“Teach your granny to suck eggs, Katsu,” Tabitha murmured while she played with the controls highlighting the building schematics they had been able to pilfer from the local government offices. “Here’s the central office, and here looks like the primary location for the computer geeks.”
“So, we hit the main office to connect to the server?” Katsu asked.
“No, you go for the computer admin’s computers. If there’s a back door, those fuckers will have one because they won’t want to walk through the security to get to the servers if they don’t have to.” She spoke a little louder, “Achronyx, do we have a count of internal people?”
“I have located eight heat sources walking outside around building one. None in buildings two or three.”
“Plus, count on another one or two in a control room to be safe,” Ryu added.
“That seems reasonable,” Tabitha agreed and stood up. “So, is the plan hit them fast, knock them out, hit the security and kill it and then the servers?”
She looked at Hirotoshi who seemed to be accepting input from the rest of the team just by looking at them. “Yes, it is.”
“Achronyx, take us down as soon as you have scrambled all available security.”
“Understood, one moment please,” the electronic voice replied.
Down below, seventeen small devices angled towards any wires that were available. Six of them, larger than the rest, pulled out metal pins that stabbed the cables, seeking a way to penetrate the wires within.
“Core security has been infiltrated. Please stay away from all areas marked in red as I have been unable to take control of those signals.”
The team locked in the areas in their minds and nodded.
“Just keep the video off of us, Achronyx,” Tabitha said.
—
Ryan kicked back, sipping on his coffee. It was always the midnight to three o’clock shift that was hardest for him to stay awake. On his third sip, two of his twenty monitors went to static.
He leaned forward, setting his coffee down. “What the hell.” He hit the call-all button. “Stay sharp, people. We have interference on the video cameras.” He barely got out the last word when the audio squawked a piercing loud high note, and he slammed his hand down on the mute button.
“Shit!” he said, and grabbed the walkie-talkie and hit the button. “I’m on mobile walkie-talkie people, what are you seeing?”
“Nothing’s wrong out here, boss,” Terri replied. “Building three is clear.”
“Nothing here either,” Deith said.
“Where are you located, Deith?” Ryan asked. He waited a few seconds. “Deith, where are you located?” Ryan swore. “Terri, can you see Deith?” He barely got the question out when four more of the videos went to static.
Shit, shit SHIT! “Terri, can you see Deith? Terri?”
He double checked his channel, he was transmitting on the right one for the time of night. A blip on one of the videos caught his eye. Two more video cameras, these inside the building also had something flash in front of them.
“Hey, boss?” A female spoke.
Ryan pulled up the walkie-talkie. “Terri, where the fuck are you?” his frustration destroying the calm demeanor he had meant to project. “We’ve got people inside the building somehow, get whoever you can and get your ass in here!”
This time, he practically yelled the demand as two more of his internal video cameras went out. He reached across and hit the prep-button to warm up the final server defense system.
Then, the power dropped for a microsecond before the backup came online.
There was a rap on his door and a ‘boss, open up’ from a female on the other side.
Ryan pushed his chair back and took two quick steps and pushed open the armored door. “Terri, get your ass….”
“Hi sugar,” a pretty Latina in all black smiled at him as all of the cameras behind him blanked off. “Terri is asleep right now, but she gave me this to play with,” she waved Terri’s walkie-talkie back and forth. “So,” she stepped into the room and grabbed Ryan’s shoulder.
The smaller woman easily forced him down on his knees. “You are going to take a short nap after you give me the code to the server room, honey.”
“I can’t!” Ryan shook his head. “I don’t have the combination to the lock.” He had grabbed the lady’s arm and tried to dislodge, then twist it. She popped him in the head.
“Stop that shit!” Ryan slammed to the floor, grabbing his head when the pain from her slap registered.
Tabitha looked back at the door, and Ryan’s head moved slowly to see someone in black, face covered who shook his head negative.
She looked down at Ryan. “Dammit, that makes things annoyingly more difficult.” She stepped over Ryan who was still seeing two of everything. “Put him to sleep.”
—
Tabitha walked towards the server room, Ryu walking behind her. She pulled the small Achronyx device out of a pocket. “Achronyx, can you do anything for this?”
“According to location sensors, you are in front of the research area. The servers are located in a room beyond one and past another door. This door is on a simple alarm system that is bypassed. You can break it down.”
“Who can break it down?” Tabitha asked, her voice going an octave higher. “I don’t have bones like Bethany Anne, do I?” she turned to Ryu. “Do you?”
Ryu, stepped forward, Tabitha stepped back. He looked at the slice of glass with tiny wires six inches wide, traveling up the door. He turned around, looked and then walked to a bathroom and stepped in.
