Hard Drop (23 page)

He went to work on the door. There was no keypad, and he doubted his override would work even there had been one. These doors were last-option, worst-case scenario lockdown doors, rated to a couple megatons of strategic blast force; the mountain would come down before they did. He had encountered them often on his missions, and he knew there would be no way to force them. They would need an override directly from the command post in low orbit, and he set about linking his rifle directly into the system, tapping in to start the uplink. The display whirred into action, blinking as it sent its request. Shelley watched with scornful impatience, turning his nose up at the crude technology.
 

“What’s your name, kid?” Hog asked Flip, by way of greeting.
 

“Flip.” She responded, and Hog laughed loudly, her deep, throaty chuckle ringing through the facility’s high archway.
 

“Who gave you
that
name?” She asked, finally.
 

“Ringo.” Flip said, smiling shyly in return. “Speaking of which, where is that bastard?”

The silence that met her question was heavy and sad. Chip shook his head slowly, scanning the open road for trouble.
 

“Oh.” Flip said. “Sorry.”
 

Hog nodded slowly, as good-naturedly as she could manage. “Hog.” She said, extending her hand.
 

Flip shook. Shelley ignored her, and she returned the favor. Chip turned, taking his eyes off the road momentarily, and nodded coolly.
 

“Chip.” He said. “I don’t shake.”

Hog snorted. “Not after you burn your hands half off on climbing rope, you don’t.” She said, and looked at Flip mischievously. “He had to have a smoke…”
 

Chip turned as if stung, quickly, shaking his head as he wandered away. “’least I’ve heard of deodorant…” he muttered under his breath.
 

Flip looked from one to the other and smiled slowly, not fully understanding.
 

“And the Cap I guess you already know.” Hog said, rounding out the modest team.
 

Flip nodded. “Is this everyone?” She said, quietly. “Everyone that made it, I mean?”

“So far.” Hog nodded, taking pains to sound carefree. “We ran into a couple on the road here, but…” She trailed off, leaving no doubt as to what had happened to Mac and his team.
 

“Speaking of which,” Tyco said, looking up briefly from his satellite uplink. “Where did
you
come from?”

“From the…uh…up in the…” Flip started, then finished, simply, pointing towards the mountain. “That way.”

Tyco smiled at her awkward greenness and checked his display. It beeped its readiness as it acquired the command signal, then started scrolling through numbers furiously as it interfaced with the door lock. It beeped in approval as the circuits took the orbital override.
 

A shudder rippled through the door before them. The heavy metal rocked on its runners and then gasped open in front of them. The metal doors split along a seam they had not seen before, rolling slowly open. On Tyco's display, the countdown re-set itself to 20 minutes.
 

“Got it.” Tyco said, and smiled at Shelley triumphantly. The door hissed as it slid along its runners, lurching open in front of them, its metal wings disappearing into the massive rock wall with a heavy groan. The interior loomed through the opening, dark and foreboding.
 

Tyco nodded in satisfaction, turned and cocked his rifle.
 

“They’ll be back soon.” He called out, in Chip’s direction. “Let’s get moving.”
 

Chip sprinted towards them, rushing towards the wide-open doorway with distinct pleasure.
 

“Looks alright.” He nodded after a cursory glance, and stepped inside.
 

The team followed in close order. Hog breathed a heavy sigh and stepped forwards, taking charge of Shelley, pushing him ahead of her into the dark facility.

They entered a cavernous entrance area, every inch crammed with gleaming steel and the remnants of long, wall-length computer displays, larger even than those they’d seen in Shelley’s basement laboratory in the city. They were smashed now, their displays still occasionally lighting up with random data fragments, like a dying man trying to croak out his last words. Lamps hung overhead, broken free of their moorings and swinging unsteadily, their uneven light washing over the crushed fragments of the broken world below.
 

There were no burn marks here, no signs of a battle – just the aftermath of purposeful, methodical looting and destruction. No table had been left upright, no monitor unshattered.
 

