8

It was still several hours until the other soldiers came out the graft-assimilators so JC had time to continue reading the old-fashion paper and glue-bound book Paul had given him. It has been ages for him. Actually, he had never read a single book in his short life, but the memory packs made him think had done so in his childhood. Something new was being prepared by Alex; he figured such a handsome man should have a least one fleeting romance and one that ended tragically, so the newest memory upgrade would be JC’s teen years. Alex loved the notion of building a history from scratch, building a lifetime of early experiences that would not affect the worldviews JC currently held. The project had had his full attention for the past three years. Helios ][ provided memory patterns from UNATCO agents and compared them to JC’s. Alex provided the human part of the equation; for all that Helios ][ could do, it couldn’t be human or understand the need for suffering and tragedy. Thus requests for memory patterns relating to early-childhood parental death, pet flushings, and other distressing childhood events were met with questions regarding the logic in introducing pain, fear, and sorrow to its sibling. All Alex could do was remember McCoy and Spock locked in one of their "your damn green Vulcan blood wouldn’t let you be human for even a second" type arguments. It was refreshing to tell Helios ][ off color jokes every now and then only to have it ask everyone at UNATCO what humorous value existed in a chicken traversing a road or how a native-American could improve the function of a phallic sundial by increasing his rate of masturbation. Helios ][ was a phenomenal system, but a horrible storyteller; at times he loved the damn thing just for its lack of humor.

9

One second into its spin, the gyroscope tried in vain to synchronize with propulsion and fired several controlled thruster burns randomly from the internal fuel reserve not blow to the void. At 3 seconds, the pod was boring down on UNATCO at 24,000 kph. Had the world been busy interfacing in cyberspace, shopping, making love, and carrying on in their usual manner, the pod’s arrival would have gone largely unnoticed. However, water, power, and cyberspace had instantaneously been brought to a halt. Hospitals had lost emergency power, riots began out of nowhere, lawlessness rose in metropolitan areas, and answers were somewhere unattainable. People in North America who would have been sleeping peaceful had taken to the streets with pistols and flashlights to protect the homestead from foreign invasion or UN radicals. Witnesses would tell their children and grandchildren of the great blackout and the odd green flash that lit up the night and crushed Liberty Isle; at least they would have liked to have.

10

In the lower chambers of UNATCO command, JC watched the progress reports on the first of the newest Ubermensch released from the graft-assimilation chambers. So far, no noticeable mutations were detectable. DNA grafting had been successful, physiometric reading were acceptable, vital signs were good, and memory transference was beginning as planned. Hopefully, the clinical tests would determine the exact changes caused by the insertion of Gray DNA into human beings.

11

The pod’s entire fore-section, it’s shield generator and directional energy vaporized as it slammed through Lady Liberty blowing her frame apart as if made of foil and drove through UNATCO’s west wing igniting the air throughout the six connected levels of the public offices. Bodies were immediately vaporized from the inside out. Super-heated air and compression liquefied the lungs, burned hair and skin entirely, and a half-second later exploded victims from the inside out. Within seconds of impact not a living soul remained. Oxygen tanks, fuel lines, buried munitions bunkers, and the air itself exploded in a mile high fireball, a miniature mushroom cloud, that toppled America’s guardian –leaving her in pieces. The physical impact of the pod with UNATCO left a one-hundred meter deep crater with a diameter of nearly a half kilometer. Surface facilities and personnel faced the same fate as the public offices, only many of them were blown violently into the sea.

The seven levels and four quadrants of UNATCO Command were fortified with ten meters of interlocking layers of ferrocrete no thicker than one’s hand. Minute air spaces were filled with fire-retardant, radiation-impervious gel.

Wholly independent air supplies and filters connected to the hydroponics quadrants on level 1 providing the air-tight base with a nearly indefinite air supply; it also had a portion of hanging gardens that connected through to level 3’s park. The loss of this level would not affect the base for months. Six three-megaliter (million liter) liquid atmosphere tanks below the base, with 10cm triple-hull Titanium armor, could keep each level of the command base in clean air for 6 weeks before levels reached critical. The hydroponics level was totally isolated from the base by several armored and shielded bulkheads.

Personnel quarters and services on level two 20m below hydroponics housed the 548 specialists representing all areas of current science and technology. The apartments were spacious, but designed for single occupancy and spartan in comparison to what corporate complexes offered.

The recreation facilities, park, mall, and general medical sector of level three were luxuriously designed drawing from some of the finest cities on Earth. Areas of Hong Kong and Paris had been carefully recreated by engineers. Most of UNATCO’s command personnel were American and British, but many others came from Russia, Paris, and Hong Kong.

