Mark joined Blackie at the extraction chamber to help remove two large ceramic panels from the side opposite the viewing port, and Amelia, who had just finished clipping the gurney’s wires, joined Joules. Finally, all the ceramic pieces had been removed and the wiring was nothing more than short pigtails. “These are not even worth using as splice wires,” said Mark holding up a bit of wire so Levon could see the girls’ handiwork. “What now?”
“Once you break the ceramic into bits you’re done,” replied Levon. “There are some thin packing sheets in the print warehouse; you should probably drape those over the parts before bashing them to keep shards from flying everywhere.”
Blackie and Mark went to the warehouse while Amelia and Joules finished completely destroying the extraction chamber wiring system. Joe and Wayne were just about finished disassembling the extractor/injector cones. When the final cone was removed, Joe put it in a pile with the others and announced, “I think these are hammer fodder.”
“How about those wires?” asked Amelia.
“They’re all yours,” said Wayne. Joules and Amelia attacked the wiring like piranhas eating an unfortunate meal.
In almost no time the cone hangers were stripped of their wiring. “They look like mannequins without clothes,” said Amelia. “There is something really pathetic about them being stripped completely naked.”
“You think that’s pathetic?” commented Blackie, “wait until I remove all the bolts and bend them into pretzel shapes.”
Blackie and Wayne returned from the warehouse with a dozen large packing pads. “These should do,” said Wayne. “Mark, I’ll bet you two Gorgas Cavitas I can bash more ceramic than you can.”
“You’re on,” said Mark.
“I’m getting out of the way, and I suggest you do the same,” recommended Blackie as he stepped into the farthest corner of the room.
“You want to go outside?” asked Joules.
“No, I don’t want to miss this; it should be hilarious,” responded Blackie. “I just don’t want to be close to the action. I’ve seen a different version of this before and anyplace closer than right here,” he pointed to the ground beneath him, “is life threatening.”
“Are you ready?” Mark asked Wayne.
“Ready.”
“Okay, the loser has to do the extractor/injector cones,” replied Mark. “On three then, one…three” and he began clobbering the ceramic parts under the pad with a large hammer.
During that little space of time between one and three Wayne made his first blow before Mark’s hammer hit its target. That sort of cheating is exactly what you would expect from such close friends. Before long, there was as much laughing going on as destruction. Mark decided a better method was to jump in the air and bring his hammer crashing down on the ceramic, finishing in a pose that looked like Thor pounding the ground with his gigantic hammer.
Wayne responded with theatrics of his own. After delivering a blow, he tossed his hammer in the air so it turned end over end, caught it with the opposite hand and delivered another blow. The ceramic plates were hard, but they were no match for those hammers and soon every piece of ceramic in the room was reduced to shards no bigger than a hand. Mark and Wayne both looked like they had just finished a grueling fifteen round boxing match.
“Who won?” asked Mark. “It had better be me because I don’t think I can lift this hammer anymore.”
“I totally beat you,” said Wayne as he sat down, and then laid down on the floor. “What was I thinking? When I can move again, I’m going to pummel you Mark.”
“From the looks of things, I’d say I’m safe for a while,” responded Mark, and he joined Wayne on the floor.
“This is the safe phase,” said Blackie, “when they’re both so tired they can’t move. He pulled a hammer out of Mark’s limp hand and started bashing the extraction/injector cones to pieces.
“Bless you,” said Mark. “I take back everything Wayne said about you.”
About that time Dex returned to the extraction room. “You’ve done all the ceramic – good job, Blackie. Jerin and I are visiting with the people outside.” He paused to look at Mark and Wayne lying on the floor, then continued, “Let me know when you’re finished,” and he left the room.
“That’s not fair,” grumbled Wayne.
“I know,” said Mark, “I won and Blackie gets all the credit.”
“If I could get up, I’d hit you,” responded Wayne.
Nita and her dad and brother came out of Nevel’s office into the processing chamber just as Blackie hit another EI cone. Nita saw Mark and Wayne lying on the floor like they had passed out. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Splendid,” said Blackie, “they’re just recovering.”
“Mark are you okay?” asked Nita. There was a distinct sound of concern in her voice.
“I won,” replied Mark.
“It’s being contested,” snapped Wayne immediately.
“Dad, this is Mark,” she said, gesturing with her hand toward the floor.
“Hello, sir,” said Mark as he struggled to get up. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. This is Wayne, my best friend and staunch inhabitant of second place.”
Looking at Nita with a smile on his face, her dad said, “I see what you mean. It’s a pleasure meeting you Mark, and you, Wayne. And, this is my son, Denton.”
Wayne begrudgingly got to his feet and shook hands. Blackie had stopped bashing the cones while Nita was trying to introduce her family.
“That’s Blackie and Joules,” said Nita. “Why don’t we step outside?” she suggested, and everyone but Blackie and Joules left the room.
“What a great first impression,” laughed Blackie, “I’ll get some mileage out of this… Mark, remember the time you first met Nita’s dad and brother…”
Joules laughed, picked up a hammer and started bashing EI cones. With both of them working all the cones were destroyed within minutes. Blackie tossed his hammer to the ground and suggested they check on Guzzle and Nevel in the control room.
