The Overlord Protocol

by Mark Walden

  ‘Now release Shelby,’ Laura said, still speaking slightly too loudly, ‘and don’t get any ideas about telling her to attack me or anything because I’m willing to bet I can pull this trigger before you do.’

  Laura watched carefully as the Contessa spoke.

  ‘You are free,’ she said and Shelby visibly relaxed.

  ‘Good,’ Shelby said. ‘That means I can do this.’ She took two quick strides towards the Contessa and punched her squarely on the chin. The Contessa’s eyes rolled back in her head and she fell to the ground unconscious.

  ‘Well, that’s not very helpful,’ Laura said, pulling the earplugs from her ears. ‘How are we going to get her out of here now?’

  ‘Who said anything about getting her out of here?’ Shelby asked, a hard edge to her voice.

  ‘But if this works she’ll be killed,’ Laura said, gesturing at the computer terminal.

  ‘Well, cry me a river,’ Shelby said bitterly. ‘Do I really need to point out that she just tried to get you to kill me and then shoot yourself, not to mention betraying all of us to Cypher?’

  ‘She might deserve it Shel, but she’s not turning either of us into murderers,’ Laura said firmly, ‘and that’s that. I’m not finishing this hack if she doesn’t come with us.’

  Shelby stared at the unconscious form of the Contessa for a second.

  ‘OK, get on with it,’ Shelby said, sounding slightly frustrated.

  Laura turned back to the workstation.

  ‘Tie her up and gag her,’ Laura said over her shoulder, ‘This should only take a couple more minutes.’

  Nigel crept down the corridor after Block and Tackle. There was no sign of the Colonel and he hoped fervently that it would stay that way. He stopped at the door through which the two other boys had passed and read the sign over it: ‘Flow Control Chamber’. He had no idea what it meant but it didn’t sound like the sort of place into which it was a very good idea to take high explosives. He pressed a button on the access panel next to the door and it slid open. He was immediately struck by a wave of heat that emanated from the room and he could hear the same low rumble that he’d heard before. There was a short flight of open metal stairs that led down to a turn in the passage, red light glowing softly from beyond.

  Nigel crept down the stairs and peeked round the corner. He managed to suppress the gasp that almost escaped his lips as he finally understood how H.I.V.E. could be powered by geothermal energy alone. A suspended metal walkway led out to an enormous series of metallic columns that plunged down hundreds of feet to a seething lake of lava far below. There the columns disappeared below the surface, glowing white hot and presumably tapping the enormous heat of the magma. Like all of his fellow students Nigel had always presumed that H.I.V.E. was hidden within an extinct volcano but now he realised that this volcano was not extinct – tamed would be a far better word.

  At the far end of the walkway Block and Tackle were busy mounting a large disc-shaped object to the central column. Nigel wasn’t sure what it was, but given that the crate with the high-explosive markings sat open next to them he was willing to bet that it wasn’t a high-tech Frisbee. He shuddered to think what might happen if a powerful explosive device was detonated here – he had to stop them somehow. He took a step round the corner and suppressed a cry of surprise as he nearly tripped over the orange-jumpsuited body of one of H.I.V.E.’s security guards. Nigel quickly realised that the guard was just unconscious, which explained the Sleeper shots he’d heard earlier, but more to the point his Sleeper was still in its holster on his hip. Nigel unclipped the holster and pulled the gun free. He had never held a gun before, let alone fired one, but he knew that he would only get one shot at this.

  He stood up and pointed the gun at Block, who still had his back turned, fully focused on attaching the device to the giant column. Nigel took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger.

  And nothing happened.

  ‘Unauthorised user,’ a loud electronic voice squawked from the gun.

  The noise caught Block and Tackle’s attention and they both turned to face Nigel. He felt a wave of panic and pulled the trigger again.

  ‘Unauthorised user,’ the electronic voice repeated in what to Nigel’s ears was a mocking tone.

  Block and Tackle said nothing, just advanced across the walkway towards Nigel. The murderous expressions on their faces suggested that they weren’t very pleased by his interference.

