DISCLAIMER: The usual disclaimer. You know, the one about this being a humorous, fictitious piece of work and it is not intended to offend anyone.
The Gambit (Part 1)
Piers was already in the control room when Wombat and Cypher walked in. Music was playing from somewhere. “He’s got 400 stations on satellite TV, he’s got picture in picture in picture….he’s a high tech….redneck….” Wombat smiled at the sign on the wall, “Wombat Crossing next 10m”, he could see where someone had taken yellow paint and painted over the “k” between the 10 and the m.
“Theme music?” Cypher asked. “Yeah, every hero needs theme music, I happened to pick George Jones.” Piers snarled back.
Wombat could tell that Piers was extremely nervous about this mission. He wasn’t sure if it had to do with his friend of over 20 years being on this operation or what. Wombat still hadn’t gotten the whole story behind Piers and what drove him the way he did. He suspected Ben knew something, but out of respect for the friendship between the two, he hadn’t bothered to pressure Ben or Piers for the story. It would be told in due time.
“Comcheck.” Piers said quickly as Cypher slid into the seat next to him. “Mr. Brown, read you five by five” Ben said. “Mr. Green, five by five” Harel quipped back. “This is Mr. Black, reading you five by five” Piers answered. “Mr. Pink, five by five,” Cypher said, “why do I have to be Mr. Pink??” A laugh came across the link.
Piers started mumbling, not realizing the com channel was still open, “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, stuck in the middle again….” Ben chimed in, “Would you stop that! You know how that makes me feel! Relax, nothing is going to go wrong.” Piers didn’t bother to answer, he was fixated on the displays.
Cypher was working on his terminal, going through the checklist. “Perimeter defense system, check. Surveillance cameras, online. Building schematics, called up.” he said. “Cypher, get schematics for the buildings in a two block radius.” Piers ordered. “Two blocks? You know how long that will take, it will suck our bandwidth down.” Cypher countered. “Just do it, let me worry about the bandwidth.”
Piers went to work, he was already hacking into the routers that he needed access to, so getting extra bandwidth was not going to be a problem. “Piers,” Wombat started, “what’s going on?” “I’m paranoid, OK? You pay me to do a good job, paranoia comes with my job description.” Piers answered shortly, returning to his work.
In a few moments, he had the extra bandwidth he needed, plus running the Trojans that were needed for this operation. He silently said a quick prayer, this had better work.
“Mr. Brown to Mr. Black.” Ben said. “Black here.” Piers answered. “All units in position. Waiting for the go.” Piers looked at Cypher, who just nodded, everything was a “go”. “Black to Brown and Green, you are cleared to go, repeat, cleared to go.” Piers said, sighing heavily after the com channel was closed. This had to be one of the more risky operations they had planned yet.
A source of Blacksmoke’s had mentioned that the Fellowship was going to be transporting the technology for Mind Terror Weapons, this would clearly be a bad thing. After weeks of recon, Special Forces decided to take action and steal the technology before it could be used. This research would have to be destroyed, and the creator of such technology eliminated. It certainly was a unilateral decision, but it was for the greater good of humanity.
The intel on this op was limited at best. The only thing they knew for sure was where the technology was going to be stored, and when it was transported. That was it, nothing else. They had a grainy photo of the scientist that developed the technology and that was all they had. Piers had spent the better part of 2 complete days, processing the photo with every technical gadget in his inventory (and he has quite a few toys…) to get a photo that was legible. Now all he could do is sit back, and guide his friends as best as he could.
The plan was for them to divide and conquer. Harel would enter the building on the north side, while Ben came in from the roof, through an air vent, but first, the security systems needed to be taken off line. The weather actually was working in their favor, an ion storm was approaching, so the EMP grenade Harel was about to set off, would make it look like the storm took out the security systems, along with the electricity.
“3, 2, 1, Mark” Piers said through the com link. Harel set off the EMP grenade and it worked flawlessly. This was one of Cypher’s ideas. He had actually stumbled across it by accident one day in Q-Branch. Piers smiled at the memory of that.
“Hey Piers.” Cypher said, walking through the door. Piers simply nodded and went back to work. Cypher had a habit of stopping by Q Branch, usually when he was bored and wanting to help Piers. Normally Piers didn’t mind, but today, he was especially busy. Not only was he perfecting the “Sergeant’s Stripes Porter” he’d been working on, but it was trying to enhance the visual range of the custom glasses he’d been working on for Ginata. These glasses would have an increased range of vision, plus span multiple spectrums. He really didn’t want to be bothered right now.
