Pier 13, Downtown Bridge, New Milton Keynes, 9:15PM, Wednesday the 10th of March, 2055.
Shen attempts to question the guy (formerly known as 1), but fails to get anywhere. You'd have thought at least some of his special forces training would have been in interrogation techniques.
He and Roland then decide to head into the next room. Shen picks up the mortally wounded guy (formerly known as 11), who's still semi-conscious and holds him in front of him for a shield. Roland opens the door, revealing a large room about 80 foot on a side.
Crates, some sealed, some still being filled, are scattered around the place, along with desks. In some of the crates that are still open, lab and computer equipment can be seen. The crates and furniture look unarmed. The same can't be said for the four guys stood around the room, wearing black uniforms and body armour.
There then follows an exchange of words. I'm sure it would have been an exchange of gunfire, if only Shen didn't have his hands full. The verbal exchange goes something like this...
Guy: "What are you doing in here? This is a private area."
Shen: "I'm a nosy bastard! Blah, blah, blah."
Guy: "Put your guns down!"
Shen: "No!"
I'm sure you get the general idea. A typical Solo's conversation. It went on for longer, with Roland joining in, but to cut a long story short, it turns out the guys are there watching over the packing up of a small Biotechnica staging area and lab.
Shen went to have a look around the room, but two of the guys moved to block his path. Roland said "Give us the computer discs!", but unsurprisingly they wouldn't. Shen demanded that they back off. When they didn't, Roland announced that the reason they, him and Shen, were there was because they had contracted a Biotechnica manufactured disease. At that point the guy Shen was still holding wet himself.
Looking slightly agitated now, the Biotechnica guys tell Shen and Roland to leave again. They respond by looking inside the crates nearest them. One of the guys threatens to shoot. It's only now when they look up, that Shen and Roland realise that the Biotechnica guys have been slowly edging round the room towards the door, while they themselves move further into the room.
The apparent leader of the Biotechnica team, who's been doing most of the talking, says stay and search if you want but we're off.
Back up on the boat, we spot a Police river patrol boat approaching. I find myself idly wondering if their callsign is 'PBR Streetgang'. We slowly put some distance between us and the bridge, while trying not to look too much like we're deliberately moving away from it. Jake tells us to prepare to be boarded, but not to worry as he's dealt with these sorts of situations before.
Under the bridge, the Biotechnica team are completing their withdrawal from the room. As the last guy starts to pull the door closed behind them, Roland calls out "Don't shut it!". Predictably, the guy continues to close the door. So Roland fires his shotgun, hitting the guy in the arm.
Shen's human shield struggles free, although, to be fair, Shen doesn't do much to try and stop him, and the guy runs out the room after the others. Roland drops his shotgun and draws his pistol, but the door is already closed. Shen starts to look around the room, and Roland follows.
Meanwhile, the police boat has drawn alongside. They ask what we're doing and Jake tells them we're just out enjoying a trip on the river. For some reason they don't seem to believe us and three of the harbour police come aboard.
The first of them questions Sykes. He explains that he's not the one in charge of the vehicle(?) and that we're just drifting along with the tide. The second guy goes forward to talk to Jake, and the two of them seem to be getting along quite well. I suspect Jake has got something up his sleeve.
The third cop comes over to me. He looks at me and says "Don't I know you?" I respond by asking him how his captain is. He says "How do you know him?" I explain that I was a cop until quite recently, but I resigned because I got fed up with all the paperwork. He nods his head knowingly. I tell him I'd not seen the city from the point of view of the river before, so was just taking an evening cruise with a few friends, to get a different perspective on the place.
He seems happy with that, and the copper talking to Jake has concluded his 'business', so they all get back on their patrol boat and head off, looking for someone else to bother.
As we turn back towards the bridge, we see five figures emerge from the hatch on the base of pier 13. They also have a large package with them. Looking at the attention they are giving the package, it appears to be another one of their number. They start climbing the ladder up the side of the pier, helping their, apparently injured, comrade as they go.
There's the distinctive whine of an AV-4 approaching. It hovers over the bridge long enough to pick the men up and then moves off.
