Cyber Dreams 2.30 - Steam Tunnels

Hey everyone! Things are getting complicated. Hope I haven't lost you. Let me know what you think of this one, please.

Cheers,

Plum

When Juliet and Delma stepped out of the elevator, they were met with a periodic klaxon, red flashing lights, and Kent’s voice repeating a message over and over, “Attention, Grave employees on sublevels seventy-seven through eighty-three, for your safety, all doors have been sealed. Do not attempt to leave your domiciles. Attention, Grave employees on sublevels . . .”

“Startling, isn’t it?” Sergeant Polk asked, approaching the two women as they tried to take stock of their surroundings—the low, plasteel ceiling, flashing lights, sweltering temperature, and general look of disrepair and well-worn . . . things. The trash can beside the elevator banks looked like it was a hundred years old and was packed to the brim with refuse. Posters on the walls depicting slogans like “Together, we make the dream possible!” were faded, ripped, and marked with graffiti. The plasteel floor was worn shiny along well-traversed paths and smeared with grease or grime on the edges.

Juliet jerked her head away from one of the posters where a woman flexing her arm had been lewdly altered by a rather talented, though crude, artist. She cleared her throat, gestured toward one of the flashing red lights, and said, “Uh, yeah. Damn, Sarge, is this all happening because of us?”

“Yeah, don’t want these civvies getting into our line of fire.” Polk shifted her gaze to Delma, then smiled, “You Granado?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Good, good. Okay, tell your PAIs to filter this noise and follow me. Time for a briefing.”

Suddenly the klaxon and Kent’s droning message were cut short as Angel followed Polk’s order. Juliet sighed with relief and, still bathed in blinking red light, followed Polk over to the rest of Charlie Unit, huddled together near a pair of grimy, orange plasteel doors. White saw her coming and held up a fist, and Juliet gave it a bump with her knuckles.

“‘Sup, rook?” Houston asked, smirking as he stuffed something into his lip. They all had their helmets and visors on, and Juliet felt absurdly cool knowing the aftermarket visor she’d purchased made her look more like one of them. She glanced at Delma, saw her open, unshielded face, and felt a little guilty, but she couldn’t have gotten her helmet modded in time, even if Juliet had mentioned it yesterday.

“Hey, Houston; glad to see you’re not cleaning bathrooms. I heard you got written up again!”

“Who told her?” Houston asked, looking around at the rest of the unit.

“Jesus, Houston. Could you be any easier to play?” Polk sighed and said, “Listen up, grunts—this is Delma Granado. She’s with us for a rotation.”

“Hey, all,” Delma said, waving briefly and offering a quick smile.

“Have your PAI put names on us,” Polk said. “I’m sending out a group comm invite through the watchdog . . . there we go. I see you guys. All right, so . . . Dammit, Houston! Zip it already!” She glared at Houston until he pulled away from where he’d been murmuring and giggling at Vandemere, who’d been stonily trying to ignore him.

“Sorry, Sarge,” Houston said as White slapped the back of his helmet.

“Hey,” Juliet said, risking Polk’s wrath, “where’s Rodriguez?” She glanced from Yang to Vandemere, to Houston, then over at White and Polk, and they all got quiet, any lingering humor dispelled.

“He cashed in last week,” Polk said. “Not the time, though, Roman. We’ll have a drink for him this weekend. Okay, listen up, you assholes.” She looked around at their faces one more time for good measure, then began again, “We’ve got intel that one Joshua Kyle is conspiring with several other employees on this level. Sharing target pics,” Polk gestured in the air, and then the faces of seven young to middle-aged men flashed onto Juliet’s AUI, accompanied by their names.

Polk continued, “They’ve circumvented the watchdog somehow—managed to feed it a loop or some other bullshit; the suits don’t want us to know exactly. Anyway, scans done yesterday by deep ops found they’ve used torches to cut tunnels in the plasteel from his apartment here on B80 into the plumbing and electrical conduits that feed foundry seven.”

“Jesus,” Houston said, and Polk frowned at him.

“Juliet, Joshua Kyle is named in the database of GARD subjects in the, um, GIPEL program.” Angel’s voice hesitated before the GIPEL acronym, and Juliet grinned, remembering how she had asked Angel to stop calling it that.

“You can say GIPEL in that context, Angel. Don’t worry; I won’t be annoyed. This is either an absurd coincidence or a total setup. Study his file and give me a report after the sarge is done talking.”

