Overlord

by Sedgwick, T. J.

  ***

  Half an hour later, she took a deep breath and moved towards the side of the building, below where the HVAC intake drew the cold morning air. She unzipped her pocket and felt for the vacuum-packed bag containing hundreds of the pea-sized capsules. She removed the bag, which filled her invisible hand, floating there in the dim early morning. She removed her small survival knife and poked several holes in the bag exposing the capsules to the air. She replaced the knife and took a step back, eyeing the intake vent. Trying for a forty-five degree angle, she lobbed the bag at the vent. It struck the grill sending some of the capsules inside.

  As she waited to see the result, she heard, “Ghost-one this is Intrepid Command. You have an incoming patrol. Four centurions moving fast towards your location. Over...”

  She saw them a hundred metres away coming from the direction of the main lobby to the south. They were heading straight for her, assault rifles raised. For the first time she doubted her adaptive camo suit and started a dash for the large tree just up the grass bank half way to the perimeter fence. The robots maintained angle, one of them looking up at the vent she’d just thrown the smoke capsules at. Black smoke was now billowing into the vent and that’s when she heard it. The smoke capsules were working. Just as she’d planned, the fire alarm started sounding. She bypassed the patrol and made her way to the front entrance and its glass and steel lobby.

  The concourse was filling with evacuating staff, many of whom had only arrived in the last half an hour. Some held coffee cups. Others stood around shivering, having unwisely forgotten to take their jackets with them. The glass floor-to-ceiling entry gates were wide open, letting a steady trickle of staff exit the building. She counted a dozen Centurions and a pair of Sentinels discreetly stationed both outside and inside the lobby. She wondered what bullshit story Sinclair had fed his staff about why the robots were there. Perhaps he’d told them these were ‘friendly’ robots. Or perhaps all staff had implanted computers and were as beholden to the so-called leader as the plotters seemed to be. These were interesting questions, but she had no time to stop and ponder. The window of entry into the complex would be short, so she double-timed into the marble-floored lobby, just a ghost ready to haunt the coup leaders. She approached the entry gate. Next thing she knew, a gaggle of six workers in casual dress came out of nowhere rushing towards the exit as if there really was a fire. Sophie turned her shoulder as she reached the inside of the entry gate, trying to avoid the obese man with greasy hair and a black tee shirt. His shoulder knocked hers with enough momentum to send her stumbling backwards. He stopped and looked at where she stood, his mind trying to reconcile the incongruity between his eyes and his nerve-endings. She ghost-stepped away from where he’d rushed, keen to get out of his line of sight even with her camo suit cloaking her. He shook his head in confusion and carried on towards the concourse. She exhaled and resolved to be more observant in future. She allowed herself a smile. She was in. Now, the next phase was to begin.

  As she rounded the corridor to the left of the entry gates, the flow of staff thinned to nothing. She stood flush against the wall and accessed the map on her contact lens HUD. She checked the route to the server room and continued down the long, straight hallway. She’d seen some bots around the premises, there was nothing like the hundreds intel had warned of; although taking down even one Centurion was a major undertaking. But they had to be hiding somewhere. It made sense to hide them, not draw attention to the facility, and give air assets targets to take out. She guessed they were probably distributed throughout the sprawling complex. She moved swiftly to the side door on the left of the corridor fifty metres ahead. She checked no one was coming and raised her invisible hand to the RFID chip reader. They’d reprogrammed her embedded chip to open any door secured with that make and model of reader. The light blinked green and the bolts clicked open.

