Nov. 14, 2149
Outpost Alpha
Commander Williams sprinted through the concrete halls of the outpost on his way to the command center, not caring what people thought of the sight of the bases' commanding officer nearly knocking over several citizens on his way to his through the corridors. He only slowed once he reached the door, moving briskly through the technicians and officers milling around the room as he found his way to the communications station.
A few feet behind the console the commander barked an order as he approached. "Specialist Travers, I want a report."
Olivia Travers bolted upright at the commander's voice. She adjusted her headset before pulling up what she assumed the commander was going to ask her about. "The transmission was a little garbled sir, but I believe our DC recon team sent out a transmission. The relay station at Sumter barely picked it up two nights ago, must have been right on the edge of their radio range. But their equipment couldn't clean it up well enough so they sent it to us."
The commander stood silently behind the specialist, eyeing over the screens, waiting for the specialist. Realizing she wasn't going to proceed on her own he gave her a nudge. "Play the transmission."
Travers went to work on the system, dialing and tuning a series of switches who's purposes perplexed the commander, though he didn't tell the specialist that. Finally she brought up the volume and for a few seconds the only thing they could hear was static. Before Commander Williams could ask if there was a problem with the file he suddenly heard Lieutenant Taylor's over the transmission, scarcely louder than the background static.
"This is Lieutenant Jarin Taylor, contacting the Outpost. Commander, if you're listening we found something up here. Something you're going to believe. We had to head south along the coast a ways to get back in range and it's too risky to stay put for the night so we need a series of radio relays set up along the coast north of Sumter for live communications. It's that big of a discovery, sir. Will return to this spot in seven days for return transmission on same frequency. Taylor out."
Travers flipped a switch in front her, killing the transmission which was once again taken over by static. "That's all we got sir. Apparently it repeated three times that night, but each was the same message. Haven't heard anything since." Travers turned around when the commander didn't respond to either her, or the transmission itself. "Sir?"
The commander looked down at her. "Pass the word up to Colonel Avery at Bravo. We need to take down a few of their interior radio relays and get them along the coast at intervals three miles under their max range. That should cut down on any power issues from the storms along the coast this time of year."
Travers turned around in her chair. "What about the president, think he'll sign off?"
Williams looked down at his comm specialist. "He's the president-elect for a couple more months. Even if he was the full blown president I'd still tell him to screw off. We have a job to do. Taylor's been on enough missions to know if something big enough to break from his primary objective. If he says it's worth it, then I'll believe him until I have reason not to. Any more questions, specialist?"
Travers was a bit taken aback by the commander's directness. "Um, no, sir."
"Good, then patch me through, I want to give this order personally."
Nov. 19, 2149
The Rig
Jenn Blake was hard at work re-wiring the network cables along the north wall, deep in the bowels of the base. After the short express elevator ride down, she had at first been stunned to see how well preserved the old world technology was. With a little elbow grease, and some help from the base's educational Virtual Intelligence, she'd managed to restore power and function to quite a bit of the computer systems on the main level. But for some reason the north bank of computer, even after powered on, refused to connect to the main network. So she slid on her back, ripping out the cable casings as she worked backwards from the main network hub to try and locate where the connection was breaking down. Between the tearing insulation and her own grunts of effort she completely missed Jarin stepping off the whisper quiet elevator, at least he until he yelled to get her attention.
"Hey, you want to quit monkeying around down there?" Jenn bolted upright at his voice, loudly knocking her head into the bottom of one of the monitor desks she'd been working under. While she rubbed the back of her head, she worked her way out from under the desk to find Jarin kneeling down next to her. "You know, giving yourself a concussion won't rescue you from grunt work, Jenn." He offered her a hand to help her up and the pair cleaned off a few old chairs to sit down. "But who am I kidding, you love this stuff. Probably couldn't drag you away from here if I tried."
Jenn propped her feet up on another chair between the two, leaning away to stretch her back. "Damn right you couldn't." Pulling herself forward into a seated position she caught the canteen Jarin had tossed to her. "Thanks."
As she screwed off the top Jarin started getting down to the matter at hand. "So you've been down here going on three days straight since you talked Luna into letting you coming down. Hopefully none of us have gotten in your way, but given that I need to head out to give the sitrep to Commander Williams tonight what have you found?"
She answered after a swig of water. "Well for starters, Luna and her people have only scratched the surface of this place. The place had all the oxygen sucked out and was hermetically sealed for over 93 years until Luna showed up, so things are still near mint condition down here. That VI apparently played a message to her when she first came down and answered a lot of her questions about the world. My guess is it's a historical VI, because it doesn't know anything about electrical systems, otherwise they wouldn't have had any problems getting this base up and running again.
