Eric and the Quantum Dragon

Brackenridge Vault, 8th District

Saturday December 29th, V26 (2046)

The massive weight of the Vault door rotated outwards, showing a large chamber beyond lit by bright overhead lights. Quent Scarfe and his bloodied team of soldiers whooped in unison at the sight and the man confidently led them inside.

Naomi was at the back of the group, holding her Plasma Gun in both hands. Her helmet visor was open, letting her see them with her own eyes. She saw Scarfe pause and turn to look at her, a cunning smile on his face.

“Is this where you betray me, Miss Tengaki?” he asked her, his own eyes darkened to a solid black. Those eyes rested on the reloaded weapon in her hands and Naomi let out a small chuckle.

“It would be the perfect time to take you out” she agreed. “All of you would just vanish if I fired this baby right now”

“So why haven’t you fired?” he asked her thoughtfully.

“Maybe I decided to be loyal to my new master” she declared with a smile, then her face sobered. “Or maybe I know you have someone watching my wife, waiting to take revenge if I fail you”

“You are a smart one, aren’t you” Scarfe replied. It was more of statement than a question and Naomi wondered if he truly believed that.

“I can be” Naomi responded and joined Scarfe in the Vault. It was a big chamber, close to twenty meters wide and nearly fifty deep. Rows upon rows of sturdy metal shelves ran along each side, standing out from the walls and leaving a central passage through the middle. The shelves themselves were stacked with hard plastic cases, metal boxes and an assortment of bottles, jars and even old clay urns.

Scarfe went to a metal chest at random and opened it up. Nestled inside were small cloth bags and he tipped one out, spilling gold coins into his hand. He opened another plastic case and found trays of gems, each layer one particular type such as diamonds or rubies, emeralds and sapphires.

“How much of their wealth do they keep down here?” Bob-Two marvelled, his mind boggling at the thought of what they had captured from the Brackenridges.

“Who cares! We’re rich!” shouted Quent with glee. “We never have to go back to Haven. We can buy a mansion here in the City!”

The men from the Lucas Cartel, those that could still stand, were going from aisle to aisle, looking in boxes and crates at random. Naomi saw how scattered they had allowed themselves to get, seduced by the incredible wealth they were seeing all about the Vault.

She checked on the Strike Team, realising with a tinge of regret that one of the men had fallen in the fight with the Sentry-Bots. The two survivors, Randolph and Lacey, were sticking close to Scarfe as he examined his stolen treasure.

“Hey Scarfe, I need you to put this on” she said and walked over to the man. He looked at her curiously as she held up the small leather pouch tied to a long loop of cord. It smelled of herbs and he took it and sniffed it experimentally.

Naomi took a similar pouch from her waist belt and draped it about her own neck.

“Why do I need to wear this?” he asked her suspiciously. At that moment the big Vault door closed with a heavy metallic clang, reverberating loudly through the inner chamber. The lights flickered and Naomi moved to a corner, putting her back to the hard surface and hunkering down.

Screams started to come from the deepest end of the Vault, with sporadic gunfire echoing from the walls.

“To save you from that” Naomi said and lowered her visor, pushing herself as far into the angle of the corner as her armour allowed. “You may want to get against the walls as well” she advised through her helmet speaker.

“What have you done, Tengaki!” screamed Scarfe in anger. Then a black mass of writhing tentacles erupted from the depths of the Vault and blood and pieces of flesh were hurled in all directions.

Naomi shut her eyes tightly and quivered in terror, hearing the noise of bodies being torn apart by the Shadow Mare summoned by Yolanda Brackenridge.

=====

It was quiet after a while, the only sound she could hear was her breath drawing in and out inside her helmet. Naomi opened her eyes and found her visor was smeared with thick blood but it had not come from her.

With a trembling hand she cracked her visor open and gazed at the partially illuminated scene. There was a clear space around her for about two meters in an arc and beyond that was an abattoir. Unidentifiable pieces of humans were all over the hard concrete floor, mixed in with broken fragments of armour, weapons and clothing.

She stood slowly and walked forwards, placing her booted feet carefully on the slick red surface, her Plasma Gun charged and ready. Traversing to the centre, she ran her eyes down to the furthest end of the Vault but saw no sign of the creature.

