Entrance Area
Site Lima-One-Nine-Echo-Three
Bighorn National Forest
Central Wyoming
United States of America
6 April, 2002
1510 Hours
The water finally cut out and Kincaid hit the wipers out of habit as I got out of the vehicle and shambled over to the keypad next to the massive door that prevented us from going any further. There was peeling paint on the door, most of it torn off by the water. I flipped the plastic cover up, then punched in the maintenance code.
"WARNING! PRIMARY VEHICLE READY AREA ACCESS DETECTED!" The woman bellowed. It had the weird reverb that taking a normal volume recording and cranking it up to thunderous levels.
I put my hand on the wall and could feel the cylinder thumping heavily. The system was flashing "WAIT" and "PLEASE", alternating them. My brain went through the heavy electronics design that was needed to produce that effect with hardware that could handle a 450W EMP burst. I was down to the thickness of the traces that would be needed and whether it would be safer to use copper or tin when the door's LED readout flashed "OPENING" at me.
Again, the door dropped down, losing my personal bet again. Beyond it was a vaulted room, a steel grate big enough to hold, side by side, two semi-trucks with a trailer hooked up to them at the far end. On right right were fuel pumps, on the left a tool bench and the racks, with the tools vacuum packed and waiting. The grate was marked with yellow paint in case you somehow missed it, and "DANGER! ACCESS LIFT" stenciled above it. There were no other exits from the room.
I walked in, dragging my left leg slightly and slumping. It was easy, and made me look like an easier target to anyone who was watching through the camera that was making slow sweeps on the interior. I doubted that anything but the dog-brain AI was watching, but any edge was an edge I'd take.
Donaldson hopped out of the Gypsy Wagon and began making sure all the vehicles were moved out of the center. The room was massive enough that even parking the vehicles two double-arm intervals apart from one another took up less than a quarter of the room. I was checking the power to the control box on the grate when Donaldson and Vollman walked up.
"This is... not what I expected," Vollman admitted, looking a bit nervous.
"Claustrophobic?" I asked him.
He shook his head, sweat appearing on his forehead, "Not that I was aware of before."
"Harden up, buttercup, we've gotta go down," I told him, hefting the control box. "This is a Zulu-ID bunker."
"I don't understand what that means," He said, looking up at the ceiling.
"Don't think about the millions of tons of solid rock over your head that has been weathered and slowly cracked by tidal forces for millions of years," Heather said, slapping him on the back.
I wagged a finger at her, "He'd be justified in shooting you in the gootch for that line," I told her.
She blew him a kiss, "Sorry."
He just nodded.
The others were slowly walking over as I looked at Donaldson, "We're going to move the vehicles down into Ready Storage once we're sure we have the site secured," He told me. I just nodded as everyone else gathered up, the LT Colonel moving up beside Donaldson and cooly appraising the surroundings.
"Prepare the men for descent, Major," The LT Colonel said.
"Ready up, defensive positions," Donaldson snapped.
"First squad, left side and front."
"Second squad, right side and rear."
Everyone E-4 and below shifted so that they were down on one knee at the edge. The E-5 grabbed the LT's arm and pulled her down, moving in front of her, the E-6 repeated it with the Colonel. The SEALs all paused for a second before grouping around the officers and the four suits. Someone tugged on Donaldson but he just looked at them mildly.
"Corporal?" The Colonel said.
"I'm good," I stated, lifting the box and flipping the lever to "charge" with my thumb.
The amber and red lights lit up and there was a loud buzzing noise before system began thudding for long moments, the pitch changing as the cylinders charged. It buzzed again, the red light switching for the green one. I pressed the button and the amber light started flashing. Once it was charged we could all hear the blast shield below the grate pulling back and the grate shuddered and began lowering. We could see the massive gear teeth that made up the rails the grate was moving down. We sat through the blast door shutting, the decon, then the lower door opening.
The ride down took nearly twenty minutes, counting the pausing period. It was too loud to hear what each other were saying. Twice we moved forward for several minutes after we passed blast doors. My internal compass told me the speed we were moving and I calculated the speed in my head.
