POD (The Pattern Universe)

by Roote, Tobias

  Baxter swung Dick’s body around so it took the main impact of the blast as he kneeled on one leg using himself as a shield for those behind. When it hit Baxter, he was driven back into the other two who caught him and held him while the concussive wave passed them by. He was practically unconscious as he felt hands grappling at him in the ensuing chaos

  The others pulled him up, dragging him forward with them as they took a run at the corridor expecting Ferris to be severely injured if not dead. Unfortunately for them, although he could no longer stand, he still grabbed at Pitt as they attempted to get past him, yanking him to the ground while with his other hand he reached for Baxter, still reeling from the sound grenades’ effect.

  Phelps reacted immediately, pointing one of the recovered Fortress weapons at Ferris. He discharged it at point blank range, the projectile going right through Ferris' upper arm. Baxter couldn’t see what type of weapon it was, but it had the desired effect and Ferris’ arm dropped to his side.

  Ferris didn’t act like he was wounded, quite the opposite. With only one good arm and legs that wouldn’t carry him, he still looked exceedingly dangerous. Baxter realised that he was still too close and tried to pull back, reaching for Pitt to drag him away from Ferris.

  Ferris looked at Baxter and laughed evilly. The result of the light, the sound grenade, the heightened senses of the moment, made the whole situation appear surreal. Ferris’ one good hand held the struggling soldier. He strained slightly as he tightened his grip around Pitt’s throat, crushing the life out of the helpless soldier. Ferris threw the body to one side and began reaching for Baxter again. Phelps pulled him out of reach.

  Baxter was again dragged away by Phelps. Ferris temporarily subdued by the damage from the grenade tried to get his legs under him to stand up. They had all been told by the scientists not to take Ferris on as he had become practically superhuman. He wouldn’t stay damaged for long if he was injured as he had fast healing abilities and could recover in seconds. They could see that now first-hand

  They ran, Phelps taking the lead. Meeting no further resistance, and without realising quite how they achieved it, they reached the underground river. They pressed the buttons on their emitters trying to reset their shields, which eventually worked, but the cloaking indicator light warned Baxter that his was not fully functional.

  They heard sounds coming from behind them, someone was racing down the corridors. Realising they were out of time, they took one last look at the fast flowing waters and leaped in.

  Shields protecting them from the rock-face and earplugs blocking the noise of the torrent, the water sped them from the underground river at breakneck speed. It was freezing, but the journey down would be much quicker than the one up.

  They had to get to the waterfall before someone thought to turn off the nullifiers which would ensure they drowned under the pressure of the back-flow hitting the shield. They had no breathing equipment, which might not have survived the effect of the sound grenades anyway.

  As they reached the nullified area near the end of the underground river Baxter was relieved to see the water was still rushing through. He had no doubt this wouldn’t last long and sighed with relief as they slid past the shield and got caught up in the eddy pool that had developed over years.

  Slowing themselves sufficiently to find the ropes they had left attached to the walls, they began to feed themselves hand over hand, until they were out of sight of the main pool and halfway to the waterfall's edge and freedom. Phelps, who had gone first, disappeared under the water, Baxter just saw the end of the rope as it whipped past his face in the water.

  A second later, and he felt the resistance disappear as his rope parted company with the wall in the pool. Somebody had cut the ropes. They were going to pop out of the waterfall like corks from a bottle. Their already damaged shields would be unlikely to withstand the two thousand foot drop to the ground.

  Baxter still holding the rope, extended his arms winding the slack around his hands while trying to keep level so his feet ejected first. As he felt himself thrown forcefully into the air with the volume of water, he tried to remember the relative positions of the sleds, and when he felt the air around him, threw a loop outward in the hope of catching one of the sleds. He didn’t know if he had succeeded until he body-slammed into the cliff, only his shield stopping him from being beaten unconscious from the impact. The rope had caught and held.

  He looked up. The water flow had stopped, just a dribble coming out the overhanging lip of the fall. The rope had caught around the smooth grip of the handlebar of the outer parked sled. As he watched, it began to slide off towards the side; in moments he would be hurtling towards the ground. He looked down for a second and felt the rope as it gave.

  “Oh Shit!” His body instinctively prepared for the worst.

  Expecting to be instantly airborne in a terminal dive, Baxter was astonished to find instead that he was actually going upwards. He strained his neck upwards to see the rope being pulled into the mouth of the cliff, one pull at a time. Was Ferris pulling him back in? Should he let go and take his chances with the rocks? Was dying down there preferable to being mangled with those massive hands of his?

  - 13 -

  As he looked down, nervously contemplating the consequences of jumping to his death if his shield failed, he felt the rope slip a little. Glancing up in a moment of pure terror, he saw Phelps straining to hold the thin cord in his hands. Now very glad he hadn’t let go, he had no time to wonder just how he had managed to avoid being thrown out over the mountain cliff. He must ask him sometime, if he got out of this in one piece.

  Relieved at seeing his comrade, Baxter smiled, calling out to him in a forced jovial tone, “Move your backside, Phelps. It's damned cold out here.” As he said it he realised the truth of it; the cold wind was biting through his clothing, his hands fast becoming numb.

