Scrambling

McDougal pulled a Tic/Toc from the locker, flipped it on the bench, and set a Ferret on the bench next to it. He set the Tic/Toc parameters just like the ones on the oxygen tanks, but put it on a different frequency, he pulled up the Ferret menu and started fiddling with settings until he got the Ferret to ping the frequency of the Tic/Toc and watched the Ferret open the switch.

Satisfied, he put the Tic/Toc at the end of the maintenance tunnel and started checking distances from the Ferret to the Tic/Toc to see what the maximum range of the ping was. It ended up being about forty feet, and McDougal cussed at the lack of range. Because of where the pallets and oxygen tanks were currently placed, he couldn’t get one Ferret to hit all of the Tic/Tocs.

Grabbing the skid of flour sacks, he maneuvered the pallet at the far end of the tunnel back to the front of the hooch tunnel. Killing the hologram, he stalked down to the still, opened the hopper and pulled out another globe of booze and bit it. Looking at the hopper, he realized it was almost full.  He pulled a double handful of the globes out, carried them to the tunnel entrance, and set them on the floor. Doing that twice more, he had about fifty globes of almost pure alcohol sitting at the entry.

Taking one more trip to the hopper, he pulled the last four globes out and stuffed them into his skin suit. It’s alcohol, it’ll burn. And I’ll be damned if I leave any evidence behind. If I restart it, maybe there will be enough manufactured to burn it down and destroy the evidence. Leaving the hopper open, he jury rigged the micro switch to start the still processing again. He walked back to the entry, picked up as many globes as he could and carried them another twenty yards down the tunnel toward the tunnel face. He deposited the next load ten yards closer to the flour-laden skid, and finally, put the last double handful in the center of the pallet.

McDougal made another pass through the supply tunnel, looking for the explosives he figured should be in there but were not on the inventory list he checked earlier.  He finally found one pallet of explosives underneath the rifle bead rounds, and used the portable skid to break it out. Opening the lid, he found a list of the contents on the inside and started strewing the explosives down the supply tunnel, hoping they would also go when the flour blew and add some life to this particular party.

In the very bottom of the explosives pallet were two boxes, holding six shaped charges each. Dragging them over to the skid, he loaded them on it, and maneuvered them back down to the armor. Dumping them next to it, he decided he’d take some time to eat and clean up while he could.

He was debating eating another emergency ration when he smelled smoke and heard a loud crash against the tunnel door. The power in the tunnel died, and the emergency lighting kicked on. Dropping the ration on the worktable, he scrambled out of the maintenance tunnel and started running for his armor.

Cussing, he saw that Herbert hadn’t finished installing the emergency lighting in the last half of the tunnel. He pawed a small flashlight out of his pocket as he frantically brought up the remote BIT on his datacomp, started the process and hoped the armor would be open and ready by the time he got there.

As he ran, he realized he had no way to block the smaller tunnel. You stupid shit, if you blow the flour, the overpressure is going to blow your ass all the way down the tunnel and probably pancake you against the Mechs at the end of the tunnel! How can you be so frikkin’ stupid?

Jumping into the armor as quickly as he could, he waited impatiently for the BIT to complete, then stood and grappled the two bags of shaped charges with the right manipulator arm. As he started into the tunnel, the bags got caught on the side of the tunnel and McDougal yanked them free and got them in front of him.

Pulling up the Ferret menu, he fed the programming into it for the Tic/Tocs attached to the oxygen tanks and turned sideways to launch it back into the main tunnel, positioning it on an overhead duct he’d marked earlier on his datacomp. Bringing up a range ring on his carat, he confirmed the forty foot range of the Ferret would now encompass all the oxygen tanks and Tic/Tocs.  He sent a self-destruct delay command to the Ferret timed at five hundred milliseconds after the Tic/Tocs fired.

Programming a second Ferret, he deployed it at the entrance to the small tunnel for real-time updates on the main tunnel itself. Popping a side window open in his HUD, he zoomed the Ferret’s video to the tunnel door, and left it there.

Setting the bags down, he used the manipulator to extract two shaped charges, and looked for the programming for them. He had a moment of panic when he couldn’t find them, then remembered they were construction charges and wouldn’t be filed under his weapons menu. As he blinked through the menu options to get to construction he had a random thought, Dammit, I should have moved the holo over to this tunnel, then I could watch who comes in, if and when they do…

He finally got the construction shaped charge menu up, and was confronted with multiple options for the shaped charge settings. As he scrolled through he thought, Damn, what do I… Ejecta Penetrator- No, Beehive- No, LSC? What the hell is, oh! Blinking on LSC he got CONFIRM LSC Y/N, he blinked yes, and got another set of options.

