POD (The Pattern Universe) (17 page)

Space Island was under siege. The gunships outside the shield had zero effect on the complex, but Pennington was concerned about the activities of the Mother-ship that had behaved erratically. It appeared to drop to sea level, then after a few minutes returned to several thousand feet. It just sat there doing nothing while the smaller ships ran about causing a disturbance without much of an effect. Pennington’s instincts were being poked.

Pennington smelt a rat, a big one. He picked up the comm's unit and called the ops centre

“Ops, what’s that status of the shields?” he asked.

"Shields are holding, sir. We've had a couple of blips, but nothing that caused any problems for the shields or the generators.”

“What do you mean, blips?”

“Well, sir. Twice, the shields seemed to go a bit fuzzy, but no weapon fire got into the compounds, and they have been all right since then."

“Tell me when this fuzzy period occurred, Ops, and tie it into the position of the enemy ships - and make it quick will you, please?”

“You will need to log on to a display, sir, may I suggest –”

“I’m on it, Ops, logging in now... here is my monitor number, 2402AB, display, please.”

Pennington watched as the 3D display of the shield and the enemy ships ran through a fast action replay. The shield’s ‘fuzzy’ reaction occurred just as the Mother-ship flew down to sea level, then again before it lifted off.

Pennington turned to the officers who were all watching the display put on by the gunships, nobody seemed unduly concerned. “Gentlemen, if you would sound the intruder alarm please - I think you might find we have been invaded!”

“But, sir? –” Carroll protested.

“No buts, Carroll, we HAVE been invaded. Those ships are running a diversion - go to red alert and lock-down immediately. Somebody make sure the admin and science blocks are locked down - room by room if needed... NOW! Carroll.”

Pennington watched grimly as Carroll smartly picked up a comm's unit and sent out the necessary alerts.

The other officers looked concerned; some peered out the windows to look for any evidence of disturbance of an invading army. There was as yet nothing to see. Even so, he now had their undivided attention; the gunships forgotten, he gave them immediate orders.

“The rest of you join your platoons and carry out WATCHTOWER on every single installation starting with this one.”

With that command, one of the officers took out a long black box and switched it on. All the officers, including Pennington, went to one end of the room to ensure they could cover the width, then progressed through to the other end, without incident.

“All clear, sir,” the junior officer confirmed what everyone else had already surmised. He put the box back in his jacket pocket.

“Okay Lieutenant, carry on with every room and corridor in this building, take some men with you, This room will now go into operational lock-down “

The officers left on the double, mostly calling their units on their comm's leaving Pennington with Staffie and two other officers. The control tower went into lock-down as per the regulations. This was to ensure no opportunity existed for infiltration after being cleared for use. Their door was closed and locked with only their overrides accepted. Nobody could come in now, those were the regulations.

Slowly the news filtered in via the comm's, the science building was in lock-down There were two teams going through WATCHTOWER procedures on a room by room basis. Several military A-Grav sled units took up patrols of the external areas.

When a report came in from the science complex of an intruder, there was the sound of rapid gunfire, then silence. Pennington feared the worst. He picked up his comm's and ordered a unit over to reinforce the security team. He felt that Osbourne’s team would fare better than others as they had at least a fair amount of security within the actual building.

Two more cases of intruders were reported over the next ten minutes. In all instances gunfire was heard, fire-fights in progress. Then the building housing Pennington and the control staff shook as it was attacked from somewhere outside. They went to the windows to see if there was any evidence of the enemy.

“They must be running around cloaked,“ Pennington observed.

“If we get out of this, I’m going to have nullifiers installed across the island,” he said to no-one in particular.

He turned back to the command desk and looked to where the incidents were being marked up.

The officer doing the marking gave him an update. “Sir, reports are coming in that our teams are on the defensive in four locations. Enemy is cloaked and shielded, we have not managed to get close enough with a shield nullifier to disable them,” he advised.

