The main black section elevator had never been advertised. It wasn't anywhere near the ISO front door. Nor was it overtly different from any of the many other local elevators. Get in this one and you'd discover that it took you down to a couple of underused areas of basement storage.
Unless, of course, you knew the right codes. The panel was dark and useless now. Mark could only hope that the security systems in the shaft were equally inoperative. At least the elevator car was here, rather than blocking the shaft higher up. Getting through the floor from below would have been a real pain.
He pointed at the access hatch in the ceiling. "Can you get up there?"
Don gave him a look that was pure disdain and jumped for it. One fist to knock the hatch loose, the other caught the edge of the opening, and he swung himself through and onto the roof of the car.
Mark cursed silently and followed him. Thank goodness this hadn't happened a couple of weeks ago. He still wasn't back to full fitness... but he was close. He'd need to be. ISO elevator shafts didn't have ladders up the sides. Security reasons. And, dammit, he was going to lead the next bit, not Don Wade.
A full floor of blank wall lay between him and the sole opening above him. Ten feet per floor, and then some for the inter-floor voids. Close to twelve feet vertically to the ledge. No room for a run-up, or any way to generate momentum.
You can do this, he told himself, and leapt.
He couldn't. Not twelve feet. But he made something close to four, and that meant he could hang from the ledge and then pull himself up. Upper body strength, after six months in a wheelchair, was a non-issue. One knee on the ledge, then the other, find a handhold on the rough brick of the shaft wall, and he stood up facing the doors.
Please, don't just open fire when you realise someone's coming up the shaft. He started tapping. Long, long, short. Pause. Short, four longs. Pause. Repeat.
After three repeats, the door opened and Mark found himself looking down the barrel of black section security's standard issue firearm, with two more just behind it.
"Hands up!" the captain barked.
"Only if you want me to fall back down there." Mark did raise his right hand over his head. "Captain, I don't have time for games. Do you really think anyone could impersonate me this well?"
"You should have been at the last Halloween party, Commander," one of the other guards muttered, but all three guns were lowered, and the captain offered him a hand.
"Sorry, Commander."
"For what? I'd have torn strips off you if you hadn't been guarding it." He turned round and leaned back into the shaft. "Don? Put the hatch back - then can you get up here?"
It made him feel rather better that it took Don three attempts, and even then he had to be hauled into the corridor.
"Commander," the captain said as his men wound the doors to the elevator shaft closed again, "the senior staff are in briefing room one, if you want to join them."
"I -" He stopped. Down another corridor, someone was yelling for backup.
"You and you. With me." A random guard and the captain. He didn't want to leave the elevator shaft unguarded.
The shouts were coming from the top of another elevator shaft: the one which dropped to the level of the Phoenix's hangar deep beneath ISO. One not very senior guard stood there, fingers white on his gun, eyes glued to the doors.
"Step back, son," the captain said, not unkindly. "Commander?"
"Hush." The kid was right. There was definitely something going on in there. Someone coming up the shaft.
"Open it," he said, boomerang out. "Just a fraction." If there was a squad of Spectrans coming up that way, flashing sharp blades in the shaft should put them off really quite efficiently even without the sonics. Efficiently enough that it would be worth losing his weapon. He'd never be able to make a throw which would bring it back in a space that narrow.
The captain - Adams, his nametag read - nodded, hit the manual release, and eased the doors a fraction apart.
Who goes there? Mark didn't say it. Instead, he called, "Report!"
"G-2... reporting..."
Jason's voice, no question. He sounded exhausted.
"Open it!" Mark snapped.
A cablegun grappling hook buried itself in the corridor ceiling almost before the doors were fully open. A couple of minutes after that, the Condor appeared, both hands locked round the pistolgrip of the cablegun, swinging from side to side and using the cable retraction mechanism as a ratchet. Mechanical, spring-based, non-electronic, and not particularly powerful. The moment Jason's feet hit the floor he dropped the gun, leaving it to reel itself slowly into the hook. He winced as he lowered his arms.
"What the hell is going on?"
"Spectra," said the young guard.
"No shit. Doing what?"
Mark shook his head. "EMP, I think. Power's out, and there's a massive forcefield all round ISO. And we're under assault."
"Your bracelet as dead as mine?"
Mark held his hand up, showing the blank face. "Who else is down there?"
Jason shrugged and winced again. "Standard guards and maintenance. I told them to sit tight and stay locked down." He rotated his shoulders gingerly, one at a time. "Not one of my better ideas."
"Nobody else will be coming up that way, at least." Mark didn't know exactly how deep the elevator shaft was, but the Phoenix's hangar was well below sea level. How high were the cliffs round here? Probably two hundred feet, maybe more... and then the ground sloped up from the clifftop to the ISO complex.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I will be."
"Then we'd best go find Anderson."
Someone had opened every door off the corridor - not a bad idea, given that they couldn't possibly guard every window in every room - and Jason gasped as he got his first glance outside.
"That's one hell of a forcefield. How are they generating something like that? When nothing else electrical works at all?"
"You said it." Mark glanced sideways. He needed to ask. "Implant?"
