Chapter 44: Plans
"It's the only thing that makes sense, isn't it?" Kim asked, rhetorically. "Drakken comes up with some scheme and diverts both of us! But you became suspicious of your perfect girl. Why didn't you get suspicious of Eric?" The last question wasn't rhetorical; it was aimed right at Ron.
"I did, but not until after Dessie showed up." Ron replied.
"Did you have Wade perform a check on Eric?"
"Yeah, but not until tonight."
"Why not Ron? It was important."
"KP, I will never, ever get between you and a crush. You taught me that already."
"What? When?" Kim was clearly both confused and upset. "Is this that thing that you told Yori, but you won't tell me?" Ron nodded.
"RON STOPPABLE! THIS SECRET THING HAS GOTTEN OUT OF HAND! I WANT TO KNOW AND I WANT TO KNOW NOW! HOW MUCH HAS IT COST US ALREADY? HOW MUCH COULD IT COST US YET?"
"Okay, KP," Ron replied. "But not right now. We're not done with Drakken yet. Once we get him taken down, no matter how late and no matter how tired we are, I'll tell you."
Kim glared at him for several long moments before relenting. "Fair enough, what do you want to do now?"
"I say we get back to your place and get you into mission gear. Then we get Wade to give us some info and we hit the Bueno Nacho headquarters."
Kim nodded. "Good thinking. If we take out the main antenna at the HQ, we foil the entire plan."
Ron drove his scooter back to the Possible residence, at a much more sedate pace than he had left it, while Kim spoke to Wade.
Mr. Barkin and the custodian had just finished starting the Gymnasium's emergency generator. Since the facility was a designated community shelter, it had one but because it was an older building, the generator had to be manually activated. A couple of police officers were in the Lobby when he returned. After speaking to them for a few minutes, he returned to the main Gym and addressed the crowd.
"All right people, here's the situation." He announced. "This city has come under some form of attack by giant robots. The attack has halted but we don't know if it will resume. Now, most of the city is without power so we are all going to stay here. In addition, several buildings have been destroyed so we are going to remove the decorations and get this building ready to house the homeless."
There were a few groans about that last one, but most of the students could appreciate the necessity.
"Prom has been suspended, people. Sometime next week we'll make the decision if and when to reschedule. Okay, I want to see EVERYONE packing up the decorations. Move it, people!"
Oscar, Cindy, Monique, and Felix hung together while they helped out. This gave them a chance to talk.
"You're sure he did that?" Monique asked Oscar.
"Yes I'm sure. He seemed just a little too eager to have Kim stay here, so I decided to keep an eye on him. To be honest, I was already peeved with him because I thought that Kim and Ron…" He clamped his mouth shut with a guilty look at Monique. He had forgotten who Ron's date had been.
Monique just smiled it off. "I wouldn't have minded seeing them two together. But if you saw Eric do that, you'd better get yourself down to Kim's house and pass the news on to them two."
"But Barkin has told us to stay here." Oscar protested.
"Mat rat, you are just too much of a country gentleman!" Monique countered, "there's what, all of three faculty members here? How hard will it be to sneak out?"
"I'm going with you." Cindy told him.
"Okay," Felix chimed in. "You two pick up these bags of trash and head out back to the dumpsters. Monique and I will keep an eye out. When we wave, make a break for it."
Warren the roving cameraman sat at his desk in the Middleton Channel 6 Office Building. He had gotten some good footage of the robot attack but he was sure that several other stations had similar footage. He needed to pick up something extra and he was just sure that this whole thing wasn't over yet. He picked up his camera, the one with the built-in satellite feed, and jogged to his motorcycle. He had a hunch that if he followed Team Possible, he would get something special. Since he had no idea where Kim Possible was at this moment, he decided to head to the Possible Residence and wait.
Kim and Ron sat on the couch in the Den, looking at satellite pictures on the television screen. Mr. Dr. P, like Wade, had equipped his home with a backup generator. The two teens were alone at the moment. Shortly after arriving, a police car had come by to take Mrs. Dr. P to the Medical Center. A few minutes after that, agents Smith and Smith had shown up to take Mr. Dr. P to brief some government types. Kim knew that she and Ron could be in action against Drakken at any moment, so she took the tweebs to the next door neighbors. Team Possible was now making plans while Wade's carrier flyer brought over a new piece of equipment.
"The way I see it, the antenna is the key point." The young genius's voice explained from the television. "Drakken seems to have planned this fairly well. The antenna is located on top of a forty-foot concrete tower, adjacent to the Headquarters Building. The building itself is four stories, so the roof is at the same level as the antenna base. The tower seems to be about twenty feet away from the building."
"Okay Wade," Kim was all business. "What can you tell us about the grounds?"