“Are the situations contained? Can we send in more troops to those locations and pin them down while we get more electronics into neutralise them?” Pennington enquired grimly of the officer, who shook his head negatively. “It’s all moving too fast, sir, the enemy seems to be running sensor neutral, we can't get readings off them at all. There is one report that the enemy is airborne so they may well be using cloaked sleds,” he added.

It was worse than he thought. The enemy had crept in under the shields. How many were they dealing with and what were their objectives?

The building shook again as the hidden assailants continued their attack on the downstairs access area.

Then Pennington saw one of the generator lights on the control display change from green to red. They were under attack there too; if more than twenty percent of the generators went down, the shields would fail.

“Why aren’t those generator rooms in lock-down mode?” Pennington shouted out.

“They are, sir,” said the junior officer, looking keenly at the readouts on his terminal.

“That one must have been infiltrated before the lock-down began. There may be more.” Staffie informed him sadly. There may well be civilian casualties, was what he wasn’t saying.

Osbourne and Lang were ensconced in Osbourne's private laboratory when they heard the lock-down command and then the gunfire. There were a series of explosions, each one getting nearer. Osbourne had the cameras rolling, eventually catching up with the invisible intruder by the direction of the damage. The doors of each lab were being systematically blown open.

After a few minutes, Osbourne managed to get cameras in the labs to show what had occurred. He was amazed; all the personnel seemed unharmed. They were, in some cases, even tidying up the damaged areas.

Osbourne was puzzled. Then, as he saw the pattern, his blood went cold.

“Lang? What if I told you that, whoever these people are, they seem to be looking for someone in particular and as you are, to all intents and purposes, dead to the Fortress and they are leaving all of the other scientists alone, who do you think they would want to capture, or eliminate, the most?”

Lang looked concerned. “Well, if they see me here I’m a ‘dead lab rat’ for sure. There is no way Ferris would allow me to live if he suspects I’m here. So, I could be the target if he were suspicious.”

“Well, in that case, you need to get behind the units over there and stay there. Whatever happens, do not come out. If they get me, I will need you to take over and run everything. If they don’t realise you are here, they will just take me,” Osbourne said.

Lang wasn’t sure. “but...” He realised he had been thinking of himself, but Ossie was the bigger catch.

“No buts....” Osbourne’s response was cut off by another explosion, this time close by. The cupboard Pod usually rested on, jumped a good few inches across the room.

Osbourne calculated the enemy was only a few doors away. He looked up at the cabinet that was chinking from the glass bottles jumping with the explosions. He realised he had the glimmerings of a plan.

Darting to the glass cabinet, he opened the door just as another explosion rocked the room. He caught the contents with his arm stopping them from spilling out. That would be disastrous. There were volatile materials in there.

Picking one small container he slipped it into his pocket. Then taking one of a pair of ear-bud communicators out of the cabinet, he placed one in his ear, the other he gave to Lang, who scuttled behind the cupboards as the vibration of heavy footfalls sounded outside.

Closing the glass door and locking it with the latch, Osbourne placed a nullifier down near the door. He hoped it wouldn’t get damaged in the explosion. He put another in his lab-coat pocket and then retreated away from the door.

The explosion when it came was thunderous. The room seemed to implode, but behind his desk and shielded Osbourne was protected. The smoke cleared but there was nothing there.

Osbourne stood up, then went as if to look, knowing perfectly well he was going to be in full view of the assailant, whoever he was. The nullifier was working still, he could see the light on. Then an apparition stepped in front of the gaping doorway and Osbourne stepped back in horror. Robots.

The robot stepped confidently into the room. A metallic arm reached out, the spindly hand making a grab for Osbourne. There was nowhere for him to go. The metal clamped around his arm, some form of rubber surface made contact with his wrist and he realised it was designed not to damage, just hold securely. It looked pretty advanced, the scientist in Osbourne, recognising the design as Fortress-based, could only admire the machine. Now he was over the initial shock he used his head to learn everything about it, he needed to know their weaknesses.

