by Bruce Bethke
"Couldn't get the door open," Britt said. "It must have relocked when it closed. But you'd think Starkiller could do 'is rat-tail trick again, y'know?"
"Unless they got hit on that side."
Britt, for a change, was silent.
Colonel Josef von Hayek was lost in his own thoughts. This whole raid is a botch. We should have scrubbed this mission after Roberts got killed. But General Consensus said we could pull it off, even with an amateur.
"Colonel?" Britt asked. "Maybe I could give it another try?"
I wasn't willing to risk anyone else's life on this. There are only three men here who really know what this mission is about. But now our success hinges on MANTA, and MANTA won't work unless we get those shields down.
"Colonel?" Britt prompted again.
"No, we can't stay put any longer. Those probes are linked into a defense net, and the dirts will be sending troops down here to investigate, even if they didn't see us on the vid." He slapped a fresh power cell into his ACR and set his jaw. "We move."
"How?" Stahl pointed to a blue platform a meter or two higher than the one they'd come from. "Maybe if we climb back up on the other one we can jump across, but..."
"Colonel?" The commando Josef had sent out on scout returned. "I've found a hidden lift. It's a pop-up, under that floor grating there, see?"
Britt clapped the scout on the back. "Good work! That's our ticket." He turned to the others. "Now let's play a bit more carefully, lads. We're supposed to be pros, here."
Josef walked over to the grating. It looked like a typical nondescript metal grid. But upon closer examination, he saw a small button cleverly worked into its crosshatched pattern. He stepped onto the grate and pressed down hard on the button with his foot. With an explosive release of compressed air, the lift shot up five meters, carrying him up to the level of the blue platform.
Josef leaped over to the platform and, seeing no sign of enemy activity, waved the all-clear sign. After fifteen seconds, the lift lowered to the floor. The rest of the commandos boarded the lift and joined him on the platform, weapons held at the ready.
After holding up a hand and halting her squad, Bunny called up the vid broadcast by the drone just before it was destroyed. She mentally compared the glimpse of the room she'd seen with the green map of the dome displayed inside her helmet. Puzzled, she nearly gave up, but instead decided to contact the battle computer again.
What the hell, she thought. We already broke silence when BatCom downloaded this to me. And this won't tell them anything they don't know, even if they can run an instant descram.
"One Five Three Bravo One, you are logged in with level C access." The BatCom's voice software wasn't the monotone synthetic beloved by the old-science fiction vids, but it was recognizably inhuman nevertheless.
"BatCom," Mahoney said, "run me a compare on the vid clip you just sent with the blueprint of this dome, and ID the locale for me in red if you can find it. Give me probables of point nine and up."
"Roger, One Five Three Bravo One." There was a brief pause. "Search complete. There are three possible locations with probabilities higher than point nine. Transmission follows."
A soft ping sounded in her ears to let her know the transmission had ended, and she called up her map again. Three areas were glowing in red, but one location in particular caught her eye. It was near the warehouse where the recent shipment of plasma cannons had been stored.
"Got it!" she said to Asrad, who had taken the point ahead of her.
He turned around to let his tight-beam lens target her. "What's that, Captain?"
"I know where the rebels are. They just killed a couple of probes near the warehouse. They're approaching it from the southeast. If we hurry, we might be able to get there first."
"Let me see your map."
"Okay, but make it fast." Bunny turned her arm over and punched the transmit button on the keypad. The map with its highlighted regions appeared in front of the Asrad's face sooner than he expected, and he took an involuntary step back.
"See the red?"
"Yes, is that where the rebels are?"
"It's where they were three minutes ago. It should take them at least another five to get to the warehouse."
"Right. Praise Allah they're not heading for the reactor."
"Sure, but we can't let them break open those plasma guns before we get there." She pointed Asrad forward and waved to the rest of the squad. "Come on, boys, let's move!"
