Unstable Prototypes (53 page)

"Slidepads are, I guess, jammed?" Paolo
drawled, his level of calm now clearly chemical in nature.

"What the hell is going on!?" Rogers growled.
"This is a test. It has to be. Things don't go this wrong unless
someone is doing it on purpose. Well, I'm not going to let them
catch me off guard. Stick to the book, right? You can't get in
trouble for following procedure."

Paolo tapped at the computer screen at this
station.

"It says here we're supposed to post armed
sentries, then dispatch engineering teams to fix the damaged
equipment."

"Good. We can do that. Let's do that!" Rogers
rambled, keying the intercom. "Attention!"

The building shook once more, causing the
lights to flicker and die, and killing the public address system
with a sad little fizzle. The backup power came online for a few
moments, then a second distant explosion plunged them back into
darkness. Finally the red emergency lights flicked on. Rogers tried
to hold herself together, and for a few seconds it seemed like she
would succeed, but a final explosion somewhere on the outside of
the building startled her, and she collapsed into tears.

"Why did this have to happen
now!?
I
was two weeks from having enough service time to get the
scholarship, and then I would have been out of here and studying
liberal arts back home," she sobbed.

The door burst open, prompting a startled
shriek and a new round of sobs, and in rushed an aging man with a
similar uniform. Unlike the less dedicated cadets, this man was
following dress code to the letter, with the exception of his name
badge, which had been torn off.

"Please don't hurt me!" Rogers screamed.

"Rogers, that's the new guy!" Paolo
proclaimed, seemingly proud of himself for contributing to the
situation.

"Which one of you has the current code for
the armory? We are under attack, and it looks like I'm the only one
in this damn facility with any training," the veteran barked, his
words having an odd slur to them, thanks to an obvious piece of
major reconstructive surgery that had been done to his chin.

"I do, we both do! Take it! Do something!"
Rogers cried, digging out a sticky note with the six digit code
scribbled on it.

The veteran snatched the note and delivered a
look that compressed all of the hatred and disdain he felt for the
entire generation of soldiers into two seconds of glare. He then
pounded out of the monitor room and down the hall. The cadets
watched him go.

"So what do we do now?" Paolo asked.

A tone sounded over the emergency system,
followed by an announcement.

"Primary systems failure. Biohazard protocol
in place. All personnel evacuate to designated safe areas.
Biohazard containment apparatus failure possible. Lock down will
initiate in six minutes. Regroup at designated rally points and
await further instruction."

"Oh, wow. We should probably-" Paolo
began.

Rogers, in anticipation of his statement, ran
screaming from the room.

#

Back in the Declaration, Silo and Garotte
watched the mayhem through pairs of binoculars as they coaxed the
ship closer to the facility at a carefully controlled speed.

"Yep, the biohazard lights are on, and have
been for about two minutes. I count six troop carriers evacuated
already. They looked fully loaded, more or less. I'd say that's
about eighty troops out. How many total are there?" Silo asked.

"The full complement, as of this morning, was
eighty-four," replied Garotte. "I would call that fair warning.
Thirty more seconds and we go in."

"Just so we're clear, there isn't really any
hazardous material that we need to worry about, right?"

"Just Zerk," Garotte assured her. "The rest
of their inventory is basically military rations, expired
medication, and assorted equipment."

"Good. I don't like those hazard suits. They
never have enough room in the hips."

"Well, rare is the soldier with curves so
generously-"

"You can stop right there, Mister. That's
plenty of time. Let's get in and get out," Silo decided, popping a
clip into the pistol and slipping it into her holster, then
shouldering the grenade launcher.

"With pleasure," Garotte remarked as he
nudged the throttle.

The Declaration soared toward the facility,
clipping the tops of dunes and stirring up a sandstorm in its wake.
They reached the front doors of the depot in the final seconds of
the countdown, switching their ship into autonomous and dropping
out of the crew-deployment door just in time to slide under the
heavy duty shutter that was lowering into place. Silo delivered a
powerful thrust to an interior door, popping it open before the
bolt could engage and earning them entry to the wide,
warehouse-style hallways of the depot's interior.