"Like it was never there. Creepy as all hell. And it wasn't an EMP. The emergency generator we hauled out ran just fine and generated nothing. I have no idea what could do that. Are you okay?"
"Better now I know it's not just me, I guess." He checked his tree. Still half visible. That was something, at least. He'd had a horror that the thing might be getting smaller.
The briefing room wasn't as full as he'd expected. Anderson was at the head of the table. Ivanov. Grant.
The emergency equipment chest lay open on the floor to the side. Hardened comms, serious batteries, all stored inside a Faraday cage which would have protected them from any EMP. Protocol said that the first thing command should have done would be to hand them out and get people at vantage points observing what was going on. There should have been one left in this room, clamped to Anderson's ear. Looked like Jason was right.
One of Grant's security team stood each side of the door, wearing that 'I'm part of the furniture' expression which Mark assumed security officers had lessons in. Message runners. No comms was an absolute nightmare.
The screen behind Anderson's seat was dark and dead. Someone had found a flipchart stand. The visible sheet held a rough sketch of the ISO complex, contained in a big circle. Standard symbols indicated known and suspected locations of friendlies and hostiles. Most of them were 'uncertain'. None of them were 'dealt with'.
He turned to the men at the door. "Get Wade in here."
The man on the left saluted and left, and Mark headed for the flipchart. There wasn't much he could add, but 'known friendlies' in the Team Seven area of the complex together with 'hostiles, dealt with' was better than nothing.
"Casualties?" asked Ivanov.
"Yes." He didn't know who, or how many, or how bad, and this wasn't the time to worry about it.
Jason took the pen from him and marked 'known friendlies' in the hangar level. "What's Don got to do with this?" he asked. There was careful control in his tone.
"He's gone out to infiltrate the Spectran ranks," Grant said flatly.
"You're kidding. He'll never cope."
"He did fine," said Mark before the two of them could turn it into a slanging match. "Unfortunately he ran up against a bluesuit who made him. But -"
The door opened again, and Don came in. His body language screamed 'fear' even worse than it had downstairs.
"You wanted me, Commander?"
Mark pointed at the flipchart. "Anything you can add to that, based on what you heard?"
Don nodded stiffly and headed for it, giving the table a wide berth. Grant's chair, Mark realised. Major Grant had, after all, been responsible for Don's interrogation.
He marked hostile headquarters in the western parking lot, two uncertain hostile strongholds beyond it, and an uncertain friendly marker in a corridor which Mark knew for sure he hadn't been in.
"Elaborate," snapped Grant, and Don dropped the pen on the floor, visibly trembling.
"I..."
"Easy, son," said Ivanov. "The parking lot?"
Don retrieved the pen, making a visible effort to control himself. He pointed it first at Mark's 'dealt with' hostiles outside Team Seven. "The captain of this squad wanted to report there. I think it's their command centre." The pen moved to the two uncertain hostiles. "The grammar he used... they came in more than one craft, and they set up HQ in front of them. This one" - he indicated the uncertain friendly - "I'm not sure, but he didn't want to go this way even though it would have been a shorter route to the parking lot. But he might have made me by then."
"Yes. What happened to this source of useful information?" Grant's tone was icy, and Mark stepped in.
"Like Don said, he made him. Started asking questions about who his CO was. He was a bluesuit, and we know they're not idiots. Don killed him in self-defence when he pulled a gun, and I'd have done the same. Now, if you want a goon to interrogate, G-2 and I will go fetch you one."
He stared Grant down - he was not a broken traitor to be intimidated - and the other grimaced and looked away.
"We need to discuss our next move," Anderson said. "Security, I want all available relevant personnel in here in ten minutes. Send scientists and engineers to room two. Wade, that includes you."
He didn't specify what relevant was beyond that, and the man at the door didn't ask before leaving. Mark only hoped it included someone useful. Twenty senior operatives armed to the teeth would be good.
Wait a minute, though. Armed to the teeth with what?
"Sergeant," he said to the remaining security officer," can I see your sidearm?"
Grant's men probably also had training in not looking surprised when asked odd questions by G-Force. The man handed it over without so much as a raised eyebrow.
As he'd thought. He'd seen the other guards carrying them, had several aimed at him by the elevators. ISO's latest standard issue. Laser sights, electronic trigger. Aware that every eye in the room was on him, Mark pointed it at the window and fired.
Not even a click.
There was a horrified silence, broken by Jason casually tossing the cablegun onto the table.
"This'll still work," he said, one eye on Anderson, and Mark belatedly remembered the arguments about whether it should or shouldn't be upgraded with the latest electronic trigger technology. Jason had been insistent that it had a trigger mechanism he could fix in the field. "What else do we have that's all-mechanical?"
"There's a revolver in my desk drawer," said Grant. "Not much ammunition."
"We must have plenty of ammunition..." Jason tailed off. "Let me guess. In the armoury, electronic locks, UPS-based backup, no manual systems."
Grant nodded silently.
And Mark realised that no, there wasn't a minigun trained on the main entrance, because miniguns were electric-powered. The Spectrans had known exactly where to find Team Seven. He could only hope they had less information on the location of black section.