"Colonel, will you check these out?" Britt Godfrey ran an admiring hand over the bronze finish of one of the plasma cannons. He lifted the nozzle section in his hand; attached by a black cable to the minireactor built into a square backpack, it looked like a cross between a World War II flamethrower and a massive dowsing rod.
"Don't just stand there, Godfrey. Get the thing on and let's roll. We've only got fifteen minutes to get the shield down before the attack gets scrubbed." Feeling the time pressure build as the precious seconds ticked inexorably away, Josef von Hayek anxiously watched the entrances above them and to the west.
There was a sputtering, crackling noise behind him, and then the plasma cannon Stahl was holding sparked to life with a loud roar. It subsided to a distorted hiss as the commando dialed back the setting and wrestled the weapon under control. Between the two points of the fork there now was an electric blue arc, leaping dynamically in synch with the hisses and pops.
"Looks like they're on full bang, Colonel."
"Lovely. Now if we can only—"
He was interrupted by the sssth-whoosh of a gobbet of heated plasma being blasted out of a cannon. He started to turn around. "Britt, will you quit goofing around and—" Then he realized what was happening and jumped to his left, narrowly avoiding a blast of laser fire that burned a hole through the crate next to his head.
Britt didn't bother to reply as he ducked behind a large wooden crate and continued to fire at the blue-suited troopers who were taking up positions on a second story ledge on the north side of the warehouse.
"Colonel, where's the south exit?" Stahl shouted over the furious roar of plasma fire. He was crouched low, scuttling along the south wall trying desperately to find the door.
Looking up, von Hayek saw another team of UN troopers storming in through the northwest entrance.
"There isn't one!" Josef screamed back. "We're trapped!"
Dalton nodded at Akkerman as he reached the far end of the hallway, and the Volodyan quickly caught up to him, then ran past him and around the corner as Dalton stepped out to cover him. In this leapfrogging manner, they'd successfully avoided probes and the occasional ATFOR patrols as they made their way back to the central ventilation system.
Using a long white half-wall as a springboard, they leaped up into a ventilation shaft that took them into the heart of the dome. The walls were soft and gray, insulated with a soft, dark webbing that made a recurring X design appear. It was a long and claustrophobic passage. Dalton and Akkerman turned right, then left, and leaped across a large pit to land in a narrow passageway heading north.
Akkerman stopped and turned around to face Dalton. "We're about to exit the vents, so keep your eyes open and be ready to shoot. There should be a security terminal that'll give you access to the Central Computer, but I expect it will be guarded."
Dalton nodded, and true to the Volodyan's word, they soon reached a place where the shaft overlooked a large room with dark gray pillars and computer panels on the walls. Dalton started to jump down, but Akkerman put a hand on his shoulder.
"I just flashed an IR scan. It showed two guards around the corner. I'm going to draw their fire. After I jump down, you count to ten, then jump down and move forward, but stay along the wall to your left. You should get a clear shot at the guards as they try to come at me. Got it?"
"Y-yeah ... I got it."
The action went as Akkerman planned it: short and violent. Dalton walked up to the scattered, burned bones that were all that was left of the UN troopers and nudge
d one with his foot. He'd never even killed a mouse before, but somehow he'd expected it would be harder than this. Or at least that he'd feel something. I swore I'd kill one of them for Dara, and I have. But I still feel... nothing.
"Dalton, are you all right?" Akkerman laid a hand on Dalton's shoulder. "I expect you're feeling shocked now, but we have to move. Just keep it together, man. It's them or you."
"I understand," Dalton replied, marveling at how cold he felt. "Actually, I do understand."
Several minutes and two more dead guards later, Dalton found himself before the security terminal Akkerman had been hoping to find. The panels were huge, with numerous indicators and digital readouts, taking up more than eight meters of space and set four meters deep into the wall.
Akkerman looked at Dalton's norton skeptically. "I know you can open doors with that thing, but can you really break through their security with it? It seems awful—I don't know—simple."