We moved nearly two thousand feet into the bedrock and over five hundred feet down. I updated my estimates on the facility's capability to survive. It would need a direct hit in the 1.5 megaton range to compress the rock deeply enough to collapse any un-reinforced sections, and even then I wouldn't count on a single hit to do the job and would probably use a staggered daisy-chain hit with each impact in the 250kt range hitting a few split seconds off in order to make the rock elastic, which would depend on the rock flowing and squeezing the corridors into smears of metal and plastic only millimeters thick.
I was still running numbers in my head when the grate reached another airlock. Again with the water, this time a lot warmer and 'softer' feeling than the times before. Once the shower shut off the door lowered, pretty much confirming that the system had firmly come online.
Beyond the door was a massive room that my brain automatically showed me the points that a large natural cave had been converted to vehicle storage area. The ceiling was fifty feet up in the center, the room vanishing into the darkness as the lights slowly began coming on with loud clacks.
The vehicles were in orderly lines, grouped by likely need. NBC modified M113 APC's, heavy jeeps, then cargo trucks, then the heavy hardware. As the lights came on I saw tanks with the torsion taken off their treads, the wheeled vehicles lifted up on cables and their tires removed, motorcycles hanging from wires.
Everything you'd need, vehicle-wise, to move out and rescue survivors, explore, and eventually dominate the surrounding area after a major extinction event. All of it put in long term storage in such a way that the vehicles could survive for literal centuries without maintenance. I could see the canvas bags hanging off the sides that I knew held all the FM's and TM's a person would need to learn not only how to operate them, but how to return them to service and maintain them.
Someone whistled low and slow.
"Follow me, stay alert, skirmish line. Kincaid, you're on point with me," I snapped, hefting my rifle and moving down the line of vehicles. Kincaid jogged up next to me, the heavy flamethrower tanks across his back and the igniter in his hands. He wasn't shuffling, the weeks of training getting him back into shape so he was high stepping the whole way.
"Make sure you don't cook us if you have to use that," I told him.
He snapped the ignitor three times in response.
I counted eighty vehicles and eight heavy support pylons on each side before the far end of the room came into view. I held up my closed fist so everyone would stop and moved over to one of the pylons, taking a good look at it.
Yup, a maintenance access panel on the side. I popped it open with a screwdriver and checked it. The gauge for hydraulic pressure was in the green, and I knew that inside a half-inch of concrete there were massive cylinders normally used to handle ship engines. I closed the panel and rejoined Kincaid, making the motion to move out.
The sheer size and the hushed, almost eager feeling of the converted cavern had smothered all idle talk and a glance behind me showed everyone on high alert, but not drawn wire tight. My Hammerheads were checking down the aisles, checking the ceiling, and the guys pulling drag checking behind them even as the people in the back were checking on them. The Lieutenant Colonel was ignoring the men to either side of him, acting as a guard, and just cooly appraising everything without letting his opinion show on his face.
They'd been trained up right.
"Remember the last time we were in a place like this?" Kincaid said just loud enough for me to hear.
"They died like anything else," I reminded him.
The wall was drawing closer and I could see several color bands on it, as well as writing on the wall. The lizard was wide awake, paying attention to shadows as well as cranking up the sensitivity toward any sounds that would be out of place.
Of course, he was still replaying Heather laying on the bed for me on one of his monitors.
Another glance back showed me that the SEALs were responding quickly to the way our men moved, interlocking and integrating into our own movements. That told me more than anything that these guys were the real deal, were still Active Duty, and were professionals.
I stopped at the far wall, staring at the tool benches in front of us. All of the tools had a light sheen of grease on them. The tool boxes were sealed in thick plastic and I could see the dehumidifier packs in the plastic to prevent rusting. There were file cabinets, against sealed in plastic, that I knew would contain more TM's and FM's.
One in particular caught my eye, as it was labeled "EVNT CONTUTY" in bad stenciling. I started to move toward it when the Colonel's voice caught my attention.
"Secure the exits, Major" The Colonel said.
"Stillwater, Kincaid, find the exits and secure them," Donaldson snapped.