“It’s gone” said a voice and she turned to see Scarfe lying propped against one of the walls, covered in gore but otherwise alive. Naomi stood in front of him and aimed the Plasma Gun at his head from about three meters away.

“You planned this with the Brackenridge Witch, didn’t you?” he asked her tonelessly. “Even knowing what I would do to your wife?”

“Yeah” she admitted. “I just hope she listened to what I told her to do”

Scarfe shifted a little and raised his metal arm towards her.

“I could kill you with this, you know” he told her. Naomi nodded her head in agreement.

“Maybe” she said. “Or I could burn you into charcoal with this gun” They held each other’s eyes for a moment then Scarfe lowered his arm.

“So what happens now?” he asked.

They both heard the big Vault door unlock and begin to slowly open outwards, letting a wash of fresh air into the chamber.

“Now my boss hands you over to Archimedes. That was the deal we made with the AI” she explained. “The Brackenridge’s get to stay in business and I get the best medical treatment they have to purge your infection from my body”

Scarfe laughed without humour and gave her an evil smile.

“They might get me out of your blood, Miss Tengaki, but you’ll still be a widow. My operator will have received his Kill orders by now”

“No” she stated with confidence. “I have my best man on the job”

Tengaki Apartment, Residential Tower, 8th District

Oracle was not accustomed to working in the field like this. It was definitely a strange but exciting feeling as he monitored his drones and sensor array from the rear of the black unmarked van. In the front seat was the rather scary Miss Shaw, who had arrived at his parent’s apartment early that morning with instructions from his boss, Miss Tengaki.

The Brackenridge maid had practically dragged him from his bed and thrust him into the portable data station that filled the van’s interior. At least she had the decency to let him get changed out of his bright yellow onesie first although he was regretting his lack of breakfast.

Right now they were parked in sight of his bosses apartment building, watching over the living room windows some storeys up the side of the residential tower. Oracle stretched in the padded couch that occupied the middle of the van interior, monitors and holo-projectors arrayed in a circle around his throne.

“Is there anything to eat?” he timidly asked the black garbed maid. She turned her head slowly to regard him from the front driver’s position with her dark flat eyes. A pale hand lifted into sight and tossed a wrapped bar at him with remarkable accuracy, his hands missing the catch and it landed neatly on his chest.

Oracle picked it up and examined the bar with interest.

“Hey, aren’t these the protein bars they feed the Guards?” he said in alarm. “Is it safe for me to eat this?”

“I eat them” she answered in a dull monotone. “They are high in protein and essential nutrients”

“Yeah, I know” he agreed. “But aren’t they loaded with emotional suppressants too?”

Monique Shaw gave him the full weight of her regard, her eyes boring into him.

“I have not noticed any problems” she told him.

=====

The protein bar had been filling but as bland tasting as Oracle had dreaded. Under the vigilant gaze of Miss Shaw he had eaten every bite of the awful thing, even picking up the crumbs and licking them from his finger.

Only once he was finished did she turn away, focussing her attention on the street outside. Oracle felt like he had passed some kind of secret initiation and wondered if he was now part of some special gang.

His further thoughts on the matter were interrupted by an alert from one of his drones, currently clamped using its folding legs against the side of a tower. It had detected a big drone moving rapidly towards the Tengaki apartment, the passive sensors picking up a targeting laser aimed at the windows.

“We have a contact!” he yelled out to the maid, who simply nodded her head.

“Then please deal with it” she commanded him.

“Copy that” Oracle answered. His fingers danced over a virtual keyboard under his hands while his internal processor issued mental commands to the drones. On his displays he saw the three combat drones he had been given moving on an interception course, their own targeting lasers locking onto the fast moving enemy.

“Missile launch detected!” he shouted as his screens flashed red alerts. His leading drone fired its own Interceptor missile, the small weapon leaving a bright white trail across the sky as it raced to meet the bigger incoming missile.

Oracle knew he was good at his job, but operating drones in combat was a specialist role and he hadn’t done it since he was a teenager. Luckily for him, Oracle at his worst was far better than most other Net Divers and Drone Jockeys.

A blast of yellow fire blossomed over the street, marking the destruction of the missile.

“Yeah!” he screamed in elation, filling the van with his raucous noise and earning a glare of disapproval from Miss Shaw.