  He didn’t hear Phelp’s reply, which was probably just as well.

  As soon as Baxter got level with the sled he pulled himself onto it giving Phelps an opportunity to get himself off the cliff-side and onto a parked sled. The water no longer coming out of the side of the cliff imparted a totally different image of the place, cold, dark, forbidding and empty. With what they knew was being held back by the shield, they wanted to be long gone when it was released.

  They didn’t have long and knew it. Each sled could be set in tandem; Phelps immediately took two sleds, and Baxter took one with two trailing him.

  As they released the tractor beams on all the sleds, they drifted down and away from the cliff. As the lead sled, Baxter reset the GPS, his cold fingers barely registering the contact with the touch-screen His visor couldn’t be relied upon since the grenades had blasted the sensors on the outside so it would be a case of pointing the sleds and let the GPS take the strain.

  They hugged the mountainside as close as they could manoeuvre without creating a flurry of snow in their wake. They had cut it fine as their sensitive sled sensors indicated hostiles coming into range headed directly for the waterfall, just as they curved around a mountain peak out of range of the enemy reception committee’s own sensors.

  They had scouted out a location on the way in that would give them some cover, which they reached within an hour. Hidden under an outcrop of rock that would deflect most sensors, they waited there, slowly freezing as the temperature, considerably colder out of the sun, froze the water in their uniforms. They waited until it was deemed safe to continue, then made their way to the arranged rendezvous point, and the waiting ship.

  Space Island was under siege. The gunships outside the shield had zero effect on the complex, but Pennington was concerned about the activities of the Mother-ship that had behaved erratically. It appeared to drop to sea level, then after a few minutes returned to several thousand feet. It just sat there doing nothing while the smaller ships ran about causing a disturbance without much of an effect. Pennington’s instincts were being poked.

  Pennington smelt a rat, a
big one. He picked up the comm's unit and called the ops centre

  “Ops, what’s that status of the shields?” he asked.

  "Shields are holding, sir. We've had a couple of blips, but nothing that caused any problems for the shields or the generators.”

  “What do you mean, blips?”

  “Well, sir. Twice, the shields seemed to go a bit fuzzy, but no weapon fire got into the compounds, and they have been all right since then."

  “Tell me when this fuzzy period occurred, Ops, and tie it into the position of the enemy ships - and make it quick will you, please?”

  “You will need to log on to a display, sir, may I suggest –”

  “I’m on it, Ops, logging in now... here is my monitor number, 2402AB, display, please.”

  Pennington watched as the 3D display of the shield and the enemy ships ran through a fast action replay. The shield’s ‘fuzzy’ reaction occurred just as the Mother-ship flew down to sea level, then again before it lifted off.

  Pennington turned to the officers who were all watching the display put on by the gunships, nobody seemed unduly concerned. “Gentlemen, if you would sound the intruder alarm please - I think you might find we have been invaded!”

  “But, sir? –” Carroll protested.

  “No buts, Carroll, we HAVE been invaded. Those ships are running a diversion - go to red alert and lock-down immediately. Somebody make sure the admin and science blocks are locked down - room by room if needed... NOW! Carroll.”

  Pennington watched grimly as Carroll smartly picked up a comm's unit and sent out the necessary alerts.

  The other officers looked concerned; some peered out the windows to look for any evidence of disturbance of an invading army. There was as yet nothing to see. Even so, he now had their undivided attention; the gunships forgotten, he gave them immediate orders.

  “The rest of you join your platoons and carry out WATCHTOWER on every single installation starting with this one.”

  With that command, one of the officers took out a long black box and switched it on. All the officers, including Pennington, went to one end of the room to ensure they could cover the width, then progressed through to the other end, without incident.

  “All clear, sir,” the junior officer confirmed what everyone else had already surmised. He put the box back in his jacket pocket.

  “Okay Lieutenant, carry on with every room and corridor in this building, take some men with you, This room will now go into operational lock-down “

  The officers left on the double, mostly calling their units on their comm's leaving Pennington with Staffie and two other officers. The control tower went into lock-down as per the regulations. This was to ensure no opportunity existed for infiltration after being cleared for use. Their door was closed and locked with only their overrides accepted. Nobody could come in now, those were the regulations.

  Slowly the news filtered in via the comm's, the science building was in lock-down There were two teams going through WATCHTOWER procedures on a room by room basis. Several military A-Grav sled units took up patrols of the external areas.

  When a report came in from the science complex of an intruder, there was the sound of rapid gunfire, then silence. Pennington feared the worst. He picked up his comm's and ordered a unit over to reinforce the security team. He felt that Osbourne’s team would fare better than others as they had at least a fair amount of security within the actual building.

  Two more cases of intruders were reported over the next ten minutes. In all instances gunfire was heard, fire-fights in progress. Then the building housing Pennington and the control staff shook as it was attacked from somewhere outside. They went to the windows to see if there was any evidence of the enemy.

  “They must be running around cloaked,“ Pennington observed.

  “If we get out of this, I’m going to have nullifiers installed across the island,” he said to no-one in particular.

  He turned back to the command desk and looked to where the incidents were being marked up.

