Carl was excited when he heard the girl Adriana had been located. Some of the mercenaries had given him some basic instruction on how to aim and fire a gun. To his disappointment his cybernetic upgrades did not give him any particular advantage with aiming or reflexes. It did make it easy to see in the dark and he could usually identify whoever he was targeting if they were friendly.
A couple guys had shown him some exercises and basic things to practice for hand-to-hand combat. Carl thought the weightlifting was easy, but endurance training was really hard. The mercenaries were getting paid extra to train him, but it was clear none of them wanted him to participate in the raid once they received a target location.
Regardless, when the call came, he was brought along but ordered to stay in the car as various specialists left to get in position for the raid. Carl was disappointed but realized he really wouldn’t be able to help much. Still, Carl had watched enough TV to know that the guy waiting in the car always got out and ended up helping in some unexpected way.
It was nighttime, but Carl was able to spot several members of his team surrounding the target building. He exited the car but didn’t get close because he did not want to risk alerting the kidnappers. He also didn’t want to get shot by someone on his own team.
The building they approached was a low-end apartment complex. He identified a few snipers working for his team who had set up covering the building. Another group of four were entering the complex dressed inconspicuously like normal residents coming home for the night. A couple minutes later there was a loud bang and some audible gunshots. The four men who had entered the complex were leaving quickly, escorting a girl and a dark-skinned man. Carl confirmed it was Adrianna and a guy named Solomon Rhodes. The whole operation had taken less than ten minutes from when they had arrived.
“Carl, get back in the car.” Sergio told him, sounding amused.
“Sorry,” Carl replied. Unlike on TV shows, they didn't need him at all. He resolved that one day he would be one of the guys who got to go in and rescue the hostage. There was a feature in his cybernetics software called “Skill Training”. He had checked it out before and it looked boring. It had been much more interested in catching up on the whole internet thing.
As they drove back, he decided to look at some of the articles and videos it recommended. There was an article which detailed some simple martial arts moves to improve fitness. Another article described training your brain to improve your observation skills. Carl watched a video that explained basic safety and maintenance for firearms. He continued working through the list well into the night.
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Alexey Lukina was supervising this operation personally. He had received news that the hostage had been rescued, but it was not a big concern. The tech they had traded in the initial exchange was verified although the reactor had melted down when his technicians had tried to examine the interior. He had been angry, but not really surprised after their repeated warnings. Regardless, the Mexico facility would have all the data he needed, and the key people were here in case he needed more hostages. He had stirred up the Calavera cartel who had been embarrassed during their last raid. A donation of a couple of APCs and some intel on their opponents had persuaded them to send a significant group of their thugs. He didn’t expect them to be successful but having them blasting away at the walls should be a great distraction. It didn’t really matter how successful they were. If they made it through the walls, his men would easily put them down.
His main attack was an amphibious assault. They had several small boats that were silent and nearly invisible to sonar about a mile away from the target. One of his commandos had scouted the area and returned evidence of extensive mining operations. There was a mound underwater which occasionally released red hot slag near the top. It kind of looked like a small undersea volcano. He saw signs of industrial robots with designs similar to the schematics they had received moving materials around.
He had teams of frogmen approaching the facility underwater. Meanwhile, a Tsirkon cruise missile was launched from a submarine over 200 miles away. Technically this could be considered an act of war against Mexico, but after their initial confirmation of the fusion reactor, his bosses had declared he must seize or destroy the facility at any cost.
The explosion leveled the house and knocked out whatever power the guard towers were getting. He expected the lower levels of the bunker would survive. His men continued their approach. A heavily injured guard in one of the towers somehow propped himself up and launched an underwater grenade into the water, killing a couple of his divers and injuring more. Some of his men surfaced and suppressed the tower with heavy fire.
As the first group of his men were starting to exit the water, emergency power kicked in. Some turrets on the wall swiveled towards the ocean. There were a couple large cavitation events in the water and some of his men exploded in the water leaving a nasty looking chum.