"You men, with me," Sergeant Harris said, hefting the M-249 SAW, "Watch the flanks, check elevation and on top of vehicles."
The privates with him nodded as we headed to the right, following the red, green, white, and yellow lines. The blue line went off to the left. Sergeant Harris, like Sergeant Johnson, had firmed up under the intense training, now working with the privates like clockwork. Like the privates, and the handful of specialists, they had taken to the fact that they only had access to old style BDU's, and from the murmuring I'd heard, they took it as a point of pride that marked them as different from everyone else.
I'd pulled all of the gear out of the depot storage area hidden at the decomissioned National Guard training area. Given them all BDU's and Cold War equipment. They practiced with the equipment until their hands moved on muscle memory, until even applying a pressure dressing was a task that they could perform without thought, with artillery simulators exploding, CS gas and white smoke drifting over the training area, with blanks fired by machine guns thudding out, and simulated patients screaming in simulated agony.
I'd combined the Expert Field Medical Badge course with Special Weapons Qualification Course, and a healthy dose of the Basic Training final field exercise and sleep, food, and water deprivation to ensure they could function no matter how bad it was. All of them were qualified now for MOPP4 and J-Suit operations and could operate any weapon or piece of equipment in our inventory.
They felt good at my back.
The white line terminated at outlining a pair of doorways marked by sex, bathrooms that we swept and cleared. I noticed that the facilities had pictograms showing how to use them. The green line terminated in a room that was divided into offices by cubicles. We swept and cleared it, noting that all there was inside was desks, chairs, and calendars with the months listed but not the day, so that the day could be filled in by whoever was there. The red line terminated at the fuel pumps that were set into the wall. I flipped the manual switch to check the fuel status.
Tens of thousands of gallons of diesel, mogas, aviation fuels and kerosene. Even three pump handles for water, with over three thousand gallons in the tanks.
The yellow line was a storeroom full of barrels of oil, hydraulic fluid, and grease. All things that would be needed to bring the vehicles up to speed.
We passed by the blast door that we'd entered the room through. The stencil read "EXTERIOR ACCESS VEHICLE READY AREA" on it, as well as warnings. We kept going on the side, following it around. We stopped at another grill and I looked at the box.
It was the big heavy system, going along with "VEHICLE DEEP STORAGE" on the wall. Another grill was a hundred feet beyond, with "EVENT STORAGE ACCESS" stenciled above it.
"How big is this place?" Sergeant Harris asked.
"It's a Zulu site, a War Fighter site. It's going to be massive," I warned as we kept moving on.
Unlike before, he didn't press it.
The red line terminated in a single heavy door, six feet wide and eight feet high. Stencilled next to it was "FACILITY ACCESS" above the heavy bar that would activate the mechanism. I put my hand on the door and could feel a faint vibration that let me know that the system was already working.
That meant the facility's computer system had come online, probably when I hit the entry codes, and was prepping the entire site. All I could hope was that the system didn't engage any of the defenses, which could be anything from pumping hallways full of water to using colorless odorless tasteless nerve gas into the environmental system to kill us all.
"We'll wait here. Let the LT know that this is the only facility access," Harris snapped, turning to face one of the privates. He turned to another "Go with him, two man rule at all times."
Both of them took off, jogging as they headed back.
"Once we open this door we're going to move fast. I know how these sites are templated, and it should be pretty close," I told the rest. "We're going to go in fast, seize control of The Egg as fast,"
"The egg?" One of Specialists asked.
"The primary command and control room is built inside an egg shaped chamber, with heavy duty springs and hydraulic shocks to handle the kinetic shockwave of any near hits or direct hits. It's usually called 'The Egg' because it's protected like one," I told him, "We'll seize The Egg, and take control of the site's computer system. That is a priority. We need to know what it has already done, what it will do, and what's this site's programmed objectives."
I stared at each of them. "Do not under-estimate what this site's computers are capable of. The may be forty to fifty years old, but the same people that put a man on the moon, with a combined total computer power less than one of your phones, programmed this entire site to take full advantage of what was then state of the art computer equipment."
All of them nodded.
