Chapter 40 – Burning Bridges
On District Thirteen, Captain Grey set his last mine on a strut between the Bolt and the Athletic Complex. He triggered his radio, "All right, gents. Done with phase-one. Commencing part-two.”
Captain Snow replied, "Finished here too. I'm going to see a couple guys about a boat.”
First Sergeant King and Corporal Sorpresa floated through the double zero, placing their last mines on braces and beams. "We're wrapping up. See you when you get out back," King replied.
Captain Snow triggered her mic. "Hey, Kilo, Splitter says our girl is swimming through this mission. I thought you told her to stay dry?”
"Kids now-a-days, what can you do?" King laughed.
"Kilo, you copy" Snow asked Captain Grey directly.
"Snow, this is Kilo. What channel is Splitter on?”
"Deuce-deuce," she answered. "All right gents, I'm going radio silent while I wake the Docs. Do what you have to do. Snow out.”
At the lowest of the connecting struts, First Sergeant King lit Corporal Sorpresa's torch. He attacked the beam; the super heated metal blasting into the air around them. The plasma-torch ripped through the metal like butter. Sorpresa laughed and First Sergeant King smiled.
Ashley paused to take stock of her resources. Three guards stood between her and the elevator bank. There was a lot of open space between them, too far for the handgun.
The elevator doors opened, three more guards stepped out.
"Armitage says keep your eyes open. Shoot anything that moves."
The three new uniforms set out at a jog, away from the hedge where Ashley crouched in shadow.
She planned her route and whenever the remaining men turned away or adjusted their stances, Ashley slipped closer. There were small pockets of cover between them, a planter here, a park bench there. Thirty feet, then twenty, ten.
Materializing from the shadows, she slipped up behind a corporal and drove the Little Dragon through the soft tissue above the crest of his hip, above his pants, but just under his vest.
The oiled blade pierced a kidney, spreading poison up into the lungs and severing major arteries before bursting out through the soft tissue of the throat.
The two other guards could hardly see her and hesitated to fire directly at their comrade. Holding the dead corporal upright with one hand, Ashley drew the detective's handgun and fired twice, killing the two standing men.
Ash pulled her blade from the NCO and stepped back. The three of them collapsed together.
She stepped over to the elevator bank and pressed the call button. While she waited, she stuffed her overflowing backpack with more grenades and badges. Mostly the guards had smoke or tear gas grenades, but she'd found a few of the lethal kind as well.
The elevator dinged; Ashley raised the handgun, ready to fill the car with hot lead.
The doors opened, the car was empty.
She propped it open with one of the dead soldiers and hit the call button again.
Her pistol at the ready, another set of doors opened. She propped this one open as well and then a third. The fourth car she jammed open with the backpack.
In the first car, Ash hit the button for the top floor, the guard's HQ. She popped two gas grenades inside and pushed the dead guard all the way in. The doors closed. In the second car, she sent two more grenades to the top floor, with another dead man along for the ride and did the same with the third.
Ashley strapped the backpack over her shoulders and slid the hoverboard between the pack and her back. She stepped into the fourth car and donned her gas mask. She hit the button for the top floor, and popped a gas grenade. She pulled the pins on two more as they climbed toward the command post.
Across the district, Captain Snow approached a pair of heavy, bolted doors. She landed and powered down her phase-cam. She waved a keycard at the access panel and the gate rolled back.
The district guards standing inside snapped to attention and saluted the officer.
"Wake the resident Directors," Snow ordered. "Have them call me here from their control center.”
Before long the nearby monitor fired up and a fresh faced lieutenant saluted and sounded off. Behind him, two sleepy-eyed doctors stood silently.
Captain Snow took the lead, "I've been sent to inform you that this facility has been compromised. Your internal network is secure, but the remainder of the district is blacked out. Prepare 7982 for emergency evacuation protocol three-alpha.”
"Which one is that," the thin doctor asked.
"The underwater one," his rotund colleague replied.
"Aren't they all underwater?”
"It's the deep one.”
"How deep?”
