When Livia and I were in place, with the others still a few minutes out, I pulled out a super-sensitive EM sensor and ran a passive scan at the base of the building. Sure enough, there was a wired connection exiting the lowest story that did not go to the city power grid or some media-delivery network. That probably meant a live video feed and maybe more, so I bumped the power just a little and ran a very brief active scan, not more than a few milliseconds. And caught a secondary alarm system which I recognized.
This particular system used normal-seeming geological features — low-grade deposits of iron ore, and the earth’s natural magnetic field — to slowcast a constant steady signal. It was extremely low-power and would be overlooked by all but the most sophisticated scanners, and it was extremely low-fidelity as well, consisting of just the most simple on-off signal, probably just sending out a continuous OK message. Interrupt the circuit, or trip an alarm in any way, and the steady-state all-clear would be interrupted, signaling an intelligent system at the other end to alarm the base.
For the first, most obvious wired connection, Livia set a mole loose. The tiny mobile electronics package, no bigger than a small mouse, quickly burrowed down through the dirt at our feet, reached the wire, connected, recorded thirty seconds of dark and empty rooms inside and empty streets outside, and then inserted itself into the circuit and re-broadcast its recorded signal repeatedly. The package was smart enough to renew its video from time to time as the sun rose and light entered through windows, while never revealing our presence.
The second sensor was going to be more difficult.
Since it had no physical circuitry to interrupt and re-route, we couldn’t simply follow the same route as with the live feed. And since we had no idea what sort of sensor package and artificial intelligences the alarm was hooked up to inside, we could not assume that spoofing the video feed was going to be sufficient. We needed another plan.
Casting about in my mind for ideas, I noticed Livia pointing to a wooden telephone pole about a block away, teetering under the load of too many wires loaded on with too little planning. I followed her gaze, then caught her meaning.
“Smart …” I breathed, understanding.
If we couldn’t be certain we could maintain or spoof this alarm’s all-OK signal, we could interrupt it intermittently, making it an unreliable indicator and dismissible by security staff. Especially if we provided an easy explanation to why the alarm was malfing.
“Sama, Helo, drop that telephone pole,” I signaled. “Make it look natural, but make sure some of those wires break. We need random electrical discharges into the ground.”
I received an OK signal, but didn’t see them moving toward the pole. After a few minutes I was just about to call them again when I heard a car’s engine, first just starting, then loud revs, and then tires shrieking as it burst into view, turning out of a side street. The driver was on the far side, but I thought I could see a door opening and a person bailing out, rolling into the middle of the intersection as the car continued on its course and smashed dead center into the telephone pole, shearing the aged wood in half and ripping at least half of its load of wires, which immediately sagged to the ground, sparking.
“Perfect,” I signaled.
I quickly connected with our bug on the video systems, reviewed the live, actual feed for the outside, confirmed that at long range it did not show the driver exiting, but did show a fairly natural-looking accident and the resulting broken wires, and patched that through to the enemy base. Then instructed our bug to resume a live feed for that camera, and that camera alone.
“Meet us at the building,” I signaled Sama and Helo. “Approach from another angle — I’ve got a live feed from that accident scene up right now.”
In sixty seconds they and Tonia and Kin joined Livia and I at the building. Without hesitation I silently broke a window, and we all slipped inside, dumping our disguises. The all-OK alarm was definitely signaling not-all-OK right now, but it was probably also a fairly dirty, ragged signal. The guards would be looking for explanations, and an apparently silent, empty interior with a car accident and significant electrical discharges a block away would almost certainly tell the right story, from our point of view.
Almost certainly.
I pushed the team hard as we ran through the house quickly, not bothering to find any more sensors or alarms, going down to the basement, to the rear of the structure, where our scan told us the tunnel to the enemy’s base lay. We locked gazes, clasped hands, and opened the closet doors which concealed the entrance.
The doors opened to a forest of clothing, jackets and coats, which we just picked up and dumped into the room, and then a small door, with a lock. I motioned Helo forward — he was the best of us with locks — and he jumped up with a pick in his hand.
Only to have the knob of the door instantly explode, tossing his body back clear across the room, and knocking the rest of us down.
“Helo!” I shouted, jumping to my feet and stumbling to him.
He looked up, a curious expression on his face. Body armor had done its job and there was no mark on his torso or arms, but his bare hands were shredded stumps gushing blood. A little spasmodic grin flickered over his face, and he opened his mouth to speak, and blood flooded his teeth and spilled out over his chin. Such a powerful explosion so close must have given a hammer blow to his lungs and internal organs, even if it did not penetrate his suit.
“I guess … I guess you’ll have to do this one without me, G,” he said.
There was no hand to hold, so I held my palm to his face. Helo shook once, then he died.
Pulling myself away in agony and anger I yelled at the team to get moving. Now our presence was certainly discovered, and now the enemy would be attempting to escape or preparing to fight. I wiped my bloody hands on my pants, turned, and ran through the now-blown door, heedless of further booby traps.
As expected, it was a long corridor. As we ran through it, lights flickered on in recognition of our presence. I saw another door at the far end of the hall, coming up quickly, and unsafing an AM grenade, I tossed it as hard as I could. There was no need for subtlety now.