"I don't know how we're going to get you in. The grounds are a square shaped and a half mile on a side. A double, thirty-foot electric fence borders the grounds. I'm willing to bet that the space between the fences is full of motion sensors. In addition to this, the satellite images I've been pirating show an awful lot of activity on the grounds, which could be guards. Now, I have one intriguing possibility. This new excavation he-"
The doorbell, and frantic pounding on the door, interrupted him. Ron opened the door to see Cindy and Oscar.
"Ron, Kim, you're not going to believe this!" Oscar gasped out.
"Tonight, I think I'm open for pretty much anything." Kim replied.
"Okay, here goes. After you guys left, I kept an eye on Eric, since he seemed just a little too determined to keep Kim from leaving. He kept trying to leave but we wouldn't let him. Anyway, after a while a custodian comes in and says that the city is under some sort of attack, then the lights went off. Eric gave me the slip in the dark so I went looking for him. I finally found him, talking on some sort of radio just outside of the gym. A few minutes later, some sort of weird hovercraft shows up and he jumps in. But the really strange part was his tux; it flat out turned into some sort of jumpsuit! Anyway, once he got in that hovercraft it flew away."
Kim's eyes were downcast. "Well, that confirms it." She said in a very quiet voice. "He is definitely a synthodrone."
"A what?" Cindy wanted to know.
"Long story guys," Ron cut in. "For right now, I'll say that he's working for the other side. Drakken claimed to have kidnapped him."
"Why would he do that?" Asked Oscar.
"To make me loose my senses and make a stupid charge in to rescue him." Kim blurted out. "Drakken must not know that we're on to him."
Oscar had been looking at the television screen. "Hey, that's the worksite that Mr. Mickman has my dad working on! It's forty or fifty miles away, isn't it?"
"Wait a minute!" Wade protested. "I haven't been able to find out who's doing the excavation. It's Mickman's Earthmoving?"
"Yeah, dad's been really tense about it. He says that three general contractors and two construction management firms are inspecting the work. It's a real nightmare because nobody knows who's really in charge of it all."
"Front companies and intermediaries!" Wade exclaimed. "Drakken is smart! He's got a real tangled web of contractors working this job so it's hard to track down drawings."
"Dad talks in his sleep when he gets tense about work." Oscar reported. "And he's been talking a lot about something called 'the Glowworm Project.'"
Wade worked hard for a few minutes and managed to find some schematics about the latest excavation. "Okay, before we review this do me a favor. Oscar, Cindy, stand next to each other, thank you. Now Kim, point your Kimmunicator at them. Okay, hold still."
"OUCH!" "YEOW!" Neither Cindy nor Oscar seemed to appreciate the yellowish light that Kim's device emitted.
"Okay, everyone, they're definitely human." Wade reported.
"I could have told you that if you had asked me." Cindy fumed.
"Sorry guys, but Oscar showing up with this information seemed just a little to convenient. Anyway I think I have a plan." About that time, Wade's carrier flyer floated in through an open window, much to the shock of Cindy and Oscar. "I've got something that just might work."
The something looked like an oversized dart gun. "It's a resonant frequency feedback weapon." Wade explained. "Get to within forty feet of the antenna itself and shoot it with this. The projectile can't hold a charge for long, and it can't analyze the frequency of the target, the gun takes care of it."
"Wade, let's pretend that I didn't understand the practical aspects of that explanation." Ron complained.
"Right, this weapon will fry the electronics in the antenna if it's active when you shoot it. Get to the antenna, make sure it's active, aim and fire. The weapon will take two seconds to analyze the target's electrical frequencies, then another two seconds to download this information and a charge into the projectile before firing. So you'll need to hold it steady, on the antenna, for four seconds after you pull the trigger."
"Okay," Kim replied. "Now for the real gem. How do we get to the antenna?"
"You see these excavations I'm highlighting? This is a major dig, which appears designed to hold a secondary reactor. Apparently Drakken wants redundancy but he didn't dare try to sneak in enough material to build two before executing his plan. This excavation is not within the perimeter fence and plans call for a tunnel to go from it into the Main Electrical Room inside the Headquarters Building. Mickman's Earthmoving rented a small tunnel boring machine Wednesday and returned it yesterday."
"So you think there's a tunnel running from this excavation to the interior of the headquarters? That sounds a little convenient." Ron still had a healthy dose of skepticism.
"It may be guarded, and it may have various security devices installed. But if we believe the synthodrone's rant, this is all taking place a full week before Drakken had planned."
"I don't have a better idea, do any of you?" Kim asked the entire room.
"Not an idea exactly, but maybe an addition." Oscar replied, walking over to stand nose to nose with Ron. "Didn't you say that Drakken told you he had captured Eric so that you would make some sort of rash rescue attempt?" Kim nodded. "Why don't we give him just that?" Oscar was looking close at Ron. While Oscar was huskier, the two boys were about the same height.
Kim looked at Cindy, who was sizing her up in the exact same way.