  The officer doing the marking gave him an update. “Sir, reports are coming in that our teams are on the defensive in four locations. Enemy is cloaked and shielded, we have not managed to get close enough with a shield nullifier to disable them,” he advised.

  “Are the situations contained? Can we send in more troops to those locations and pin them down while we get more electronics into neutralise them?” Pennington enquired grimly of the officer, who shook his head negatively. “It’s all moving too fast, sir, the enemy seems to be running sensor neutral, we can't get readings off them at all. There is one report that the enemy is airborne so they may well be using cloaked sleds,” he added.

  It was worse than he thought. The enemy had crept in under the shields. How many were they dealing with and what were their objectives?

  The building shook again as the hidden assailants continued their attack on the downstairs access area.

  Then Pennington saw one of the generator lights on the control display change from green to red. They were under attack there too; if more than twenty percent of the generators went down, the shields would fail.

  “Why aren’t those generator rooms in lock-down mode?” Pennington shouted out.

  “They are, sir,” said the junior officer, looking keenly at the readouts on his terminal.

  “That one must have been infiltrated before the lock-down began. There may be more.” Staffie informed him sadly. There may well be civilian casualties, was what he wasn’t saying.

  Osbourne and Lang were ensconced in Osbourne's private laboratory when they heard the lock-down command and then the gunfire. There were a series of explosions, each one getting nearer. Osbourne had the cameras rolling, eventually catching up with the invisible intruder by the direction of the damage. The doors of each lab were being systematically blown open.

  After a few minutes, Osbourne managed to get cameras in the labs to show what had occurred. He was amazed; all the personnel seemed unharmed. They were, in some cases, even tidying up the damaged areas.

  Osbourne was puzzled. Then, as he saw the pattern, his blood went cold.

  “Lang? What if I told you that, whoever these people are, they seem to be looking for someone in particular and as you are, to all intents and purposes, dead to the Fortress and they are leaving all of the other scientists alone, who do you think they would want to capture, or eliminate, the most?”

  Lang looked concerned. “Well, if they see me here I’m a ‘dead lab rat’ for sure. There is no way Ferris would allow me to live if he suspects I’m here. So, I could be the target if he were suspicious.”

  “Well, in that case, you need to get behind the units over there and stay there. Whatever happens, do not come out. If they get me, I will need you to take over and run everything. If they don’t realise you are here, they will just take me,” Osbourne said.

  Lang wasn’t sure. “but...” He realised he had been thinking of himself, but Ossie was the bigger catch.

  “No buts....” Osbourne’s response was cut off by another explosion, this time close by. The cupboard Pod usually rested on, jumped a good few inches across the room.

  Osbourne calculated the enemy was only a few doors away. He looked up at the cabinet that was chinking from the glass bottles jumping with the explosions. He realised he had the glimmerings of a plan.

  Darting to the glass cabinet, he opened the door just as another explosion rocked the room. He caught the contents with his arm stopping them from spilling out. That would be disastrous. There were volatile materials in there.

  Picking one small container he slipped it into his pocket. Then taking one of a pair of ear-bud communicators out of the cabinet, he placed one in his ear, the other he gave to Lang, who scuttled behind the cupboards as the vibration of heavy footfalls sounded outside.

  Closing the glass door and locking it with the latch, Osbourne placed a nullifier down near the door. He hoped it wouldn’t get damaged in the explosion. He put an
other in his lab-coat pocket and then retreated away from the door.

  The explosion when it came was thunderous. The room seemed to implode, but behind his desk and shielded Osbourne was protected. The smoke cleared but there was nothing there.

  Osbourne stood up, then went as if to look, knowing perfectly well he was going to be in full view of the assailant, whoever he was. The nullifier was working still, he could see the light on. Then an apparition stepped in front of the gaping doorway and Osbourne stepped back in horror. Robots.

  The robot stepped confidently into the room. A metallic arm reached out, the spindly hand making a grab for Osbourne. There was nowhere for him to go. The metal clamped around his arm, some form of rubber surface made contact with his wrist and he realised it was designed not to damage, just hold securely. It looked pretty advanced, the scientist in Osbourne, recognising the design as Fortress-based, could only admire the machine. Now he was over the initial shock he used his head to learn everything about it, he needed to know their weaknesses.

  As he was pulled out of the room, he looked behind to see Lang peeking out the side of the cabinet. He looked terrified. Osbourne shook his head, warning Lang to stay put, so he didn’t see the second robot until it stuck its face in front of him.

  “You. Are. Osbourne,” it said. The voice was mechanical with a buzz, definitely not human. It didn't seem like a question.

  To Osbourne, being close up to the ‘face’ was a nightmare. It was not humanised at all, just a rectangular box with sensors built in and round it gave it a menacing look. The voice appeared to come from some kind of piezo synthesizer device. The whole thing looked solid state and very, very scary.

  “Yes, I am Osbourne. What are you going to do with me?”

  The robots didn’t answer. The one that had asked the question was armed with a massive weapon that it obviously was using to break in and out of the complex. The Garrison here had nothing like it. They had concentrated more on prevention than aggressive weapons. That had been a mistake, Osbourne thought wryly to himself.