POD (The Pattern Universe) (3 page)

As he walked back to his office, he felt new pains creeping up his back. That was the fifth one this week; his nerves twanged in response. Even with the high tolerance and pain threshold he could endure; the aches had become increasingly painful, the doctors didn't know what was causing them. They had suggested removing the Ferrazite from his system, but he just told them it stayed. The boost he was getting to his brain was worth the few twinges.

- 2 -

The group of scientists bubbled with excitement. They were fussing around the sled before it even reached the shielded laboratory. They hadn't had a new challenge like this since Zeke Callaghan had stood in front of them with an alien-designed Needlegun, and told them they needed to figure out how it worked themselves, without any reverse engineering. His only comment had been, “You have the technology, now apply yourselves to it,” and, of course, they had. Now their own Needle Rayguns, termed NRG’s, were ‘state of the art’ not to be found anywhere else on Earth. It was one of the new weapons Ferris intended to use in the forthcoming overthrow of Space Island.

Now they had this little problem to play with. They all viewed this as a rare opportunity to steal new technology that they felt would give them immediate superiority in air and space. They were chomping at the bit like children.

Goeth pulled them all together, they huddled around him as he outlined his plan. He was in his element. Possibly the greatest outward thinker of the group, he often found the solution to problems they were hunting for, by thinking in different directions to the others. As a result, he was well respected amongst them. He was their 'de facto' leader, he filled the role admirably, bathing in the kudos of being first amongst his equals.

They set up their equipment. When they were ready, they turned on the tractor beams and lifted the cloaked object off the sled. Underneath they replaced it with a series of repressor tractor beam generators in place to take the weight and provide opposing force against the ones above.

With all tractor beams in place, the last of the mesh and chains were removed. They now had their object in stasis. If it turned off its shields, or they collapsed under pressure, the beams would immediately take up the slack and lock onto the hull of what they presumed to be a ship.

Goeth went around checking everything carefully, paying particular attention to the stabilisers. They needed to exert pressure equally, or it might be spat out of one side. He nodded as each one seemed true and even to the others.

Then, on his signal, they began to increase the pressure equally on all sides. With the beams all reinforced by the relativity of solid stone walls, they were able to exert significant tonnage to the surface of the shield. The fact that it was cloaked would eventually prove immaterial.

Goeth had come to the conclusion that if the ship were put under extreme pressure, it would force the shield into a colour change as the exertion created heat, giving them a thermal signature.

This occurred thirty minutes into the exercise. They all crowded around the monitor at one end of the lab to see the results Lockwood had pulled up on the screen in front of them. They could clearly see a tear-shaped ship approximately one metre at its thickest point and three metres at its longest.

“It's just a surveillance drone,” one said.

“No, look at those outlets there, it's some kind of space drive,” the speaker spun the control so the three dimensional image shifted to show a better angle.

“What do you think these are? “ asked another.

“They look like sensors, we have seen similar before on the AI, Ship,” Goeth informed them, being one of few who had actually been on the ship and in space.

Several looked up at him enviously. They had not taken the chance to be beamed up to the alien ship when it was available.

“We should proceed with phase II and see what happens,” Goeth commented. “How about just here. Seems a good point where damage would be minimal,” he said pointing towards the rear, behind the outlets that they agreed were engines of some type.

Five minutes later they had set up the latest laser cutter, which they knew would create considerable strain on the shield and hopefully force the cloak and shield to fail.

“Be ready with the cut-out if it goes through,” Goeth reminded his colleagues who were managing the computer controls on the laser. “Now!” he ordered.

The red beam sliced through the short distance from the end of the lance to the shield and the temperature in the room rose rapidly from the generated heat. There seemed to be no effect on the shield, even the thermal 3D image seemed to show little change. In fact, it appeared to be cooling.

“STOP!” shouted Lockwood, who had been monitoring the screen output, gesturing to his colleagues on the lance. He summoned Goeth across from where he had been supervising the laser.

“It's absorbing the energy from the laser beam and using it to strengthen its shield,” he muttered as his fingers flew across the keyboard forcing the system to show them a replay of the last thirty seconds.

“Well, I'll be damned!” Goeth agreed. “It's smart. By absorbing the heat, it's reinforcing the shields, but assuming its power was at maximum before it came in, how much can it absorb before it can't handle any more?” he questioned.

“Where could the excess heat go if its systems were already full?” the scientists who had brought their attention to Pod's strategy echoing in agreement, as he pondered the answer.

“Step up the power,” ordered Goeth confidently, “and switch on the air coolers, it's going to get damned hot in here,” he added, undoing his coat and taking it off. He removed his jacket, then replaced his lab coat.

“Let's see if we can cook that alien out of its skin,” he bawled confidently. “Set up a Needlegun mounting over here, we will add to the pressure on its shield,” he added pointing to the front of the tear shape.

He called back to the scientist still monitoring the 3D image. “Are you logging all the data readings?”

Lockwood nodded. “Yep! And it's pretty interesting stuff, way off our normal scale of operation. This is some tough cookie we are dealing with here.”

“Let me know when it starts to cook,” Goeth called back to him as activity in the room increased. He went around the trapped unit to supervise.

Lockwood watched the 3D thermal screen image as the heat signature of the shield continued to climb. The NRG was having a limited effect, but the laser was building up an increasing level of pressure which was turning the local area an expanding deep red covering an increasingly wider radius.

He thought that if the shield were to collapse the damage might be significant. He chewed his lip debating whether to point it out to Goeth. In the end, he decided to wait a bit. It was to prove a fatal decision.