How many options are there—it’s construction for cryin’ out loud? Scrolling down he didn’t see a flat plane or bar linear shaped charge, but found wave shape. Yeah, yeah, that’s what I want! Wave shape… Blinking it and confirming it, he got yet another set of options.   Uh… Bar? Yeah, there it is. He blinked and confirmed the bar, and the menu finally quit giving him options. Now it wanted the charge numbers.

Bringing up the first charge, he focused his suit camera on it, captured the serial number, and loaded the program into it, except for angle of deployment. Angle? What the… Unless it’s angle off vertical or horizontal.  If I want to drop twelve feet, then I’d need, uh… twelve feet of spacing, that’s what, sixty-three degrees? Close enough! Selecting sixty-three for the angle, he saw a graphic representation of the charge’s deployment and explosive shape pop up in his HUD. Backing down the tunnel a few feet, he used the manipulator to bring it up to the ceiling, but the angle was pointing away from him so it didn’t attach.

Flipping it around, he pressed it to the ceiling, and commanded attachment. He felt two small taps as the charge fastened to the ceiling.

CHARGE ATTACHED. LSC. 63 DEGREES VERTICAL. ARM Y/N. He blinked the carat over Y and the HUD came back, CONFIRM? Y/N. Blinking the carat to confirm for the first charge, he then programmed the second one, he went twelve feet further in and attached it to the ceiling. His HUD lit again CHARGE ATTACHED. LSC. 63 DEGREES VERTICAL. ARM Y/N. He blinked the carat over Y and the HUD came back, CONFIRM? Y/N. After confirming the second charge, he got yet another cue on his HUD.  FIRE SERIAL OR SIMUL WITH CHARGE 03493? SER/SIM? Blinking the carat to SIM so that the charges would fire at the same time, his HUD said, SET DELAY Y/N? He selected N, and a red blinking button came up on the left side of the display with the legend CMD/DET.  He was now set.

He was getting too many feeds on the HUD, so he used the carat to blink the graphics for the shaped explosives away, and glanced at the timer running in the upper corner, 07:21:12. Grimly, he stared at the video feed and wondered what was going on on the other side of the door. Relaxing the armor’s padding, he squirmed around until he could get his hand in his skin suit pocket, and pulled out the four globes of hooch he’d grabbed from the hopper.

As he contemplated biting one, a nagging thought hit him, Dammit! How the hell am I going to get by the Mechs? Shit! Too late probably to back one or both out, no I can’t back them both out.

Pulling up the Mech menu, he looked at the statuses of both units and just for the hell of it, tried to reach Mech Three. Still no answer.  Commanding Mech Four to start digging a side tunnel ten yards back from Mech One, he commanded the manipulator to pick up the bags with the rest of the shaped charges and started moving slowly down the tight tunnel.

Being careful to not jar the explosives, he left the armor’s padding relaxed and sipped at the nutrition tube in the helmet as he did isometric exercises with his legs and arms. Gah, I thought the crap in the E-rats tasted bad, this shit is even worse! At least if I throw up, it’ll get reabsorbed and I can try to drink it again. I wonder when this stuff was changed last?

His HUD pinged with an alert from the Ferret at the tunnel mouth. He snapped out of his daze, commanded the padding to combat mode, and peered at the video feed. He didn’t see anything, so he blinked it back thirty seconds, then ran it forward again on show motion.  Now he saw the heat color change on the upper corner of the door.

As he watched, a random spark popped through, followed by a bright plasma arc, which slowly traced its way around the side of the door.  Instinctively McDougal drew back, then realized he was almost a hundred and fifty feet up the tunnel. Unless somebody shined a beam up the tunnel, there wasn’t any way to see his armor, as it was reactively anti-reflective.

07:00:03, McDougal cussed under his breath at the slowness of the countdown, and shook his head. This wasn’t good. It wouldn’t take them long to cut through the tunnel door, then what? Blow the tunnel immediately? Try to collect all the data I can? For what? They trap me down here, I’m dead. Shit, maybe I should just fire the flour without dropping the tunnel. That way it’s all over. Hell, it may be all over anyway, if those charges catch a fracture in the rock!   Oh crap, how am I going to fire the charges and still command the Ferret?

