Doomsday Exam [BUREAU 13 Book Two]

by Nick Pollotta

  Interesting, I was noticing that her accent got thicker the more excited she was. An important tip to remember for future poker sessions.

  "Must have been an EMP bomb,” George stated, walking in a smooth line, one boot placed exactly in front of the other as if traveling through a minefield.

  Ducking his head, Steve brushed a nest of drooping machine guns out of his way. “A what kind of bomb?"

  "An electro-magnetic pulse bomb,” George explained, watching everywhere for danger. “A tesla coil accumulator emits a spit charge to generate a split second full spectrum, magnetic field that fries transistors and computer chips."

  "And that is bad,” said Ken as a question.

  After a pause, George politely agreed. Yes, that was very bad and very high tech. Any electronic equipment controlled by microprocessors or transistors would be rendered useless. But an EM pulse would have no effect on the magical defensives, and the Facility used both.

  I snorted in annoyance. EMP bombs were merely the latest toy of humanity. It seemed to me that the higher the technology, the easier it was to destroy. The only real way to stop a good, old-fashioned, steam locomotive was to drop it off a cliff. Preferably to land on top of another steam locomotive.

  Flinching and dodging, Jessica tried to avoid the hanging ironmongery of doom. “These have been used,” she stated, stooping under a faintly humming vibro-sword. “And more than once."

  "There have been escapes before,” I admitted honestly.

  "But nothing on the scale of today."

  "Never."

  Parting the last of the impotent armaments with our gun barrels, George and I stepped out of the tunnel, moving out of the way of the folks behind in case we needed some combat room. But there was only darkness, deep and silent. Not a sound could be heard, even our own breath seemed to be hushed.

  I don't like this, Jessica sent.

  "Me either. Infra-red,” I ordered, touching a switch on my helmet.

  Illumination returned to my visor, and I could see that my team was standing on a small ledge that jutted from the ebony wall like the hand of a starving beggar. To our left was a sloped walkway that flowed along the curving wall, going down and out of sight into the stygian depths. A pipe railing alongside the walkway offered meager protection from tumbling off the abrupt edge into the nothingness.

  Careful of my balance, I glanced over the railing. Total blackness stretching into infinity. Vertigo seized me for a moment as ghostly echoes drifted upward, distant pinpoints of light flickered in the great abyss resembling dying stars. In actuality, they must have been fires lit by the prisoners to try and see their way to the exit. Torches made from bed linen, perhaps burning hair, or each other.

  "How deep is it?” Ken asked, sounding impressed. There was no echo of his words, the distance consumed the words and gave nothing back.

  "It bottomless,” Mindy said, lowering the rainbow effect of her sword with a twist of the pommel.

  "Factual or poetic?"

  Sanders sure had an odd way of talking. “Literal,” I replied.

  "Then what does it rest on?” Steve asked puzzled.

  "The exterior is buttressed on a bed of ferro-concrete only a few miles away, but the inside goes on forever without a bottom."

  Dimming her own wand, Katrina frowned. “How is that possible?"

  "You tell us and win a million dollars from Horace Gordon and the eternal gratitude of TechServ,” I said.

  Glancing upward, I could dimly see an octopus in medieval armor hanging suspended from the ceiling. Each of its limbs were supposed to be holding a magic wand with a different property. No wands were in sight, and I had a feeling that the armor was empty. So long Lou, best of luck in the afterlife.

  "Hai!” Mindy cried falling on her butt, both hands slapping the floor as she hit.

  The students rushed over to assist the shaken martial artist back to her feet, while the rest of us could only stare in dumbfoundment. Mindy Jennings fell down?

  Keeping a hand gripped tight on the railing, Mindy eased her sneaker onto the sloped walkway and pushed it about. There was no squeaky sound of rubber on wax.

  "Frictionless surface,” Mindy declared, retreating to a safe distance. “If I hadn't been able to throw myself backwards, I would be sliding my way to the bottom of the Facility."

  Hesitantly going close, Patricia spit on the walkway and it slid away without a trace. “At about a zillion miles per hour,” she added as a guess.

  Swell. I hadn't encountered anything like this before. The stairs had been in place last time I visited.

