Chapter 20
The interface device needed for Ping to make more Biotronics devices was in a tech lab up the coast. As far as Blake knew, the Feds weren’t linking any of their activity to the Biotronics development, yet, so the security may not be as ramped up as it would no doubt be when they joined the dots. Osiris would no doubt be on to it very soon, so they had to move. Worst case scenario, they knew what the next objective was for the fugitives, and the device had already been moved. Either scenario would end in the team having to raid the facility, so they got onto it immediately.
Ping and Cindy were both remaining at the house, while Jack and Blake took the two functioning vehicles north. Cindy would be assisting in controlling the Ferrari’s attack and defence systems remotely. Jack was tired of calling Cindy’s vehicle ‘the Ferrari’ so officially renamed it ‘The Coffin’, for its lack of windows from the exterior.
The plan was still evolving as they drove, with Cindy hacking through Fed systems to get layouts for the facility, and Ping controlling the required satellites and ancillary systems from Wing’Tan the Feds still hadn’t had time to find. They had a wealth of hardware available on that note, as most of Wing'Tan's hardware was under various pseudonyms of legitimate companies. Although the remaining members would be scrambling to get access to the gear and shift it, the truth was Ping and Loach controlled almost everything that had a circuit running through it.
Ping was activating a dormant microwave emitting defence satellite the Wing’Tan hid in LEO a few years back. “Damn it!”
“What’s up Ping?” said Cindy in a flat voice, not looking away from her screen.
“Bloody, Loach.”
“What, he’s alive?”
“I guess so, unless there is another tech genius from Wing’Tan that arose from the ashes and commandeered a satellite no one knows about!” Cindy stopped and looked up at him, he wasn’t grinning.
“Jack, its Cindy”
“Tell me something Sin, we’re less than an hour out and open road all the way.”
“One of the old Wing’Tan techs may be out snooping.”
“Loach?”
“Yeah, seems he didn’t go down with the ship. Wherever he is, he’s got access to global systems. He’s acquired a Sat that Ping was after. We don’t need it, but it would have been handy.”
“So he’s out there looking for something too. Let’s hope he hasn’t found the Fed lab yet. He’s an unpredictable bugger, he’d probably just as soon fry it as visit it.” Cindy looked over to Ping, he gave a slight nod.
“OK, well we have a mil Sat roving and throwing signals all over the show, which will hopefully keep the Feds off us for a few hours. You’ll have to make a smash and grab. I’m streaming the location and preferred access point of infil of the building.”
“It’s online now, we’re hammer down.” Jack flicked his comm off and dropped Betty down gripping and moving forward. As he went past 400, Blake started losing ground. The Coffin was damned quick, but had nothing on the bike.
The freeway from Sydney to Brisbane cut hours off the travel time. The B4 system cut even more off. Jack and Blake weren’t on the B4 though, it wasn’t fast enough, and if they were intercepted between off-load points on the B4, they were sitting ducks for an aerial assault.
Blake was moving at a little over 350, with little traffic ahead. It was a clear night, and the bright but hazed stars seemed closer when out of the cities. He looked over to the coast and could see waves crashing against the eroded land. At times the sea seemed to be lapping the road, it was only a matter of time before this section would be gone, unless the ice age everyone predicted kicked in first. Either way there would be no happy ending for a great deal of the remaining people on the planet.
“Blake, you there?”
“Yeah Sin, sorry, tuned out.”
“No time for that. See the blue holo to your right, with what looks like a bunch of stars on it?”
“Yup, pretty!”
“It’s a Sat map. In a few seconds it should change to red. Tell me if there is anything blue left on there.”
“Um, I’m doing three fifty here Sin, give me a minute to slow a bit before I start playing video games.” He took his foot off the pedal and engaged the speed limiter to 280 kilometres per hour, activating the proximity sensors in case he wasn’t looking at the wrong time.
“Right, checking. I’ve got three blue stars Sin.”
“They’re Sats I don’t have mapped. Tap them with your finger and they will be uploaded to my system here. Then I can tag them.”
Blake tapped them, they enlarged momentarily. He looked back ahead and got on the comm. “Done Sin.”
“Damn!”
“What?”
“They’re not showing up. It means they’re being cloaked. The only reason you can get them is my sensors triangulate relative star intensities in the local area. Short story, someone is messing with those Sats, and I don’t know who they are.”
“Sounds like a cock up in the making.”
“Maybe. Tap the nearest Sats to each one of them and I’ll tag them instead. If they are in geostationary orbit, I can still send signals to disrupt their comms.”
“Blake, it’s Ping.”
“More good news?”
