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Post By The Hooded Hood introduces a few old faces Fri May 13, 2005 at 09:53:28 pm EDT |
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#212: Untold Tales of the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation: Executive Strategy | |
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| #212: Untold Tales of the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation: Executive Strategy Previously: The Interdimensional Transportation Corporation, a high-science high-tech delivery company, is under new management and is no longer the ally to the superhero community that it once was. ITC has hired unscrupulous media consultant Roni Y Avis as their public face, while the mysterious Andrew Royd runs the security team for the even more mysterious new Director. Yuki Shiro, cyborg detective, has gone undercover as a security employee at ITC to discover its secrets. Part of ITC’s agenda involves taking over the upcoming WeirdSciCon 2005, a gathering of most of the greatest scientific minds on the planet. Meanwhile, former LL support staff Ruby Waver has been kidnapped by someone wishing to fatally exploit her low-grade psionic ability.  “Control, this is Lee.” “Okay Lee, what’ve you got?” “I’ve got your unauthorised E.M. reading on the sixtieth floor. You’re not going to believe it.” “What?” “Your security alert? Somebody left a Sea Strike Action Visionary Doll in a waste bin. Looks like the sensors were picking up his Frisky Kicking Action.” “Sea Strike Action Visionary? That takes me back. Weren’t they voted Dumbest Merchandising of All Time on that TV show?” “I don’t see much TV, Control. What do I do with our security breach?” “Orders are orders. It’s an unauthorised electrical device in a secure zone. Destroy it.” The sensors spiked for a moment as an ITC-issue particle pistol was discharged, and then the anomalous reading dropped off the board. “Sea Action Visionary has left the building,” the security guard called over the link to Control. “I see that. Nice work, Lee. Keep on with your rounds.” “Sure. And I’ll watch out that I don’t get jumped by Surfing Barbie.” Control snorted and cut the commlink. Yuki Shiro smiled to herself and prised open the security panel she’d just breached with a single shot from her sidearm, then pocketed the Bautista Enterprises Digital Signature Simulator she’d used to justify her shot. Now she had access to the elevator shaft right up to the ninety-seventh floor. The cyborg P.I. swung herself through the maintenance hatch, hoping that Al B. was right about her latest upgrades shielding her from the electronic countermeasures in the deep pit. Her metal and plastic body wouldn’t trigger the defences set to detect life, and the refractive mesh under her synthetic skin should stop her being pegged as a machine. She’d have to depend on the Digital Signature Simulator to spoof any motion detectors or more esoteric sensors. But she had to take the chance. She’d worked undercover as security guard Linda Lee for two weeks now and she still wasn’t much closer to finding out who the new management of the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation was. The computers she’d been able to tap simply didn’t carry that information. The secure computer core was on the ninety-seventh floor though. Yuki rappelled up the elevator cable. This late at night the cars were all shut down for security purposes. She made good time up to the exit she needed. She ran a low-intensity scan of the area, calculated to be just under the building sensor net’s detection range, then leaped the distance from cable to doorframe lip, landing and balancing on the three inch ledge over the hundred floor drop. The reverse of the security panel burned off easily enough and Yuki was able to bypass the wiring that detected the outer lift doors opening. Then she used the manual emergency release to crank them apart so she could slip into the computer centre. It was pitch black in the lobby. Yuki switched her eyesight to infrared thermal imaging. She didn’t dare use an infra-red or ultraviolet light source in case there were photon detectors deployed. She hadn’t been able to pull a full schematic of the secure areas. Her sensors picked up the electromagnetic impulses of the pressure pads, allowing her to pick her way across the room to the coded vault door that accessed the main hard drives of the massive computer banks which ITC used to calculate the co-ordinates and wavelengths of the dimensional jumps that were the core of their business. The same countermeasures that protected her in the elevator shaft got her as far as the door. According to Yuki’s internal clock she was eleven minutes into mission time. That left thirteen and a half minutes before she needed to be back on the lower floors reporting again to Control. She did a passive scan of the vault access panel. Time was going to be tight. There were several ways to try and fool the system, but Yuki hadn’t the equipment with her to spoof a DNA scan. An alphanumeric code over-ride would take far too long. Instead she opened her forearm hatch, unpacked an interface cable no thicker than a hair, and jacked one end of the monofilament into the neck port concealed beneath her hairline. She micro-drilled into the panel itself and threaded the rest of the interface conduit through the tiny hole she’d made. When the conduit brushed against the panel’s control chip she rewrote its functions and the door slipped quietly open. With nine minutes