POD (The Pattern Universe)

by Roote, Tobias

  As they moved away, the robots shields and cloaks reactivated. Osbourne hoped that Lang had the sense to get the camera video to the ops control without delay. He was going to be kidnapped and they had no idea what they were dealing with. The video would help them identify the threat and possibly deal with it. Osbourne felt he could deal with his end, given the chance. However, he would need Pennington to be aware and up to speed.

  When Osbourne was grabbed around the waist by the robot, he immediately feared for the items in his lab-coat As he was lifted off the ground, he at first thought it was the strength of the arm, but when he continued going upwards until the ground was a good twenty feet below him, he really got scared. Instead of wriggling to try and get out of the robot’s grip, he hung onto it instead.

  He switched on the nullifier without taking it out of his pocket. It would disarm the shields but shouldn’t cause any disruption in its circuits, he hoped. The robots wouldn’t immediately look to him for the source of the lack of cloaking. Importantly, it would give Pennington’s people something to see and, hopefully, follow.

  They appeared to be heading out towards the edge of the shield. Osbourne looked around and could see battles being fought all over the complex. It was a full on attack. He wondered if anyone else was being sought out, or captured.

  He looked down, it was only then he realised the robots were not on an A-Grav sled, they had inbuilt A-Grav and were guiding themselves. He kicked himself for not thinking about designing something along the same lines. It was easily done.

  He couldn’t see the back of the one he was on, but twisting slightly he could see its companion although it was in and out of its cloaking shield dependent on its proximity to the nullifier in his pocket. The robots seemed oblivious to their loss of shield and cloak, or they didn't care. Their objective had been achieved.

  Cursory inspection allowed him to see the vague outline of what could be the motors and directional thrusters. Range couldn’t be too far, he decided. They had no power packs that he could see, it all had to be internalised.

  As the shield approached, Osbourne automatically braced himself for the impact. He knew the shields were good; he had written the code himself, it was brilliant. However, as they pulled up to the barrier he had a gnawing feeling he had missed something important, and was about to find out what it was.

  What happened surprised him. First he was pushed through as if it was some kind of membrane, then he was being pulled through the other side as if it was an elastic bubble. Then they were through and looking back at the shield from the outside, it had returned to mirrored full defence mode. He realised they must have a software hack to create their own localised access door.

  That was when Osbourne gave full reign to the nagging feeling he’d felt just before they reached the other side of the shield.

  Remembering vaguely cutting and pasting a large chunk of additional source from the Fortress software retrieved by Pod, he now realised there must have been some back-door access code written into that section. Foolish boy! and now his laziness might well have cost them lives as well as the island.

  He felt bad now, worse than just being captured. Osbourne knew Ferris would want revenge on him for stealing all the blueprints in the first place and defecting to Space Island, but Osbourne was also a realist and knew Ferris had taken a big risk in capturing him, exposing a weakness in the shield. This meant he needed him for something. This gave Osbourne confidence that if all else failed he would not die just yet.

  The robot seemed to be hovering, although it was difficult to tell being in the air without easy reference points. A cloud or two might have helped, but it was a typically cloudless sky. Blue sea beneath him and only the mirror shield in the distance. The other robot was now moving ahead of his captor, and as he disappeared out of range of the nullifier, something began to appear in its place.

  As they got closer the shield harmonics synchronised and its shape was revealed. Osbourne recognised it immediately, the Mother-ship from Pod’s surveillance globe cameras. This should be interesting, he thought. A hatch opened up along the side where the robot appeared in the doorway, along with several others. They had obviously just arrived and were holding somebody else inside the hatchway. He could see it was Frank Garner.

  - 14 -

  It wasn’t immediately evident to Goeth that anything untoward was going on with the mainframes. He stood there studying the doorway into the mainframe safe room, or at least what was left of it, which was nothing. He kneeled down and looked closely at the dust built up around the area. Most had been dispersed in the impact of the sound grenades, some, however, remained, and this was what was absorbing Goeth’s attention. He had seen this before, but where.

  He could hear Ferris shout, and sighed expecting a nuclear barrage from his mutating partner who, he had decided, was becoming increasingly unstable. He stood up as Ferris came hobbling around the corner. The damage to his clothes was as if he had withstood a nuclear blast, yet his skin seemed almost perfect.

  Goeth knew from the reports he’d had from the others that ten minutes ago Ferris was still half crippled from the effects of the grenades. An interesting device, he thought to himself absently. Goeth could put together a design for them, as well as a defence. His mind whirred as always. Half of the ideas he thought up never saw the light of day, not because they were faulty, rather that he was always concerned about just how much power he let Ferris wield.

  “Damnation, those bastards got away!” Ferris cussed at nobody in particular. “What were they after?” he added, this directed at Goeth.

  “They appear to have died trying to do nothing, there is no disturbance of the mainframes that are...” Goeth was about to say running perfectly, when alarms began to go off in the cabinets. First just one, then another, then more, increasingly until there were upwards of forty piezo alarms protesting something wrong with the networked servers.

