Author’s Notes: This episode focused a great deal on Hawk and Tank’s relationship as well as Dread’s current project. It also brought up various questions and a few plot bunnies that didn’t exactly co-exist peacefully in a single story. In an effort to answer these questions and find a Jon/Jen slant to the episode, I’ve split the tag up into two parts. Part 1 takes place two days after the events in the episode. Part 2 takes place one week after.
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Episode 15 - And Madness Shall Reign - Part 2
Tank ingests an insanity-inducing drug hidden in the water at Cipher’s Resistance base, a site chosen by Dread for experimentation. Hawk is forced to stop Tank on his own while Jon, Pilot and Scout try to stop Dread from putting the same drug in a major water supply.
~*~*~*~*~
Power Base
One week after the mission
“Database journal 47-8 Mark 22. Supplemental entry. Captain reporting.”
Jon stopped. He didn’t know quite what to say for the journal follow-up of their latest mission. No, that wasn’t correct. He knew what happened, knew what he had to report, but for the first time in a long time, there was more to a mission than just what happened. There was some underlying danger that he couldn’t put his finger on. To put it in rather ironic terms, he felt a new sense of dread.
There was something different about the mission. He felt like there was something he should pay attention to, but he wasn’t certain what it was. He didn’t know why. It really wasn’t any different from other missions lately.
For almost a year, his database journals had the distinction of a recurring theme – missions had become repetitive. Dread planned something, there was a fight, the team stopped him, there were a few injuries, everyone made it back to the base, game over. Repeat everything next time. It reminded Jon of an old saying of Albert Einstein’s that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It seemed Dread fell into that definition.
Unfortunately, Jon had to keep a record of it all, no matter how repetitive it was.
Updating database journals was not one of the perks of a team leader’s job. They were a necessary evil, but keeping track of all activities was a task Jon filed under the description ‘tedious and thankless.’
Maybe he could give the job to Hawk? He was a major, after all…
In any case, their last mission wasn’t quite as repetitive as the previous ones. No, there was something worrying him, something intangible he couldn’t quite put into words. Yet. He felt like he was overlooking something.
Enough stalling. This wasn’t getting the entry into the journal.
Jon thought for a moment – maybe he could gain a little inspiration if he listened to the opening journal entry for the overall mission again. He brought up the particular recording and listened to his own voice.
“Database journal 47-8 Mark 16. Captain reporting.
Intercepted data indicates Dread has targeted the resistance group led by Cipher for some sort of test. As we have been unable to reach Cipher, we have entered his base hoping to warn him.”
This time, Dread showed an even sneakier side of himself than Jon knew existed. He had found Cipher’s base, but instead of destroying it or capturing them, he’d used them for an experiment…
~*~*~*~*~
Cipher’s Base – A Day Earlier
Cipher gathered up all the remaining canteens and stacked them against the wall in the control room. “Good thing that stuff wore off after a few days,” he muttered. “I don’t know what was worse – all of us trying to kill each other or Tank trying to go kill all of you. Damage might have been about the same.”
Jon shrugged. “Either way, it wasn’t pleasant. What did the analysis show?”
Cipher looked at the sensor. “Looks like the drug degrades in the water at the same rate it does in the human body. The water’s clean.” He took a quick glance at the canteens. “I’m not drinking it though.”
Scout looked up from the computer screen. “Good idea. At least Dread is consistently single minded. He puts one plan in play and doesn’t have any surprises if it goes off script.”
Cipher frowned. “You mean he only put the drug in the water and didn’t have any contingencies?”
“Not his style,” Jon reminded him. “Let’s see what the others have found.” Jon switched on his transmitter. “Hawk, anything?”
“A lot of the clickers are gone, Jon,” Hawk answered back. “It looks like some were dragged out of here, and I found some strange looking tracks. I think it was Blastarr. I don’t know why he was here unless he took the clickers for some reason.”
“They may have been looking for survivors or getting information out of the computers.” Jon shook his head. Trying to stop that biodread was one of the hardest tasks they had. Their blasters had limited affect on him. Even the explosion at Haven didn’t destroy it. What would? He knew that not destroying Blastarr would come back to haunt them some day.
“They didn’t get anything,” Scout assured Cipher and Power. “None of the computer files have been touched since before all this happened.”
