by Nick Thacker
Hendricks nodded, then waved Joshua and Kyle over. “You two, here’s the plan. We know what we’re looking for, and it’s probably…” he paused, turned to Julie, Colson, and Mrs. E. “I have no idea, actually. What are we looking for?”
“A computer, maybe a server box,” Colson said. “Everything’s stored on the cloud, but that ‘cloud’ is hosted somewhere here at the station.”
“Why not just grab your computer and be done with it?”
Colson was shaking his head even before Hendricks had finished the question. “No, they have security measures in place. They’re running a modified Linux install, and the OS doesn’t allow saving remote files to local drives.”
“Right,” Hendricks said. “Whatever that means. So it’s some sort of computer, but not Colson’s. I’m obviously relying on the brains of this operation to figure out which one and where it’s located. That’s all we’ll need?” He started to lift his hand and address Kyle and Joshua, but Julie interrupted.
“Yes, but it still won’t be easy to get,” Julie said. “Even if we find the server, they’re going to have defenses set up against just plugging in a USB stick to the front of it and copying the files over. We might be able to make a disk image, maybe even —“
“Guys,” Reggie said. “Hate to interrupt, but seriously. We need to keep moving.”
Hendricks nodded along. “Colson, if you were a computer that held extremely sensitive information, where would you live?”
Colson frowned.
“Colson, where do you think that computer is?”
“Oh, right, yes,” Colson said. “Level 9 is the server room — right above the level you found me on, and two levels below my where my workstation —“
“Colson,” Hendricks said, “you mean to tell me we rode an elevator past the level that might have exactly what we’re looking for in it?”
“Well, I, uh…”
“He didn’t know what we were looking for,” Julie said, “and we all passed it. None of us realized it was a server farm, or even gave it a second glance. Give him a break.”
Reggie grinned, unable to help himself. He’d gotten to know Julie better after meeting in Brazil, and he knew she was a take-no-crap kind of person. Still, he also knew she had no military experience, and insubordination like that, especially in the middle of a mission, would have earned her a swift dressing-down. Reggie wondered if a vein was about to pop out of Hendricks’ head, but Hendricks just stared down, motionless, at the group.
“Listen, folks,” he said. “I understand many of you are not military; no one’s perfect. But here’s the deal. We’re going to either die down here or not, and the way to not is to listen to me. And to think. If you have information we need, please don’t be shy. We withhold information, we die. We waste time, we die. We —“
“Incoming!” The sound of gunfire cut the conversation short.
CHAPTER TWENTY-eight
Reggie heard Ryan Kyle yell from the doorway a split second before he started shooting. He was aiming down the hall from the direction they’d come from, firing short bursts toward the stairs.
Hendricks and Joshua sprang into action, and Reggie followed suit. He involuntarily checked his weapon, ran to the door, and stopped behind Hendricks and Joshua.
We’re sitting ducks, he thought. If they pin us down…
“If they pin us down in here, we’re toast,” Joshua yelled.
“Agreed,” Hendricks said. “We need to at least get a few men across the hall. Let’s —“
Before he could finish the order Kyle was in motion, shooting a quick burst and ducking down, all while squat-running across the open hallway. He reached the opposite wall and continued backwards, aiming for one of the open sections that led to the wide central area of the level.
He waved a signal to Hendricks and the other two men in the doorway, and Hendricks nodded. “Okay, one more. You both are quicker than I am, but I can cover you.” He didn’t provide any room for argument or discussion, so Reggie and Joshua looked at each other to decide who should go.
Joshua was already halfway out the door and into the hallway, so he shrugged and stepped out farther. He lifted his weapon, aimed down the curved hall, and waited for Hendricks’ next burst of cover fire. When it came, he crouched down a bit more and side-stepped across the open space to Kyle’s location.
Reggie turned to the others in the room. “Guys, we need to get to the center space over there. It’s not a great spot, but it will at least put us on the offensive. Kyle and Joshua can cover you with me and Hendricks. Keep your head and your gun up, but move fast.”
