AZU-1: Lifehack Page 13

  “...... no, I’d have to be a lot drunker.”

  Regan looked up at Alisia, (since Regan was slowly slumping over against Alisia’s shoulder), and eventually mumbled “Hm. Keep drinkin.” She rested against Alisia fully, wondering how much they’d both had to drink. “Wine’s more powerful th’n beer,” Regan falsely thought to herself, “She’s gotta be plashtered!”

  Regan snuggled into Alisia’s side a bit more. “Hey! I know what. I’m gonna drink yew under the table...... yesh! Great idea. I’ll get under th’ table, an’ yew get yer pantsh off!” With that, Regan fell asleep.

  Alisia sighed and stared into her wine for a few moments, as if it would tell her how to handle Regan.

  With patience and time, Alisia finally guided Regan back to her quarters. Alisia slumped Regan down onto her bed to find that Regan wasn’t letting go of her arm.

  “Jush shtay a minnit, k, ‘leesha?” Regan’s eyes were glazed over in a mixture of drunkenness, sleepiness, and tears. Alisia knelt down beside the bed and Regan held her forearm like a teddy bear. “Thanksh, ‘leesh.” Regan mumbled, squeezing Alisia’s arm.

  It wasn’t long before Regan was passed right out. Alisia carefully removed her arm, careful beyond fear, not to graze Regan’s chest with her hand. She headed back to her own room and went to sleep.

  The next morning, Alisia awoke with the sinking feeling that something was wrong. It only took a glance to the side to see what had happened. Less than an inch from the side of her head was the side of Regan’s head, upside down. At some time during the night, Regan had come into her room and made herself comfortable on Alisia’s bed. Alisia decided not to blow up. Not yet.

  “.....Regan?” Alisia looked around a little more, and saw that the teddy bear that was usually at the corner of her bed was now under Regan’s arm.

  “Good morning, ‘leesha.” Regan replied. She was close enough that Alisia could hear the vibrations of her voice.

  “Yeah, uh, what the hell are you doing in my bed?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I was good. Kept my hands to myself.” Regan innocently replied.

  “Did... did you miss the part where I said I wasn’t a lesbian?”

  “Nope!” Regan pecked Alisia on the cheek and sprung up, headed for the door. “Gotta go get ready! Big day!”

  “I’m locking my door from now on!”

  Alisia pulled herself together and stepped out towards the showers. Who should be out in the hall, but Corporal Parker. He stared wide eyed at Alisia as she came out. Alisia looked at him with mild irritation and for a moment, there was silence.

  “She...” Parker stammered, “...out of your room....”

  Alisia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that’s right, Corporal. Last night, we got drunk and did it. Yeah. Hot and slippery all night. I’m kinda surprised you didn’t hear the screams from your quarters.”

  “You... you’re kidding me...!”

  Alisia narrowed her eyes at Parker. “Geez, what do you think?” She said, walking off for the showers.

  Parker blinked and turned to yell out after her. “I think you’re a mean, mean woman, Captain!”

  ~~~~~

  Chapter 27: Pit

  ~~~~~

  By mid morning Alisia and Regan were deep into Autar. “General? Can we get a VTag on the target?” Alisia asked into her comm.

  “Well ladies, it looks like Regan’s already beat me to it.” The General responded.

  “Let me take a wild guess,” Regan said, “it’s a VTag I set called ‘PIT’.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Ok, I give up you two, what’s the pit?” Alisia said.

  “It’s the surface access to the mana core.” The General offered, but was interrupted.

  “Surface access!? Just how deep is this thing?” Alisia blurted abruptly, forgetting the General’s rank.

  “Well, the specs I have show about six floors.” One could hear a smug grin on the General.

  “Wonderful.”

  “Oh, at ease Captain. With cement walls over a meter thick, there won’t be any surprises.”

  “Have you seen it these days?” Regan asked.

  “Do enlighten us Ms. Grier.” The General’s voice mimicked the expression on Alisia’s face.

  “Well, last time I was there, it looked a lot like a huge empty swimming pool, with about fifty zombies mulling about.”

