera,” I said turning to Ezra.
“Apparently we overestimated your abilities,” Dick said with a chuckle.
Ezra came back with one of the female Metasapients and explained to her that I needed someone to listen to the internal components of the burn box. She understood and said she would indicate which tumbler or slide bar moved by holding up a particular finger. Ezra did his best to translate, as she mostly used a form of sign language to communicate.
“This is going to take forever,” Dick grumbled.
Less than sixty seconds later with the Metasapient’s keen hearing to assist me, I had it open, much to Dick’s chagrin. I reached in and pulled out a case that contained twelve separate metal tubes, each stoppered with a pressure clamp. The metal felt incredibly light and was like nothing I’d seen before.
“Should we open more boxes?” Dragos asked.
“Depends. How long do you want to make the people who have your mother wait?” I replied handing Taylor the case of vials.
Dragos looked about the room mournfully as Taylor opened the case. She set it down on the floor and withdrew one of the vials and opened the stopper. It looked like mercury inside, liquid metal. Taylor closed her eyes for a moment, then looked back up at me.
“It looks the same as what I was injected with, right before I went crazy, moving at super speed,” she reported putting the stopper back on.
“We’ve made a lot of assumptions about what this stuff is. Is it a poison, a control agent, or a catalyst as we’d been led to believe before? I guess it’s too much to ask that some literature be included in the box?” I asked.
“No luck,” Taylor replied giving the burn box one more look.
“I’ll admit it, I assumed the whole thing was a lie and we were walking into a trap,” Ezra remarked.
I turned and clasped the slender hand of the Chiroptera Metasapient and mouthed the words ‘thank you’ to her. She just blinked and looked at my hand for a moment until Ezra signed the words for me. She nodded to me, giving a small screech.
“Well then, we mustn’t dally about,” Dick said looking at his watch.
“We’ve got to get the sentience core before we leave,” Taylor reminded us.
We walked back through the massive underground facility unfettered until we found the small dark chamber above a ring of servers where the onsite AI’s sentience core rested. Taylor reached her slender hands into the slot where the circuit board cluster was lodged and unhooked several wires and a cable sticking them in her pocket. I then slowly slid the cluster out of the slot and into a soft bit of cloth and wrapped it up.
We stuck it in a satchel beside the catalyst case and made haste back for the elevator. The Chiroptera Metasapients waited for us and skittered across the ceiling into the elevator. We stepped in beside them and hit the button. The doors slide halfway shut then froze
in place.
“Uh oh,” Taylor said looking up.
The Chiroptera chittered nervously amongst themselves as Dick chuckled and threw his hands into the air.
“Pull the AI that regulates the facility. What a brilliant idea,” he said taunting us.
“Shut up, Dick. Everyone out,” Ezra said scaling the side of the elevator to the ceiling.
We all stepped out and Ezra kicked himself a couple of footholds in the side of the metal sheeting of the elevator car. He then reached up and began clawing away the false ceiling and the lighting, making it fall to the floor inside with a crash. He squinted up at what lay overhead and began feeling around trying to find a hatch.
“There’s nothing,” Ezra said dropped down and pulling up his rifle.
We plugged our ears while he emptied a clip into the ceiling. The Chiroptera screeched and shuffled about, obviously not liking the loud noise. Ezra looked up and frowned.
“I made a bunch of holes, but I don’t think we’ll be able to punch through without a tool or something,” Ezra said looking around.
“What about going through a wall and squeezing past the elevator car to the shaft?” I asked.
Ezra looked over at the wall and grabbed the foothold he’d made and pulled the metal sheeting down. He then tore out a piece of fiberglass sheeting setting it aside. Finally, he poked his head in the opening he’d made and looked up.
“Bingo,” he said, giving me the thumbs up.
Fortunately, we were all slender enough to slide up past the elevator car to the shaft. Dragos and Ezra were the first ones up, fearing somewhat the possibility that there were countermeasures in the elevator shaft. After a few moments, there didn’t appear to be any and they gave us a hand up with Dick and the Chiroptera sliding up behind us.
“Men,” the female Chiroptera whispered after giving off a short screech.
“I know, right?” Taylor laughed.
The Chiroptera blinked at one another, not understanding.
“Where?” Ezra asked, with a loud sigh.
The Chiroptera all pointed up the shaft in unison.
“Oh. So much for this being not being an ambush?” Taylor said looking up the shaft.
“There is only this way out?” Dragos asked.
“We’re somewhere below midtown deep in the earth. I don’t think the tunnels beneath downtown come out this far. I doubt there is another way out of here, or our friends here would have found it,” Ezra said, gesturing to the Chiroptera.
“Okay,” Dragos replied, grabbing the first rung of the service ladder and hauling himself up.
The Chiroptera skittered along the walls leaping into the air back and forth from the walls to make their own ascent. Ezra leapt up to the ladder and began climbing as well.
“I’m scared,” Taylor said hugging me.
“Not half as much as I am,” I replied, hugging her back.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Dick muttered, jumping up to the ladder.
I grabbed Taylor by the waist and lifted her up so she could reach the service ladder. The climb was very long, nearly three hundred feet of elevator shaft by my reckoning. The Chiroptera stopped just short of the elevator doors and clung to the walls quivering slightly, probably from having exerted themselves.
