Crash Flux 1: Welcome To The Machine (13 page)

Raydin said, “No.  These people don’t have the equipment to do that.  They are nomads.  Most of them are, at any rate.”  Raydin thought back to Tochi’s operation with a twinge of guilt.  “We don’t have time.  How long have these bodies been dead?”

Irule said, “At least an hour.  The Guard could still be close by.”  She looked behind her.  “We should keep moving.”

They headed out again, with Goo once again in the lead.  They traveled for what seemed like forever, crossing over to the next sector, with nearly half the day behind them.  It was a maze, they were constantly having to maneuver around the tunnels flush cycles, security checkpoints, and other obstructions.  They came across a cross tunnel and Irule hunched down in a dry spot.  She took off her helmet, careful to leave the filter over her nose and mouth, removed her pack, and said, “Third checkpoint.  I’m taking a breather.”

The rest of the crew followed her lead and removed their helmets.  Irule said, “Where the hell are we anyways?”

Burk said, “We’re in a whitewash cross-tunnel. There are five blast doors, north, south, east, west, and one above us.  We came in from the South.  Two doors open on the ground, then the whitewash comes from topside.  The sewage gets so thick in some places you can actually walk on it for short periods of time, until it sucks you up like a pit of quicksand.  The white wash uses chemicals and genetically spliced microbes to loosen up the soup into a thick liquid so it can float through the tunnels.  The blast doors are here so maintenance crews can get access to the pump systems without being afraid of drowning in sewage, or getting whitewashed.  That stuff will dissolve anything.”

Raydin said, “Where the hell did you learn that Burk?  Another skill cheat?”

Burk laughed.  “No, it was what I did when I used to live on the edge of catacombs, working on the expansion rings.  I was a laborer from the Pitt, an indentured worker for a labor contractor. Sewage maintenance was what I did until I managed to buy my labor contract, and from there I was allowed into the section beneath Datcora.  I still had to take a HAP test to get into the Hub.  I cheated, of course.  After that I became a hardware wizard in red sector.  Raydin, Adon, and I used to live in the catacombs.  Not the most pleasant subject for casual conversation.”

Raydin looked up from where he was sitting.  He turned away, staring a hole through the wall.

Adon said, “It’s not the sort of thing anybody likes to talk about.  I worked in data storage, monitoring storage data for integrity corruption.  I tested out, made a warehouse distribution manager, then managed to hack my way into Red sectors non-profit retail, finally became an equilibrium broker.  After that, I started playing the market.  One thousand people test out each year, and last I checked, there are two-hundred eighty million people living in the catacombs.  The odds of me, Burk, and Raydin meeting are so improbable I think we were probably meant to find each other.”

Irule turned to Raydin and asked, “How did you leave the catacombs?”

Raydin kept his back turned.  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

They where interrupted by an enormous flood coming from above, running through the tunnel above them and passing over the blast door in the ceiling.  Goo said, “We take east tunnel.  Goo will have to check for traps, from underworlders.  Much danger, but quick, uh, quick, uh quickeeer.  Many soldiers in tunnels, very bad.”

Adon said, “Let me go with you, just in case.”

Goo frowned.  “Better alone, you get in way.”

Adon said, “Who do you think is paying you?  I’m going with you.”

Goo opened the panel for the east blast door.  Adon watched Goo enter the code, downloaded it into his camera eye, following a hunch.  Adon followed him through, the door shutting behind him.  Adon started to speak as he turned to look back at the door sealing behind him.  “Why is the door closing…”

Raydin jumped up from where he was sitting, hearing a loud shout from the east.  He ran up to the door, shouting.  “Adon, can you hear me?  What the hell just happened?  Adon!”

Irule had just finished putting on her helmet and her pack, when Raydin’s pounding was interrupted by the sound of the north door opening.  He had only a split second to see the silver shield insignia on the Grey helmet of the guardsman taking point, then his nerve wires kicked in.  He flew up against the wall next to the open blast door, out of sight.  He called out to Burk and Irule, who were both standing in the line of fire.

