POD (The Pattern Universe) (10 page)

“And that is?” Baxter eyed the Staff Sergeant suspiciously.

Pennington took over, sensing a quick mood swing in the Lieutenant. “Your mission is to infiltrate a small team, four of you, into the complex, with a view to creating either a delay to their operation to invade, or taking out the opposition leader, Ferris, whichever proves practicable.”

Baxter eyed the ‘Old Man’. “Sounds like a one-way ticket, Sir.”

“I hope not Baxter, I would sorely miss having your ugly mug around the place.” Pennington smiled, and tried to reassure him that all was not what it seemed. “I’m hoping you can get out the same way you get in, undetected.”

The men were looking around at each other. They all knew the complex; they had run drills and training exercises based on its layout, in the hope of one day doing just this. None of them had ever succeeded in extracting themselves from the operation once they were inside. Very few attempts had resulted in the success of their operation.

“Okay, men, this is the initial briefing. If any of you are concerned, say now, and we will get you replaced. No blot on your copybook, Scouts honour.” Pennington stuck his fingers up in a Winston Churchill salute, causing the men to chuckle. The tension was only slightly relieved by the action, but it was enough to make them all hunker down, in a concerted attempt to show solidarity. None of them were going to back out of this, suicide mission, or no.

WOOP! WOOP! WOOP! A sudden ship-style alarm sounded; the room went into ‘red-light’ mode. A voice came over the intercom calling to those in the room.

THIS IS A 2440 WALKABOUT, REPEAT... THIS IS A 2440 WALKABOUT... LOCKDOWN MODE, THIRTEEN.

Pennington’s eyes, as with all the others, were now looking around. Their side-arms had been drawn as soon as the alarm sounded, they now moved into positions that protected each others backs while still giving them room to manoeuvre

Pennington approached a flashing red button on the wall and pressed it. The lights resumed their healthy glow, but the room remained in lock-down The alarm silenced instantly. Nothing was said by any of them. They knew what to do.

As one, they spread out across the room, right hand touching the shoulder of the man next to them until dressed to the right against one wall. Between them was insufficient space for anything to pass unnoticed.

“PROCEED WALKABOUT,” Pennington ordered.

On that command, every man proceeded to take a step forward in tandem and, in that fashion, marched through the room. They had got just over half way when one of the men was seen to fly through the air as something unseen impacted with him.

Immediately the ends of the line moved, with the others following, as the slack was drawn in, and the noose tightened towards one corner of the room. Pennington, standing behind his men now, drew a grey box from his back pocket, opened it and selected a setting on it. He then kneeled on one leg and slid the box into the centre of the cornered area.

As the box began to hum, a hint of a shadow appeared up against the wall furthest from the box. It was enough.

The men regrouped and progressed towards that section of wall. The nearest soldier gently kicked the box closer to the shadow whereupon it solidified into a black suited figure who appeared unarmed and deeply agitated.

The men took no chances. They ran at the figure and pinned it against the wall, each bracing their legs against the intruders and holding an arm so that only the person's head could move.

Pennington walked towards the door to insert the disarm code. He was fully confident they were only dealing with one person as the alarm called out ‘THIRTEEN’, and there were only twelve individuals that should have been in the room.

Two white-banded MPs entered the room, and whilst the intruder had said nothing and no questions were asked, he was frisked thoroughly; shield emitter and various other items were removed including an earpiece. When all that was done, one of the MP’s took out a neural stunner and tapped the intruder on the neck.

As he collapsed they picked him up and, with an armed guard, proceeded to carry the black clothed figure out of the room - destination - a solitary shielded cell where he would be stripped, scanned and interrogated. But, they all knew where he had come from - The Fortress.

- 8 -

The lock-down of the briefing room, and subsequent capture of the intruder was a rehearsed exercise that had been put into place as soon as it was discovered the Fortress had designed a camouflaged shield, effectively a cloaking device. Osbourne had issued all senior staff with a local nullifier keyed to the Fortress frequencies. They had also installed them on all entrances to buildings as well as the A-Grav ports.