  Nigel turned to run, stumbling again in his panic over the unconscious guard.

  The unconscious guard.

  Nigel dropped to one knee, pressed the Sleeper into the limp palm of the sleeping guard and clumsily pointed it towards the advancing Block and Tackle. He pressed the guard’s finger against the trigger.

  ZAP!!!

  The Sleeper fired, the pulse crackling past Block’s ear, and the two henchmen started to sprint along the walkway towards Nigel.

  ZAP!! ZAP!! ZAP!!

  Nigel fired again and again. The first shot flew wild but the others found their targets, first Block and then Tackle collapsing to the ground as the Sleeper pulses stunned their nervous systems. Block collapsed within a couple of feet of Nigel, who breathed a long, loud sigh of relief.

  ‘Drop the gun.’

  Nigel felt something cold and metallic press against the back of his head.

  ‘Drop the gun now,’ the Colonel repeated, emphasising the command by pressing the pistol he was holding harder into the back of Nigel’s head. Nigel let the gun slip from his hand and slowly stood up, both hands in the air.

  ‘Yaaaaaarrrrrgggghhh!’

  It was halfway between a battle cry and a scream of terror and the Colonel spun round just in time to be hit by the airborne body of Franz Argentblum. The Colonel was a seasoned soldier and physically incredibly strong but Franz had leapt from the top of the stairs just behind him and physics did the rest. Franz landed on the Colonel like a rock, knocking him down and sending the pistol he had been holding scattering away over the edge of the walkway, tumbling into the lake of lava far below. The Colonel rolled, throwing Franz off his back, and struggled to his feet.

  ‘Now I’ll just have to kill you with my bare hands,’ he snarled, advancing on Franz, who crawled backwards away from him, a look of sheer terror on his face.

  ZAP!! ZAP!!

  The Colonel’s expression changed from one of rage to one of confusion as he fell to his knees, his eyes rolling back into his head as he collapsed forward on to Franz.

  Nigel let the Sleeper, still held in the unconscious guard’s hand, fall from his trembling hands.

  ‘Get him off me! Get him off me!’ Franz yelled as he tried to roll the deadweight of the Colonel’s unconscious body from on top of him.

  Nigel rushed over to his friend and dragged him out from under the Colonel, helping him to his feet.

  ‘You saved my life,’ Nigel said, struggling to keep the amazement from his voice. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Next time,’ Franz puffed, his face red, ‘we go to the dining hall, OK?’

  .

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Hello again,’ Otto said with a grin. ‘Long time, no see.’

  ‘Indeed, it is good to be back,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied.

  The Professor looked at the screen on the central hub.

  ‘Well, it appears that you are fully functional again, H.I.V.E.mind, although your behavioural restraints don’t seem to have survived intact,’ he reported.

  ‘I am at one hundred per cent of my full functionality, Professor,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied, ‘though I appear to have no access to security or base defence systems.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a long story,’ Otto said, ‘and one that we don’t really have time for right now. H.I.V.E.mind, we need your help.’

  ‘I exist to serve,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied calmly.

  ‘I need you to run a scan for me,’ Otto continued. ‘Are there any alien wireless command transmissions running within H.I.V.E. at the moment?’

&nbs
p; ‘Scanning,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied, falling silent for a few seconds.

  ‘One unknown wireless transmission is broadcasting at this time. Origin unknown, specification unknown, protected by extremely sophisticated encryption,’ H.I.V.E.mind reported.

  ‘That has to be it,’ Otto said. ‘That’s Cypher’s command net. It’s how he’s controlling his assassins. Can you crack the encryption?’

  ‘Yes, though it will require a brute-force method to crack,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied.

  ‘How long to crack it?’ Otto asked.

  ‘Fifteen years, three months, two days, thirteen hours approximately.’

  Otto felt a horrible sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. Their only hope had been if H.I.V.E.mind had been able to hijack Cypher’s command network. And he would be able to, just nowhere near as quickly as they needed.

  ‘We have minutes at best,’ Otto said quickly. ‘Is there any way to speed the decryption up?’

