"I've made preparations for the scheduled exercise this morning in the launch bay," be began without pause, "are you all ready to begin?"
"We haven't even made our final decisions yet about our plans afterward," Thorn responded, a little annoyed that Cypher was presuming we were all going to cooperate with his plan.
"I overheard your discussions last night, and believe I can provide each of you the final destinations you were searching for. I assure you there is plenty of room on the Mirage Station for anyone else, including Serena and the child ...whose name I still didn't quite get?" Cypher paused in question.
"Neither did we," Thorn responded in kind, but Cypher was lost on the personal joke.
"I had a stack of rations and other useful odds and ends of supplies delivered to the cargo hold in the shuttle this morning," our host mentioned, referring to the prototype ship, "the elevator will be opened at the end of the hour to take you down, please take the time to prepare yourself for the mission ahead" Cypher instructed, about to sign off just before I caught him with a question.
"So, what's the plan with Beatrice, anyhow; what are we supposed to tell her?" I inquired.
"She slept in her Lab last night, and I informed her that I would release the meteor sample to her care so she may continue her research here at this base, where she would be safe and all of her needs provided for," he added, "and in turn, she agreed to give me her full cooperation. She will join you at the elevator at the end of the hour," he finished, and signed off.
Cypher left us wondering if that was merely some sort of ruse on his part; since he was effectively disconnecting her lab from the power supply; but it was likely just a temporary matter until the ship launched. Whatever his ploy, this didn't sound like the greatest of ideas. At least the small wrist radio stayed on, displaying a rough digital map of the route we were to follow to get to the power conduit we needed to transfer.
When we finally fully assembled when the hour passed and we made our way to the elevator to find the meteor sample sitting in the center of the floor inside. Moments later, Beatrice arrived, flashing an arrogant smile that was quite out of character considering her attitude from the night before. Cypher came over the intercom to ready us for what would lie ahead. With decisive grace, he colored in explanations for the few key questions we had.
There was a floor above the mainframe that was our first stop, which was our first destination were we were to escort Betty and the asteroid fragment. Once there, she was to install the sample into the bio matrix to initiate new testing of the purified strain. The automations would take over from there. He refrained from having a robotic unit deliver the volatile sample to the location itself, as hordes of weepers were known to attack the drones whenever they were patrolling the lower levels. Though, it would be safer, in this case it wasn't worth the risk of losing the meteor sample.
Leaving her there, the rest of us were to make our way to the launch chamber to reset the power coil on the power supply. We had been previously instructed to keep quiet and follow Cypher's lead about what he meant by 'resetting' the coupling. Regardless, Beatrice didn't make a remark about it in question to our relief. With that, we load checked our weapons again as the elevator began its long decent.
Serena felt bad about having to stay behind to watch the boy, even though Cypher had offered to watch over him and assured the child would be safe. Still, her wound had not yet fully healed and she didn't want to leave the child alone. Our host had promised that the elevator would be returned to take them both to the bay level once we had cleared the way. Cypher had related to us earlier that it would be best if Beatrice was not informed that there was actually a ship located on the pad, lest she might use it in an attempt to escape.
Dropping to the lower levels, we came to a halt at a secured floor. Betty had to wave her hand by panel so her clearance could be read by the scanner. The doors slid open and the six of us flooded into the short corridor. Beyond its edge, there extended a metal walkway from the main structure out into the exposed wall of the massive launch chamber. We looked down from the high floor at the dark jumbled maze we were about to enter in the moments to follow.
At the far end of the catwalk rested a thick ominous door of brushed steel. It appeared far more secure than any others we had seen on the site thus far. With a death-like grip on the handle of the capsule, Betty lugged the core sample container over to the portal; now it was her show. She placed her hand on a template which scanned the data on her implant chip.
With protest from hidden hydraulics, the door parted from its interlocking sections and folded away. The interior revealed a surprisingly small chamber; lit from floor to ceiling. A slot, slightly larger than the size of the containment sample box, sat embedded on the far side. Two blinking screens on either side of the slot still displayed that the failsafe protocol had been initiated all those years ago.
Betty approached the digital keyboard and punched in a code, whereupon the shield door to the slot slid open with a hiss. With a moment of hesitation, she admired the stone in the reflecting light, and then finally placed it within the niche. Back at the control panel, she engaged the device that locked the casing in place and sprayed it with a sterilizing gas to sanitize the outer container. Just as quickly, a mechanical laser began to cut a hole in the protective glass of the box, spraying red sparks as it melted away the containment shield.
With a countdown ticking, a clock replaced the lit the screen as a new bar displayed acceptance of the asteroid fragment. It gave us mere a twelve-minute window before the ejection of the rock sample from its casing and would deposited into the systems testing rig. That wasn't much time considering where we were heading. We had not bargained for a limited timeframe to get this done.
"Twelve minutes?" Ava exclaimed in dismay, "why didn't you tell us that was all the time we had to get down there?" she demanded towards the old woman, while I kept my communicator with Cypher hidden under up my sleeve.
