Making the Grade (Omnia Online Series Book 2) (16 page)

The capsule trip back to the spaceport was as quick as usual, but it gave Drake a chance to ask Samantha for an update.

“Samantha, I know it’s only been about two hours since I asked you to keep an eye out for the cargo van, but have you seen anything… it’s getting on toward sunset.”

“Yes, Drake, just a few minutes after you entered the electronics store the cargo van took off from one of the suspected locations.  I’ve since focused the camera more tightly on that area… I’ve noticed something odd about the area, the canopy of trees seems to be covering something there, like a rock formation, or something that doesn’t allow the trees to grow straight up.” said Samantha.

“Hmm, maybe that’s their based then.  Anything else to report?”

“I had a second camera follow the van, it headed north and landed in a small clearing about a kilometer from a settled area, there were some animals loaded in the van, and then it returned to the suspected base.  It appears that there are teams of people along the edge of the settled areas, that collect what they need, and the prospector's van is being used to transport the people and animals,” said Samantha.

“Thanks, Samantha.  Request an air-car rental, preferably something dark green, to meet us at the High Jinx.  Make the rental for three days, which should be enough to complete the mission.  Oh… could you let Fiona know that I’m going to be busy tomorrow, but she’s welcome to come in and finish her inventory of the ship?” Drake requested.

“I’m requesting the air-car, and calling Fiona now.  I did find a dark green air-car, is the color to better blend in?” asked Samantha.

“Yes,” replied Drake.

At this point, the capsule came to a complete stop at the terminal in the spaceport.

Drake made a jog to his ship to get ready for scouting the base of this group of brainwashers.  It seemed a strange way do get people to do something, why go through all the trouble and risk?

“Samantha, do we have one of those underground hide bags, like I used on that last training mission?” Drake asked.

“No we have nothing like that in the ships stores we inventoried so far.” said Samantha.

Drake thought,
‘Well one last thing to pack in.’

Drake took out the new radios and paired them together each with it’s remote.  Then he put a small piece of duct tape on one of the controllers and it’s paired radio so he could tell them apart in the dark if needed. After matching the radios and controllers, Drake had Samantha give him the comm code of a comm broadcast station, that focused on political discussion, counseling and weather.  With the station locked in, and the radios checked out, he turned them off and placed them back in his backpack.  The pack was almost full with all that it carried.

Drake loaded his backpack and carbine into the green air-car.

It was now about 8 pm, and he wanted to start scouting the base in the middle of the night when people tend to be the least alert.

Drake got into the air-car and programmed the route.  The vehicle had fifteen hundred kilometers to cross since Drake wanted to approach his target indirectly and land in a small clearing about 10 kilometers off.  He had the air-car fly the route low, and slow as it approached the target.  The trip would take a couple hours.

Drake climbed into the car and did his best to relax and try to catch a nap while in route since he expected to have a long night.

***

“Drake, we’re almost at the landing point you selected,” said Samantha’s voice, bringing him out of a fitful, restless sleep.  With possible action nearing Drake had found it difficult to sleep, even his training in meditation didn’t overcome the underlying tension.

So Drake was fully alert and ready to go as the air-car descended into the dark forest.

Drake put on his helmet to be able to use the built-in optics to see out into the night darkened forest.  As the car reached the bottom of its descent, Drake directed the car, through Samantha, to move to one side where there was some overhanging vegetation.

Once the car was half covered in the bushes, Drake exited the vehicle and ordered it to shut down.  The air-car’s, landing gear extended and it settled onto the ground, then it went silent.

The forest became a place of silence and darkness until Drake started to notice the natural sounds of the area’s nightlife.

Drake finished concealing the car by cutting some of the surrounding bushes to cover the exposed front half of the vehicle.

With the car hidden, Drake slung his carbine and backpack, then set off into the forest in the direction of the suspected base.

This trip was much easier on Drake then the last time he was in the same forest, due to his armor.  The helmet’s interior doubled as a display that Samantha could control, and she used it to illuminate his path.