Ben, Julie, and Mrs. E nodded. Colson was wide-eyed and looked terrified, but he stepped forward as well, still unarmed. They surrounded Reggie and waited for him to lead their group to the hallway.
Before they made it to the door, Reggie heard Kyle yell from the opposite side. “Hendricks!” he shouted. “They’re guards, not Chinese.”
“Understood,” Hendricks said, simultaneously answering a volley of rifle fire with his own quick bursts. “Listen up. There’s only one reason they’re shooting at us —“
“Besides wanting to kill us?” Reggie said.
“No, I mean one reason they’re focusing on us right now. If the Chinese were already in the base, or even close to the entrance, they’d be focusing all their attention on maintaining a defensive position to hold them out. That means the Chinese are not here.”
“So they’re able to spend some quality time with us instead,” Reggie said. “Got it. Can we kill them anyway?”
Hendricks nodded. “Yeah, that’s the plan. Only we don’t need to worry about being overly strategic and losing time. These guys aren’t trained as well, so as long as we —“
Crack!
An explosion ripped Hendricks’ words from the air, and the visible shockwave passed directly in front of the door. The grenade had detonated down the hall from them, in front of another room, but it still had a powerful effect. Hendricks was knocked to the ground, and Kyle and Joshua across the hall pressed forward a bit to fill in.
Reggie ran forward and grabbed Hendricks’ arm to help him up. The man was dazed but conscious. Reggie dragged him back into the relative safety of Colson’s room to give him space to recover.
“Ben, Mrs. E,” he said. “Get in there and help out. See if you can take out the asshole that fired that thing on us, but be careful. They’ll be reloading and trying again in a minute.”
He noticed that Julie seemed upset that he didn’t specifically request her help, but he hoped she’d understand. Ben would kill me if I sent you to the front lines and something happened to you.
As Reggie finished pulling Hendricks to safety, Julie locked eyes with him. The daggers she was sending his way were not lost upon him, and he realized he’d made a vital mistake.
She’s the one who’ll kill me, he thought. He offered a huge smile to break the tension.
“Save it, Red,” she said. Without another word, she ran to the doorway, lifted her gun, and began firing at at the guards, standing alongside Ben and Mrs. E.
Reggie’s smile grew wider.
“Three down!” Reggie heard Kyle yell.
“Get off of me, kid,” Hendricks said, pushing Reggie’s hand away. “I ain’t dying here.” Hendricks rolled over and sat up on the hard floor of the barracks. “You’re wasting your energy in here, and they need your help. Give me a few more seconds, and I’ll be out there with you.”
“Whatever you say, boss,” Reggie said. The bullets from the remaining guards pinged around the sides of the hallway, and Reggie wondered whether they had even been trained in a combat situation or not. They seemed to be wasting a lot of ammunition firing at the wrong targets, but he was just glad his own group wasn’t as trigger-happy.
Reggie decided to chance a trek across the hall to see how Kyle and Joshua were holding up. He quickly conveyed his plan to Ben, Julie, and Mrs. E, and had just started to sprint across when Kyle and Jo
shua stepped out into the middle of the hallway.
“I think we’re clear,” Joshua said. Kyle nodded, but didn’t move his eyes from the end of the hallway. Smoke was already drifting back into the space of the halls, filling the area with an acrid odor.
“Where’d they get that RPG?” Reggie asked no one in particular.
“A station like this will have a cache of weapons somewhere,” Mrs. E said. No one contradicted her, so she continued. “But they need a lesson or two in how to use it. I vote we push up and see if we can get them backed into a corner.”
“I second that,” Kyle said. “Maybe even eliminate the threat before the big boys get here.” He paused, looking around. “Hendricks?”
Reggie motioned with a quick nod. “He’s resting, but fine. Old guys like him, you know —“
“You know what?” Hendricks’ gravelly voice called out from just inside the doorway of the room. “An old guy like me can slap all of you around pretty decent. Any takers?”