“Seriously?” Tabitha asked. “I ask him about opening a door, and he goes to take a piss?” A second later, she heard a loud screech and then a bang from inside the bathroom and the door opened once more.
Ryu stepped out with a misshapen metal box, and Tabitha took another step back. Ryu walked up to the door and then the glass shattered as Ryu sped up and shoved the metal box through the glass. He reached in and unlocked the door from the other side.
Tabitha walked in behind him, noticing the tiny wires that had cut rips into the metal box. “Oh, those would have hurt like a bitch,” she muttered.
They walked across the crunchy floor, glass not bothering them in their shoes with the leather soles. Ryu looked at the final door. A metal one with no window on it, “You need in there?” he asked.
“Yes, maybe, hold on,” she told him and clicked her call button on her collar, “Katsu, any luck?”
“None Kimosabe,” came back. “It seems these admins are not as lazy as most.”
“Fucking great. Okay, thanks.” Tabitha nodded at Ryu. “I need in there.”
Ryu looked around and up to the dropped ceiling. Turning to his left, he took two steps then pushed off the nearby wall and popped two of the ceiling tiles. They fell on the floor, and he did it again, but this time he grabbed something up in the ceiling and his body and then his feet disappeared.
“Always fucking leaving when all I need is a door opened,” Tabitha muttered. “Imagine what he’d be like on a date.”
There was a small noise from the other side of the door and then a click, and it opened. Ryu waved her in.
“Wow, that was impressive,” she said seeing an air vent had been ripped off the ceiling and parts littered the floor.
She looked at the three rows of server systems, each twenty feet long and back-to-back. “Wow, deja vu.” She walked to the first monitor and keyboard system and pulled it out. She called out, “I need you, Ryu, so badly,” as the man came up and turned around.
She zipped open the bag and pulled out her very small laptop and two very tiny USB keys plus three cables. “Sorry, just wanted you for your tool, buddy.”
Ryu snorted and then started walking around the room when she was finished pulling the electronics equipment.
Achronyx called over the team band, “We have a 911 call to the local emergency services. ETA seven minutes.”
“Don’t ever tell me time,” Tabi
tha muttered.
“I didn’t, it was actually six minutes and forty-six seconds. I rounded up,” Achronyx answered.
“We need to work on your manners, Achronyx,” Tabitha said as she looked over to see what was happening as she tried to hack into the system. “Some other time, though. When you tell me the time on…” she paused and frowned. “Dammit, that doesn’t look right,” she changed ports and typed additional commands.
Moments later, her eyes opened wide. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck no!” She started typing rapidly then started cursing in Spanish.
Ryu walked in when he couldn’t understand the cussing, it was coming so fast, and saw she was typing much more rapidly than the computer was able to register. Finally, she slammed her hand against the cage next to her, causing it to dent in a few inches.
“FUCK!” She screamed. “Tabitha, you idiot! You tried amazing them with stupidity, now try a few tactics, you hack.” She looked over at the door and punched the lock and twisted it to the side. Grabbing one of the USB keys, she put an arm back into the cage and turned to Ryu, “Do me a favor and fuck up every one of the cage doors, so none look any more special than others.”
Ryu shrugged and started walking down the lane, punching, kicking and delivering head-butts to the cage doors, messing them up. By the time he was done with the last row, Tabitha was coming down and chose a door midway and opened it up. Reaching behind it, she said, “The bastards did a melt job on the primary access. We tripped something, and they fucking scrammed the main hard drives. I’m putting a USB on the back in an out of the way place. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and we can get access in a few days after they fix everything.” She pulled her arm out, closed and locked the door, and walked back the other way, feet stomping on the ground.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and the fuckers won’t be so damned good a second time,” she said, with exasperation, as she turned the corner.
A second later, Ryu heard her voice in the room, and over the comms, “Tontos, let’s shag ass, this was a bust.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dulce Lake, New Mexico, USA
The underground base had been around for well over seventy years. The natural tunnels under the base opened into a deep underground cavern system that went off in multiple directions. The single base entrance led to a shaft that descended over two thousand feet using a large elevator, over twenty feet in diameter.
However, for operations, various large doors were opened into the deep cavern system, and if you had the right map, you could come up in any one of a hundred different exits spread over almost two thousand square miles.
Some barely broad enough to allow a man with a backpack to squeeze out into a forested area, a couple of others allowing their large craft options to fly out in the nighttime, hidden from civilization.
Mostly.
Occasionally someone might see something, but their technology had gotten much better in the seven-plus decades since they were formed in 1947 by the Executive Order of President Harry S. Truman. Their job was to facilitate recovery and investigation of alien spacecraft.
