“What’s a zip-craft?”
“Their version of a UAV. Exact replicas of the Federation variety, built using Swarm plans. You’ll have to trust me, but nothing in history has ever been more important than getting me inside one of these ships. And that’s an understatement.”
“Why not go there directly?” asked Tessa.
“I doubt we’d make it. We’re on the far east side of the base, and the hangar is on the far west side. Despite our enhancements and your skills, that’s a long way to go through a gauntlet of trained military personnel who will shoot us on sight.”
“And the armory is closer?”
“Much. We’re on the ground floor right now. There are elevators down to the military subterranean levels, but using them would be too conspicuous. Fortunately, there is also a stairwell about ninety yards from here, and the armory is on the first subterranean level down.”
“Right. So better to fight our way the short distance to the armory so that we’re literally bulletproof for the longer journey.”
“That’s my thinking, yes.”
Tessa put one finger across her lips and shook her head, indicating silence.
I strained with my extended hearing and was able to make out the sound of five people shuffling through the corridor a fair distance away, clearly military, moving silently but with a purpose.
They soon arrived at our location in the corridor.
“Lieutenant Gary,” said one of the group, whispering far too softly for us to have picked up if not for our enhanced hearing. “Derek!” he added as if he hadn’t been heard the first time. “Scan the closet for heat signatures inside.”
There was a reason for his inaudible whisper. If we were in the closet, he didn’t want us tipped off that he and his team were just outside the door.
“Right away, sir,” came the whispered reply.
I pointed a confiscated gun at the door and braced for a bloodbath. Killing this lieutenant was the last thing I wanted to do, but we had no choice. We had to kill him and burst out of the closet to have any chance of surviving.
“Don’t shoot!” mouthed Tessa, shaking her head vigorously. “The nanites will send them false readings.”
“No heat signatures detected, sir,” said the soldier named Derek Gary a few seconds later.
“Good,” replied the commander. “Team eighteen reporting in,” he continued, as if he were speaking into a general comm channel, “Sector Gamma Six is clear. Proceeding to Gamma Seven.”
I lowered the gun and blew out a long breath. Less than twenty seconds later team eighteen had moved out of nanite-enhanced earshot.
“Interesting,” said Tessa softly when they had passed. “Perhaps your plan has a silver lining, after all. Fleeing to military quarters is such a bad idea, it might actually be a good one. It’s the last place they’ll expect us to go. Sounds like they have at least eighteen teams looking for us, and my hunch is they’re all focused on civilian areas of the base, leaving virtually no one behind to mind the store.”
“So what now?” I asked.
“Lead us to the armory. We use our enhanced vision and hearing to avoid trouble. If we can’t avoid it, we take out who we have to take out, or use our speed to outrun them. When we have the personal force shields, we each act like a running back in the open field and sprint toward the end-zone.”
“Let’s do it,” I said, delighted by her use of a football metaphor.
I opened the door and stepped out with Tessa close behind. When we came to the end of the long corridor I took a left. We continued on toward the stairwell at a rapid pace, but slowly enough to listen ahead so we didn’t sprint headlong into hostiles.
“Nanites,” I thought out as we moved, “how’s the password hunt going?”
“We have ninety-eight percent of our capacity involved. We haven’t found it, but it’s going more efficiently than expected. We’re designing search optimization algorithms on the fly as we learn more about the architecture of hive-mind thought and memory storage.”
“Good. Keep at it.”
We reached the final turn and peered around it, only to find a five-man team standing guard at the entrance to the stairwell twenty yards away—at the end of the long corridor. Five more were likely doing the same at the bank of elevators farther away.
The military sections hadn’t been as abandoned as we had hoped.
As we paused, trying to decide on the best approach to take them out, we could hear another of the prowling five-man teams enter a corridor we had recently vacated. We were still out of sight around a bend, but if they continued on there was no way we could avoid being discovered.
“What’s the play?” I mouthed at Tessa.
“We backtrack to the corridor junction and take them out. And hope like hell the stairway team rushes in to help. If not, we’re in big trouble.”
The approaching team came ever closer while Tessa and I retreated to the corridor junction they’d be passing and readied ourselves for action.
Time seemed to stand still, and my own heart pounded in my ears. Finally they began moving across the section where the two hallways intersected, and even though they had their guns ready as they crossed, on the off chance we were there and preparing an ambush, they never even got off a shot.
Tessa was a blur of motion, her fists, elbows, and forehead striking hostiles with savage speed and precision, while I was using superhuman speed and strength of my own to knock out the soldier nearest to me.