Inez blows stuff up. An escape attempt begins. Tehran swears vengeance. More of that kind of thing. :p
21.
Behind Enemy Lines
"Ha-ha, I've really fooled Tehran now." Inez remarked, as she started putting explosive around the room containing the portal generator leading to the neutramatter dimension. "Now we'll see who will get out of this victorious."
Her plan had been brilliant. She had already suspected Tehran wouldn't take letting her make him vulnerable for attack lying down as she had arranged to let the Grand Cyber Council escape and organize an attack plan between them and those on the Wreaker II. So when Marbles told her about Tehran's portal generator, she immediately took the time to locate it from within the neutramatter dimension.
It didn't take long for her to find it, for it was at a pretty obvious location at Cyantis. Once she had found it, she tracked it down from her side of things in the neutramatter dimension. She was pleasantly pleased to see it was already active. When she contacted Tehran on the bridge, she had been standing just within the neutramatter dimension, right beside the active portal. When the discussion turned AWOL, and Tehran made it clear he intended to cut all connections to the neutramatter dimension and strand Inez there, unable to contact anybody, she quickly made a mad dive for the open portal. She cut it real close, but she made it through and safely back to Cyberspace for the first time in over a month.
And better still, Tehran had no clue she had made it out of the dimension that had imprisoned her for so long.
It felt real good to be back where she belonged, but she knew she had jumped right into the middle of a very dangerous situation in the middle of enemy territory. She was by no means out of danger yet. Celebrating would have to wait.
At first, she just hung around the generator room, thinking that she had to have set off some kind of alarm that would eventually send someone here to investigate. But when no one ever came, she found herself a weapon. Opening a wall panel, she found a metal beam that, once removed, made for a good club. Once she had that, she pounded away on the generator itself and it's controls; mostly it's controls. It felt really good to vent some of that anger.
She then hid, certain that had to have alarmed somebody on the site. She was proven right when, not longer thereafter, a guard came along to check things out. Inez knocked him out and relieved him of his weapon, which seemed to be a laser rifle; an enlarged version of a laser pistol. She also found that the guard carried a fair amount of explosive. She recognized it; Cyberbombs version 3.7. They packed quite a punch.
Which led her to now. Having finished placing the last bomb in it's intended location, Inez idly left the room and proceeded down the staircase to exit the building. Once outside, she looked back up to where the general location of the generator room would be, then pulled out a remote, and pressed a button.
Without looking back, she continued onward on her path while an explosion gushed out of the side of the building, destroying the portal generator...
"He's coming." Alex announced suddenly.
And sure enough, the usual guard was making his way towards them, idly carrying his weapon in his hands. He looked bored, ready for some excitement. Fortunately, Alex's dad had come up with a plan to give it to him, although it may be more action than he was hoping for. He continued to draw closer, only a matter of paces away from Alex, his father, Davidson, and McKinsey, until he was finally there. A secret gesture was passed to McKinsey, and he readied to do his part in the plan.
Then the explosion rang out.
Surprised, everybody turned where the fiery orange plume was just barely visible. The guards turned and raised their weapons, their attention away from the prisoners.
"What the...?" Alex began, surprised.
McKinsey hesitated for a moment, then reacted according to plan. He lashed out with his feet, tripping the guard before him, then lunged forward so he could grab, even while handcuffed as he was, the guard's fallen weapon. Knocking the guard out with a brief kick to the head. McKinsey then rearranged himself and the captured weapon, and with a moment's struggle, fired the weapon and hit his cuffs, breaking them and freeing his hands.
He was instantly on his feet, taking full control of the weapon. He first used it to shoot an oncoming guard who had seen the first fall, taking him out, then he turned and used the weapon to free his friends. Davidson quickly picked up the fallen weapon for the second guard, and both he and McKinsey ducked down and began shooting and taking out the other guards scattered all over the area.
Most were caught by surprise. Some lasted long enough to fight back, but they were too ill-prepared. They eventually went down as well. Soon there weren't any guards, and the prisoners were no longer being watched. The four freed people quickly then went about freeing everyone else.
"Everybody grab whatever weapon you can and gather around the teleporter!" Davidson ordered, retrieving the fallen weapons from the other fallen guards and handing them out. "Quickly, now, we're not going to have much time before we start having to fight again!"
Everybody hurried to carry out the orders. McKinsey held up a moment to talk with Alex's dad.
"Hey," he said, "I guess your plan worked after all, so thanks. To be honest, I didn't think you had it in you."
"Hey, I just say a way to help, so help I did." Alex's dad replied, grinning, as they hurried to take up defensive positions all over the area.
"There was an explosion on Cyantis!" someone exclaimed on the bridge of the transport ship. "The portal generator's been destroyed! Automated repair system engaged! We're still tracking the source of the blast!"
Tehran looked thoughtful for a moment while he considered this new development.
"Could it have been weapon's fire that caused the blast?" he asked curiously.
"Possibly sir, though it would have to have come from a ship." the crewmember replied.
"The Wreaker?"
"Hard to say with the information we have."
Tehran thought for a moment longer, trying to decide how to respond and make sure things stayed safe.
"Have the people down on the site raise the energy shield." Tehran said. "If it was an attack from our illusive friends, that should keep them from trying it again."
"Yes sir."
A moment later, a bubble of transparent blue energy encompassed the cybersite below, fitting just overtop the magnetite shield that was still active below it. Once fully powered, the shield was completely impenetrable...
Inez wandered the streets aimlessly for a little bit, surprised to find that they were so empty. Again, Tehran seemed to be overconfident, and it was going to cost him. To her knowledge, he still had no idea she was even still in the picture anymore, although that explosion no doubt told him that something was up. Nobody still had appeared to investigate the explosion, but Inez knew it had to have been seen.
She was looking for a way to escape the general area at the very least, she found what appeared to be a hovering motorbike parked along the edge of the street. She presumed it belonged to a guard who wasn't present at the moment. Maybe it was the guard she had beaten in back at the portal generator. Whatever the case, she decided it was exactly what she needed.
Hopping onto it, and after quickly familiarizing herself with the controls, she started the device and zoomed off down the street, heading towards the center of the site where she remembered the data core was located. She didn't have much of a plan yet, but seeing that the core had controls for the whole site, it seemed like a reasonable place to start.
She hadn't driven far when two more similar craft appeared behind her with guards driving them. They sped up to gain on her, pulling out their weapons. Inez took one look at them, and then sped up to go faster.
"Sir, we've gotten an update from Cyantis." a crewmember announced suddenly. "They've found an intruder on the site."
Tehran turned to look at the officer, stunned. "What?" he asked, alarmed. "How?"
"Unknown sir. There are two security guards in pursuit as we speak. Target is avoiding capture. We're patching through a live video feed now."
Sure enough, a moment later, a video appeared on a computer screen and began displaying a picture of a person on a motorbike speeding away from the camera, presumably on another bike, the camera hurrying to try and keep up. Tehran recognized the person instantly, and jumped up and moved closer to stare at the screen with widened eyes of shock.
"Inez." he muttered.
His eyes narrowed into dark slits.
"Kill her!" he ordered. "Kill her now!"