  She sneaked inside the anonymous door and passed down two flights of tiled stairs. The brushed metal sign on the landing read—amongst other things—Server Room, with a down arrow. She neared the bottom of the staircase to the basement level. The corridor ran two hundred metres, straight ahead into the distance. Immediately before her, it branched both left and right. A Centurion stood either side of the way ahead—the way to the server room. She could see at least a dozen more to the left and right and still more lining the passage to the server room. A heavily armed Sentinel stood guard in the distance, at the end. The sentries were utterly still, but she was sure they were monitoring as intently as ever, waiting for a kill mission should she be discovered. She checked her layout map of the basement level. The sentries stood picketed on the left hand wall, either side of the three entrances to the server room. She could take any one of the three doors, so she decided on the nearest one, some fifty metres away. She counted six security camera bubbles equally spaced along the ceiling and wondered what other sensors they’d installed. Her suit could defeat most things, but there was nothing she could do about pressure pads and alarmed doors, if there were any. Their intel came mainly from the building’s original plans and wasn’t perfect. Next came the wait. It could be a minute; it could be all day. She knew the security on the server room doors wasn’t the same as elsewhere—as well as the RFID reader, a retinal scanner added a second authentication factor. There was no way around it, she’d need to wait.

  ***

  Fifteen minutes later, he came. Perhaps he’d stopped off for a chat or a coffee after the fire alarm all-clear. Whatever. It didn’t matter, the curly-haired, bespectacled man in jeans and chequered shirt was heading her way. He was whistling without a care in the world, only reinforcing her view that most of these staff must be what Khan termed The Faithful. He eyed the first door, changing his path slightly. She knew this was her chance and waited against the wall opposite, out of his way. As he stopped next to the RFID reader and eye scanner, she drew closer behind him, ghost-walking every step. She regulated her breathing reflexively even though her mouth was inside the full-covering suit. He placed his hand in the embedded RFID reader and his eye to the retinal scanner. The Centurions just stood there, staring into space like two armed metallic statues. She had to get this right and it wasn’t going to be easy.

  After a few seconds, the light blinked green and multiple bolts whirred and withdrew from the door into the wall. It was clearly a more secure mechanism—more like a safe than a regular door. The worker reached for the handle and opened the door with Sophie inches behind him. As he stepped around to immediately close the door, she side-stepped past him and the half-opened door, brushing his side. Her stomach lurched when she spotted several Centurions amongst the rows of servers. The worker stopped and looked straight at her, frowning, the door now just ajar. He squinted and poked his head closer, trying to make sense of the minor refractive anomaly he was witnessing. She shuffled slowly and quietly away. He reached out his hand, trying to touch the ephemeral ghost. His fingers swiped inches from Sophie before he broke his stare, closed the door and started shaking his head. He headed off to his left and Sophie pushed herself flush against the wall and took a deep breath composing herself.

  She checked her contact lens HUD and found the place she needed—the fifth row of server cabinets to the right of the entrance, at the far wall. There was a workstation directly linking into the servers. She passed another statue-still Centurion and took the left down the fifth row, walking fifty metres to the end where the workstation was. The standing bench had a display and a panel next to it mounted on the server cabinet end. The panel had a selection of sockets and slots. She touched the display, activating its menu screen. She located the slot she needed and inserted the data chip. They’d told her the virus would do the rest and she hoped they were right. She waited for thirty seconds and nothing happened. Then she heard the door open. The same door she’d tailgated through minutes before. The two women were whingeing about standing around outside in the cold after the false alarm. Sophie heard them part company, one set of footsteps recedin
g but the other getting closer.

  “Shit!” she whispered.

  Then the display changed. Black screen, green progress bar and 5%.

  She listened carefully—a heavy-set woman, wearing flats, but definitely coming her way.

  The progress bar was slowly moving: 25%

  The heavyset woman sounded just ten or so paces away. The virus just wasn’t uploading quickly enough. Sophie stood back and observed from across the aisle in between the server cabinets opposite. Perhaps the woman would pass on by and not even notice the display—no point engaging her unnecessarily. This was about stealth—quick and clean.

  The progress was on 40% as the overweight dumpling of a woman, around forty with curly, red hair, emerged from between the cabinets. She turned, readying herself to tap the display when she just stopped.

  Shitty luck! cursed Sophie in her mind, as she got ready to do something about it.

