POD (The Pattern Universe)

by Roote, Tobias

  Ferris had noted recently when fighting the artificial sparring machine set to kill level, that he would sustain an injury and then heal almost immediately. The Ferrazine nonetheless continued to flood the area causing an accelerated mutation in the region.

  He was beginning to have doubts as to the continued efficacy of the Ferrazite implants and, had it not been due to the fact that he had laughed off every earlier warning of the continued development of side effects, he might have gone to them and had it removed. As it was, he was caught in a mood of stubborn intransigence and believed he could weather the changes.

  As a result of this he viewed the pain and stiffness perversely as a the price he would have to pay for achieving his dreamed of objective.

  Ferris believed that he would transform into a super being if he just persevered long enough. It was this that drove him onward regardless of the increasing pain and the accelerated transmutation of his DNA. He didn't see what others saw, an increasingly restrictive body where joints and movement had reduced by over fifty percent.

  While he could move fast and his reaction times were incredibly quick, these only represented a small proportion of his overall activity. In addition, when he used these skills, he paid a heavy price as the Ferrazine swamped through his system and drove him further along the disability trail. For all his intelligence, he found he was becoming predominantly occupied with his condition instead of the Fortress and his plans.

  The young scientist, in his white lab-coat, didn’t look out of place as he shuffled down the cold underground corridor. He shouldn’t do, as this was Research and Development territory and all of the laboratories came off these frigidly cold walls; walls that were hewn from solid granite by their own designed NRG devices.

  The white lapel badge, hanging off his open coat, simply said ‘LANG’. It didn’t even have an initial. They didn’t go for sociability in the Fortress. You were lucky to be called by name at all, most of the time. The scientists were a highly competitive and organised group. Their camaraderie was shallow; their will to compete and rise in the ranks required them to be on the constant lookout for any advantage. They would steal your research, and make it their own, if they felt it advanced them up the hierarchical ladder.

  Boris Lang was a deeply worried individual. He had a serious problem that he needed to rectify, which, all being well, would be sorted in the next fifteen minutes. Unbeknown to his colleagues, he had been working for months on cracking the alien code architecture built into their nanite technology.

  It wasn’t strictly his field, but he had silently picked up the challenge after trying to assist an arrogant colleague, who shot him down in flames for not knowing what he was talking about. He hadn’t told him that he had also been a game-board enthusiast, who had created whole worlds and languages for a commercial software organisation under another ‘pen’ name.

  While looking over his colleague's shoulder, he had seen things in the alien nanite software that rang recognition bells in his head, so had nonchalantly walked off with a copy of it on his jump-stick, determined to teach the guy a lesson. As he got engrossed in unravelling the secret, he came to realise the ramifications of what this would mean if he succeeded. Technology like this would change their whole world, and not for the better, in the hands of the wrong people.

  He was close to creating a new formula for compressing software into the new Nano technology being developed in their labs. It had been a problem from the beginning to get the nanites to hold a versatile structure that would allow them to be used as multi-purpose nanites. The difficulty was, getting the code small enough to fit the microscopic architecture of the little machines. He had solved the problem or was close to it.

  That research was hidden away on the monitoring hard drive in the laboratory that was about to be trashed. The research was irreplaceable and represented his whole future, if he ever had a future at all. He had to recover it at any cost.

  He had intended to hide it until he could get it out of the Fortress and market it himself. Lang didn’t want Ferris making even more millions out of the scientists, in return for being a prisoner without privileges and money. He knew the US government would pay him handsomely for his coding and designs. He had even worked out a means of escape. All he had to do was lose some weight.

  Now, the software he had hidden, was on the computer about to be scrapped and he couldn’t afford for that to happen before he got his work transferred off. He had a miniature jump-drive that he could transfer it to, he just needed five minutes alone in there.

  They were all in a meeting so this was the only chance he would get. He reached the sealed entrance to the lab that he hoped would still have the heating running. They had switched everything off in the corridor after the object had disappeared and hadn’t bothered to restart it. As a result, it was bloody freezing.

  He swiped his access card across the sliding doors and watched in satisfaction as the doors slid silently open. As he walked across the long room to the monitoring station, he had to step around Lockwood's blood spatters. ‘Yeeuck! What a mess,’ he thought. He reached the workstation that Lockwood had been using and fired it up. Luckily, the blood had gone in a different direction, so the keyboard and screen were clear.

  They hadn’t turned the heating on in here either. He was relieved as the higher temperature would have made the congealed blood and brain matter, coating everything, putrid in a short time. Despite cauterising the wound as it struck, it had still left an inordinate amount of spatter. He studiously ignored it all and concentrated on his task.

  The computer started up instantly; a massive improvement on the old gear, and in seconds the screen lit up.

  Lang logged in with Lockwood’s user-name and password which the dumb-ass always left under the keyboard on a stickie. He wasn’t stupid; he wasn’t going to let them know he was here, not that they were going to check. They would scrap these later today, and being a closed network nobody would be prying into any login data now. If he could get his information off, he would be home and dry.