Dalton smiled inside his helmet. "The trick isn't here." He tapped the norton. "It's in here." He tapped his head. "Just keep my ass covered while I'm working on this, okay?"
From her vantage point on a high ledge, Bunny studied the cluttered warehouse. The rebel strike team, which seemed to consist of only four men, was pinned beneath her men and the two Charlie teams. One white-armored figure was down, but the plasma cannons gave the three remaining rebels nearly as much firepower as the three ATFOR teams could amass between them.
She cursed HQ for not providing them with grenades, which could easily have ended the standoff. But it had been typical of the UN—from some of the earliest peacekeeping missions in the Middle East almost a century before to last year's debacle on the Quebec-Canadian border—to place woefully underequipped troops directly in harm's way.
"BatCom, patch me through to Colonel Houston,
please," she requested. Now that the commandos were pinned, it didn't make much sense to worry about her comm link being intercepted.
"Roger, One Five Three Bravo One. Your link with unit One Five Three Alpha One is confirmed."
There was a short beep, and Houston's familiar voice came through her speakers. "What's going on, Mahoney?"
"Colonel, we've got three rebels caught in the warehouse here. I've got two teams from Third Platoon backing me up here and both exits covered, but they've got plasma cannons, so I don't dare risk a frontal assault."
"Right. Who you got from Charlie?"
"Two of Lieutenant Knowlan's squads. We've got big numbers here, but nothing better than lousy pistols. No grenades, no nothing. I need some backup here, preferably a couple launchers and maybe a chaingun or two."
"I'll see what I can get you. We've secured the core, but I don't want to pull anybody out of there until we're sure that's not the rebels' target. This could be a diversionary assault."
"Could be," she had to admit. "But I'll probably lose ten men trying to close with them from here. At least get me some heavier artillery."
"Okay, I'll get it to you as fast as I can. Can you hold tight for another fifteen minutes?"
"Don't see why not. We can't get at them, but if they try to break out, they'll lose their cover. Can you make it five?"
"Ten, and I'll have three missile drones activated and sent to you, plus a team from Alpha. Just hang tight and keep those Loonies under your thumb."
"Yes, sir. Mahoney out."
She closed the comm link and glared down at the giant crates blocking her line of fire. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the men from Charlie rise up on one knee and fire a quick burst of three rounds before dropping back to his stomach. A purplish pink gobbet of heated plasma just barely missed melting his helmet as he sprawled.
Shaking her head, she went to broad band and yelled into her mike. "All ATFOR units, cease firing immediately. Hold position and return fire only if they start coming our way. Otherwise make no move to attack. We've got reinforcements on the way, and I don't want anyone being stupid. Just hold your positions!"
Kneeling behind a giant crate, Britt turned to von Hayek. "All's quiet on the Western Front, mate."
"Too quiet," Stahl added. "What d'ya think they're up to?"
"Probably bringing up some heavier guns," Josef von Hayek observed. "They outnumber us, but if you've noticed, they've got nothing but H&K pistols. We've got us a little Mexican standoff here, and whoever's in charge on their side just realized it. They're going to keep us bottled up until they can reinforce."
"So what do we do, Colonel?"
"What else?" Von Hayek turned his wrist over and started punching his comm pad. "Scream for help."
"What's that?" Dalton asked as a string of yellow-orange text began streaming across the inside of his faceplate.
"S.O.S. The colonel's in trouble!" Akkerman was leaning against the southernmost computer panel, keeping watch while Dalton tried to work his way past the Grimaldi computer's security system. The norton had been slotted for more than ten minutes now, but Dalton still hadn't penetrated the sophisticated system.
Dalton watched the signal repeat. "Where are they?"
"They're warehouse," Akkerman said, "and it looks like they're trapped."
"So what can we do? It would take us at least fifteen minutes to get there from here, even if we had full access to the locks."