  The woman saw the datachip sitting there and the progress bar turning majority green. As she reached for the datachip Sophie grabbed her in a chokehold, only relenting when the woman went limp and unconscious. She’d live, but would be out for a while. Sophie’s more pressing problem was that a Centurion somewhere nearby had started moving. She had no idea whether it had detected her, but it was getting closer. Perhaps it was coincidental—but she didn't believe in coincidence. She grabbed the slumped woman under her arms and dragged her into the opposite row of cabinets just before the Centurion emerged from her right. It stopped and stood there in the aisle, five metres from the workstation and the 90% progress bar. Its metallic hands were gripping an assault rifle, the gun barrel pointing downwards. She watched the progress bar hidden between the cabinet rows opposite.

  Then two things happened. First, the upload reached 100% and the display reverted to the menu screen. Second, she looked down and noticed her hand—and her arm and her feet and the rest of her body. Her adaptive camouflage had failed. She instinctively reached for the 9mm handgun in her ankle holster, trying to regulate her breathing and stay calm. Deep, slow breaths. Just focus on every move. Her next planned tasks were to remove the data chip then exfiltrate, but this was a clear case of a plan not surviving enemy contact. Getting the datachip was out of the question—the robot would spot her immediately, or it’s human operator, wherever in the world he or she was. There was no way forward now the Centurion was active—she’d need to flank around behind it and just hope to avoid further contacts. She retreated up the narrow walkway between cabinets—away from the slumped worker, the workstation and the Centurion just to its right. She moved swiftly and quietly, covering the way ahead with her 9mm. After reaching the end of the row and another aisle flanked by the wall, she turned left and went four rows past level with the robot in the middle aisle. Before turning left again, she caught the movement of a second Centurion in her peripheral vision to the right. It had spotted her and it was making a beeline for her position. This time the Centurion’s weapon was raised.

  “Damn!” she muttered and redoubled her pace, trading stealth for speed. The bot was closing seriously fast.

  Why the hell isn’t the virus working? she thought desperately. It was supposed to shut the robots down.

  She dashed across the first aisle and into the narrow cabinet row opposite. It was just a few seconds to round the end server then a few seconds more to reach the entrance she’d come in through. She was almost sprinting now, ten paces from the end. Checking her six, she saw the Centurion, its rifle raised, thirty metres behind. Almost simultaneously, her brain registered the flash from the barrel and the hammer blow to her back. The next thing she registered was sprawling forward to the floor, dazed and in pain. She gasped for breath and took seconds she knew she didn’t have to start acting. Her body armour had saved her, but for a price. She desperately tried to crawl prone around the cabinet end, but heard the unrelenting advance of the machine. A machine probably controlled by some spotty teenager in the comfort of his bedroom. Playing a game of Mercenary Wars for fun and a fifty pence subscription credit. A chill ran up her spine when she thought of that. Her life for fifty pence and a three-minute thrill. If she lived, she’d make sure the plotters paid for this.

  She dared not turn back and kept crawling as fast as her aching body would allow. She reached the aisle then heard the robotic voice say, “Stop now or I will shoot!”

  She complied and froze, tentatively turning her head to get a look. If this bastard’s gonna kill me he’ll need to look me in the eye, she thought.

  “Roll over!” commanded the bot.

  She rolled over onto her back, resting on her elbows. Her back cried out in pain so much that it was like being subjected to a stress position. But all the time, in her mind she knew that with the click of a button the human controller could end her life and would think nothing of it.

  The Centurion lowered its weapon and let go of it, the sling keeping it hung across its torso. The anonymous human controller may have felt invincible in the face of the puny human before him. “Drop the gun!” ordered the bot.