  "Find the controls to extend the stairs,” I said, shouldering my weapon. “George, Sanders and the twins on guard."

  We spent a precious two minutes on a fruitless search of the ledge. If the controls were here and not secreted somewhere else entirely, there were hidden beyond our ability to find them. Linking our belts together, we wasted another minute doing a comedy routine of drunks on ice as the team attempted to walk down the frictionless surface. Even the railing was made of the same slippery stuff. Lose your grip for a split tick and whoosh!

  Gathering the mages in a huddle, Raul held a fast conference with Steve and Katrina.

  "SOSF?” Steve offered hesitantly.

  "Seems the best way,” Sommers noted.

  "I'll do it,” Raul announced. “You two watch and learn."

  Katrina bowed. “We obey, Obi Wan."

  "Smart ass,” George said as a compliment.

  Gesturing and chanting, Raul tapped each of our shoes with his silver staff and the footwear now clung to the ground as if it was flat and level. Laughing in delight, Mindy even ran up the wall to stand perpendicular to us.

  "Shoes of Sure Footing,” Raul explained, as we hurried along the walkway. “Its such an ancient conjure I nearly forgot the words."

  "What was SOSF originally used for?” Patricia asked, lifting and placing each foot with exaggerated care. “Mountain climbers? Or was it for sailors at sea to stay on deck during a storm?"

  "Thieves."

  "Ah."

  Passing an alcove set into the black wall above us, I noticed a security camera sitting motionless. How had that happened? Even with the electronics dead, there still should have been battery power, and there was clearly no external damage. Strange.

  Glancing about for any other cameras, I noticed a barely discernable square of pure ebony coming our way from the darkness overhead. Bloody hell, a flapjack!

  "Incoming!” I shouted over the chatter of my machine pistol, the spent brass shells hitting the walkway to instantly slide away with out a noise. “Twelve o'clock high!"

  "Roman Candle!” George ordered, his M60 spitting lead upward.

  In rough unison, everybody cut loose with their weapons; beams, Fire Lances, arrows and bullets impacted into the deadly flying chameleon, the muzzle flashes strobing the dark in a wild disco effect. The sheer physical mass of our weaponry held the beastie at bay until Katrina shouted a spell.

  Instantly, the flapjack shot down the central shaft of the Facility, disappearing into the blackness as it was hot for a date with the sexiest lady flapjack who ever lived.

  "What did you do?” Steve asked, staring over the railing.

  Patting the Russian on the shapely shoulder, Raul chuckled, “She used a Fly spell."

  "But it was flying."

  "Now it flies for me,” Katrina answered proudly. “At thirty two feet, per second per second, compounded by the maximum velocity of the species. When spell wears off, animal will be too far away to annoy again. Unless we are lucky and it hits something hard on way down."

  I was starting to like this gal. She fought mean.

  Unfortunately, our gunshots seemed to have attracted the attention of the other denizens of the Facility. Distant growls and slobbers did not sound so distant anymore, and some of those burning stars were coming up the walkway in a steady line.

  "Double time, hush,” I whispered, screwing a magical silencer onto
my .357 Magnum revolver. “Use silenced weapons only. Harch!"

  In tight order, we moved down the walkway and soon began to encounter side corridors. Let me see, we're in section 3, so we wanted level 17, corridor 5, number 12.

  The torches from below were uncomfortably close, the growls nearly understandable words and we were running when I finally reached the correct corridor. Silently, I pointed inside and my team rushed off the ramp. Raul paused until everybody else was inside, then sprayed the mouth of the corridor with a smoky discharge from his staff. The end of the corridor closed solid just as the sounds of the prisoners arrived, then proceed onward. Whew, close one.

  Yowsa, Connie sent telepathically.

  Moving deeper into the corridor, the passage way lined with the doors to cells. Some had broken hinges, others were ruptured in the middle, and a few were completely missing.

  "Hey,” Steve called. “This cell is still sealed!"

  "Excellent,” Sanders replied, tightening a silencer covered with Celtic runes on the barrel of his Desert Eagle .50 automatic. “Then we do not have to bother with the occupant. Come along!"

  But curiosity got the better of the mage and he glanced inside.

