Deadlock (25 page)

‘Looks like we’re on the right track,’ Shelby said.

‘Which at least means we didn’t throw ourselves out of a perfectly good aircraft for nothing,’ Otto replied.

They had been ninety per cent certain of the location of Furan’s facility based on the heat signature they had seen earlier, but this was clear physical evidence that there was something here, hidden beneath the ice. They didn’t need to worry about this outer layer of defence; their suits’ camouflage systems masked their thermal signature completely, making them invisible to the detectors. The real challenge still lay ahead. They walked a short distance further and Raven held up a single closed fist, dropping to one knee. She brought her rifle up and peered through its sights.

‘Target ahead,’ Raven said and a small image of what she was seeing popped up in the bottom left-hand corner of Otto’s HUD. There, just visible, was a small concrete structure, shrouded in ice, with a metal slab set into the centre of it.

‘OK, that’s the entrance,’ Raven said. ‘Franz, can you see a good firing position?’

‘Yes, I am thinking that the ice shelf on our left would be good,’ Franz replied.

‘OK, get set up,’ Raven said. ‘Otto, are you ready to do your thing?’

‘Ten seconds,’ Otto said, unslinging the pack from his back and pulling the case that Professor Pike had given him a couple of hours ago from inside. Franz moved off to the left, scrambling up a steep sheet of ice and on to an outcropping that provided a commanding view of the approach to the entrance. He pressed a button on his rifle and a small bipod snapped out from under the barrel as he lay down on the ice, sighting on the concealed entrance.

‘In position,’ Franz reported.

Otto opened the metal case and reached out with his senses, connecting to the dozens of tiny machines inside. A moment later, the first microdrone rose out of the case. It was no larger than a housefly, hanging silently in the air, its tiny rotors inaudible. A few seconds later the rest of the drones were hovering in the air in front of Otto in a perfectly symmetrical swarm. Otto pushed gently with his mind and the swarm flew towards the entrance, scattering in all directions before dropping to just a couple of centimetres above the ice. Otto felt the feedback from the tiny olfactory sensor mounted on the bottom of each drone as they slowly began to sniff the air, homing in on the scent of high explosives. The sensors were so sensitive that they could detect the distinctive chemical signature of numerous forms of explosive on the basis of just a few airborne molecules, and as they spread out across the ice they began to hunt. Each one homed in on a single one of the landmines hidden beneath the snow and then slowly landed at the point where the scent was strongest. Otto waited as each of the drones touched down and then he sent another command, illuminating the tiny infrared beacons on the top of each drone. They were far too small to trigger the sensors surrounding the entrance to the Glasshouse, but they appeared on the HUDs of the assault team as tiny pinpricks of green light, each one highlighting the position of a hidden mine. Now all they had to do was cross the minefield without stepping on any of the drones.

‘You’re sure that’s all of them?’ Shelby asked.

‘Pretty sure,’ Otto said, ‘but maybe you should go first just to be on the safe side.’

‘Funny,’ Shelby replied, ‘terrifying, but funny.’

‘I’ll go first,’ Raven said. ‘Follow my trail.’

She crept forwards, carefully stepping around the gleaming spots of light, picking her way through the minefield. Shelby followed close behind her, matching her step for step. Otto took a deep breath and stepped on to the trail, concentrating on following it as closely as possible. He was halfway across when a sudden blast of Arctic wind howled out of nowhere, catching him off balance. He started to tip, his arms flailing when he felt someone catch hold of his pack and pull him back upright.

‘Thanks,’ Otto said with a relieved sigh.

‘You’re welcome,’ Wing replied. ‘Just watch your step. I prefer my friends in as few pieces as possible.’

‘Noted,’ Otto replied, smiling inside his helmet. He took a deep breath and focused again on following the trail of footprints in the snow in front of him. A minute later, he joined Shelby and Raven on the far side of the minefield with Wing just two steps behind him. The entrance was now only twenty metres away across a featureless sheet of solid ice.

