by Unknown
The AGI pursed his lips. “Fine.”
Chapter 35
The next two days were a blur of seemingly random transfers between different perts as they traveled north from New Zealand to mainland
Asia. At one of their early stops, they colected packages from the doorstep of a stranger’s home. The boxes contained clothing that the AGI had purchased to help them blend in. They also traveled on two sparsely filed machines that reminded Matthew of a giant mechanical snake. Gary told them they were caled trains. Apparently, there had been many more of them in the past, but only a few were in operation these days due to a paucity of organics needing mass transport.
When they reached a city caled Hong Kong, they transferred to a special aerial transport known as a ‘hypersonic jet.’ It had seats for over a hundred people, but like the trains it was only half filed. The two wizards were fascinated by the thought that they would be traveling at nearly three times the speed of sound, but the reality was far more boring. After an exciting half hour they wound up taking a nap for the rest of the flight.
After arriving in Los Angeles, they took another short trip via train before meeting yet another pert. This one carried them al the way to New Mexico where they met the pert that Gary informed them would be their last vehicle of the journey.
“What’s the last city we are heading to caled again?” asked Elaine as she attempted to scratch beneath her breasts.
“Houston,” Matt answered.
“The names here are so weird,” she replied as she reached beneath her blouse to rearrange something.
He found the activity beneath her shirt fascinating, but his curiosity was growing. “What are you doing?”
“It’s these clothes, this ‘bra’ thing in particular . It itches. I don’t think it fits right, either. While I can’t complain about the bathrooms, these people have strange ideas about what constitutes comfortable. Give me a properly tailored dress over this bizarre mish-mash of clothes any day!”
Matthew was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a cotton T-shirt. “The clothes do lack style, but these trousers are very comfortable; the shirt too. I was thinking about getting Gary to buy more for us to take back home.”
Elaine was digging around behind herself with both hands. After a brief struggle she puled the offending undergarment out through one sleeve.
“Here, if you think the clothes are so comfy, you can have this.”
He held the bra in one hand while he examined it. Matthew had never been one to ogle women, or show any other over attention to their
‘attributes,’ but he was having difficulty managing his train of thought. Elaine was quite an attractive woman and not too far away from him in age.
While the women of his own world didn’t wear bras, neither did the dresses drape their torsos in quite the same way the light, soft fabric of this world’s shirts did.
He kept his eyes on the object in his hand. The bra was soft but it had a strangely stiff portion. “Why would they put wire in this?” he asked.
“It’s stupid,” complained Elaine. “It’s supposed to hold up the breasts, but it keeps biting into my skin. Look at this shirt.” She shook the material with her hands. “It’s too loose! If it had more substance and was tailored properly—like this,” she puled the shirt in the back, stretching it tightly beneath her breasts, “then it would provide al the support I need, without any stupid wires.”
Matthew glanced at her and quickly looked away. The effect of her manipulations had been to make it look as though her shirt were painted
on. He was used to seeing things ordinary men could not, thanks to his magesight, but seeing things with his eyes was different, and for some reason it embarrassed him. “I see your point,” he said non-commitaly .
Elaine watched him suspiciously. “What?”
“I was agreeing with you,” he said defensively.
“Not that—you’re blushing. Did I embarrass you?” she accused, in a sly and mischievous tone.
He was very sure that he was not blushing. Probably. “No. Can we move on? This isn’t a topic I realy care about.”
“That’s good to hear,” she told him. “You’re almost like a little brother to me. I’d hate to think you were harboring a secret attraction. Besides, we’re here to save your girlfriend, after al.”
Matt growled, “She’s not my girlfriend, and of course I’m not attracted to you.” An evil thought crossed his mind. “You’re more like a kindly old aunt to me.”
Elaine scowled. “That’s a relief, but it might be better if she were your girlfriend. My father once suggested it might be advantageous for our families to have closer ties. I’d hate to think how you might suffer if you were forced to marry such an old woman.”
He gaped at her for a second, but then his anger drained away, replaced by amusement. “That’s a fair point.”
She was taken aback by his reversal. “Now wait a minute!”
“You’ve always been a good friend, Elaine,” he said, trying to get ahead of her temper. “There’s no teling what the future holds, for either of us. Who knows who we wil get stuck with? At least we aren’t strangers.” He handed the bra back to her.
Elaine closed her mouth, pausing for a moment, then she replied, “That’s true. Though, just to be clear, if that ever happened, you’d be the one getting the better end of the deal.”
Matthew disagreed, which sparked a new round of debate. The conversation was light-hearted after that, but he had no real doubt. Elaine
wasn’t a bad person, but she was a little too superficial for his tastes, and she was definitely too much of a talker. As they bantered back and forth, he found himself thinking of Karen. While he had traveled with her, Karen had seemed mildly annoying, but in comparison to Elaine, he found himself wishing for her long periods of silence. When Karen spoke, she usualy got right to the point, she wasn’t one to play word games.