No one moved.
“That’s what I thought. Now, back to business. I’m all for seeing how many of these rent-a-cops we can knock out, even if it does make it easier for the Chinese to get in. Let’s get up one level and —“
A low, rumbling explosion caught everyone off guard, and Reggie felt his feet giving out beneath him. He wobbled around a bit but caught his balance quickly, righting himself.
“What the…”
An alarm siren began screaming for attention somewhere on their level, and it was drowned out only by the computerized female voice they’d heard earlier over the broadcast system.
‘Attention all security personnel. We have a Level 1 breach. Move immediately to lockdown, and prepare for engagement.’
The message began to repeat, but Hendricks was already in motion, fully recovered. “You heard the nice lady,” he said. “Sounds like the Chinese found a way in,” he said, calling out orders over his shoulder.
Reggie and the others followed Hendricks down the hall toward the stairs. The woman’s voice, computerized yet eerily human, laced with a slight British accent, echoed through his mind.
Prepare for engagement.
CHAPTER TWENTY-nine
“Colson,” Hendricks barked, “you have a map of this place?”
Jonathan Colson steeled himself to respond in an equally authoritative and commanding way Hendricks had asked the question. He sucked in a deep breath, pushed out his chest…
And then deflated in fear. He had been terrified since finding the callback script in the subroutine, but he was surprised to discover how much more terrifying it was to be in the middle of a three-sided war.
He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. There’s nothing like that, at least not printed out —“
“What about digital?” Julie asked.
“Um, maybe. I would have to find a janitor’s tablet, or get back to my —“
“There’s no time, Colson. We need to figure out how to get down to that server room again.”
As soon as the alarm had begun ringing, the doors leading into and out of each level were locked. And unlike the soft, bubbly walls, the doors had no give. Constructed from solid steel and mounted on a single, tall hinge that stretched from floor to ceiling, they were nearly indestructible. Much of the base, Colson knew, was designed to ‘flow,’ a term he’d heard from some of the engineers that meant it was created to move gently with the creaking and displacement of the ice. The levels themselves were stacked on top of one another, but besides the connecting stairwells, a layer of ice was sandwiched between the floor of one level and the ceiling of the next. The walls were cut from the ice as well, then covered with the wrap of liquid pockets to maintain temperature on both sides.
It was a remarkable feat of engineering, but it had also been designed with a few security concerns in mind.
Namely, there had been a lot of thought put into how to keep people inside the base, or keep unwanted visitors out. To accomplish this, most of the levels had the ability to close their massive doors, severing the ties to the rest of the base.
Colson had explained this to the team when they’d reached the door and found it locked. His keycard wouldn’t work either, of course, and even if there hadn’t been a lockdown procedure enacted, the security computer system would have by now gotten around to deactivating him anyway.
“We’re stuck,” he said for the fifth time. His mild claustrophobia hadn’t kicked in fully yet, and it likely wouldn’t if they remained in the hallway or larger open spaces, but he’d never felt completely comfortable in the station, knowing that he was packed into a sardine can surrounded by ice. “We’re stuck, and there’s nothing to do but —“
“There’s nothing to do but figure out how to get out of here,” Hendricks said, whirling around to face Colson. “If you really think there’s nothing you can offer us, why don’t we just shoot you now and get it over with?”
Colson gulped. “Sorry. I’m a bit claustrophobic, that’s all. I’m trying to ignore it, but with the doors locking and everything…”
“You chose to come work here?” Hendricks asked.
“It was a lot of money.”
“Yeah, I hope so. There’s always a price, isn’t there?”
Colson wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He knew the group wasn’t a huge fan of his, and he owed his life to them, but he wasn’t sure how he could help. He had never been the heroic type, and he had certainly never considered that he would be in a situation like this. He was ‘brains,’ not ‘brawn,’ but even his intelligence was failing him now.
What can we do?