Cipher just shook his head. “They come into a Resistance base and don’t get any information? That doesn’t make sense.”
“They were after something else,” Jon explained. “Whatever it was, let’s hope they didn’t find it.” He pressed his communicator again. “Pilot?”
“No sign of anything strange in the hangar bay, Captain.”
“Tank?”
“There’s no sign of any tampering on the water pumps or purifiers.”
Jon sighed. They’d searched the base several times, but they had found nothing that indicated how Dread could have found Cipher’s base or how he got the chemical into their water supply.
“Makes no sense,” Cipher muttered as he helped Scout check through the computer logs again. “There’s no way Dread could have found our base. Every security measure you can imagine is in place. The only other people who knew about this place were you guys, and I know you didn’t tell anyone.”
“Could you have been followed after your last mission?” Jon asked.
Cipher thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “We’d have seen something. Sensors would have picked up movement if anything was out there. There weren’t any biomechs or biodreads on the scanner. No sign of anyone watching. As far as we could tell, it was an ordinary operation and everything went pretty smoothly.”
Scout found something on the computer database. “Cipher, what was your last mission?”
“Gathering Intel,” he said quickly. “We met up with an informant and he gave us some data disks that he stole out of one of the Dread labs north of here. When we took a look, some had some good usable information on them. Shipping schedules, troop movements, things like that.”
“I hope you made some backups of the information.” Scout pointed toward the remains of destroyed disks lying all around them. “Something heavy walked all over them,” he suggested as he picked up one lying on the console. “This is the only one left intact. I found this one still in the disk drive.”
Cipher picked up the disk. “Yeah, right. Nothing important was on it. At first, we thought it was blank but another check showed there was one small unencoded file,” he told them.
“It read blank the first time?” Scout didn’t quite believe that. He took the disk and quickly inserted it back into the computer. He punched the buttons to begin a quick disk check.
The first result came back as a blank disk, but Scout reconfigured the diagnostic reader and re-ran it. That time, the result was a mostly blank disk, but there was something there. “It’s what I thought,” he told them as he analyzed the findings. “Dread doesn’t keep blank disks lying around. There’s something on there, but it’s not even what I’d call a file. It’s something… else.”
“What do you mean?” Jon asked.
Scout punched a few more buttons and a new analysis showed on the monitor. “For lack of a better term, I’d say it’s a sound file, only it doesn’t emit a normal sound. It’s more like a sub-electronic blip that only pings once.”
That didn’t sound good. Jon glanced at the readout. “Is it active?”
Scout checked again. “One blip when the computer checked the disk. That’s all.”
Cipher leaned over toward the monitor and studied the analysis. “Sub-electronic blip? What good is that?”
Jon had a hunch. He spoke into his radio again. “Pilot, can you come back to the command center?”
There was a brief pause, then she answered, “On my way.”
Cipher looked at him curiously. “What are you thinking, Jon?”
“I hope what I’m thinking is wrong. How much do you trust this informant?”
Cipher didn’t have to consider the question. “With my life. I’ve known him since before the Metal Wars. We served in the Navy together for five years on the same ship. Why?”
“If Dread didn’t find your base accidentally, then it’s possible someone may have used your informant to get to you,” Jon explained. “How did he get the disks?”
“One of his contacts told him that a Dread lab had been abandoned and scavengers were taking what they could. He checked it out, and he brought me the data disks. He couldn’t read them since the equipment at the lab had already been taken by the scavengers.”
Scout glanced back at Power. “Think it was a setup?”
“Maybe,” Jon answered. “Think about it. Dread mysteriously finds a hidden resistance base and uses it for an experiment instead of destroying it and taking everyone prisoner? That doesn’t make any sense since there are a lot of settlements he could have used for his experiment instead. I think he wanted a resistance base for a specific reason, and no, I don’t know why.”
Cipher thought the idea had some merit. “Maybe he was checking out our security? But that wouldn’t do him any good since we all set up different security programs for the bases.”
“Possibly,” Jon agreed, “but those biomechs walked right in after we arrived, and I know we reactivated the security system when we got in the tunnel. That disk may have something to do with the attack. That’s why I want Pilot to take a quick look at the analysis. She may have some idea what it is.”
“How?” Cipher asked.
