Brave New World Ch. 05

"You must be Jorg," Tami said.

The man nodded. "Yes, I am. Burt briefed me last night. Asked me to give you a hand. However..." He paused, looking the three of them over with one of those glances that imprint a myriad of details on the retina. It was the sort of look that Roy had seen before, in top notch intelligence operatives.

"I'm not sure I got the whole story from him," Jorg continued. "So if you will follow me..." He turned around and gestured at the skimmer's open door. "Why don't we sit down and have a little talk before we go anywhere." Somehow Roy got the distinct feeling that the invitation was not optional.

Tami nodded. "Fair enough," she said. "Ki?"

Kyo, who had been running her admiring gaze up and down Jorg's gray-clad body, nodded. "Yes," she said. "I suppose Burt would have left a few blanks for us to fill in."

Jorg raised his eyebrows. "Why would he do that?"

Kyo smiled. "That, handsome lad, is a question better answered inside. After you."

"Alright." Jorg turned and stepped back inside the skimmer, followed by Kyo, her eyes on Jorg's tight and firm tush.

"Behave, woman," Tami muttered softly, smiling at Kyo. Kyo giggled.

"Roy, would you shut the door behind us?" Kyo asked.

Roy pulled the door closed. A latch snapped in place with a loud click, and a small green light on the door came on.

The inside of the skimmer was almost homey. The side of the vehicle where they had entered was designed to be living quarters of some sort, Roy guessed, with some comfortable-looking couches and a small folding table that was attached to the floor. Curtains behind the couches covered what looked to be niches set in the walls. Bunks? He couldn't tell. Next to the curtains were small doors, possibly giving access to storage compartments. Farther in, toward what he took to be the front of the vehicle, was a more conventional arrangements of seats with head rests and seat belts.

"Jorg, while we talk, maybe you could run a quick systems check, just to make sure everything's working at top performance?" Kyo asked.

"I did that last night," Jorg said.

"Well, let's just be sure. If you don't mind, start by switching on the propulsor field at ten percent power, would you?"

Jorg raised his eyebrows and gave her a long, thoughtful look. "Sure," was all he said. He turned and walked to the front of the skimmer, bent down, and punched some controls on a panel that was shielded from Roy's vision by the front row of seats. There were a few beeps, then a gentle humming. The ceiling light dimmed briefly, then became steady again. When he looked out of the window, he could see a small dust storm forming behind the skimmer. A soft vibration ran through the floor.

"Is it that clandestine?" Jorg asked, as he returned to the back of the skimmer.

"Well... Yes and no," Kyo said. "I suppose Burt gave you the general background, didn't he?"

Jorg nodded. "Yes. I know you from his description of the three of you. Pleased to meet you, by the way. I'm Jorg, but you knew that already. You're Kyo, Tami and Roy, right?" The three of them nodded. "I understand that we're to locate a party or parties unknown, following hacks into your systems as part of several attempts to kill Roy for reasons unknown. I also understand that said party or parties may be responsible for various outbreaks of violence across a range of shelters, based on a correlation between illicit data transmissions and the time at which these riots took place."

Roy nodded. "Yes." He paused. "You're either security or intelligence. Am I right?"

Jorg looked at him, with what Roy could only have described as X-ray eyes. The man's stare seemed to bore straight to the back of his skull, dissecting his brain as it went. Finally Jorg nodded curtly. "Both, lieutenant Beaumont."

Roy smiled. "Roy, please. Yes, I gathered that from the way you phrased your briefing summary. So it won't surprise you then that we expect some hostilities?"

"No, not really," Jorg said dryly.

"Alright. Let's cut through all this," Kyo said. "Jorg, there are two details I'm not sure Burt included in his briefing to you. First of all, we have managed to trace the origin of the transmissions to a point in the southern polar region, at the edge of the Antarctic continent. Secondly, we have no weapons, but we can't go in there totally defenseless. Which is why I asked Burt for help."

Jorg chuckled. "A request he couldn't refuse, right?"

"Burt and I have an understanding. Let's leave it at that."

"Alright. So you asked him for weapons. Which he couldn't give you, so instead he gave you me. Asked me to provide you with assistance and equipment. Figures." He sighed. "Alright then. The three of you stay here. I'll be back in a minute." He returned to the front of the skimmer and switched off the propulsor field. "How did you know that trick, by the way?"