Inside, the depot looked more like the sort
of place a college student would store their meager possessions
between semesters than a military building. Aisles wide enough to
maneuver a forklift were arranged in a regular grid, providing
access to row after row of shuttered storage compartments with
spray painted numbers. The thickness of the doors and complexity of
the locks were the only appreciable differences between a place
suitable for ammo crates or a place suitable for lava lamps. The
walls, floor, and high ceiling were all made of the same unpainted
metal, a quick to deploy, easy to work with material with a
diamond-plate texture but with half the weight and twice the
toughness of its steel ancestry.

"Where's Zerk being kept?" Silo asked,
hustling down the corridors.

"Storage unit EE-12. That should be the
southeast corner," Garotte answered.

They made their way deeper into the complex,
the only light coming from the deep red emergency lights that ran
from their own dedicated power supplies. Both of them had brought
flashlights, and each carried a weapon with a light attached, but
neither would be used unless absolutely necessary. The reason for
their caution asserted itself almost immediately, as a sweep of
bullets peppered the corner of a row of lockers.

"Right on cue," Garotte huffed.

He and Silo slid to a stop and crouched
behind the corner of either side of an aisle. Communication game in
the form of crisp, precise gestures. Garotte squinted at the bullet
damage on the dimly lit wall and signaled the direction the attack
had most likely come from. In turn, Silo listened and flashed a
sign indicating a single target, on foot, four aisles away. Without
so much as a single flinch of additional communication, each set
about the predetermined tasks. Garotte sprinted for the storage
container, carefully controlled strides making not nearly the noise
one would have expected, but more than enough to be heard. The
sound was enough to coax their pursuer out of hiding.

The enemy soldier charged along in the
darkness, following Garotte's path in a parallel aisle. Silo picked
an aisle between them and matched them step for step. Thanks to her
time enduring Manticore's intense gravity, she moved in great,
bounding strides despite her heavy load of weapons and ammunition.
In moments she was between Garotte and their tracker. With
practiced motions she pulled a hand grenade from her munitions
belt, popped the pin, and started counting. When the time was right
she pitched the explosive down.

"Bunnies and Bats in three," she stated over
the radio.

She slid to a stop, shut her eyes tight, and
covered her ears. An aisle or two away, Garotte did the same, and
not a moment too soon. The grenade she threw exploded in a rush of
sound, pressure, and light. It hadn't done any damage, but it
wasn't designed to. In the near-blackness of the facility, the
flash-bang robbed their pursuer of what little night-vision he had,
and the burst of sound sent him reeling against the door of a
storage locker. Silo tried to move in, but the soldier blindly
fired his assault rifle, keeping Silo at bay. When the firing
stopped, Silo spoke.

"Listen! I realize that right now you
probably can't hear anything but a loud whistling noise, but we're
not looking to kill anyone if we don't have to. If you'd been
following procedure, you'd have evacuated by now," she called
out.

"Procedure!?" the soldier spat, hidden among
the aisles. "Don't talk to me about procedure. Playing it safe is
what cost me half my face! We're through with procedure."

"Who's we? Are you one of those technology
terrorists? The Ludds or whatever?"

"We aren't terrorists!"

"So yes, then," she stated, slinging the
grenade launcher down and drawing her pistol. "I'm happy to hear
that, because now I won't feel so bad if you end up getting
yourself killed."

Garotte's voice appeared in her earpiece.
"Reached the storage locker, accessing the medication distributor.
I need three minutes."

"I'll try, but stay on your toes, hon."