Although Jennifer’s Dread Youth past wasn’t a secret, Jon wasn’t comfortable talking about it if he wasn’t certain someone already knew. Jon smiled. “Pilot is very good with computers and programs. She’s seen some that very few others have.”
“Captain?”
Jon turned at the sound of Jennifer’s voice. She walked out of the tunnel into the control room. Although it wasn’t professional and it was hardly the time, Jon couldn’t help noticing a few changes. One in particular was that she was wearing her hair down. That was very uncommon when they were working with other resistance groups. She usually wore it back in a ponytail. Years ago, Jon thought that the ponytail might have reminded her of having to wear her hair up when she was a Dread Youth and gave her some sense of ‘familiarity’ which led to a feeling of having some control. It took months before she felt comfortable enough with the team to wear her hair down. Regardless, she seemed to be more socially confident lately, and Jon found that very appealing.
“Cipher’s informant gave him a data disk that has a sound file on it rather than a program. I was hoping you’d seen something like it before,” he explained.
Jennifer paused for a moment and listened to some sound that Jon didn’t hear. “Pilot?”
“I thought I heard a low hum,” she mentioned as she walked over to the console and looked at the monitor. She scanned the readout and then re-ran the systems check on the data disk. She immediately took her gun out of its holster. “Did the computer play the sound before?” she asked Scout quickly.
“Yeah. One blip when I checked it. Why?”
She looked over at Cipher. “Did you check out the disk when you got it?”
Cipher nodded. “Yeah. That was the day before the water was spiked. Why? What is it?”
Jennifer looked around the room, listened, and then said, “It’s a newer version of a basic tracking file with a security infiltration sub-code. The moment you check the disk, it automatically reads your security systems and sends the information out in a compressed file in a single one-second frequency blast. If a clicker, a biodread or even an observation drone is in the area, it’ll detect the file and follow it to the source. It would have found the base and known exactly how to get past the security systems. That may be how your security was compromised. Dread abandoned this type of infiltration system some years ago when the encoding was broken by a resistance group in the southeast. I guess he’s starting it up again with new coding programs.”
“A new code?” Scout asked. “I think we just found out what Blastarr was looking for when he came here. He didn’t want anyone finding this disk.” He quickly ejected the disk and put it safely in his pocket.
Jon nodded as he glanced at the destroyed disks scattered around. “He didn’t want that information falling into our hands and thought he destroyed it with the rest of them.”
“Excuse me,” Cipher interrupted. “Observation drone?”
“Scout calls it a flying spying eyeball,” she explained quickly. “It’s a surveillance probe that is very good at being undetected. I heard a low hum when I came into the room, and if that sound file just sounded again --”
That was enough. Jon and Scout immediately drew their guns. Jon quickly grabbed into his radio. “Hawk, Tank, get back. We may be in trouble. Meet us in the steam tunnel. We’re leaving. And everyone power on.”
Cipher watched in awe as, once again, his friends became the armored Power Team. “I’ve got to get me one of those suits,” he joked to himself. He followed them, not understanding the full import of the use of an observation drone. “Pilot, exactly what can an observation drone do?”
“It’s one of the many devices Dread uses to spy on people. It can send a live video and audio feed to Volcania from anywhere on the planet. It has cloaking capabilities and can stay invisible for a short amount of time before it has to recharge. Since none of you reported seeing anything strange like clickers or biodreads before you drank the water, my guess is that there was an observation drone in the area. It intercepted the file and came into your base while it was cloaked. It sent the location back to Dread, and it’s probably what he used to taint your water supply.”
Cipher took another look around his base as they hurried through the corridors into the steam tunnels. It was getting a little more difficult to see through the steam. “And you think that when the blip sounded when we re-checked the disk, it got the drone’s attention again and it could even bring more biomechs to this location?”
“Do you have a self-destruct?” Jon asked as he glanced around a corner to make certain nothing was in their way.
“Yeah,” Cipher said hesitantly, then sighed. “I guess we need to blow up the base. Not that it’s any good to us now since Dread knows where it is.”
“Let’s make sure we blow it up with the drone inside,” Scout told him. “If it’s cloaked, then there’s no way to find it or track it, Captain.”
“How do you know it’s still here?” Cipher asked.