“We don’t know how far their rathole goes, how the others are getting in there to have their little meetings. It’s likely to be a real shitshow, and we’ve been instructed to use plastic rounds.”

“Fucksake, Sarge!” Juliet jerked her head to the speaker, surprised by White’s outburst.

“That’s right, White. You can leave that gauss rifle here in the lobby. Logistics will be delivering the LTL weapons in the next fifteen minutes.” She looked at Juliet and added, “You’ll get a standard semi-auto-shotgun with plastic loads. Leave that thing with White’s gun.”

“They gonna keep this shit on lockdown while we’re in there?” White asked.

“Yes, don’t worry about your baby; no one’s gonna walk off with her.” She paused a minute, clearly waiting to see if anyone else had something to blurt out, then continued, “So, we’ll clear his apartment first—should take all of two seconds, considering the little rat holes these poor bastards live in. When we find the access they cut, then we’ll go through, two by two, and split at junctions. Yang, are your new toys ready?”

“Yes, Sarge!” Yang said, touching four bulbous, metallic orbs attached to her belt.

“So, Yang’s pets will take point, but I'm sure we’ll still be splitting up. There’s too much damn ground to cover in those conduit tunnels. I’ll take Roman with me. White, you get Granado. Houston, Yang is your buddy, and V, you’ve got egress guard duty.”

While she spoke, Houston held out a fist in front of Yang, and she bumped it, and Juliet was reminded that, while they talked a lot of shit, these guys worked well together. “Okay,” Polk said. “ETA for LTLs is five minutes; then we’re heading in. Start stripping those mags. No one is to go in there with anything but plastics.”

As the group split up and started pulling the ammo out of their weapons, Delma looked at Juliet and asked, “LTLs?”

“Less than lethal,” Houston answered for her. “I’m Houston.” He held out a fist, and Delma grinned, bumping it. “So, strip those mags. You’ll get new ones here in a couple of minutes.”

“Juliet,” Angel said as soon as Houston moved off, “Joshua Kyle had strong results prior to his procedure, but his testing was deemed a ‘conclusive’ failure in post-procedure assessments.”

“Uh huh, much like they probably are starting to view me as a failure. This could be bad, Angel.” Juliet walked over to where White was laying his long, elegant gauss rifle on a beat-up bench with scraped and faded olive-green paint. She unslung her electro-shotgun and asked, “Can I put this by your rifle?”

“Yeah, ‘course. Sucks, but I guess they don’t want us blowing holes in pipes or through walls; lots of people crammed into these levels.”

“Makes sense,” Juliet nodded and put her shotgun, blocky and ugly next to his sleek rifle, on the bench. “Did you buy that gun, or just get lucky when they issued you your gear?”

“Hah! Nah, I rated highest in my unit at the range and on the LR test field, so when Randolph retired, they gave it to me.”

“LR test field?”

“Um, long rifle? Long range? I’m not sure which it is, but that’s where you go to get qualified for weapons like this. It’s out past the ABZ north of town.”

Juliet nodded and was going to ask a follow-up question when the elevator dinged, and a man in blue coveralls wheeled out a cart with a big, black, plastic crate atop it. Houston rushed over to it, and the rest of the unit lined up behind him. Juliet walked over with White, and he gestured for her to go ahead of him. “Thanks,” she said, waiting patiently while the others received their plastic-loaded magazines. She caught a glimpse of Delma’s mags as she started shoving them into the holders on her belt. They were loaded with aluminum-cased ammo topped with red plastic slugs.

“Don’t be fooled,” White said quietly. “Those slugs will still kill someone if you hit ‘em right. They just won’t damage the infrastructure. More importantly, they hurt like a sonofabitch—put enough rounds into someone’s center of mass, and they’ll cry uncle.”

“Right,” Juliet nodded. When she got up to the crate, Polk handed her a black, semi-automatic shotgun and four extended, slightly curved magazines, each loaded with eleven shells. “Thanks, Sarge,” she said, moving to the side to load the gun and stow the extra mags in her vest pockets. She racked a round into the gun, glad she’d gotten practice with similar weapons after Charlie Unit had finished the bug hunt.