Operations filled the vast and labyrinthine fourth level of the base; truly the heart of life support, water and oxygen purification and recirculation. Getting into operations was the trick. If you had the access code, which changed daily, the central elevator would stop and let you off into a massive lobby guarded by 4 reconditioned commandos and hyperion-4 security bots; these were not the common units seen around the base, but augmented and armored to the max. If you got past them, the security booths controlling access to the central corridors prevented unauthorized access to their quadrant’s systems. Technicians worked one quadrant for three and were required to memorize the layout in 3 weeks. Only a handful of non-operations staff knew the layout entirely.

Level five was robotics, nanotechnology, and cybernetics maintenance; here personnel could have their systems tested, recalibrated, and upgraded as new systems became available. Each lab was accessible by a ten-meter by ten-meter corridors that extended from the central security landing. Robotics had 3 stories designed in an arena format, a completely open central area; it also had two sub-basement levels for storage. The first floor had eight heavy repair bays and technical centers for system analysis. The second floor had 28 assembly and preparation bays, the offices to the north and south had lounges, break rooms, and a few sleeping quarters for security personnel.

Level six held Tracer Tong’s test ranges extended deep into the north and south wings. His team and allied corporations tested new bots, weapons, augmentations, and cybernetic/mechanized replacements. In the western portion was the classified operations research and development division that tested new prototype systems. Alex’s communication command station had been build in the empty east-wing. A cyberspace neuroplex theatre and trainers, for net-runners like Alex and Marcus Walters’ cyber-defense team, dominated the east wing of level six. The cyberspace defensive station in the northeast was small and for technical purposes was a base in and of itself. The topmost floor was personnel, the second was medical, the third had security leading to the neural interface rooms, and the bottommost held the sub-AI nodes that allowed netrunners to defend cyberspace from hackers.

Levels seven through nine were 40m below level 6. The central elevators would pass several scanning arrays before reaching level 7’s landing. Levels 7 through nine were designed with Versalife’s secret labs and Area 51’s command centers in mind. JC often found himself clutching his sidearm when walking alone through the familiar area. Everything was more accessible as the potential for unauthorized personnel to find their way in was remote. Several agents, including JC, had tried to force their way in using simulation weapons, stealth, fake ID software, and other means, but failed miserably. A sea-floor level tram shuttled scientists, techs, and security personnel to and from the five scattered underwater research sites that were patterned after those JC infiltrated years ago.

12

The pod’s momentum, shield energy, and armor allowed it to burrow through to level five. The air system was the first crippled as the slowing pod ripped down into level two. Hundreds of sleeping personnel were killed instantly by the shockwave and concussion waves. The recreation area was reduced to rubble leaving the park in flames, the mall a tangled mess, and medical units scrambling to begin damage control. Operations was spared severe damage thanks to its maddening layout, but absorbed little of the pod’s kinetic energy. Ripping into the Robotics labs in the west-wing of level six, the pod came to rest in the remains of an old subway tunnel and began running primary diagnostics as the tunnel collapsed sealing the pod under 9 tons of debris leaving virtually no sign of its existence.

Four seconds after impact the air in level one ignited and raced throughout the base consuming, as if a living beast, every molecule of oxygen it could have. The magnificence of the fire could be seen for miles as a great column of fire, some great tale from Exodus come alive in the 21^st century. Oxygen tanks in hydroponics were the first to explode sending ferrocrete flying into the night. The liquid nitrogen fertilizer tanks were washed with successive waves of flame and exploded sending a compression wave of 290 °C air and flame slithering over the delicate botanical pods sucking life from them in seconds. Down the central secured stairwell it darted, blowing through bulkheads as if the first pig had made them himself. The stairwell and central atrium’s at each floor were battered and their security stations driven into the floor by the explosion’s invisible hand. It pounded into the personnel quarters, past doors, ripped pipes and tubing from the walls, crept into ventilation ducts and strangled sleeping victims; only the environmentally sealed medical quadrant and its twenty-three night crew remained untouched. Entire areas were obliterated to be never again recognizable. Recreations sapped its strength thanks in part to its cavernous design and wide-open esplanades. Still, it succumbed as had hydroponics and personnel, and withered under the heat. Snaking tentacles of flame sought to pry open the bulkheads to operations, but finding no entry exacted their revenge on the bots, night security and custodians who were only a few hours into their rounds. Further down the flames raced until on level six, the end of the open central stairwell; its anger was calmed by emergency Halon extinguishing ducts lining the halls.

A halo of flame and smoke was all that remained.