Tunnel Rat - Chapter 277: Early Christmas

“Why do I feel you’ve never wrapped Christmas presents before?” Belinda was sitting and trying not to move as Milo worked on his plan to confuse signals emanating from her or looking for her. It wasn’t that the plan bothered her, she thought the theory was sound. But something about being wrapped up in layers of bright, shiny, colored foil seemed wrong. And of course, the only colors were red, white, and green. With matching ribbons and bows.

Milo looked up from where he was crumpling up colored aluminum foil Christmas wrapping. “I haven’t. Is there some traditional method? I assumed the foil wrapping was to keep children from scanning their presents and ruining the surprise, but then I found out that most of the wrapping stuff is just paper. I’m really hazy on Christmas as a whole. I like the idea of everyone having a glowy-tree, but why one for each house? And the physics of reindeer flying is just bonkers. They move their legs, but not like they are running. Even if we conjecture that they can run across air, why don’t their legs move right? And is the sleigh anti-gravity? Why doesn’t it fall? How much does a load of presents for a large geographic area weigh? And the guy driving isn’t small. I understand why he’s so fat, he puts away a ton of cookies that night, actually closer to 12 tons? Let alone a tanker truck full of milk. I was always confused by it.”

Belinda slowly shook her head. She had so much work to do with this boy but for now she went with the easy explanation….”It’s magic. Christmas magic.”

“Yeah, they said that in the story with the talking snowman; it still didn’t make sense.”

“Did you ever stop to consider that Frosty is a Snow Elemental Wizard? His focus is the old hat, the way a Liche needs their Phylactery.”

Milo paused. “They should explain that in the video then. It makes a lot more sense. Wait, then…”

Belinda smiled. “The sacks of presents are extradimensional storage devices called Bags of Holding. The sleigh is enchanted with levitation, and the flying reindeer are pegasi crossbred with enchanted moose. They mix Potions of Flying with their corn for extra lift. The feet moving that way constantly draw a Rune of Speedy Flying and Time Dilation. Santa Claus is a shapeshifter that can go down chimneys easily or under doors. He’s fireproof because of his Ring of Fire Protection. He fuels a lot of his magic with the milk and cookies. Being a minor winter spirit, the goodies left out for him count as offerings and give him his power. His Medallion of ESP can cast the Know Alignment spell to tell him who’s naughty and who’s nice. I’m sure you can figure the rest out on your own if you apply your knowledge of magic and spells to the problem.”

“Thanks, it makes a lot more sense now. OK, could you hold still while I tape this on you? A few more layers, and we should be good.”

Belinda was completely wrapped in bright red foil, and now Milo was adding bags of crumple foil around her, all taped up with red, green, and white fluorescent tape. He’d found the stuff years ago in an abandoned novelty warehouse. Most stuff had been looted, but not the huge rolls of wrapping foil and glowing tape. Milo was crumpling several feet of foil, then wrapping it around Belinda and securing it with the luminous tape.

“A few more layers, and I won’t be able to waddle, let alone walk.”

Milo started crumpling the next layer. “I don’t want you walking; it might tear the foil and let some of the signal through. The Tagyourkids.com system is really efficient. The scanners do more than look for a signal from the implant; they also send out signals every thirty seconds. If one pings off your implant, it will ping back. That has a much better chance of detecting you and doesn’t rely on a constant signal. The crumpled foil diffuses the signal from your implant and will bounce the signal from a scanner. Added to your suit’s protection, it muffles things enough to be safe, but I’m not taking any chances. We need all of those people confused and chasing phantoms.”

“While I, the amazing Christmas Girl, waddle to my clever escape route? You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”

“All planned out. You’ll have to trust me about visiting Rusty, it’s complicated. I’ve mapped out a route that minimizes the distance to our objective while staying inside ducts at least 36” high and wide. That will let you use one of the crawlers to move you. All you have to do is sit on the cargo trailer. I’ve set up the screens I need on a second crawler and will lead the way while I command my troops. Speaking of which, it’s time to head out, General Maximus. I want to test the system with just one scout, then move to Operation: ‘Belinda on the Move.’ Max beeped twice, and Milo triggered the programs to help his general make decisions. The sleek black Roombas with upgraded equipment rolled out from Milo’s home and into the ductwork, some staying in the tunnels while others moved into the hallways.

“Harry, I’ve got a Ping. The scanner even picked up her signal for a full four seconds. Looks like she’s moving. Two levels up and 300 hundred yards away.”