  Was that a noise? He heard the murmur and swish of something moving down the corridor outside, which brought him to a dead stop, mid key-press, in a cold funk. If he were discovered in here now, there would be lots of questions, and Ferris wasn’t above using his own personal skills to make a point, as Lang had seen on several occasions. The guy could be an animal when the mood took him.

  He waited, his breath creating clouds in front of him and fogging up his glasses. The sound moved on, probably a cleaning bot sent by the mainframe on a routine run. He breathed a sigh of relief as he wiped the insides of his lenses with his thumb without taking them off his nose, then looked up at the cameras, nervously checking their direction.

  He had introduced a subroutine to make them ignore everything in the room that was moving and had a pulse. The recording wouldn’t even show a blank area where he was standing. It was on a timer, so he had to be out of here... he looked at the time on the wall..in three minutes.

  Inserting his jump-stick, it took but a second to register; his encryption tied into his shield's bio meant he was the only one able to read the data files. He quickly copied the directories he wanted to rescue, so, while he was at it, he copied off the data on the captured object. He would study it as soon as he got the chance.

  Logging off, he quickly closed down the system, then placing his feet as delicately going out as he had coming in, he retraced his steps to the door. Listening carefully through the metal door for any activity in the corridor, he pressed the button and exited the lab, the door swishing closed behind him. His faithful globe followed every step of the way behind him.

  The cameras in the room resumed their normal operation shortly after, detecting no further lifeforms in the room. The program then deleted itself and wiped its presence from the drive. In its place, the next part of the recording of the now empty laboratory, filled the space.

  - 7 -

  Pennington sat drumming his fingers
on the large table as he sat awaiting the rest of the team who were inbound from the various assignments he had given them. The maps he had requested were displayed on the whiteboard and a three dimensional model hologram was on the table created from satellite images as well as overflights of the area. He had arrived early because he wanted somewhere quiet to think.

  The idea had been put to him that the force he was building needed to earn its spurs. A purely defensive role would not give them the blooding they needed. Pennington, keenly aware that they needed to be seen as a force to be reckoned with, realised the Space Council’s military arm would be nothing more than a ghostly apparition to the outside world unless something significant occurred.

  One by one his officers filed in. It was unusual that he would be waiting for them, but the circumstances were not usual. He needed them all in one place; he was prepared to wait until every one of them got here. He was an unorthodox leader; it was his methods that won him the men's' loyalty.

  He deliberately ignored the men around him, his introspection evident on his face. Nobody interrupted or intruded. They knew him well enough to understand his thoughts were on their emerging situation. They would know his thoughts when he was ready. They busied themselves getting their own contributions ready and murmured quietly to each other anecdotally to pass the time.

  When the last straggler rushed in with data-pad in hand, and looking like he had run a four mile sprint, Pennington’s head came up acknowledging them all. He smiled at those around him.

  “Gentlemen,” he began. “We are gathered here to develop a strategy to neutralise a known threat, namely the Fortress. You have all seen the vidrep’s,” he referred to the images fed back by Pod’s surveillance globes. “There is clear evidence of a large military build-up which can have only a single strategic objective... Space Island.”

  The 3D image in front of him changed to a fully rendered image of their island base. The shield showed fully represented by a partially opaque dome, over the whole territory, including some section of sea and outcropping rocks. It covered everywhere that represented a potential weakness in the island’s defence.

  “Gentlemen, the science bods have outdone themselves and I want to show you the new shield technology before we move on to matters to do with the inner defence and protection of civilians and infrastructure, in the event of an attack by the Fortress gunships.”

  With this, Pennington pressed a key on his data-pad, and the lights dimmed a little for effect. When he pressed the second key, the partially opaque shield turned a metallic gold colour and reflected everyone’s image of themselves, seated around the table, back at them. A few murmured, and one whistled in appreciation. Pennington frowned. That type of behaviour was for football pitches. The whistler cringed and tugged his forelock in apology as Pennington zeroed in on him.

  “Smithie, you do that again and I will put you in charge of the latrines.” A chuckle went around the room at the ‘old hand’ put-down the ‘Old Man’ had voiced. Those days were well gone, but Pennington might just re-invent it if the crime demanded it. They all knew it was a harmless threat to put smith in his place without loss of face or privileges.

  “Now, if you think that’s impressive, let me tell you what it does.” He pressed the key to return the shield to its previous configuration and explained.

  “The shields themselves have been upgraded and can now remain in force while ships and sleds are filtered through them.” As he said this, several vehicles materialised inside and outside of the shield and the local nullifier technology, retrieved by Pod from the Fortress, activated to allow them entry and departure.

  “The nullifiers,” Pennington explained, “are designated to specific ship registration on a single-use access allocation and will not allow any non-designated vehicle entry, if used in an attempt to infiltrate the no fly zone. This shield upgrade has been in place since 02:00hrs.. LT this morning,” he finished. “Any questions?”