"So we're going to move in quickly, straight line no matter what. If we encounter and resistance we keep moving in on the objective. We won't leave wounded behind, but we won't let them bog us down either," I told them.
"Drink water now, we may not have the chance later," Harris said.
We waited silently until the two privates jogged back. When I'd first gotten them, they'd have been covered in sweat and blowing hard, now they were moving smoothly without any strain and seemingly without effort.
I'd forced them to run two to five miles a day the last two months, building their strength and endurance for exactly this kind of thing.
There were two SEALs following the two men from SSG Johnson's squad keeping pace. They slowed down to a walk as they approached us, and once they reached us I gave the same lecture to the two who had missed it.
"You four guard this door. Do not, I repeat, do not open it for anyone knocking, do not let anyone enter without Major Donaldson's presence and explicit permission," I told them.
They nodded.
I grabbed the handle and pulled it upright, stepping back as the mechanism engaged. The door rose smoothly, revealing a twelve inch thick door. The wedge was six inches deep, with a four inch thick blunt end for reseating. One of the SEALs whistled, but the guys that had been with me for awhile had been there while we removed the gear from the depot, or had been under Blackbriar with me, so they'd seen these doors and I'd already explained how the wedge was designed to reseat the door if it was knocked off its tracks.
The hallway beyond had lines on the walls. I chose the yellow and red striped line, mainly because of the "OPERATIONS" stenciled inside of it, and broke into double-time, jogging forward at a slow pace, the "Airborne shuffle" so that Kincaid could keep up.
I glanced back a few times as we moved down the hallway, noticing that the people I'd trained up had spread out, five meters between each man, each person keeping close to the wall, and how everyone was staggered.
We moved past the doors, and I counted five hundred paces before we hit the first crossroad. I held up one hand, looking up at the mirrors on the high corners that let me check the intersection. Nobody.
"Move quick, one at a time, remember your training," I snapped, then darted across.
Kincaid high stepped after me, and we started moving down the hallway.
We went past a half dozen intersections and three blast doors, until the line terminated in an outline around an open stairwell.
Before I could say anything one of the privates moved into the stairwell, jumping up and down on the landing until there was a loud "PANG!" and a bolt ricocheted off the wall and landed at my feet.
"Heading down," He said. "No rust visible on the walls or supports."
He jumped up and down on each step and we waited silently.
"CLEAR!" he shouted. "OPERATIONS ON THIRD LEVEL DOWN!"
"You heard the man, move out!" I snapped, moving into the stairwell. The stairwell shook slightly as we pounded down the stairs, moving quickly. Stairs were a killing zone, a really bad place to get stuck.
...you fuck's tried to kill my baby!...
I passed through the door first, checking the right, clear, checking the left, clear, the red line continuing on to the left, and I moved forward, hearing Kincaid pick up the pace behind me. Boots followed as we hustled down the hallway.
We had moved down at least two hundred meters, and gone another thousand meters deeper into the bedrock.
This facility was built to take anything anyone could throw at it. I wasn't even sure if multiple detonations would cause enough bedrock plasticity to destroy the site with any reasonable amount of targeting. I had to adjust to three MiRV weapons, ICBM class, and that was just a waste at this point. I could paste all of L.A. and its suburbs with that kind of payload.
It would require too much effort for this one base. Even to eliminate the entrance we'd found. And bases like this never had only one access point.
Which was the best protection it could get.
I noted how the boot thumps were muffled, sounding more like someone was running on a steel plate laid on dirt rather than the normal airspace that was typically built into the corridor so all four sides on the hallway could flex and compress with the blast wave.
This was heavy duty protection. Probably springs specially designed with only a six inch gap between them as well as heavy duty hydraulic shock absorbers.
The doorframe around Facility Operations Command & Control showed additional reinforcement, and the inch gap at the corners told me even the frame was designed for shock absorption.
"Stay sharp," I snapped. The keypad beside the door was flashing "OPEN" so I threw the bar below it.
The door raised up slowly, showing me the operations room. The door opened into the middle floor, a circular room, with six concentric rings of computers. Stairs on my right, left, and in front of me. In the middle of the room there was a single workstation with large cathode ray monitors curved so they could show data to the room. Green lettering was flowing by. Lightning fast by 1960's standards, but I was used to modern computers, so it was slow as hell.