Jennifer stopped, listened again, then stared behind her as Hawk and Tank emerged from a connecting tunnel, their forms like gray ghosts rushing through the steam. She was hearing something no one else had paid attention to. “Easy. They go where they’re programmed to and then they’ll stay in that area until Dread sends them to a new location. Since we’ve kept Dread busy for the last week cleaning up after Project Styx, reassigning an observation drone would have been low on his list of priorities. It’s probably been hovering around here waiting for instructions.”
Hawk had his gun drawn. “There’s an observation drone? Great. That’s all we need.”
Jennifer turned her head slightly. “Do you hear that?” she asked the others.
Everyone stood still. All listened. “Hear what?” Jon asked.
“That humming sound.”
Cipher didn’t hear anything at first. “Drones hum?” Then he listened more intently. He heard the low hum of machinery. “That’s just the echo the generators make when they’re working.” The team looked at him. “Isn’t it?”
Jon finally heard the low noise. “No. That’s a drone. Scout, can you get a fix on the sound?”
Scout pulled out a sensor and scanned the corridor. “It’s originating in that direction,” he pointed behind them. “I think it’s following us which means it’s probably sending a fairly steamy surveillance picture back to Volcania.”
A bright cone of light shone around the room, forcing them to close their eyes against the harsh brightness as the beams bounced off the walls and support columns. “We’re being scanned,” Jennifer said, her voice sounding both worried and surprised. The light's tendrils touched each person, studied them, classified them. When the beam reached her, it remained longer and tracked her as she tried to turn away.
Cipher noticed how tense the Power Team was getting. “Can these things do any more than spy?”
“They’re fast, very mobile and can hurt you,” Tank told him.
Hawk kept looking around, trying to find the drone. “They’re equipped with limited small-yield laser weapons and are dense enough to put some serious holes in stone walls by ramming them. They’ve got a stun weapon that can paralyze someone temporarily. You do not want to go up against one in close quarters. You’ll get broken bones, concussions and serious bruises.”
Jon could hear the hum, dimly, as it hovered somewhere above them. “Keep moving. Keep your guard up. If we have to fight one, I’d rather it be out in the open. Cipher, how do we blow the power source?”
“I can remote trigger them,” he answered.
Jon nodded. “Good. Let’s –”
Laser shots!
Blasts sprayed from the far corner of the room, right into their center. Everyone scattered, dodging the shots and giving the drone multiple targets. Tank grabbed Cipher, pulled him down behind him as laser bursts rounded on their position. The shots bounced off Tank’s thick armor, leaving dents and smoking embers. Hawk ducked, aimed in the general direction and fired but hit nothing as the laser blasts continued from an undefined area. Scout stood behind a column as he tried to track the drone. Jon and Jennifer crouched behind a concrete separator and covered Scout by adding suppression fire. The area was screaming with the echoes of the blaster bursts.
The hum changed pitch. The cloaked drone moved invisibly from position to position and targeted the concrete separator, blasting it from the top and shooting huge chunks out of it. Jennifer ducked down as a huge piece of the concrete disintegrated over her head. Jon grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him where the wall was still somewhat intact.
Then… everything stopped.
No one moved.
Everyone listened for the hum.
Scout checked his scanner… there was no movement, no indication that anything metal or electronic was lurking in the room ready to kill them.
“Scout?” Jon whispered.
“Nothing, Captain. I can’t read it as long as it’s cloaked.”
Cipher craned his neck to look as far as he could around the room. “Think we got it?”
The silence that followed told him the team didn’t think they did.
“Now what?” he asked.
Everyone held their position for a few more seconds. Jon glanced over at Jennifer and saw her tilt her head. “Hear it?”
Jennifer listened, then she whirled around, gun pointed at a point near the ceiling as a small grenade exploded the concrete separator, knocking both Jon and Jennifer in different directions.
“They’ve got grenades now?” Scout yelled as they returned fire again.
Laser blasts peppered the entire area and one laser in particular concentrated on Jennifer. Numerous shots hit her directly, repeatedly, knocking her to the ground and immediately powering down her suit. Tank moved in front of Jennifer as she regained her feet to find cover – a blue laser shot hit her in the shoulder and then she was punched in the stomach, thrown back a good ten feet and onto the train tracks.
Before anyone could move, Scout fired into the steam rising from the pipes, just above Jennifer. That’s when Jon saw it – the movement in the steam. The drone could cloak itself, but it couldn’t hide its movements through the mist.
