BELLATRIX BARRACKS’ VICINITIES
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Because of the bad weather, the dirt road that led to Bellatrix was a quagmire; a vast plain of several acres that Malin bumped around in her off-road vehicle.
Peering through the darkness and the splashing water against the windshield, she set her course for the facility. It was not difficult for her to find which direction to take. There in the distance, about a mile, rose pillars of fire, blurred pillars of red light piercing the blackness of the night and the storm; she only had to take the largest and brightest as a beacon and drive there without losing sight of it.
They were near the end of the road, and the doubts about what she was doing and what she was going to do, made her shiver in the same way the cold in the motel’s shed had done before. She didn’t want to question Juzo again because she knew that after that, ‘Malin, I’ll go! Like it or not!’ he’d told her, his next answer would be indifference.
It was too late to go back; they were in the enemy territory, and soon they would face another enemy and a very powerful one, as it seemed.
“That was all caused by a single android?!” she commented, surprised. “Does that computer mean that much to him?!”
Gripping the dashboard as the vehicle lurched, Juzo glanced at her friend struggling with the wheel. He didn’t doubt Malin’s skill in driving, but either way, there was uneasiness in his eyes; as if he feared the mud road was going to play a trick on them at any moment, making them skid and roll over.
Easy there, he thought. If we flip over, you’ll know. Maybe it would have been better to come on his motorbike.
Then, he put his face to the windshield and focused his attention on the rows of poles that stood up in the road where they would begin to travel in a few seconds. There was so much water falling and the night was so deep that it was difficult to see them clearly; they appeared out of nowhere in the darkness, revealed on both sides of the road and one after the other by the vehicle’s headlights and the reflection of the fire that reached there. From time to time, he could see another row of posts beyond this one and another behind it, almost obliterated by the storm. Those long metal rods were radio and radar antennas, the so-called outer antenna circuit.
“Look!” Malin pointed to the left.
Juzo glanced away just to see the car’s headlights flicker over a pile of wrecked androids, smoking in the rain, huddled on the muddy ground near one of the posts. He looked down at the small stopwatch-like device on his lap, confirming his suspicions with the data on the screen.
“I suppose it won’t be necessary to do anything here anymore,” she said. He nodded and tossed the device into the back seat. “You’ll have to thank that bellicose Cyclops for that.”
Malin was right, though Juzo feared that was cause for more concern. If, due to the attack, the barracks had been accidentally isolated and exposed to anyone who came from outside, in an irony of fate, the A60 had made it easier for them to enter; but if the android had done it on purpose… Well, maybe his circuitry wasn’t as damaged as Rigel thought, and there was a logical pattern to his behavior beyond a simple error in his system. Because one thing was to reach Bellatrix guided by some kind of tracking chip or something and claim the computer as part of programming, and another thing was to study the enemy’s defense system and sabotage it to make entry easier. Same purpose, very different processes.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The A60 could get ahead of him and take the machine or destroy it before he had a chance to access the encrypted data.
His infiltration into Bellatrix had been simplified; the rest of the plan, just the opposite. Not only did he have to enter Level 5 and access the protected hardware of the huge computer, find the Auriga, and cross to the other side of the world, but also overcame a powerful and unpredictable enemy like a haywire Cyclops.
They began to hear rumbles carried by the wind and rain, although neither of them ventured to say if it was explosions or if it was thunder.
The perimeter wall of the barracks became visible behind the curtains of water and darkness; they were a little less than six hundred feet from the place.
“Here!” Juzo ordered his partner to stop.
Malin slammed on the brake and the off-road car skidded a bit. Juzo’s fear that they would spin and overturn almost came true. The vehicle bellowed. Juzo got out seconds before the car came to a complete stop—the car’s body, still swaying in the mud, nearly hit him from behind—and testing his leg strength and balance, he ran through the rain with his backpack carried on his back, trying not to slip; his boots sinking into the mud.
“Hurry up!” he called to Malin, waving his arm. There was no more shooting, only a howling alarm; the android must have penetrated the base. There was no time to lose.
Worried and full of doubts, Malin left the car, and the storm greeted her with slaps of water. Pulling her hood up, she looked back and said goodbye to her beautiful vehicle, stranded in the storm, off that sort of route marked by the rows of antennae. She turned to her partner and found a reproachful gesture that told her, ‘Now, you put up with it.’ Juzo didn’t tolerate hesitation.
They crossed in front of a small guardhouse that, without having its lights on, had been absorbed by the darkness. The narrow door was ajar and moved in the wind. As they peered into the concrete cubicle, they jumped. In front of a flashing screen, a young man was sitting in a chair, still; a young soldier in a uniform identical to the one Juzo wore.
They looked at his face; the guy’s eyes were open, lost in the monitor that was transmitting nothing but a dead signal.
Malin waved her hand in front of the soldier’s face. There was no reaction. She rested her fingers on the young man’s neck.
“I don’t think you’ll need to use your false ID to pass yourself off as his relief either,” she said to Juzo; “—if that was your plan.”
“Is he dead?”
She shook her head. “He’s in some kind of trance,” she replied. “Maybe an ultrasonic weapon. I heard that—” She turned, but her partner was already gone. She went after him and found him at the side of the guardhouse, crouched in front of a ventilation hatch on the floor.
Juzo punched the code into the hatch’s electronic handle and opened it. He took the backpack from his back, and putting it on his head, he got in there and began to descend. The space was so narrow that he barely fit. Rainwater swirled around the edges of the conduit and fell inside like the precipice of a waterfall.
Malin watched him disappear into that little square of darkness, and at the thought that soon she would be the one scurrying into that confined space, hemmed in by a torrent of water and mud, she was struck with a maddening sense of claustrophobia.
“What are you waiting for?!” Juzo called from inside.
Malin took one last look at the car she was leaving there, not far from the guard booth, and knew that once the attack was over and the forensics began their work, it would be impounded and dismantled. She took a breath and followed Juzo; had she hesitated a little longer, she would have ended up staying.