Freezing Shadows, Chapter 47

Chapter 47: Into the Lab

“Com check,” I subvocalized into our comm net. One by one, the others responded, with our temporary hire Boomer being the last. “All right. Twilight, what Matrix magic do you have going to get us into the garage?”

“Since I gave myself admin access, I’ve been able to quietly look through communications logs. As you know, the labs we’re going to are off the books, and unknown to most of the workforce. The parking garage goes from B1 to B4. Elevator to the secret lab is in the back corner of the garage on B4, going express to B6, where the lab is.

“Because this is an off-the-books operation, there is a special routine already in the system. Type in a fifteen-digit access code when we get to the gate, and the security door opens for thirty seconds, security logs are sanitized, and the alarms on B4 are disarmed for one hour. It does send an automatic alert to the corpsec on B4, but the alert won’t hit the main security office, unless they hit the physical alarm button. And yes, physical button, completely hardwired.”

“So, we’ll have to take the corpsec down fast and hard. You have our ‘fake biomonitors’ ready?”

“Yes, and location is already being spoofed. I can make the switch at any time. In fact, I’ll probably do all four at once, for the two up top and down below.

“Speaking of down below, the elevator is a direct trip from B4 to the antechamber on B6. Physical button on B4 calls the elevator, but if you don’t press it for two seconds, lift, one second, lift, three seconds, then the guards are likely to have guns already drawn and pointed our way before the door even opens. That sequence is the ‘authorized user’ code. And yes, it is a physical connection, again, and the elevator is a closed system. They are going heavy on the non-networked hardware for security, which makes sense, given what is going on.”

I took a breath, and said, “Berzerker, Sexkitten, Shadowgirl, and I are first group down. Boomer comes down after we give the all-clear. Babydoll and Twilight stick with the vehicles. All respect to Boomer, but I don’t like the idea of being underground when those bombs go off, so I want us gone by that point.”

“Don’t worry, the sssetup I picked hasss a time delay, rather than manual ignition. I’m not ssstupid enough to tessst how clossse I can be to explosions unlessssss it isss absssolutely necccessssssary.”

“Good. Babydoll, you have the vehicles ready to roll. Twilight, keep an eye on the matrix, but be ready to come down to the labs, if we need help with systems down there.”

“Got it. I’ll be waiting.”

Moments after Twilight’s message, he felt the van slow to a stop. Babydoll spoke up from the lead vehicle, where she and Twilight were sitting, “Approaching the garage entrance. Security door in place, no visible guards. Typing in the code.”

The vans moved forward again, quickly getting through the security gate before it closed behind them. I checked my weapons. Shadowgirl and I were crouched by the sliding door to Berzerker’s van. Pistols ready, with the APDS ammo loaded. Overkill for generic corpsec, but the longer they were breathing, the more chance they’d have to hit the alarm.

“Coming up to the elevator,” Babydoll said. “Sliding door will open directly on the guards.”

Markers appeared in the vision link of my glasses as Twilight chimed in. “Targets marked. Fake biomonitors online.”

I took a breath, to steady myself. I didn’t turn to look at Shadowgirl, since I knew she was getting ready, just like me. “I got left. You take right.”

“Got it.”

Iceblade’s Attack Roll (Guard 1): 10d6 = 2 hits, 3 Miss

Guard 1’s Defense Roll: 4d6 = 1 hit, 0 Miss (1 Net Hit)

Semi-Auto: 6P, -5 AP

Guard 1’s Damage Resistance: 4d6 = 2 Hits, 0 Miss (4P damage)

G

Iceblade’s Attack Roll (Guard 1): 10d6 = 3 hits, 2 Miss

Guard 1’s Defense Roll: 3d6 = 1 Hit, 0 Miss (2 Net Hits)

Semi-Auto: 7P, -5 AP

Guard 1’s Damage Resistance: 4d6 = 0 Hits, 0 Miss (7P Damage)

Guard 1: 11/10 Physical Monitor (Dying)

Shadowgirl’s Attack Roll (Guard 2): 13d6 = 6 Hits, 1 Miss

Guard 2’s Defense Roll: 4d6 = 1 Hit, 1 Miss (5 Net Hits)