As Drake traversed the forest, he saw some of the areas nightlife, but no people.  The software he added helped Samantha isolate many of the local forms of wildlife that Drake would have otherwise missed, and this helped him avoid any confrontations that might have caused noise.  Silence and stealth would be his allies for tonight's work, so he didn’t want to get tangled up with the near-cat with her litter, out for their night's play.

Even trying to move quickly, Drake couldn’t manage to close the distance to the presumed base in less than two hours.  He could have made the trip in half that time except that he was trying to remain quiet in the dense forest, where the trees and bushes limited his vision and gave him many chances of making noise.

As Drake closed the final distance to the camp, he first noticed the firelight.  Drake thought that this was odd since it would be something the optics on the space station could see, against this otherwise dark part of the planet.  But it would help his attempt at staying hidden since any people near the fire would be night blind.  Samantha would help keep Drake from getting blinded by the light, by selectively dimming the helmet visor for him.

Drake looked into the clearing, this is when he first spotted the wrecked ship.

“Samantha, can you  tell what type of ship that was before it wrecked?” Drake asked.

“It’s hard to tell, with so much of the craft damaged and buried…  But, do you see those oversized engines?  I believe this ship was a Trient-Sellnor Class Transport, it’s a type of freighter that hasn’t been in service for more than 1500 years.  That engine type was an old class that was too loud, inefficient and caused too much environmental damage, so it was banned on most planets after a better type of engine was developed.”

Drake looked out on the scene.  What he saw looked like someone had been excavating the ship, there was one whole side exposed.  There was even an area under the wreck that had been cleared away.

No one was digging around the ship, but neither were they sleeping.  Drake figured the time to be near midnight, and all the people he could see were lined up near the edge of the area that had been excavated.  They were all down on their knees and seemed to be bowing in the direction of the area under the ship.

Drake tried to slip around the edge of the clearing to get a better look at what was going on.

Just as he found a spot where he could look down into the area excavated under the ship, he saw something being lowered out of a hatch on the ship's underside.

The object was kind of bulky and about a meter and a half square in shape.  As Drake watched the object moved out of his sight and behind the rear of the cargo van where he suspected it was being loaded.

“Drake, you know that slight possibility I mentioned?” Samantha asked. “The one about the chances of there being an illegal A.I., well I’ve good news and bad news for you.”

“Let me guess what the bad news is.  That’s an A.I. there in the middle of that crowd?  What can be good about this?” he asked.

“Well, there is actually a lot bad about going up against an A.I., but the one good bit of news is, there is traditionally a sizable Imperial Reward for eliminating any rogue A.I.s.” said Samantha.

Drake moved around the edge of the clearing to see if he could find and angle to get a shot off at the box he saw a few seconds ago.

As he was moving through the woods, he heard the sound of the van lifting.  By the time he regained sight, it was vanishing beyond the top of the trees.

“Samantha, can you track that van using the space station’s optics?” Drake asked.

“Yes, for now.  But we need to get after it fast.  That van was heading in the direction of the city, and if it gets there, who knows how long it will be before it starts taking over the city services.”

Drake turned and started heading back to his air-car, and a faster pace, with much less concern for stealth then he displayed on the way in.

He asked, “What do you mean? What do you think it will do if it reaches Vastal?”

“One of two things, either head for the space station in an attempt to flee the planet, or it will go to ground somewhere and start trying to defend itself.  If it does the second, it will take over services and shut down those that it isn’t using, like cars, the tube way and shuttles.  It will take over the power grid and data-net, and do anything else it can think of to delay a response while it tries to take control of the planet.”

“Great, so if I’m in the air-car, it will crash me into the ground?” asked Drake.

“No, the air-car has built-in firmware to prevent it from crashing.  But if the vehicle is hacked, it could shut it down, forcing it to make an emergency stop where ever it is.” Said Samantha.