ENVIRONMENTAL (PRIMARY): OFFLINE CHECKSUM OK
ENVIRONMENTAL (BACKUPS 1A-4E//2B): STANDBY CHECKSUM OK
ENVIRONMENTAL (BACKUP 2B): ONLINE CHECKSUM OK 40% LOAD
28% OF FACILITY HABITABLE, REMAINDER ON STANDBY
GENERATORS (PRIMARY): STANDBY CHECKSUM OK
GENERATORS (BACKUPS 1A-19F // 15A-15D): OFFLINE CHECKSUM OK
GENERATORS (BACKUPS 15A-15D): ONLINE CHECKSUM OK 60% LOAD
REACTOR: OFFLINE, STORAGE MODE CHECKSUMS OK
Scrolled by on the screen.
"Kincaid, secure the servers downstairs. Sergeant Harris, secure this room," I snapped. "Private Paige, you're with me."
"Roger," Sergeant Harris answered. He stayed with me up until the central workstation. I noticed all the monitors read "TERMINAL LOCKED, CONTACT FACILITY OPERATIONS MANAGER" on them. The keyboards were locked into position with plastic shields over them, and I could tell by the lack of ghosting that the monitors had just warmed up. Two of them were rolling badly, and one needed adjustment since the words were jumping. When we passed the central workstation and Sergeant Harris and Private Noughtly stopped there, Harris deploying the bipod on the M-249 and aiming it at the door we'd entered through.
I jogged up the stairs, Paige following me. Banks of mainframe computers were sitting dark, full of blinking lights, reel to reel tape, and as we passed one massive console I heard the flutter of punchcards being read.
"Jesus," Paige breathed.
"Doesn't care about Special Weapons, only the Arch-Angel Michael does," I shot back, moving past another mainframe bank.
"The Arch-Angel of War," she answered. "Why am I not surprised?"
Four desks were in the middle of the room, inside a wire cage with metal strips. A Farraday Cage, designed to keep any kind of electro-magnetic surge or pulse from damaging the computers beyond. It was locked, but one hard kick from my combat boot on the lock blew open the door.
All four terminals were live. None of them asking for passwords. One was mirroring the displays in the main control room, one was scrolling commands, one was open to the main directory, reminding me of Novell For Networks workscreen, and the last had several crude GUI boxes open and a trackball.
I reminded myself that a guy working for the Navy had created the first mouse in the 1940's.
"Keep watch," I told Paige.
She nodded, kneeling down behind one of the desks and leveling her M-16A1 at the entry to the Farraday Cage.
Kilo-29 and a few other places had taught me how to use them.
Well, that and training at Blackbriar when I had been read into the project that had bore the fruit we were in currently inside of.
"What are you doing?" She asked me.
"Bringing the facility fully online," I told her, navigating to the door system. I put the override code as the same one I had made Donaldson and Kincaid memorize all those years ago, then put in the standard opening code as the one I'd made everyone write down before they'd left training. It took about ten minutes for me to gain full control of the computer system.
"Paige," I said, carefully typing in the codes to bring everything online.
"Yes, Corporal?" She asked.
"You know that once I hit the enter key, you're no longer part of the normal military, right?" I said.
I didn't know why, but it was suddenly important to tell at least one member of the team.
"I think that stopped under Blackbriar," She answered.
"No, this goes beyond that," I told her. "You'll be made to sound crazy if you talk about what you've seen, even if we never see another clone. You'll have nothing in common beyond the uniform with the rest of the military."
"I understand," She said softly.
"Then you do this willingly?" I asked.
"Yes, Corporal," She answered.
I hit the enter key.
DEEP STORAGE MOVING TO INVENTORY STATUS
EVENT STORAGE MOVING TO INVENTORY STATUS
DEEP/EVENT SYSTEMS ONLINE
FACILITY NOW OFFLINE
FACILITY IN AUTONOMOUS MODE
WAR FIGHTER PROTOCOLS ENGAGED