P
HASE
F
IVE
“Why is Jason Bjorn here?” Learner fiercely asked.
“He has planted a Phase Five Disintegration Lock on the Payload Repository Hatch,” Mitchell responded.
“Just hack into the processor, and bypass the security.”
“Any attempt to do so, sir… would cause a CRE.”
“Speak to me as if I were new at this stuff,” Learner irritably said.
“We only have technology to defeat Phase Three or lesser locks but this… this is very sophisticated equipment.”
“What happened to Phase Four?” Learner questioned.
“I have only read about Phase Four, and didn’t even know Phase Five was even…operational yet.”
“How do you even know the lock on the container is a Phase Five Lock?”
“Go take a look for yourself, Mister Rotterdam.”
Learner Rotterdam and Mitchell walked to the side of the container to verify the device. Attached to the door panel, a hexagonal spider-shaped device had the words, “PHASE 5” embossed across its front.
“Easy enough, get a magnesium torch, and make another entrance,” Learner suggested.
“Again, this would create a CRE.”
“Mitchell, what the fuck is a CRE?” Learner brusquely asked.
“CRE, is a Chain Reaction Event, sir”
“I assume you mean the device would explode.”
“Think about the cargo inside…the detonation of the lock would cause the NEPRs to go critical. The nuclear explosion would be seen from outer-space.”
“Any large explosion would kill us all…you idiot,” said Learner while rolling his eyes. Learner crossed his arms, tapped his finger on his bicep, and continued, “What do we need from him?”
“Verbal and Bio Metric face-scan…”
“Duh, drug him…get the password, and hold his face to the fucking device…and be done with it.”
“Um, sir, the Bio Metrics and Voice Recognition is beyond our technology…it is has ultimate fail safe in unlocking the device.”
“Mitchell, what did I miss?”
“The system detects any chemical changes in his metabolic state,” Mitchell excitedly said.
“In other words, the lock can tell if he’s being manipulated against his own free will,” Learner translated in a capitulating tone.
“Correct, any hint of coercion, will cause a…”
“…Chain Reaction Event, a CRE…” Learner finished Mitchell’s sentence, and continued, “Yes, Mitchell, I get the picture.”
“Fucking sneaky bastard!”
Learner thought before entering the empty freight container, where Jason, dangled half naked from a chain.
Stripped from his bio-suit, Jason’s hands were bound, and hoisted above his head; covering his upper naked torso in a ghastly liquid red effect was a stream of sweat and blood. “You should’ve taken the original offer, Jason. You’d already be back at Dronski’s Café, counting your credits…playing with the twins’ large breasts.” Learner’s voice echoed off the inside of the walls.
Shocked to hear Learner’s voice, he yelled, “You! You’re nothing but a fucking back stabber.”
“You look very hot without your protective suit, Jason; a man can die without one.” Learner wiped his forehead before continuing. “You know as well as I do that this ubiquitous heat is a killer.”
“Just try and open the container…see what happens!” Jason spoke with spitting malevolence.
“We are undeterred by your little safety precautions,” Learner said in a dismissive tone.
“Go fuck yourself, Learner!”
“I know what you’re thinking about, Jason… all those years, and I go ruining our business relationship like this.” Learner paused scowling at the defeated man and continued saying, “Do you think I would’ve really given you twelve million?”
“You have sixty million in Plutonium, you lowballing mother fucking asshole.”
“All that money is not mine to give away, my friend,” he simply said in a cynical tone before pausing to closely inspect Jason’s gash. “Nasty wound you got there.”
Jason lurched forward in the chains, and yelled, “I’m going to kill you before this day’s end.” He then winced from the pain ripping through his shoulders.
At this point, Learner’s proximity was close enough, Jason could smell his breath when he spoke. “You know, once your little puzzle box is cracked, let’s just say that your insatiability will’ve been your own demise. Jason, I don’t take pleasure in the thought of your death but you do have it coming for being so damn greedy.”
Jason turned his face to look Learner in the eyes, and defiantly spoke. “Do you still eat your own shit or are you still going down on your sister?”
“You’re not making this easy for me, Jason,” Learner growled inches from Jason’s eyeballs while studying the insolent man; he then shoved deep into the gash on Jason’s head with his thumb.
Jason retched backward. Feeling Learner’s thumbnail scrape against his skull, Jason screamed, “I’m going to kill you!” Thick blood pulsated out of the wound; and Jason petulantly continued speaking. “Does your mother know…that when you kiss her, your tongue is covered in gonorrhea-herpes-syphilitic sores? We all know how you liked your cancerous Titan whores…does it still burn and itch when you piss?”
“Things aren’t going to end well for you…”
Interrupting Learner’s confutation, Jason jeers. “I read your medical file on Titan, the shit those whores gave you will never go away!”
“…Nothing you say will deflect your dire predicament,” Learner petulantly responded in a dismissive tone.
“Anyone in close proximity doesn’t need to read your chart. Back at Dronski’s, I couldn’t count the number of times I vomited in my own mouth from smelling your nasty breath…”
“However, if you cooperate…”
Jason defiantly interrupted. “You better do something about the putrid diseased stench coming out of that pie hole you call a mouth.”
“You pugnacious fuck!” Frustrated, Learner snapped. He then exploded, punching Jason in the midsection when his anger spiraled down the violent spectral end of his emotions, collapsing Jason’s midsection.
Gasping for air, his lung cavities struggled to recover as thick blood oozed from his head.
After recovering from the punch he expletively laughed. “Ha, ha, ha! I still have your fucking five million.”
“Wrong! I did a recall the minute you opened the door to desert air.”
“You don’t have the power to do that,” challenged Jason, before spitting up blood.