Harry had worked for Manpower for less than a year. It was an odd outfit to work for, guarding thousands of sleeping people in pods. It got boring a lot of the time. But he’d have to admit that he’d rather be bored than running all over this dingy, dark maze of hallways looking for his boss’s lost daughter right now. The details were hazy. There had been a kidnapping attempt by a relative, and she was either hiding or kidnapped by someone else. The big boss wanted her found, which is why two-thirds of the Manpower security forces were looking for her, along with many other people. He had five other people with him because of those other people. His two-man teams had been ‘discouraged’ a dozen times, resulting in many bruises and two broken bones and losing four scanners coded to Belinda Seimovich’s transmitter. Security had been told to search for her but hadn’t been told they would have to fight against other security teams who were much better fighters than they were. With no firearms allowed in the habitat, brute force was king again, especially when the other side had bigger brutes wearing body armor.

The six men jogged down the hallway, one using a datapad to find the nearest stairway up to the next level. As they arrived, the signal came in strong. “She’s just above us and moving that way. Moving fast, too.”

Harry grimaced. “Of course she is. She can’t walk and uses a motorized wheelchair. An expensive one like I’ve seen her used can move at a good clip, unlike you lard asses.” Finding the next set of stairs, Harry did his best to race up them. He made it to the wide corridor just in time to see the wheelchair slow slightly as it took the corner two hundred feet ahead of them. He started sprinting but slowed after the first hundred feet. “Damn, I should have listened to my doctor about doing more cardio; running once a week isn’t cutting it.” The rest of the squad was strung out behind him. He turned the corner just as the wheelchair turned again. He’d closed some of the gap, but running towards him were two other men, the bulk of body armor slowing them as they moved. Harry picked up the pace, two of his guys able to keep up with him, one of them holding a scanner, and three lagging behind. They made the corner ahead of the two coming from the other direction.

“I think she’s heading for one of the service elevators! It’s around the next corner.” They made it just in time to see the doors close. “We need to see where she heads to and alert the other crews.” They sat at the doors as Belinda went up ten floors, and the elevator started back down. The two men in body armor had arrived by the time it arrived.

“Greetings, gentlemen. We seem to be chasing the same quarry. It would be a shame to compete with each other.” The words were friendly, but the tone and facial expressions were not. Both of the other men pulled out heavy rubber truncheons used by riot police in some countries. The elevator opened, and all five piled in, two going to one side, three to the other.

“Who the hell are you guys?”

The two smiled. They knew there wouldn’t be a fight; they would have charged by now, not waited. “Security people, just like you, hired to find a poor lost girl. But I’m sure that unlike you, we are being paid well. We have a minute while we ascend for you to think. We can discuss this with violence, and some of us get hurt. Well, you get hurt. But my companion and I want the bonus for getting her to safety. Work with us, and we will split the bonus with you. Good pay, no violence, and we are professionals. You can trust us.”

Harry was about to protest but wasn’t sure he wanted to. The two men with him both said, “How much.”

More smiles. “One hundred thousand dollars. That is 25,000 for the two of us and 16,667 dollars for each of you for catching her and handing you over. Thirty seconds.”

Harry hated saying it, but he really wasn’t up for the fight. “A deal then. Where does she show.”

The tech was nervous but showed the scanner. “Not moving, she’s right outside the elevator. Easy money, we just let these gentlemen off first, then help them escort her out.”

There was a jerk, and the elevator started to go back down, then stopped, and the lights went out. The blip on the screen started moving away and then disappeared. Tensions ran high, and some yelling was done, but after the emergency button brought no answer, Harry got a boost to the ceiling and crawled out the top hatch. The doors were shut and fifteen feet up. “We’re going to be stuck here awhile.

If there was one thing Nikki hated, it was giving reports to Bogdan about a fluid situation. The man needed diagrams and three days to figure out which way the wind was blowing. Pavel should have been coordinating the teams, but Pavel was on his way to London in case the situation there became serious, and with how the fan was flinging the shit, it would be serious soon. “The girl is on the move, and these scanners we took from the security teams are picking her up. She seems to be trying to get back to Manpower HQ in section H, but she’s not heading there directly. She knows the corridors well and must be using a mapping program.”

“How hard can it be to wait for her to hobble to the end of a corridor? Go grab her if you can see her.”

“Screw you, Boggy. Did you read the briefing? The girl has a motorized wheelchair. It doesn’t get tired and won’t run out of energy for hours. Out of body armor and heavy boots with no gear, I can catch her, but this isn’t race day down by the river. We’re geared up. I need you to coordinate with the other teams and set up a perimeter so we can envelop her.”