Irule dove into a roll before she realized what was happening.  Her body jerked, pulling her burst rifle up to lay down covering fire while Burk struggled to get to the side.  Spheroid projectiles went flying down the barrel, the ferrous shell bursting at the choke, the electro-magnetic force driving the shot at immense velocities.  She fired three volleys, sending rounds scattering everywhere, catching most of the guards in their chests and knocking the wind out of them.  A soldier taking point took a bullet through the thin padding in his neck, covering the soldier to the side with his blood as he fell.  Irule couldn’t even flinch as caseless slugs whistled past her head.  Her eyes wild with panic, she set the choke to a wide spread, catching two more in the legs.  The skill cheat forced her eyes open as she jumped to her feet, closing to point blank.  She set the choke all the way up.  A full load of shot burst through the soldier’s faceplate, smashing through his visor, and covering her in blood.  Before she could pull the trigger again, her helmet caught a slug with from one of the soldiers taking cover down the tunnel.  The force of blow knocked her head back, as she fell backwards onto the floor.

Raydin threw his back against the right side of the north entrance, peering around the corner.  His eyes passed from soldier to soldier, assessing how many targets there were.  Plasma exploded, taking out a chunk of wall near Raydin’s face, blinding him, leaving his left eye mangled and burning half his face.  Raydin pulled back, the skill-cheat’s pain disassociation taking full effect.  Burks back went up against the other side of the tunnel opening, opposite Raydin.  Raydin hand signaled Burk to clear the tunnel.  Burk reacted before Raydin could figure out what the skill cheat had signaled.  

Burk grabbed a plasma grenade off his belt, pulled the pin, and sent it flying down the corridor.  Raydin sprinted into the middle of the corridor and almost sent Irule flying into the air with the force he used to lift her off the ground, then continued running past the entrance to the corridor.  The back blast from the tunnel sent a wave of plasma burning forth from the door, singeing Burk as he flinched away from the tunnel.  Raydin took a look down the corridor.  The soldiers were in disarray.  Raydin whipped around the corner, and before he knew what was happening, his laser sight was on a wounded soldier’s faceplate.  The trigger snapped, firing a bullet into his brain, killing him instantly.  He entered the corridor, gunning down the wounded soldiers.  Burk followed, his rifles alloyed slugs smashing through the remaining two soldier’s helmets like they were made of tin.

More soldiers took up positions farther down the tunnel.  Raydin linked up his optics to the rifle’s laser distancer, scoping a target and sending a round through the soldier’s vest, into his heart.

The second soldier let loose with a wild burst from far down the tunnel.  Bullets bounced off the tunnel walls, ricocheting down the corridor.  Raydin felt four loud thumps on his chest, followed by a light sting in his side torso.  He saw the blood pouring forth from where the shot had hit him and fell backwards onto the tunnel floor, dropping his rifle.  He sat up, groaning, extending his left arm while folding his hand back from the wrist.  A mathematical projection program ran over his vision, his weapons line of fire highlighted by three points on a white line.  The points lined up, and Raydin triggered his holdout laser, burning a hole through the last soldier’s chest.  Raydin grabbed his rifle and allowed Burk to carry him back the way they came.  Burk dragged him to the cross tunnel, then turned around, slamming his palm over the emergency control to shut the blast door.

Adon was waiting on the other side.  He said, “That little bastard hit me with a stunner.  It looks like we’re fucked.”

Burk looked at Irule lying on the floor next to the east blast door.  “Is she still alive?”  

Adon bent over her body, taking her pulse.  He said, “It’s just a concussion, she’s still breathing.”

Raydin wheezed.  “I’m going to hack the tunnel grid system.  Try and buy me some time.”

Raydin shifted to total VR immersion.  He uploaded his fantasy environment interface, a neo-feudal world.  His own persona was projected as a black dragon, covered with black plates and wicked spikes, tearing through the net on wings of fire.  He approached a castle made of steel alloy and black bio-chitin that spanned the horizon like a city fortress.  

Spindled turrets atop the towers fired balls of white light, trying to crash him.  He shifted his comjack’s frequency, sending the white balls of lethal code hurling out into nothingness.  He dived into the flood channels forming a moat around the castle.  He hit a blind access node, and ripped the grate off its hinges, forging pass codes into an input/output port, connecting him to an input line into the sewage system.  He whipped through the tunnels, running into a maze of barriers blocking his path.  Raydin found a locked gate, a back door he could request a promotion to managerial access from.  The back door allowed a telecommuter to access his managerial account within the system, working on a home computer.  