Semi-Auto: 10P, -5 AP

Guard 2’s Damage Resistance: 4d6 = 1 Hit, 1 Miss (9P Damage)

Shadowgirl’s Attack Roll (Guard 2): 13d6: 2 Hits, 5 Miss

Guard 2’s Defense Roll: 1d6 = 0 Hits, 0 Miss (2 Net Hits)

Semi-Auto: 7P, -5 AP

Guard 2’s Damage Resistance: 4d6 = 0 Hits, 2 Miss (7P damage)

Guard 2: 16/10 Physical Monitor (Dead)

The moment the door opened in front of us, we fired. The guards weren’t completely surprised, since the van wasn’t exactly invisible, but they weren’t quick enough for us. Two silenced gunshots each, and both guards were down, dead or dying. Just as it ought to be.

“No alarms sounded,” Twilight confirmed. “Fake biomonitors working as intended. But they probably won’t hold up to scrutiny if an alert goes out.”

“That just means we need to keep an alert from going out,” Sexkitten grinned, before sliding her respirator into place. All four of us going into the lab did the same. We didn’t know what kind of weapons that the higher-level corpsec would have, but gas grenades were one way of ‘pacifying’ groups without causing too much property damage, so it was something to take into account. Plus, the respirator covered most of our faces, making it harder to identify us on cameras.

Not that I expected Twilight to miss any of the main security cameras in the elevator, parking garage, or antechamber. However, any security in the lab itself was separate from the systems she’d already inserted herself into. There had to be security cameras in the lab, and the security on them was almost certain to be Black ICe, the kind of Intrusion Countermeasures that were set to kill first, ask questions later, if at all. That meant getting in to scrub those systems would be much more dangerous. While we were going to be making liberal use of explosives to cover our trail, we couldn’t count on all of the cameras getting destroyed beyond a data recovery expert’s abilities.

And, of course, there were the guards themselves. These were likely to be elites, and elites were almost certain to have some kind of camera on them. Cameras that would each be on isolated systems, to keep the technomancers being held in the facility from messing with them. Maybe they’d be helmet cams, maybe cybereyes. Maybe both. Either way, we had to assume they’d be wired.

As Shadowgirl pressed the elevator button in the pattern Twilight mentioned earlier, Babydoll and Boomer started putting the explosives on a remote-controlled cart. Simple thing, just a platform with wheels and a motor. Didn’t even qualify as a drone. No pilot program or anything. AR controls, and limited speed. In other words, something that was only good for moving cargo from A to B, under direct supervision. You could pick one up at the local hardware store for a couple hundred nuyen, or less.

Not my problem, though. Those of us going down piled into the elevator. Berzerker and Sexkitten were towards the front, since Shadowgirl and I had gotten the last two. Only fair to spread the love, while we could. I noticed that, while Sexkitten had her battle rifle ready to roll, Berzerker had her Mars Predator out, probably because she had the White Knight LMG with her, which she planned to use once we got into the main area. No reason to go light when they were dealing with elites, after all.

Ding.

Berzerker’s Attack Roll (Guard 1): 11d6 = 6 hits, 0 Miss

Guard 1’s Defense Roll: Surprised (6 Net Hits)

Semi-Auto: 12P, -2 AP

Guard 1’s Damage Resistance: 7d6 = 3 Hits, 0 Miss (9P Damage)

Berzerker’s Attack Roll (Guard 1): 11d6 = 4 Hits, 1 Miss

Guard 1’s Defense Roll: Surprised (4 Net Hits)

Semi-Auto: 10P, -2 AP

Guard 1’s Damage Resistance: 4d6 = 0 Hits, 3 Miss (10P damage) (Critical Glitch)

Guard 1: 19/10 Physical Monitor (Dead)

Sexkitten’s Attack Roll (Guard 2): 14d6 = 4 Hits, 2 Miss

Guard 2’s Defense Roll: Surprised (4 Net Hits)

Semi-Auto: 11P, -5 AP

Guard 2’s Damage Resistance: 4d6 = 0 Hits, 4 Miss (11P Damage) (Critical Glitch)

Sexkitten’s Attack Roll (Guard 2): 14d6 = 8 Hits, 2 Miss

Guard 2’s Defense Roll: Surprised (8 Net Hits)

Semi-Auto: 15P, -5 AP

Guard 2’s Damage Resistance: 4d6 = 2 Hits, 0 Miss (13P Damage)

Guard 2: 24/10 Physical Monitor (Dead)

The elevator chimed, and the door opened. The guards, who had gotten the ‘authorized personnel’ signal from above, were standing at attention, not preparing to defend themselves. That made them easy prey for the girls.