“We should also consider that, if it determines we’re a threat, the A.I. will try to find ways to target us more directly.  So when the A.I. gets near the city, I’m going to send the Governor a warning to close the spaceport, and raise an alarm.  But shortly after giving the alert, I’ll have to start looking for any signs of hacking.  If there is any attempt I’ll have to turn off my comm access, to avoid any attempt by the A.I. to hack into me and take over.” said Samantha.

“Shit, so you can’t help me with this one?” asked Drake.

“I’ll do what I can, but after a point, it will all have to be internal to the suit alone.” She replied.

The trip back to the air-car took about an hour, Drake just couldn’t run all out in such a dense forest.

After the car was in the air and headed back toward the City, he asked, “So how far behind are we?”

“The cargo van is blockier than this air-car and will take a little longer to make the trip.  So once we get to the city, we’ll be about thirty minutes behind the van.  We just have to hope the cities protections against hacking slow the A.I. down, giving us a chance to close the distance.” replied Samantha.

This time, as Drake headed back to Vastal, there was no way he could sleep, so he just did his best to relax into a meditative trance while the air-car ran at its top speed to close the distance. 

There were no speed governors outside Vastal city limits to slow his trip down, and Drake had already had Samantha set the car to ignore the limits inside Vastal, based on his marshal's warrant.  He was pretty sure that the van wouldn’t slow down either, so the speed limits wouldn’t be any help.

About 30 minutes out of Vastal, Drake heard Samantha say, “I’ve informed the Governor that we’re dealing with a rogue A.I., and shortly afterward everything that was capable of space flight launched for the space station.  This will delay the A.I., meaning that for now it’s trapped on the planet since all space ships and services went dark shortly after broadcasting a general warning.”

“Since it’s the middle of the night, I doubt many will have heard any warnings.” replied Drake.

“Based on the last video I’d received before the space station went dark the cargo van appeared to have turned, to head in toward the middle of the city.” said Samantha.

“So where do you think it’s heading now?” he asked.

“Its last course is just out of line for some of the likely targets, but lines up directly with the Sarasina Memorial Hospital.  That’s Vastal’s main hospital and the place where they took the Dwarf we captured a few days ago.  I give the likely hood of that being its new target at close to an 86% chance.” replied Samantha. “Fortunately for us, this change in course closes our angle of approach and buys us about 3 minutes,” said Samantha.

“Why would it head to a hospital?” asked Drake.

“A hospital or clinic would have a lot of medical pods that the A.I. could use for conditioning more followers.  But a hospital also has more people, access controls, and cameras.  The A.I. will be able to find more systems it can take control of for self-protection, at the target hospital.” said Samantha.

“It's unfortunate that the Governor didn’t prepare ahead of time enough to close off the data-net.” She continued, “I’m going off the net now, I hope that we haven’t yet been identified yet by the A.I.”

“Provided that the A.I. still hasn’t shut down this air-car, should we land on the hospital roof?  Do you by any chance have the layout of the place?” asked Drake.

“Yes, I did get the standard map of the hospital, that’s posted online. I was also able to use your Marshal’s access to get the building schematics from the City Records Office,” said Samantha.

“As for where to land, I think the A.I. will want to gain access to the hospital's medical pods as soon as possible.  The cargo van couldn’t have fit many people.  I estimate that it only had room for six to eight individuals in the van with it, and that many only because it would care nothing for their comfort.  So it may attempt to immediately add more people to its service by putting them through conditioning quickly.” Samantha replied. “So the emergency entrance is the most likely place for them to have started.
”

“Remember, if the air-car starts making any sudden changes in direction, there is an emergency shut off there under the panel to the right of the display.  Just flip the panel up, and you’ll see a large orange button. We don’t want the A.I. to send us off on a long ride away from the hospital after all.” said Samantha.

Drake found the edge to the panel to the right of the car’s main holo-display, and he flipped it open.  There he found the emergency shut off that Samantha remarked on.