“Will do; I’ll work on that. Meanwhile, keep chasing her.”

Nikki put away his radio, cursing in two languages his squad was familiar with, but only from his cursing. “Let’s get moving. We have to get ahead of her and hope she turns our way. The chance that Boggy can set up teams to outflank a moving target in a maze isn’t good.”

“Does he understand that the problem is three-dimensional? She’s already shifted floors twice. Thankfully, she needs an elevator, and we can use stairs.”

Nikki was thankful his squad understood the problem. “Let’s move closer to Manpower and their main entrance; let the other teams look for her and chase her; we can be patient and wait for the rabbit to come home to its hole.”

Fyodor had the scanner and cursed. “The rabbit is skittish. She just reversed course when a team crossed an intersection ahead of her. They said the damned chair spun on a dime and was moving as fast as a racehorse. Shit…she just dropped a level and at a stairway! Hmm, pausing there, maybe tumbled down?”

Nikki was already running. “Move! Call out the turns, Fyodor. Let’s hope the chair is broken and not the girl.

They were a minute away from the stairway when the signal became weak and blinked out. A ping placed her down a level, moving slowly away from them a minute later. They were jogging now, trying to keep up the pace. She led them on a chase, always a little ahead, but other teams were closing in. When it looked like they had her, the signal went dead, and pings from the scanner showed nothing. Nikki called a halt. “Catch your breath. I’m calling Boggy and having him keep the teams here and bring two more. She’s close. I know she is. They continued down the corridor, walking and catching their breath. A Roomba stayed silent, hidden under a trash heap in an alcove. It would return to recharge for another round of hide and seek when it was clear.

Meanwhile, two people had slowly and carefully made their way to a set of unused administration rooms. The last leg of the Journey was the most dangerous. They had to traverse a section of a regular corridor, move up a flight of stairs, and down a short hallway. Milo sent out his scouts to scan the area. To accomplish this, he picked up Belinda in his arms and moved as fast as he could. He was about to step into the corridor when he heard the voices. Two men were taking a smoke break, guarding this corridor leading to the roof’s stairway. They were fifty feet down the corridor from him. He’d never get his rustling burden of bright red and green foil down the hall the other way and couldn’t lead them to the elevator.

He set Belinda down. “Lean against the wall; I need hands free to program this.” His fingers tapped on his datapad, and two sleek black Roomba disappeared around the corner. Two six-foot-tall blocky-looking robots with one glowing red eye emerged on the other side. They projected loud mechanical voices at the startled mercenaries.

“Intruder Alert! Unauthorized Humans! You are not allowed in Sector Omega! Retreat or be Terminated.”

The two men looked at each other and then drew their guns. Like the robots at the end of the hall, these guns were blocky and thick, made of layers of high-density plastic parts that could circumvent the scanners that the habitat security used at the entrances. Each held six shots and couldn’t be reloaded.

“Stay back, or we’ll shoot you in your silly costumes.”

The eyes of the robots glowed, a red beam shot out, and large red dots appeared on their chests. “Kill the Intruders. Kill the Humanoids!” Laser beams burned into the body armor of the two men and set their tunics on fire. They immediately fired back, emptying all 12 shots into the robots. Small dents appeared, and the sound of bullets hitting metal rang out. Also, there was the sound of bullets hitting walls, but neither of them noticed that. What they did notice was when the lasers shot their hands, burning through their gloves, melting the plastic guns, and giving them painful burns. The robots advanced slowly, and the mercenaries ran.

“Kill the Intruders. Kill the Humanoids!”

When the ‘Killer Robots’ got to the end of the corridor and signaled all clear, Milo raced with his Christmas package to safety inside the admin rooms. He didn’t stop until they were in the hidden elevator with its collapsium shielding.

“You can relax, they can’t find us now.” Milo hit the button, and they began descending rapidly.

Belinda counted the seconds, and her eyes got wider and wider. “How deep does this go?! How did you build this?”

Milo smiled at her. “Time for that later. I have a pod ready for you. Once you’re in that, I’ll get Butch and Mama down here, then go see if Eric needs help.”

He’d been helping her strip off the foil as they went so she could walk alone. As the doors opened, she walked out but was a little unsteady on her feet. “Help me out here; I need an escort.” She took his arm and leaned on him slightly as they made their way down to Independence Hall. Her eyes widened as she took in the rooms, the wood paneling, and the antique furnishings. Then he opened the door, and she got her first glimpse of the overgrown park and the small village under a bright blue sky.

Rusty’s voice rang out. “Welcome to Downtown, Belinda! This is going to be so much fun!”