____________________________________________________
CLEA
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It seemed like we had been searching forever until we had found what we were looking for. Katrina had thought that this would be an impossible task, but I knew differently. Setting up at the top of a ridge just south of the river that bordered the town, I pulled out the tablet and began to explain.
“I’ve made my way into many places where people did not want someone like me, especially palaces, forts, and mansions. All three of those locations want to have secondary ways to get things in or out unnoticed, but those secondary ways all have some things in common. They must be inconspicuous. Now the main entrance was here,” I tapped the map on the tablet. That means an attacker would logically concentrate his forces there, so you would not want the secondary in a location they could easily see the use of from that point. Next, they must not be obstructed. It won’t do much good if you can’t get in or out, so they will be set up so that a fallen tree or flooding won’t affect them. However, it has been hundreds of years, so that may not be the case anymore, but we can search for a location on this old map and then juxtapose likely locations with the current terrain.”
Katrina was clearly following along; she had been listening quite carefully to my lessons in chicanery on our travels.
“It can’t be too long, in case you need to transport wounded, and lastly, it must funnel those exiting to an area away from any incident; this goes with the first requirement, naturally. You want a clear path of escape if necessary. Now, where would you hide one?”
She looked at the map and then pulled on her data glasses, probably to use the magnification, before looking north at the town.
“The edge of the old facility came all the way to the water. Could they have gone under the river and come up on this side?”
“Oh, that’s good. Yes, of course, they could have. You’ve seen the bunker. The Old World was excellent at digging.” I brought the map up and zoomed it to examine all the little draws at the base of the ridgeline we were viewing from.
“There was an old road here, running along this path,” I said as I traced it with my finger. “If I was going to hide it, I would have placed it here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or here.” Every time I tapped, a small orange dot appeared.
It felt like it took almost the entire night, which started with us leading the horses through the drifting snow until we found a place where we could set up a small camp with a well-hidden fire; now that the horses were unsaddled and dried off so they wouldn’t freeze with blankets over them, and now we were on snowshoes which Katrina had quickly woven out of pine branches and tied to together with cord. These made walking much easier, and we combed through all the locations, finally finding the right place in the early hours of the morning.
The vision modes of the data glasses had picked up a luminescent glow on some of the exposed stone on the side of one of the draws we were searching. After brushing away snow so we could see more of the bare stone, it was clear it was a remnant of an arrow.
Following the arrow’s base into the back of the draw, there was a slot in the rock wall choked with brush and debris,
After clearing enough away so we could look, we saw an obviously created passage.
“Should we go in?” Katrina asked with a grin. I just rolled my eyes.
After squeezing inside and following the passage, there was an open area with a sign on the wall.
S-21 CDO
Unauthorized Access Forbidden
Lethal Force Authorized
“Oh yes,...” I said softly as I pulled out the tablet and, after setting up the access commands Mara had given me, pressed it against the metal door. There was a click, and it swung open. Dim red lights switched on, illuminating a stairway down, and we descended, arriving at a door with a bar on it. Pressing the bar set off a loud buzzer and a flashing red light. Katrina had her pistol out in a flash and was looking for a target. I raised my hand and, reaching up, disengaged the alarm contact. Chance had told me about what had happened to him, after all.
“What is this?” Katrina asked, looking around. We had exited in the side of a large tunnel that could easily have two Guts driving side by side. The roadway sloped slightly downhill toward the river but continued on up under the ridge.
“I’m not sure. Let’s head to the base.”
Going downhill about a quarter mile, we saw a shimmering surface that had to be water. The tunnel going underwater had clearly sprung a leak and flooded.
“Dammit. This was a waste of time,” I swore.
“What’s the other way?”
“I don’t know? Let’s find out.”
Retracing our steps, we passed several doors like the one we had entered through, and then the roadway leveled, and we were in, “A warehouse…” I gasped.
In here were parked Guts and larger things on charging sleds like the ones in the garage, along with crates and crates of supplies. There was also a large cylinder like the one that was moved to one side in the warehouse back at R-34.
“We got very lucky,” I said as I ran over to it.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, you’ll see. Hopefully, they’ll listen to reason.”
Now, I’m no Chance Magellan, but at least I learn fast, and touching the gray sensor plate brought up,
Brutus-45
System Ready for Charging
YES/NO
PRESS YES to Start Charging Sequence PRESS NO to Continue Sleep Mode
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The words ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ were blinking. I pressed ‘Yes.’
Now it read,
Brutus-45
Central Power OFFLINE
Auxiliary Power Available -- Charging Initiated
00% Completed-- Estimated Time to Completion: 05:59:59
“What do we do now?”
“This is like the garage at the Duchy,” I pointed at the covered vehicles. “We need to find the outside door, open it, then fetch the horses and bring them inside.”
She nodded, and we started searching. Finding the door was easy, but figuring out how to open it was not; Chance would probably be laughing at me as I fumbled with switches and panels, looking for the right command.
“Hey!” Katrina called out. “I found something about the doors!”
I walked over and saw a panel flashing.
