Making the Grade (Omnia Online Series Book 2)

by Christopher Booth

  Kevin wished he could do something to help the prisoners, but a whole world’s future depended on him successfully completing this mission.

  The only thing that made this job possible at all was the fact that the people running this research lab had gone to extreme lengths to keep it off the data-net. So there was no automated security, just a lot of the old-fashioned, human-driven kinds.

  By the end of the first night Kevin had a plan that he hoped might work, he felt it was still a long shot. To Kevin, the weak point of the compound was the maintenance building. It was close to the edge of the perimeter and seemed to have the lowest security. But he thought that there must be some access from there to the other buildings in the compound, some way for power and water to be distributed.

  Since Kevin had planned on a multi-day mission, he came prepared to wait out the daylight hours. He packed in a mummy bag and breathing system, that was designed to allow him to hide buried beneath thirty to forty centimeters of earth for the day.

  Before dawn, Kevin found a small depression outside the compound, and dug a shallow trench, then buried the mummy bag in the dirt and leaves. The bag was three meters long, and once the whole thing was buried in dirt and leaves, only one end was exposed. Kevin climbed into the open end of the long bag. He pushed his feet down into the slick material, forcing the ground to make room. Once he was at the bottom of the bag and underground, he then pulled the open end down below the surface.

  This hiding system came with a rebreather that Kevin could use for up to twenty-four hours. But he only needed fourteen hours for the sun to pass. Kevin did his best to sleep through the day. The pressure of the ground around him made his sleep fitful and uncomfortable. The best he could do for most of the day was just to try to meditate and focus on relaxing.

  If Kevin had been claustrophobic, this plan wouldn’t have worked. But he made it through the day, and getting out of his hiding spot was much easier than going in.

  Kevin had snuck up as close to the building as he dared, and was now waiting for the guard who was responsible for patrolling this side of the maintenance building to pass him by.

  Kevin’s heart was racing as the guard approached his position. He didn’t think he would have had a chance to hide undetected without his armor’s ability to blend into the background. Still, he’d selected the part of the building that was closest to the perimeter. As Kevin waited, he laid low in the long grass of a small ditch, as the guard walked by no more than five meters away.

  The guard turned the corner and started to walk away.

  Kevin stood up and did his best to sneak up behind the alert man. This was the risky part of this phase of the plan… He was just a meter away from the man when something must have alerted the guard to his presence. Kevin was watching the guard carefully as he tried to sneak up on him, so when the guard started to turn to look behind him, Kevin sprang forward and in a rush tackled him.

  As soon as Kevin had his arms around the guard, he squeezed the trigger on the stunner in his right hand. Kevin felt a jolt of electricity as some of the charge managed to pass through both the guard and his own armor. It was enough to make his nerves jump at the spike of energy.

  The guard was now limp. The stunned man would be out for the next five to ten minutes.

  Kevin took the guard's company badge from around his neck and pulled him over to the door. Once at the door, he propped the man up against the door for a minute. Then he placed the guard’s left hand over the door’s sensor plate and swiped the employee card passed the I.D. reader at the same time. There was a click from the door.

  Kevin hurried to drop the man’s body and reach past him to open the door.

  He dragged the stunned guard into the building and shut the door behind him.

  Kevin found himself in a stairwell. It continued to surprise Kevin when he found something so low tech in a game where you're surrounded with so much advance technology. But he figured that the A.I. that made this game must have realized that emergencies often mean no power, which meant there were stairs.

  Kevin took a set of restraints out of his backpack and secured the still unconscious guard to the hand rail. He then pulled out an injector from the same pack and gave the guard a shot that would keep him out for the next few hours.

  He didn’t know when the guard would be missed, so the clock to his discovery had just started.

  One of the stairs led down, which had been what Kevin had hoped for.

  Kevin stretched out his growing psionic senses. He descended the stairs with his senses pushed to their limit, as well as his eyes, and his helmet's sensors. He didn’t find any cameras or sensors that might give away his presence.

  The stairs only went down one level.

  When Kevin reached the bottom, he looked for any signs that the door was wired for security. He could see nothing on this side of the door, or through his helmet's sensors.

  He then reached out with his psionic senses… there was something… something at the top right corner of the door. He could sense it there, but he’d yet to develop enough sensitivity to ‘see’ fine details.

  He looked through his backpack for something that might help… He had a door bumper, for breaking into regular electronic locks, or he could try using his stunner to fry the electronics on the other side of the door… If what he sensed at the top of the door was a lock, the bumper would work, but if it were a sensor, the bumper would set off an alarm. If he tried to hit the spot with a jolt from the stunner, it might fry a sensor, but would set off an alarm if it were a lock… He wished he had something he could use to look through the door jam and see, like some sort of fiber optic camera.

  Kevin decided to take a chance and bet that they wouldn’t put a lock at the top of the door. He took out a small handheld electric drill from the tool kit in his backpack, and using his psionic senses to see where to drill, he drilled two holes on either side of the presumed door sensor, then he ran two wires through the door, which he hooked up to the stunner.