“Hey, Piers, what’s this?” Cypher said, picking up 3 globes that were roughly 6 inches in diameter. He started juggling them. “Put those down!” Piers yelled. “They contain anti-matter that is run though an energy channeling unit controlled by nano technology.” He had been designing a portable energy unit that could be used to power just about anything in an emergency.
Well, the thought of handling anti-matter must have startled Cypher to the point he lost his concentration and one of the globes went flying off in a tangent to the circle that he was juggling. Stumbling, Cypher tried to catch the errant globe, only making matters worse. It bounced off a wall and landed in a small vat that contained a trial portion of the Porter Piers was working on. The next thing Piers knew, the power went out in the room, and in every room on that deck and 2 decks above and below them. The only thing that didn’t give out was the computer system Piers had been working on, they, along with the UPS system, were encased in Tri-strontium Alloy, which apparently is immune to an EMP. After some research, Piers found out that the anti-matter reacted in such a way that when the casing of the globe was exposed to the fermenting sugars in the Porter, it created an EMP of considerable size.
Piers had later created casings for the electronics that Ben and Harel were going to be using, to protect them from the EMP grenade. Piers snapped back to the present when Cypher confirmed detonation of the grenade. “Security systems off line.” That was Piers cue, he needed to hack into the system to bypass the emergency backup units for the security system. As he typed commands into the routers, he was monitoring a screen off to his left.
“Heads up Brown, you’ve got a roaming guard heading up to the roof.” Ben quickly opened the air vent, slid in, closed it and held his position inside the shaft, propping himself on each side of the vent with his hands, careful to not make contact with the shaft and his kitana. After a few moments, Piers came back on the link, “Clear”. Ben shimmied carefully down the shaft and made his way to the HVAC units at the top of the building.
Meanwhile, Harel had made his way up to the 3rd floor, using the fire escape. Finding one of the emergency doors released once the systems were shut down, he quietly entered the building. Each of them knew the route that they had to take to reach their respective objectives. Ben’s goal was to steal the technical files while Harel was going for the scientist. As Harel made his way towards the scientist private room, Cypher got on the link. “Green, pair of guards heading towards you from the left.” Harel found a closet and ducked in, stealth was the key here, they didn’t need to get caught this early in the game.
“So what’s the story?” one guard said, as they passed Harel’s hiding spot. “Ion storm knocked out the power. I hear it took out 3 square blocks.” the other replied. Harel smiled, he hadn’t thought the grenade would be that effective. The guards were out of earshot, but Harel held his position. “Green, you’re clear.” Cypher said, once he was sure that the guards weren’t coming back.
Ben carefully made his way down to the 30th floor from the maintenance area. He was headed to the research facility, where the plans were stored. During the planning stages, it was discussed. From the information that they were able to get (which was costly), the files were stored in a vault that had it’s own internal power supply. After looking at the schematics, Piers found out that the EMP would have no effect on the vault. It wasn’t made of Tri-strontium, but something he’d never seen before. He also found that the security system on it held a 128-bit encryption key. Not terribly difficult to crack, but it would take some time. Piers had crafted a device that would allow anyone to crack the combination.
As Ben entered the research facility, he heard Piers curse. “Feldercarb.” Piers said quietly. Not quiet enough as the voice activated mike opened the channel. Harel even paused. “What?” Cypher asked. “I thought I saw something on the infrared. It was there and then gone.” “Cloaking device” Cypher answered. “Shit.” they heard Harel say.
Wombat picked up a headset. Usually he kept a “hands off” attitude when the ops were running. He trusted his staff enough to handle it, but this required his intervention. “Stand by to abort.” Cypher countered, “Wait a moment.” He started typing in a series of commands. After what seemed an eternity, Cypher declared, “It’s not perfect, but it should help. I’ve reconfigured your perimeter scanners to include Type A Gamma radiation, the same stuff that turbo phasers run off. The downside is now your alert radius has decreased to 50 meters, instead of 150.”
“Is everyone comfortable with this?” Wombat asked over the com link. There was a pause, then Harel said “Green is still a go.” Another pause, then “Brown is still a go.” “We are a go.” Piers sighed. “Problems?” Wombat asked. “No sir, adjust fire, drink water and drive on.” Piers answered curtly.
Suddenly, the hair on the back of Ben’s neck stood on end. Very quietly he said, “We’ve been compromised.”
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