Kyo smiled. "I'm an engineer."

Jorg, who had returned to the back of the skimmer, nodded as he opened the door. "Figures," he said again, softly, as he stepped out and closed the door behind him.

"I'm sure I missed most of that," Tami said.

Kyo nodded. "Yes, you did," was all she said.

"For starters, I can't place his accent."

Kyo sighed. "Jorg was born in three."

"Oh." Tami looked sad. "I didn't know."

Roy looked at her uncomprehendingly.

"Shelter three used to be about seven and half thousand miles north-east of here," Tami said. About twenty years ago it was completely wiped out by some kind of virus."

"There were almost no survivors." Kyo sighed. "Jorg wasn't there at the time. He's lost everyone he knew."

"I know how that feels," Roy said softly.

"I know you do, lover." Tami put her arm around him.

"And what was that trick he mentioned?"

Kyo chuckled. "One of the drawbacks of a propulsor field is that it surrounds us completely, which makes communication impossible. But the upside of that is that it also prevents any eavesdropping. I'm not sure whether or not it was really necessary, but better safe than sorry."

"Exactly my philosophy," Jorg said as he opened the door and stepped back in. "Not that this is a very clandestine operation as such things go, but the fewer questions asked, the better." He put a long, narrow black case down on the floor. "This should do. We'll go through it a little later." He stood up and looked at the three of them. "The skimmer is fully stocked, so I think we've got all we need. Are we ready to go?"

Kyo nodded. "I think so. There's nothing else we need, is there?"

"Our destination coordinates would help," Jorg said dryly.

Kyo nodded. She touched a spot on her left wrist, and a series of digits lit up under her skin on the inside of her arm. She showed them to Jorg, who stepped forward and punched them into his console.

"Not too bad," he said. "A little over two thousand miles. It shouldn't take us more than an hour or two to get there. Better sit down and buckle up." He took the front seat behind the console and began to strap himself in.

"Will it be a rough ride?" Roy asked, sitting down next to him. The console showed a world map, with a line of dots running from the southern tip of what used to be South America down to the south pole.

"Unlikely. But strap in all the same. It's standard operating procedure. Propulsors have been known to fail. Ready?"

"We're ready here," Kyo said from the seat behind them.

"Yes," Tami said. Her voice sounded a little tense. Roy turned his head to look at her. The smile she gave him was a little strained, but she seemed alright.

"Good." Jorg began to tap out some command sequence on his console.

A loud clang rang through the hangar, and a large hatch in the ceiling began to slide open. A soft humming vibration ran through the skimmer, and it began to rise vertically. Dull, gray daylight poured in through the windows as the skimmer cleared the hatch and hovered above the domed roof of the hangar. Jorg turned the vehicle slowly, then punched a large green rectangle on his control panel. The skimmer slid forward. When it passed the edge of the roof it began to drop slowly. It began to pick up speed, and its glide gradually evened out, then slowly gained altitude as they went.

They continued to accelerate, but there was no sense of motion or acceleration. Roy felt like he was sitting in a cinema, watching a movie of the landscape moving past, faster and faster. All in all it was a strange experience, but apart from a brief moment of dizziness he found that it didn't bother him. After a few minutes the landscape had become a blur, and a soft, rumbling sound came through the walls of the skimmer. Another minute later the skimmer shook slightly, then smoothened out, and the sound disappeared.

"We've gone supersonic," said Jorg. "For the next two hours or so we're on automatic. We can get up now." He began to unbuckle his seat belt.

Roy followed his example. He stood up and held out his hand to Tami. "Are you alright?"

She nodded and smiled. "I'm fine, Roy." She rose, put her arm around his shoulder and kissed him.

"Alright," Jorg said, businesslike. "If you'll all come to the back, I'll take you through the, ah, equipment you said you needed."

"We're hoping not to need any of it, Jorg," Kyo said. "But as you said..."

"Better safe than sorry. Yes." In the back of the skimmer Jorg touched the sides of the black case he had brought in, and the lid popped open. Inside was a collection of rifles, hand guns and a set of rectangular boxes with straps attached to them. Jorg took one of the hand guns out of the case and held it up. It didn't look like any weapon Roy had seen before.