  “Lovely.” Alisia mumbled.

  “Captain, is this going to be a problem?”

  Alisia thought for a moment. “We’ll see when we get there, but we can probably handle it.”

  As the target VTag got closer, zombie encounters got heavier and more frequent. Alisia was glad she had packed extra ammo for this trip.

  “I’ve never seen this many aberrations at once.” Alisia said, referring to zombies which had taken on inorganic parts, or whose parts were in the wrong order.

  At that moment, one decided to lunge out from around a corner. It had a pair of arms in place of a spine, and two extra arms on top of that. Regan leveled her P90 and shot its legs out from under it. It collapsed but kept coming, walking on its four available arms. The girls glanced at each other and relieved the determined creature of its walking arms.

  “No worries,” grinned Regan, “It’s perfectly armless!”

  Alisia looked around for immediate threats. There were several groups visible at the time, but nothing coming their way at the moment, so she took the chance to reload.

  ”Anyway,” Regan said, checking her clip, “this area always has all the weird ones. I saw one once that looked like it was trying to do an imitation of a squid. A pile of arms, a head, and it was walking on its elbows.”

  “What? Was it any good in combat?”

  “Good for me. While it was trying to get at me it tripped up three other zombies.”

  “They’re not bright...” Alisia glanced towards the target VTag.

  “Now and then, I see one doing something a little smart. Like trying to operate an elevator. I always made sure to nuke those guys fast.”

  “Why?”

  “I was always worried that one day one would sneak past my alarms, and get me in my sleep.”

  Alisia tried to imagine that possibility, trying to go to sleep every night. Now and then Alisia was stunned by the idea that Regan had lived in this mess for two years. What does that do to a person, being alone and in mortal danger all the time? What kind of person would choose that? “Well.. we only have another few blocks to go.”

  There were a lot of wide open areas. Expensive corporate buildings wasted a lot of front space, making the wide downtown streets even wider. They worked at avoiding the zombies as they went, in an effort to conserve ammo.

  They soon came to a block that was totally surrounded by a cement wall, almost five meters high. Outside the wall there stood a sparse, wide forest of pink, plastic flamingos. Regan kicked one up into the air for fun. “Damn crazy zombies.”

  “Let me unlock the gate.” The General called in.

  “Why?” Regan said, “There’s lots of holes in the wall.”

  “Yeah, but look,” Alisia pointed, “The zombies are using the holes to get in and out. If we open the gate and charge, they might not be around the gate. We can meet less resistance.” The gaps in the wall had enough slow, ambling traffic to make it nearly impossible to peek inside without attracting attention.

  “I have the commands for the entrance. It’s in the bottom middle of the pit.” the General said “So when you’re about three seconds away from it, give me the word.”

  “Check.”

  They walked up to the steel gate as its red light turned green.

  “Thank you General.”

  “When you’re ready, ladies.”

  They double checked their rifles and stared for a moment at the gate. “Alright. Open up.” The metal doors rumbled to life and began to drag apart.

  Before them was the cement yard that hosted the pit. The pit sat fourteen meters wide, descending in beveled
layers. Alisia mentally prepared a simple course to the man-hole-like hatch in the center. Forward, down, forward, down, and so on.

  There was a denser concentration of zombies than they could have expected. The most space between any zombies was less than an arm’s reach.

  “That’s different.” Regan said softly. Already, a handful of them had turned their attention towards Alisia and Regan. “There’s gotta be a thousand of em...!”

  “Crap! No time to talk about it” Alisia slung back her P90, and brought the bad mojo forward. “Charge!”

  Alisia fired a first round into the wall of zombies ahead. The sound was both dull, and sharp. Quiet, but you felt it through your body. At the same time, a hole appeared through the mob like a wave of rotting flesh being splashed out of the way. A dozen zombies went flying and uncounted numbers fell before them.

  “Holy fuck!” Regan screamed in delight, “Yes! Harder!”