One of his men had a portable missile launcher and took out one of the turrets. After about 6 seconds the remaining turrets fired again injuring most of the remaining men still in the water. He didn’t recognize the guns; they seemed to fire a powerful blast relative to their size, but with a slow rate of fire. Eventually, the men who had made it on land finished off the turrets and a grenade had silenced the remaining tower.
Casualties had been severe and there were only 12 men left in fighting condition, but a few more were badly injured using floatation devices. He signaled his boats to move in towards the shore. He had more men on the boats along with some heavy equipment to get into the bunker.
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When the missile hit, the main power unit on the first floor of the bunker was destroyed. Also destroyed was a backup gas generator that was located near the house. No one had been in the house when it was destroyed - everyone staying there had already exited through a tunnel into the bunker. They had installed some anti-dive ultrasound devices which had picked up the enemy about 20 minutes before the missile hit. Losing all power took out their connection to the battle robots, automated turrets and sensors. They also lost communications with the guards in the towers. Worse, it had disabled their ability to remotely trigger an array of underwater mines that had been set up to counter an attack by divers.
They still had a generator for electric smelting operations in the lower level, but it had not been set up as a backup source. The technicians quickly started running cables originally used to power the first-generation robots which needed to tie into the bunker’s power network. They were improvising, so it took several minutes before they could restore power.
“The antennae to control the surface robots are completely fried.” Phillip cursed. “See what systems we still have.”
“Wall turret controls and some of the underwater facilities.” Rafael replied.
“Turrets!” They took control of turrets and started firing the rail guns into the water. Everyone remembered how they had accidently killed a school of fish testing these guns, so hopefully it would cause divers some problems too.
The turrets managed to get a few shots off before the feeds were cut.
“Well, this is not looking good,” Matt said. “Do we still have any of the first gen mining robots?”
“There are six we didn’t bother to upgrade. We could probably power and control them by wire if we loaded our fighting robot controller software and made a few changes.”
“Can we just tell some robots to dig us a tunnel out of here?” Scott asked. “The house next door is empty. If we dug up under it, we could probably get away.”
“Not a bad idea.” Matt admitted. “I can change the dig plan on some of the newer robots near the surface. Much easier than reprogramming the older models to accept manual fighting controls.”
“Let’s do both.” Melinda ordered. She had installed an intercom which allowed her to communicate to various rooms in the base through her phone. “I didn’t expect they would hit us with a missile so most of my defensive plans were ruined from that first attack. In the future we need to hire a general, since I keep messing this up.”
“Hey, we’ve taken some damage, but you rescued Adriana and most of our people are still alive.” Scott said. “Let’s not give up yet.”
“Right,” agreed Melinda. “They had four boats unloading men with jackhammers and other equipment to dig into the bunker. I see about 40 additional combatants besides the 12 that made it to shore.”
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“That is not exactly motivating us.” Scott complained.
“Don’t be a baby. We have 2 guards inside the bunker plus your bodyguards. They are well armed but won’t be able to stop an assault once they break through the entrance. The Dark Siren was about 4 hours out last time I spoke with them. We could communicate by cell phone from the surface, but the Russians are probably jamming signals in the nearby area.” Melinda continued.
“I got the robots returning here with a new priority dig plan.” Matt announced.
“That was quick. How long will it take them to tunnel out of here?”
“I think they can get outside the wall in about 6 hours.”
“How long until the Russians dig into the un-collapsed part of the bunker?” Melinda asked.
“No idea, but at least a few hours. I can’t exactly look up the digging speed of soldiers on the internet right now. I can only assume they are not faster than our robots.” Matt replied.
“Is there any way to get our battle robots back online?”
“We could probably run a cable through our tunnel and fabricate a new antenna.”