remaining Yuki leaped over the infrared beams and landed gracefully on a master-terminal desk. She quickly connected herself to the system then forced herself to be cautious as she probed the internal architecture of ITC’s database. She’d been wise to be circumspect. Almost at once she spotted the savage firewalls and attack programs built into the system. Somebody very good at this kind of thing had spent a lot of time devising ways of keeping intruders out, even electronic ones. The only other time Yuki had seen anything this sophisticated was when she’d interfaced with Hallie, the Lair Legion’s artificial intelligence. In fact it looked very much like some of the programming here was specifically designed to detect and destroy intrusions from Hallie herself. And that took a rather intimate knowledge of Hallie’s own software specifications. Yuki realised that breaking much further into the system would be far too dangerous. She might be able to do it, but one blunder and the game was up. Cutting her losses, she copied whatever files were still sitting in the system’s Random Access Memory to evaluate later, made a quick map of what file structures she could read without triggering alarms, and risked planting one single datum to add Linda Lee to the most privileged users security clearance list. That was for her next attempt. Yuki made it back to the sixtieth floor with twenty-seven seconds to spare. Ruby Waver woke up with the taste of chloroform in her mouth. She tried to move then realised she was handcuffed to a bed. She swallowed hard, the bile of fear overwhelming the chloroform taste. She’d turned down offers to make movies like this. Nothing much happened for a couple of hours, which gave Ruby plenty of time to run through various possible scenarios about her fate. She was mildly disgusted at what a crude imagination she had. She wasn’t comforting herself. She tried the handcuffs, but they were police-pattern titanium steel, attached to an iron-framed bed. She gave in and called for help, her angry shouts degenerating into screams before she realised that nobody was coming. Nobody good anyway. The door opened at last and the same man who’d been in her apartment came into view and looked down at her. She could hardly see him in the darkened room, but his pupils glowed dimly red. Ruby’s rape scenarios were replaced with speculations about demonic rape scenarios. “Awake then?” he noted, feeling her wrist to take a pulse. “Good.” “Kidnappers and rapists don’t have a very happy time in prison,” Ruby told him. Her captor was tall and handsome. Ruby would have dated him if she’d met him in a bar. He opened a plastic case and took out a hypodermic syringe. “Not drugs,” Ruby pleaded. “I don’t want to be drugged.” She suddenly remembered what had happened to Laurie Leyton, how Lisette had been hooked on heroin and forced to prostitution. “Oh please…” She tried to move her arm to prevent the needle stabbing her. Her captor held her still with a vice-like grip of inhuman strength. She felt the stab of the syringe and the yellowish serum in it vanished into her vein. Ruby called her captor every filthy name she could think of, while she was still in control of her own mind. “It’s not an addictive substance,” her captor snorted. “And it’s not your body we are interested in.” That puzzled the captive girl. “Then what?” “We only want you for your mind,” sneered the tall man. He thumbed a panel on the wall. “She’s ready now,” he spoke into the microphone. “I’ve administered the telepathy inhibitor.” “Telepathy inhibitor?” Ruby remembered her assailant had said something about his employer requiring a low-grade telepath. Ruby remembered her cousin Whitney telling her she had untapped occult potential. Ruby remembered how sometimes she could ‘push’ men into agreeing with her. Ruby wondered if what was happening to her was karma for all the crappy things she’d done. Did she really deserve this? Ruby concluded that she did. The door opened again, and this time the lights came up. Ruby was in a modern room more reminiscent of a dentist’s surgery than a medieval dungeon, or – Ruby’s worst-case scenario – a home-made TV studio. Then she remembered Marathon Man. “Good afternoon, Ruby,” one of the newcomers bade her. “I hope you’re hanging in there, kiddo.” Ruby knew that voice. “Roni Y Avis!” she called out. “Get me out of this contraption now! I’ll sue…!” “Sorry, Rubes. And we go way back, don’t we? But I’m not your agent any more. You broke the deal.” “Lisa and Mumphrey saw through our plan with Bill. And it was a shitty thing to do anyway.” “But still, we had a contract, Ruby. I was hurt, therapy-badly hurt, Ruby, when you walked out on it. I could have made you a star.” “Is that what this is all about, Roni? Some kind of kinky revenge?” “Hey, I’m not that guy, Ruby. But when I was asked to locate a low-grade telepath we could use in our next business venture, I naturally thought of you.” Ruby turned her invective on the inventor of internet spam. “Don’t you have some kind of gag, Royd?” the third man in the room asked Ruby’s captor. “This isn’t really language becoming a young lady.” Ruby swung her head over to see the third of her tormentors. He was barely in her peripheral vision – deliberately, she felt. He was as thin as a lath, youngish but prematurely aged, with an unhealthy prison pallor. Although he had no physical resemblance, for some reason Ruby associated him with Hannibal Lecter. He scared her more than the brutal and passionless Royd. She knew instinctively that