  With a press of the trigger, Kevin heard a muffled zap on the other side of the door… He paused and listened, there were no alarms.

  He quickly put the gear away.

  Once ready he opened the door, again he reached out with all his senses for anything that might give him away.

  Kevin caught a break as he exited the stairwell. On the wall just outside the stairs was a sign that displayed the emergency escape routes for this floor and a map of this part of the building. The large room off this corridor to the right was labeled as the robotic cleaning and maintenance support room; further in there appeared to be some smaller rooms that were not labeled or marks as escaping through this exit.

  Kevin noticed that there was a camera that he hadn’t sensed or seen until he opened the door. Fortunately, it was mounted above the door pointing inward. Kevin thought he would have mounted the camera on the other side of the hall looking at the door, but he was glad that security seemed more interested in what was going on inside the building then what might be coming from the outside.

  Kevin knew he might have to deal with a few cameras, so he’d come prepared. He’d rigged up some ‘clip and feed’ devices for the camera feeds. Kevin started by taking a telescoping rod out of his pack. He then attached a little black box with a slot on one end to the rod. Once Kevin had the box extended up near the camera, he sent it a signal, and it took a still shot of the view down the hall. Then he slipped the black box over the laser fiber line to the camera. Once the box sensed the fiber line, it sliced in, severing the camera’s connection, and in less than a tenth of a second later it connected to the fiber and started transmitting the still picture it had taken of the hall.

  Kevin again paused to listen for any alarms, if the guards noticed the brief interruption in the camera signal; they might be on the way down to check it out.

  Hearing nothing, Kevin decided to move forward. The robotic cleaning and maintenance support room door was locked, but having not discovered
any sensors he used a door bumper to scramble the door lock… resetting it to the unlock default built into non-military interior doors. The problem with a door bumper was that it would jam the door in the unlocked position. The next guard to check the rooms down here would know there’s a problem if the door opened to his touch.

  Kevin entered the room, closed the door behind him, and placed a piece of duct tape on the door to keep it shut.

  He didn’t turn on the lights, but used the optics built into his helmet to look around the robotic cleaning and maintenance support room. There appeared to be one cleaning bot here that was down for repairs on a work bench. While there were many empty robotic charging stations, the rest he figured were out cleaning the buildings, since the night would be a prime time for such work.

  “Sam, do you see a place to start looking for the evidence we need?” asked Kevin.

  “There’s a small office with a terminal on the far side of the room to your left, maybe we can find some information about the buildings and labs there,” replied Samantha, through the speakers in his helmet. Samantha was Kevin’s personal A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), who interacted with him through the armor’s data bracer.

  Kevin made his way through the room and into the small office. He then went to the terminal and disconnected it from the wall socket.

  Sorting through his bag, he pulled out a small device that had a wire attached to it. The wire had its own connection that he plugged into the wall socket.

  This box was a pre-programmed computer hacking bot, sometimes called a data-sap.

  Kevin was surprised a few weeks back when Samantha told him she was unable to hack any other computer, or device not owned by him. Kevin thought it was nice to know that his A.I. had limits; she could not lie and would ensure his privacy. But not hacking was one of the downsides to the limits. It was an extension of the rule against lying, that she couldn’t lie to other computers, so legal A.I.s utterly failed at hacking. If the data was off limits, they couldn’t access it.

  Kevin had thought that hacking was one of the things Samantha would be great at. All the fiction stories and movies dealing with A.I.s made them out to be incredible at hacking, so when he discovered this restriction he was really disappointed… For about a minute, then Kevin thought about it. The more he thought about the constraint, the more sense it made. How could a person have any privacy if A.I.s could hack? How could governments and businesses stay competitive if there were millions of hacker A.I.s getting into every crack?

  So, the only way to hack? Become a hacker, which Kevin didn’t have the time for, or use a non-A.I. hack bot. They could be incredibly sophisticated, but they weren’t A.I’s, and they had to be wired directly into a source.

  Kevin watched the indicator lights on the hack bot as they cycled. They were flashing amber as they tried to gain access to the system. The systems were probably defended by an A.I., but this data-sap was supposed to be military grade. After a few minutes, the light started flashing green as it began to absorb any data on the local network.

  Once it was downloaded, Samantha then could look at it… After all, Kevin stole it, not her, and since Kevin owned it… she wouldn’t be lying or stealing… Kevin shook his head at the Machiavellian thought. A.I.s or girls… they were all complicated. And Samantha was a girl and an A.I. … so naturally Kevin loved her.

  “Samantha, can you start sifting the data for anything that might help the mission?” asked Kevin.

  “Working on it…” replied Samantha, from the small speakers near his ears in the helmet.

  Two minutes later…

  “According to this information, the proof you’re looking for can be found in a stasis unit in Lab A of the research building. It appears that we were right about the purpose of the buildings in the compound. I’m still trying to see if there are any floor plans…” said Samantha.

  After just a few more seconds she said, “Yes, Research Lab A is on the far side of the research building, but there are no corridors between the buildings.” said Samantha.