“OK. You robot guys do whatever you can to rig up the first generation wire guided robots to your fighting controls. I’m going to send our Scuba diver Jansen to sneak out and head down the coast. I’ll see if he can run the cable to the shore at the next property over. I recently bought out the neighbors, so we own it anyway. He can also contact Dark Siren and the police. I’m sure the police and Mexican military are already aware there is a major situation here, but it might help to get them information on what they will be facing.”
As usual, Scott felt like there was little he could contribute. He couldn’t even walk at the moment, and most of his skills depended heavily on access to the internet.
“Scott, I’m sorry I got carried away with your upgrades,” Melinda’s voice was saying over the intercom. “It is very important you go down to the gym with Dr. Chaikhot and get started on your rehab. We are in a dangerous situation so getting you up and walking is kind of important right now.”
Well, he was still mad at Melinda, but she had a point. With their base under attack, being stuck in a wheelchair might get him killed and could put others at risk if they tried to help him.
“OK, I’m not forgiving you, but we can discuss it after we get through this situation.” Scott grudgingly agreed.
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Dr. Chaikhot wheeled Scott to the elevator. He heard Elsa’s voice from down the hall asking if she could save her rainbow rats. He didn’t even bother worrying about what that was about. This place had a lot of crazy projects going on that he would ask about if they survived.
They went down a couple levels. This place had really grown in just a couple months. This floor had more of the same rough, low-quality limestone walls, poured concrete flooring and industrial looking light fixtures. He hoped they would have time to improve their facilities eventually, so they didn’t resemble a Soviet style prison.
Through a door was a fairly large gymnasium. There were racks of dumbbells, about a dozen weight benches, a row of treadmills and other pieces of cardio equipment. No one was currently working out; not surprising given they had just been hit by a cruise missile and people hopefully had better stuff to be doing right now.
There was one rather fit looking guy who sprang to his feet when they entered.
“Hello, I heard on the intercom we are under attack. Do you need me to help push the guy in the wheelchair?” The meathead asked helpfully.
“No thanks, Gabriel.” Dr. Chaikhot answered politely. “Can you bring out the physical therapy bars and the walker?”
Gabriel hustled to a storage area and started setting up a pair of parallel bars that Scott had seen before in movies for people re-learning how to walk. He also wheeled out something that looked like what old people used to move around, but it had additional padding and straps.
While he was setting up, Dr. Chaikhot had rolled Scott over to an area with a thin mat on the floor.
“First we need to do some stretching and make sure all your ligaments are staying attached.”
That was very disturbing.
Gabriel helped Scott down onto the mat and started moving his arms and legs into different positions. It was really awkward having a muscular dude so close and personal. Why couldn’t they have hired a female personal trainer or therapist?
“Wow, you are built like a chimpanzee. This guy doesn’t look that big, but he is heavy!” Gabriel said, sounding impressed.
“Funny you should say that. We used some proteins from apes to build up his muscle density.” Dr. Chaikhot replied.
What the heck? Was he some kind of half monkey hybrid now? Scott glanced at one of the wall mirrors trying to see how bad he looked. His face looked normal as far as he could tell and if anything, he looked fit, but not freakishly hairy or misshapen.
“We think it’s critical to get his muscles moving on their own in the next day or two or a lot of it will break down. We will have to treat him for severe ketosis.” Dr. Chaikhot declared casually. Scott thought that sounded pretty bad. The pain from the stretching wasn’t too bad, probably because he was still doped up on pain meds.
What followed was pure torture as Scott was made to do all kinds of basic movements starting on the mat, then pushing around the walker and finally using the torture bars. Everything hurt as he moved and his limbs would frequently shake or twitch. Why did normal movements like lifting his arm or sitting up hurt so much? After about half an hour, Dr. Chaikhot allowed him a break but pulled out the horrifying biopsy needle. Gabriel was holding him down, but Scott shoved him away. 250 pounds of fitness trainer went tumbling about 10 feet across the floor mat. Holy crap!