  "Well, hi there,” Steve said in a gentle voice. “What are you doing in there?” Then a scream was ripped from his throat as the mage threw an arm across his face for protection and retreated dragging his sister along.

  In muffled coughs, Sanders pumped a few silver-jacketed rounds through the grille of the door and when he stopped I peeked inside. Sitting on a dirty mattress was a weeping little girl in a torn dress, cradling a ragtag doll. The pitiful figure was rocking the toy in her arms and crying that mommy would be back soon and take them home. Oh give me a break.

  "Nice try, Hecthrope,” I snorted. “But we're the guys who put you here, numbnuts."

  Turning her head without moving her shoulders, the thing on the bed snarled and shot out a forked tongue that slammed into the grille denting the steel. Slowly the metal straightened back to normal.

  While Connie comforted her shaken brother, Jessica scowled at the trembling student wizard. “Steve, can't you read?"

  "Read what?” he demanded sniffling.

  Using my Magnum, I pointed at the door. “That!"

  "Ah, Ed, there's nothing there,” Mindy noted, tapping the featureless door with her sword.

  Eh? Damn, the warning sign had been removed. Just a bit of horseplay from the departing boojums. Har-har.

  "Sorry, Steve,” Jessica apologized.

  "How come this supernatural is still a prisoner?” Ken asked, checking the hinges to see if they had been rigged somehow.

  "Madam Hecthrope's weakness is steel,” I explained, moving again. “She can't touch it, or even go near the metal."

  Resting her wand on a shoulder, Katrina made a face, “A rather feeble weakness, comrade."

  Checking each jail cell with his wand before walking past, Raul set her straight. “Well, a few thousands years ago in the Bronze Age, Hecthrope was big stuff. But then came the Iron Age.” Then the mage smiled. “We captured her with a truckload of spatulas."

  The students laughed, and a menacing growl sounded from the cell. Some demons just do not have a sense of humor.

  There were no more surprises, and my team continued on until we reached number 12 south. This door was still intact, with only a vacant cell showing through the grille. Ignoring the prominent slot in the locking mechanism as a trap, I slid my Bureau ID card into a crack in the wall. There was a hum, a click, a gurgle, and with a hydraulic hiss, the twenty-ton door cycled open taking along a good section of the stone block wall. Now that was what I called a door.

  "The Facility command center is hidden in a cell?” Connie asked sounding askance.

  Leveling her M16, Patricia shrugged. “What should they do? Advertise its location with a nice big neon sign reading, ‘Monsters: Don't Come Here to Escape'?"

  She nodded. “Hmm, good point."

  Stepping past the already closing door, we entered the command center. To the left was an office behind a yard thick sheet of Armorlite plastic. To the right was a thick steel lattice closing off a complex array of pipes, conduits and cables that constituted a 22nd Century tokomac fusion reactor. Horace Gordon himself had stolen that baby from the Royal Empire of Australia during World War IX in an alternate future. TechServ took very good care of the machine as replacement parts were damn hard to get delivered.

  In the center of the room, was a raised dais with railed stairs leading to the top on four sides and cresting the platform was a short cylinder of glass. The holograph projector should have been showing a detailed picture of the interior of the jail, but it was clear. Curving around the cylinder was a bank of control stations, each with a video monitor, a computer keyboard and enough dials, switches, buttons and levers to launch a space shuttle. Skeletons draped in the tattered threads of uniforms were sprawled on the floor, sitting at the console chairs and entangled in the works of the humming tokomac. In the distant corner, a coffee machine was bubbling merrily. Katrina turned it off. Whatever hit the guards never gave them a chance to defend themselves. What could possibly have moved that fast?

  However, time was short. Directly in front of us was a low barricade made of sandbags full of fairy dust. The nest held a .75 Gatling machine gun, a Bedlow polycyclic laser cannon, and a Palooka Joe. That weapon we had purchased from a parallel dimension which the Bureau was rather friendly with and bartered goods on a regular basis. They had advanced technology, but had never discovered fermentation so we sold them six packs of Budweiser for weaponry. A good deal for everybody.