He frantically blinked through the menus until he got the Ferret menu back on top. Time delay- immediate, two seconds, ten seconds, variable. Selecting variable, he pondered, How long is long enough? How quickly will the ceiling collapse? Dammit, I’m going to set it to five seconds and I’ll either live or die…

FIVE popped up and he blinked the carat over it, and watched a blinking yellow button with a five in it pop onto the left side of the HUD. Damn, this thing is getting crowded! How the hell the troops fight these things in combat is beyond me! The Ferret video pinged again, and he saw a plasma arc cut through the center of the door in a quick circle, and a cylindrical object shoot through it.

He glanced at the timer seeing 06:18:25, and almost fired the Tic/Tocs then, but waited as the Ferret in the ceiling locked on the movement and a second screen popped up on the HUD. It showed what appeared to be six legs unfold from the cylinder, and some kind of sensor open out of the end of the cylinder. The Goon probe scuttled off almost too fast for the Ferret to follow it, and disappeared into the supply tunnel.

Three minutes later, it scuttled back out, across and into the maintenance tunnel. Three more minutes, and it came darting down the main tunnel. McDougal was of two minds as to what to do, blow the tunnel or wait and see what the probe would do next. He decided to wait a bit longer. He knew the probe couldn’t hurt him in armor.

Mech Four pinged TUNNEL COMPLETED, and McDougal moved quickly up the tunnel to the back of Mech One, then commanded Mech Four back into the tunnel. The video from the Ferret at the entrance to the smaller tunnel picked up the probe as it scampered along the tunnel wall, then flipped to IR to follow the probe as it turned into the smaller tunnel.

McDougal cussed again as the Ferret’s video picked up a bag of shaped charges lying crossways in the tunnel, obviously ripped free earlier. He quickly programmed another Ferret and set it on the back of the Mech, pointing down the tunnel to pick up the probe if it came all the way down the tunnel.

The probe didn’t pass the shaped charges, and he wondered if the probe or whoever was monitoring it thought the tunnel was booby-trapped. Suddenly his external mics picked up a clanging noise and the video from the Ferret in the main tunnel slewed violently back toward the door, which was now lying on the floor of the tunnel. Six armored Goons were stacked in the opening, weapons at the ready.

Reflexively McDougal moved the carat over the blinking five, started to blink it into action, but stopped again, wondering what would happen next. The six Goons cleared the maintenance and supply tunnels but stopped short of entering the small tunnel, and seemed to be arguing with each other. From the size of their armor, it was apparent they couldn’t fit.  One of them fired a plasma bolt up the tunnel, but it missed McDougal by a couple of feet as it slagged a fifteen foot section of the side wall.

His flight or fight reaction had him bringing up the bead rifle, almost without thought, but he stopped short of firing a reply back down the tunnel. One of the Goons stayed at the entrance to the smaller tunnel, while the other five stalked back to the main tunnel entrance.

McDougal glanced at the timer and was surprised to see it click under six hours, then the video from Ferret in the overhead slewed back to the tunnel entry. Two Goons in armor came through, followed by another six also in armor, then two more Goons in their version of skin suits. The Ferret picked up the snarling, whistling language the Goons used and attempted to do real-time translation. Without access to the network, it did not have enough data to produce a useable rendition of the Goon conversation much to McDougal’s frustration.

Looking at the video closely, McDougal could make out what appeared to be rank tabs, but he’d never bothered to learn what they stood for, since it wasn’t his job. Now he wished he’d paid more attention. Another group of four Goons came in, pulling some kind of device on a skid.  He watched they kowtowed to the first group, then headed towards where the smaller tunnel started.

The second Ferret’s video picked up the guard at the entrance to the smaller tunnel coming to what McDougal could only think of as the Goon version of attention.  He blinked the carat over the button with the five, closely followed by blinking over the red button and detonated his flour bombs.

Five seconds later, the overpressure from the flour blast knocked him over the top of Mech One, and pelted his armor with rocks and boulders, as the tunnel collapsed. Shaken, McDougal managed to get the armor back on its feet, and risked the HUD’s lights, only to see a tunnel full of dust, and what appeared to be a rock fall that ended about twenty feet behind Mech Four.