They walked for another 15 minutes and reached what appeared to be an elevator. Scanning revealed no power with the car at the bottom of the shaft. Prying open the doors, they descended to the top of the car and in through the hatch. Adjusting their vision for low light and infrared, they opened the elevator doors.

They had expected damage, but what they encountered was too organized to be caused by an accidental explosion or even secondary detonations. Charges had been placed with precision and forethought. Greg took in the scene with a low whistle.

“‘Only imperial storm troopers are this accurate’. This was a well-planned raid.”
His voice echoed eerily through the wrecked chamber.

Trish exclaimed.

He considered this for a moment.

she responded crisply.

They made short work of the obstruction and Greg was once again in awe of the power he had been granted. Ten men working for an hour couldn’t have done what they did in ten minutes. They broke open the panel and found the mains then they poured a small amount of power into the system and waited.

he directed. This time, there was a dim flicker and Trish tracked the activity to a vault 250 metres below them. Scanning the area, she discovered what looked like a closet door. They opened it and discovered only janitorial supplies.

he asked suspiciously.

Trish responded.

He stepped fully inside and pulled the door shut. The back of the closet slid aside revealing an elevator cab. It was small, but lit. They got in and the door slid shut as the cab started its descent. The cab opened onto a hallway that showed some damage and brown stains on the walls.

she paused.

Greg cautioned.

Trish assured him.

They edged down the corridor and encountered the source of the blood. On the floor was a corpse dressed in black assault gear with a Glock machine pistol clutched in its hand. Greg checked the gun and found that its magazine had been emptied and the assailant had a gaping wound in his chest. There was a trail of dried blood leading in the direction that they were investigating, so they continued along the corridor with extreme caution and found the other combatant. Trish gasped in horror.

she declared incredulously.

Greg glanced around.

Trish replied worriedly.

They crept along further until they were faced with a steel door of immense proportions and no evident way of opening it. Trish retracted a glove and changed their hand to hers. Reaching up, she tentatively laid her palm flat on its shining surface. They heard the sound of heavy bolts withdrawing and the door swung smoothly inwards with a low hum. The vault’s interior was well lit and ventilated, and reminded Greg of a ‘clean room’. They entered cautiously and looked around. This room appeared to have survived intact. Greg surveyed the layout.

he pointed at them. Trish recognised where he was going.

she re-iterated. They got the control circuit to switch to back-up power and heard the rumble of generators starting up from somewhere in the complex above. The rooms lighting dimmed momentarily then brightened, the comforting hum of the big mainframes filling the air.

there was doubt in her mental tone,

she advised.

Greg confirmed.

They went back up to the main level, which had benefited from the back-up generators as well; there was now some air circulation and light. Still, it took them over an hour to find an untouched supply room and luckily, all the door had securing it was a basic mechanical locking mechanism. Greg quickly pulled it off its hinges and placed it to one side. The room was jammed with parts of all descriptions and sizes and he was astounded that this room had been overlooked.

he asked.

Greg worked his way to the box through the packed shelving and noticed that almost all of the equipment was labelled similarly.

he sounded intrigued. They lifted the box and took it out into the hall. Greg pulled the lid off and Trish let out a gasp.

she proclaimed excitedly.

Greg took a closer look at the terminal.

He whistled,

Greg was seriously impressed.

Trish willingly agreed. They had to go back into the storeroom and dig for the fuel cells to power the unit, but were rewarded with a lit screen and a boot sequence. The screen then displayed a symbol that looked like a rotating pyramid and a stylized letter ‘S’. There was also a palm plate on the console and several touch points.

Greg wondered.

Trish reasoned.

Greg placed his hand flat on the plate and found himself looking at Professor Saber for the second time in his life.

“Whoa…” Greg spoke aloud in his momentary surprise.

Trish rejoined.

“Hello Gregory, Tricia…” the avatar greeted them. “Please standby… network resources are curiously low. I have accessed my protected backups. Are you physically at my retreat?” the Professor inquired.

“Um, yes Sir, we were investigating…” Greg began but the Professor cut him short.

“What is the date and time please Solomon… Solomon? Oh dear… this isn’t good,” the Professor took on a worried tone.

“It’s April 15th, 2009, just past noon local time Professor…” Greg interjected.

“I see… my backups end rather abruptly on December 26th, 2008 at 9:00am local time,” the avatar frowned.

“We discovered that a circuit failed to activate the backup power in your vault, so we re-engaged the generators about an hour ago. Is there any surveillance of the day in question?” asked Greg.

remarked Trish excitedly.

