Dark Energy Supernova - An Anthology of SF SD Shorts

Part 4 - Volstagg

"Can we bypass?"

A look of concentration on her fine-boned face, Tuck didn't immediately reply as her fingers danced across the portable, a tablet-sized computer built specifically for cracking into heavily guarded networks.  A few seconds' later, she hissed in disappointment but kept working.  Another hiss erupted a few seconds after that and she looked up to give Robin a shake of her head.

"Fractal encryption," she announced with a sigh.  "It actively shifts each time I try to crack it.  So I can't even locate a gatekeeper algorithm that,..."  Her voice trailed off as she spotted something on the screen.

"Tuck?" Robin asked, leaning forward with an interested frown.

"There's a super user accessing the network.  An arrogant one, too; they didn't bother closing their access point behind them."  Again Tuck's fingers started dancing over the screen.

"Volstagg."  She paused to look over at Robin.  "It's Volstagg."

"As in the local head of the Illuminati cell?"  And Robin's frown deepened when Tuck nodded in confirmation.  "Can you piggy back in, using his access point?"

"Already done."  Tuck quietly reported, her fingers a blur as they streaked over the portable's touch-sensitive face.  "Bah!  It's a bloody minefield in here.  Trapdoors, random security sweeps, fractal barricades, and,... wait!  There it is."

"Talk to me, Tuck," Robin tautly ordered before glancing around the corner at the guard post.  "Time's a-wastin' here.  There what is??"

"The data core," Tuck tightly revealed, her face a mask of concentration.  "The Illuminati aren't keeping their data in one physical location.  Instead they've spread it over a number of virtual nodes accessible via a centralized data core.  Which Volstagg just accessed, allowing me to slip in."  She slipped a storage crystal into the portable's bottom edge.  A tap on the screen and she was nodding in satisfaction.

"And now, thanks to Volstagg's unwillingness to follow even basic security protocols in his rush to get to the core, we now know what the local Illuminati cell knows."

The lights abruptly flickered as a low thrum vibrated its way into the bottom of their booted feet.

"Uh oh."  Tuck returned her attention to the portable.  "Volstagg has activated the power up sequence for the reactor."

"That's why he was in such a hurry to get to the data core," Robin realized out loud.  Another glance around the corner yielded the guards looking a little uneasy. 

"And the guards don't seem too happy about it."

"We need to find Joan and Jill as quickly as humanely possible," Tuck indicated, slipping the portable into a satchel.  "The power spikes I was reading on the network reveal an inherent instability in the system.  If it continues, we could see a cascade failure in the reactor's power grid that could bring down the entire building, if not several blocks around it."

They found their two colleagues deep underground after navigating a warren of hallways, corridors and lift shafts, on a walkway overlooking what looked to be a test chamber of some sort.

"Rob," Joan greeted them with not a little relief before gesturing towards the beehive of activity surrounding an unidentifiable mound of machinery.  "That thing down there just started humming and all the techs went crazy."

"And a few seconds later that thing turned on over there," Jill added, pointing to a metal ring some four metres in diameter that now hovered a good two metres off the floor five metres from the heap of machinery.  Even as their eyes fell onto it, the ring began to slowly spin on its axis like a bizarre, giant gyroscope.

"Tuck?" Robin asked, finally giving in to the urge and drawing her own weapon.

Portable in her hand once more, the technical genius among them was shaking her head in confusion as her fingers danced over the portable's face.

"The best I can come up with is that's the portal Langdon mentioned," she finally replied after several seconds of searching.  "Volstagg's database doesn't even mention it."  She looked up as the ring's spinning quickened until it had formed a silvery ball of blurred motion.

"All I know is what sensors I can access are reporting time and space are bending around it."

"That seriously doesn't sound good," Jill muttered and Robin nodded in agreement.  It certainly didn't  If that reactor had a power grid meltdown like Tuck was predicting while space and time was being bent, who knew what could happen!

Then the blond was frowning as she spotted a newcomer stepping onto the test chamber floor.  Wait a second.  Wasn't that Tarion??  In place of his long coat and suit in neutral colors, he wore a dark purple robe, with some kind of conical hat that was marked with the Illuminati symbol.

He took a couple steps towards the humming mass of the reactor before he turned and looked right at them up on the observation walkway.  A serene gesture and they were abruptly surrounded by heavily armed guards.

"What the,...?" Jill had just enough time to stammer before they were being jerked to their feet and unceremoniously hauled down to the chamber floor.

"You set us up!" Robin spat as they were jerked to a halt in front of the rumpled man.

"That, I did." Tarion smirked.  "How else could I get test subjects to see how well my portal works without sacrificing one of my own?"  Then, a little louder: "Full power to the portal!"

"Yes, Grand Master," one of the techs at the reactor replied and, with a thrum of power, the blur of motion that was the ring shuddered as space bent even further around the mysterious mechanism.

"Twenty seconds to breach," the tech reported, eyes glued to a data display.  "Fifteen seconds.  Ten seconds."

"We are at maximum output on the reactor, Grand Master," another tech reported and the rumpled man nodded in satisfaction before turning his attention back to the ball of motion.  Just in time to see a pulse of light ripple across the ball before it abruptly disappeared, leaving behind what could only be described as a hole in space.

"We have breached the dimensional barrier," the tech who had been counting down, indicated.

"We shall see," the rumpled man said before a nod to the guards surrounding Robin and her people had them pushing the four women forward.