“Yes, actually. I’ve run an analysis on the lab activity in the last twenty-four hours. Nothing has changed, same power usage, same vehicle movement, no increase in comms activity. They don’t know you’re coming.”
“That is good news. ‘Bout damned time.”
“Get to the RDV with Jack and we’ll go through the best entry and exit points.”
“Roger. Comms down.”
Blake disabled the comm, and with it, half the fruit glowing up the vehicle. He took all of the aids and sensors offline and dropped the hammer. The boost was intense, Blake could actually feel his internal organs pushing through the back of the seat. “Holy crap!” he said to no one in particular as he went past 350, at 370 he levelled off when a few random lights started flashing across the windscreen. He was too scared to read them, but he figured they said ‘dead man driving’, or something similar.
An overlay came up on the windshield that had light and dark red patches. Blake soon found they were undulations in the road surface, the darker the deeper. After hitting a few pretty dark spots that nearly threw him off the road, he used the display to weave his way through the highway. The car was surprising responsive considering he was travelling about two hundred kilometres per hour faster than he usually drove.
He blew past an onramp from a small town. The sensors on the cop’s car blipped and woke the dozing officer. By the time he looked, he could only see settling leaves and dust. Looking at the sensor, it read 372. He figured there was no point chasing, he’d just wander up after his nap and scrape whatever was left of the car off the cliff face. Plenty of time, pleeenty of time.
Fifteen minutes later Blake took the last freeway exit before Brisbane and pulled into the unnamed gravel road on his Sat Nav. He saw Jack step out onto the road, and pulled up behind some scrub.
“Hey slow poke, what did I miss?”
“Sorry, had to drop off your mamma.”
“Cute.”
“Well, Loach has commandeered some Sats in the area, Sin is trying to block them. There is no increased activity at the lab, so we’ll have an easy entry. And the device is definitely there, Ping hacked the inventory logs, it’s on a sub-level.”
“So we walk in the front door, ask for the device and walk out?”
“Hopefully. Cindy is going to jam all comms in the vicinity, making it look like a severe atmospheric storm.”
“She may not have to work hard, did you see the plasma bursts going off up the coast? It’s going to get nasty later.”
“Best we stop messing about then.” The two of them pulled on their nano-suits and only armed themselves with the Timmys, they would be more than en
ough fire power, and hopefully not be necessary. They then put on Defence Ministry overalls with the bio-readers Cindy had cooked up for them. It wasn’t foolproof, but if the signals were jammed in the area, it would be enough to get them in and out.
After a quick briefing to Jack of the entry area and requisite checkpoints, they headed off. It was only fifteen minutes to the facility, which was only itself fifteen minutes from Brisbane, but on completely unmarked roads. Ipswich was more or less a coastal establishment now, but was sparsely populated, almost everyone had moved on from the region after Brisbane was completely doomed to a fait accompli after the sea rose almost a half metre in less than fifty years.
Nonetheless, Ipswich had some resource and therefore a population, although not many would be aware of the existence of the Fed lab, it was a research facility, and they were questionable territory by the general public these days.
As Jack and Blake came to the first checkpoint, the two guards were busy slapping and thumping every piece of hardware they had. Thank you Sin, thought Jack. One of them came out of the entry with his hand on his holstered weapon.
“What’s your business?”
“We’re with the agency, here to pick up a low-priority device from the facility.”
“Low profile, in the evening, on a weekend?” The guard looked at him as though he believed Blake’s first breath, but nothing after it.
“Look buddy, I’m a little wired, we’ve been driving all day, for god knows what, for god knows who. All I know is I’m missing my boy’s birthday party because the fat-heads from above thought it would be fine to mess with my family life. I’m quite happy to turn around now and go back, you can explain it to them.” Blake started to raise his window and looked over his shoulder to see if it was clear behind.
“Hold on mate, relax. We’ve had a crap day here too. Some bugger tried to get in earlier, all jacked up on something hard. Now we have comms down, so it’s a little tense.”
“Yeah, sorry, miserable days all round, not your fault.” Blake smiled like he was on the same plane as the tired pissed-of minimum-wage guard.
“Looks like it. Let me scan your bio, and you boys can go about your business.” Blake held out his tag, the gates opened and he drove on. Jack stopped next, didn’t remove his helmet or speak, just lifted the flap on his overalls to show his tag. The guard scanned it and nodded his head across the gate threshold. Jack moved on and pulled up alongside Blake.
“So far, so good,” he said, removing his helmet.
“We just passed the peasants, we need our full bag of rubbish to get all the way in.”
“Oh, I’m full of rubbish,” winked Jack. “Just like you.” He put his helmet on Betty and walked towards the main entry.