  “So take the data and settle for a partial completion of the mission, or try for the actual bio-weapon to back up the claims.” said Kevin, as he thought about his options.

  The problem was the mission goals stated that without solid physical proof, the expected war might not be avoided.

  In this mission, the planet Hwan was his employer, they had intelligence that indicated that a nearby planetary neighbor, Baldarick, was planning a coup attempt. They discovered some evidence that Baldarick’s self-proclaimed Grand Protector was planning on releasing a bio-weapon on Hwan. Then they’d launch an invasion of Hwan, disguised as a mission to ‘assist and support’ them during the disaster.

  Such weapons of mass destruction were banned under the Imperial Common Law, so if Hwan can prove that Baldarick had such a weapon, then they could get the Imperium and the Fleet to intervene in something that would otherwise be considered a local matter.

  The data alone might help, but it wasn’t proof on its own since it couldn’t be certified as being true by a verifying agency. Since Samantha could not directly steal the information, she only knew what the little black data-sap was telling her, which was provided by Hwan. So the data was tainted and couldn’t be considered proof. But if Samantha saw Kevin actually pick up a sample of the bio-weapon, then there was actual evidence that could be verified.

  “Thanks, I guess we need to follow the bread crumbs. Can you see any other way to get to Lab A, airshafts, service ways for bots rather than people… anything?” asked Kevin.

  “No to the air vents; but there’s a small passageway for maintenance bots that runs between the buildings. It will be a tight squeeze, and I couldn’t say what you might run into. Remember, the clock is ticking, you’ll still have twenty kilometers to cross to exit the patrolled area,” said Samantha.

  “Great, is the data-sap done?” Kevin asked.

  “The data-sap’s memory is full, I think it has the data they need, but there’s no way it could pull all the data from the local servers.” answered Samantha.

  Kevin pulled the data-sap and put it back in his pack.

  “Ok, Sam, where is this maintenance bot passage?” he asked.

  Samantha used his helmets display to highlighted a panel on the far side of the room, opposite the door to the corridor.

  Kevin decided to secure the door a little better, to try to fool the guards into believing that the door was still locked. He put duct tape the whole length of the door, on the side near the lock.

  The panel to the maintenance bot passage was designed to swing open at a signal from a cleaning bot. Since Kevin couldn’t reproduce the signal, he tried to pry it open. It was easier to open than he suspected, but it jammed in the open position.

  Kevin felt like he was leaving an easy trail to follow.

  The small passageway was about a meter tall, but a little less than a meter wide, Kevin could barely fit in the small passageway with his armor on. He followed Samantha’s directions as he crawled through the small passage. Kevin crawled on his hands and feet for what felt like a kilometer before he arrived at an opening to the research lab they were looking for. This time, the wall panel was easier to open since he could just push it open.

  He was relieved to find the lab empty.

  Kevin asked, “Samantha when I get the bio-weapon, what’s the quickest way out?”

  He didn’t want to use his blaster on the way in since it would cause so much noise. But if he was spotted, the stealth game was up.

  “This building has another fire escape just like the last, but it’s further from the perimeter, and it will still be guarded.” she said.

  Kevin didn’t want to take all the risks involved in going back through the whole tunnel, he felt very lucky to have made it this far.

  “Thanks, Sam, so where is this stasis unit?” asked Kevin.

  Samantha highlighted something that looked like a big refrigerator to Kevin. He approached and looked it
over with his eyes and helmet sensors.

  “Do you see any signs of an alarm on this, Samantha?” asked Kevin, after looking the outside over.

  “There are none that can be picked up by any sensors built into your helmet.” said Samantha.

  “Let me try my psionic skill, to see what I can find.”

  Kevin closed his eyes for a moment to focus… he pushed out his psionic energy… and tried to sense anything his eyes and sensors couldn’t find…

  He couldn’t detect any traps… He couldn’t sense any alarms built into the unit…

  Kevin knew that he was being overly cautious, but he kept getting the feeling that he’d made it this far on luck alone and that it would fail him at any second.

  He opened the stasis unit. There were two shelves of metal containers in the unit. Each one had a label and a vertical set of light bars. The bottom light bar was red; the next light bar up was orange, then yellow, after that there were five more that were green. Each container had all the lights on, which Kevin took to mean that they were fully contained, cooled, or whatever they needed, to be safe to handle.

  “Samantha, can you tell by the labels which one we need?” asked Kevin.

  “Yes, let me highlight the latest batch.” replied Samantha.

  Kevin grabbed the canister and put it in his pack, and then he headed to the door.”

  “The building plans indicate that when you exit this door, you’ll be in the range of the security camera.” said Samantha.

  Kevin had already mentally plotted out his next moves, so he just said; “Ready, let’s go.”

  Kevin pushed open the door leading to the corridor. He didn’t see anyone, so he made a dash for the exit leading to the stairway. He was more than half way there when an alarm went off.

  Kevin was only a step from the exit when the corridors began to fill with gas. He was sure that he’d made it into the stairwell leading up before any gas got to him, but he held his breath as he ran up the flight of stairs.