"Thirty-six months.”
"Does that mean I can go back to sleep now?" he asked.
The round one laughed. “It means that if you stay up for the next few hours and help me, you can sleep for a week.”
“You’ve got a deal.”
Outside, along the back of the wing, King and Sorpresa held torches to the connecting metal braces.
Snow arrived and triggered her radio. "Splitter, what’ve you got.”
"The kid is already inside the bank and moving upward.”
"And you were disappointed with her progress?”
"Well, she's killed everyone. We'll have to arrest her.”
"Not before she carries out her mission, Staff Sergeant.”
"This was supposed to be a dry op," Splitter asserted.
"She's not a soldier. She doesn't have to follow orders like you do. Do you copy, Sergeant?”
"Yes, sir. Splitter out.”
Snow looked over to King and Sorpresa. "Where's Grey?" she asked.
They shrugged.
"Goddamn it. Keep on it. I'll be back." Captain Snow pushed off and flew her gravity suit up into the night.
As her elevator neared the headquarters, Ashley could hear the commotion. The command post was a mad house, roaring chaos.
As the doors opened, she dropped the grenades in her hands and drew her handguns. The car unleashed more gas into the command center, and it unleashed Ashley.
Wearing the mask, she stepped out. She methodically picked her targets and opened fire. The guards and technicians fell around her, she spared no one.
In less than thirty seconds, Ashley fired her weapons over a hundred times. Her fingers were sore, burning, over twenty had fallen and none of them moved.
She crossed and entered the server room. In order to broadcast on the video screens, she'd need the internal network up and running. She leaned over the network connection grid, found the cable for terminal 726, the post in the garage where she'd inserted the drive, and disconnected it.
They didn’t want to cut power to the network running the gravity drives, so Ashley selected the system carefully. She located and rebooted only the particle servers running the communication systems, like Grey had told her, by briefly interrupting the circuit. There was no need to reboot the entire system, as long as you knew where the problem was.
Ashley traced the cables to the main router, which she disconnected and removed. Without it, no one on the district could make a call. Nothing could be transmitted; no citywide alarms could be sounded.
Ironically, this situation was only possible on controlled districts, like prisons and schools. In those places the main router was always located in the most restricted and controllable location, administration offices, command posts, headquarters.
The router in her pack, she smiled. "Objective two complete.”
Far below her, on the open mall, Splitter argued with Grey.
"Special Agent Kilo, yeah, you told her to do this, didn't you?" Splitter shouted.
"I told her not to." Grey said.
"Bullshit! You're the big bad ass! Killed a thousand guys all locked in tubes. Yeah, you're real tough.”
Grey stepped forward and punched Splitter in the mouth, knocking him from his feet.
"You son of a bi
tch!" The staff sergeant scrambled up and leapt at the newly promoted captain.
Captain David Grey stepped off the line of attack and delivered a stinging blow to the side of Splitter's head. The staff sergeant stumbled to the ground, his balance knocked out of alignment.
Splitter got to his feet but had a hard time standing. He didn't raise his hands. It took all of his concentration not to collapse to the ground. He wobbled on his knees, holding his hands up between himself and Grey.
Captain Snow landed between them. "I have three torches sitting cold because you two are out here proving your manhood to one another.”
Splinter dropped to a knee.
"What the fuck did you do to him?" she snapped at Grey. "I need him working.”
Splitter coughed a couple times and finally straightened up. It took him a minute, but he managed to point a wavering finger at Captain Snow.
"This is bullshit," he said. "She's out there killing citizens.”
"Get political on your own time, right now I need you on a torch." Snow stepped directly into Splitter's face. "I suggest you get to it.”
Splitter shook his head, took a moment to get his balance and lifted off toward the 7982 wing.
Snow turned on Grey. "Remember who the stranger is here, Captain.”
Grey didn't reply.
Captain Snow turned her elevation dial and lifted off. Grey watched them with his newly enhanced vision, and followed to the next task.
Within minutes, there were five torches burning through the metal beams holding the Project 7982 Laboratory to District Thirteen.