Akkerman snorted in frustration. "Don't worry about it. Just concentrate on getting that damn shield down."
"But—" Dalton didn't understand how shutting down the ion shield would help the rest of the squad. Once again he cursed Britt Godfrey for conning him into joining this mess. He'd thrown in out of anger, and there were too many things he hadn't asked about and Britt had never bothered to explain. Like how, exactly, they would get out of here.
Dalton returned his attention to the security system. He understood less about the mission than he had when it began, but he knew wasting time arguing with Akkerman wouldn't help him get the shield down.
The Grimaldi central security system was structured around the same AI as the door panel he'd cracked earlier, but its program was much more sophisticated. Simply gaining access to the computer itself wasn't the problem; that he'd already done by successfully masking himself with the identity and connection code of a cable maintenance tech. The hard part was convincing the system's netsec that his borrowed I.D. had the necessary authority to shut the shield down.
Of course, in vids, computer hackers always managed to grant themselves instant superuser status and obtain godlike control over the entire system. But in reality that was practically impossible, because there simply wasn't such thing as a super user anymore; netsec science had long ago evolved past the point where such access was provided to any one individual. Thus far Dalton had managed to bluff or otherwise worm his way into the "inven" node as well as "unet" and "lzone," but the nodes labeled "mil" and "admin" still hung before him like forbidden fruit, spelled in glowing red letters that indicated their inaccessibility.
Okay, at least I can see they're there. That's good. But let's try another angle. Who would have a good reason to have the shield downed? Dalton would have preferred to convince the system that he was a full-fledged admin, or better yet, a netsec tech, but sensitive positions like those usually required a retina scan or fingerprints. An ATFOR patrol leader? No, because I'd have to change the patrol schedules to cover it, and "mil" is off limits. It shouldn't be someone stationed at the dome, anyhow, since if I can't get into "admin," a conflict could pop up and set a trigger off.
He tapped a key on the touchpad and switched to voice mode, then back again, trying hard to come up with a solution. Meanwhile the norton's little virus kept chugging away, hurling thousands of possible I.D. and password combinations every second against the impenetrable walls of the "admin" node's security system.
Chapter 14
Undisclosed Location, Luna
14 November 2069
22:30 GMT
Fifteen thousand kilometers away from Grimaldi Colony, the technical director of
the MANTA project was looking nervously at the digital time readout. Patrick Adams was just as worried as the scientist, but he refused to show it.
The technical director checked his watch, just in case it was more optimistic than the system clock. "Damn. Only five more minutes before we abort. What's taking Josef?"
Adams cleared his throat. "Who knows? And screw the schedule. We're going to give the boy as long as he needs." He took another sip of cold coffee. "We'll wait all night if we have to. Keep your people alert. Josef's window could appear at any moment, and it probably won't stay open long."
Bingo! Dalton stopped the norton's futile penetration routines and switched over to a manual terminal. He left the gates of "admin" behind and leaped over to "inven," where he quickly created a false shortage of chemicals essential to the oxygen recycling system. Then, in "lzone," he scheduled the arrival at the south cargo lock of a fictitious shuttle from Sinus Rons carrying a load of weapons plus the urgently needed chemicals. The weapons would probably distract the attention of any roving security routines, while the little background subterfuge he'd constructed just might help the scenario hold up against a closer examination.
He waved Akkermann over. "I think I've got it, but the shield won't stay down for very long. I'll do what I can to prolong it, but we're probably looking at thirty seconds, a minute at the most. Will that do?"
Akkerman gave him a thumbs-up. "Plenty of time, as long as the folks at MANTA are still awake."
"MANTA?"
"Never mind." From Akkerman's body language, Dalton guessed he'd let something slip. "Congratulations, Star-killer. You've just received highest classified security clearance. Hope you know how to keep your lip zipped."
"I don't get it."
"You will. But for now get ready to move, because I'm about to give our position away to every combat drone and trooper in the dome. When will the shield drop?"