‘OK, now for the tricky part,’ Otto said.

‘You know you’re having fun when crossing a minefield in the dark
isn’t
the tricky part,’ Shelby said.

‘You ready, Franz?’ Otto said.

‘Yes, I am having clear lines of fire,’ Franz replied in Otto’s earpiece. ‘Ready when you are.’

‘OK, guys, get in position, we’re only going to get one shot at this,’ Otto said. Wing, Raven and Shelby all moved to their assigned positions and Otto took a deep breath. ‘Disengaging thermoptic camouflage.’

There was a flickering in the air for a second and then Otto became fully visible. A moment later a pair of hatches on top of the concrete structure in front of him popped open and two automated machine guns snapped up into position, swivelling towards him. Otto closed his eyes and reached out to the drones covering the minefield behind him, triggering a massive overload in their infrared beacons and sending out a huge flare of invisible light that temporarily blinded the sentry guns’ sensors. They had two, maybe three seconds, until they recovered.

‘Now, Franz,’ Otto said.

A hundred metres away Franz held his breath and fired once, re-sighted and then fired again.

In front of Otto, a neat hole appeared in the centre of the sensor package mounted on top of each of the robotic cannons. They tracked left and right, suddenly blinded and unable to sense now the target that had been standing in front of them just a moment before.

‘Good shot,’ Otto said. ‘Thanks, Franz.’

On top of the concrete structure, Shelby swept the snow off the numeric keypad, while pulling a roll of tools from her belt. She quickly unscrewed the faceplate and set to work, stripping wires and attaching crocodile clips as Otto heard the whirring of machinery from the other side of the heavy metal door.

‘OK, here they come,’ Otto said. ‘Re-engaging camouflage.’

A moment later he disappeared from sight, only a few seconds before the door in front of him rumbled open and two guards with assault rifles stepped outside. They carefully surveyed the area in front of the door, their weapons raised.

‘We’ve got nothing here, Control,’ one of them said into his throat mic. ‘The turrets seem to be having trouble tracking though. Better get a tech up here to check them out.’ The guards took another quick look around and then stepped back inside the elevator carriage, the heavy steel door rumbling shut behind them again.

RFID chips analysed and recorded
, H.I.V.E.mind said inside Otto’s head.
Sending frequency and ID code to ISIS units
.

‘Got the unlock code,’ Shelby said. ‘We’re good to go.’

‘OK, move in,’ Raven said. ‘We need to get inside before their technicians figure out what happened to the sentry guns.’

‘Opening main door,’ Shelby said and a moment later the steel door opened to reveal the empty elevator shaft beyond.

‘Assault team to Leviathan, we’re going in,’ Raven reported.

‘Understood,’ Nero’s voice crackled over her earpiece. ‘We’re on station and ready for retrieval.’

‘Roger that,’ Raven replied. ‘Let’s go.’

She walked over to the entrance and engaged the magnetic adhesion system in the gloves of her ISIS armour. She leapt from the threshold and caught the steel cable in the middle of the shaft, her gloves adhering to the metal. Slowly she lowered the power of the magnetic field until she began to slide down the cable in a controlled descent. One by one, Wing, Otto and Shelby followed her, all gliding silently down the thick cable until they landed gently on the roof of the elevator car below. Raven opened the maintenance hatch on top of the carriage and dropped down into the lift.

‘OK, transmitting RFID code,’ Otto said, once all four of them were inside the carriage. A moment later the radio transmitter built into his suit broadcast the security code that he had recorded from the tiny transmitter attached to the Glasshouse security guard’s uniform. He had bet correctly that they would need some kind of friend or foe system to identify and protect themselves from the facility’s own security systems. Now that they had a recording of the code they could fool the system into believing they were part of the security team. A second after the code started to transmit, the doors to the elevator slid apart and they were inside. The facility was just as impressive as Nathaniel’s schematics had suggested. The concrete walkways that led off to their left and right encircled a massive central atrium which dropped away to an open training area a hundred metres below them.