"I didn't know what it was set for or what the system would do," she spat back in defense as the timer ticked down to the system reboot, "Cypher said you need to get down to the coupling to make sure we don't lose power by resetting it during the transition," she advised. This we already knew, but our actual mission was to disengage the power supply completely and redirect it to the fuel coils of the shuttle.
"What are you going to do while we are down there?" Tasha asked Beatrice, who stood monitoring the screen while a faint growl of countless weepers echoed up from below from the noise of the countdown blaring over the speakers in the bay.
"I will be fine," she granted, "that door will close behind me, and nothing can get in here without security access. Just make sure to collect me on your way back up top," Beatrice scolded with her finger.
Another glance at the timer and we had time to press as the silent clock ticked relentlessly lower. We rushed back to the open elevator as the door to the chamber folded shut once again, sealing the old woman within. Once inside the lift, I felt a tick clicking on my wrist and rolled up my sleeve to expose the communicator device. Now uncovered, the hologram screen sprung to life.
"My data screens show that the introduction of the specimen sample has been confirmed," Cypher concurred, "and it appears you now have a limited span to reach the conduit in time to transfer the connection."
"Yeah, it sure would've helped if you had fucking told us about that!" Ava shouted over my shoulder towards the small screen.
"As I've mentioned before, that system is protected by a firewall; there was no way of telling how long it would take the infusion cycle to commence," he admitted, "that said, I would suggest a measure of haste and less arguing at this point," he snapped back at her.
"Why do we need to do this right at the time of the reboot, why not just manually detach and reconnect the power cable into the ship and be done with it?" Kel inquired, as we were not clear on the specific details. It was a question both Felix or Haiti could have answered, but they were no l
onger with us.
"One cannot simply disconnect that many Terawatts of energy," Cypher explained, "for one, you would not be able to disengage it from the primary conduit, and the recoil of separation would cause an electrical chain reaction. Believe me, this would be much simpler if we were able to shut down the hydrogen generators at their source ...but that is not an option," he offered with a condescending tone.
A lighted bar ran through the wire frame graph on the screen, mapping our way. Unfortunately, due to the new time limit, Cypher had to recalculate a last minute detour to get us there before the time elapsed. This new route took us through a portion of the crumbing construction platforms. The way was dark and we really did not want to risk such a hazardous course.
When the elevator doors opened on the bay level, we decided to split up, giving us two chances to make the target on time. Tasha and Ava could move faster, so they would go the long way. They took the briefest of moments to memorize the path on my hologram display and took off running. As Kel's leg left her handicapped, she decided to climb the tallest construction rig near us to help provide cover fire from a vantage point with her sniper rifle.
Thinking out of the box, I had wondered why Cypher didn't just open the launch bay doors and let the sunlight in so we could have better visibility. As it turned out, there were certain steps in protocol, which needed to be tripped in sequence before that could happen. The bay doors would not open without the ship prepped for launch, and that tier wouldn't initiate until the vehicle was fully fueled; and of course, we couldn't fuel the energy coils until the electrical matrix was realigned.
The timer on my fancy wrist radio showed we had less than ten minutes left. Thorn and I made for the detour while Kel scrambled up the nearest platform crane. Weepers in the bottom level began to stir, and we heard their growls and errant shrieks echoing from the dark shadows. My heart started pounding and I began to wonder if this whole endeavor had been a huge mistake.
The floor level had a mixed stench of rusting steel and ozone. To make matters worse, a light mist clung to the floor, hampering our vision. After crawling on our bellies under a pair of pressure tanks, we scurried up a building crane and made a risky jump to a construction platform, which creaked and swayed precariously as we landed upon it. We could tell that the weepers in this section had caught our scent when their glowing eyes, which reflected in the floodlights, slowly turned our way from the darkness of the shadows.
Strapping our rifles to our backs, we had to make a jump for an exposed undercarriage and swung across like a treacherous set of child's monkey bars.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I breathed aloud as Thorn took the lead.
Below us a group of infected began to swarm, reaching out for us as they growled from gloom below. That was incentive not to slip, which I did more than once on the slick rusted steel. This course took a bit more athletic tone of a marathon runner, which I was not; and I wasn't accustomed to such demanding acrobatics. Thorn caught me on the far side as we landed on a turnstile that left us just out of reach of the ground.
I had to glance at the holo-screen once again to figure where we were supposed to head next. For lack of any buttons on the wristband, I waved my hand through the hologram in desperation to reach Cypher.
"Hey!" I pleaded towards the communicator, trying not to excite the weepers weaving through the maze of machinery towards us, "Are you there? Where do we go now?" I pleaded as Thorn and I could not make sense of the new route etched on the small screen. From here, we could see the central bay and the secondary ship, which was secured by a thick restraining clamp. Close by sat a raised hub with several wires and cables that snaked away in various directions off the platform, one of which led to the rear of the shuttle.
"Give me a moment," Cypher answered in return. Just then, a huge mechanical arm from a nearby crane swung around at disturbing speed and landed with a thud at the edge of the turnstile to act as our bridge to the launch platform. It was difficult to climb up its enormous curved claw, and even more so across its structural arm to the far end where another similar crane moved as its immense servos whined while reached out to connect our path midair, to keep us out of reach of the weepers swarming below.