There was nothing about this situation that was familiar to him, aside from the fact that it was happening in the place he was currently living. He knew the others understood that to mean he should have an additional familiarity with the place, but he wasn’t one to spend undue effort observing his surroundings. He knew the walls were covered by some sort of liquid-filled balloons, and he knew the doors locked when there was a lockdown.
Nothing the group didn’t already know.
“Colson, you still with us, buddy?” Reggie asked. Colson had drifted off into his own thoughts, trying to find something of value he could offer everyone.
“Yeah, uh, sorry,” he said sheepishly.
“Boss,” Kyle said from behind them. He had run up from somewhere farther back down the hallway, almost far enough down the curved alley that he couldn’t be seen. “We have company. Other side this time.”
“Other side?” Hendricks said. He glanced over at Colson expectantly.
“Yes, that’s right,” Colson said. “There are two entrances to some of the levels, not including the elevator.”
“Some of the levels?”
“Right,” he explained. “The highest and lowest levels are the smaller, while some of the middle levels — the common areas, meetings rooms, and larger support team levels — are larger. So those have two sets of stairs.”
“Colson,” Hendricks said, “this is the sort of information that will come in handy. Remember the ‘how to not die’ conversation?”
“Of course,” he said. “It’s just — I don’t know what you need. I don’t know how I can help.”
“Colson, you can help by not getting shot, and filling us in on every minute detail you can think of about this place. Nothing obvious — we have eyes. But if you know of something that falls into one of three categories, I want to hear it as soon as that nerd-brain of yours digs it out of the file.”
“Got it.” Colson thought for a moment. “What are those three categories?”
“One: things about this place that only guys like you remember. How many stairs between each level, how many toilets in all, I don’t know. Numbers stuff. Two: things you’re just now putting together, based on other information and observations you’ve had, like, ‘hey, team, maybe we shouldn’t walk over there, because that’s where we keep our killer drones.’ And three: things that might kill us. That goes for all of u
s — you see or hear something that might kill us, please say something.”
Hendricks’ speech had started as a directive toward Colson, but now he was addressing everyone. He waited for their nods of approval, his eyes resting longer on the non-military personnel — Mrs. E, Julie, Ben, and Colson.
Kyle stepped in. “Sounds like whoever’s trying to get in is almost through the doors. We need to get a move on.”
“Agreed,” Reggie said. “How do you suggest we do that?”
“How about this?” Joshua said, picking up a long metal tube from the floor next to one of the dead security guards. It was the same RPG that had temporarily disabled Hendricks. Joshua slung it over his shoulder and practiced aiming the massive unloaded weapon.
“You even know how to use that?” Reggie asked. He sidled up to Joshua and took it from the younger man, taking his own turn with the launcher.
“As well as you do,” Joshua said. “How much arms training have you done with it?”
“Plenty. Hey, throw me that round over there,” Reggie said, motioning to the triangular warhead strapped to the security guard’s back.
Joshua gave him the round and helped him load it. “Seriously, though. How much training do you have on that thing?”
Reggie checked that the RPG was loaded, then swung around to rest of the group. “RPG-32, standard-issue HEAT round, unaltered. I’d suggest getting back a bit. There’s quite a bit of throw to this one.” Without waiting for anyone to move, he fired. The tube ignited, sending the RPG round forward and down, toward the edge of the door.
The detonation was louder than Colson could have imagined, and the wave of heat that washed over him seemed like it was going to sear the skin off his bones. Just when the heat grew to an intensity he couldn’t stand any longer, it died down completely. He was left standing, shaken but alive, with the rest of the group.
Apparently he was the only one who had fared badly. The others were already gathered around the door, waving the smoke away, to see what the damage was. Reggie’s trick, though perhaps a bit reckless, had worked flawlessly. The door was hanging from a single section of the long hinge, the metal twisted and dented in where the bulk of the explosion had been focused. Bubbles on the wall on both sides of the hallway had burst and were dripping with the thick fluid that filled them, oozing down the ice that was now exposed.