The building had a large outer façade that was an optic-grid energy screen. It was used to prevent signal jamming. Blake looked a little concerned as they walked through it to the reception area. “Don’t worry,” muttered Jack, “if Sin hadn’t had that covered, we’d have been shot or stunned by now.”
They approached the counter. There was a single guard present with three holo-displays in front of him. They were stuttering as though there was static coming from everywhere. “Junk tech, what the heck is wrong with this stuff.” He looked up to Blake and Jack. “Must be a hell of an electrical storm going on out there fellas, everything is getting messed up at the moment. What can I do for you?” He took his hands away from the displays and reached for his written log books.
Blake walked to the counter while Jack stayed a few paces back to cover the angles. “We’re here to collect a device from lab five, on sub-level three.” The guard looked at him quizzically, looking up at the clock. Blake quickly added, “It’s late, I know, I’m pissed that we’re having to come all the way up here. But when the captain gets a directive from the Secretary, he doesn’t ask why, he just sends us out.”
“Fair enough, scan your bio and fill out the log.”
It all seemed too easy, but then these guys weren’t exactly top of the food chain, and probably couldn’t be stuffed with the hassle of asking questions that took them away from their HTV viewing. The guard gave them an access chip and pointed them in the general direction before turning back to cursing at the holos.
Blake and Jack walked down a corridor with continuous lighting on each side of the floor. The corridor was on a gentle downward slope and about forty metres long. By the time they got to the bottom they were definitely underground. At the entry to the lifts a voice came across in an even tone, “Please stand still, scan underway … please stand still, scan underway … please stand still, scan underway. Scan clear, please proceed.” The door to the lift opened.
The lift seemed slow and noisy. Blake figured the facility had to be fifty years old now, and the lifts were probably originals. The door signal indicated “3”, and the doors opened. From this point they had no idea what was in front of them, how many staff there were, or where the device exactly was. Ping described it as a black and silver box, about the size of a briefcase with what would look like veins on the outside of it. Can’t be too many of those here, thought Jack.
Plan A was to do a circuit of the labs, looking in any that were empty, and looking past the ones that weren’t, trying to see what was in there. They were hoping there was no security and only scientists, they would be easier to subdue if necessary.
As they walked along the corridor, they passed a security guard dozing in a chair. He briefly looked up, but carried on his snooze when Jack flashed his bio. The first two labs were occupied, but looked like they had chemical equipment in them, not likely for a device that was a biological-electrical interface. The third was empty, and where the device should be. A quick look around came up empty.
They moved out and carried on to the next lab. There were two scientists in there, one sitting at a computer and one with what looked like a briefcase with veins plugged into a series of computer arrays. A holo in the middle of the room was streaming data of some kind, not important right now. Neither of the scientists had seen Blake and Jack.
“Right, this is it kiddo. You mark one, I’ll mark the other. We’ll try and bluff our way through it, but if they get too skittish we’ll subdue them and take the case.”
“No guns, we don’t want collateral damage.”
“They’re scientists Blake, how much of a fight are the nerds going to put up?” He gave his best geek-boy facial, almost making Blake laugh.
“Game time.”
They walked into the room, with Jack staying half way between the door and the man on the computer. He could still get a look up the corridor and be close enough to strike.
Jack gave a muffled cough and introduced himself as he walked to the scientist working on the device. “Excuse me sir, I am Agent Blake Corten.” He showed his Fed ID to the scientist. “We have been instructed through the office of the Secretary of Defence to retrieve this device and return it to the Ministry.”
“The scientist looked at him startled. “Excuse me, I think you have the wrong lab.”
“I assure you we don’t, sir; here is the order.” He produced the documentation Cindy had made and passed it over. The scientist looked at it, then looked to the other scientist, before looking back to Blake.
Blake tried to maintain control over the situation. “Do we have a problem sir?”
“Well, we were told that this device was not to leave this table unless the Secretary himself was in the room.”
“Well, you’re more than welcome to call him if you want, I’m sure your career isn’t that important to you.”
“There is no need for threats, Mr Corten. Either way, our comms seem to be down at present. Curiously, at the same time you arrived.”
“Curious. It is a bad night out there, must be atmospheric interference. Either way, the device is leaving with us. Please disconnect it now.”
“Like I said, we were instructed not to
move it.” He took a few steps away from the table.
Blake stepped to the table in front of the device, as he reached for it the scientist swung an arm at him. Blake wasn’t expecting the geek to have a go, so was caught off guard. He stepped to the side, but the edge of a hand caught his check, just enough for him to lose balance.
