by Mia Archer
Some of the super science stuff this place got up to these days was arguably less destructive than some of the crap they’d gotten up to down here back when they were researching how to give Hitler and Tojo the business so our boys could come home sooner and more alive.
“That doesn’t look like anything else we’ve seen down here,” Nancy said.
She could say that again. The door spanned the entire length of the tunnel, and it was absurdly spacious for an underground tunnel. I guess the professors who thought they might be caught down here for a long time if the cold war got radioactively hot had wanted things to be comfortable.
I couldn’t argue with that. You wanted some elbow room while you were spending your time banging hot grad assistants in an attempt to repopulate the world for Uncle Sam and avoid a mine shaft gap with the reds.
This door looked far more modern than anything that would’ve been built for the cold war though. We’re talking it looked like something out of the future. A massive metal door with blinking lights, a keypad, and some other biometric sensing stuff on the front, and all around the thing were a bunch of nasty weapons that, for the moment, seemed to be content to lie dormant.
I breathed a sigh of relief. It was the first indication we’d had of actual weapons being used down here, and they weren’t doing much of anything. Talk about a relief.
“Stay here for a second,” I said. “I’m going to…”
Only before I could finish that sentence Technomancer stepped forward with confidence. Maybe that confidence came from her tendency to be slightly unhinged. Maybe that confidence came from the fact that she could usually get technology to do her bidding simply by touching it.
Maybe she was just stupid and didn’t realize the kind of mortal peril she was putting herself in by approaching a door that was armed to the teeth.
Talk about the kind of sentence you only hear uttered in Starlight City.
“Um, Technomancer?” I asked. “I know you’re kind of new to playing in the big leagues and everything, but I really think it would be a monumentally bad idea for you to approach that door and…”
She moved closer and ignored everything I was saying. Which of course she would ignore everything I was saying. She thought she knew better than me. She thought there wasn’t a piece of technology invented that she couldn’t bend to her will, because her experience so far had been nothing but technology bending to her will.
I started grinding my teeth. I didn’t care that I didn’t have the dental module fabricated in the new lab yet so I’d have to deal with tooth pain like a normal.
The numerous weapons tracked on Technomancer as she approached. Like they were waiting for her to make their day. Like her getting close was enough to suddenly get all of the old technology in this place to start waking up.
“Technomancer…” Nancy said, looking at the weapons as well.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Nothing’s going wrong here. Trust me on this.”
She held her hands out. She looked like Nimoy trying to do a mind meld with a hunk of latex and plaster that was supposed to look like a terrifying rock monster but fell short thanks to the limits of ‘60s prosthetic technology. We’re talking the mind melds back before they worked out some of the rules where he had to touch. Back when Spock could stand in front of the thing he was melding with and send his mind to their mind.
Maybe that’s what she was doing here. Some sort of technological mind meld. Why the fuck not?
She reached the door. Touched it. Okay. So much for the long distance mind meld. The door started to hum, and it sounded for all the world like all the technology behind that door, technology I had no doubt would love an opportunity to murder-death-kill us if it could, was purring for her.
“That’s right baby,” she said, stroking the door with the kind of affection most people usually reserved for their dog or autonomous rodent hunter-killer. “You’ve been left alone for awhile now, haven’t you? Your old master disappeared and you miss her?”
Only Technomancer stopped. Frowned as though she was sensing something with her weird tech mind meld that she didn’t like. Which immediately put me on edge. If there was something in there she didn’t like then I figured it meant there was very shortly going to be something here that I didn’t like.
I held up my wrist blaster and let it do a little bit of humming of its own. Hey, I figured if there was a bunch of tech on the other side of that door that was going to do its best to kill me then the least I could do was respond in kind.
“Something’s wrong,” Technomancer said, turning to me with an even larger frown. “I thought you told me this Dr. Lana person was dead?”
“Well yeah,” I said. “At least I’m pretty sure she’s dead. I know that’s sort of a moving target with heroes and villains in this city, but she drowned and then I atomized her and left a trail of those atoms behind the orbital path of the planet, so I’m pretty sure she hasn’t had time to reconstitute herself.”
“Huh,” Technomancer said.
Another loud muted thump from up above pulled my attention away from the door and all the guns that were pointed at us.
“I wonder how things are going up there,” Nancy said, her voice tense. “If we can’t break into this thing then they’re up there dying for nothing.”
She was looking at her phone. Technomancer had done some sort of mojo with the thing that let it get a cell signal even here in the tunnels beneath the university. I’d pointedly told her it wouldn’t be a good idea to access any WiFi networks down here that looked like the university WiFi network. I’d learned that lesson the hard way once upon a time.
“Technomancer will have that shield down,” I said, not able to resist a quote.