Not far away, Ava and Tasha were making a sprint for the conduit on their own path. Tasha took the front lead with a set of double pistols, gunning down weepers to clear the way as they both bolted ahead. These poor souls were still wearing the tattered remains of their uniforms, some in jumpsuits or stained lab coats of their former station. There were still hundreds of infected lingering here, many of them huddled in dark corners and shambling aimlessly about; on these, they didn't waste their limited ammunition.
The green spotlights made their eerie glowing eyes of the weepers appear even more sinister. It made me wonder if even a small piece of their minds lamented, knowing that they had become victims by their own hand. Rifle shots cracked the still air, as Kel took snipe shots at stray weepers from her nested position far above; helping to clear a safe path for us. With the timer now under five minutes, we had to dash for the conduit.
Dropping hard onto narrow ledges of the robotic crane, we found ourselves on the far edge of the tarmac. Cypher's alternate route had not given consideration for any delays, such as the dozen looming figures that had crawled up upon the launch pad before us, blocking our way. Shots rang out, but at this distance, more of Kel's strikes missed as bullets ricocheted off the concrete deck. Around us, we heard the low whir of enormous winding servos.
Giant metal arms reached out to pluck the weepers up one by one as huge robotic pincers snapped at the infected creatures. We dodged their swooping arms while hoping that Cypher had a finer control of these hulking automations than it currently appeared. After almost been crushed by the cranes more than once, we dared to skirt the outer edge as we took potshots at any weeper that tried to grasp at our legs as we ran by the ledge. Those ghouls who had scaled the upper platform led chase behind us as we made our way to our target.
Out of breath, I turned to see weepers being flung high into the air by the wildly swinging arms of the crane, which were inherently slow and lacked the subtle dexterity for picking off their moving prey. Even so, they were deadly allies when they found their mark. Infected blood sprayed across the deck whenever a weeper was squashed to a pulp by an automaton clamp or had its body severed, as the lower half kept walking a few awkward steps before collapsing. The launch platform had been transformed into a horror gallery of death.
We made it to the conduit with only a minute to spare and took cover behind the hub, shooting down any weeper that escaped Kel's sniper rounds or the reach of the construction claws under Cypher's control. Tasha and her friend were gaining ground on us when the clock finally ticked to zero. With that, the power in the entire bay flickered, with only the red emergency beacons of the upper conveyer belt tram left shining into the bay. With a dying hum, the lights on the conduit itself blinked out as the power draw terminated and the system began its reboot. Thorn and I looked at one another and dropped our guns to the floor as we took our positions on either side of the power hub; we only had a few moments to do what needed to be done.
Square in the center of the exposed hub was a manual reset switch. Around the edge of the platform, Tasha and Ava were making their approach through the stray weepers being drawn by the sound of their gunfire. Thorn manually uncoupled the feed marked for the Development Lab while I traced the line to the ship and connected it in its place. We stood there in silence wondering what to do next while the crane arms locked in frozen silence without power as more of the infected began to creep upon our position. Cypher popped up again on the holo-screen on my arm to give us additional instructions.
"Caitlin, as the power begins to cycle back on, you will need to activate the reset switch on the center column," he advised, "you must only do so while it is within the shown safety range of the meter before it reaches maximum load."
Thorn suddenly snatc
hed up his gun off the floor and brought his rifle to bear to cut down the few weepers that made it through the forest of giant robotic arms, which had now slowly began to regain power while I was busy attended the switch. I noted the series of colored lights were aligned in the hardwired system when I grabbed the thick handle with both hands to push it into place when the levels hit the green bar of the meter. It was difficult pulling it back into activation when I met resistance, and grunted with the effort as I pulled with all my weight. To our relief, it snapped into place just before exceeding the green bar.
Energy snaked through the cable to the ship as white dots of light appeared upon its outer housing. A set of flood lamps appeared below the ships underbelly as the giant clamp that held it slowly transferred the shuttle vehicle into the center of the tarmac.
"T-minus twenty minutes until launch. Secure all cargo," a computerized voice echoed through the bay. Thorn and I looked at one another in disbelief, suddenly realizing that bastard, Cypher, had shortchanged us on time yet again.
Launch
The noise blaring from the speakers roused every weeper in the structure as we heard moans and shrieks arise from the surrounding walls of the launch bay. The battling arms of the robotic cranes ceased shortly thereafter, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Shots continued to ring out as Kel attempted to compensate for the sudden lack of backup support the cranes had provided. Tasha and Ava were finally able to make their way to the top of the pad moments, mere moments after we had finished resetting the power coupling.
With a jolt, a distant crane arm extended from the walkway along the wall support above us, and swung out to breach the tip of the tarmac as it extended. This was unexpected, but we had failed to anticipate how Cypher planned to make it down from his glass penthouse on the top floor to the dock of the ship. We kept cover fire as the expanding deck took its sweet time progressing to bridge the gap between us.
Broken Mirror: Apophis 2029 Page 29