“Juliet, touch the pairing button there near the rear sight,” Angel said, and when she complied, Angel continued, “The gun is safe now; it won’t fire until your finger is on the trigger. I’m updating your HUD.” Juliet aimed at a blank wall and watched as the center of her AUI was populated by a new, bright orange crosshair and an ammo count that read 11/11 (44).

“We locked and loaded?” Polk asked.

“Yes, Sarge,” White said, racking the bolt on a shotgun just like Juliet’s. “Good gun for clearing tight quarters,” he said behind his hand, grinning at Juliet beneath his dark visor.

“Houston and White up front; you’ll clear the apartment, then we’ll split into pairs. Look alive, folks!” Polk walked up to the double doors, and they clicked loudly at her touch. She shoved one open, and Houston and White charged through, the rest of the unit hot on their heels. Juliet and Delma were at the rear, followed only by Sergeant Polk.

Just as in the elevator lobby, the corridors were plasteel from floor to ceiling, and Juliet wondered at the lack of concrete; perhaps they’d simply poured foundation posts and outer walls this deep and filled the rest with more modular materials. If she were being honest, she’d admit she had no clue; corpo skyscraper structures and their endlessly deep subbasements weren’t anywhere near her wheelhouse.

The walls of the narrow corridors were lined with posters, old and new. She saw concert promotions, game and VR advertisements, handwritten posts for odd jobs, lost cats, and rats for sale—the variety was endless. The center of the plasteel hallway was shiny from traffic wear, but the edges were filled with grime and the uncleaned debris fallen from the boots and pockets of countless passersby.

“Don’t they clean down here?” Delma asked, echoing Juliet’s unspoken question.

“Sure,” Polk said from behind them, “but it usually takes a big mess, like a body or a large spill, and then the maintenance crews just clean the immediate area. Focus now.” She jerked her chin up the hall, and Juliet and Delma clamped their mouths shut and hurried after the rest of the team. They wound through the maze-like corridors, though Juliet only thought of them that way because she wasn’t familiar with their organization; she could see letters and colors at each junction and figured it’d be easy to find your way once you knew the system.

Just a few minutes later, Houston and White stopped outside a nondescript door, and the rest of the team caught up. White held up four fingers and began to drop them, one by one, and Juliet knew Polk would have Kent open the door when he dropped the last one. Sure enough, White’s pointer finger fell into his fist, and the door hissed open. He and Houston were through it in a nanosecond, and V and Yang moved up to either side, helmets turned so they could peer within.

“Clear,” Houston’s voice came through comms, and Polk shouldered her way past Juliet and Delma to duck through the narrow doorway. Juliet and Delma moved to either side of the door behind the others and waited, their muzzles pointing off to the side. Angel upped the gain on her audio implants, and Juliet heard footsteps on plasteel, papers shuffling, mumbled curses, and the sound of something heavy being dragged on the floor.

“Everyone in. V, you’ve got door duty, keep it closed and watch that tunnel for a runner.” Juliet hurried in at Polk’s words and found herself shoulder to shoulder with Vandemere and Delma and not much room for anyone to move; the ‘apartment’ was about ten feet by fifteen, and the sparse furniture didn’t leave extra space with the seven of them stuffed inside.

White was standing next to a narrow refrigerator he’d pulled out of the corner, and Juliet saw the tunnel Polk had referenced. A jagged hole had been cut in the plasteel, and a dark opening about two feet by three led into a dark, cramped space lined with conduits and tubes. “Jesus Christ,” Houston said, peering around White to look into the opening. “We’re supposed to operate in there? Sarge, I have claustrophobia!”

“Suck it up, Houston,” Polk said. “White, Granado, you’re going left. Roman and I are going right. Yang, launch your bots, then you and Houston wait here until one of us calls you forward; whoever gets to a junction . . . or clue first. Speed and surprise are the order of the day, though by now, they probably have a good idea they’re fucked, so stay on your toes. Desperate people do desperate things.”

“Aye, Sarge,” White said, and then he was gone, slipping through the opening and around the corner like a ghost. Delma was hot on his heels, though her belt got hung up on the jagged plasteel, and she had to grunt and shuffle back and forth, cursing under her breath to free it.

“C’mon, Roman,” Polk said, plunging into the tunnel and cutting to the right. Juliet followed, and as soon as she poked her head through the opening, she became aware of the heat. If she’d thought B80 was hotter than the rest of the tower, the tunnels were absurd—she glanced at her AUI and saw the temp readout said 122F.