“Ok, good to know, now can you produce a top down map of the hospital grounds?” asked Drake.  And he was immediately provided a map of the outside of the hospital, with the main and emergency entrances clearly marked.

“When they were loading the van, did you see anyone carrying weapons?” asked Drake.  He couldn’t remember seeing any guns, but the group was backlit by the fire at the time, and he couldn’t recall seeing any weapons.

“Yes, I was able to detect four figures carrying weapons, including the Droid.” replied Samantha.

“What droid?” he asked.

“You didn’t get a clear view, but there was some kind of maintenance droid that was helping carry the A.I., and it had a weapon attached to one of its limbs.” replied Samantha.

“Shit,” said Drake. “How hard will it be to take out the droid do you think?”

“It was an old style ship maintenance droid, I don’t imagine that it was armored.  It should be just as easy to disable as a human. I believe the A.I. would prefer it over people.  It will be able to have direct control of the droid and another set of eyes.” said Samantha.

“Hmm, ok,” Drake continued to look at the map, “This looks like the closest place we can get to without being spotted by someone near the emergency room entrance.  The question is, do I move in slowly and safely, or crash in and try to achieve a speedy end?” said Drake as he considered his attack approach.

Drake looked into the night sky.  The Vastal City nightscape was unusually calm, while he watched he could see few air-cars, and some of those ahead were making a landing as he watched.  He didn’t know if they were going to ground on their own accord or if they’d been hacked.

While he was still a few minutes away from the hospital, the whole city went dark.  Drake immediately ordered the air-car to the street level.

“Samantha, do you think you can override the air-cars lights, and turn them off?” asked Drake.

“I don’t think that’s the right choice at this time, Drake.  Running dark would do more to attract attention than keeping the lights on.  We should just see how close we can get to the hospital,” said Samantha.

He was only about two kilometers from the hospital when the A.I. finally took notice of his air-car.  The first thing Drake noticed was the car lifting and starting to turn around.  So he followed Samantha's directions and hit the emergency shut off switch.  The air-car dropped down right in the middle of the road, came to a landing, the doors all opened, and the craft powered down.

Drake again slung the green backpack and carbine, then took off running toward the hospital.

The map of the area around the hospital that Samantha had displayed, was bordered on one-third of its circumference by a wooded area, that was marked with walking trails.  Drake headed down a side street where one of those trails emerged from the woods.  The other end of the trail came out on the back side of the emergency entrance, about 100 to 120 meters from the building.

As Drake neared the hospital, he started to pass people running in the opposite direction on the trail, away from the hospital.

It became apparent to Drake as he reached the end of the path, where the people were coming from. Someone had started evacuating the hospital through a side door.  Based on the big air vents and nearby disposal bins, Drake thought that this might be an entrance into the maintenance services section of the building. 

Drake was reminded of his recent training mission at this sight. 

This time, the building door was being held open by a man in a guard's uniform and people were exiting in a steady stream.  Some of the more able people were being directed to the trail Drake had just left, while others were being directed down a service road that ran along the back side of the hospital.

Drake approached the guard to introduce himself and try to get more information on what was going on.

As Drake approached the guard, he opened his visor and announced himself, since the guard seemed very nervous.

While still about forty yards away, Drake held up his empty hands and said, “I’m Marshal Horatio Drake, and I’m here to help.”

Drake continued to walk forward, but the guard seemed to relax when he heard that Drake was there to help, and not cause him more problems.

As Drake approached the door, he called out, “I’m trying to hunt down some fugitives that may have entered this hospital, can you tell me what’s going on here?”

“That’s no uniform you’re wearing.” The guard said. The guard was a dark haired human man that looked about 35 to Drake, on his shirt he wore a company tag with the name Josep Rufus on it.

“Yep, I was just hired as a temporary marshal by the governor to deal with this problem.  I doubt I’ll have the post long enough to get a uniform made.  So, what’s going on here, Josep.”

The man seemed to accept the fact that the Governor had hired Drake and that he was there to help.