A burst of bullets punched holes in the
storage locker across from her. She began moving backward with
slow, measured steps, attempting to remain as silent as possible.
With all of the equipment she was carrying, it wasn't an easy task.
Ahead, still hidden by the crisscrossing corridors, the enemy
soldier moved with equal care and even less success. When he
stopped moving, so did Silo. For a few seconds there was only the
sound of her own breathing and the distant click of the equipment
Garotte was manipulating. Then came a distinctive sound with which
Silo was quite familiar. It was like the jingle of an empty key
chain bouncing to the floor, followed by a heavy thump and rattle.
Around the corner ahead of her bounced a round, red, baseball-sized
grenade.

In a decision made in the heartbeat available
to her, Silo took two quick steps forward and punted the fallen
grenade with all of the strength she could muster. As it screamed
down the long aisle ahead of her, she scrambled to dive into an
adjoining row. The blast that followed wasn't nearly as bright or
exciting as the flash-bang had been, but it was a lot more
dangerous. A clap of detonating explosive splashed the surrounding
walls with brilliantly glowing flecks of molten metal. The globs
cut through the metal walls like wax, setting fire to whatever the
doors had been protecting. The rest pooled on the floor briefly,
before eating through and becoming an ominous glow from below.

"What was that?" Garotte squawked in her
earpiece.

"Thermite grenade," Silo huffed, "I hope
you're almost done, because if you aren't, we're
both
almost
done."

"If you can help me get this door hitched up
a few centimeters without having to unlock it, the deed will be
done."

"Coming your way."

The fire suppression system, a sprinkler that
operated independently of power, began to trigger and douse the
thermite-afflicted section of the floor. Because of the imprecise
nature of the fire system, and thermite's tendency to heat up a
much larger area than normal fire would, most of the rest of the
heads triggered as well, making the metal flooring treacherously
slick and hiding the sound of footfalls behind the steady patter of
water. Silo slid into the aisle containing their target, and it was
instantly clear that this was the one storage cabinet they actually
cared about protecting. The metal of the door was triple the
thickness of the others, and there were redundant locks on both
sides securing monstrous latches. Beside the door was a panel that
Garotte had managed to open. Inside were two shelves of canisters.
The top canisters were glass jars filled with something that looked
like lime-green, watered down baby food. The others were narrow
vials resembling cigar tubes. Each type of canister had a matching
socket. The baby food one was properly attached, but the other had
been replaced with one of the allergy medication refills.

Garotte pulled a pry bar from his bag and
tossed it to Silo, indicating the near side of the industrial
strength shutter. The locks there had been removed, while those on
the other side were intact, meaning that only half of the shutter
was free to move. Once again making use of the side effects of her
high gravity incarceration, Silo hammered the pry bar into the gap
and strained desperately. The edge of the door creaked and groaned,
budging just an inch or two. Without a word, Garotte pulled an
energy pistol fuel cell from his belt and slipped it through the
gap.

"Good enough, my girl," he said, turning to
pull the contents of the medical panel into his pack.

Silo gratefully released the bar. The tension
of the door forcing itself shut hammered the bar's end into the
floor plating.

"Leave it! The fuse is lit, we've got to
move," Garotte advised.

The enemy soldier pounded into the hallway
and leveled his weapon. They raised their own.

"Hold it right there!" he barked. "That's
enough! You are going to tell me what you are after, what you did,
and how to undo it. Then you are going to come with me and we are
going to-"

"Look, if you want any answers, you'll need
them pretty quick," Garotte snapped. "See, that panel there is the
medication distribution point. It keeps a steady flow of sedative
circulating through those tubes. We swapped it out for epinephrine,
which is more or less the opposite of sedative. You'll want to pop
that vial out and replace it for one of the ones I've got in the
bag. It'll only really work if it hasn't woken up yet, though."

From behind the door, a sound like someone
jiggling a stuck silverware drawer became apparent, periodically
rattling and shuddering.

"There goes that idea, then," Silo
quipped.

"Not to worry. The sedative only keeps its
brain asleep," Garotte explained. "The primary security measure is
the complete removal of all power sources. That thing will barely
be able to move until it can get some sort of juice into its
batteries. And that couldn't happen unless someone was to, say,
toss a plasma clip in there."