E-mail this Page - Previous Chapter - Table of Contents - Home - Next Chapter
This chapter is provided as a preview. Anybody who wants to can access it for free at http://www.EastCoastGames.com . We ask that no copies, physical or electronic; be lent or given. Offering this portion of the novel is expressly prohibited.
Flight
Luxury
Conference Room C
Enough of the design for the colony had
been created and approved that groundbreaking could start as soon as the tools,
supplies, and work force were in place. Considering
all required colonists had been selected and what CTF had done to Carmen, all
the colonists agreed to head to the property as soon as possible. For Carmen, the Hunt, and the Millers this
meant
Carmen, Aaron, Sarah, Keith, Kara, Jared
and a still sick Michelle all met in a conference room for last minute
planning. Everybody was already packed
and Hunt Security would help them get from the facility to the docks. Aaron gave operational control to a senior
staff member of the company in a meeting on the preceding Friday. Most of the Hunt fortune had already been
moved to Swiss bank accounts.
They all sat down so that Aaron could give
a briefing on how the operation would take place. “We are going to drive out the back entrance
of this facility. We will meet escorts
there who will lead us to
“The trucks also have tinted windows so it
is unlikely we will be noticed. We’ll
enter the vehicles from the parking lot inside this facility so CTF will not be
able to see us leave. The boat is large
enough for us to drive into, so they won't see us exit the cars either. Any questions?”
Jared asked, “Where does the back entrance
lead?”
Aaron said, “It leads to a hidden exit
which will let us out near a road.” He
waited for more questions but there were none.
They were all prepared for this moment.
This is what they had been waiting for and building to. Now all they had to do was follow the plan and
everything should go fine.
They all put on vests that were stored
near the entrance to the inner portion of the facility. Everybody’s stuff was carried out into the trucks.
A contingent of Hunt Security personnel
met them in the parking area. There were
eight trucks total. The two trucks that
would hold the two families had a driver.
The other six trucks each had four people. The time machine easily fit in the rear of
one of the trucks. Michelle, Jared, and
Carmen each had a builder. Michelle’s
was set to work like it had exactly one month ago, that fateful night had sent
their lives on this strange path. Jared and
Carmen set their builders to turn targets into steel.
****
George Peterson met six teams outside of the
Hunt house at
Peterson pointed to the nearest agent,
“You go get the heat sensors.”
A minute later, the agent returned. There was no heat detected anywhere but the
laundry room, where the water heater was, and the living room. They went into the living room and realized
that the heat was coming from inside the wall next to the fireplace.
“Open it,” Peterson barked.
Some agents started working on the wall,
trying to find a way in. Peterson said,
“Get some axes.” One axe was standard
for every truck, to help get through low-tech security systems, like walls and
wooden doors. CTF also standardly carried hacking equipment due to all the high-tech
security systems they regularly had to bypass to enter anything from networks
to vaults and even panic rooms.
After a few minutes, agents were chopping
at the wall with fire axes. When they
got through, they found a few tanks of hot water. The water was body temperature.
One of the agents who had been guarding
when they arrived said, “They were here, Sir.”
Peterson said, “Listen up; they must have
these tanks to help them sneak out. The
question is, where did they go? They probably have a tunnel system that
starts near this heater. These people
are rich, so they may have spared no expense to make such a system. Find it.
Tear this place apart. Just be
careful with computers and paper files.”
George called the office and sent some
people to the airport to make sure they didn’t escape that way. Peterson waited in the kitchen after helping
himself to some orange juice. Then he
went upstairs and found that most of the clothing, drawers, and closets were
empty. He started to panic. Had he missed them by mere hours? Krinshaw had said
to go in the morning. Would George be
blamed for Krinshaw’s plan? Of course, the answer was yes. It would not matter whose fault it was:
George’s career was on the line. As
George pondered his future, an agent came up. “Sir, we found something.”
George followed the agent back into the
living room. The agent explained, “This
fireplace is on a hydraulic lift. It’s
like a little elevator.”
George said, “Can we get it to move?”
The agent said, “Not yet. We found a wireless receiver, and we’re
trying to hack in, but it could take a while.”
“What about making a hole and climbing
down?”
“Sir, it’s a long elevator shaft and we
don’t have any climbing rope.”
“Fine, you two go get rope,” he said
pointing at two agents. Turning back he
said, “Keep working on the hack.”
After a few minutes, one of the agents
working at the fireplace finally said, “Got it.
They have it well encrypted, but as soon as we were inside it was a
piece of cake. Their network topography
is obvious. We’re ready to send down a
full elevator.”
George picked a team of men to go down
first. They got the elevator to go down
to the loading position. Then the team
boarded the elevator and it went to the bottom.
One of the team members yelled up the elevator shaft, “Clear.”
George ordered a few men to stay upstairs.