As he was pulled out of the room, he looked behind to see Lang peeking out the side of the cabinet. He looked terrified. Osbourne shook his head, warning Lang to stay put, so he didn’t see the second robot until it stuck its face in front of him.

“You. Are. Osbourne,” it said. The voice was mechanical with a buzz, definitely not human. It didn't seem like a question.

To Osbourne, being close up to the ‘face’ was a nightmare. It was not humanised at all, just a rectangular box with sensors built in and round it gave it a menacing look. The voice appeared to come from some kind of piezo synthesizer device. The whole thing looked solid state and very, very scary.

“Yes, I am Osbourne. What are you going to do with me?”

The robots didn’t answer. The one that had asked the question was armed with a massive weapon that it obviously was using to break in and out of the complex. The Garrison here had nothing like it. They had concentrated more on prevention than aggressive weapons. That had been a mistake, Osbourne thought wryly to himself.

As they moved away, the robots shields and cloaks reactivated. Osbourne hoped that Lang had the sense to get the camera video to the ops control without delay. He was going to be kidnapped and they had no idea what they were dealing with. The video would help them identify the threat and possibly deal with it. Osbourne felt he could deal with his end, given the chance. However, he would need Pennington to be aware and up to speed.

When Osbourne was grabbed around the waist by the robot, he immediately feared for the items in his lab-coat As he was lifted off the ground, he at first thought it was the strength of the arm, but when he continued going upwards until the ground was a good twenty feet below him, he really got scared. Instead of wriggling to try and get out of the robot’s grip, he hung onto it instead.

He switched on the nullifier without taking it out of his pocket. It would disarm the shields but shouldn’t cause any disruption in its circuits, he hoped. The robots wouldn’t immediately look to him for the source of the lack of cloaking. Importantly, it would give Pennington’s people something to see and, hopefully, follow.

They appeared to be heading out towards the edge of the shield. Osbourne looked around and could see battles being fought all over the complex. It was a full on attack. He wondered if anyone else was being sought out, or captured.

He looked down, it was only then he realised the robots were not on an A-Grav sled, they had inbuilt A-Grav and were guiding themselves. He kicked himself for not thinking about designing something along the same lines. It was easily done.

He couldn’t see the back of the one he was on, but twisting slightly he could see its companion although it was in and out of its cloaking shield dependent on its proximity to the nullifier in his pocket. The robots seemed oblivious to their loss of shield and cloak, or they didn't care. Their objective had been achieved.

Cursory inspection allowed him to see the vague outline of what could be the motors and directional thrusters. Range couldn’t be too far, he decided. They had no power packs that he could see, it all had to be internalised.

As the shield approached, Osbourne automatically braced himself for the impact. He knew the shields were good; he had written the code himself, it was brilliant. However, as they pulled up to the barrier he had a gnawing feeling he had missed something important, and was about to find out what it was.

What happened surprised him. First he was pushed through as if it was some kind of membrane, then he was being pulled through the other side as if it was an elastic bubble. Then they were through and looking back at the shield from the outside, it had returned to mirrored full defence mode. He realised they must have a software hack to create their own localised access door.

That was when Osbourne gave full reign to the nagging feeling he’d felt just before they reached the other side of the shield.

Remembering vaguely cutting and pasting a large chunk of additional source from the Fortress software retrieved by Pod, he now realised there must have been some back-door access code written into that section. Foolish boy! and now his laziness might well have cost them lives as well as the island.

He felt bad now, worse than just being captured. Osbourne knew Ferris would want revenge on him for stealing all the blueprints in the first place and defecting to Space Island, but Osbourne was also a realist and knew Ferris had taken a big risk in capturing him, exposing a weakness in the shield. This meant he needed him for something. This gave Osbourne confidence that if all else failed he would not die just yet.