“Such a big amount for such a little man. Yeah, the Fissure Point Council sanctioned the transaction,” Learner said and paused to punch Jason again. He continued. “This is much bigger than you, you insignificant turd!” Again, Learner punished the injured man with another blow. “The Council, and the Vril are in bed together.” He paused to deal out another before speaking more. “Nowadays, I’m not actually sure, who controls who.”
Learner paused in the beating, and with dramatic effect, “CLICK,” was the sound made by Learner unsheathing his Katana shaped knife from the composite scabbard attached to his tactical vest. He then slowly dragged the knife’s edge down Jason’s bicep, scraping sweat from his skin until reaching the jugular area of his neck.
Learner pressed the knife drawing blood, and threatened, “I think I’m going to use this blade, and disembowel you. You’ll be alive to watch your own intestines spill out on to the floor.”
“Jason, are you OK?” asked an unexpected voice.
“Yes, nice to see you,” he replied in a quivering voice.
Learner turned with the long knife in his hand. With a look of overwhelming surprise, he shouted, “You’ve got a SYN!”
“Don’t kill him, Sofia,” Jason moaned from the constraints.
With amazing speed, Sofia closed in, and picked Learner up by the collar before saying, “You are a piss-ant!”
“What is an…ant?” Learner chokingly answered while trying to pry her hand from under his chin.
“It is an insignificant, extinct arthropod.”
“I don’t understand,” Learner said while making a futile attempt to stab Sofia, and she countered by violently throwing Learner against the floor, knocking him unconscious.
“And you never will,” Sofia said before silently scanning the incapacitated man.
“CRANIAL DISPLACEMENT, improbable…CONCUSION, 95.28% viability… overall estimated physiological recovery time, 9 to 14 days. LEFT DISPLACEMENT ACROMIOCLAVICAL JOINT, and CLAVICLE FRACTURE, 98.28% viability… overall estimated physiological recovery time, 8 to 10 weeks…psychological impact, digressive affects of previous psyche status.”
“He is not dead,” she reported in advance of pulling out a laser-cutting tool out from the small bag connected to her utility belt. Oddly, she paused momentarily, and lovingly stared into Jason’s battered face, before saying, “You poor thing, I have to get you back to the ship so I can medically treat your injuries.”
“Did you already scan me too?” Jason feebly asked.
“Yes, I did...it is in my protocol.”
“Good to know…you’re a complete vision, Sofia.”
“I love you too, Jason.”
“No, I just meant, I’m glad to see you,” Jason exclaimed.
“I know but I just wanted to say, I love you,” Sofia demonstratively insisted.
“OK, we have to hurry… so can you get me down?”
“I don’t have time to argue,”
he thought
as
Sofia reached up, and cut through the handcuffs. After freeing him, she gently held the tired man from collapsing; hanging from the chains had drained all his energy.
“Grab Learner and we’ll take him hostage,” Jason ordered. Sofia then tucked Learner Rotterdam under her right arm while holding Jason to her left side; she turned to head out of the empty container, but their egress was hindered when Learner’s partner showed.
“I think I have a way to trick the lock’s security…” Mitchell paused in disbelief and his words began to trail off, “…system in thinking...”
A puzzled Mitchell stood dumbfounded on the ramp of the container, and looking up in complete disbelief, he blurted, “Unbelievable!”
Staring back, she canted her head to the right with curiosity studying the bewildered man’s reaction; and before the man could react to their escape, she threw a whirlwind roundhouse kick, knocking the computer scroll pad from his hands.
“Hey, that was mine!” Mitchell limply said while looking down at his broken device.
“It’s broken now,” she said before canting her head to the left; and with the ball of her right foot, she jabbed it straight into Mitchell’s sternum, collapsing him backward with the lightning fast front kick. His body crumpled in half before landing on the ground.
“Good work, Sofia! Now let’s get the hell out of here before the cavalry arrives,” Jason exclaimed in a weakly horse voice.
Sofia’s neural net calculated Mitchell Thacker’s injuries as he lay motionless on the cave’s sandy floor.
“MENUBRUM FRACTURE, 98% viability with possible celiac plexus damage, overall estimated physiological recovery time, 10 to 12 weeks without medical treatment…psychological impact, improvement of previous psyche status.”
On foot they silently escaped through cave’s mouth, leaving behind the cargo container full of Plutonium C3; after climbing into the sand dunes, the full moon began to edge from behind a silvery cloud, painting the desert surface a shiny grey. Sofia made quick work traversing through the thick sand.
“ETA, twenty-two minutes,”
her high functioning processor calculated.
Leaving behind the dunes, she carried the two men out on to the astral glossed plane, where a few but rare genetically modified Joshua trees, and patches of customized grass, sporadically sprouted shadows across the hard baked soil. Anything growing wild on the Earth’s desert surface had been genetically modified, to handle the harsher elements. Lack of ozone caused high radiation levels to kill nearly everything that was not altered by man. If caught out on the surface, the only way to survive was to hide deep underground, and travel by night. On average, during daylight hours, temperatures reached 158 degrees. Nighttime, the surface cooled off to a mere 123 degrees Fahrenheit.
After reaching a considerable safe distance, Sofia broke her silence by saying, “Jason, why did Learner Rotterdam and the other man look at me, so…bizarrely?”
“You shocked them,” Jason tiredly answered.
“Yes, I know…but it seemed their response was a little excessive do you not think?”
“Sofia, you’re stark naked...”
“I am not, I have my Personal Utility Belt on.”
“…Also, Learner didn’t know I had a SYN Operative with me. Besides, you’re probably the most beautiful woman they have ever seen.”
“Thank you, but what do you think, Jason?” Sofia asked in a seductive tone.
“I think, you’ll wriggle into synthetic bio-wear before getting back into your Command Pod,” responded Jason.