“Um, sorry!” Scott apologized. He had never really had to worry about hurting anyone before, and thus far his muscles had seemed stiff and barely able to keep himself up. Fear of large needles had briefly activated his full strength.
Dr. Chaikhot ran over to Gabriel and was checking to see if he was OK. The trainer looked a bit stunned, but not badly hurt.
“Wow dude. You hit like a truck.”
“Scott, I really need to get a sample to make sure your muscles aren’t breaking down. Can you hold still without hitting me or Gabriel?” Dr. Chaikhot asked.
“Yes, it probably won’t even hurt as bad as everything else we have been doing. I didn’t mean to push him like that. I’ll be good.” Scott promised.
The doctor took her sample and left to go run some tests. Scott decided to try standing on his own power. It hurt a bit and he was very wobbly, but he found he could stand up.
“Nice!” Gabriel said with some enthusiasm. “Do you feel up to trying some light weightlifting?”
“I don’t know anything about weightlifting. The first and only time I went to a gym like this was when they made me do curls until I couldn’t move my arm.”
“No problem, we’ll keep it simple.”
Scott was directed to a contraption that looked like a chair with a strange, padded desk that sloped away from the person sitting. Gabriel said it was used for something called isolation curls.
“This should be easier than a regular dumbbell for you to control. We’ll start with something easy, and I’ll spot you in case you need to drop the weight.”
Scott agreed to give it a try. Gabriel’s idea of something light was 20 pounds which was about the maximum he had been able to manage when they last dragged him to a gym.
“So just try to curl your arm, then back down slowly.”
Scott tried to lift the weight. It was so light it slipped out of his hand and went flying across the room, landing with a series of loud clangs. It bounced and finally cracked one of the wall mirrors.
“OK, I can see control is still a problem. Do you think you can just move your arm slowly without any weight?”
Moving his arm felt really weird, but with a bit of practice his movements were smooth.
“OK, we should probably be doing yoga instead of weights, but I’m still curious how strong you really are.” Gabriel admitted. Scott was kind of interested too. He had never imagined himself being strong, but he admitted to himself it might be pretty cool.
Gabriel handed him a 45-pound dumbbell.
“OK, go really slow and be careful. I’m going to stand back a bit just in case. Please don’t hit yourself with it!” Gabriel said.
Scott curled it with ease. They tried 60 pounds, then 90. Scott couldn’t believe how big that dumbbell looked, but he was able to curl it. It wasn’t easy, but he thought he could do more.
“Dang, these are getting hard to lift.” Gabriel said, carrying the largest dumbbell they had which was 110 pounds. He was using two hands to lift it.
Scott struggled with this weight but was able to curl it a few times before asking for help to put it down.
“OK, your form is terrible, but you are crazy strong for your size.” Gabriel said. “There are some powerlifters stronger than you at the same body weight, but they have been working out for years and tend to optimize specific lifts.”
“Can we try some other exercises?” Scott was now a lot more interested in this whole weightlifting thing.
“What are you doing?” Dr. Chaikhot asked, disapprovingly.
“Uh, we just wanted to get a baseline of his strength.” Gabriel said, looking guilty.
“None of that macho nonsense! We need to focus on basic control and mobility. Maybe some yoga. The good news is his muscles are not breaking down, but he’s going to need to keep eating a lot of protein to keep it up.”
Scott was pretty hungry. They took a break for a protein smoothie, before getting back to work. Over the next hour Scott’s soreness became more manageable and he felt like he could jog on the treadmill for about a minute.
“OK, that’s enough. Melinda wanted to upgrade his heart and lungs, but we haven’t even tested that yet. I was able to stop her. If I were you, I’d keep away from her until she finds some other victim to run tests on. Scott, you need to take it slow on the exercising for a few weeks because the unimproved parts of your body are not yet adjusted to these changes.
While Scott was doing some light stretches to cool down, his bodyguard Brad rushed into the room. “The Russians have entered the bunker. We need to get out of here now!”