  Regan P90’ed those zombies lucky enough to be missed but were still in the way. They ran into the mob. The bad mojo soon beeped, ready to be fired again. At this time, the horde was all around them except the rear. Alisia took aim and fired. Again, the sea of death parted before them.

  “Yeah baby!” Regan’s wild enthusiasm was a stark contrast to Alisia’s silent professionalism. They ran forward, starting down the first beveled slope into the pit. They were now below the highest level of zombies and the gap behind them finally closed up, sealing the easy exit. They now felt thoroughly surrounded by the mob. Even the sky seemed at risk of being swallowed up.

  They continued forward, blast, charge, blast, charge. Regan pegged back lucky ones with her P90. Alisia sometimes joined in with hers while the mojo recharged its capacitors.

  A fallen one grabbed Alisia’s leg as she took aim, but Regan took care of it before Alisia even noticed. “Sorry, buddy,” She thought to herself, “She’s mine.”

  They slowly got deeper and deeper in towards the middle of the pit. The terrain made it clear that they were getting closer to the bottom, even though the density of the zombies made it nearly impossible to see. Alisia blasted into the pit, and suddenly the manhole-sized hatch was revealed.

  “General! Now!”

  ”Opening!”

  The hatch began to open as they ran towards it. Regan used P90 fire to keep any curious zombies from getting in.

  They reached it and quickly clambered down the ladder inside. As Alisia went down, she noted the thickness of the hatch. About fifteen centimeters thick. “Close it, General!” It started to scrape closed. Curious zombie faces began to peer over the rim, but a bit of lead made them reconsider. The hatch closed with a satisfying ‘thoom’ but it soon came to Alisia’s mind that they were also trapped in.

  Regan screamed in victory, hopping off the ladder to the floor of this small cement room.

  “Report!” the General jumped.

  “We’re in, Sir. We’re fine. Regan just got over excited.” And almost as if to illustrate, Regan hopped up and down, grinning like a demon.

  ”Good work, ladies. The path should be pretty clear for a while. I’ve opened the appropriate hatches.”

  Nearby, the only way out of the room was an industrial elevator. They got in and pressed the only button. The doors closed and they started going down. Regan eyed Alisia, smiling, still breathing heavily from the battle. She cornered Alisia, pressing up close with her thigh up onto Alisia’s hip. “Do you feel as hot as me right now?”

  The General jumped in. “Really? I don’t have access to the core’s readings from here. I hope it’s not spilling any heat or radiation.”

  Alisia thought quickly. “Uh, no Sir, I’m sure it’s fine. We’re just a little heated up from the running.” Regan smiled into Alisia’s eyes and leaned forward. Alisia grabbed her by the jaw and paused a moment. She considered kissing Regan and then tossing her on her ass, but she didn’t want her sardonic sense of humor to encourage the poor girl. “Get your mind on the mission.” She tried her best not to smile, but whether she was successful or not, Regan was still happy.

  The elevator stopped and opened into a dark, empty hallway.

  ”I kinda expected to see zombies.” Alisia said quietly. Regan hummed in agreement. She seemed to be more focused now. They moved forward with caution. Most of the doors were closed, sealed by electric locks. The General left the irrelevant doors alone. Alisia called door numbers now and then to confirm their route with the General.

  Soon they were at a clean, steel-door elevator. Alisia pressed the button and was greeted with a sharp, annoying buzz.

  “Damn.” The General said. Through the comm, Alisia could hear him tapping on his keyboard. “That goes almost all the way to the core. Fine!” A clink was heard down the hall. “I’ve opened up the stairs. Five floors to go.”

  The girls had their reservations. A complication was just another chance for something really bad to happen. Of course there was always the chance of the elevator failing and dropping them, too.

  As they went down, the General’s signal became progressively worse.

  “General, this cement’s starting to make it hard to hear you. I’m dropping a repeater.”

  “You have what, two? Will that be enough by the time you get to the bottom?”

  Alisia reconsidered. “Hmm. Alright, I’ll hold out.” She put the signal-amplifying device back in its pocket.