here was somebody who really knew how to hate. “I’d have preferred we use her cousin Lania,” he noted as the kidnapper now identified as Andrew Royd strapped a rubber bar between Ruby’s jaws. “But such a high-profile media celebrity would attract attention by her sudden absence. And then the dragon would come looking, and things would get prematurely tedious. Where as nobody is going to miss this piece of trash.” Joshua Parkson looked down at the struggling low-grade telepath. “No offence,” he smiled coldly. It took the cyborg P.I. more time than she liked to decode the file names she’d copied. But she didn’t feel that she could call on Hallie or Al B. Harper for help interpreting illegally acquired data. Besides, there might yet be defences nested in the files specifically aimed at Hallie. So Yuki processed them herself, her human brain interfacing with the computers that ran the robotic body it nested in, picking apart the material with diligent care but a growing bad temper. “What the hell are they up to?” she demanded irritably as she jogged past the Heroes’ Memorial in Off-Central Park. Most of the RAM material had been copies of recent e-mails and electronic bill payments. The latest redundancies had been announced. ITC had just purchased four hundred million dollars-worth of SPUD-surplus computer storage space. “And who’s Royd?” Yuki continued, confusing a passing cyclist as she overtook him while pondering the identity and abilities of Linda Lee’s security supervisor. He hadn’t even been an employee six months ago. “And why would ITC sponsor the Weird Science Convention this year?” she wondered as she reviewed the corporation footing the bill for the whole event through various sponsorship deals. Surely they didn’t want to shut EEE out of a potential sales venue that badly? “Roni Y. Avis isn’t worth that salary,” she noted as she found the payroll. But most of the senior staff were listed by title not by name. She vaulted the parapet over the Lovers’ Bridge and dropped thirty feet onto the jogging track below. “What’s this? Draft negotiations to renew ITC’s contract providing anti-dimension-shifting and counter teleport technology to the Safe Metahuman Penal Facility? But renew means…” Yuki stopped dead. “ITC provides that protection now,” she concluded. “Nobody can teleport out of the Safe… unless ITC says so.” Yuki shuddered, a human reaction that had followed her from a body of flesh to one of metal and plastic. Then she hooked her communications net into a nearby walker’s mobile phone and placed a call to her real employer. “I’m getting closer. ITC’s undoubtedly up to something. This Royd guy’s definitely more than he seems. I’m going back in.” “Jolly good, Miss Yuki,” came back the voice from the other end of the line. “Take care, what? Carry on.” Frank Juspyzyk was super for most of the block of seedy apartments along Frazetta Street. He didn’t let that interfere much with his schedule of drinking beer and watching womens sports on cable. He certainly didn’t answer the door when some angry tenant hammered on it. He did react when his front door flew across the hall and splintered against the opposite wall. “What the f…” he began, reaching for the sawn off shotgun he always kept at the side of the couch. But he never got there. The weapon was taken from his hands and hurled through the screen of his 32” wide-screen TV set. “No guns,” the man gripping him by his vest and leaning over him warned. “S-sure. No guns. Whatever,” Frank jabbered. The guy had to be on PCP at least, how strong he was. Maybe even Shazam, the new designer drug that gave fifteen minutes of superpowers before causing spasms and often fatal embolisms. “313,” the intruder growled. “Ruby Waver. Where is she?” Juspyzyk didn’t remember all his tenants, but he knew the cute ones. Ruby was on his list of fantasies about distraught or drunk residents needing help with their toe stuck in the bath. Near the top of the list. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “She came home yesterday after the night shift.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. “Sure.” Frank liked to watch her going up the stairs. She worked nights, so she was probably a hooker. Frank was hoping maybe she’d have trouble one day making the rent. That was another of his favourite dreams. “Somebody was waiting for her. Or rather something.” “I don’t know about that.” The super’s body odour increased as he sweated more. “You’re lying. You know.” The grizzled man’s expression was the most terrifying thing Juspyzyk had ever seen. “He got in without breaking or entering. Like he had a passkey.” Frank stared in terror at the unshaven Irishman that towered over him. There was an animal rage about the intruder, barely concealed under the surface. “Y-yes,” confessed the super. The other guy had been scary because he was so calm, so cold. This one was the opposite: a beast. “How much did he give you?” “A hundred.” “Where did he take her?” “I don’t know about that. Really, I swear. I didn’t see him leave.” “But you went up later to see what he’d done,” the Irishman accused. “I could smell your reek up there.” “I don’t know where he took her. I don’t know that he took her. Oh please…” “There’s more you’re not telling me. If you want to live through the surgery you’d better tell me now.” “S-surgery?” The intruder grinned. His canine teeth were very prominent. “I’m going to hurt you very badly,” he explained. “But you tell me what I need and I will let you live. Your choice.” Frank lost control of his bladder