He went down on the next elevator
ride. All, except for the few staying in
the house, continued to arrive. Some
agents worked on hacking the door. First,
an agent took the faceplate off the number pad and cut the cord. He then pulled out his hacking tool and
connected the cut wire to the tool.
Numbers started flashing on the screen.
First the tool tried all the obvious choices, like 1234, 4321, then
choices like 9999, and 8888. Then after
going through the obvious choices, it went through all the possible
combinations sequentially. When the
number was found, they attached a panel to the thumb pad that scanned for
residual fingerprints. After isolating
and clarifying a fingerprint, it would then copy the print and press the copy
against the pad. The fingerprint took
less than a second. Finally, they got it
open and headed down the tunnel with weapons drawn. When the tunnel met up with the bigger
tunnel, he left a team of men to open the big door, in case they were hiding
there. George went with the remaining
men down the wide tunnel.
They arrived at the parking area just as the
Hunt Security trucks began to leave. The
first few trucks were already so far down the tunnel that CTF couldn’t see
them. George wasn’t sure who shot first,
since he was in the rear. He hoped it
was his men, but it seemed unlikely.
With the team left at the big door, the two teams outside and the three
men upstairs only, 15 men remained with George.
****
Hunt Security was in the front and rear
trucks. The Millers and Carmen were in
the first of the middle trucks. Jared
sat in the front, Carmen sat behind the driver, and Michelle sat behind
Jared. The Hunt family was in the second
of the trucks. Kara sat in the front,
Sarah sat behind Kara, Keith sat in the middle, and Aaron sat behind the
driver.
As the first trucks started moving, the
CTF agents came down the hall. The passengers
of the rear trucks had been looking in the back to make sure they weren’t
attacked from behind. As soon as the CTF
agents popped into view, the last two of the three rear trucks broke off from
the convoy and started firing from the windows and the skylight. The skylight and windows were bulletproof,
allowing them to shoot under near-perfect cover. The first five forward-most CTF agents were
shot down in the first few rounds. The
only noticeable shots from the agents hit the bulletproof glass. After the first five were shot, the other
agents retreated towards the house. The
two trucks quickly caught up with the rest of the convoy and reported their
results over the radio.
****
When the Hunt Security trucks arrived at
the exit, they had to stop for a few minutes to open the tunnel and remove the
camouflage that hid it. As they drove
out, three CTF vans were suddenly in the tunnel behind them. George had had them retreat because of the
advantage the trucks caused. He had not
expected any of this. This was supposed
to be routine. He had expected a
firefight but not underground and not with vehicles. As they retreated, they found that the team
that was left at the big door had opened it.
They brought some vans down through the elevator. Hunt Security still had better vehicles, but
George had equipped the vans with rocket launchers after the incident with
Carmen. He could not be sure what had happened,
but he would take no chances.
****
The two rear trucks broke off when the CTF
vans caught up. Hunt Security opened
fire as they had before and did some serious damage, but then there was an
explosion. The explosion seemed to make
the tunnel shake. After a moment of
relative silence there was another explosion.
When the debris cleared, the two Hunt’s Security trucks could be seen .
. . completely destroyed.
The Hunt family, including Kara and Keith,
prepared for a firefight. Over the
radio, Aaron urged all the drivers, “Step on it!”
The trucks had come out of the tunnel in a
field that led to a small logging trail that went downhill. Two of the forward trucks held back to join
the sole surviving truck in the rear.
They started down the logging trail single file. After all the trucks had gotten on the trail,
the CTF vans started to appear in the field.
They had driven through the wreckage and were now in pursuit. As soon as the vans surfaced, their GPS
systems reported their location. George
ordered the two teams that had waited outside and the three who stayed in the
house to take the remaining three, of six, vans and to follow the road toward
their position. The logging trail kept
everybody going no faster than 25 miles per hour. They were out of range of each other, so
neither group started firing.
Carmen said to Jared, “We should use the
builders to wall off the road.”
Jared nodded, “You’re right.” He handed the radio to Carmen. Carmen said over the radio, “We want to make
a steel wall at the end of this trail.”
Aaron replied over the phone, “No, use
gold. We don’t want to show our
hand. Let them think we can only make
gold!”
“OK, we can use gold.”
“How long will it take?”
“Seconds”
“Fine; when we come out, you guys hang back and make a wall only if they’re as far back as they are now. If they’re any closer, we can’t risk losing
you.”
Carmen wondered to herself how, when it
came to life or death, her life could be held as more important than that of
anybody else, like the lives of the men and women in the rear trucks. Her only reply was, “OK.”
Carmen said to Jared as they saw signs of
the road, “I’ll take the left, you take the right.”
Jared nodded. Michelle said to both of them, “Be careful.”