“A very astute observation, my Dear, I patterned the backup systems AI on myself, though not having Solomon available is very disturbing,” worried the Professor.

“Wait a minute,” Greg demanded, “you can hear Trish? Are you tapped into the PNE or our brain?”

“Please relax Gregory, I’m not in your head, but the PNE network is connected so I can ‘hear’ my daughter, so-to-speak. I can see that I never did get to send you the equipment I had earmarked for you, but now it seems it was for the best,” the avatar spoke soothingly. “Could you try to find a component in the storeroom marked J-9658 please, it will vastly simplify your task here.”

Trish located the box and opened it. It contained what looked like a simple ornamental badge. It was triangular and had three equal triangles of color defining it. It appeared to be three dimensional but was incredibly thin and flat.

“Gregory, may I ask you a question?” queried the avatar.

“OK… but what should I call you Sir?” Greg responded.

“Oh, Professor is fine Son. Tell me, what is that garment you’re wearing? Aside from your hands and face, you are invisible to all of my active scanners,” he sounded curiously impressed.

“Uh,” Greg began, “this was actually inspired by you, Professor. We call it the Adaptive Camouflage Matrix or ACM for short. We got tired of… um… destroying clothing during training, so we came up with this secondary suit that can be any kind of clothing we need for any situation and that is still tough enough to stand up to battle conditions. And, well… this is actually its first field test,” his narrative ground to a halt.

“Why, that’s brilliant Son! It’s wired into your systems?” the avatar was beaming with pride. Greg actually blushed and was at a loss for words. The mind of the greatest scientist the world had seen since Einstein was praising him! Had called him Son! Trish realized Greg was having an emotional moment and quickly shifted them to her form. The ACM adapted automatically.

“Sorry Daddy, Greg isn’t used to a lot of praise. Though he handles himself well in mission situations, he’s just not used to having a family yet. He is a darling though. So, to answer your question, yes, it wires directly into the network. It requires a high level of computing power to work,” she covered smoothly.

“Hmm, well my dear, is it possible to patch the J-9658 unit into your ACM please?” the avatar asked. “It will link you to this terminal and allow you some freedom of movement while keeping in touch with me.” Trish placed the badge on her right shoulder and directed the bugs to link it to the ACM and network systems. It blended into the battle suit like a shoulder flash and started transmitting and receiving immediately. By this time, Greg had regained his composure and immediately got back into the spirit of things.

he apologized.

Greg deferred.

“A very tactful decision, Greg, you’re everything I’d quite imagined you’d be… except for your shyness,” the Professor grinned. “I didn’t see that one coming. Now Trish, we need to go to upper level 4, room 13-A. It was not as well shielded as the backup vault, but there still might be some hope,” the avatar directed them.

The elevator was damaged but they managed to hotwire it. The doors opened on another scene of devastation. There were several more bodies lying about in the hallways and the walls and ceiling were riddled with bullet holes. They found 13-A and saw that the door had been cut open with a torch.

Greg said.

“I’d have to agree with you Gregory,” replied the Professor. “There’s not much left intact in the room itself, however, if you would please go to the south wall, there should be a pressure plate disguised as an outlet there. Press it please Tricia.” Trish did so and the wall grumbled slowly aside. They found themselves looking at a smaller version of the vault room in the basement.

“Well, well… it appears they missed this part of the room,” clucked the Professor, “but the systems all seem quiescent. I must have given Solomon the autodestruct command which would’ve caused him to wipe this system, himself included.”

“Oh no Daddy! Not Solomon!” Trish wailed.

“Don’t fret Dear Heart, it’s not permanent. But I’ll need to work with Gregory for a while,” said the Professor calmly. Trish shifted back and Greg waited to hear what the Professor had in mind.

“As you may have gathered Greg, I had this complex built mostly by Solomon’s servomechs. I am pretty good with software, but I’m not the greatest of network engineers,” he paused. “Still, there should be a diagnostic program running in the system. I need you to locate and repair the break in the fibre-optic cable between here and the backup vault. There should be a repair kit on one of the mechs in the other room. Activate the diagnostic system from the left panel,” he instructed.

Greg got the diagnostic running and it pinpointed the damage almost exactly to where he thought it would be… where the concentration of gunfire had occurred. With toolkit in hand, Greg walked to the battle scene and activated his lifters. Although the diagnostic only noted the first break, Greg discovered several others. With the Professor’s guidance, they worked backwards from the vault end of the cable and about an hour later, Greg sealed the final filament and drifted back down to the floor.