“Don’t know exactly, we have this evacuation plan laid out in the case of a fire or other threat to the building.  I heard on my comm that someone was attacking the emergency room, and then there was an evacuation alarm that sounded like a fire drill.  I came to this post like I’ve been trained to do, but the comms died shortly after the alarm started, then after a few minutes the alarm was cut off too.” said Josep.

“Good, I think you did the right thing.  Well, I have bad news for you.  I was tracking a rogue A.I. to this building, and I believe that it’s trying to take over the hospital, starting with the emergency room.  So I’m going to enter here and try to see what I can do to bring a stop to it.” said Drake.

When Drake mentioned the presence of the rogue A.I., the man’s eyes went wide and his face a little pale.  For a second Drake was worried that the guard might faint, but then he appeared to recover on sensing Drake’s confidence that he could do something about it.

“Ok,” said the guard, who still seemed nervous, “so what should I do?” asked the guard.

Drake looked at the man for a second, he didn’t have any confidence that this guard would be very helpful to him on the inside.

“I think you're doing the right thing by following your orders and helping these people to evacuate.  Once the people stop showing up, I would ask that you try to find whoever is in charge of the buildings security and let them know that I’m in the building.  I’ll be heading in the direction of the emergency entrance to try to deal with this problem.” said Drake.

Based on how much the guard relaxed when Drake suggested that he should find his superior, he decided he was right in not asking this man to accompany him.  Drake would have to be careful, though, not to get shot by building security while trying to kill the A.I.

After Drake had entered the building, he asked Samantha, “Sam, what do you think about cutting power to this building.  Doesn’t the power enter in through this section?”

“Yes it does,” replied Samantha, “but there are probably people in this hospital who would die if the power was shut off here.  Since I imagine you're talking about turning off the power at the power distribution panels?” asked Samantha.

“That was my thought, yes.  Maybe even blow up the board to keep it off, but it sounds like you think that would be a mistake?” asked Drake.  “How about just the third floor where the emergency room entrance is?”

“That would be a better choice if we had to turn off any power at all.  The third floor is just for emergency, imaging, and labs. A lot fewer patients would be involved,” replied Samantha, she still didn’t sound thrilled with the idea, though.

While Drake was considering his options, he looked over the floor plan as Samantha projected it on his helmet's display.

The hospital was built on the slope of a hill, so it was laid out in such a way that the first three floors all had an external entrance.  The maintenance and building services area where he entered was a floor below the emergency room.  This level provided its own services, including the Family Birthing Center, Cardiovascular, and Short Term Surgical services.

Drake could only imagine that the A.I. would have it’s minions spread out through the rest of the hospital after it had control of the emergency room area. He wanted to cut the power to slow the A.I. down and make it change its plans.

“Ok, maybe the risks outweighed the benefits of cutting the power for now.  So, let’s head up the stairs to the third floor and see what we can do,” said Drake.

Two stairwells accessed both the second and third floor.  Drake headed to the one furthest away.  This stairwell was further from the emergency room but opened on the third floor to a kind of alcove.  The nearer stairs opened right onto the hallway leading into the emergency waiting and registration area, which Drake thought would be a weak tactical position to be in.

Drake thought that one of the problems he would have was trying to tell the A.I.’s minions from the hospital staff and patients.  Then he remembered that they had been living rough in the woods, so they were dirty and probably armed.

Drake considered first going down to the first floor, where hospital security was located but decided against it.

As Drake moved through the building, he noticed a few frightened people. He ordered anyone he saw to exit the building by the door he had just come through.

The alcove that led to the stairwell on the second floor was empty of any people, so Drake opened and entered the stairwell.

He heard voices from the next floor up.  With his stunner in his right hand, Drake carefully started up the stairs.

Drake had spotted the guards before they noticed him.  He backed off a pace around the turn in the stairs and called out, “Hello, I’m Marshal Horatio Drake, and I’m here to help.”