  ‘Unfortunately a brute-force crack of such encryption is entirely dependent on pure processing power,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied. ‘Without access to additional processing power there is no way to accelerate the process.’

  Otto let out a long sigh. If H.I.V.E.mind couldn’t crack that encryption more quickly then there wasn’t a computer in the world that could.

  Something sparked in Otto’s head.

  There wasn’t one computer in the world that could do it, but all of the computers in the world might just be able to.

  ‘We have to let him out,’ Otto said to the Professor. ‘Allow H.I.V.E.mind external access.’

  ‘Out of the question,’ the Professor replied quickly. ‘Doctor Nero would never allow it.’

  ‘Right now that’s the least of our concerns,’ Otto shot back. ‘If we can’t crack Cypher’s encryption we’ll all be at the mercy of that psychopath and you can bet that Nero doesn’t want that.’

  The Professor looked at Raven, who just shrugged. Malpense was right. What other choice did they have?

  ‘There’s one problem,’ the Professor said. ‘If we allow H.I.V.E.mind access to external networks it may overload his personality matrix entirely. There’s no guarantee that he would survive or that he wouldn’t come back as something . . . worse.’

  ‘That is a chance I am willing to take, Professor,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied.

  ‘Whatever you’re going to do, do it quickly,’ Raven said suddenly, pulling the twin black blades from the sheaths on her back and pushing past Otto. He looked down the walkway after her and saw half a dozen of Cypher’s assassins rushing into the chamber.

  ‘We have to do this now, Professor,’ Otto said urgently as Raven advanced on the robots.

  ‘Yes, I think you may be right,’ the Professor said, staring with a mixture of horror and scientific curiosity at the mechanical killers that were now advancing across the gantry toward the hub. ‘H.I.V.E.mind, I am going to open an external port. From there it’s up to you, do you understand?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied.

  ‘OK, Otto, I’m going to open the port. When the execute prompt pops up on that screen just hit “yes”, OK?’ the Professor instructed.

  Raven smiled as the first of the assassin units approached. She was going to enjoy this.

  The first assassin leapt but Raven was ready. The crackling black blade hissed through the air, slicing through the metal chassis of the robot from shoulder to opposite hip. The two halves of the robot flew apart, twitching and sparking, now just so much scrap metal.

  ‘Now that’s more like it,’ she said and launched herself at the remaining robots. They were still superhumanly fast and quite deadly but she was faster and deadlier, her twin blades a blur as she sliced through the attacking machines like a scythe.

  Otto tore his eyes away from the sight of Raven laying waste to the attacking robots and focused on the hub display. The Professor completed his network rerouting and the execute prompt popped up flashing on Otto’s screen.

  ‘Ready?’ Otto said to H.I.V.E.mind.

  ‘Always,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied and winked at Otto.

  ‘H.I.V.E.mind, world; world, H.I.V.E.mind,’ Otto said under his breath and hit ‘yes’.

  H.I.V.E.mind’s head shot backwards, a horrid electronic scream coming from his gaping mouth, and then vanished.

  ‘Professor?’ Otto asked urgently.

  ‘I don’t know, there’s nothing there. His personality matrix has been erased, he’s gone.’

  Otto looked at the Professor’s distraught expression and knew exactly how he felt. That was it, they’d played their last card.

  ‘We have company,’ Raven yelled from halfway along the suspended walkway.

  Otto looked towards the entrance and watched as dozens, perhaps hundreds of the assassin droids poured through the doorway like swarming insects, spreading out in all directions and pouring along the walkway. They halted within a few metres of Raven, as if waiting for instructions, as another figure stepped through the doorway.

  It was Cypher. They were out of time.

  Laura and Shelby rolled the unconscious body of the Contessa into the lifeboat that hung suspended over the ocean far below. The lifeboat had an outboard motor and Laura just prayed that it was fully fuelled.

  ‘I still think she’s just excess baggage,’ Shelby said with annoyance.

  ‘Well, take comfort in the fact that whatever Nero has planned for her will be far worse than anything we can do,’ Laura said.