"Stunner," Jorg said. "Non-lethal, just very unpleasant. A full body hit will put the target out of action for ten minutes to six hours, depending on the setting. Range, about fifty feet. Beyond that the effect of the stun bolt diminishes rapidly. When you draw the gun out of the holster, the firing capacitor will charge automatically, and you can fire your first shot within about a second. The firing capacitor holds enough charge for three shots, so after three rapid-fire shots you'll be unable to fire for about a second."

He pushed a button on the side of the gun's handle. "You release the power pack by pressing this button." A small gold-colored cylinder popped out of the handle and fell into his hand. "A full charge is good for twenty shots. When the pack is down to two shots, a red light will blink, here." He pointed out a spot at the back of the gun. "Push your replacement power pack in like so," and he slid the cylinder back into the handle where it snapped in place with a click. "And you're good for another twenty shots. We've got one spare pack for each gun. If we need more than that, we'll be in so much shit that these won't help us anyway." He looked up. "Any questions?"

"What about ricochets?" Roy asked.

"There are none. The stun bolt is either absorbed or dispersed by whatever it hits."

"This is essentially an energy weapon, isn't it?" Kyo asked.

Jorg nodded. "Yes. Why?"

"What happens to any electronic equipment you hit with it? For example, if I shoot a bolt at the dashboard," and she pointed to the front of the skimmer, "what happens?"

Jorg slowly nodded. "Good point, and I should have mentioned that. Yes, if you shoot our flight systems with it, you'll probably kill us all. The stun bolt will burn out most electronics. The amount of damage depends on several factors including shielding, penetration and the mass of the object you hit, but overloads and burnouts are extremely likely."

"I'll keep that in mind," Kyo said.

"Good." Jorg put the stunner back into the case and took out what looked like a small rifle. "Roy, I expect your training would have included the use of conventional projectile weapons, am I right?"

Roy nodded. "Yes. Very little else, in fact."

"Then you'll have no problem using this. It's a railgun rifle. It fires a micro-caliber slug, which is electromagnetically accelerated to a hypersonic muzzle velocity of about Mach twenty. Recoil is relatively light, but be careful anyway because sometimes it can kick. The pellet completely disintegrates on impact and has relatively little penetrating power, but the shock wave it induces in the target causes major tissue damage. Hits on the head are close to one hundred percent lethal; hits on the torso around ninety percent depending on the condition of the target and possible body armor. Hits on arms and legs are mostly fatal, but in some cases are survivable if the maimed limb is tied off and amputated quickly enough."

"Is it that powerful?" Kyo asked.

Jorg nodded. "Yes. These rifles are designed to have a good side and a bad side. Since we're on the good side, the worse things are at the bad side, the better they are for us." He pointed at two buttons at the stock of the rifle. "Safety here, firing stud here. Both the magazine and the firing capacitor are built into the stock. To reload the weapon you replace the entire back of the stock, like so." He twisted and unlocked a section on the stock of the rifle. It came off with a soft click. "We only have one reload for each of these. With thirty shots each, that gives us sixty shots per rifle. We've got two rifles, so that's a hundred and twenty shots in total. Again, if that's not enough, we're most likely done for in any case." He put the magazine back into the stock of the rifle and returned it to the case.

Tami sighed. "I hope we won't need any of that." She'd gone slightly pale at Jorg's explanation of the rifle's effects. "This is nasty."

Jorg nodded. "Yes. Of course it is. That's the whole idea. We prefer a shooting over a fire fight."

Tami looked puzzled. 'What's the difference?"

"In a fire fight, the other guy gets to shoot back," Roy said.

Jorg nodded. "Exactly. Which is where these come in." He put down the rifle and took a small rectangular box out of the weapons case. He pulled one of the elastic straps that were attached to it and stuck his arm through the loop, which went over his shoulder until the box sat on his chest. He unclipped the other strap and put it around his waist.

"Body armor," he explained. "Essentially it's just a portable repulsor field, but the shield it creates when activated should stop most types of incoming fire. One very important thing to remember is that these shield units are linked to the weapon you carry. They have to be, because when you fire from within the shield, the stun bolt or projectile has to go through it without being deflected. So when you fire, for a split second the field switches off so that the shot can get through." He looked at the three of them, his face grave. "That means that whenever you fire, you are vulnerable," he said. "Never forget that. A good shooter may be able to exploit that weakness and hit you when you fire at him. So you fire when you have to and you take your chances, but only when absolutely necessary."