“Tank! Bust open a pipe. We need more steam in here,” he ordered as he tried to follow the movement through the cloud. He jumped onto the train tracks and placed himself between Jennifer and the last known position of the drone.
The drone focused its explosives on Tank as he smashed his foot through a pipe, the steam escaping into the train tunnel. They searched through the mists until they saw the movement through the steam. “One o’clock!” Hawk yelled as they blasted the area around the movement.
Then… nothing moved.
Jon reached down, grabbed Jennifer’s hand and helped her stand. “You okay?”
“Nothing bruised by my dignity,” she told him as she clutched her side.
“Just your dignity?” Jon asked her.
“Maybe a couple of ribs?” she suggested. “I can’t move my left arm and my left leg feels strange.”
Cipher kept one sharp eye on the steam, the other watching how Jon kept hold of Jennifer’s good arm. “What do we do now?”
“Don’t move,” Jennifer suggested. “Maybe the steam is obscuring its sensors.” She tilted her head and listened. Her eyes slowly tracked the room. She located the sound of the drone’s hum; saw the movement in the steam. “Right corner, near the ceiling,” she said.
Bullseye! Five blasters aimed in that general direction and fired. Shots ricocheted off the cloaked drone as it fired back. There was a pop, a vicious spark, and the drone was visible. Its cloaking device failed under the onslaught. Its weapons once again targeted Jennifer. Jon placed himself in front of her as the drone fired repeatedly. The shots overpowered Jon’s suit and it shut down as Tank lined the drone up in his sights and fired a low-yield shot from his rocket launcher. He hit the drone head-on. A shower of sparks flew out of it and the orb hit the ground hard.
Cipher moved toward the now defunct drone. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he muttered. “This is what poisoned our water supply?”
“It’s capable of doing far worse,” Jennifer explained, holding her side as still as possible. She tried moving her left arm, but it remained slack at her side. She started to lean a bit but Jon reached out and held her upright. “My left leg just went numb,” she told him.
“Why did it focus on you?” Cipher asked.
“Self-preservation program probably,” Jennifer told him. “It heard we were going to blow up the base with it in here. Maybe it didn’t like that idea.”
Cipher looked at the team, surprise showing in his eyes. There was concern, but they were acting like everything that had just happened was nothing new under the sun. Was the Power Team so accustomed to fighting in all sorts of situations that it didn’t faze them anymore? Had all of them been hurt so often that an injured teammate wasn’t considered injured? They seemed to take it in stride that Pilot had been beat up and her left side temporarily paralyzed and that she was still standing. He pointed toward Pilot. “It must have been more than that. I mean, that floating tin ball seemed to like you. Those hits should have knocked you unconscious. Will you be all right?”
“I won’t be comfortable, but I’ll be fine,” Jennifer told him. “It takes a few days to wear off,” she said nonchalantly.
Jon took quick stock of everyone. “Okay, let’s get out of here.”
Jon carefully eased an arm around Jennifer, careful of her bruised ribs and taking most of her weight as he helped her limp out of the base. Tank took point and the others brought up the rear.
Cipher took one last look around what had been a pretty good hideout. “Oh, well, easy come, easy go,” he whispered to himself. He trailed behind the others, watching them as they walked back through the tunnel toward the entrance. There was a knowing smile on his face once he noticed how careful Jon was with Pilot.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Power Base -- The Next Day
Listening to the original entry helped a little. Jon couldn’t dictate the entry as a mere follow-up to a mission. He needed to explain more of what happened.
But how could he? How could he explain how watching Jennifer get hit with the paralyzing beam, punched in the stomach by a cloaked drone and tossed onto the train tracks nearly made his heart stop beating?
He couldn’t. That wasn’t something that could go into the database journal. He couldn’t let his personal feelings get in the way of the mission, but it was getting harder and harder to push them away. The truth was that he didn’t to push them away anymore.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts and turned on the recorder. He needed to get the supplemental entry recorded, but it couldn’t be recorded well in a chronological fashion.
“Database journal 47-8 Mark 17. Captain reporting.
