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Post by Silverback on Jan 7, 2005 11:16:44 GMT
Shrike listened in silence to the report as the cold wind buffeted his body. Leo gathered his thought before he replied. "Hitting the roof top sounds like the best option, at least it will give you extra time to penetrate the security systems."
An idea suddenly popped into his head. "Are the lighting systems controlled electronically or via a central power grid? If it's possible to knock the lights out it would give me an advantage over the security personnel in there. Even if it just gives me enough time to get to that elevator shaft I can bypass the car and drop down to the basement level and gain entry that way."
Before waiting for a reply he finished off his train of thought, "if we can't disable the alarm systems at least knocking the lights out should cause enough confusion for me to complete my mission and get out of there. I'd prefer to bypass the security altogether but we do not always get what we wish for. Shrike out."
From the increasingly rapid pings of the sonar visor Shrike knew that he only had a few more minutes before he'd have to commit himself to his point of entry. Unless Janson came back with some late-breaking information Leo was going for a roof top entry.
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Post by Tomahawk on Jan 7, 2005 12:11:03 GMT
It was a few moments before Janson's voice came back over the ComLink, a few moments which had seemed like an eternity.
"Ok, looks like the lights are set up on the same grid as the IR sensors and electric eyes. From what I'm seeing here, I could kill it, but they could get it back online in 30 minutes or so there via on-site over-ride. Problem there is, if the main power grid goes down, it automatically sets off a level 1 security alarm. Not really a big deal- they'll probably figure it's a downed power line, what with this wind."
The Comlink went dead for a few seconds before Janson continued,
"I'm reading the elevator as currently being on the bottom floor, sub-basement. If you manage to even get to it, you'll have to somehow pry the doors open to even get to the shaft- they're governed by electronic locks which will be dead when I kill the power. Wait a sec- I just found their master comm channel. Once you get inside I could patch you into their communications, so you'd know what they're saying. If you speak german, that is. Ok Shrike, what's the plan here? Gimme the word and I'll kill their lights and phone. Over."
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Post by Silverback on Jan 7, 2005 13:20:34 GMT
"Cut the chatter! I need to concentrate on my landing." Shrike was half-annoyed at Jansons timing, he could do without distractions right at this moment. Getting a final lock on his bearings Leo flared his fins and landed lightly on the roof top of the building his feet crunching on the gravel surface as he half-skidded to a standstill.
He still wasn't used to pulling off these kind of stunts but the adrenaline rush kept his mind sharp and focussed on the task at hand. "Okay I'm on the roof and heading towards the doorway. Over."
Reaching his defined point of entry Shrike pulled out his PDA and plugged in the cardkey hack to the entry mechanism and snapped the cable onto the PDA. "Okay Janson, I'm at the roof entry and am plugged in. Can you hack the code for me?"
"As soon as the door opens I need a power outage and directions to the elevator shaft. Once the lights go out I want a mark to give me three minutes to get to the sub-basement, fifteen minutes locating and downloading the data and twelve minutes dealing with guards and making my exit. Can you do that? Out." The last question was pretty much rhetorical he realised, if he couldn't complete his mission during the blackout he probably wouldn't get out at all.
With his hand poised on the door handle Shrike took a deep breath and waited for Jansons confirmation that all was green-lighted and ready.
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Post by Tomahawk on Jan 7, 2005 14:05:51 GMT
"Uh... Roger that. Codehack uploaded to your PDA... Now. The entrance to the elevator is in an office off of the corridor stright down from the stairs- clear at the end. Your PDA is already pre-programmed with 25Gig of hacks for the keypad there- if none of them work, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way. I am reading nothing to even remotely indicate that you have been detected. Power is going down in 5... 4... 3... 2... Now. Good Luck, Shrike. Out."
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Post by Silverback on Jan 8, 2005 11:18:21 GMT
With a click and a buzz the PDA hacker bypassed the security pad and Leo yanked the door open to reveal the stairwell down to the third floor. Quickly recovering and stowing his equipment he clattered down the steps and accessed the main office corridor.
His hearing detected a faint babbling in german but it was too far away for him to be worried about. Getting his bearings the costumed man ran almost silently along the carpeted floor through the main office and to the main elevator doors. Fumbling around on the nearest desk Shrikes hand landed on a pair of heavy duty scissors.
'Perfect', he thought to himself. Inserting the blades between the metal doors Leo gave the handles a twist and inserted his fingers into the crack. Muscles rippling he managed to force an opening wide enough to climb through. Popping the scissors into a pouch on his utility belt Shrike dropped down the shaft and flared his fins to slow his descent as he used the cable to guide him to the car roof below.
"How am I doing for time Janson?" He enquired as soon as he was secure on the elevator cabin.
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Post by Tomahawk on Jan 8, 2005 11:41:29 GMT
"1 minute, 45 seconds down. Shrike, it looks like that office had some kind of independent alarm system- must have been a battery-backup of some sort. I'm reading 5 guys making their way to that room. Did you forget to hack the keypad on the office door?" Janson crackled over the ComLink.