  Then she opened fire straight into its face—all eighteen rounds. The rounds smashing into its left ‘eye’ seemed to stun the robot. She pushed down and tried to get up, optimistic she’d bought the few seconds she needed. She scrambled around the corner and tried to put some distance between herself and her erstwhile executioner. Every step was painful, but she pushed through and moved several rows away from the robot—and the exit. She’d maintained comms silence until now, but needed to report in. There was no time to stay silent and compose a text message, so she spoke in a frantic whisper.

  “Intrepid Command this is Ghost-one... Do you copy?”

  “Ghost-one go ahead.”

  “Virus fully uploaded, but multiple contacts with bots down here in the server room. They’re still operational...”

  “Copy that, Ghost-one... We’ve seen no effect on enemy units. We can confirm that all visible robots still appear operational. Marines are taking heavy losses. Advise your status, Ghost-one...”

  “My camo suit’s out of action—I’m visible and ready to exfiltrate. Request immediate ground unit support.”

  “Negative on the ground support, Ghost-one. Marine cordon still two klicks out and closing. Contingency plan for case of virus failure is for immediate airstrike... Every minute we wait is costing lives out there.”

  The USAF long-range drones were armed with bunker-busters. Nothing in the server room would survive. She was trapped and running out of options.

  “Confirmed, Intrepid. Advise estimate time—”

  She heard the Centurion coming. It was close. Perhaps two rows away. She started running, simultaneously reaching inside her suit for a spare 9mm clip.

  “Ghost-one, airstrike in approximately ten minutes... Please respond,” said the worried voice.

  She panted, “Okay, confirmed... Airstrike in ten. Out.”

  Shutting off comms, she slotted in the magazine, all the time running from the contact. She looked over her shoulder. The bot had closed on her scarily fast and bolted the final ten metres as she turned to fire on its good ‘eye’. It swiped the gun from her hand, sending pain flashing up her arm as metal hit flesh and bone. The pistol flew from her hand, bouncing off the server cabinet. Inhumanly fast, the Centurion grabbed her throat and held her there. She tried to push its arm away then moved to its hand to try to force it off her. She could still just about breathe, but she could not release the vice-like grip. The menace was still for a few moments. She wondered what was going through the mind of the operator. She had a nasty feeling he was prolonging this a little too much—enjoying the sadistic power he wielded. Power with zero accountability and zero comeback. But she didn’t blame the operator; it was the plotters—the so-called Faithful—that had blood on their hands. The blood of her friend Dean Ashley and many other good people.

  Then it spoke. “You’ve got a hell of a bounty on your head, agent... I’d love to crush you like a bug, but the reward is highe
r for capturing you. Now I need to deliver you to the general...”

  He used his other hand to grab her neck from behind and released the chokehold on her throat. She gasped and held her tender neck, relieved at a few more minutes of life. But the bombs were just eight minutes away now—approximately eight minutes. He frog marched her towards the exit and the corridor beyond.

  She said, “You know you’re controlling a real robot, don’t you? That this is all part of the coup?”

  The robot said nothing. Evidently, he could speak but not listen. Like a lot of people I know, she thought, quite tangentially.

  She spent the next few minutes being manhandled through the basement corridor to an elevator and to an office on the first floor. Her body ached and her energy seemed to have drained away. The building seemed more alive now, with more robots than before and more of them active. They were gravitating towards the exits. She supposed they must be aware of the Royal Marines in the area and were going out to engage.

  They reached the lavishly decorated reception area outside of Sinclair’s office. This bastard robot’s really grabbing me hard, digging into my skin, she thought. She stoically resisted crying out in pain. There was no receptionist controlling access to the frosted glass doors to the right and left of the desk. Sophie’s mechanical captor dragged her forwards and pushed through the right hand door and into the wood-panelled office of Roman Sinclair. The tubby, nerdy-looking guy standing behind his desk just stared at her impassively. Flanking him were Zane and Becker—there was no sign of Hardcastle. Sinclair looked like he was about to speak, but before he could Sophie decided to take the initiative.

  “It’s over. We know who you are and so do the Marines surrounding this place—”