“How’s it going in here?” said Joules.
“Great,” said Nevel, “we’re just about finished.
“It’s not my best work,” replied Guzzle, “but it will work in a pinch. I’ve given them two tries to reinstate the names. I also included an encrypted messaging program to automatically notify me each time they try a reinstatement. Every time they try the system will crash. The third time, before the system crashes, the administrator and operator will be warned that the next attempt to recover the missing names will initiate a subroutine that erases everything in memory and renders the computer useless.”
“What if they need the other names?” asked Blackie.
We made a separate list that doesn’t include the missing names,” said Nevel, who showed them a laser stick. “All they have to do is upload the names from this memory stick to a new database. We did make a nice discovery while we were fishing around in the code and the database,” continued Nevel. “We found the name of the person who leaked Joe’s research to the Zin Charr and the name of the firm that illegally used Guzzle’s programmable ceramics to make the equipment in this facility.”
“I can’t wait to pay them a visit,” remarked Guzzle.
“Is there any backup equipment we need to destroy?” asked Blackie. “Like spare parts or an extra gurney or extraction chamber?”
“None, the equipment in the processing chamber was all we had,” said Nevel.
“I’m done here. The virus is loaded, I left a false backdoor, and a real one in case I want to harass them. That should be it,” said Guzzle with a satisfied smile on his face. “Nevel, I think it’s time for you and Levon to call your families.”
After conferring with Dex, both Nevel and Levon called their wives. They didn’t bother to find a private place because both of them spoke what sounded like gibberish. They had independently concluded that someday they would need to escape from the facility and they would have to use the warehous
e’s communication system, which was sure to be tapped, to contact their families. They each developed a code with their wives, knowing that one day something like today might happen. When they finished their calls both of them indicated their families would be waiting in the spoils west of town.
Dex called the assault team and Jerin together for a meeting and went over everything to be one hundred percent sure nothing was overlooked. They all affirmed what had been accomplished including who and how many people were reanimated, what equipment was destroyed, and the virus that Guzzle and Nevel had created to infect the computer system.
Drawing a knife from a scabbard on his right leg, Dex said, “It’s time to make it look like we forced Nevel and Levon to help us. Where do you keep your medicine kit? We’re going to need some bandages.”
“It’s amazing how a little blood makes such a big mess,” commented Nevel as Joules bandaged the cut on his arm first, then Levon’s. Blackie was cleaning the edge of the machete he used to fling the blood on walls and the debris.
“If they go to the trouble of analyzing spatter patterns, it will look like you put up a fight and were cut up pretty badly,” said Blackie.
“I think we’re ready for a pickup,” said Dex. He pulled his transponder from his pocket, scanned his fingerprint and pushed the green button. “They will be here soon.”
Wayne and Blackie alerted people in the viewing room and asked them to line up in the aisles. When everyone was in the cryogenic unit warehouse, Dex explained what was about to happen in just a few minutes.
“Once the assault team has cleared the area outside the main door and the ship has arrived, we will file out the door and directly onto the ship. No matter what happens when we call you to board the ship we need you to advance and don’t stop until you’re seated on the fighter. Is everyone clear?
Anyone have any questions? No, we’re not taking everyone to their homes, we don’t know if your homes are safe. We are going directly to Centoria. Once we’re there we can sort out the rest. If any of the Centorians want to help clear the area you are welcome to join our assault team. We’ll use a spoke and wheel for 400 meters.”
The silence that followed Dex’s explanation was immediately disturbed by the sound of seventy-three people getting to their feet and advancing toward the exit door where Dex and the assault team stood.
“Let them all help,” said Dex to his team, “this is what they were trained to do and they are very good at it.”
Amelia and Joe handed their stun weapons to the first Centorians to exit the door as Blackie pulled a short machete out of his bag. The blade had been ground so that it was perfectly balanced. “I got it at Theadelbaum’s before we left,” said Blackie to Mark who was eyeing the machete.
“You should have gotten two of them,” replied Mark, who was feeling a little uneasy since he didn’t have a weapon.
“That’s an interesting sword,” commented Jerin who was standing close by and overheard Blackie and Mark’s conversation.
“It’s not a Kitan, but you’re welcome to it,” offered Blackie as he held out the machete, handle first with his palm against the spine.
Jerin took it and stepped backwards, whirling the machete in the air several times. “It’s nicely balanced,” he said.
“Quarter gram to heavy,” replied Blackie.
“That’s perfect,” said Jerin.
“You take it when we go out, you’re probably better with it than I am,” suggested Blackie.
“Thanks,” replied Jerin. “Something tells me you’re being modest.”
Dex asked Amelia if she would remain at the door until they had swept the area and confirm each team had returned with all its members. She looked relieved and accepted his offer; Amelia was more of a thinker than a fighter.
Wayne opened the exit door and within moments the assault team and 73 Centorians poured out onto the landscape. You could tell the Centorians were professionals. Without saying a word, they formed teams of eight as they cleared the door and immediately picked a compass heading to follow, clearing the line straight ahead of them. Each successive team picked an adjacent heading, working clockwise from zero and when the final team cleared the door and moved away, every square inch of ground within 400 meters of the warehouse’s front door was being swept and cleared by the best fighters in the universe.