Jenn handed Jarin back the canteen. "Explain that one to me, the commander will want to know what's giving this power the juice to run all these computers."
"Well that one's fairly simple actually. According to the base schematics on the main hub it's getting power a proprietary geothermal generator. There's a second system connected to a hydro-electric system underneath one of the major ocean currents a dozen or so miles out that was meant to supply power to several other bunkers like this, but it doesn't seem to ever have gone online. Oh, and the coolest part? The geothermal system is maintained by robots. Robots!"
Jarin laughed at the sheer joy on Jenn's face. "I take it that's the next stop?"
"Yeah, but first I gotta get a handle on all the main systems and this stupid bank of computers," she pointed to the north bank she'd been working on when Jarin came down. "controls the bases internal defenses near as I can figure. Don't want to run into any nasty surprises on the way down."
"So what about this bunker? What was it meant for? Government continuity?"
"Bingo. The VI tells me that this was actually the primary fallback point for the President and the Cabinet, in the opposite direction of the one they told the public about at Mount Weather. Apparently they built a bullet train system into the bay floor that connected to the base so the president could escape DC in time."
"Really? So did she make it here before the bombs dropped?"
"Yes. I'm still digging through the files, but the VI confirmed the President did arrive, and they blew the train system to prevent any radiation seepage. But the base had only been completed for several weeks when the bombs fell and wasn't fully stocked. There was only enough food to last a few years."
"So they starved to death."
"Hard to say, but the activation log on the VI had the last date before Luna as three after the bombs dropped. Hopefully, I'll know more once I have time to sift through the computers more thoroughly. Whatever happened to them, it couldn't have been pretty, that's for sure."
Jarin sat back, running a hand through his beard while he digested the information. "Damn."
Jenn nodded. "Yeah, but that's not even the heavy stuff. The VI filled me on what it knows about the AI that went rogue. We already knew its creator had managed to make it to orbit and was working on version 2. Hell, our secondary command room was mission control for her satellite. And we knew that her station launched a pod down to the ground and the VI had noted an orbital strike in that same window. Track that with what Luna said about the first Commander and I'm thinking freaking Becca herself made it back to the ground!"
"Not to damper the enthusiasm, because believe me, this is all interesting as hell, but was there anything actionable I need to pass on to the Commander when we get the comms up?"
Jenn mock glared at Jarin "I was just about to get there, spoil-sport. You want actionable intel? How about that Luna was totally right about the first AI still being active or that the station VI has tracked several people with some kind of weird chip things in their brains who've all tried to break into Luna's stronghold?
This shocked Jarin. "How in the hell did it know that? What kind of chip?"
Jenn threw up her hands. "Hell if I know, but apparently that shipping container we rode up in doubles as a fully body scanner. But if I was an evil AI trying to take over the world I don't think I would ever stop trying to take this place, and that fact that no one's tried in weeks makes me think the AI doesn't know anything about the real base down below. Score one for the government actually managing to keep something secret."
"Now that's some stuff I can use." Jarin stood up, motioning for Jenn to follow him. "Boat's leaving in 20, let's get topside."
Jenn lazily got out the chair, the lack of sleep from the past few days finally catching up to her in a hurry. She wrapped an arm around Jarin as they walked to the elevator. "So what are you going to tell the commander?"
"Pretty much everything you just told me. I'm gonna ask him to change our primary objective. We can do a lot more up here than just find some people who may or may not have managed to survive their space station crashing to the ground."
As the two entered the elevator Jenn looked up at Jarin. "Just promise me when you get back you wake me up for a little moonlight stroll on the deck."
Jarin smiled mischievously, moving in for a kiss. "Oh I can promise a lot more than that."
Just over a minute later Trent was in the main hall, waiting for the elevator to arrive so he could go talk to the lieutenant. When the doors slid open, however he was in for a quite a surprise. "Oh." He turned around, trying to avoid more of something he probably shouldn't have in the first place. "I'll just, yeah; I'll just come back later."
A few hours later President-Elect James Grayson walked into the commander center just as Commander Williams was hanging up the comm.
"Tell me that what I heard on the way here was wrong." The sitting president and the commander both turned to face him. The looks on their faces told him everything he needed to know. "So it's as bad as it sounds?"
Williams nodded. "There's an AI out there, the same one that blew up the whole damn world, and both the station survivors and our people are right in its crosshairs. So yeah, it's as bad as it sounds."
Grayson was stunned, not wanting to believe that after a week and a half after his election the whole world may very well be on the edge of collapse yet again. "So, now what?"
A/N: Bit more exposition than I would normally be cool with, but had to get some things laid out for the coming chapters. For the most part, the first half, give or take, of season 3 will hold for the main cast, but you'll quickly pick up on the changes in the next chapter. Please review!