Then the second missile roared in, dropping from a hidden drone latched onto a nearby building face. Oracle realised how he had been suckered even as the missile locked onto the targeting beam from the first drone. The initial strike was a decoy to draw out his defence, the second drone able to stay hidden by using the shared targeting laser of the first one.

“Clever, but not clever enough!” he snarled and sent two drones to deal with the one on the building side. His leading drone accelerated hard towards the incoming missile and it met the deadly weapon about twenty meters away from the Tengaki apartment.

A second fireball boomed into existence over the street, rattling the windows and drawing everyone’s attention now, as if the first explosion had not been enough.

“What else have you got?” Oracle demanded as his two drones fired their own missiles at the now fleeing second drone. It died in a third fireball as both his missiles blew it out of the sky.

His alerts flashed red again. The original drone was still operational and it launched another missile. Oracle could only watch in dismay as it flew like an arrow across the open air and impacted with the windows to his boss’s apartment.

“Oh crap!” he whispered in despair as the apartment exploded in a ball of flame.

=====

Alison was drawn to the apartment window by the boom and flash in the street outside. The heavy glass window rattled in the shockwave and she involuntarily flinched back.

“What’s happening out there?” asked her friend Yamiri, joining her at the window with a steaming mug of coffee in her hands.

More explosions followed in the sky outside, then one muffled boom as her apartment windows were blasted open.

Alison held her own coffee cup in trembling hands as she watched her and Naomi’s home burn from across the street.

“I think someone just blew up my apartment” she told her friend.

“Really!” Yamiri exclaimed. She looked at the smoke and fire billowing out from the broken windows on the opposite tower. “Yes, that is your apartment. Why did they do that?”

Alison raised her cup to her lips and drank the coffee her friend had made. It calmed her a little as she pondered what Naomi had told her this morning.

“Something to do with Naomi’s work” she replied then added thoughtfully, “I think I need to redecorate. Maybe I’ll go for a blue colour scheme this time”

Maintenance Tunnels, Pan City

Nothing was crawling through another narrow tunnel, more of a shaft really, when her phone rang. She took the opportunity for a rest break, wedging herself into a more comfortable position in the cramped confines of the power duct.

“Hello?” she said pleasantly.

“I am going to hunt you down and kill you with my bare hands!” Blayne Lucas seethed into her ear.

“Is that any way to greet your fellow conspirator?” Nothing replied teasingly. “Has something happened?”

“You and that Scarfe swine have betrayed me!” the man shouted. “All those men. All that valuable equipment. You promised me these attacks would succeed. Instead I have lost all of them and you are to blame!”

Nothing smiled to herself in the dark confines of the shaft, only her face illuminated by the glow of the phone.

“Actually, it was Scarfe who planned all the attacks with your help” she corrected him. “I just provided information on where people and places might be found”

She grinned and held the phone away from her ear as Blayne swore loudly and at length. Once he paused for breath she spoke to him again.

“Feeling better now, Mr Lucas?” she enquired. “From your tone I am guessing all the planned missions have failed. It is what I expected as neither yourself nor Scarfe really committed enough resources to complete the tasks required”

“So why didn’t you stop us before we began?” he demanded stridently. “Why let us go ahead if you knew we were going to fail?”

“That part is easy to explain” Nothing told him with a small sense of glee. “I needed you and that fool Scarfe, the Emissary, to draw all the attention to yourselves”

Blayne was silent as he absorbed this revelation. Nothing was going to disconnect the call when he spoke again, his voice strained with anger he was vainly trying to hold in check.

“You made us into decoys?”

“That’s right” Nothing assured him confidently. “I wanted Eric and his team all worrying about you and the Emissary. I needed Archimedes frantically looking all over his City, trying to work out what you would attack next. It left me free to complete what I need to do”

“And what is that, Miss Smith?” he asked her in resignation.

“Sorry, I can’t tell you that. You never know who could be listening”

Nothing ended the call and tucked the phone safely back into the coveralls that Seven liked to wear. After that rest she was ready to proceed once more and uncurled herself to crawl down the long power duct, her strong fingers probing ahead as she squeezed through another narrow section.

“Nearly there, Seven” she whispered to her inner companion and allowed herself another wicked grin.