When they arrived, the vans had actually
lost some ground. The trucks were made
for off-road driving, but the CTF vans were not. The driver of the Millers’ truck pulled to
one side and let the others pass. Carmen
popped up awkwardly through the sunroof and Jared opened his door to shoot. Within five seconds, they had made a foot
thick wall that stood six feet high.
Both ends were started from large white pine trees.
The road was built on the side of a mountain.
The left side of the road was a steep
rock face, and the right side was a steep sloop covered with evergreens. As they got back into position and took a
right onto the road they had come out on, the three CTF vans from the house
came barreling down the road. Aaron said
over the radio, “GO!”
The six tucks were moving again and had
almost reached the speed limit when the vans got within range. With all the added room, the three rear
trucks spread out, allowing the three passengers of each truck to fire at the
vans. Before the CTF agents were ready,
the first van lost control as its tires were shot out. The CTF vans were driving single file, and
when the first lost control the one following directly behind it bumped into it
before the forward van could get clear. The
third CTF van passed the first two and shot a rocket hitting the middle of the
three rear trucks. The two remaining rear
trucks regrouped as they started rounding a bend. A 16-wheel tractor-trailer came down the
oncoming lane. The van that had shot the
rocket swerved into the wreckage of the truck to avoid hitting the
tractor-trailer. The remaining van
passed in the right lane.
The lead van fired a missile at the truck
on the right but missed. The van’s tires
blew out and it lost control, headed off the road and down the hill.
At this point, the strategies on both
sides were obvious. CTF wanted to blow
them up one at a time while Hunt Security wanted to destroy CTF’s
tires. The single remaining van stayed
back to avoid the gunfire, but because the rockets were so slow and had no
guidance systems the trucks were easily avoiding them. If CTF wanted to hit them, they would get too
close and risk having their tires blown out.
For miles, they drove in this stalemate position. Finally, Aaron’s voice came over the radio. “If we keep driving like this they’ll report
our position and we’ll have too much company after a few intersections. How much range do those builders have?”
Jared replied over the radio, “Limitless .
. . well, almost limitless . . . as limitless as visibility, so a few miles.”
Aaron said, “If we get out of your way,
can you stop this van?”
Jared looked at Carmen. Carmen shrugged. Jared finally replied, “Sure, give us a
second to make a plan.”
Aaron replied, “You have three minutes
before we come to the first major intersection.”
Carmen said, “We’re too close and
‘valuable’ to make another wall. Besides,
this area is more open, and it would have to be a huge wall. You didn’t happen to get files of explosives,
did you?”
Carmen was referring to the project to
deconstruct objects and save their structure into files. Jared replied, “No.”
Michelle said, “Why don’t you just turn
their front-end into air or gold.”
Carmen said, “Gold. The wall we made will probably be enough of a
clue of what the builders do, but we can at least limit them to thinking we only
make gold.”
Jared nodded. They quickly programmed in the structure and
set the builders to calculate the distance basing it on visual scans. When they were done, Jared said on the radio,
“All set.”
The trucks behind them moved to the
left. Carmen popped out the sunroof
again, this time with less trouble.
Jared opened his window and aimed.
They both shot, completely destroying the front of the vehicle by
turning it into gold. The gold was mixed
with glass and steel. The van continued
to roll forward and as the road curved, it went off the side.
When they reached the intersection, they
took a right. They continued towards the
coast using back roads.
****
George could not understand what had
happened. Where had the wall come
from? The bottom of the trail had been
out of view when the trucks pulled off. How
had the trucks gotten around it? Did it
slide into place? Where did it come
from? Maybe it slid from the sides, but
where did it slide from? There was a
tree at the end of each wall. It would
have had to slide through the tree. It
was an enormous thick gold wall, perfectly smooth. Did the Midas machine make gold as opposed to
transform objects into gold?
They hacked their way through the trees to
make an opening for the vans. It took
over twenty minutes.
George kept trying to reach the other
trucks but got no answer. He called the
office and found out that most of the CTF team members had died. The rest had slow heart rates and were either
unconscious or at the very least unable to talk. GPS showed that none of them were moving. If he had realized how long it would take to
get past the wall, he would have called in some help.
When they were finally out, they drove
towards the GPS signals of the CTF teams.
They found all their vans. Some agents
had died, and the rest had serious injuries.
George called for ambulances. He
left a few people with the survivors to do what they could until
****
After hours of back roads, a journey that
would have taken little time on the highway finally ended. When they arrived at the docks, they drove
right onto the ship. Aaron and Sarah
said their good-byes to each of the surviving Hunt Security staff. Michelle, Jared, Carmen, Keith, and Kara said
good-bye as well. As soon as they were ready,
the crew of the ship got underway, and they headed to
****
After hours of searching, George finally returned to his office where he would inevitably be fired.
Copyright (C) 1998-2001 East Coast Games, Inc. and 2001 - 2006 Forest J. Handford
E-mail this Page - Previous Chapter - Table of Contents - Home - Next Chapter