His dragon crawled down a narrow tunnel towards the cavern underneath.  He cracked the simple encryption on the security register log, smashing the lock on the vault before him.  Inside was a tome, representing a list of everyone who had used the backdoor in the last few days.  He found the last manager to use the backdoor, then connected to the manager’s home computer.  He continued sifting through the tomb until he found the pass code key that the manager had left unguarded on his personal computer.  The tomb disappeared.  The dragon roared over the line, the burst of code making the sound of an old twentieth century modem.  Silver text overlapped his environmental interface, then the lock turned gold and fell off the grate.  Raydin flew inside the castles sewage control system, a large room with thousands of primitive control devices to control the castle’s sewage system.

Adon was wiring a message through his eye spike.  “More soldiers are tearing apart the control mechanism, we don’t have long before they break through.”

Raydin opened the gate into the castles sewage control.  He accessed the command options of his new account.  He found the command he needed, and began jumping in and out through the other accounts linked to the employee network.  He checked private registers, looking for the passwords he needed to override the security precautions that prevented him from using the sewage system while personnel were still in the tunnels.  The dragon ripped through the complex system of levers and pulleys controlling the sewage gates.  Raydin sent a text message to Adon’s eye spike.  “I need a little more time.”

Adon removed his spike, put his palm comp away, and grabbed his laser.  He set the rifle to a low intensity sustained beam.  He targeted the crack between the doors and fired his weapon in a long, searing line down the door’s middle, keeping his beam steady.  The door began to melt along the small contour running through the middle of the door, fusing it together.  Adon held his breath as the seals on the door hissed.  The door shuddered, but did not open.

Adon continued melting the door until his chemical canister was exhausted.  He loaded another canister into his rifle, taking a look around.  Something was wrong.  He listened to the silence, taking another look towards the door.

Adon yelled, “BURK! Get away from the door!”

Burk ran five steps before the shock wave from the explosion broke his spine.  His body landed on the floor, blood pouring out of his mouth and nose.  The blast doors had ripped off their hinges, shaking the floor as they landed on the ground.

Adon pointed his rifle down the tunnel, turning his rifle to a full burn.  He dropped to one knee, bracing his rifle and preparing for the end.  Instead, he heard shouting, saw frantic movements coming from the other end of the tunnel.  Adon heard a loud roar.  He gasped, the deluge of processed sewage rushing down the tunnel bowling them over like rag-dolls.  The heavy sludge was like being overrun by a wave of quicksand, the pressure smashing him up against the blast door behind him.  He surfaced from under the sludge, gasping for clean air.  He picked a target and pulled the trigger, point blank.  His weapon vaporized the sludge coating his barrel, burning through a hole through the disoriented soldier’s helmet.

Another soldier surfaced from the sewage.  Adon fired his rifle, hitting the wall behind him.  He ducked beneath the sewage, feeling bullets whizzing past his head.   Raydin surfaced from behind the soldier, garroting him with his Snake.  Adon closed in on another, his arm spike extending from the hollow in his arm into the soldier’s abdomen, splitting him up the middle.  Blood mixed into the sewage, disappearing into the sludge.  Raydin grabbed Adon’s arm.  “Grab Irule, I’ll get Burk.”

Adon tried to tell Raydin that Burk was dead, but he was already gone.  Raydin grabbed Burk’s body, holding his head above water.  When he saw Adon had a grip on Irule, his eyes went out of focus as he accessed VR.  The dragon gripped a pulley, and ripped it from its hanger.  The blast door behind Adon opened, and the pressure of the incoming sewage sent his party sprawling through the door.  The dragon severed the cord suspending the sluice gate, and the blast door started to close, leaving the soldiers in the cross tunnel.  The dragon opened the last grate above him, and the top blast door in the cross tunnel let forth a deluge of white wash.  A soldier forced himself in between the blast door.  Half his face had been washed away, leaving only bone.  Raydin yelled over the hiss of the white wash burning his legs.  He flexed his phase wire, slashing down the middle of the soldier’s torso.  The blast door closed as most of the soldier was forced into his tunnel, away from the whitewash.  The door sealed closed, what remained of the soldiers body falling on top of Raydin.