Over the years, most of those who knew about the base and their operations passed away. When age, or strategic removal, took out all the main players in the creation of the group, they went totally beyond black.
Now, they were line items in a budget that could hide the state of Wyoming.
Living by their own rules, their own plays, their own goals. They brought in government connections as they needed them. Always keeping the highest level security since they, until recently, held all of the technology cards.
Which, in the end, was also their Achilles heel.
Patrick sat at one end of the table, facing the head of the scientific side of the Majestic 12. His side, operations, and special tasks were more action based. Dr. Eva Hocks was on the opposing side of the table, and she represented all research.
Since Patrick called this meeting, he opened. “I’m sorry to say we have a potential problem. Knowledge of this project is now outside of our control.”
The other eleven individuals waited to hear what else Patrick had to say. Some were only counting the moments until they would be released to go back down to level six and seven. Their need for understanding and the dopamine it released in their system was the only high they could counted on to drive their daily existence.
Others, having lived down here for so many years, had lived through these problems before and never had it become a serious threat, so they weren’t worried.
“I have called a full lockdown for everyone to stay here in the base until such a time as we feel comfortable we have the situation under control, except for Tanya who is still seeking her target. We have confirmed the three questionable members are no longer here on Earth, or at least not in any area our markers can be located,” Patrick amended.
“How is that possible?” Dr. Hocks spoke up for the first time. “We have tested those to be locatable over 99% of the face of the Earth and even up to a quarter mile deep underground.”
“My suspicion,” Patrick said, “is because all of our equipment is pointing down from our satellites, not up into outer space.”
“Well, we didn’t take them there, so… oh,” she stopped talking.
“Yes, oh.” Patrick agreed. “We have pretty strong proof that they are presently being held by TQB off planet.”
“Why do they want them?” Dr. Abesemmins asked from down the table to Patrick’s left.
Patrick turned to answer the doctor’s question. “We believe we have someone trying to acquire some of our technology. Somehow, they located one of our employees who was easily suborned due to family and was blackmailing them. TQB figured this out, how we don’t know, and carried out an operation to successfully extricate them. Fortunately, none of our data was lost.”
“Told you we should have shut down the Family Project back in ’06,” Dr. Abesemmins commented.
Patrick put up his hand. “Well, you can be assured the project is dead. As in, we have no members with family presently part of our group at this time.”
“Good,” was the doctor’s reply.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have those employees anymore, either. None of them had access to the lower levels nor the higher clearance levels,” Patrick nodded at Dr. Abesemmins. “Due to concerns over their mixed allegiance.”
“Okay,” Dr. Hocks interrupted. “Other than a lockdown, how does this affect us?”
Patrick controlled the rolling of his eyes. As but one member of the twelve, he had power but not the ultimate authority to call for a strike using the advanced technology. “Tanya has reported that our intelligence has confirmation the U.S. Navy is underway for a second Operation Highjump.”
Eva snorted. “Do they want another ass kicking like they got the last time? Hell, we don’t mess with the Thule ourselves, and I’m pretty sure we have overtaken them in technology.”
“The government doesn’t believe the previous ass kicking happened, Eva. Remember, we’ve changed the history so much, no one believes what was printed in the past anymore,” Patrick reminded them.
“There is an interesting change, however,” Patrick said. “The government has figured out that the Thule haven’t been answering with their ‘go away’ signal for a few years. No one is sure if the Thule are still alive or not,” he finished.
This time, everyone watched Patrick as Dr. Hocks leaned forward, putting her hands on the table. “Is that so?”
Patrick smiled back. “Yes, it is.”
—
The ride back to the ArchAngel was quiet. Hirotoshi and Ryu let Tabitha go through all of the emotions of an unsuccessful operation.
When the Pod arrived, she unbuckled and turned to her team. “Thank you all. I have to apologize as I failed to realize they would erase their data and I didn’t think to take any precautions. I won’t make that mistake a second time.”
She inhaled deeply and sighed. “Hirotoshi, I’ll get with you and Ryu
in a little while. I’m going to walk the halls. Guys, I won’t fuck up like this again.”
As she spoke, the larger Pod doors were opened by those in the Pod bay, and she turned and walked out, nodding to the two men as she strode towards the exit.
—
A half an hour later, Tabitha could hear some coarse language coming from ahead of her, and she looked up to see where she was.
She was in R&D. The voice was a female, so probably Jean Dukes. For a moment or two, she allowed herself to just float along, listening to the tirade Jean was going through and realized something.
She wasn’t allowing herself to vent too well.
The Kurtherian Gambit Omnibus 05 - The Fans Version: My Ride is a Bitch - Don't Cross This Line - Never Submit Page 18