Tyler sat down at the table and took the maps and other random papers from Donovan.
"So run down what's so valuable about these alley rats, what kinda info did they claim to have?"
"Well for one thing," Mike pointed to one of the maps that appeared to be a city plan. "This is why so many abandoned buildings still have electricity... the Visitors are running the power plants themselves."
Tyler was perplexed for only seconds. "And that's because..." he began.
"Keeping things running keeps people calm, and happy," Mike finished for him. "Looks like they learned some things the first time around. First time they kept switching it up, on here and off there, to drive people out and keep them guessing."
"And look how well that turned out," Tyler smiled wickedly. "Lotsa pissed off people on the move, who met up together and raised all kinds of hell." The smile disappeared. "What makes you think they don't have bugs everywhere? Keeping people calm and happy and talkative, in all the right places?" He stood and yelled out the door. "Yo! Fred, c'min here, we gotta job for the wild boys!"
They swept the building top to bottom under Tyler's direction. None of the stuff appeared to be functional but they pulled out everything they found for future use.
Over the course of the next week, "Hotel Cell" took shape and a routine had been established. Mike, Tyler, and Angie ran the strategy, and Fred ran the now-known-as "wild boys". Each day Fred gave his crew their jobs. Mostly they were gathering intelligence, and each day Mike would go over what they brought back with them, then get together with Tyler to see how to fit it all together.
A few others were tasked with locating former comrades of the "senior rebels". At the top of that list were Juliet Parrish, Elias Taylor and Willie. Julie would be an asset in too many ways to count, and Ham and Mike needed Elias for his help in scrounging everything under the sun, and for his ability to work both sides of the street to get information. Willie was needed to help decipher and make use of any intercepted Visitor communications they hoped to get, and for his knowledge of the culture of the Visitors. Working together he and Angie would be far more than the sum of their parts.
The predictable objections to welcoming a "freaking lizard" into their operation were both unwisely expressed by one of the random wild boys, and soundly shut down by Tyler.
"You gotta problem with Willie being one of us, she'll be happy to discuss it with you." He nodded toward Angie, who smiled and gave a friendly wave with her Ruger as Tyler continued, "Choose your words wisely, they'll probably be your last."
Angie had also gone to Fred privately, to plead with him to locate Chris Farber. Tyler and Mike hadn't talked about him after that first day, the imperative of war-logic forcing them to assume he'd be capable of finding his way to them if he were still alive. Tyler didn't even speak his name after that, and Angie knew better than to bring it up. However she was compelled by something that overcame all logic. Finding Chris would be vital to their operation, she told Fred, though she kept her deeper reasons to herself even as she bullshitted her way through explaining why Tyler and Donovan hadn't mentioned this to him.
He had to be okay; she refused to believe she was the only one left alive after the attack because the only reason she was alive was because she ran like hell. According to long-established plan, but that didn't help any. Since Reno's death the only way Angie could think of to fix that sometimes empty space behind Tyler's eyes, not to mention the growing hole in her heart, was to find Chris Farber. She didn't care what Ham had said about losing Maggie and how she got through it. She knew damn well that if Maggie had gone missing he would've moved heaven and enlisted hell to find her, for the same reasons she had now. But so far not a hint of even his previous existence was on the streets.
As Mike and Tyler organized the intel gathering Angie was putting together "geek tech" to serve as a center of operations and eventual data crunching where they could store and analyze whatever was learned that might lead them to a plan of action. The office computer was powerful, and already capable of parsing Visitor language. Angie immediately disconnected it from whatever outside network it had been connected to, and on paper began to design what would be necessary to turn it into a secure system: parallel modules large and small, some that could hold and run the existing applications plus any more useful ones they could get their hands on, some that would hold only data, all of them small enough to conceal separately in safe spaces or on anyone's person. She'd need lots of them... each app would be on a separate module, each class of data would also have its own separate "home". She'd gotten the idea from the resistance itself... distinct cells each with its own function that could not be used to identify the system - or strategy - as a whole. The computer itself would be empty except when in use. It would appear to be a shell of no use to anyone and would look like it had been that way for a long time.