The alarm was raised by the AI when a routine sweep alerted it to an unregistered body mass in the room when the meeting called for twelve. It had alerted the security detail to confirm its suspicion and then overridden the protocols to visually verify the anomaly. It set off the alarm when it could only observe twelve bodies yet sensors indicated thirteen present.

For the next two days, all areas were on lock-down, while security, assisted by military personnel, went through the buildings, one by one, until cleared. No other intruders had been found. However, vigilance was high with the knowledge that Fortress were now sending in spies. They had yet to work out how the spy had infiltrated the building and the island. They hadn’t excluded the possibility of inside collusion.

Pennington reconvened the briefing after it was established there were no other leaks. The same room housed them, but now it had additional security of a local nullifier installed in the walls. The bio-signatures were read on entry, checked off by the AI and the MP on station and excluded from the nullifier effect. Eventually, all security rooms would contain these additional features.

“Right, let's get down to the basics,” Pennington began.

“Firstly, chaps, this is not intended as a one-way mission. There will be an extraction at the point of insertion, or, if all hell breaks loose, we will attempt a hot recovery anyway we can.

Secondly, there is every chance you will get in undetected. There is apparently a single break in the shield that has been discovered. We intend to use that as a means of gaining entry, and if we are lucky, out again afterwards.

Here’s the plan in detail. You will get plenty of opportunities to run it through your simulations and drills, but be ready to roll when I give the word.” He began to outline operation ‘WatchTower’.

Garner was exhausted and showed it. Being President of the Space Council had its off days, and the constant flow of council members was taking its toll on him. With the lock-down in place, it was essential that each and every member be given the opportunity to voice their concerns. Their anger at being held virtual prisoners, even if it was for their own safety, and their fury over being trapped in a potential war zone made them fearful and aggressive. More than one had attempted to bully or buy their way off the island.

Information had leaked about the impending invasion from Fortress. Garner suspected one of the Council members to be a Fortress sympathiser. Either that, or an agitator had been imported, along with the multitude of workers they constantly needed for their expanding workforce. There would be many more such instances before the battle was won.

He’d spoken with Zeke Callaghan on the phone, and the US was preparing to send a few gunships of their own into the area, although they would probably not be in time. They had the sense to know that, despite peace and personal shields, there was still something to be said for maintaining a military presence. Their fire-power might just tip the balance in a fight if they ever got here. Garner wasn’t going to hold his breath. He knew about the USA’s rules on gunboat politics - he had written them.

These days, it was more of a peace-keeping role than containment and attrition of militant forces. Still, they kept their powder dry and gave confidence to those in the US that didn’t have faith in the unilateral disarming of nations. They might be right, all Garner knew was that it would take a few generations of peace to bring about a permanent change in attitude and thinking.

Despite the intention of keeping themselves totally independent, the USA had a massive investment in Space Island. They had been training crews for the SC for months. They were keen for the ships to get into space so they could publicise, to their citizens, how their NASA space programme had evolved into a fully fledged space defence force with an ex US president in charge. They still wanted to shape the future and in keeping on top of the space programme they felt they were having an impact.

In some ways, the discovery of the cloaked infiltrator had done them a favour in allowing them to bring the military involvement up a few notches with the genuine approval of the Council. A few were wavering, and Garner had their measure so felt they could be discounted. He knew their agendas, and that made them easy to anticipate.

The rest wanted peace and prosperity at any cost and Fortress was the only risk to that. They wanted the matter resolved, but didn’t want to be seen as the instigators of a military exchange that might lead to loss of life, or worse, a war of any kind. However, Garner wanted revenge on Ferris for his involvement in the assassination attempt on him during the military coup, he would move if it felt right at the time AND if he could carry the council with him.

His intercom buzzed pulling him from his thoughts, he pressed the button. “Yes, Annie?”

Annie’s distorted voice came through the small speaker. “Mr. Osbourne is here. He has the budget figures and a few items to discuss with you.” The electronic pause that occurs when a key is let go and then pressed again, followed. “If you have time, he says."

