Susan's Plague

Chapter 12 - Contingencies

A dozen black-booted members of Niles' security detail flooded into the MemEx lab, guns at the ready. Two helped the bloodied oligarch to his feet and escorted him back to his office. The rest worked on freeing Henrik and the technicians from their bonds and securing the room. Two were stationed just outside the door denying entry to anyone who was not strictly authorized to be there.

A team of MedTechs arrived shortly thereafter and began working on the casualties, all but two of the guards were already deceased. Epsilon troops were renown for being brutally efficient and deadly, they were not know for their mercy. The MedTechs, as a result, called in a clean-up crew to deal with the mess left behind. Henrik and his team were ushered quickly from the room to make way for the repair and cleanup teams. In the confusion no one noticed Nic's Netpod still connected to one of the workstations.

Nic's heart still pounded in his chest, listening to the life and death struggle in the MemEx lab was excruciating. He had never before felt so impotent, unable to aid his friends. The overheard din painted a pretty ugly picture of the battle. He could only imagine what had actually transpired. He wondered if any of his friends were injured in the fray.

It was apparent though that they were successful in liberating his Netpod from Niles and for now it was connected directly to a Centreon workstation. It was a small victory, which gave him a glimmer of hope. But now he had his part to play. He'd made a promise.

It took Nic only minutes to get full control of the workstation, he was forced to move quickly as the Netpod could be disconnected at any moment. He immediately began setting up a backdoor so he could easily regain entry to the system in case of a disconnection. The files provided by Wagner provided Nic considerable access into adjoining systems, for the most part he was able to move throughout the network with relative ease. There were so many areas of the network he wished to explore, he had been trying to access this network for a lifetime, it seemed. However, he could not allow himself the luxury of curiosity and stayed on task, his promised goal of locating and freeing Erik.

The first of the two networks Wagner gave as possible locations presented itself as a partially hidden network segment, separated and firewalled from the rest of the network. Nic delegated the job of penetrating the network to Katherine, while he went about locating the other possible location.

* * * * *

Angry and uncharacteristically disheveled, Niles stormed about his office in a rage, berating anyone who dared interrupt his tirade. Presently, two managers from the network security team were being dressed down over their team's failure to prevent Wagner's infiltration of key systems in the MemEx lab. The subsequent disaster was being neatly laid at their feet, and Niles was making no effort to be discreet. The men seem to shrink before Niles as he spared no venom in his relentless stream of accusations, verbally accosting the two managers for over fifteen minutes.

A chime sounded, interrupting the onslaught, and his secretary opened a channel, "Recall team here for you sir."  She said, ever cheerful.

"Send them right in," he answered, "as for you two," he turned back to the managers, "I want a full analysis of the incident by tomorrow morning. Now get out of my sight!" The visibly shaken managers passed the Recall team with their heads down as they exited the office.

"Go right on in." The secretary advised the Recall team, who were exchanging looks with each other.

Niles, still red in the face, addressed them immediately, "Gentlemen, we have a situation, three rogue Epsilon operatives have aided in the escape of four known terrorists." The men listened intently, as Niles continued. "I need you to recall all three operators with utmost expedience. The targets are Captain Daniel Carrington and a couple of his lieutenants, Paladins one-three and nine. I have already uploaded their CIT keys and recall codes to your systems."