  Goeth reached one of the servers closest to the door, his feet crunching on something under foot. He glanced down briefly seeing crushed ceramic shards underfoot, but his concern was for the servers. He opened the frame doors to be confronted with total and utter chaos.

  Pennington-Brown was fighting a losing battle with who, or whatever was trying to break in the door. The explosions were making short work of the frame and the next one would take the door completely out. A bunker is only as good as its weakest point. In this case, as in many such, the door was it.

  As if sensing the impending success of reaching their quarry, the assailants increased their tempo and the door blew in just as Pennington decided it would be best to vacate the room through the emergency hole they had cut in the ducting. The others had already gone, but in case the enemy had monitors registering for body heat and human vital signs, he had remained until the last minute to give the others more time to escape.

  They had baulked big time at that, but it was his habit to lead by example and never let his men put themselves into risky situations that he wouldn’t go into himself. Occasionally, he had to remind himself of that by acting and doing.

  Meanwhile outside, they had rallied reinforcements to trap the enemy within and deal with them. It was now up to Pennington to escape so they could spring the trap.

  As soon as he had retreated into the ducting he realised he had left it too late. He looked back down the corridor of nanobot-forged metal to the forced entry hole they had made with a Needlegun just in time to see it being ripped open with some unseen brute force.

  He quickly slid his body along the narrow ducts until he reached the point where it would drop him to the floor below. Pennington realised that, with no means to control his descent the twenty feet to ground level, he was going to have to rely on his personal shield to cushion the impact. He let go. The blow still hurt his legs; he felt his knees, which were never the best since the old parachuting days, pop under the strain, but they held, just.

  He rolled out of the restrictive exit hole, cut to provide a way
out, stood up and walked off to meet up with his officers who were supervising the troops. As he reached the small group, Staffie pulled him aside and gave him the bad news. It was bad, the worst.

  “We just got word that Garner has been taken,” he said. “We also received video download from Lang, they took Osbourne too. They didn’t touch the other scientists and all of the security team are down, but only disabled. No fatalities.” He sighed. “We were lucky there,” he admitted. “...and, sir, you need to see this... they aren’t human.”

  Staffie held the vidcom for him so he could see the results of the nullifier to get their first view of the enemy.

  “Sir!” A soldier ran up, saluted and looked ready to spit out his news. Pennington was peeved at the interruption but held it in check. No point in letting the troops feel the despair felt at that moment. They wouldn’t fight better knowing their Commander was losing it.

  “Yes, private.” Pennington scrutinised the young soldier.

  “Sir, we have a visual on the enemy, actually two of them but one keeps disappearing....” he rambled.

  “Lead on, private, we’re right behind you.”

  They raced outside in time to see a metal framed apparition sweep past them approximately thirty feet from the ground. It showed no visible means of propulsion, and it had a white-coated individual in its grip.

  “Can you see who that is Staffie? ...Anyone?” Pennington called out.

  “It’s Osbourne, sir,” someone called out.

  “How come we can see them, and not the others?” someone else shouted out excitedly.

  Pennington smiled and responded quietly, so only Staffie could hear. “Because that boy is smart and has a local nullifier on him. He must have realised we would need to see what was causing the mayhem. ”

  “Staffie, get a sled team up there to follow that ‘thing'. Make sure we keep eyes on that lad and see where he goes,” he ordered. “I expect we might need to follow up on Osbourne’s location in a jiffy.”

  He turned his attention back to the men around him who were waiting for further orders.

  “Right then, lads, let's close this trap up shall we?” He ordered his men into position.

  The troops gathered around the exits, keeping far enough away not to be directly in the line of fire of the enemy as they came out. Two soldiers ran along the sides of the building then placed local nullifiers in all of the main areas. They needed to be able to see the enemy.

  Believing the intruders would have to come through the floor exits, the troops were taken completely by surprise when the first floor wall blew out. The resultant chaos of falling debris forced many of the men to scatter while it seemed obvious to some that this was the intended escape route, nobody could see the enemy to hit them as the nullifiers range was only three to four metres.

  A moment later, Pennington was taken completely by surprise as he felt himself grabbed by a hard, unyielding clamp that tightened around him, which seemed capable of holding him regardless of his shield’s desire to keep him safe. He attempted to pull himself free, but felt steel bars digging into him despite his battledress. He yelled at Staffie.

  “Staffie, shoot this damn thing off me quick before it has a chance to get away.”

  His aide turned around from where he had been looking at the aftermath of the building fallout to see nothing but a void where his superior officer was shouting at him. Pointing his needle rifle at the blank area, he realised it was pointless trying to shoot anything without knowing what he was aiming at.

  “I can’t see you Pennington, you need to turn your disrupter on.” Staffie yelled back.

  Pennington reached into his jacket with his free arm and pulled his nullifier from his jacket, switching it on so that they could see what it was that had captured him. The resultant exposure of the armed machine was sufficient to catch everyone’s attention. They resisted the urge to fire on the enemy robot in case Pennington himself were injured. “I’m shielded, you idiots - shoot the bloody thing.”

