Lyssa's Flame_A Hard Science Fiction AI Adventure by M. D. Cooper & James S. Aaron

Author:M. D. Cooper & James S. Aaron [Cooper, M. D. & Aaron, James S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Wooden Pen Press
Published: 2018-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

STELLAR DATE: 01.15.2982 (Adjusted Years)

LOCATION: Raleigh, Heartbridge Corporate Headquarters

REGION: High Terra, Earth, Terran Hegemony

As the maglev approached the South delivery dock for the Heartbridge Spire, Brit checked the overlay Petral had provided showing Tristan’s location. The mech was following them in a sewage system below the train tube, pausing in places then leaping forward.

They were riding in a cargo transport maglev with narrow windows, stacked with crates locked to its floor. Wind blew through gaps in the outside wall and the air tasted like a mix of scorched plas and oil. The cargo line had been two levels below the lab section at the TSF facility, left unmonitored as the Quick Reaction Forces responded to the lab breach and were then drawn off by Tristan as he dug his way out of their headquarters, wreaking havoc chaos the whole way. The Weapon Born had seemed immensely pleased by his task, and Petral kept smiling when she received his updates.

The cargo transport followed a non-priority track away from the Heartbridge spire and into an industrial section of Raleigh, thirty levels below the inner surface of the ring, where it shot through factories filled with fabrication lines leaking sparks, storage areas that stretched as far as Brit could see, and even a low-ceilinged reclamation center filled with scummed algae vats, air humid and cloying.

When they returned to the inner surface and the light, Brit breathed deeply of the fresh air. She didn’t have to check the train’s path to feel centripetal force as it started a long curve back toward the Heartbridge spire. While it wasn’t a direct path, there wouldn’t be any stops before they reached the private delivery dock.

On the other side of the car, Petral’s brows knit and she craned her neck to look out the slim windows at the approaching buildings.

“Jirl hasn’t delivered my package yet,” she said.

“Can you hit her up over the Link and find out what’s going on?”

Petral shook her head. “Too risky. They monitor all traffic in that place. If they even see she’s getting a connection request from outside, it could set off security.” She considered. “I could try routing it through Mars 1 and pretend to be her son.”

“If she hasn’t inserted the key yet, that means she’s in some kind of trouble,” Brit said.

“Without Jirl, we’ll have to make our own diversion,” Starl said. He patted the grenade bag in his lap. “We can still cause some chaos but are we going to be able to get into the control room?”

“Tristan is going to cause plenty of physical havoc once he hits their building,” Petral said, “which is happening shortly. It’s not the building I’m worried about, it’s the network. I need to lock their comm backbone open so they can’t sequester the building from the network. If there’s a network access station near this stop, I might be able to do something from there. I was hoping to have the payload delivered from an admin area so they couldn’t track it back to anyone.

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