We were too late to warn Cipher. When we arrived at his base, we discovered that his water supply had been tainted with a drug that caused temporary madness, hallucinations and violence. The water was drugged by an observation drone that was led there by a sub-electronic security system sound file recorded on a data disk given to Cipher by an informant. Biomechs attacked while we were at the base. We don’t know if they attacked us on Dread’s orders, followed the sound file the same way the observation drone did or if they were waiting to apprehend survivors from Cipher’s group. After the fight at the base, we took Cipher and his group to the Passages for medical care and returned home. Some hours later, we learned that Tank had drank some of the water.”
He stopped.
Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Something that happened at Cipher’s base…
He clicked on the record button again.
“Dread’s plan was to launch a rocket filled with the drug into a major water supply. Scout, Pilot and I flew to the location to stop the rocket while Hawk remained on the base to find Tank who was suffering from the effects of the drug.”
All right, both groups were successful. He was grateful for that.
“We were able to stop the countdown and self-destruct the missile. We also had another run-in with Blastarr. Destroying him is proving more and more difficult. He has survived massive explosions, stronghold destructions and blaster fire at point blank range. I’m not certain what it will take to destroy the biodread.”
Not destroying Blastarr was going to hurt them, he just knew it.
“There’s been no report of any damage done to the ground or water tables beneath the missile explosion, and preliminary tests indicate that the chemical was destroyed completely with the missile. Upon our return, we learned that Tank wasn’t suffering from the full-effects of the drug any longer even though it was still present in his system. We sedated him so he could sleep off the remains of the drug.”
And it had to be Tank that drank the water, didn’t it? The one person who could rip sheet metal in two… okay, that wasn’t much of an exaggeration, but that didn’t take away from the fact he was almost impossible to stop.
Jon had to make the difficult decision of having someone attempt to stop Tank before he hurt someone or himself. The problem was that this wasn’t their Tank. This was a man who had been deliberately given a drug without his knowledge and had no defense against it. This Tank could only see biodreads surrounding him and wanted to destroy anything that moved. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone to get through to him.
Tank was a trained soldier; Jon was his commanding officer, but would that have been enough to reach him? Jon didn’t believe so. It would take more than military protocol to break through the hold the drug had on him. Scout? No, as close as he and Tank were as friends, it’d take something more than mere friendship. Jennifer? If Tank ever hurt her, he’d never forgive himself even though she could undoubtedly best him in hand-to-hand combat; but if she hurt him, she would never forgive herself. Jon wouldn’t risk that, plus he needed a pilot for the jump ship when they went after the missile. At least, that was the reason he kept telling himself.
That left Hawk. He and Tank were friends, they were colleagues, they were military. Given their type of friendship, Hawk would have had the best chance of reaching him in that drug-induced state.
It hadn’t been an easy decision to make, but it had to be done. Luckily, Hawk could joke about it afterwards.
“How did you do manage to get through to him?” Jon asked Hawk.
“I almost let him kill me,” Hawk said, half jokingly.
Making light of a bad situation was a necessity at times. They could be looking down the gun of a warlord and still make a bad joke to relieve the tension. Yet, the idea that one of them could kill another even in a hallucinatory rage wasn’t one that was easily joked about.
Would the joke have been the same if it had been anyone else who drank the water?
What would he have done if Jennifer had drank the water? She’d proven herself more than able to win a fight against soldiers Tank’s size. Her size hid amazing strength and agility. She could take down any of the rest of the team in a fight – how would Jon have stopped her if she’d had the drug in her system?
He switched on the recorder again. “We were lucky this time, and we did stop Project
He heard a noise, turned around and saw Jennifer slowly making her way toward the stairs that led into the control room. He noted that she still had her arm in a sling and her left leg was dragging a bit, but she was walking. Obviously, the stun blast had not worn off. “Should you be walking around yet?” he asked as he quickly climbed the steps and helped her down into the control room.
“Probably not, but it wears off faster if I can force my leg to move. It’s better now than it was. At least the feeling is coming back,” she smiled.
She had a very shy, sincere smile, Jon noticed. He’d seen it before, but it suddenly came to him how real her smile was. As time passed, he was noticing more and more about her. Sometimes, like at that moment, dressed in a simple t-shirt and khakis, her hair tucked behind her ears, he could picture her as she might have lived had the war never happened, had her childhood not been robbed from her. No uniforms, no military training perhaps, just Jennifer. Would she have been very different? Would he? Would he feel the same way about her if they had met under different circumstance? Questions like that really didn’t matter since they met exactly as they did. He knew the woman now, and the feelings he felt for her were because of who she was.