  Soldiers opened fire with their Needlegun's and laser rifles, but had no effect on the metal of the robots, which repaired itself instantly.

  Pennington wasn’t going to allow himself to be taken without a fight, so did the only thing he felt able to do. He took out his side-arm and began shooting at the thing’s box-like head, in the hope of damaging its control functions. The Needlegun should have had some effect, but the material seemed to heal itself as fast as he burned it. nanites, he thought bitterly.

  The warrior bot’s response was to take hold of the gun with its other appendage and yank it from Pennington’s hand, crushing the offending weapon in its mechanical grip, and dropping it. Other than that it carried out no retaliatory response against its captive, just ignored him as if he didn’t matter, which to the warrior bot, he didn’t. It was just carrying out its orders.

  The soldiers below maintained a barrage of fire at the departing warrior bot despite it having no effect on the machine, which continued to ignore them. Instead, it gained height and began to move off. Even without its shield, although Pennington’s own shield offered it some protection, it seemed indestructible as larger weapons were brought to bear on it.

  Seconds after leaving the ground Pennington noticed they were departing in the same direction as Osbourne had been taken. He figured that if he wasn’t being eliminated, but being kidnapped, that he, Osbourne and Garner would probably be going to end up in the same place.

  Osbourne stood with Garner on a deck inside the A-Grav Mother-ship; they were kept apart so they couldn't talk to each other. Garner just nodded to him. He looked troubled, as he should be, thought Osbourne. There was no love lost between the ex-President of the USA and the one-time General Ferris. It made him wonder at Ferris’ intentions.

  He looked around the deck where they were being held. It was a large space, probably a troop carrier, Osbourne decided, as the hatch wasn’t large enough for vehicles of any kind. It seemed purpose-built; there was no seating. He imagined the deck being packed with warrior bots and decided it wasn’t a scenario he liked much.

  He looked out the hatchway at the mirror surface of the dome shield and saw the shield change momentarily as another warrior bot came through it carrying someone that Osbourne couldn’t see properly, but wearing a military uniform. He took a guess, then looked at Garner.

  Pennington – it had to be; with a flash of intuition he realised what Ferris was up to. He was cutting the head off the Space Island establishment while at the same time pulling the teeth of the Space Council. Without the Head of the SC, and no military chain of command in place, the Space Island venture would collapse.

  Osbourne also realised why he had been taken. Without him, the research division would become direction-less, or worse, disintegrate. He had to hand it to Ferris, he was a clever bastard. In one adroit manoeuvre, Ferris had removed his only competition and left Space Island intact for his people to move in and take over. He hadn’t done it bloodlessly, but as near a bloodless coup as possible. That is not going to make Frank happy. The idea of the Space Council and the Island in Ferris’ control were going to make things very dangerous for everyone.

  He looked back out the hatchway at the robot pulling in Pennington. He was just in time to observe some very strange goings on. The robot appeared to be changing its mind. One second it was flying up, then downwards. He could see Pennington’s face now, and he looked very scared. It wasn’t him causing the problem then.

  He looked at Garners guards and noticed they seemed preoccupied as if receiving information from somewhere. It didn’t look good; they were twitching and then as his guard started acting up too, Osbourne panicked. Then Pennington came flying through at speed with his robot guardian and instead of landing quietly as the rest had done, it slewed across the deck for a hundred feet before coming to rest lying down with Pennington still trapped in its embrace.

  When Osbourne looked over at Garner, he seemed in pain. Osbourne realised that there was somethin
g seriously affecting the warrior bots. The one holding Garner was squeezing him, pushing his shield to its limit. He could just see the red build-up as the shield took on the immense pressure. If his shield were to give out, Garner would be cut in two.

  Osbourne looked up at his jailer to find that it too had suddenly frozen in place as if its machinery had seized up.

  Damnation, he thought. Trapped on an A-Grav Warship in the grip of robots several thousand feet in the air and everything was going to crap around them. What to do...

  He put his hands in his pockets unconsciously looking for inspiration when his hand went around the small flask he had taken out of the cabinet ‘I’m a bloody genius’ he said to himself.

  It took ten minutes for him to free himself using a small quantity of the killer nanites. Then he was out of his restraints while the nanites continued to chomp on his warrior bot and ran over to Garner, who was now feeling the pressure - literally. Then while the nanites were working on Garner's warrior bot, he ran over to Pennington and began his release, as well.

  All the warrior bots were standing around, not responding, so Osbourne ran to the edge of the hatch to see if anything was happening. They were still suspended, everything seemed to have come to a halt down there. The gunships were just hanging in the air unresponsive.

  He pressed his earpiece, activating it.

  “Hey, Lang... do you hear me?” he called out. The sensitive microphone would pick up his speech and beam it down to Lang.

  “Yep! Ossie, good to hear your voice - what’s happening?”

  “We’re trapped on the Mother-ship about two thousand feet up. Everything seems to have gone into freeze mode here. Can you get someone to come and get us?”

  “You and who else Ossie? Shit! I have to go find someone in command.”

  “I have Pennington and Frank Garner here, as well. We need out of this ship before it decides to go off somewhere.”