Large graffiti letters - ‘YOUR BABEL SHALL PERISH TOO’ – dripped down the walls, leering down at the troopers as they passed through.
 

The door closed behind them, swallowing the outside light and leaving the team marooned in the gloom inside. The lights at the tips of their rifle bores switched on, cutting starkly through the dark with their concentrated beams like bayonets.
 

Hog looked up from the center of the room, letting her light play around the two-story entrance in a wide circle, staring up at the sheer amount of broken technology, the gadgets and cameras and security measures stunning in scope despite their destruction.
 

“Can you imagine if we had this budget - ?” She asked Tyco, open-mouthed.
 

“You’d spend it all on tattoos and liquor, I’m sure.” Shelley snorted.
 

Chip cocked his sniper rifle and turned, letting it linger on Shelley for a long second, his finger playing listlessly over the trigger. “Don’t forget ammunition.” He said pointedly.
 

“Cute.” Shelley said, and strode past into the dark. “Keep up.” He spat at the team over his shoulder. “I don’t think you’ll get far without me.”

The destroyed entrance hall split into a series of small hallways, each one running on seemingly endlessly back into the mountain. Tyco shone his light furtively down each, feeling out the threat carefully. The marks of violence where everywhere – more destruction, burn marks, small streaks of blood. Sometimes the hallways ended in thick, closed blast doors. More often they just continued into the structure, turning by almost imperceptible degrees, the flashlight petering out before the end was reached. They could have spent a month in these corridors, Tyco realized, finding nothing, and would barely have scratched the surface of what was down here.
 

Shelley pushed on insistently, striding quickly over the broken equipment and down familiar hallways, moving without hesitation towards his goal. Occasionally, he gave small cries of frustration and anger at the complete, intentional, and vicious sabotage that greeted him. It was still, clearly, his facility in his mind, and he took its destruction personally.

The team followed him closely, doing their best to move cautiously while keeping Shelley in sight. In the dark passages, Shelley’s cautionary words took on new meaning: the facility was enormous, cavernous and deep, carved unendingly into the hillside, and it was hard not to get caught behind while staring down one hallway or another.

Tyco stuck close to Shelley, shadowing his every step, shining his light on the path ahead.

“So, Doc,” He said quietly. “You want to tell me what we’re looking for here, huh? What does my team need to know?”
 

Shelley stopped short and turned to him derisively.
 

“Just get me there, Captain.” He said, frost in his voice. “I’ll take care of the rest.” He turned to continue down the hall, but Tyco thrust his rifle forwards, blocking the way.
 

“You’ve seen two men die, Doctor.” He said. “I think it’s time you tell us what we’re looking for.”

“Stand down, Commander.” Shelley said, gingerly taking the rifle barrel and pushing it aside. “I’m not the enemy.” He continued on past Tyco into the dark.
 

Tyco lingered behind him, waiting for Hog to catch up to him. He shook his head angrily as she came alongside.
 

“I really fucking hate this one.” He said, and chuckled.
 

“You and me both, Cap.” She responded, and grinned, casually aiming her rifle at the back of Shelley’s head. “After you.” She said pointedly, and motioned Tyco back on ahead of her.
 

Shelley led them out, at last, onto a high, unadorned landing overlooking a deep, hollow shaft, tunneled hundreds of feet down into the bedrock. A dull yellow light shone from above, filtering through the spotty patchwork of a partially broken glass dome that crowned the excavated mountain, and disappearing down into the dark passage below. After the gloom of the narrow passages, the sunlight, dim as it was, was a welcome change. A cool draft rose from the drop below, rushing up and washing over the team with icy, unrelenting insistence.
 

A ramp, etched like threading on a screw along the wall, spiraled its way down as far as the eye could see. Chip took one look at it, then at the deep drop below and frowned, realizing just how far they were going to have to walk.

“This better be worth it, Doc.” He said, without trying to keep the threat out of his voice.
 

“Worth what?” Shelley countered. “Your pay, your colleagues? Your
time
?!”
 

