The Overlord Protocol

by Mark Walden

  Suddenly a strong gust of wind seemed to come from nowhere and Otto felt a vibration as if something heavy had hit the ground nearby. There was a brief flicker and the view of the distant skyline was suddenly obscured by the stark, black outline of the Shroud that had just landed twenty metres away in almost complete silence.

  ‘Right on schedule,’ Raven said, glancing at her watch. ‘Let’s go.’

  She jogged towards the waiting transport with Otto in tow. As they approached the aircraft the rear-access ramp lowered and the pilot stepped out, gesturing urgently for them to get on board. Otto and Raven walked up the ramp and into the belly of the Shroud as the pilot climbed the ladder back up on to the flight deck.

  Within moments they were airborne again. Raven set to work going through the contents of several crates that were stowed at the far end of the passenger compartment. She spent several minutes systematically checking all of the equipment that she retrieved from inside the crates before finally giving a satisfied nod and sitting down in one of the seats opposite Otto.

  ‘There’s a fresh uniform in there for you,’ she said, gesturing towards the crates. ‘That suit has seen better days.’

  Otto had almost forgotten that he was still wearing the suit that he’d put on that morning. It seemed a very long time ago now. The rips, scorch marks and stains that covered it were a powerful reminder of just how much he’d been through in the past few hours. Unbidden, the memory of his conversation with Wing about their new outfits sprang into his head. The realisation that it had been one of the last conversations he had had with his friend struck him harder than he expected. Otto supposed that there would be many such moments in the days to come.

  Raven spent a few minutes scanning her Blackbox, tapping at the screen with the stylus, an occasional frown furrowing her brow.

  ‘Anything I can help with?’ Otto asked. They’d only been in the air a few minutes and he was already starting to get bored. The biggest drawback to having a brain like his was its intolerance of inactivity – he needed something to do.

  ‘You can go over these numbers if you want,’ Raven said, tossing the Blackbox to Otto. ‘I need to go and talk to the pilot.’

  Raven got up out of her seat and climbed up the ladder to the flight deck as Otto looked over the data on the display. The numbers were lists of timings and velocities, all of which had to be precisely right for Raven’s insertion into Cypher’s base to be successful. It was all just simple physics, really, and Otto couldn’t see any flaws in the calculations. If all the equipment worked as designed there was no reason that she should not be able to get inside completely undetected.

  There was little more that Otto could do with the Blackbox. Raven had been sensible enough to lock off its other functions before she had given it to him. He knew he could get round the lock-out with time and the right equipment, but at the moment he had neither so he deactivated the Blackbox and walked over to the crates of equipment at the other end of the compartment.

  He quickly found the clean H.I.V.E. uniform that Raven had mentioned and took the opportunity while she was up on the flight deck to take off the battered suit and put it on. It was a strange relief to be back in the black H.I.V.E. jumpsuit; he was surprised at just how right it felt to be wearing it again. He told himself that it was just the comfort of something familiar in the midst of so much chaos, but a tiny voice at the back of his head asked if he wasn’t just getting used to being a student of H.I.V.E., whether he liked it or not. It was a disturbing thought. He had been telling himself that he had been tolerating life at H.I.V.E. because of his friendship with Wing, but now that his friend was gone he could no longer use that excuse. He knew in his heart of hearts that H.I.V.E. was probably the perfect place for him, for better or for worse. Life at the school, though, would be very different without Wing, and he had to make up his mind if it was a life he truly wanted.