‘OK, I need to get up there,’ Otto said, pointing at the glass-sided structure that was suspended from the ceiling above them. ‘That’s where the central processing hub is. You three know what to do once I’ve disabled the automated security systems. You’ll know I’ve succeeded when those things go offline.’ He gestured towards the camera drones that slowly floated around the central shaft.

‘I’ll head to the main guard barracks,’ Raven said. ‘Wing, Shelby, you go down and wait for the dormitories to unlock. We’re going to have a lot of confused people to get out of here. Don’t hesitate to take down any of Furan’s men if you have to. Remember what they did during the Hunt.’

Otto walked to the edge of the balcony as Raven, Wing and Shelby set off towards their targets. He raised his arm, aiming the grappler unit mounted on the back of it at the ceiling above the central glass structure. The bolt shot from the unit, trailing a monofilament cable, striking the concrete ceiling and locking in place. Otto triggered the reel mechanism and it pulled him towards the ceiling at high speed. He hung in place for a moment, looking through the glass into the darkened room beyond. Once he was satisfied that the room was empty he triggered the laser on his suit and began to cut an opening in the glass large enough for him to fit through. He pressed on the glass as the laser finished cutting, ensuring that the glass fell inside the room and not to the ground a hundred metres below. He climbed through the hole and into the room on the other side, ears straining for any sign of Furan’s security personnel. After a few seconds, satisfied that his entrance had gone unnoticed, he made his way over to the door of the small office. He opened the door a crack and peeked into the corridor outside which he was pleased to see was empty. He closed his eyes for a moment, visualising the schematics that Nathaniel had shown him and plotting a route from his current location to the central computer core for the facility. He hurried down the corridor, moving as quietly as possible, heading for his target. He was slightly surprised to find the door to the core unguarded, but that was probably due to the fact that Furan and her men would have assumed that it was effectively impossible for anyone to intrude this far past their security systems. The sensor above the door scanned the RFID signal that Otto’s suit was transmitting as he approached and hissed open. The room beyond was filled with the gentle hum of processor fans from the banks of servers that lined the walls. Otto could still not sense any activity from the machines, presumably due to the electromagnetic shielding that Nathaniel had described. He moved over to one of the servers and removed the cover on the front of it, exposing the hardware inside, and suddenly he could feel the data running through the network. He smiled to himself – this was going to be easier than he had expected. He reached out and connected with the Glasshouse’s network, quickly identifying the security systems he wanted. First he deactivated the camera drones, leaving them hovering, but with their cameras looping recorded footage, and then he locked the doors to the main guard barracks. He quickly identified which of the dormitories housed the kidnapped H.I.V.E. students and unlocked the doors to them also. He scanned the roster of students, looking for one name in particular, but not finding it. He broadened his search, hunting for two words: Laura Brand. A moment later he found her. She was held in an isolation cell a couple of levels below where he was right now. He felt a flood of relief wash over him as he realised that she was still alive, something he had not quite dared to allow himself to believe until that moment. He left the shielded cover off the server, hoping that he would now be able to maintain contact with the security system. That at least should give them some warning if an alarm was somehow triggered. He crept back outside and made his way to the bridge that led from the control centre to the outer area of the Glasshouse. He willed the bridge to extend as he approached, watching it slide across the gap to the perimeter walkway before heading across. He found the cell door quickly and issued a command to the now vulnerable security server, ordering it to open up. The cell door popped open and the light inside turned on. Otto deactivated his suit’s camouflage system as he entered, pulling off his helmet as he approached the girl who lay shaking in a fetal ball on the concrete bed.

‘Laura,’ he whispered, placing a hand on her shoulder. She slowly turned over, her eyes widening in terror as she looked at him.

‘Oh God, no, stay away from me,’ Laura whimpered as she recoiled from him. ‘Please don’t hurt me any more, please, just leave me alone.’ She shuffled backwards away from him, until her back was against the wall, her arms crossed over her head defensively.