The reception on the frequency was starting to waver and break up- no doubt caused by the casing of metal surrounding the elevator shaft.
"Shri... fzzzz...dio. The... fzzzz... minutes. Loo... fzzzzzz... way. Over. "
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Post by Silverback on Jan 8, 2005 12:36:07 GMT
'Office door? What office door?' Shrike thought to himself. As the radio crackled and 'died' he knew that he would be out of contact until his mission was finished now.
"Chyort!" he cursed as he realised his rooftop escape route was now cut-off and it was likely that the other security personnel had been alerted too. "Chyortov!" Leo put aside his frustration and returned his concentration to the mission. Groping round on the cabin roof Shrike located and prised open the trapdoor and dropped into the elevator itself.
There was no time for niceties and stealth now. He needed to take down any opposition quickly and gain access to the central computer core. Taking out the pistol he ensured that the magazine was properly loaded and checked the firing mechanism. Ever cautious Leo used the same 'trick' to pry open the elevator doors and used hiw visor to detect the presence of anyone in the immediate area.
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Post by Tomahawk on Jan 9, 2005 22:42:25 GMT
As Shrike started to pry the doors open, the elevator fans suddenly started to operate, and he heard a loud "Ca-Klunk!" from below the cabin proper. The doors themselves hiss open with a loud, "Bing!"
Directly outside the now wide-open doors, Shrike's sonar paints a three-dimensional picture of a rather short corridor with a portal at the far end, and what seems to be a table and chair close beside it. Directly above, coming from along the cieling, Shrike can hear the tell-tale sound of flourescent lights coming on. The entire area itself seems to have a faint yet steady background Hummm. There is no presence of anyone in the immediate area detected.
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Post by Silverback on Jan 10, 2005 14:14:45 GMT
"Ca-Klunk!"
The loud noise almost made Leo jump out of his skin and he cursed something unintelligible, and Russian, under his breath.
"Bing!"
As the doors slid open under his touch Shrike jumped back slightly. 'Surely the power should still be out!?' He was not comfortable with the mission any more. It was really making him nervous, and he didn't know why. His attention was suddenly grabbed by the sound of fluorescent lights kicking into life.
"Bzz, click, click, chik, chik, chik, bzz, bzzzzz."
'Dammit, Janson was supposed to have killed the power to the building!' This was looking worse by the second. 'Come on Leo,' he told himself 'keep it nice, cool and professional. At least nobody's down here - so far anyway.' Niggled the doubt at the back of his mind.
Taking the scissors he knelt down, felt along the edge of the elevator door and firmly pushed them home under the track to prevent them closing. At least no one would be getting in that way. 'Ha, you hope!' There was the nagging voice of doubt again.
Pulling out the PDA Shrike ran his fingers over the braille keypad and called up plans for the sub-basement. Hopefully, apart from the elevator shaft, there would be only one other way in and out. He needed to secure that against intrusion too. There was no time for caution anymore. The security personnel already knew something was wrong, it was just a matter of time before they put two and two together. 'Hm, maybe they'll come up with five?'
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Post by Tomahawk on Jan 10, 2005 15:55:15 GMT
With a loud skkkrrriiitttchhhh the elevator doors started again to close, but only managed about an inch before being wedged fast. Shrike's plan with the scissors worked like a charm. From inside, the " bing!" continued at an annoying 30 second interval. The plans sprung up quickly onto Shrike's modified PDA, forming a raised-outline map of the sub-basement. According to the map, Leo was now standing in the elevator access corridor to a much larger area labeled simply "Forschung". The map showed a larger room beyond the door, with several smaller rooms of chambers connected directly to this larger room along the left-hand side, apparantly with no doors of their own. In the farthest right-hand corner of the room practically the entire area was filled in and labeled "NotStrom". Directly across from this area the map showed another corridor similar to the one he was currently standing in- no doubt the stairwell access. The map also showed a stairway heading downward about in the center of the large chamber, most likely leading to the Sub-Basement area 2, and the Mainframe.
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Post by Silverback on Jan 11, 2005 13:15:52 GMT
There was something 'disturbing' about the room he found himself in. A faint memory tugged at his conciousness as all too familiar sounds reverberated through his enhanced senses.
A steady low level hum emanated from what was obviously a set of machinery in one corner of the lab. Other strange sounds accompanied the symphony of noise, a loud crackle, almost like electricity discharging sounded to his left, to his right an intermittent, but faintly audible above the other noises, was a distinctive gurgle of liquid in containers. 'No it couldn't be!' His mind was dragged back to a time in Spetsnaz, a lab in Siberia, a time when he used to be able to see. He suddenly felt sick to the pit of his stomach. 'Come on, concentrate.' He declared a little shaky he pushed the terror to the back of his mind.
Tracing his finger tips over the raised image of the floor plan Leo noticed the only other entrance to the sub-basement. Something that felt like a set of sliding doors. 'Must assume that time is against me now.' Being out of contact with Janson was frustrating, 'hell, he could be dead for all you know. It'd be damn typical if this black bag job turned into pure window dressing'.
