“Sahrin, can you open the cells?”
Her voice, thin and distant, came from a speaker above them.
‘I’ll try. I’ll have to hurry, I think they’re on to me. I’ve lost contact with Geoca.’
One by one, the doors of the cells slid open and their occupants emerged. Some ran, hurrying away before whoever had done this could change their mind. Others hesitated, not sure what was going on. Two soldiers went running past in a panic that was so blind that they didn’t seem to notice the group. If they did, they didn’t care enough to do anything about it.
“All of you, out of here,” yelled Reina, pushing the nearest of the prisoners towards the exit.
‘
If you could just let me out… We have things to do.’
It was the voice, loud and clear in Bark’s mind. Its owner was here somewhere. Bark walked along the corridor. There was one door that hadn’t been opened. Unlike the others, it had no locks or timing devices. It was welded shut, sealed by gobs of metal that held it tight in its frame.
“They really want this one to stay shut, don’t they?” Reina aimed her gun at the door. “Shall I?”
Bark nodded. Most of the door collapsed in a shower of dust. There must have been some sort of field as well. Terminals sparked, tiny bolts of lightning spitting through the air where they had been cut.
The room was bare except for a single bunk. The figure sitting on it stood up and faced them.
“Thank you. It’s been a long time since that door was open.”
“No problem.” So this was the owner of the voice.
“You don’t know me, but I know you, Bark. And the rest of your crew.”
“You’re right, I don’t know you at all, and since I’m not from here, I find it hard to see how you know me.”
The stranger came out into the corridor. His skin was black; but it was a real black, like night, not at all like Reina’s dark brown skin. His eyes were entirely black, without a speck of white in them. And when he opened his mouth to speak, his teeth were black as well. It was like looking into a shadow. The only color on him was the pale blue of his prisoner’s uniform.
“A long time ago, Bark, I gave a map to a member of the crew of the ship that you are now the Captain of – or
were
the Captain of, I suppose I should say, since it has been destroyed. That was thirty-nine Captains ago.”
“Well, if you are who you say you are, you’re something of a legend. There have been all sorts of stories about you.”
“I don’t doubt it. But for now, you’ll have to trust me. We can talk later.”
“Agreed.” There was a muffled explosion in the distance. “What are we doing?”
“One of the reasons I’ve been locked up here is that I know too much. If we destroy its power facilities, we destroy this place. And believe me, we
must
bring it down. I’ll show you the way.”
The speaker in the hallway hissed urgently.
‘It’s me! I think they’ve got me! Yes, they’ve got me, I…’
Reina leaped to the intercom. “Sahrin! What’s going on?”
There was no answer. Just a low, grinding static.
“We have to go,” said Bark.
“There’s someone we need to bring,” said the black stranger. “We’ll need him.” He went to a cell a few doors along, and stood in the doorway.
“You can come out now, William. Thank you for waiting. It’s time.”
A disheveled man came out into the corridor.
“It’s you! The voice was real, then.”
The black stranger nodded. “Yes, it was real, William. And now it’s time to do as we discussed.”
* * *
They had been cornered, but Geoca and Sahrin had done their work. Communications were a mess, working only intermittently when they worked at all. Half the monitors weren’t working, and most of the troops were locked out of the main part of the complex. And now the prisoners were loose, causing havoc. A group of them had overpowered the guards at the armory.
The war room was in chaos as well. With the communications down, everyone was coming in person to deliver their reports and get their orders. One of them, a sergeant, had come from the loading bays. His hair was caked with blood.
“Prisoners have taken two fliers, Secretary-General. We fought the rest of them off, and now they’re trying to get out through the ground exits. And the ship we sent to the control point is on its way back. We got a message saying that they found the Vice Secretary and a few men wandering around near the base.”
“And the control point?”
“Apparently it’s gone, Secretary-General. The Nefilim took it. A relief column got there too late. We lost that as well.”
The Secretary-General snorted. “They’re welcome to it. Bring the Vice-Secretary to me as soon as she gets here.”
* * *
The dark stranger knew his way around. “There,” he said after they had used a service elevator to get to an area a few levels above the landing bays. They were in front of an unmarked door.
“What’s in here?”
“Backup terminals,” said William. “We can access the system from there.”
The single technician in the room went into a state of shock when they entered. The black stranger picked the young woman up by her shoulders and put her on a seat near the back of the room.
“You don’t mind if we borrow your computer for a moment, I hope?”
She said nothing and nodded.
“Hello, how are you,” said Pig, and sat down in front of her.
She nodded again, this time slowly.
“Now William…” The black stranger pointed at the vacated seat. “You remember what we discussed, don’t you?”
William, who until now had appeared slightly bewildered by everything, came to life. He set to work, and soon the screen in front of him was a clutter of menus, dialog boxes and scrolling lists of options.
“What’s he doing?” Bark looked at the screen and quickly became confused. “Anything we should know about?”
“William here was one of their top system administrators, before falling out of favor,” replied the black stranger. “They found out that he had been sending information to the mutants. Of course, no one but a select few were supposed to know that the mutants exist, so he was doubly damned. They didn’t want to do away with him, because of his knowledge of the system here, and also because of anything he might know about the mutants. In case he might be useful some time, they threw him in jail.”
“Over the last few months, I’ve been in contact with him, just as I was in contact with you, Bark. I’ve been preparing him for this day. If anyone can bring their system down, it’s William. William, how are you doing? We will be having guests any minute.”
Reina had left the door ajar and was standing by it, listening for anyone approaching.
William nodded. He was reciting a stream of code into the headset’s microphone. A few seconds later he looked up.