He missed her, though he wasn’t ready to admit it yet.
***
The pert lowered itself to the ground, landing on a road that, unlike the few others they had seen, stil appeared to be wel maintained. Gary explained this was because the military stil used some heavy ground transports for moving large equipment in and out.
Large trees leaned over the road on either side, and the verges were thick with long grass. The air was humid, and Matthew felt sweat
beginning to form on his brow almost as soon as he exited the vehicle.
The pert’s doors closed, and it rose quietly back into the air as soon as they had stepped away from it, heading back in the direction of
Houston.
“Just folow the road,” coached the PM. “It leads straight to the main gate of the facility.”
“How far?” asked Matthew.
“Six and a half miles,” answered the machine. “We could have gone closer, but I didn’t want to risk raising their alert level before we had even entered the base.”
Elaine created an invisibility shield around them, and they took off at a brisk pace. A few miles weren’t much of an obstacle for people who had grown up in a place where walking was the primary method of travel, but the heat and humidity stil left them both damp and miserable by the time the chain-link gate and guard station came into view.
As they drew closer, they began to make out more details with their magesight, which was their only means of seeing with the veil around them.
A lone occupant was in the guard station; a military android. The gates themselves were closed and the fence was over ten feet tal.
Neither of the two wizards was comfortable with flying, but the distance was short enough that they were able to levitate themselves over and land softly on the other side without taking any serious risk of a fal.
Gary was stil maintaining network contact through a smal hole in the shield that Elaine had provided him. “No sign of an alert yet,” he told them cautiously.
“There shouldn’t be,” said Elaine confidently.
&
nbsp; “Unless one of the ANSIS detectors is located on this base, of which there is a fair chance,” countered the AGI. “I don’t know what they look like or even what principle they operate on to detect aythar.”
Since their super-inteligent guide already had the layout of the base as wel as the internal plans for the buildings, they folowed his directions.
Gary coached them across a wide lawn and past an entrance that he explained led to an underground vehicle park. They could have descended
and entered there, but he had planned a more direct route through a pedestrian entrance.
There were multiple buildings, al constructed of steel and the strange stone that Gary had labeled ‘concrete.’ They bypassed those, heading for the largest structure, which dominated the center of the facility.
It wasn’t a particularly impressive construction by Matthew’s standards. It stood barely two stories in height, but Gary had already explained to them that the majority of it lay beneath the ground. The upper levels were easy-access administrative offices, under them lay an immense structure of reinforced concrete that protected the military hardware and secure assets in the levels below.
“It isn’t as secure as Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado,” began the AGI, “but they did the best they could for an area like this without mountains or any significant rock formations. Much of the surrounding area was a swamp long ago.”
Matthew wasn’t sure what the machine meant by that, since he had no way to compare the places, but he didn’t realy care. He only wanted in.
Leaning close, he whispered in Elaine’s ear, “Remember, if things go badly and we have to fight, use lightning. Fire and other things work, but you’l get more for your aythar with lightning.”
Gary had advised him on that earlier, and he reinforced the message now, “Military equipment, especialy the cybernetics, are hardened and
insulated to withstand moderate EMP shocks, but they’re stil vulnerable to severe damage from direct electrical current. In this world, no one has ever been able to use lightning as an effective weapon. Just be sure not to hit me with any stray discharges.”
“You are not hardened?” asked Elaine seriously.
Matthew didn’t even consider making the obvious joke, and he was glad his father wasn’t there to make things worse. Gary answered
honestly, “No, this unit is not protected in the least. Even a smal shock would probably render it inoperable.”
She nodded, “Inoperable—does that mean you would be dead?”
Matthew already knew the answer to that and he cut in, “No, he’s much bigger than that. This PM is almost just a messaging device for him.
He’s in most of their electronic systems across the world, except for the military ones.”
“Except for the ANSIS systems,” corrected Gary. “I can access a lot of the military systems, but they are moving to isolate more and more of their equipment each day, probably connecting it to the ANSIS network.”
By now they had reached the entrance that Gary had indicated, a double-wide set of glass and metal doors. Matthew couldn’t help but think it didn’t look terribly secure. “Any fool with a hammer could smash these,” he observed.
“The upper doors aren’t meant to withstand a serious assault,” said Gary. “The real security is below us; this only leads to offices and low-value equipment.”
“Why not protect al of it?” asked Elaine.
“This way, if someone did take it by force, they would have to approach the secure vault doors after entering and descending several levels. It’s much harder to get the kind of heavy weapons and equipment you need to get through super-secure blast doors down there than it is up here.
“Besides, aside from being located next to the Gulf Coast reserve facilities, this is primarily a lab and research station,” added the AGI.
“Do we need to smash the glass?” asked Elaine, anxious to hurry them onward.
“Just step forward,” said Gary.
They did, and nothing happened. “And now?” asked Matt.