His professionalism wouldn't let him give up the task at hand. At the opposite end of the complex Shrikes sonar picked up the distinctive shape of three or four box shaped items of about four feet cubed. Hoping they were crates or something similar the russian went to investigate.
Running his fingers along the edge of the boxes Leo discovered to his delight they were apparently equipment crates. 'Excellent, maybe blocking the door will slow security down a little!' and with that he began to heft the heavy wooden crates into the doorway, stacking them high enough to prevent anyone from climbing over. Looking round he could find nothing to shore them up against being pushed over but at least the crash would alert him to immediate danger.
'There, that would have to suffice.' He still wasn't happy with the solution but it was the best option he had at that moment. Keeping his focus he sat down at the nearest terminal and plugged in the PDA and wondered whether the computer had access to the mainframe.
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Post by Tomahawk on Jan 11, 2005 13:45:13 GMT
Shrike connects his PDA into the nearest Terminal. After a few seconds which seem like an eternity, he is hacked into the main menu for this computer.
At first glance, it seems to be rather limited in it's functions and it's scope. A window pops up, with the question, RUN POWER DIAGNOSTIC Y/N?
Leo's ears perk up at the faint sound of movement, coming, surprisingly enough from beyond the crackling energy fields along the northern wall. A voice suddenly breaks the silence, coming from the same direction, saying,
"Hallo? Ist da jemand? Bitte, hilf mir! Lass mir raus!"
Shrike can easily tell by the tone of this voice that it's female, and sounds anxious and at the same time, very, very, very frightened.
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Post by Silverback on Jan 12, 2005 8:38:23 GMT
'Hmm, run a power diagnostic? Does that refer to the building power systems or . . . wait a minute, it could also mean . . .' Leo depressed the Y on the keypad and hoped that his hunch proved successful. His fingers tapped idly as he waited for the computer system to respond. Suddenly a voice emanated from one of the shielded cubicles.
"Hallo? Ist da jemand? Bitte, hilf mir! Lass mir raus!"
His immediate reaction saw the pistol yanked from its holster and pointed towards the source of the sound. It was moments like this that made him wish he'd stuck out the optional German language course at school. Leo tried desparately to recall some of the simple German phrases that he'd learnt from his military service, "Sprechen Sie Englisch oder Russen!"
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Post by Tomahawk on Jan 12, 2005 9:47:43 GMT
"Sprechen Sie Englisch oder Russen!"
A few seconds later, the voice responds,
"Russen? Ach nein, scheisse... KGB. I am speaking some english, but not russian. Please help and to getting me out!"
Her tone is now considerably different than before, still frightened, yet also tinged with apprehension as well, almost to a point where it sounds practically resigned to... what, exactly?
The PDA eagrely responds to it's command and begins spewing out lines of numbers jumbled with words together.
Suddenly, the machinery in the corner begins to hum even louder than it had before, then it settles back down to it's continually annoying background noise.
In this short moment of time, practically everything seems to become more audibally alive, for lack of a better term- the lights hiss and buzz louder, the energy fields crackle and spit like so much bacon in a frying pan. The sounds coming from to strange upright, fluid-filled pods gurgles even moreso, and Shrike could almost swear there's the faint dull thud-thud-thud of someone- or something- struggling against the glass.
The screen comes up again with another raised-text message window:
SYSTEMS TEST COMPLETED. ALL POWER AT OPTIMAL LEVELS EMERGENCY POWER SYSTEM ACTIVATED ALL SYSTEMS STABLE
CONTINUE DIAGNOSTIC OPERATIONS Y/N MENU?
Suddenly, from a slightly different location came a second voice, slightly gravelly and definitely masculine, with a thick east german accent.
"Ruhe jetzt! Quiet down before they hear you. I'm trying to get some sleep here." A slight pause, and then, "If the russians are here too, that can only mean trouble"
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Post by Silverback on Jan 12, 2005 12:39:05 GMT
"KGB, pah!" Leo spat in obvious disgust. He wasn't going to reveal who he really worked for. Maybe her nervousness could work in his favour. "Quickly, tell me what you know of this place! Don't bother asking whether I can be trusted, you don't have much choice."
As he waited for a reply a new screen of dialogue appeared underneath his fingertips. "Hmm . . . ," he mused, 'well, you got that one wrong. It was a control system of some sort.' He tapped his fingers nervously thinking what to do next. He elected to bring up the diagnostic operations menu, 'you're going to bring all the systems back online you know'. He despaired at this nagging doubting thought. As he waited for the next screen to arrive he heard a man's voice from over his shoulder.
"Ruhe jetzt! Quiet down before they hear you. I'm trying to get some sleep here."
"If the russians are here too, that can only mean trouble"
'Exactly how many people were down here?' Shrike inner voice was almost screaming at him to hurry up. He'd not been this nervous since his first black-op with Spetsnaz. He'd outgrown this immaturity many yeas ago, 'so why does it come back now?'
"If you want to help . . . then help! Otherwise shut up and let me concentrate on what I'm doing!" Leo hissed through gritted teeth.
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