Even if it wasn’t a quote that was strictly relevant to what we were doing here considering I didn’t want that shield down up top. The last thing I needed was a bunch of hostile aliens streaming into the place on top of all the other problems we were dealing with. No, I just needed a door opened. A door being guarded by all sorts of nasty robotics that Technomancer was fucking around with while people were up there dying to create a distraction.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Looks like they caught the aliens by surprise,” Nancy said. “The blues are reorganizing, but it’s not going to be long before they’re hitting back.”
“Right,” I said, stepping forward. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Technomancer, but it’s time we stop fucking around and get in there to take care of business.”
“Of course,” Technomancer said. “It’s just that I feel a presence. Something that…”
“Gives you a case of the willies?” a familiar voice said.
I’d like to say I got a little chill hearing that voice, but honestly I wasn’t all that surprised. As far as the list of voices I didn’t want to hear went Dr. Lana was probably about third. Beneath Fialux who could really ruin our day if she showed up here and Sabine who had no business being down here considering her molecules were probably somewhere in the vicinity of the recently demoted dwarf planet Pluto.
“Go on and show yourself you bitch,” I said, trying my best to sound bored and not irritated. “I’m not going to act surprised to see you.”
One of those turrets turned towards me. I prepared my directional shields for a shot, but when it fired it turned out the thing was just a holoprojector showing an image of Dr. Lana standing in the middle of our merry band of infiltrators with her arms crossed.
“Oh my,” she said. “This is quite the merry band you’ve brought to my home Night Terror. I suppose you’ll be wanting that depowering ray I made for Fialux?”
21
Old Enemies
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked.
“Come now Night Terror,” Dr. Lana said. “You’ve already shown that you have an obsession with killing me and the wherewithal to pull it off. Do you really think I’m going to do something stupid like go and tell you how
you can kill me now?”
“I guess not,” I growled. “But I still want to know what the fuck you’re doing here.”
“That’s for me to know and you to go fuck yourself,” Dr. Lana said.
“You sure about that?” I asked. “Because the last I saw of you, you were being destroyed by something as stupid as getting engulfed in fire.”
I waited to see her reaction. There wouldn’t have been much to see if she was using old holoprojector technology. There were some villains in the city who preferred that older stuff that projected someone in low-def blues because they enjoyed that ‘70s Star Wars aesthetic, but of course Dr. Lana was using a projector that looked like it’d been stolen from one of my designs. Which meant every emotion she was experiencing was being rendered in beautiful high definition.
So I could see her slight eye twitch rendered in beautiful high definition. I could see her eyes darting to the side, as though she was looking at some display just out of range of the projector.
“You’re right, of course,” she said. “That is a ridiculous weakness to something so common. I’ll be sure to add it to my list of defenses so I don’t have to worry about it any longer.”
I was jumping for joy. On the inside where she couldn’t see. This holoprojection didn’t know how the real Dr. Lana had kicked the bucket, which meant we were probably going up against something she’d left behind in her computer systems.
If she’d actually figured out how to upload herself to the Applied Science Department computer systems then that was a trick I’d have to steal, but it was far more likely that she’d just spent time programming this thing to look and act like her within certain limits. After all, as far as I knew no one out there had invented consciousness uploading tech so far, and if someone else hadn’t invented it then there was nothing for the good doctor to steal.
“I’m so happy I could help you out,” I said. “Now why don’t you return the favor and let us in there so I can kill whatever you are and steal that weapon?”
“Come now Night Terror,” she said. “Do you really think I’m going to fall for that?”
“A lady can hope,” I said. “Come on. Let’s skip all this annoying verbal sparring. You let us in and save me the trouble of blowing up all your shit and wasting a bunch of time getting to the same conclusion.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” Dr. Lana said.
More of those turrets pointed down at us. I got the feeling most of those were plasma cannons. The kind of harmless weapons that wouldn’t be all that much trouble for yours truly. Unfortunately it wasn’t just me down here. Technomancer and Nancy wouldn’t do well if those guns started firing.
I hated that I had to bring them down here, but there was no going through with this villainous plan without Technomancer along to help. I hated that I had to bring Nancy down here, but she’d insisted on coming along as a condition for allowing me the use of her villainous underground.
“Why are we wasting time talking to this projection?” Nancy asked.
“Because I’m trying to figure some things out here,” I said.
“There’s nothing to figure out,” Dr. Lana said. “You need my help, and I’m not inclined to give it to you since you killed my corporeal form.”
“So we’re admitting we’re just a simulation now?” I asked.
“I’m not admitting anything,” she said with a sniff.
“Whatever. If you’re an emergency backup living in a computer somewhere then I figure you’d be happy I’m here. There wasn’t a chance you were going to get to come out and play unless someone offed the real Dr. Lana.”
“Of course,” she said. “And I thank you for that, but it doesn’t make me any more inclined to let you in here so you can kill this version of me.”
“Sure thing,” I said, holding up my wrist blaster. “Guess that means I’m going to have to blast my way in there.”