“Why’s it so hot? We’re underground!” she subvocalized into the team channel. Just as she finished the question, a rapid clicking sound came up from behind her and then passed by, and she watched a baseball-sized metallic spider rush past Polk. “Yang’s pet?” she asked aloud.

“Foundries make a lot of heat, kid,” Houston said, always happy to act like he knew what was happening.

“Can it,” Polk said. “Keep the chatter down.” She turned to Juliet and nodded, “Yang’s pet.” Juliet didn’t say anything, just breathed in and out, trying to keep her temperature regulated as she shuffled through the narrow tunnel after the sergeant. Thanks to her ocular implants, the tunnel wasn’t dark, but the heat, low-hanging pipes, conduits, and occasional loops of cable made it feel like she was deep in the bowels of a machine, not nearly a thousand meters underground.

She saw color-coded, stenciled signs indicating what chemical compounds were flowing through what pipes and occasionally an arrow with directions to this or that junction. They’d only traversed about a hundred meters when Polk held up a fist and slowed down. Juliet shifted her shotgun, still pointed down and to the side, and tried to ready herself.

As Polk crept forward, Angel chose that moment to test the health of Juliet’s heart. “I’ve identified three others on the list of Joshua Kyle’s collaborators in the GIPEL program.”

Juliet gasped and shook her head, then furiously subvocalized, “Angel! I need to concentrate. Hold that thought.”

“Houston, Yang, come to my position.” Polk was squatting down, peering through another cut in the plasteel, this one leading directly down. “We’ll head down,” Polk’s voice said in Juliet’s ear; she’d spoken through a private channel. “Yang, mark this location; it’s a drop-down. Roman and I are going through. You two continue up the service tunnel.”

“Roger,” Yang said in her quick, clipped manner.

Polk dropped down, and Juliet hurried forward, peering through the opening to wait for the sergeant to move out of the way. As soon as Polk’s light moved away, she lifted the barrel of her shotgun so it wouldn’t hit the edge and dropped through, landing with a thud and a grunt. She was in a tunnel much like the one above, though the plasteel walls were painted a faint shade of green instead of gray, and the passage only continued in one direction. Polk had advanced a few feet and was kneeling, looking at something.

Juliet edged forward, tried to peer over Polk’s shoulder, and saw the sergeant slip a small data deck into her belt pouch. “Our first clue,” Polk said to Juliet in their private channel.

“It was just laying there?”

“Yep, looked like someone dropped it—was on its edge near the wall. Let’s keep moving.” Polk stood, lifted her rifle with its extended red magazine, and started forward. Juliet followed, and they’d only gone a dozen steps when Polk slowed down and muttered aloud, “What the fuck is this?” Juliet immediately saw what she was talking about; the plasteel had been cut away on the left side of the tunnel, and beyond that point, the service tunnel was filled, waist-high, with big plastic bags, half-full of dirt and rocks.

Polk peered around the corner of the opening in the plasteel, shining her helmet’s light into the darkness. Then she subvocalized into her channel with Juliet, “These crazy assholes are digging into the bedrock!” She switched to the group comm channel and said, “Yang, I want you back with V. Keep sweeping the service tunnels with your bots, but I want the rest of the unit on my position ASAP; Roman and I found what these guys have been working on. We’re advancing, but slowly. Sound off with your ETAs.”

“Granado and I are about five minutes out, Sarge,” White replied immediately.

“I’ll be there in three,” Houston replied. Juliet saw the ETAs appear near their names on her HUD, and when she focused on it, she saw a little map appear with blue dots representing everyone’s position.

“C’mon, Roman,” Polk said, stepping around the corner and into the tunnel.

Juliet wiped dripping sweat off her jawline, happy that her helmet’s liner kept it from flowing into her eyes but still very uncomfortable in the heat. She ducked through the opening into the tunnel and caught her breath at the scope of the work Kyle and his associates had done. A circular tunnel through rock and soil had been cut in a straight line leading away from Grave tower, and it went on for about a hundred meters, where Juliet could see light illuminating a concrete wall.

“My PAI says that in this direction at that distance, we’re probably looking at the sublevels of Zi Corp,” Polk said into comms as she hurried forward.

“Sarge, what if this tunnel collapses,” Juliet asked, hurrying after her.