  The Shroud had been airborne for a couple of hours when Otto felt the passenger compartment tip as the aircraft started to climb. He knew that meant that they must be approaching the drop target and that the pilot would be carefully ascending to the designated altitude. Raven stepped through the small door at the other end of the compartment, having put on her suit for the jump. What Otto had suggested back in the old warehouse was actually really quite simple. The only way to get past the masses of anti-intrusion devices surrounding the entrance to the cave concealing Cypher’s secret base was for Raven to be travelling so fast when she passed through their detection grid that the system would assume that it was a false reading and ignore her. That’s when the idea of a HALO jump had occurred to Otto. High Altitude Low Opening was a skydiving technique that had been perfected by special forces around the world. An operative would be dropped from a plane at high altitude and would then freefall for the maximum safe distance, only opening their chute at the last possible moment. There was one small difference, though, in the jump that Otto was proposing that Raven made. This would be the first time that anyone had opened their chute below the ground. Otto knew that generally this was viewed as a bit of a mistake when skydiving, but it was the only way that Raven could hope to avoid detection. She had to freefall into the enormous borehole in the middle of the darkened jungle and only open her chute once she was inside the cave. Raven was probably the only person in the world who would have even considered trying something as patently insane as that, but she actually seemed to be looking forward to it.

  ‘We’ll be at the drop target in a few minutes,’ she said, fastening the final clips on her parachute. ‘I take it that I can trust you to behave yourself for the remainder of the flight to H.I.V.E.?’

  ‘Hey, it’s me,’ Otto replied with a grin.

  ‘Which is why the pilot has a Sleeper and explicit instructions to use it without hesitation if necessary,’ Raven replied with a slight smile. Otto doubted that she was joking.

  ‘Anyone would think that you don’t trust me,’ Otto said, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘And they’d be absolutely right,’ Raven replied, checking the screen on the tiny computer that was attached to her rig. The system was pre-programmed to open the chute at exactly the right altitude. All that Raven had to do was drop into a black hole just a couple of hundred metres wide in the middle of the jungle at night. Otto decided that it was probably best not to think too much about the specifics. The real fun would start when Raven reached the bottom of the cave. They still had no idea what was waiting for her down there, but Otto suspected that it wasn’t going to be a welcoming committee.

  Otto turned as he heard a noise behind them. The pilot was climbing down the ladder from the flight deck.

  ‘Raven,’ the pilot said, ‘I have an urgent message –’

  Raven turned and looked at the pilot, curious.

  ‘From Cypher,’ the pilot continued, raising the Sleeper that he was holding.

  Raven sprang without hesitation, years of training and experience making thought and action as one. If she had not acted so quickly the Sleeper pulse that the pilot fired would have hit her full on rather than just glancing off one shoulder, but it still felt like she’d been hit by a charging elephant. She collapsed to the deck on her hands and knees, fighting to stay conscious. The pilot stepped down off the ladder and on to the deck, pointing the Sleeper straight at her.

  Otto knew that there was no way he could get to the pilot in time to stop him firing. He was too far away and, unlike Raven, he would not have been able to take him down unarmed even if he could get to him. He glanced to his side and realised that there was only one thing he could do.

  ‘Hey!’ Otto shouted, distracting the pilot for a second. ‘Why don’t you take this outside?’

  The pilot’s fleeting look of confusion turned instantly to horror as Otto leapt for the large red button mounted on the wall of the passsenger compartment. He slapped his hand down on it hard and snatched at the cargo netting that hung alongside, holding on for dear life as the rear cargo ramp began to descend. At that
point physics took over and the difference between the air pressure inside the compartment and the thin atmosphere that was screaming past outside did the rest. The pilot was plucked off his feet, tumbling past Otto, desperately trying to reach for anything that he could hang on to, but he was too slow, and was sucked out of the widening gap as the cargo ramp descended. His final scream was lost in the roaring sound of the air rushing out after him.

  Raven, still stunned from the Sleeper pulse, slid past Otto and he grabbed at her chute harness. He felt as if he was going to be torn in two as he desperately tried to hang on to the cargo net and maintain his fragile grip on her.

  ‘Grab on to me,’ Otto yelled as loudly as he could, his voice sounding pitifully tiny in the deafening chaos. Raven looked at him with confusion for a moment before her survival instincts cut through the after-effects of the Sleeper pulse and she latched on to his ankle with a grip like steel. Now that his arm was free again Otto flailed at the switch next to the one that he had just hit, the control that would raise the cargo ramp again, but it was just out of reach. He made one last desperate effort, stretching for all he was worth until his fingertips brushed the edge of the button. The motor controlling the loading ramp screeched in protest as it fought to close the ramp against the force of the air pressure differential, but gradually, inch by excruciating inch, the ramp rose. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, it sealed shut and the Shroud’s systems quickly restored air pressure within the compartment.