Berzerker’s first shot hit the guard in center mass, piercing his armor vest like it wasn’t there. Just after, her second round caught him in the eye, splattering his cerebrum against the wall behind him. The guy was very much dead, but, unfortunately for him, he ended up turning as he fell, ending up face-down, ass-up, ‘presenting’ towards the elevator. Even in death, there wasn’t going to be dignity for him.

The second guard was even worse off. Sexkitten’s first round hit the woman center mass, causing her to fall forward in shock. The next armor-piercing round hit her in her very much not armored skull, and passed through her also un-armored flesh, blowing out her lower spine, and spraying the contents of her bowels on the wall as she finished dying. At least she was too dead to feel embarrassed, or she might have died from that alone.

“Two more down,” I subvocalized into the comms.

“Fake biomonitors already up. No alerts got out. You’re good,” Twilight said, confirming what I’d hoped to hear.

I took a breath, and flicked my vision to the astral for a moment. We hadn’t pushed for astral recon, since any active wards would put the facility on alert, and cause all kinds of trouble for us. Now, though, I needed to see if there were wards to deal with.

Iceblade’s Assensing roll: 4d6 = 2 Hits, 0 Miss

Thankfully, though, there were no wards. Leaning against Berzerker, I let the woman take my weight as I slipped out of body to do a quick check. Three enemies in the entrance hall. One behind a security desk that would give them cover, one each by the two hallways leading off the room. All three mundanes, by the look.

Moving through the left-hand hallway, to my left was what looked like a break room for the guards. Two more there, also mundanes. Turn the corner to the right, row of five cells on one side, and what looked like three labs on the other. Couldn’t tell much from the shadows on the astral, of course, but I knew a prison cell when I saw it, and the layout of the machinery in the other rooms made it pretty obvious what was happening.

Five prisoners in their cells. Three researchers at work. One soldier patrolling the hall, for a total of six, so far. Still only mundanes.

Turn the corner, another hallway. On the left was something that was obviously a testing ground for something or other. Only reason to have a big space underground like that. More labs on the right. Only one occupant. Another guard in the hall, for seven total. More than intel suggested.

Turn the corner, heading back towards the entrance. Guard in the hall, for eight total. Labs on both sides. Two more occupants in the labs.

Turn the final corner. Two offices on the left. Both look important. One mundane. Maybe a lead researcher? Or at least shift lead? The other, though, was probably the lead guard. And they were a magician. That would be a problem. Fortunately, he wasn’t glancing at the astral, and I left before he had a chance to check.

There were also some maintenance areas, mostly around the outer edge, and the core of the inner section. Only accessible from within the ‘cage’. Made it easy for trusted maintenance types to work on water, power, and hard-wired networking without actually being seen by important people. Oh, and there was the internal server, air-gapped from the outside world, and only accessible by hardwired connections, if the information was right. But there were no maintenance people here, now.

Snapping back to my body I took a breath as I looked at the girls, before relaying everything I saw into the comms, so everyone could weigh in. Babydoll was the first to speak. “You want me to send my drones down?”

“No, Babydoll. We might be here to rescue lost technomancers, but they’re wild-cards until we have them convinced that we’re not their enemies. And desperate hackers turning your drones on anything that moves is going to be very unhealthy for us.”

“What’s the plan, boss?” Twilight asked.

“Boomer, come on down. I want you in the back, spell defense with counterspelling until the mage bites it. Use spells where you can, but keep yourself safe, first and foremost. The rest of us will go in, hard and fast. Once we start shooting, the guards will definitely start converging on us. Once the guards are down, we start hunting the scientists and lab techs, to make a clean sweep. And then we try and see if our target is among the prisoners.”

“On my way,” Boomer hissed happily. Guess the snake wasn’t keen on being left out of the fun.