“It’s done. I’ve released the bots. They have already started self-replicating, locking up all the free space on the storage devices and memory. Bit by bit, the system will freeze, until finally the whole thing will go into gridlock. By that time, BabyMutator will have wiped every CMOS in the place. They won’t be able to do a thing to fix it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Bark, “but it sounds convincing.”
William smiled. “Oh, they’ll be convinced, all right.”
Reina heard footsteps approaching. “They’re coming. We need to go...”
Pig got up from in front of the computer operator.
“I’m sorry about your job. I think you’ll find that the labor market here is about to suffer a major contraction. If I were you, I’d leave this place as soon as possible.” He followed the others out of the room.
They were out in seconds and found a stairwell. Above them, soldiers ran from room to room, kicking in doors and shouting to each other.
“How long until the system starts failing?”
“It’s already started.” Now that he was away from the computer, William had reverted to his soft-spoken self. “They should start to notice it in a few minutes. With the bandwidth that’s used here, it won’t take long to spread.”
“Then there’s no rush, is there,” said Bark. “We can just sit tight, and wait for it happen. Then when they’re all running around trying to figure out what’s happened, we can slip out.”
“It would be nice if it were that easy, but unfortunately it’s not,” said William. “The lighting will go soon, and this whole place will be plunged into total darkness. But more importantly, the power system will melt down. The storage units will either go dead or explode, depending on which part of their cycle they’re in. And the safeguards on the weapon systems will go down. They’re all that’s holding them…”
“Thanks. I think we get the picture. It’s time to go.”
“I know how to get outside,” said the black stranger.
* * *
THE POWER WAS FAILING. The computers were failing. Damn it,
everything
was failing.
“What is it?” demanded the Secretary-General. “Is it those things that you locked up in the network? Have they got loose?”
“No, they’re still where I put them.” The operator looked nervously up from her screen, wishing that she didn’t have to tell the Secretary-General about the other strange things that were happening. The links with the fliers and cruisers that were in flight had disappeared. Internal and external communications were frozen, as though they were choking on something. The lights flickered. Something rumbled deep underground, making the room shake.
“Fuck! FUCK!” The Secretary-General went to the monitors. He was sweating. Through the static and streaks of the disintegrating images he saw streams of soldiers, technicians and bureaucrats pouring out of the exits into the foothills, smoke billowing after them.
“Secretary-General, I think the lighting’s starting to go.”
The Secretary-General looked around the war room. The few people that were left were watching him, waiting for guidance.
Waiting for help. Imbeciles. They didn’t even have the sense to run.
“We’re done here,” he said. “It’s time to leave.”
They went to the landing bays, through corridors full of smoke and empty of people. The lights flickered on and off in celebration, spurring on the Secretary-General and his followers.
The situation in the landing bays was no better, and quickly getting worse. As they walked onto the deck, an overloaded flier tried to take off. It floated clumsily in the air, bobbing around like a ship on a swollen sea, then slid slowly, almost gracefully, down the volcano’s shaft. It veered to one side as the pilot struggled to regain control, and ploughed into several levels of offices and laboratories.
There were only two fliers left. The Secretary-General looked around at the soft, weak-chinned bureaucrats who had come with him. He didn’t need them.
He turned to a lieutenant. “Bring some men and come with me.”
The bureaucrats surged forward, confused. “But Secretary-General, what about us? What are we going to do?”
“You? You can die.” The Secretary-General turned to the lieutenant. “You heard me.”
The bureaucrats turned and tried to run, but they had no chance of getting away. A couple of the more sprightly ones almost made it to the exits, but the rest fell where they stood. The soldiers were from the Secretary-General’s private guard. Their conditioning was working hard now, straining to overcome the obvious and increasing challenge to their instinct for self-preservation, but it was holding well. They lowered their guns and stood still, their minds frozen. They would die before they would respond to any stimulus other than a direct order from him.
The other flier took off. It rose to the top of the shaft, and was just about to accelerate away when another ship appeared in the sky above it.
The Secretary-General watched as the new flier hovered for a few seconds, then swooped down, firing as it came. A beam sliced the lower craft in half and the two sections fell away, disintegrating against the walls. Bodies spilled out, tumbling into the depths. The new flier hovered in the circle of sky above them, spinning slowly, its lights blinking.
The fires were spreading now. On the other side of the shaft, the inner part of the complex was collapsing towards the center. It teetered in space, a sagging mass of girders and debris, lurching further downwards with each explosion.
“We should get to the surface, Secretary-General.” The deck buckled beneath the lieutenant as he spoke. “We need to get you off the mountain.”
The Secretary-General looked around at the fire and twisted metal. His world was disintegrating around him. Someone was going to pay for this.
It was time to go.
* * *
GEOCA COULD SENSE that Sahrin was nearby, but that was all. They were being held apart by something. He couldn’t define what it was; it was harder than anything he had ever felt before, as if there could be no question about it at all, no qualifications; it was just there. It was all around him, so thoroughly and perfectly that he couldn’t move, couldn’t resonate, couldn’t do anything.
Unable to move, he had time to think. They’d done well. They’d stopped the fighting, which for some reason seemed more important now than it would have before. And Sahrin had helped the others to find their way through the base.
The trap had been sprung on them just after she had opened the cell doors. They’d felt it teasing them, probing, as if it was confirming their existence, then it had circled around them, forcing them into a small corner. When there was nowhere left for them to run, it had closed in, snapping shut like a trap.
Geoca would have been pacing up and down in frustration if he could, but he couldn’t. He was trapped, like an insect in amber.
* * *
NIBAT WAS RELIEVED when the others emerged from the interior of the mountain, but his relief was to be short-lived. He would soon be arguing with the ship.
As soon as Bark, Reina, Pig and their two new acquaintances were on board, they took off. Nibat was glad to be doing something again.
“It’s got to stop here,” the black stranger said. “The Secretary-General must be stopped.”