While all this 'excitement' has been happening up top, Shen and Roland have been exploring. Going through a doorway off the room they were in, they find a mini sub suspended in a cradle, above a 'moon pool'. Strange neither of them has noticed that the air around them must now be over twice normal pressure.
Having a nose inside the sub, they find it'll take a pilot and six others, or some cargo. Taking a look at the controls they decide that they can probably 'drive' the thing and that it makes for a more interesting exit than climbing the ladder onto the base of the pier.
Shutting themselves inside the sub, they manage to lower it into the water and disengage the cradle clamps. Spotting an auto pilot, they decide to try to use it to find out where the other base for the sub is. Or at least that's what they told us later, as we'd lost radio communications the moment the shut themselves in the sub. I think that having got the sub in the water, they panicked as they didn't know how to pilot it, and slapped the auto pilot hoping it would take them somewhere safe.
Anyway, the auto pilot guides them out of the bridge 'complex', but not without scraping the sides of the access channel as it goes. It's at this point they say that they noticed that the auto pilot was just taking them out to sea, so they switched it off. Did they panic again? Who knows? But the sub settled itself on the river bed.
After what I can only assume was more panicked hitting of buttons, they managed to blow their ballast tanks and surface. As their luck would have it, they surfaced not far from our boat. We pull alongside, and it's obvious they need help. Jake attaches a tow rope and we tow them back to his warehouse. Fortunately, the warehouse is one of those built on stilts out over the river, so the boat and the sub can just be hidden inside.
Shen explains that he's dead keen to sell the sub, but we also want to find out where the auto pilot would have taken it. Jake gets aboard and looks at the auto pilot settings. It seems the sub would head out to sea, to a point about a mile off Long Island. Then it just waits. Jake agrees to hide the sub for us, in exchange for a five percent cut of whatever we, or he, can sell it for. One of his associates gets aboard the sub, submerges, and moves it to a better hiding place, deeper inside the warehouse. This certainly isn't the first sub Jake's handled.
By now it's getting on for midnight, and we head off to catch up with Yuki. Igor greets us at the morgue, and leads us through to the lab. As we enter the lab Roland stumbles and we notice how run down he looks. I guess his infection is further along than he was letting on.
Yuki wisely insists on testing all of us again. Tests come up negative for me, Shen and Yuki, but Sykes has got traces of the long string proteins in his blood. While we've been away, Yuki has been able to determine that the blue goo in the vial is nanites along with their programming, in the form of long string proteins. So the obvious cure for the nanite infection is to reprogram them, but Yuki doesn't have the skills or equipment to do that.
Crash says he has a contact who may be able to help. Her name's Sheila Grange and she works for a corporation called Orba Organics. He gives Yuki her mobile number, and Yuki calls her up. Sheila answers, but Yuki is suspicious of the echo and delay on the line and hangs up.
When Yuki tells us why she hung up, I explain that given who she works for, Sheila could well be somewhere in orbit, and that would explain the line conditions. So Yuki calls Sheila once more.
Yuki explains the situation to Sheila, and after asking where we are, she recommends that we contact Biotechnica as they have a large office in NMK and are most likely to be able to help. Yuki explains that Biotechnica might not be our best port of call and why. So Sheila asks Yuki for the information she has on the nanites, which Yuki sends up on a data channel, and Sheila says she'll get back to us.
Her analysis so far has told Yuki that the blue goo in the vial is in an inactive state. The samples of 'dissolved person' crusty blue goo she took from the front of the 4x4 at the lodge, are 'dead' in that they contain no long string proteins. So any remaining nanites have no program to follow, and will breakdown over the course of time.
From watching the nanites at work on Crash, she has established that they attack the nervous system first. That at least explains Roland's clumsy stumble as we entered the lab.
Somewhere in the lab a clock bleeps to indicate it's now 1AM. Yuki tests us all again, but interestingly, not herself. Me and Shen once again get the all clear, while Sykes is still showing traces of infection, but no symptoms as yet.
Yuki sets some analysis running, and we all then take the time to crash out. I expect we've still got some long days ahead of us.
Initial analysis results show that there are three types of nanite involved.
 |
This page © Greg Aldridge, 17 May 2003