Jack saw the other scientist reaching under his desk, the rush of adrenaline kicked in his vision and he charged at the man, knocking him off his chair. He saw a blur of blue change to red on his right, it was Blake moving around the other man. Looking back to his man, he could see him standing now and in a martial arts readiness stance.
“Bloody geeks, huh, Blake,” he said out loud. The scientist smiled and dipped his head. Jack moved towards him and got an expected volley of kicks, all of which he could predict. This muppet learnt how to kick, but couldn’t fight if his life depended on it. Jack stepped back, blocking the first few, then crouched as a round-house came, punching the attacker’s inner thigh hard with his right fist, followed quickly by a left arm elbow into his standing knee.
The man fell with a groan of agony. Jack immediately jumped forward and drove his heel into the shoulder, dislocating it. He then moved behind him and wrapped an arm around his chest, the other locking over and behind his head. He squeezed pressure to cut off the air flow, getting stuff all resistance from the dislocated shoulder. He looked up to see Blake.
The other scientist was facing the device about two metres away, Blake rushed him and shoulder charged him, as he lost balance he spun and grabbed Blake, pulling him down with him. The two grappled on the floor for a moment before Blake swung his elbow across, catching the scientist square across his jaw. A spit of blood flung off the side of his mouth as his head hit the ground. Blake stood and dusted his shirt off.
“Damned geeks,” he said, wiping a drip of blood from the corner of his mouth. He went to the desk, unplugged everything and put the device in his empty backpack.
Jack pushed the unconscious scientist away and got up off the ground. “Right, out the way we came in?”
“Yeah, easy money huh?” He tapped the pack and slung it over his shoulder.
They walked out of the room and down the corridor, about half way down the guard was walking towards them, he nodded as they passed. Jack looked at Blake and spun to follow the guard. As the guard neared the room he saw the two unconscious men and reached for his pistol. Jack lunged forward and grabbed his hand, but the guard spun, swinging Jack away.
Jack came straight back with a front kick, round house into a spinning heel kick. They were all deflected, and as he lost sight for a moment mid-spin, the guard swept him. He crashed hard to the ground and looked just as he saw a knee coming at his face. He rolled to the side but was caught by a right hook. The impact felt like a sledge hammer.
He saw a blur of blue coming from the left and pulled his arm up, the suit absorbing the force of the impact. Another from the right, and he did the same. For a split second Jack could see the guard didn’t know what had just happened, and it was all Jack needed. He grabbed the guard’s shirt and pulled him own head-butting him hard, blood spurting from his nose. He pushed him up enough to open his flank and drove his knee hard into the guard’s ribs. The momentum lifted him across to the other side of the corridor.
Jack picked himself up and looked to the guard who was on all fours panting. Jack spun and dropped his left knee to the ground, driving his elbow hard between the guard’s shoulder blades. He fell to the ground, not a move. As Jack stood, he saw Blake about ten metres down the corridor, shaking his head and giving him a thumbs-down.
Jack walked over, trying to wipe as much blood away as he could. “Thanks for the help, arsehole.”
“Meh, you looked in control. Kind of,” he grinned. “Now clean yourself up, we won’t get out of here with you looking like a bloody UFC fighter.”
Jack walked back to the lab and grabbed some antiseptic wipes and cleaned himself best he could. He walked out, and they moved towards the lift. They passed the two occupied labs, but none of the scientists even looked in their direction. They entered the lift and pressed the main floor button.
As they walked out, there was the familiar voice. “Please stand still, halt, non-sanctioned device detected. Halt, stay still. Halt.”
“Screw that.” Blake started running down the corridor. The lone guard on the front desk looked at his holos, then tapped a few screens. Blake was moving fast, twenty metres away, ten metres away. The guard started turning and reached for his pistol. Blake dropped the bag, three metres out he saw the guard raising his gun and dropped down into a slide across the ground. His momentum carried him right through the legs of the guard. As he fell, his pistol fired, just missing Jack who was still only half way down the corridor.
The guard hit the ground hard on his face, but didn’t move. Blake got up and started running for the door. Jack grabbed the backpack as he ran towards the front doors. The lighting in the foyer changed to a deep red, and a buzzer started ringing. A set of security doors started moving shut. They weren’t going to make it.
Blake looked at the optic grid façade. It made a stuttering light show, then disappeared. Blake let out a huge scream and dove at the screen. If he was right, and Cindy had seen the alarm go up, she would have disabled the grid. If he was wrong, he would be vaporised.
He crashed through the screen, shattering like glass noodles, with Jack following right behind. They ran for the vehicles, not knowing what defences would be in place when the lab was on lockdown. Cindy would still have the comms disabled for another ten minutes to give them time to clear, so they were on their own.