  The stairwell only went down one floor. “Next one’s across the complex. Convenient, eh?” The General smiled, “It’s gonna be like that for the rest of the way down, I’m afraid. Back and forth.”

  It was another uneventful stroll across a long hall, past locked doors, to another stairwell. They passed the elevator and tried the button to the same result as before. They continued to the next set of stairs, and after descending, the static was worse. Alisia dropped a repeater. Three floors to go.

  The quiet and the lack of opposition was getting on their nerves. “You’d think there would be some guards here.” Alisia said.

  “Zombies aren’t exactly great strategists.” Regan replied.

  “Well, maybe not, but I’d think that the A.I. controlling them would be. After all, the top of the pit was probably thick with zombies for a reason.”

  “Good point. Maybe the A.I. can’t open the top hatch, so it would have no way of getting zombies in here.”

  Alisia considered it. “Sounds good. I think I’ll choose to believe that. The A.I. may be taking advantage of the core’s output, but it’s not controlling everything.”

  “And another weakness; It controls the zombies, but not very well. If you think about it, why shouldn’t a zombie move as fast as a human?”

  “Because the A.I. has a poor understanding of the... the physics involved?”

  “Maybe. Same with the tactics. A computer program is a pretty specialized thing. I bet this A.I. has enough trouble just getting them to not fall down, let alone attack. It just can’t handle advanced tactics.”

  “So far.”

  “All the more reason to blow Autar the hell up.”

  Soon they were on the floor above the core, the second repeater freshly dropped. They came to the elevator again and saw the problem. A cart was lodged in the doorway.

  “That’s disappointing. I was expecting some kind of deliberate evil.” Regan looked inside the elevator. “Hey, now that we know it’s safe, wanna get in here and get it on?”

  “No.”

  “I mean get the cart onto the elevator, of course! It’s only one floor down but it’ll be nice to have a ride up after. We can use the cart to hold the elevator till we need it.”

  “Uh huh. Sure. You’re forgetting, we’re going to have to go back up without power and climb up that first elevator shaft.”

  “Feh.” Regan pulled the cart into the elevator and turned to face Alisia. “Going... down.”

  Alisia stepped forward and lazily shoved Regan in. She pressed the button next to ‘core’. The doors closed and the elevator began its short trip. Only
it wasn’t so short. The last floor was deep.

  The doors finally opened into another hall, except this one went in both directions in a curve, probably forming a giant circle. A door stood directly across from them, which clicked as they approached.

  “In there, ladies.” The General’s voice was almost unintelligible through the static, despite the repeaters. “The core will have eight large handles near the base. Twist em ninety degrees counter clockwise and pull em out. You’ll get a meter long device. Feel free to smash em once they’re out.”

  “Roger.”

  Alisia and Regan looked at the door and then at each other. Regan spoke. “When we pull these, there will be no more power being transmitted. The A.I. servers will go down and the zombies will be dead. If the A.I. has any last line of defense, it will be in here.”

  “Yup. Ready?”

  “Alisia. I love you.”

  Alisia sighed in exasperation. “Ugh. Shut up, already.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Alisia looked down, feeling like she’d just been hit in the head with a giant bag of marshmallows. “I... I know.” She finally replied, humoring her.

  “Good.” Regan said, “Now I’m ready.”

  They stood to either side of the door and opened it. Alisia hopped into the doorway, and back out. Regan looked to her with an expectant expression. “Well?”

  “..... dick all. No zombies, no giant robots. Just one big helpless looking core-thingie.”

  “Then why are we still standing out here?”

  “I... I don’t know.”

  They walked in and looked around. It was a large control room with convoluted terminal desks arranged in two circles around the middle.

  In the middle of the room, the core protruded from the ground as a roughly domed shape, six or so meters across, and one meter high. It seemed to meet the floor in such a way as to suggest that the core’s bulk was under the floor. Like an iceberg showing only its top.

  Pipe fittings and cabling plugs of all sizes and types littered its steely surface. Many were not currently in use, and many connected to pipes and wires that led everywhere. To the surrounding terminals, along the floor into the walls, or just right into the floor.