Ezra handed a screwdriver up to Dragos who jammed it in between the doors and forced them open. Light poured into the shaft and Dragos pulled himself up toward the floor above. I could dimly see past Taylor and Ezra to what looked like two pairs of armored arms putting a hand on each arm, his rifle, and his sidearm pulling him the rest of the way through. Resigned, Ezra did the same, handing his weapons off to some people I couldn’t yet see, followed by Dick who struggled slightly, protesting the rough treatment.
“What is this all about? Why are you here?” I could hear him faintly say.
Then Taylor stepped up. I slid quickly in behind her and shoved a guy wearing full tactical armor off of her as she did her best to hold onto her bag and the prizes we’d manage to pull up from below. There were at least dozen of these goons. One pulled out a tactical baton and raised his arm to strike me, but an elderly man wearing a hat and trench coat stepped in.
“That won’t be necessary,” Dr. Helmet said removing his hat.
I looked around at nearly a dozen heavily armed Alphadein collectors dressed in tactical armor and carrying assault rifles. The good doctor looked like he’d aged ten years since I last saw him, not looking particularly well at all. He took off his glasses and polished them while the troopers forced Dragos and Ezra to kneel beside where they had Matthias a few feet away. Taylor huddled behind me, her hand slipping down inside her bag.
“Where is the catalyst?” Dr. Helmet asked.
I gritted my teeth trying desperately to figure out what he was doing here and why. What part did Helmet play in all of this? I hadn’t really considered him a participant in the conspiracy we seemed entangled, but it appeared I would have to now. I needed to find out what he knew without turning this situation into a blood bath.
“Sorry, it wasn’t down there. I guess Dr. Madmar has been playing more games. Maybe we can negotiate or work something out here,” I said, bluffing and looking over at Dick to try and gauge his reaction.
Dick just stood off to the side, quietly fuming.
“Madmar? What’s he got to do with any of this? Please, I really must insist. Give me the catalyst, Vance,” Dr. Helmet said, sounding more impatient.
Vance, he called me Vance, not Silverstein and not what I expected. I thought he would have made a more personal plea for the catalyst since he’d treated me for a head wound and seemed genuinely concerned for my welfare. Whoever I was talking to, it felt like I was talking to him for the first time.
“Sorry, that is just not going to happen,” I replied firmly.
“Mr. Uroboros, I think we might be having a failure to communicate. It’s very simple, I can’t let you give the catalyst to them,” Dr. Helmet said, leveling a handgun at me.
Chapter 14
Central Booking District, Drainage Tunnels, Mars
September 18th, 2124 - 75 years previous to shutdown.
Calvin One looked through the port to the corridor beyond, motioning for Athos One and the rest of the squad to come forward. They were low on ammunition now, and the convicts had acquired several exoskeletons and mining crushers for use as improvised weapons. There was no getting the wardens off world now, and the forces deployed to rescue them were cut off from the port.
“You see anyone?” Athos One whispered between ragged breaths.
“No, it’s very quiet out to a hundred feet,” Calvin One replied, sinking down against the wall.
The rest of the squad did the same, taking a moment to rest while their new scout kept watch in the tunnel above they’d just traversed. The concrete forms around them were cracked and leaking water, but they could all tell by the smell it wasn’t potable. It was cold as well, but the Drones didn’t seem to mind.
“We’re too deep to get sat-signal down here,” Ezra One reported, dropping into the tunnel behind the squad.
“Take a guess at how far the port is?” Athos One muttered, checking his rifle.
“Eight or nine thousand meters of tunnel, assuming we are able to go through all the relays and stations along the way,” Ezra One said, after a moment’s thought.
“There are eight million convicts trying to break CBD, and if they succeed, millions more will be free to run the Wardens off world,” Calvin One stated grimly.
“We should go to the facility offices to try to procure a Warden, according to our original orders,” Ezra One insisted.
“The facility offices are overrun, there’s no way a Warden is still alive. You’re new, and clearly don’t know how this works. The missio
n has gone sideways and it is time to leave,” Athos One snapped.
“The sally ports can’t be opened without a Warden. If the convicts don’t keep at least one alive, they’ll not be able to free everyone in general population,” Ezra replied coolly.
“They could just use a plucked eye and a severed hand for the biometrics, and...”
“No, the biometrics won’t work unless the Warden is alive. The Factory instructs scouts in the general limits of most countermeasures, and our own mission briefing has a contingency in the event we can’t rescue a Warden,” Ezra One explained, looking to the rest of the squad.
They all knew what the contingency would require, and none of them were comfortable with it. Aborting the mission would be easier, but if the convicts managed to open the hundreds of sally ports separating central booking district from general population, Mars would be utterly lost. Also, thousands of civilians working on Mars would lose their lives or become victims to the convict population.
“Okay, scout, lead the way,” Athos One said, resigned.
Ezra One took them along the same route they’d used to fight their way to the perimeter of the drainage tunnels beneath the large facilities office. The next part was difficult, requiring each Drone to climb a vertical tunnel upward nearly eighty meters. The cistern and the adjoining pumping station was vacant, a few stray shell casings the only evidence of what happened from the exterior.
The inside of the pumping station was a different story. The rig workers were killed, some of them raped, and a handful looked like they’d been butchered. Athos One averted his gaze, looking back at the squad. It was clear some of them had lost their nerve now, but Ezra One pressed on, stepping over the pooled blood toward the back entrance.
“Do you see this, Ezra One? This is what might await us? The humans are barbarians and worse! We should evacuate,” Athos One shouted, unwilling to move another inch.
Uroboros Saga Book 2 Page 20