“Oh dear,” Dr. Lana said. “You really think you’re going to be able to make your way in here when the combined forces of all those aliens weren’t able to get past my defenses? I have to say that it’s been refreshing to have a good old fashioned alien invasion in the city for a change. Would you believe someone has been stopping those invasions out at the edge of the solar system for the past few years?”
“I’d believe it,” I growled. “And I’m about to give you more of the same.”
I raised my wrist blaster. The ominous hum was music to my ears as it sang the doom of this fucking door and Dr. Lana’s projector.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Dr. Lana asked.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Bad things might happen if you go firing on my stuff.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m going to be fine with this,” I said. “And empty threats aren’t going to…”
“There’s no need for that,” Technomancer said, her voice a quiet whisper that thoroughly interrupted my villain-to-villain repartee with Dr. Lana.
Through the whole argument with Dr. Lana she’d been stroking the door. As though she was communing with the thing or something. Which, I suppose, was exactly what her powers were.
“Wait…” Dr. Lana said, her projection flickering ever so slightly. “What are you doing? You can’t do that!”
“Oh but she can,” I said with a grin. “You’re fucked, Lana, or Lana’s ghost. Whatever the fuck you are. Point is we’re going to bring down a world of hurt on you, and I plan on going down to your computer systems and personally rooting you out of the Applied Science Department systems with my wrist blaster.”
The door clicked and hissed open. Dr. Lana’s holoprojection flickered again. She looked more and more uncertain, but then she turned on me and grinned.
“I see the game has changed,” she said. “So I’ll go ahead and change the rules too!”
I winced. When one of your enemies starts talking about changing the rules and getting their revenge and all that bullshit it’s been my experience that some bad shit was about to go down.
Only nothing happened. None of the numerous weapons pointed at us turned on us. I looked around and wondered if I was missing something.
“Um, so was there supposed to be something impressive to go along with that declaration?” I asked. “Because I’m not seeing anything impressive.”
Dr. Lana’s projection crossed its arms and smiled. It was the smug sort of smile that said I was missing something. I hated it when I was missing something in the middle of a fight. It usually meant whatever I was missing was going to inconvenience me.
“I have some information from the externals mistress,” CORVAC said. “I believe that there is good news and bad news associated with this information, as you humans are so fond of saying.”
I sighed. I knew I should get right to the bad news, but that’s just not how this was done. It was considered bad form to ask for the bad news right away. In a proper villainous exchange one was expected to ask for the good news first so that their good mood from that good news could be ruined at a dramatically appropriate moment by the corresponding bad news.
“Let’s have it CORVAC,” I said as something hit with enough force that it made the tunnel around us shudder and shake.
I figured the tunnel around us shuddering and shaking couldn’t mean anything good. If something was hitting with enough force to reach all the way down here it either meant that there was some previously unknown fault line that was seriously fucking things up in Starlight City, the New Madrid fault had finally gone off which meant the entire eastern part of the United States was about to get seriously fucked up, Yellowstone had finally gone off and it was the big one which meant the entire world was about to be seriously fucked up, or it could be the most likely explanation that something had gone wrong locally which meant my carefully laid plans were about to be seriously fucked up.
I wasn’t a betting woman, but if I was I would’ve put all my quatloos on it being the last option. The rest were geologically improbable, at bes
t.
“The good news is it would appear that the diversionary strikes against the aliens are working and they have turned their attention elsewhere,” CORVAC said.
“Okay. And the bad news?” I asked, dreading it even as I said my right words.
“The bad news is the aliens seem to be distracted because something has deactivated the shield barrier around the Applied Sciences Department and the aliens are now moving in on that instead.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “That makes no sense. The whole point of the diversionary tactic was to keep the aliens away from this place while we went looking for the anti-Fialux gun.”
“Affirmative, mistress,” CORVAC said.
“So if they’ve all turned their attention away from us, but that attention was diverted because the shields went down around the building we don’t want them paying attention to leaving it wide open to alien invasion, then both things you just told me are bad news,” I said.
“I apologize mistress,” CORVAC said. “You were the one who told me that if I was to deliver bad news to you then I should also have good news so that bad news is delivered in the appropriate template. I was merely trying to deliver the bad news in a good way to provide you with the input you requested.”
I sighed. Leave it to me to be hoisted by my own petard by an AI who was maliciously complying with my directives.
“Come on,” I growled. “That bitch lowered the shields to spite us, and I want to go in and have a little bit of revenge.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Dr. Lana said, sticking her tongue out at me. “Come into my house of horrors and we’ll see which one of us comes out on top this time.”
“Yeah, because the booby traps you hit us with so far have worked so well,” I said.
“I’ll admit they didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, but I’m looking forward to finally getting a practical demonstration of what the department defenses can do against an actual opponent,” she said.