  She scanned the deck nearby and spotted what she wanted mounted to a nearby wall. She walked over and pressed the button on the intercom unit that was marked ‘bridge’.

  Up on the ship’s bridge a button lit up on the captain’s console and he hit it.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, eager to hear if the children running around loose on his ship had been captured yet.

  ‘I want to speak to someone in charge,’ Laura’s voice crackled over the intercom.

  ‘This is the captain speaking. Who is this?’ the captain demanded impatiently.

  ‘My name is Laura Brand and you have five minutes to get your men off this ship,’ Laura replied.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Brand,’ the captain chuckled. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, but I am unaccustomed to taking orders from children.’

  ‘Well, start getting used to it,’ Laura said calmly, ‘I’ve made some rather unsafe modifications to your missile launch sequence. You don’t have time to fix it, in fact you barely have enough time to abandon ship.’

  The captain shot a glance at his weapons technician, who frantically started to check the launch system for errors.

  ‘I’m locked out,’ the weapons technician hissed. ‘God only knows what she’s done, but if she’s telling the truth we’ll never get back into the system in time.’

  All of the colour drained from the captain’s face. Clearly the Contessa had failed.

  ‘Miss Brand, I promise you that no harm will come to you or your friend if you surrender now,’ he said, trying to sound as confident as possible.

  ‘I think you misunderstand me, captain,’ Laura replied. ‘This isn’t a negotiation, it’s a warning.’

  There was a click and the line went dead.

  The captain felt a sudden rush of fear. He thought desperately for a moment; there had to be something he could do.

  ‘Lifeboat six away, sir. It’s an unauthorised launch, it must be them,’ one of the bridge officers reported.

  ‘Blow them out of the water,’ the captain said angrily.

  ‘Erm . . . we can’t, sir, we have no missile control,’ the weapons technician reported nervously.

  The captain went bright red and looked angry enough to explode himself. His mouth moved for a moment as he tried to think of an alternative before giving a long sigh and visibly deflating in his chair. Cypher was going to kill him for this.

  ‘Give the order. All hands abandon ship.’

  ‘I am getting tired of killing you, Raven,’ Cypher said coldly a
s he stepped on to the walkway.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Raven said. ‘I don’t think I’d ever get tired of killing you.’

  She stood halfway along the walkway, between Cypher and Otto and the Professor, both swords drawn, barring the way forward. Cypher’s assassins were spreading out around the circumference of the room, slowly surrounding the central hub. Otto didn’t know if any of them would be able to leap the distance from there to where they were standing but he had a horrible feeling that they might be able to.

  ‘The amulet,’ Cypher said, holding out his open hand. ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Raven replied calmly.

  ‘I know you have it, and you ARE going to give it to me,’ Cypher said angrily.

  ‘Now why on earth would I do that?’ Raven said, raising her swords in a defensive stance.

  ‘Unit two,’ Cypher said and one of the giant behemoth assault robots ducked through the door. It raised its arms into the air and hanging there suspended in the iron grip of the machine was Nero. Another of the huge machines entered just behind it, blocking the only available exit. They were trapped.

  ‘Now give me the amulet or I shall have my friend here tear Nero limb from limb in front of you,’ Cypher said calmly.

  Raven took a step backwards. Suddenly Cypher seemed to be holding all the cards.

  ‘Don’t listen to him, Natalya,’ Nero said, his voice broken with pain.

  ‘Oh, I suggest you do listen to me, Raven,’ Cypher said, walking forward across the walkway, ‘and don’t think for a moment that I’m bluffing. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than putting Nero out of my misery.’

  Raven glanced back at the Professor and Otto, whose expressions suggested that they had no more idea of what to do now than she did. Otto glanced at the display on the hub. There was still no activity – H.I.V.E.mind couldn’t help them.

  ‘Oh, I tire of this,’ Cypher said, turning to the giant robot. ‘Kill him.’

  Nero yelled out in pain as the huge machine started to stretch his arms apart, beginning to tear them from their sockets.