“What pay?” Hog mouthed quietly, without smiling, but he ignored her.
 

“It’s worth all that, and more.” He turned to face the group, manic energy shining through every pore of his skin. He stared at each in turn, settling on Flip with a hungry cruelty.
 

“You’re new, aren’t you?” He said. “You’re not as broken as the others.” Chip flared his nostrils in fury, but Shelley pushed on. “Why did you join?”

She hesitated, looking involuntarily towards Tyco, and Shelley pounced, smelling blood.

“If you had any brains, you wouldn’t be a
grunt
.” He said, and pointed at Chip and Hog. “Them, they’re killers. They’re no good for anything else. But
you
– what the hell are you doing here?”
 

“I wanted to make a difference.” Flip said, simply. Hog and Chip turned away, trying to hide the bitter embarrassment in their faces and failing.
 

“You’ll have your chance.” Shelley said, coolly, strangely pleased with the response. He broke away from the team and headed for the ramp, savoring his victory in gloating silence.

They made their way down the spiral ramp, going deeper and deeper into the structure until the landing above was almost invisible, obscured by the thin fog that rose from the seemingly bottomless shaft. It thickened as they went deeper, the moisture condensing and thickening, beading and rolling off the walls like dew as the temperature fell.
 

They passed an array of slim, locked security doors, barely visible cracks in the smooth wall, marked only by the briefest interruption in the smooth lines, and a slight leveling of the ramp. Ten, maybe fifteen security gates melted away behind them, disappearing from sight sooner than they should, the optical illusion making them one with the wall again as soon as they passed.
 

Still Shelley led on unbendingly, sure of his destination, muttering to himself quietly as he went. The team followed steadily behind, cautious as they navigated the ramp. The way down was easy, their boots providing good traction on the ramp underneath them, but Chip glanced unhappily back over his shoulder at the slope they had left behind. Their return would be decidedly harder.
 

Shelley slowed, at last, in front of a nondescript door on an unmarked landing. They had descended at least ten stories, Tyco calculated, but the ramp showed no signs of ending below them. They might be halfway into the facility’s depths, probably even less than that, and his display was already breaking up, losing its link to the satellite above. He shook his head slowly, stunned at the scale of the structure.
 

The door opened with Shelley’s clearance. The interior was familiar by now: the same dim, red emergency lights presided over the same orgy of vengeful destruction, the floor awash with twisted metal and broken glass. But the composition of the debris was different here.

Metallic limbs, broken, morbid eye sockets, and dull glass eyes peered out from below, disturbingly lifelike and human. Wiring was ripped from metal skulls, limbs twisted and burned, lying in dismembered heaps. It reminded Tyco of the highway underpass and the grim carnage they had seen there, only transposed onto digital forms. If anything, it was even more vicious here, as if the attackers had taken pains to separate these creatures from any trace semblance to humanity. In the process they had made them macabre, unperishing victims of a bloodless genocide.

The humanoid figures were not alone. There were others, smashed and broken as well, with strange, grotesque animal features. A ribbed, crab-like exoskeleton lay broken into segments. Next to it, a scorpion's tail lay, coiled eerily as if ready to strike even in death. Long, spindly legs, their surface area dotted with smashed sensors, were scattered over the floor, remnants of a mechanical horror Tyco could not put his finger on. He shook his head, marveling at the ruined ingenuity on display, trying to piece together what each model been made for. He gave up, finally, the pieces too many and too broken to recombine in his head, and moved towards the locked, battle-scarred security door at the far end of the room.
 

“You should have seen it before they came through.” Shelley said, proudly, brushing aside a thin, fractured wing with his foot. “This was a cathedral of scientific advancement. This was the nerve center. This was my laboratory.” He glared back at the team with proud defiance. “This alone would have been worth your…sacrifice.”
 

He stood in the middle of the room and turned to them like a teacher at an art exhibition, worried his students were not following. He looked from trooper to trooper, settling on Chip, ignoring the blank apathy stared back at him.