The door disintegrated and I continued running without breaking pace, breaking through a few tattered remains to find myself in another corridor, which seemed familiar. Remembering my memorized map, I called out an order and broke left, the entire team following except for Kin, who remain in the hallway to set up a defensive position, and ensure no-one escaped.
I hardly let myself be reminded that the entire team was now just five people.
Livia, Tonia, Sama and I pounded to the left, finding an expected path through the corridors. As we ran, a suspicion born of the seeming familiarity grew into a certainty, and I knew which way to go.
“Follow me,” I shouted, and took a turn down another hallway, which led to a large open space. Three enemy were milling around toting some kind of weapons but looking like they had just woken up. I gunned them down on full auto.
“Wait! This looks like …” Livia sputtered. “This looks like our Hall!”
“Exactly,” I answered. “Tonia, Sama, to the s.Leep room! Now! See if you can catch any still in their pods. Destroy them all!”
Turning, grasping Livia by the hand, I whirled for the far wall of the hall, knowing that we had only seconds. Tossed another grenade at the servitor’s door, hit it at full speed butt on the ground sliding on my back to get through the low door, and killing two enemy who were apparently waiting for some idiot to poke his head wonderingly through the door.
Livia followed at full speed too, saw immediately where we were going, and tossed another grenade at the second servitors’ door, duplicating my sliding maneuver. But there were more enemy in the second room, prepared, and I saw her body jerk under the impact of several bullets before I could follow and take out the two she had not nailed on entry. Turned to her, worry etched on my face, a silent scream beginning somewhere deep below, only to see that she was fine
and her body armor had done its job. Smiled and continued.
“We have to destroy the control room or the jump engines,” I said. “Cut off their escape!”
“Don’t destroy the machines!” she yelled in my face. “Kill the enemy, but save the machines. We may need them!”
I saw the wisdom of her plan instantly, and agreed. It was the first time we had explicitly disobeyed Hermes.
Running through the hall of feasting of this control room side, somewhere under the ancient Acropolis of Athens, somewhen in the late twentieth century, we surprised stragglers here and there at or behind desks. They took potshots at us through projected mid-air images showing complex four-dimensional maps, but missed, and did not get a second chance. Leaving seven or eight dead and dying behind, we continued.
We ran up the hallway, past the vast machine rooms, into the room of departure. We had seen this on the control side of our own home, when we had initially entered through the servitor entrance and quickly scanned all the rooms, but we had not known what it was. Now, as I saw dozens of enemy scurrying towards this one room with a raised central dais and arcane machinery dangling from the ceiling, it all made sense.
“Quickly,” I yelled at Livia, and we outran them, gunning them down as we went, taking some fire as we ran, but avoiding most of it and letting our armor absorb the rest, then bursting through a closed door into the room they were all heading towards. Only to be met by an incandescent fireball that blasted us right back, leaving us dazed and bruised.
“Near miss,” Livia said as she helped me up.
“Horseshoes and hand grenades,” I said, checking her and myself for obvious damage.
With a wry grin she grabbed a few grenades off her vest, armed them, and tossed them through the door, then a few more which she threw with even more force to get into the far reaches of the room.
“It was a nice idea to capture the base intact,” she said when the explosions died down. “But it’s a nicer idea to be alive at the end of the battle.”
I smiled, we checked left and right for any stragglers, then running across the hall and hitting the deck before we crossed the threshold, we slid into the room of departure, weapons ready for any enemy Livia’s grenades had missed.
I was a scene of carnage. There had been at least twenty people in the room, probably preparing for a hasty departure on the center dais. Blood and guts, pieces of broken human littered the floor. Livia kicked a still-twitching hand out of her path and continued searching the smoking room for live enemy, but I saw her face contort until she fought down her emotions. A rebellious tear, however, tracked down her cheek.
“We didn’t sign up to murder innocents,” she whispered.
I nodded, a heavy feeling in my own heart. These were not soldiers. They had fought back, but ineffectually, uselessly. They had died like sheep, not lions, and expired uselessly. And, I assumed, they had died permanently. Then we heard the clicking of our radios.
“Geno, Livia! Come in!” Tonia’s voice was savage, urgent.
“Geno here,” I answered. “Talk.”
“Get back here now!” she yelled. “They are pouring out of a s.Leep chamber that we missed — dozens of them. Real soldiers. Armed! We need your help now.”
“On our way. Hold out!”
Livia and I looked at each other, I grabbed a grenade, tabbed it to a 2-second fuse, activated a sticky end, threw it at the machinery on the ceiling, and we ran out the door and halfway down the hallway before it blew. No stragglers would be escaping that way while we helped our comrades.
We ran back through the halls, through the control room, nailing one or two enemy that we had missed, or had been elsewhere. Hit the low doors to the servitor rooms in our now-standard power slide, and exited back into the familiar training side of a base so much like ours it could not have been built by different people. Even in the heat of battle I could not help but wonder. More was happening here than we knew, and maybe more than we could know. But, I thought as I forced the currently-useless distraction from my mind, we would learn.