  The compartment was suddenly eerily quiet again, the only sound Otto and Raven’s laboured breathing as their lungs fought to extract the oxygen from the air. After a few moments Raven tried to get to her feet but abandoned the effort when it became obvious that the after-effects of the near miss from the Sleeper were still scrambling some of the messages going from her brain to her legs. She collapsed into one of the nearby seats with a groan, rubbing her temples.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Otto said, genuinely concerned. They were coming up on the drop target and they were only going to get one shot at this.

  ‘I think so,’ Raven replied weakly. ‘Just a bit disorientated.’

  ‘We’ve got to get to the flight deck,’ Otto said quickly. The fact that the Shroud was not diving towards the ground far below meant that the autopilot was active but he still had to find out how long they had till the drop point.

  ‘You go,’ Raven replied. ‘I’m going to need a minute before I’m climbing any ladders.’

  Otto nodded and walked to the ladder.

  ‘The autopilot display is on the central console,’ Raven said. ‘We just need the ETA at the drop waypoint.’

  ‘No problem,’ Otto said, quickly climbing the ladder. The flight deck was crowded with displays and controls but he knew what he was looking for. On the central display was a screen displaying a map and columns of numbers, which Otto guessed had to be waypoint coordinates. He quickly scanned the display.

  ‘Three minutes until the drop point,’ he shouted down the hatch to the lower compartment.

  ‘OK,’ Raven replied, ‘we can still do this. The autopilot will take you back to H.I.V.E. after I’ve made the drop.’ She knew that the systems on board were sophisticated enough to return to the island and H.I.V.E.mind would then ensure that the Shroud would make a safe landing. She’d just need a few seconds to check the flight plan and lock out the controls so Otto would not be able to interfere with them. He may have just saved her life but there was no way that she was going to leave someone like Otto Malpense unsupervised with an unlocked autopilot system. Knowing him he’d probably already worked out how to fly the thing. She knew that it was risky and that Nero wouldn’t approve but they couldn’t afford to delay this operation for the time it would take her to fly him back to H.I.V.E. herself.

  Otto was distracted by a flashing display on another console of flight controls.

  ‘Erm . . . I don’t think that’s going to be an option,’ he said, staring at the display.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Raven asked urgently, getting slowly and unsteadily to her feet and walking towards the ladder.

  ‘We have a bigger problem,’ Otto replied, still staring at the words on the flashing display.

  .

  Self destruct system initialised . . .

  .

  .

  2.56

  .

  .

  2.55

  .

  .

  2.54

  ‘I hope that you learn as quickly as I’ve been told,’ Raven said as she snapped the final clips in place on Otto’s chute harness.

  Otto didn’t reply; he was too busy staring at Raven’s Blackbox as screen after screen of text and diagrams flicked past. Learning wasn’t really the word for what he was doing; absorbing would probably be a better way of putting it. He was fairly certain that this was not the way that anyone was supposed to train for their first HALO jump, but they didn’t have any other option.

  Raven checked the display on the jump control unit, confirmed that it was functioning correctly, then glanced at her watch.

  ‘One minute,’ she said matter of factly and pulled two helmets out of the equipment crates. She silently offered a prayer of thanks that whoever had loaded the Shroud had followed standard operating procedure and packed back-ups of everything they needed; normally it was in case of equipment failure but in this case it might just save their lives.

  Otto didn’t say anything. He just increased the speed at which the pages of the HALO training manual were flicking past on the Blackbox’s display. He was nearly through it and he just had to hope that he now knew enough to survive the next few minutes.

  ‘OK, done,’ Otto said after a couple more seconds, tossing the Blackbox on to one of the seats and taking a deep breath.