“Send him in Annie, and if you have any of that tea in the pot, I could do with a fresh one,” he answered.

The door to his office opened, Osbourne walked in with a pile of papers in his hand and his data-pad The papers were a throwback; they weren't really needed any more, but people like Osbourne preferred it for some types of work. This looked like blueprints again, Garner sighed. The boy was an absolute genius with an almost unstoppable energy drive, but he really should get himself a girlfriend.

He was a one-man R&D Department and he always left Garner with a headache after budget meetings. He was single-handedly pulling the research people together into a formidable team and there was excellent progress being made on all fronts. As such Garner had to give him lee-way on some things, one of them was causing him serious issues and he was going to have to deal with that in just a minute. He smiled at Osbourne and beckoned him towards one of the many chairs.

“Hi, Frank, I thought I would drop off the reports you needed.” He bounced in with such youthful vigour that Garner felt tired just looking at him, burning all that excess energy.

“Oh, and I need your approval for a project I already began. Those ‘paper-heads’ need it signed off to get the engineers to move onto the next stage of completion. They won’t budge unless it's authorised and they still won’t take my orders,” he moaned. He knew his age counted against him with some of the old-timers.

The ‘paper heads’ he referred to were put there expressly by Garner to hold him back; otherwise he would be running through Zeke’s global funding like a lizard on hot desert sand. The fund was large enough to manage even that, but Osbourne needed something to pace his work, or his team would collapse from exhaustion and the island would be overrun with his projects.

He smiled, plonking himself in one of the chairs recently vacated by the Venezuelan Councillor, who still wouldn’t give Garner the support for the military build-up, mainly due to historical animosity towards anyone from Britain, of which Pennington-Brown represented the worst example of, in the Councillor’s eyes.

“You look as if you need a few days on the beach, Frank,” he said, keeping up the barrage as he got comfortable, giving Garner no time to even greet him.

The door opened again as Annie walked in, a cup of tea in one hand and a cold beer in the other, for Osbourne.

Frank had still not had a chance to speak; he hadn’t said a word yet.

He took the cup from her. She looked at him with concern, but he waved her away with a reassuring smile and then turned back to study the young man opposite. Finally, he had an opportunity to speak.

“Ossie, you never cease to amaze me. I had a call from Fletcher in the stores, and he said you were asking for immediate release of some fairly hefty armaments that are already in short supply. What on earth do you want with – ” he quoted from his notes, “ ...four X4F multi-lasers with independent directional tracking, six XCET missile tubes with full auto-reload magazines as well as a variety of miscellaneous other munitions. What are you building down there - your own personal Gunship?”

“Yes! but not for me. For Zeke.” Osbourne admitted proudly.

“For Zeke? I just spoke to him; he made no mention of you building him a ship.”

“That’s because he doesn’t know about it.” Osbourne rallied.

Garner shook his head, he felt one of those headaches coming on. “Why are you building Zeke a ship when he hasn’t asked you to, and, for that matter, neither have I?”

Osbourne sighed, as if he was the only one who saw things in the real world and was tired of explaining everything he did to anyone, and everyone. Which was a little unfair on Frank because Garner gave him virtually everything he asked for. It was one of those things that young people did when faced with an imaginary stop sign that was in reality simply a request for more information.

“Frank, have you noticed how miserable Zeke seems to be lately? He’s put so much into getting the technology into the hands of people like you and me. He had such high hopes of getting Zirkos and that ship AI of his to help us. He made a life for himself that included space — Ship, and Zirkos — all of which has now disintegrated, and now even Pod has deserted him.”

“True,” Garner admitted. The lad was right. Callaghan hadn’t been at all happy lately. Annie had even tried to get him to link up with a potential soul-mate; that had backfired badly. They had all noticed how Zeke had become withdrawn into himself since Zirkos had gone. He backed off a little knowing full well he was going to have to relent, but determined he wasn’t going to just rubber-stamp his expenses.