He held the seat steady as she sat down. “How’s your arm?” he asked as he took hold of her hand.
“Better,” she answered, slowly wiggling her fingers and grasping his hand lightly. There wasn’t much strength in her hand yet. She looked at the console and noticed the time stamp on the monitor’s log. “Having trouble with the data log?”
Jon nodded his head. “A little,” he told her. “The entries are getting repetitive.”
“And it never seems to end, does it?” Jennifer asked.
“No, it doesn’t,” Jon agreed. “In fact, that was exactly what I was just thinking. It never ends. It’s always the same…”
“That’s the way Dread’s empire works,” she told him as she carefully leaned back in the seat. “His entire philosophy is based on a foundation of routines and procedures. Everything is logically regimented so everyone does the same thing –”
“Over and over again,” both said in unison.
Jon sat back as well and ran his hand through his hair. “Makes sense. If you don’t want people to think independently, then don’t give them anything independent to think about.” He sighed. “It seems he’s doing the same thing with his battle strategies. There’s not much originality to them.”
“Not this time though,” she disagreed. Jon noticed how she winced when she moved slightly to take some of the pressure off her ribs. “He chose a resistance base to test his latest project on. That’s something new.”
“I wonder why. Why didn’t he destroy them when he located the base? There are a lot of settlements near water – why not try his experiment there?” Jon had a feeling that Jennifer had a theory. “Jennifer?”
She took a shallow breath and held on to her ribs. They were still painful when she moved. She took her arm out of the sling and slowly moved her fingers. The numbness was wearing off, so her hand must have felt as if it a thousand pins and needles were sticking into it. Still, she didn’t complain. She never did. Jon was tempted to tell her to go lie down and rest, but she wouldn’t. She’d find something to do, so there was no reason she couldn’t do the same thing sitting in the control room with him. “Resistance groups are well known for looking after our own. If Dread could find a way to force us to turn on each other –”
“We’d solve his problem for him. We’d kill each other ourselves,” he finished for her. “Hawk said Tank came pretty close. What I can’t figure out is why Dread tested the drug the way he did. He had to have known that it worked before he put it in the missile. There had to be a lot of it, it would have taken time to manufacture, so the tests would have been performed months ago, wouldn’t they? He had to have already known what the drug would do. It doesn’t make sense that he would test a drug the day before he launched a missile to distribute it.”
Jennifer sat quietly for a while. Then, “I keep wondering if everything that happened at Cipher’s base was some sort of diversion.”
That thought hadn’t crossed Jon’s mind. “What do you mean?”
“We’ve beaten Dread time and again. We’ve stopped, disabled or interrupted most of his projects, especially the ones having to do with the Project New Order. Why hasn’t he changed his plans? Why does he keep using the exact same plan for Project New Order that we found months ago? He knows we have it, he knows we’re using it to fight against him, but he doesn’t change his tactics.”
No, Dread didn’t change his tactics. Why hadn’t Jon noticed that? Then again – maybe he had and just didn’t realize it. “Taggert was always predictable,” he muttered. “He was a creature of habit. He had a very methodical and ordered mind which is why he was able to design a computer like Overmind. I didn’t stop to think that Dread wouldn’t change methods any more than Taggert would.” Jon thought for a moment, then wondered out loud, “Maybe that’s why he hasn’t altered tactics. He’s absolutely certain Project New Order will work.”
“Another question I have is why Overmind hasn’t stopped it unless he has other plans that he hasn’t told Dread about,” Jennifer suggested with a frown. “Dread may think that Project New Order is the plan itself but Overmind might see New Order as just part of a larger one.”
Jon considered that. It sounded feasible, and what he knew about Overmind, entirely logical. “That makes sense.”
He put away the recorder and saw how Jennifer was pulling at her fingers. Then he noticed the look on Jennifer’s face. Something else was bothering her. He reached out and gently took her left hand again. “Is it hurting?” he asked. The fingers were cold, but not like they were right after the drone shot her with the paralyzing beam.
“A little, but it’s better,” she smiled. “I can actually feel it tingling.”
Her voice sounded guarded, as if something was bothering her. “What is it?” he asked.
She took a shaky breath. “Cipher said something about the drone liking me since it seemed to focus on me.”