“Step one finished. Now we can see if the system will reload after several months without power,” Greg said, shaking his head.

“Patience Son, there are multiple redundancies built into these systems,” the Professor replied.

Greg returned to 13-A and walked back to the console. He re-ran the diagnostic and was pleased to see that the connection was sound. He followed the Professor’s instructions and started the reload sequence. He watched in fascination, he had not performed a mainframe reload since he had worked for Sears some two decades ago. A few of messages were familiar while others baffled him completely. The Professor was really quite a genius at programming.

“Do you see this Trish?” Greg pointed to the screens. “Hestia would have a ball in this system.” Trish chuckled at the thought, but the Professor cleared his throat before she could comment.

“Hestia? Who is Hestia, Tricia?” he inquired.

Trish responded.

Trish finished proudly.

“Please, I meant no disrespect to you or Gregory, Darling. I just did not understand who you were talking about. I was afraid that someone outside our family might be vulnerable to the evil at work. I didn’t want an innocent on my conscience.” Greg snorted as he watched for error messages.

“I understand your point Professor, I had quite a shock myself when I discovered I suddenly had acquired a teenage daughter, but I will never let any harm come to her.”

“I’m glad to hear that Gregory. I knew I was right to choose you as my heir. Aaah, the system is rebooting, we’ll know in a moment whether we still have the old man with us or not,” the Professor sounded slightly hopeful. The system whirred and there was a pause… then a deep voice spoke.

“Please identify yourself, you have one minute until countermeasures are activated.”

“Saber AI backup system 96587,” rattled the Professor.

“Gregory Howard with TriCa,” Greg responded.

“Saber AI accepted. Howard, Gregory. Please place your right hand on the scan plate,” directed the computerized voice. Greg did so and felt a strange two-way tingle, up then back down, inside his arm.

“TriCa presence confirmed, host identity confirmed, countermeasures deactivated. Where is the Professor?” The deep voice had lost all of its menace and sounded concerned.

Trish shifted back to her own form and nodded.

“If I may, Father?” she asked courteously.

“Of course, you do have more current information,” the Professor agreed.

“Solomon, what data do you have available beyond 26/12/08 0900 GMT +1?” Trish inquired.

“Null input,” the sonorous voice replied. Trish then contacted her daughter.

“Hestia? Uplink and download all collected newsfeed and data from 25/12/08 to present. Thank you Dear. Solomon, interface with netfiles 01/09/08-15/04/09,” she commanded. Placing her hand on the interface, Trish waited. Solomon linked and absorbed the data. There was silence for several moments.

“Accepted, correlated. It seems we were attacked and you were kidnapped by mercenary forces Professor. I also find several databanks are tomb-stoned so I assume that you ordered a destruct sequence? I will attempt data recovery. Gregory Howard, please locate my servomechanisms and replace their fuel cells, then enter the following numeric to each one -777ec856. Please right any that are turtled and bring the non-functional units to the outer room for repair or recycling.” It seemed more of a command than a request.

Uh… I copy, location of the fuel cell storage please, Greg responded.

“Main level, room 9-B,” said Solomon.

Trish righted the three machines in the outer room and took the elevator to the main floor. Room 9-B turned out to be the same room they had discovered earlier. They moved the Professor’s terminal out of the way and took the cells, which were about the size and shape of light-sticks, with them. They went to the backup vault and saw to the door. Then they righted the lone defender, popped out its spent cell and replaced it with a fresh one. Trish typed in the code and watched as it collected the body of its assailant and exited through a panel in the wall. The next two machines collected several cells and went to locate their brethren within the servo transit-ways. Four of the mechs wouldn’t power up, so Trish flagged them for repair or recycle and finished her search. The three in the office of 13-A were the last she was able to locate, so she reactivated them and left the remaining fuel cells where they could be found. Satisfied, she returned to the secondary office just in time to see surveillance of the attack.

“Oh Goddess! Those men would have killed anything human other than the Professor!” her hand flew to her mouth in shock.

“Your assessment is essentially correct Young One. The casual disregard for life and property caused the Professor to first unleash the mechs of the safety protocols, and then order the destruct sequence. All communications and monitoring were cut off from your siblings, which caused a malfunction in the neural bonding of The SIX. It is my belief that the neural bond has not been completed with their hosts. I do not know if their bonding can be repaired,” Solomon intoned ominously.

To Be Continued