  The Palooka Joe was their best deathdealer yet, the fiendish device combined a tight-focus tractor beam with a wide-angle pressure beam. The result being that your body was forced away under 35 tons of pressure, while your guts were yanked forward under an additional 35 tons of pressure. Designed as an anti-robot weapon, it served our purpose of stopping the boojums well, if rather messily.

  "Stay alert,” I said, keeping pressure on the pistol-grip safety of my Uzi. “Standard defensive pattern. I'm going to check Gil's office for the fail safe."

  The door to the office was unlocked and sure enough there it was, hidden behind a hinged painting of the good clone of J. Edgar Hoover. The insulated lever was bright yellow and black stripes, and bordered by brilliant red warning lines. Subtly, gotta love it. With a sigh of relief, I pulled the handle and from a panel of meters in the main room there erupted a spray of sparks.

  "A relay blew,” Jessica announced, lifting the lid of the smoking control board. “Must have gotten a short circuit when the rest of the electrical systems died."

  "Well, fix it!” I bellowed, glancing at the ceiling and feeling the first tug of panic. Had that been footsteps I heard overhead?

  Twisting the plastic locks, Jessica yanked away a panel covering and wiggled deep into the maze of circuitry. “I'll try. But I'm only a home stereo technician. Anybody got a tool kit?"

  Digging under my flak jacket and sweater-vest, I unearthed a damp Swiss Army knife and tossed it to George, who passed it to Ken, who relayed it to Jessica.

  "This'll do for starters,” she said, prying the blades loose. “But try and find me some real tools!"

  Yanking open drawers, I began rummaging through Gil's desk, and the rest of the team scattered in a frantic search. We each had a working wristwatch but nobody wanted to check how close to the deadline we were.

  "Is the tokomac okay?” Steve asked, staring at the great machine.

  "It's fine,” Mindy replied, checking her belt pouches. “The device is shielded inside a Faraday Cage, a fine wire mesh screen with an electrical current running through it constantly. No external EM pulses can penetrate."

  "Why don't we shield the whole base that way?"

  "Because it takes half of the power of the t-mac just to protect itself. We'd need a thousand of them to shield the entire base."

  Slamming shut the last drawer in t
he desk, I took the plunge and glanced at my watch. Five minutes to go. “Will this take long, Jess?” I asked in a deceptively calm voice.

  "Not if you don't interrupt me!” she retorted over a shoulder, ripping out loose wires with her teeth.

  Fair enough.

  "Oh, Ed!” Raul sang out with an odd expression on his face.

  With the Uzi at my hip, I spun about on the alert. “What?"

  The mage jerked a thumb at the door and mouthed the word, ‘monsters'.

  "How many?” Ken asked, jerking free the huge ungainly clip of his Thompson and sliding in a fresh magazine.

  "Too many,” Mindy said, cupping a hand to her ear. “And they know we're here."

  Oh fudge. “Anybody know how to operate these?” I asked hopefully, patting the Palooka Joe. There was a negative chorus. It had been a feeble hope at best.

  Suddenly, there came a low steady pounding on the door, bits of wall and stonework falling to the floor. Ah, the monsters had arrived to pay us a social call. How nice.

  "Okay,” I said, unfolding the wirestock of the Uzi. “We buy Jess some time the hard way. Formation two, routine nineteen."

  "And which one is that, comrade?” Katrina asked, standing still while everybody shuffled into position.

  With a grim expression, Patricia worked the bolt on an M16 carbine. “Just follow my lead, blondie."

  "Da, tovarisch."

  We quickly formed a semicircle before the door. Knives were loosened, safeties clicked off, grenades prepared, spare ammo made ready, wands polished, potions sipped, lotions poured and powders sprinkled. Katrina even went so far as to draw a fake trapdoor on the floor with a piece of chalk. What the hell, it couldn't hurt.

  The pounding increased and cracks began to appear in the door and wall. Suddenly, a hole burst through and there was head of an iron golem. Taking careful aim, I tossed a thermite grenade into the opening. The explosive charge bounced off his metal head, and Ken added a burst of .45 slugs as a distraction. The golem retreated and the grenade detonated loudly. From the screams created, it seemed that our gift was not well received. Damn, and I had lost the receipt.