Jon had thought the same thing even though he didn’t voice his opinion at the time. He was rather impressed that Jennifer was still conscious and walking after taking the beating from the drone. The fact that it singled her out could have been a coincidence, but he didn’t believe that. “Maybe it’s programmed to shoot down people in a certain sequence? Maybe by height or gender –”
“No,” Jennifer shook her head. “Drones have specific types of programming and attack styles. Pictures of their targets are loaded into its database. Drones have a very sophisticated facial recognition program, and once someone’s identity is determined, it’s supposed to kill them. The drone scanned us and then seemed to target me. I’ve been wondering if my picture is in the database.”
Jon wouldn’t put it past Dread to sink to that level. As a Dread Youth, there would have been surveillance footage of her from the time she first taken to Volcania up until the time she escaped. If Dread wanted to know where she was, the drones would be one way of finding her. “But that one particular drone? How would Dread know we’d go to Cipher’s in the first place?” The idea that there was an informant somewhere telling Dread what they were doing --
Jennifer shook her head and tried to force her mostly-numb fingers to hold on to his. She couldn’t get her fingers to curve easily. “Not just one drone. If Dread wanted to search for a particular person, he’d have their picture in every database of every drone he’s got. They’re very efficient.”
That drone had scanned them and targeted Jennifer. If it had Jennifer’s picture in its databanks, then they all did. That was another concern for them.
“Dread may have uploaded all our pictures to the drones, but there’s a pre-programmed hierarchy the drones have to follow. Traitors to the Machine would be listed as a higher priority than anyone, including a resistance group. Even you,” she explained with a slight smile. “Usually, traitors are targeted for capture first. They’re only killed if necessary.”
“And that’s why the drone targeted you after it scanned us,” Jon surmised. Then, “But why are we not finding more drones?”
“It’s just a guess, but I think Dread had them working on a particular mission. You know the reports we’ve heard about how many overunits have been executed recently because they failed to capture us?”
Jon closed his eyes at that thought. The reports over the last couple of months had hinted at a fast personnel turnover in the overunit ranks, but it was only two weeks ago they learned of the executions. Jon may not have liked what the Dread Youth stood for, but he didn’t want to be the reason for any of their executions. “You think that Dread used the drones to execute them?”
Jennifer brought up one report from another resistance group. “Find them, execute them, it’s possible. Look,” she pointed to the description of the overunit body they had found. “They found small laser shots in the chest and back and evidence of an explosive consistent with a grenade.”
Dread was using his own machines to execute members of his own army. “How many of them are there?”
Jennifer shrugged. “There might be more drones out there than we can imagine since they have a cloaking capability or there may not be a lot of them left since we’ve destroyed so many of Dread’s facilities and there would have been drones inside to spy on the personnel. But these executions have been going on for months. If there were a lot of drones, I don’t think it would have taken as long to kill the overunits.”
“So maybe there aren’t as many as we think?” Jon suggested hopefully.
“Maybe. Dread may not even know how many drones there are if Overmind is keeping the information from him.” Jennifer almost laughed. “Given how much Overmind hates organics, I can almost imagine him not trusting Dread and using the drones to spy on him since he used to be an organic.”
A duplicitous computer with an independent agenda. That was all they needed. That also meant that Jennifer could be the target of any drone they hadn’t seen. Jon gave her fingers a last squeeze and then reluctantly let go of her hand as pointed toward another file on the monitor. “Cipher has sent a copy of his report to every resistance group. Maybe we can keep what happened to him from being repeated.”
“I hope so,” Jennifer told him as she eased her arm back in the sling, moving slowly so she didn’t aggravate her ribs. “The idea that enemy troops could find a base and sneak in that easily is not a comforting thought.”
No, it wasn’t a comforting thought. Jon suddenly knew what was bothering him about the mission. Dread’s troops got into Cipher’s base with relative ease. If drones, biodreads or biomechs could get into the Power Base as easily as that…
Their security was tougher to get through than Cipher’s base was. Their protocols had been changed and upgraded after Andy Jackson broke in, but could a single frequency blast deliver the information needed for a drone, a clicker or a biodread to infiltrate the base? He didn’t believe so. Still… “Do you think our systems are safe?” he asked her.
“We’ve got every security measure we can think of running all the time,” she explained, her look one of hopefulness but also aware of the dangers. Then hesitantly, she answered, “I hope so.”
The End
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