Dr. Director, head of Global Justice, dropped the after action report on her desk and leaned back in her chair, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Across her desk special agent Will Du stood stiffly at parade rest, eyes fixed on an imaginary point three inches above Dr. Directors leftshoulder.
“Nice report Will,” she waved a hand at the thick bundle. “Now, how about explaining this cluster fuck in something a bit shorter than ‘War and Peach’?”
“No excuse's, M'am.” Will barked, eyes staying fixed on the wall.
Dr. Director sighed. Will was a good agent but sometimes … “Will, take the poker out of your ass and sit down.”
A look of hurt outrage flickered over Will's face and he opened his mouth to speak, when Director cut him off.
“Ass. Chair. NOW!” Director's voice didn't brook any argument and agent Du sat, though his body language spoke volumes.
“Will,” Director's voice took on a friendly tone, tinged with weariness. “I'm not interested in assigning blame …shit flows down hill and god knows there's enough to drown all of us. I'm not even that interested in keeping myself or GJ from drowning.”
She punched a button on her terminal and the screen lit showing three pictures and biographies. She spun the screen to face agent Du. “We know who the next targets have got to be. And I'd like to keep at least two of them alive.”
“M'am I …” Will floundered, “we …I”, he corrected himself. “I don't know how she's doing it. I checked the security and surveillance personally. In fact I left the site only an hour before the attack—”
“Clubbing baby seals.” Director muttered.
“M'am?”
“Nothing, Will. Continue”
“We had beta level coverage for physical security which I reinforced with a heavy weapons company and three platoons of roving scouts.” His shoulders slumped, presenting the defeated posture of an earnest supremely capable young man who had failed at a job he believed in and was good at. “May I …?” He gestured toward a data-port and at Dr. Director's nod he plugged his Xcyber into the slot. The tiny A.I beeped once and the wall behind him lit up, showing an aerial photo-map overlaid with layers of digitized symbols and scrolling alpah-numeric symbols.
“As you can see, there were three concentric layers of defense, both manned and robotic. The inner layer couldn't approach closer than one hundred yards to the ware-house.” Will tapped a couple of keys on the Xcyber and the picture on the wall zoomed to a close up of a large concrete and steel building, surrounded by an irregular area that had been cleared down to bare earth. “This actually made our job much easier, since it gave a clear field of fire to our sniper teams and simplified programming the automatic sensors.” Another tap of the keys and a dozen red triangles snapped into view showing the sniper nests. From each flowed scarlet cones, showing overlapping fields of fire that blanketed almost the entire area around the warehouse.
Superimposed over these were orange, green and yellow grids outlining sensor coverage and the patrol area of automated ground sentries. The image rolled along the x-axis as the perspective changed to show aerial coverage.
“There was additional air and sea coverage that doesn't show at this resolution. It will take just a moment to—” Agent Du halted as Dr. Director made a chopping motion with her hand and moved from behind her desk. Taking the Xcyber's wireless keypad from Will she walked toward the making adjustments as she moved. Icon's sprang into existence and faded, only to reappear in a slightly different orientation as Dr. Director played out various infiltration scenarios. Stopping after a moment she clasped her hands behind her back and rocked on her heels in thought.
“How did she do it, Will?” Dr. Director asked, turning back toward her desk.
“M'am, we're not …I don't know how, but I'm working —we're working around the clock and—”
Dr. Director cut him off. “How would you do it, Will.” She modified her question. “You've done infiltrations yourself. How would you have done it?” Her face twisted in a wry grin as the silence stretched out. “You couldn't do it, could you.” She watched a visible air of shame wash over the young agent. “You couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. God and his angels couldn't have gotten through the net you put up. Therefore, quod erat demonstrandum, she couldn't do it either. “
“But …but she did, m'am.” Will almost wailed, like a student whose's teacher has just insisted that two plus two equals elephant. “She got past us —past me,” (that was the real sticking point) “and she killed Fisk and—”
“She was already there, Will.” She took a moment to adjust her chair as she sat down,givng agent Du time to absorb the idea. “She got there ahead of us. Fisk, Amy, GJ …everyone. We were all looking the wrong way. And she simply stepped up behind Fisk and—” Dr. Director drew a finger across her throat.
“But, how could she m'am? How could she have beaten Fisk to his own safe house. We didn't know where he was going, until he started to move and we had him bugged …” Will's voice trailed off and his face went slack in shock. “No,” he shook his head in denial. “That's impossible. She couldn't be tapping our communications. We're TEMPEST shielded. Our encryption is level 3 quantum with randomly cycling encoding and …it just isn't possible!” He realized what he'd just said and blanched. “M'am, I'm sorry. I didn't mean …” he trailed off miserably.
“Will,” Dr. Director chided gently. “it's a perfectly good word. Webster hasn't pulled it from the dictionary just because we're hurting. But faced with two impossibilities, I'll take the lesser one. Because if she really did get through that,” she indicated the schematic glowing on the wall screen, “then we might as well issue everyone an L-capsule, because nothing we have is going to stop---”
An atonal alarm shrieked and hidden speakers blared, the voice harsh with fear. “Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Perimeter breach station North seven.” The chatter of automatic weapons could be heard through the speakers, along with the confused shouting of orders and counter orders. Dr. Director felt a heavy rumble through the soles of her feet as blast shields of Krupp battle steel rumbled into place throughout the building. Booted feet could be heard outside her door as agents raced to crew heavy weapons.
Dr. Director flipped a switch, cutting off the alarm, hit another button switching the computer screen to an outside view of the area under attack and then pressed a third control which opened a wall panel, revealing a small arsenal. Tossing Will a pulse-rifle and an armoured jacket, she started to shrug into her own armour, pausing only to hit a key which connected her to the communication center. “Somebody give me a SitRep. What's happening out there?” She barked.
“We don't know,” came the response, “every alarm on the base has gone off and there are sensor ghosts on all the screens. We're still trying—” Before the agent could tell what they were trying to do an answer of sorts came from the speakers.
“Dear god!” Came a shriek through the speakers. “She's coming through the mine field. She's—” An explosion, and the speaker went to static.
Dr. Director's head snapped to the view on the screen, biting off a oath as she watched a smoke wreathed figure make a mad zig-zagging dash across a deceptively innocent looking grassy field. Even carrying a large back-pack the figure moved with ease, tumbling and rolling to avoid incoming fire and burning a path ahead of her with carefully aimed bursts of plasma that exploded hidden mines. The automatic gun emplacements fared no better, their defending fire serving only to reveal them to the intruder, who silenced them with short, carefully aimed bursts of fire which slagged the guns or detonated their ammunition stores. The intruder spun to engage a gun emplacement and a trick of the surveillance camera made it appear the intruder was looking directly into the room. The battle suit and face mask covered her body like an armoured skin, but through the masks eye shields her eyes blazed like a mad dog.
Dr. Director imagined she could hear a voice speaking to her, ‘Wait for me. I'll be there soon.’
The moment was over almost before it began. The figure was moving again, sprinting for the cover of a dead gun emplacement. The intruder vanished from view behind the vitrified concrete and steel. There was a pause of no more than seconds, as Dr. Director waited for the intruder to re-emerge.
An enormous explosion rocked the building and the screen went white. Then black.