“Tonia!” I signaled. “We’re almost here. Where are you?”
“The corridor just down from where our s.Leep room will be. Hurry! They’re coming hard!”
Skidding to a stop I thought, considered, planned. Started in a new direction down a side hall.
“Stay there, we’re circling and will attack them from the rear.”
Livia and I pounded down a long hall, took a right turn, then slowed, took another right, and could see and hear the battle up ahead of us. And in front of us, over thirty soldiers, armed like us with 20th century weapons, but without body armor. They had likely been quickly woken, alerted, armed, and sent to fight, and they were pouring fire down the corridor, away from us, at Tonia and Sama.
It felt wrong and evil and we had already had our fill of killing but there was no choice. Livia and I each armed two antimatter grenades and then threw them, quickly, hit the deck, and opened fire on full automatic.
It was a massacre. What the grenades did not pulverize the bullets tore. And twenty or thirty living, breathing human beings with thoughts and hopes and doubts and loves died in surprised agony. We ceased fire.
“Tonia, Sama, come in.”
I waited, getting no response.
“Tonia! Sama! Come in.”
Waited again, then finally heard the crackling of the radio.
“Sama here,” Sama said, slowly. “Tonia’s down. I’m hit too.”
We charged forward, heedless of enemy survivors who might be playing dead in order to shoot us in the back. Scanning rapidly, we waded through the carnage at the end of the hall. Even the walls were half-melted, blasted by the intense heat of four antimatter grenades going off almost simultaneously. Shot one or two who were not quite dead, then picked up speed, closing on where we thought Sama and Tonia were.
“It’s us,” I signaled. “Don’t shoot.”
We rounded the corner and saw another heap of bodies almost in a circle and, in the middle, Sama’s head and weapon. He saw us and slumped, pain etching his face.
“We held them off as long as we could,” he husked. “Tonia was hit when some of them circled behind us. They didn’t have many weapons, but they did find some.”
Livia pulled aside a couple of enemy corpses to reveal Tonia. She looked at me, pain in her eyes, and shook her head. I glanced over, still scanning the perimeters every few seconds, and saw with shock that the back of her head was almost missing.
“They came up behind us while we were fighting off twenty or thirty of them on the front,” Sama said slowly. “The first I knew of it was when Tonia fell forward.” He paused. “She didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye. I didn’t even get a chance to hold her hand.”
“I turned, weapons on full auto, and killed four or five of them right here, then tossed some grenades to get the rest. Turned around again, dropped my weapon, which was out of ammo, grabbed her weapon, and kept the front ones off too.”
I knelt down beside him, motioning for Livia to take up perimeter watch.
“You did well. You did better than anyone else could have done,” I told him. “Where are you hurt?”
He unzipped his armored top, revealing huge purple welts and bruising on his side and ribs.
“At the same time Tonia died, someone emptied a mag into my side at full auto. Probably something like 30 bullets, all in the same spot. The suits aren’t magic, after all.”
“Can you move?” I asked him. I wanted to rejoin Kin and consolidate our forces. Now we had just four, with one of them injured.
“I think so. It won’t feel pretty, though.”
“Good. Get ready.”
I took Livia aside and while we continuing scanning opposite corridors for any live enemy, told her that I wanted to bring Sama to Kin. Sama was still effective for fire support, if he didn’t have to move much, and two together would be better than each apart. Then, when Kin and Sama were set up, Livia and I would t
ake on the long and dangerous task of safing the compound: ensuring that no other enemy still roamed alive.
She nodded, and we each grabbed Sama by an arm and heaved him to his feet.
Kin had set up a mini-fortress, right at the mouth of the long tunnel that led out to the house we had broken into, less than an hour ago … though it seemed like weeks. With chairs and tables he had almost completely blocked the corridor from the rear, and with the bodies of dead enemy soldiers he had built a small barricade in front.
“I wanted to be sure no one would sneak up on me from the back,” he said, nodding at the tangle of furniture behind him. “But one grenade and our exit is open.”
I pointed at the corpses of dead enemy soldiers.
“You’ve been busy?”
“Not as busy as Sama and Tonia,” he said slowly. “Just maybe ten or fifteen tried to break out this way. They weren’t expecting me, and few were armed, so it wasn’t all that bad.”
His tight expression belied his light words. Kin hadn’t sign up to be a killer either. Then again, I guess none of us actually signed up, as far as I knew.
Sama limped over, joined Kin behind the makeshift barrier. Livia looked at his wound again, gave him some pills from her medkit for the pain, and told him to take it slow.
“Most of the enemy should be eliminated by now,” I said. “Livia and I are going to do a sweep of the entire complex. You two stay here, and make sure none escape, and no reinforcements come in.”
I made sure Kin and Sama had enough ammo and weapons, then Livia and I nodded goodbye with a brief but intense gaze, and we were up and moving.
The first step was to clear what, in our home base, was the public space, the training and s.Leep and dining halls. Carefully but swiftly, Livia and I combed through the rooms, seeking any who might have escaped — and who might intend to attack us. We found none alive.
No Other Gods Page 24