Lockwood was still watching the screen when the invisible tractor fields collapsed. Whatever they had been holding onto was no longer there. The whine of the electric motors increased in pitch as their operators sought to quickly turn them off before they damaged something.

The NRG beam, having lost its target, and with nothing to halt its path, cut across the room wounding the laser operator in the arm and leg.

The laser, also having no object to focus its power on, beamed its deadly ray straight across the laboratory, drilling an explosive hole straight through Lockwood’s' head. It continued to traverse the wall behind his still upright corpse, creating a melted strip of concrete and mesh in its wake.

Both beams continued to inflict considerable damage on the room and its occupants, before eventually being switched off by Goeth and another team member.

The captured object, they had presumed to be completely under their control, had simply disappeared.

Goeth looked around at the resulting confusion furious at having lost a prized possession. He also knew Ferris was going have his hide.

Pod wasn't amused but wasn't particularly unimpressed either. They were causing significant discomfort and it wasn't easy venting the excess heat from the shield. It was, in fact, trapped. Not inextricably, but it didn't want to do any damage to itself, or the laboratory, even though it intended to leave soon. Timing was essential.

Thanks to Lockwood logging in to the network, it had infiltrated most of the computers in the room with a monitoring program developed during its days of eavesdropping on world events, a 'worm' they called it. The last thing Pod wanted was for them to replace equipment and somehow discover it.

It needed the worm to spread to other computers on the system, but these ones were isolated. It would need to be patient and await for manual dispersal of the worm across their networks.

Pod had already updated its data banks with the latest from their research and designs. It was extremely disturbed to discover many of the devices they had developed were primarily directed towards on-planet warfare, which was supposed to have halted with the implementation and increased use of personal shields.

Here, though, the Fortress was concentrating on weapons to overcome those shields and other devices using the new technology. There were some unpleasant weapons in their arsenal. Pod needed to know more about their intentions; it felt that Zeke and Space Island might be the intended targets of much of this.

It was downloading the logs of communications and files from the administration side, but needed just a few more minutes before it could begin to extricate itself from this attempt to create a trap. It had listened to the conversations and had no intentions of waiting around while they reverse engineered it.

It had noted earlier that the room where it was being held prisoner had a high ceiling. Pod had calculated that there was enough clearance above it to maintain itself out of reach of the humans as long as they didn't wave their arms in the air. Its personal experience indicated only a 3% chance of this occurring within its direct vicinity.

Pod was currently unable to escape the room using the D-Jump because the inner wall of mesh, installed as a screening device, blocked its ability much like the outer shield. It had not previously scanned this room and could not read anything outside, so whatever else it was designed to do, it was also an effective D-Jump screen.

Pod had taken note of the molecular signatures and would research the materials further when it had more time, but at the moment it had other pressing priorities. There was so much information and innovative design here. It seemed a shame these people were at war with each other. Together they would be formidable.

Pod waited until the limit of the shield was approaching. It would move just at the moment they anticipated success as this would create the maximum effect. They would not know if they had caused the result, or not.

The last of its uploads had finished moments before. It calculated that there would be enough confusion and air disturbance, in the seconds during and after its jump across the room, to ensure that nobody noticed its movement within the laboratory. It was a safe assumption as they would believe it had exited the room.

The time approached quickly as the temperature began to peak. It D-Jumped from the floor to the top front corner of the ceiling out of reach of most of the humans, close to the double doors. It had not anticipated the ensuing chaos that occurred when the tractor beams had nothing to attach themselves to.

Had the laser, without its intended target in front, not beamed across the laboratory and through Lockwood' head, he might have been able to identify Pod's new location. By virtue of him having his head de-cored at close range, this information was not readily available. As a result, when they did have an opportunity to consider it, all the occupants believed the captured object had disappeared.

There was absolute chaos as various alarms blared throughout the level. Two security guards, stationed outside, raced in with NRG’s raised. The place became instantly jammed while everyone tried to sort out what was happening. Quickly making the Laser and NRG weapon safe, and seeing no direct threat, the guards holstered their weapons. Then, keeping either side of Goeth for his protection, as the most senior scientist, they managed to get things calmed down.

Pod saw the death and injury of the two technicians as unfortunate, but, with its growing awareness, it recognised their involvement in the development of weapons, and their death and injury by same partially justified the result. Beyond that, it didn't consider the situation.

It waited until the double doors opened to get the injured lab technician out and bring in repair crews to make the room safe. Then it dropped down to access the doors and pushed its cloaked and shielded shell through the opening, shunting aside two confused emergency workers in the process who luckily remained none the wiser.

Once clear of the shielded wall, Pod found it was able to sense everything around it again. It noted the exterior signature of the shielded room for later analysis so it could find it again on a scan. It then D-Jumped into a vacant room it had detected in an earlier scan. The room was quite large, empty and in total darkness. Remaining cloaked, it hovered in position while it carried out its remaining tasks.

Seeing that it was still trapped inside the shield, detectable by external sensors, Pod decided if it remained here it would be temporarily safe.

It had a plan to extricate itself from the complex. It could stay until the attention had been diverted away, but it wanted to get free of the Fortress and back into space. It had discovered some things within the Fortress network that related to future plans. It liked them but not in the hands of the Fortress. It would pre-empt them and at the same time prepare for any potential defence of the planet. In the meantime, it had to get these patterns to Osbourne.

The shield permeated through the bedrock beneath the Fortress, an unusually paranoid action by Ferris to secure the Fortress from below, even though there was nothing currently threatening ingress from the outside of the mountain. Pod considered the security was possibly there for another reason and filed the information away along with everything else.