Their method was simple. As each team left the door, a team member stopped every fifty meters along their compass heading. When the last team member reached his mark at 400 meters he signaled the closest team member who passed the signal to the team member next to him and so on. Within moments each man on the team was moving clockwise in an arc, like the spoke on a wheel rotating around its hub.
As each spoke advanced, each team member cleared the area in front and on each side of his path. Using this spoke and wheel method, virtually every square foot of the area within a 400-meter diameter of the warehouse front door was cleared. When the first team’s line was at or near the second team’s original compass heading, the team collapsed like an antenna toward the warehouse; the eighth man joined the seventh man and so on until the team was consolidated and returned together.
Other than two campers in a tent 20 meters beyond the sweep radius, none of the teams encountered anyone. The Numarians were completely ignorant of what had transpired inside their warehouse during the last 18 hours.
Wayne had gone with the first group of Centorians out the door and was one of the first to return. “These guys are unbelievable – how did they ever get caught?” Wayne asked Dex, who had joined the second team and returned just after Wayne.
“They were all gassed,” replied Dex. “No one in their right mind would fight these guys straight up. We think most of them were betrayed by a family member of the people they were supposed to be protecting, and were ambushed in close quarters with gas canisters. Most of them never woke up; they were disambiguized while they were unconscious. Seventy-Three Centorians in almost two hundred years doesn’t seem like much to others, but to us it was completely unacceptable. We waited patiently, knowing at some point a time to act would present itself, and here we are.”
“What do you intend to do to the rats?” asked Wayne.
“Nothing,” replied Dex. “Oh, we’ll visit the ones who are still alive and let them know we know what happened, but we won’t take any action against them. The Zin Charr scare people. They make people do things they would never have dreamed of doing otherwise. And it’s always more complicated than it seems at face value. Usually the 'rat' as you called them was trying to protect someone else. The Zin Charr are very good with threats and blackmail.”
As Dex discussed the Zin Charr with Wayne the remaining teams returned and checked-in with Amelia. “All the teams and team members are accounted for, Dex.”
“Just in time, there is our ride,” he said pointing at the Centorian stealth fighter that had just appeared above the tree line just west of the warehouse. “They came in over the spoils. Amelia, as soon as they settle on the outriggers we can start loading. Tell everyone in the warehouse to get ready to load.”
The stealth fighter hovered low over the tree line then slowly advanced to position itself over the middle of the clearing where it lowered outriggers and settled to the ground. When it did, the entire area was filled with crisscrossing security lasers that set off a siren mounted in the trees.
“Jerin, find that siren and shut it up,” yelled Dex as he tossed him a Cogent Three Phase Blaster. Jerin caught the weapon and disappeared into the woods north of the clearing.
The stealth fighter lowered its airstair. Arton was at the top of the stairs yelling, “That security grid will scramble a response team. We have five, maybe six, minutes before the first fighter arrives.”
“Amelia,” yelled Dex, “get those people on board.”
The words had barely left his lips when the siren went dead. Immediately a line of people came pouring out of the warehouse. “To the ship and all the way to the back,�
�� Amelia was walking backwards at the front of the line and yelling instructions to those exiting the door. She reached the stairs with the first passenger and returned to the door
Arton was standing at the top of the airstair, “Up and to the back please, all the way to the back.”
All of the Centorians had reentered the warehouse to check on their protégé’s and assure them everything was going to plan. With no luggage to stow and no block boarding, everyone was on board and seated within five minutes. It was the most efficient boarding Amelia had ever witnessed. She made her way up the airstair followed by Dex. “Is that everyone?”
“Everyone but Blackie,” responded Amelia who pointed to Blackie who was standing on the edge of the clearing.
“What is he doing?” yelled the pilot who could see Blackie from the cockpit.
“Go get him, Amelia, we have to leave right now,” demanded Dex. But before she could move, Blackie turned and sprinted to the ship. The airstair began to retract as soon as he stepped into the fighter and Arton yelled, “Get us airborne.”
Just moments before the airstair sealed against the ship’s fuselage, Blackie’s face broke into a huge smile. Dex shook his head but didn’t say a word about Blackie’s strange behavior and strode off to the back of the ship. Amelia motioned to Blackie to join her in the galley.
“What were you doing out there?” she whispered.
“Making sure the whole team got on board.”
Amelia had a perplexed look on her face and shook her head slightly, indicating she didn’t understand. Blackie put his finger against his lips, and then pointed upward. Amelia’s eyes followed his gesture to a dark corner of the galley’s ceiling. If Blackie hadn’t indicated where to look she would never have noticed the wispy, almost imperceptible shadow. She smiled and whispered, “Welcome aboard, Anonoi.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TACTICAL WEAPONRY
“Attention everyone, this is Captain Gorman, we’re initiating lift off. Crew members you have two minutes until engagement of the Translocation Drive. Find your seats and buckle up.”
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