"Jesus, Tyler, this is torture!" Angie moaned as he sorted through his latest batch of retrieved surveillance equipment in the hotel office aka the Geek Cave.
She'd gotten a pretty respectable computer system started but was madly impatient to refine it. Pirated surveillance equipment was being reassembled by Tyler and Donovan into something that could be planted in areas where useful intelligence could be gathered and she wanted to be ready when it started to pay off.
Tyler briefly inspected the bits and parts that were part of the kind of tech he was proud to say he understood and she did not.
"Look, you came into the last war in the middle, this time we're starting from scratch. Besides, the wild boys are gonna track down Elias and Willie. We'll have our scrounge-master and translation lizard..." he paused and grinned then "corrected" himself, "I mean translation wizard back, and all will be right with the world." He knew she hated waiting her turn to play almost more than he did.
He could grin with a free conscience because he knew that Angie didn't fear for Elias and Willie's survival. She knew them too well to doubt it. He wanted them back as badly as she did, for reasons both strategic and personal. Something was bruised inside of her since the attack that destroyed their home and their staff, and Reno. He knew better than to push her on that one; he also knew that Willie could help her get her head around what had happened and why, and get her to accept that she couldn't have changed things even if she'd had that magic wand she always seemed to think she'd misplaced. Farber would help too, just being there. He smiled as he realized that, to Angie, in some ways Chris was like that big cat of hers. His solid presence reassured her that things were normal. "Normal" being a relative term for people like them. Of course Farber may have been captured or killed... nah. He told himself for the tenth time (today) that he wouldn't waste time wondering about that one. There was too much work to get done.
Angie dismissed Tyler's casual reassurance. "Oh please, 'gonna' is a long way from 'is'! It was bad enough when we had to use those dumbass classifieds. But this passing notes back and forth like junior high school..." She abruptly dropped the cable that refused to fit the parallel drive at hand, and marched to the office door.
"Stevie!" she screamed. "Do you have those cables you went after or do I whup you with the ones that don't fit?!"
Tyler kept his smile hidden. In reality Angie had made a sort of peace with the greasy punk who almost paid for a failed grope with his life. Once she discovered he'd been a champion hacker since before the liberation, specializing in downloading personal identities to steal, she decided to make him useful. In return, she promised not to make his life a living hell for as long as they were members of the same rebel cell. Tyler could tell she liked this kid in spite of his lame debut, and it didn't take a genius to guess he reminded her of a similar kid with similar talents whose death still haunted her.
Steve had already been on the way to the office toting a canvas bag of purloined parts when Angie's voice tore through the air. When she was into her computer stuff, and he could help, he thought she was pretty cool... but when things didn't go right he almost wished she'd popped him with that Ruger the day she arrived.
"Yeah, yeah, I's a coming boss lady!"
"Cheer up kid," Mike told him from where he sat going over some recently delivered messages. "She's not always like this." He paused a beat, then added, "Sometimes she gets nasty."
Then a commotion began outside; Steve dropped the bag and pulled his gun out, and Donovan followed suit.
"You better have a good reason to be here," Donovan yelled.
A familiar voice bellowed in reply, "Who do I gotta shoot to get a decent cup of coffee?"
"Holy shit!" Donovan gasped then hollered toward the office, "Tyler, Angie, get your asses out here! You need to see this!"
Chris Farber, looking none the worse for wear after a week and change, strolled in with an automatic weapon in one hand and a teenage sentry in the other.
"You really gotta stop hiring from the bottom," he drawled as he released the kid. "Damn, Donovan I didn't think you'd the first live rebel I'd find."
"HEY GUYS!" Mike yelled again even as he energetically shook the big man's hand. "FRONT AND CENTER!"
Angie glanced up from the the equipment she was struggling with. It didn't sound like an emergency.
"Better go, or he won't stop whining."
Tyler snorted in amusement but added, "He called you, too. No reason for me to suffer alone."
She waved her left hand in the air as she went back to checking the cable connectors she and Steve would be working on.
"'As long as I'm breathing', it says. Nothing about suffering together."
"Knew I shoulda gotten a bigger ring." Rolling his eyes, Tyler went out to the lobby.