  ‘If by some miracle you get down there in one piece, stay put. I’ll find you,’ Raven said tersely. She jammed the helmet on to Otto’s head, plugged in the cable from the jump control unit and snapped the visor shut. The helmet absorbed any sound from the Shroud, and all he could hear was the gentle hiss of the oxygen that the jump rig was feeding to his helmet. Otto watched as the helmet’s head-up display flickered into life, displaying streams of coordinates and velocities. He might have known how the system worked now on an intellectual level but he also knew that there was a world of difference between having memorised the entire training manual and actual practical experience.

  Raven put on her own helmet and slapped the switch on the wall that would depressurise the compartment, equalising the differential between the pressure inside the doomed aircraft and the high-altitude atmosphere outside. Otto had no exact measure of how long they had until the explosive charges hidden around the Shroud detonated, but he knew they could only have seconds left.

  A green light came on above the switch that Raven had pressed and she gave Otto a thumbs-up before hitting the control to lower the cargo ramp. There was no roar of escaping air as the ramp lowered this time, but the noise of the Shroud’s engines grew suddenly louder. Raven gestured urgently for Otto to move forward on to the ramp and he tried very hard not to think about the fact that he was about to throw himself out of an aircraft, 25,000 feet above the ground.

  Raven stood alongside him and held her watch up in front of his face. The countdown timer that she had synched with the self-destruct countdown displayed ten seconds remaining. Knowing he had no other choice, Otto ran towards the edge of the loading ramp and threw himself forward into the blackness.

  .

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Four hundred, three hundred, two hundred, one hundred.’

  Otto closed his eyes.

  ‘Zero.’

  The very fact that Otto was able to be thankful that there had been no bone-shattering impact with the ground told him that he’d at least hit the target. He opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t as the black void into which he was falling was framed alarmingly closely on all sides by the jagged rock walls of the cave, their d
agger-like shapes illuminated by the eerie green glow of the helmet’s night vision.

  Suddenly the jump rig detected that Otto was the correct distance from the floor of the cavern and automatically deployed his chute, the sudden deceleration jerking him upwards, the straps of his harness biting into his shoulders. Now comes the hard part, Otto thought to himself as he used the steering handles on the chute to steer it in a tight circle towards the ground. He knew all of the theory of the jump and the parachute deployment and steering, but he suspected that the theory of actually hitting the ground and the practical reality were two very different things.

  As he descended in a tight spiral he could begin to make out details of the cavern floor below. There was no sign of any activity and no obvious heat sources and just for a moment Otto wondered if they’d actually got the right target. Then he reminded himself of the battery of sensors and other less friendly devices that had filled the jungle around the cave – this had to be the right place or someone was going to a lot of trouble and expense to guard a big hole in the ground.

  He thought he could see a relatively flat-looking area of the cave floor near to where the waterfall that had bored this huge sinkhole over the centuries hit the ground in an explosion of white foam. He gently tugged on the controls of the chute, slightly adjusting his downward path, aiming for this potential landing spot. He seemed to be travelling very fast, even though the chute was functioning perfectly. All of the diagrams he had seen just a few minutes earlier for the correct way to hit the ground, bending his knees and rolling to absorb the impact, seemed very abstract as the ground rushed up to meet him.

  He hit the ground hard. The rock was slippery and wet so his landing was far from graceful, jarring his ankles as he let his legs collapse underneath him and rolling just as he had so recently learnt. The silky black material of the canopy fell on top of him and he struggled for a few seconds to get out from under it before finally extricating himself and standing up on solid ground. He was alive and, as far as he could tell, there were no bones broken although his ankles throbbed painfully in protest at the impact they had suffered. He quickly gathered up the chute and unclipped it from the jump harness, stuffing the rolled-up ball of black material behind a nearby pile of rocks. There was no sign that his arrival had been noted; no floodlights lighting up the cave or wailing alarm klaxons; just the dull thunder of the waterfall nearby.