The AGI sounded embarrassed, “They’re automatic doors. Motion sensors activate them. I forgot that with Elaine’s invisibility they won’t react to your presence. Do you perhaps have a way to pass through solid objects?”
“I’m a wizard, not an archmage,” he answered, though Gary realy didn’t understand the difference. “Can’t you control the doors?”
“These are actualy just dumb doors; the mechanism is purely automatic. They aren’t connected to any network. The security screening point is inside the lobby, so they don’t even bother to lock these doors most of the time. We need something visible to trigger them to open.”
Matthew stared at the PM and Gary stared back at him, neither of them immediately coming up with a solution. For al of the AGI’s elaborate plans and Matthew’s powers, it seemed ridiculous that they would be stymied by a pair of automated doors that weren’t even locked.
“For goodness sake,” said Elaine in exasperation. “Let the Prathion do it. Neither of you has the brains of a turnip.” So saying, she used her aythar and seconds later a large dog ran around the corner of the building and crossed in front of them. The doors opened as it passed by and continued on to the far corner.
Of course, the dog was an ilusion, but it had worked perfectly. Al three of them remained silent as they stepped into the lobby. Matthew
added a sonic shield beneath Elaine’s invisibility before they spoke again.
The interior was another gleaming and immaculately clean example of the world’s fascinatingly strange architecture. Everything was white tile and stainless steel, punctuated by granite and marble stonework in odd places like countertops. A long, low desk stretched across the far side of the room with two human-sized openings for people to walk through. Two cybernetic guards stood on either side of the room.
“Just walk across and step through the screening machines,” advised Gary. “Make sure to close the hole in your shield; otherwise the machines might register something unusual as we pass.”
The two humans did as he asked, walking single file. Elaine had to adjust the boundaries of her invisibility to get through the machine without causing some parts of it to temporarily ‘disappear’ from view, but that was easy enough for her.
On the other side, they passed several more cybernetic guards who stood in front of a row of strange metalic doorways. Between each set of doors were two buttons with triangles pointing up and down. Folowing Gary’s directions, they went left and down a short halway until they
reached a door that opened into a stairwel.
There were cameras and another guard stationed on one side of the hal, so they had to be careful opening the door. Fortunately, Elaine was confident in her mastery of ilusion. She cloaked the entire area around the door in a static ilusion so their invisibility veil wouldn’t create oddities when they opened the door, and Matthew’s sound barrier prevented the noise of the door closing from reaching the guard.
There were more cameras mounted on the ceiling inside the stairwel. Ignoring them, they began descending the stairs. Four flights of stairs and two landings later, they had reached the level they needed. The stairs ended there, since beneath them began the massive concrete fortifications that protected the deeper levels.
To get farther below, they would have to leave the stairwel and pass through the main entrance on that level. Beyond that there would be more elevators and stairs.
Before that, however, they had to exit the stairwel, and the door was locked. A smal plastic box was fastened to the wal beside the door, and it held a smal display screen with a red light beneath it. As they stood beside it, the light changed to green and a click indicated that the door had unlocked.
“Was that you?” asked Matthew.
“Yes,” said Gary. “Most of their regular building security is stil on the network. This wil be a piece of cake as long as we don’t get spotted or arouse suspicion along the way.”
Back in
a halway again, they walked a short distance and made a turn. There before them were the elevators they had seen on the upper
levels. Directly across from them was a large round gate flanked by a massive disc of solid steel that was obviously meant to seal the entrance at certain times. A contingent of eight cybernetic guards were in position, two on either side of the gate and two farther away on either side.
Matthew’s magesight was limited by distance, but he could detect more guards on the other side of the gate.
“Maybe we should wait until night,” suggested Elaine, “when most of the workers are at home. Or is that giant door closed then?”
“They work in shifts around the clock,” Gary replied. “The blast door is only closed twice a year, to ensure it stil functions. Other than that, it’s only meant to be closed during an emergency.”
“We just have to walk through, making sure not to bump into any of the guards or workers coming in or out,” said Matthew. “It couldn’t get any easier.”
Staying close together, they walked out, but before they had gotten within thirty feet of the entrance, red lights on either side of it began to flash.
There might have been an alarm siren as wel, but Matthew’s sonic shield kept them from hearing it. The giant steel door began roling toward the opening to seal it off.
“We’ve been disc…,” Gary started to announce, but Matthew was already grunting under the strain as high velocity rounds began slamming
into his shield. Every guard on either side of the entrance was firing, their weapons pointed directly at the apparently empty space where the two wizards stood.
Several canisters were launched into the area around them and began issuing a large volume of gas.
Matt was already reinforcing his shield and adding a filter to keep out the external air, but the sheer volume of firepower focused on them made him wonder how long he could keep up his defense. A cybernetic unit with a black metal frame emerged from the other side of the gate and pointed an even heavier weapon at them, a massive gun with multiple barrels that were beginning to spin in place.