  His staff sergeant raised a hand. “Sir, what’s to stop the enemy from bombarding a locally nullified field as a ship is going through it?”

  “Good question, Staff! The local nullifier automatically creates a secondary shield around the ingressing ship, effectively creating a small bubble that progresses through a larger bubble. Once the ship was accepted by the shield, it in turn, becomes protected and part of the shield,” Pennington explained.

  “Right, moving on,” he pressed the key again, returning it to the gold mirror, then pressed it again and it disappeared - so did the island. All that could be seen was a blue sea with no rocks, island or breakers. Nothing.

  Everyone looked confused except Pennington.

  “What you are seeing is camouflage,” he explained. “The shield technology takes a constant snapshot of what is reflecting off it and returns a value that negates height, width and depth. Effectively, it cancels out the body of terrain under it and replaces it with a computerised version of everything around it, matching in the currents and waves and moving seas. The island, gentlemen, is still there.”

  Pennington ended his demonstration by creating pseudo nullifier entry points where people could look through the shield and see the island below. In real life, that wouldn’t be possible, because the shield would be in ‘full protect’ mode and was designed so nothing went in, or out.

  “That people, is the first part of the point defence strategy, the bit that keeps them out.

  The next bit is more complex, so we will go over that in more detail, section by section,” he indicated to Staff to take over the lead.

  Over the next hour and a half, they took the teams through their backup strategy in the event of the shields failing and defence of the island becoming secondary to protection and evacuation of the civilians. The military had for some time been working on the A-Grav technology, armour-plating the sleds and adding Needle guns and mobile lasers. As a result, they had a hundred two-man sleds capable of raining fire on surface troops. The shields were state of the art; they had implemented local nullifier technology so they could shoot through the holes.

  They weren’t under any illusions here. They knew their technology was on a par with the Fortress troops; it was going to be down to strategy, fire-power and accuracy, if they were going to hold off the invasion. All of them had seen the gunships and knew, in all probability, they would lose this battle and would have to call in assistance from wherever they could get it.

  “Okay, that's all for now. We have some ideas for taking the fight to the enemy, but we will deal with that this afternoon,” Pennington concluded. “Baxter?” he indicated to an alert-looking Officer, who had been writing down notes on his data-pad so was behind the others going out. He turned and quickly proceeded around the table to the General, already knowing that he wouldn’t want to shout across at him.

  “Baxter, pull a team together, your best people. Make sure none of them are claustrophobic and if any have potholing experience, rope them in,” Pennington ordered him. “When you have your team together, let me know. Don’t take too long, briefing,” - he glanced at his watch - “at 0800hrs.. LT.”

  “Sir, are we going off piste?” Baxter enquired.

  “Yes, Lieutenant, you will be our ‘backstop’ and you just might pull us a bit of manoeuvring room in all of this,” Pennington smiled reassuringly. He knew Baxter could pull it off, he just hoped that it would be in time.

  The team were all assembled and ready in the briefing room when Pennington arrived with his Staff Sergeant, Dixon.

  They went over to the operations table, and Dixon dropped his data-pad into the slot, in the corner, and pressed a key on it to activate the table’s hologram system.

  Instantly, an image began to form in the confines of the three metre square table top and solidified into a rugged snow peaked mountain range. Above it, there were statistics floating with identifiers, heights, weather, winds and temperatures. Three red circles pulsed on a single part of a mountain peak amongst the range. Dixon’s hand
reached in and pulled the outermost circle; the hologram twisted and grew so that they were now looking at a close up of the target.

  “Your target is this complex in the Swiss mountain range, designated operation ‘WatchTower’. You will be able to approach the target using our latest A-Grav sleds which will camouflage you and should keep you free of detection up to approximately three kilometres from the target.” He indicated points with a pen that lit up the positions he pointed out. “They have sophisticated listening posts and sensors, so you might be detected before that. We have no way of knowing.”

  “You mean they will see us coming,” Baxter interrupted.

  “More than likely, Lieutenant. However, we intend to provide them with enough Intel to believe it's a recce team going in, there will be other teams doing the same, but yours will be the only one with a mission,” Dixon finished.

  “And that is?” Baxter eyed the Staff Sergeant suspiciously.

  Pennington took over, sensing a quick mood swing in the Lieutenant. “Your mission is to infiltrate a small team, four of you, into the complex, with a view to creating either a delay to their operation to invade, or taking out the opposition leader, Ferris, whichever proves practicable.”

  Baxter eyed the ‘Old Man’. “Sounds like a one-way ticket, Sir.”

  “I hope not Baxter, I would sorely miss having your ugly mug around the place.” Pennington smiled, and tried to reassure him that all was not what it seemed. “I’m hoping you can get out the same way you get in, undetected.”

  The men were looking around at each other. They all knew the complex; they had run drills and training exercises based on its layout, in the hope of one day doing just this. None of them had ever succeeded in extracting themselves from the operation once they were inside. Very few attempts had resulted in the success of their operation.