CENTRAL POWER OFFLINE
INSUFFICIENT POWER FOR AUTOMATIC DOOR OPERATION
Manual Mode
YES/NO
I pressed ‘YES’ and there was a loud clank; a panel popped open, revealing a lever, and the display changed,
CENTRAL POWER OFFLINE
INSUFFICIENT POWER FOR AUTOMATIC DOOR OPERATION
Manual Mode Engaged
PRESS Cancel to resume Automatic Mode
CANCEL
Sighing, I examined the lever. There was a heavy valve next to it marked ‘OPEN’ and ‘CLOSE’. Making sure the valve was set to ‘OPEN’, I grabbed the lever and pulled down. It moved easily enough, but it was clear that this was going to take a while. After half an hour of hard work, there was a large enough gap to get a horse through, and I was exhausted.
“Go get the horses,” I said, bringing up the map on the tablet. “They were here,” I pointed, "and this is where we entered. Go out that way, and it should be right there. Then you can walk them alongside this ridgeline and around, and we’re somewhere around here, I think.”
“It will take some time to break camp.”
“I understand. I’m not going anywhere.”
She headed back down the roadway, and I slumped. Even my endurance could be tapped out after all. I went searching for the inventory console, but that was off due to no Central Power either. I did find a door labeled POWER, but even though my tablet could unlock it, I had no clue what I was looking at. This, again, was a Chance sort of problem.
Katrina returned to find me leaning against the wall, and we took turns pumping the door closed before we both could finally get some sleep.
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I woke up and stretched before heating some water over the Old World portable cooker and making ‘Hot Chocolate’ from one of the ration packs. Katrina was already up and had opened the door enough to go outside and do her business. I followed suit, and we then fed the horses some of the grain we had brought before filling the collapsible cloth tub with snow to melt for water.
Checking the clock on my data glasses, I returned to the cylinder as it finished counting down.
Brutus-45
Central Power OFFLINE
Auxiliary Power Available -- Charging Completed
100% Completed-- Estimated Time to Completion: 00:00:00
Initiate Deployment
YES/NO
PRESS YES to Initiate PRESS NO for Hot Standby
“What is that thing?” Katrina asked as she walked up to me.
“One of the biggest secrets that the Duchy has,” I replied as I pressed ‘YES’.
The end of the cylinder opened, and a rack slid out with a man wearing CDO coveralls on it. He was huge, at least as tall as a soc, and powerfully built, with a bald head and a small, neat beard. His nametapes read ‘S-21’ and BRUTUS-45.
The tray finished extending and then began to pivot upright. A panel with many things I didn’t understand lit up beside his head, and after a little while, a series of lights came on next to the phrase, ‘Boot Status’. Starting off as all red, they gradually changed to green, passing through yellow on the way. ‘Boot Status’ was replaced by ‘Cycling’, and that started to flash as it shifted from red to green as well before stopping at ‘Active’, and his eyes opened.
“What’s the situation?” he asked in a deep voice. “Wait a second, who are you?” now he sounded threatening.
“Clea Lindquist, and this is my protégé, Katrina Eklund, Mister..?”
“Mister? I’m a Master Chief, and don’t you forget it. I work for a living. Now, who the hell are you? Where’s the ranking officer?”
“Probably dead as of four hundred years ago, Master Chief.”
“Start talking.”
“The Hiver…Hi-Side War was four hundred years ago, and nobody won. An avatar named HARI-9 was activated and rescued Katrina and I, along with a great many other people. Now, we’re helping her get things back together.
“You’re full of crap.”
“Frequently, but not now. We’ve traveled here from Bunker R-34.”
“How’d you get in here?”
“We were given the necessary codes and gained access through an emergency entrance as there is apparently a hostile force on the main entrance.”
“Hostile force?”
“Mara…HARI-9…suspects surviving Hi-Sider involvement.”
“I thought you said the war was over?”
“We thought so, but things have happened, “Sir…Master Chief, I am sorry. Would you know how to restore power in here?”
He looked around him and was about to speak when he was startled to see the horses, “You rode here? From where?”
“Just off the western edge of the Duchy of North Star. You would have known it as Minnesota.”
“Would have known? What the hell happened after I was downed and transferred?”
“I’ll try to explain…” I began, “But power?”
As he walked us down and opened the doors marked POWER, SENSORS, PROCESSING, and COMMS, I described what I knew.
“Uh, Master Chief,” Katrina spoke up as he was working on the Power panel.
“Yes?”
“Do you have a name? HARI-9’s is Mara Edgerton.”
He turned to look at her, “I do, Master Chief Petty Officer Vasa Olesa, formerly Naval Special Operations, now assigned to Ceedo.” As he finished what he was doing, the ceiling lights began to switch from red to white, and I could feel the air starting to move.
“So, assuming you’re telling the truth, and the fact that you have horses along with your outfits and still managed to get into here, means something is screwed up."
He led us down a side corridor off the warehouse area and into an elevator. With his bulk, it was a tight squeeze for all of us. Arriving at a level marked OPERATIONS, we exited and were in a room much like the Main Level at R-34.”
Moving to a panel that looked like one of the ones in the OP, he reached for a switch and paused, “You said hostiles are close?”
“Right across the river.”
He nodded, “Passive only then…God, I wish we had a tech here. I’m a gun bunny, not a brain.”
“I understand completely, Master Chief Vasa,” and I meant it.
He laughed, “Just Vasa or Master Chief’s fine.”