"Got it," Roy said. Jorg's competent, business-like manner felt hugely comforting to him. The man was obviously no stranger to combat instruction and military skills training. Memories of boot camp and drill sergeants stirred all sorts of old reflexes in him. With a hint of amusement he realized that if Jorg were to shout "Attention!" it would probably click his heels and salute.

Kyo nodded. "Are the shields and weapons links preset, or do you set them up when you deploy them?

"You sync them when you deploy. When we land I'll show you how. Which brings up a good point. Mixing up shields and linked weapons is dangerous. Firing a stunner inside a non-opening shield will knock you out. Firing a railgun rifle that way... I'm not sure, but I suspect the effects of the shock wave would be very messy."

Tami sighed. She looked small and more than a little worried.

"Don't worry, Tams," Kyo said. "We'll be fine.΅

Tami smiled mirthlessly. "Then why do we need these?" She shrugged. "I'll be alright, Ki. It's just... I'm not really cut out for this."

Jorg looked at her gravely and shook his head. "I disagree," he said. "Yes, you're scared, I can see that. But you were just as scared before you decided to leave the hab, right?"

Tami nodded.

"And yet here you are," Jorg continued. "That takes real balls, if you will forgive me the expression. I think you'll do fine." He turned and opened one of the storage compartments and began to take out various food containers, which he put on the table. "While we're underway, we might as well have an early lunch," he said. "No telling when we may have another chance, so let's take it while we can."

* * *

The coast ahead of them was black and gravelly. Dark rocks reached up from the waters over which they flew at an altitude of less than twenty feet now. As the skimmer's forward sensors detected the escarpment, it gradually rose until it was high enough to clear the rocks. Jorg, back at his dashboard at the front of the skimmer, gradually reduced their speed.

"It will take us about fifteen minutes to the coordinates you gave me," he said to Kyo. "How accurate are they?"

"They're as good as we could pinpoint them from orbit," Kyo replied. "What we will find there is anyone's guess, though. It might just be a relay station."

"Do you think so?"

Kyo shook her head. "No... Not really. I'm not sure why. It's just a feeling."

"I'll go with that," Jorg said, as the skimmer continued to slow. "We're lucky it's not winter," he continued. "Having everything buried under twenty feet of snow would have been a pain."

"Yes..." Roy said slowly. "To think that this all used to be covered with tons and tons of permanent ice..."

Jorg nodded. "Yes, a couple of centuries ago this would all have been permafrost. Technically, Antarctica was a desert back then; there was so little precipitation. Now it's much like the rest of Earth."

Roy sighed. "Yeah, we sure messed things up."

Jorg looked up from his instruments. "We'll fix it, Roy. Mark my words. We will."

The skimmer flew on. Some of the rocky peaks now sported patches of snow and ice, but other than that the bleak landscape remained black and barren, with a few isolated swatches of moss and lichen but not much else.

"We're coming up to your coordinates in a minute or so," Jorg said after a while. "Have you given any thought about how to find whatever it is we're looking for?"

Kyo made a face. "Yes, we have, but so far we haven't really come up with anything useful, to be honest. We're open to suggestions."

Jorg smiled grimly. "Well, I may have a few. Last year I managed to fit this tub with deep-radar. You know, scrounged a part here, saved a bit there... And we've got a fairly serviceable gravitometer. Not sure what I thought I'd be doing with it, but I put it in anyway. That may come in handy too, because any underground facility would register as an anomaly in the gravitational field. So if we..."

There was a blue flash, and the skimmer bucked as if kicked by a giant. Then it rapidly slowed down. The deceleration threw Roy out of his seat and against the dashboard. Jorg, who had strapped himself into his seat, fought to raise his arms against the G-forces to reach his console. Behind them, Tami and Kyo tumbled forward in a tangle of arms and legs. A second blue flash hit, surrounding them with azure lightning. Sparks crackled across the inside of the skimmer's hull, and a massive bolt of crackling blue voltage hit Roy. He trashed in agony for a second, then everything went black.

* * *

His dreams wouldn't go away. There was pain and darkness, and invisible hands who rolled him around and pulled at his arms and legs, and faces and voices that were both familiar and strange at the same time. Then a wave of nausea swept him into a dark, dark pit filled with nothingness. But in the nothingness there was discomfort. There was a faint, dull ache in his shoulders, a chill against his skin, a roughness pressing into his back.