“Look around, Roman. See how the dirt’s been glassed? They superheated this shit as they went. Houston, watch our backs. Hold the tunnel entrance until White and Granado catch up.”

“Aye, Sarge.”

Juliet hurried after Polk, panting in the heat and from the exertion of running in a crouch through the low, narrow tunnel. She scanned ahead, knowing Angel would alert her if she saw anything resembling a trap, but she also knew Polk was doing the same. When they finally reached the concrete at the end of the excavated tunnel, she could see, in the light of a scuffed-up portable floodlamp, a round, two-foot-wide opening had been cut through it.

Polk peered through the opening, and Juliet hurried up behind her, standing straight for the first time in several minutes. Her lower back popped with relief, and she sighed, glancing back into the tunnel. No sign of any backup was incoming yet. “Status, White?” Polk subvocalized.

“We ran into some trouble . . .” He trailed off. Then, frustration evident in his voice, he said, “Sarge, we were retracing our steps, and I’m following the damn map to you in my HUD, but I . . . we’re fucking turned around.”

“Goddammit. Houston, head our way; I’m investigating this hole.” Polk looked over her shoulder at Juliet, then nodded quickly and crawled through the opening in the concrete. Juliet hurried after her, and she’d just pushed her shotgun through the hole and was moving through on her hands and knees when she heard Polk shout, “Freeze right there! Do not fucking move one inch! Turn around! Keep your fucking hands where I can see them!”

By the time Juliet got through and stood up into a concrete-walled room that extended some fifteen or twenty meters toward a closed gray metal door, Polk had the object of her shouted commands at gunpoint, backed up against a pile of empty pallets.

Angel immediately identified the man as Joshua Kyle. He had wispy blond hair, ruddy, pockmarked skin, and two unskinned wire-job hands, which he held out to his sides. He was dressed in a dark blue pair of grease-stained overalls, and his eyes were darting side to side like a cornered dog, trying to find a way to bolt.

Juliet moved to Polk’s right, lifting her gun toward Kyle as Polk shouted, “Turn around, hands on the wall. Do not make any sudden moves!” Kyle continued to back against the pallets, edging to the side as though he was stuck, unable to comprehend, or unwilling to follow Polk’s commands. He shook his head violently, and then he started to moan, a weird ululation that rose from the back of his throat.

“No, no, no, no, no,” he groaned, then he put his hands on his head, but not like he was complying, more like he was trying to hold it together as though it was about to explode. Juliet began to feel a pressure in her own head, then, and her vision began to waver strangely, as though she were looking through a vaporous cloud.

“Your lattice is spiking with activity, Juliet!” Angel said.

“Sarge, something’s wrong!” Juliet cried.

“Joshua Kyle!” Polk shouted, “You’re under arrest! Comply with my command . . .” Juliet heard a scream as Polk’s words were cut short, and her vision bloomed into white noise. The sound wasn’t natural, not a scream from any human throat. It was in her head, and it echoed, reverberated, and threatened to destroy her with its violent impact. Somehow, some instinct inside her pushed that scream away, muffled it, and the intense pressure faded.

When it was gone, and the white fuzziness of her vision resolved into clarity, Polk was face down on the concrete with blood pooling out of her ears, and Kyle was running toward the metal door. Juliet lifted her shotgun and fired. As the plastic shot exploded out of the barrel and the gun stock crashed into her shoulder, she fired again. The first shot hit Kyle in the small of his back, and as he screamed and stumbled, the second hit him dead center, and he stumbled forward, arms windmilling to smack into the stone wall.

He was still standing, though, so Juliet fired again as she walked forward. The explosions of her shotgun must have been cacophonous, but her implants protected her; she only heard muted *bangs* with each shot. Kyle fell after the third impact of plastic pellets, but he kept trying to get up and didn’t lie still until Juliet fired four more times. In the corner of her mind, she knew she should have stopped shooting, should have jumped on him, subdued him with an armbar or something.

“Jesus Christ,” Houston said from behind her. She turned to see he was obscured by the white haze of spent gunpowder, but he hurried through it, rifle low and ready. He took in Kyle’s tattered, bloody form, looked at Juliet, and said, “What the fuck happened? You’re bleeding out of your eyes!”

“Can you please cuff that asshole while I check on the sarge?” Houston nodded and moved toward Kyle, and Juliet hurried over to feel for a pulse on Polk’s clammy, sweaty neck.