and bowels at that point. “I don’t know who he was,” the super confessed. “I don’t. But… he had a van. I took the license tag. For… for…” “Blackmail purposes?” the Irishman suggested. “Give me the number.” Juspyzyk pointed to a cluttered dresser. There was a used Burger King bag with a license number scrawled on it in marker. “Thank you,” Tanner grinned wolfishly, allowing his claws to grow a little longer. “Now it’s time for your lesson.” “You seem to be working out okay, Lee,” Mr Royd told his latest security employee. “Two weeks and you breezed through training. You’re smart, fast, diligent. You might have a future with this company.” “Thank you sir,” Yuki Shiro replied. She didn’t allow her face to show her internal frown. Whoever Royd was he had defences against scanning at least as effective as her own. “I’ve been checking your references. I see you had some trouble at New Tomorrow Industries?” Only a deep penetration of the NTI personnel database would have discovered the bogus file Al B. Harper had planted there. Yuki filed away that capacity for future consideration. “I guess,” she conceded defiantly. “In fact your employment was terminated.” “Those punks forfeited any right to walk out of there the moment they pulled their guns on me,” ‘Linda Lee’ argued. “All three thieves hospitalised with multiple broken bones.” Royd didn’t sound as if he disapproved. “You don’t have a problem playing rough?” “I like it rough.” “Then there’s definitely a future for you in my…” Royd’s proposition was cut short by the security klaxon. “We have an intruder in parking garage three,” he declared, leaping up from his desk. Yuki noticed he hadn’t had to check a security monitor to know that. “Get to your assigned station, Lee,” the Security Chief ordered. “I’m going down to supervise the hunt.” “Yessir,” Yuki replied. Like hell, she thought. This is a better distraction for me to slip into the secure areas than anything I could have cooked up myself. Belatedly she picked up on something her enhanced senses had been telling her. Andrew Royd’s heartbeat and respiration had remained dead stable even when the klaxon sounded. In fact Andrew Royd’s heartbeat was identical every time is thumped, to the exact same .wav. The last piece clicked into place. Andrew Royd. Andy Royd. Android. Yuki swore at herself and headed for the elevator shaft. They wheeled Ruby into what looked uncomfortably like a huge operating theatre. Parkson was there in a white lab coat, talking with a similarly-clad woman. “Ah, the star of our performance arrives!” he mocked as he saw the captive lifted off the gurney onto the interface table. Ruby was still gagged so she couldn’t retort. “May I present my associate, Dr Ulz Hagen? Rikka is the foremost expert on computer intelligences on the planet.” “You’re too kind, Justin,” the German woman simpered. “But it’s true, of course.” “Why else would the Managing Director of ITC bother to spirit you out of your cell and replace you with a robot double?” Parkson asked. “Anyway, if you’d be so good as to prepare the interface and connect the electrodes, I’ll explain to Ms Waver what is expected of her.” “Of course. This will be somewhat painful, Ms Waver. It doesn’t have to be, but I prefer it that way.” Ruby squirmed helplessly as the metal circles nipped through the flesh of her temples. “So Ruby – may I call you Ruby?” Parkson began. “You’re probably wondering what our grand design is, and how you fit into it.” He thumbed a remote control and a screen on the wall flicked on, showing multiple camera shots of some kind of hotel lobby. “What we’re going to accomplish today was so exciting I just had to come out of retirement to be part of it.” He pointed at the images. “That’s WeirdSciCon 2005,” he explained. “Hundreds of the finest scientific minds alive all clustered in one place.” Rikka Ulz Hagen was drawing back moveable screens to reveal a much larger video screen, but that one was blank. It was attached to dozens of massive grey drums ribboned with alien-looking translucent wires. “And that,” Parkman continued, “is the computer mainframe housing of the late great Supreme Interference, the alien Skree’s master computer. ITC acquired it recently, since its owner has apparently been erased by the Lair Legion’s Librarian.” “It’s a magnificent machine,” Ulz Hagen admired. “The Skree downloaded only the finest minds of their culture into it, forming a gestalt being of extraordinary intelligence and capacity. This one invention allowed them to conquer the stars.” “I’m sure you see where this is going,” Parkman told Ruby. “One convention full of geniuses, one machine that absorbs the brain patterns of beings as they die.” He pointed to the girl on the interface table. “And one telepath who can act as a conduit between the two. Simple, eh?” “Except,” Rikki Ulz Hagen added with an aroused shudder, “this Supreme Interference will work for ITC, and the power will be ours.” Yuki made the ninety-seventh floor with practised ease. Her internal memory recalled the exact movements she’d made last time and reproduced them with flawless precision. But this time the security systems on the vault door recognised her authorisation to enter. She was very slightly concerned with the lag time it took the ITC computer to respond to her commands. She was more concerned with the man in the leather jacket who was already inside, successfully clawing his way through the titanium steel vault door with his bare hands. “I’m guessing you’re the intruder,” Yuki noted. “Yep,” Tanner answered. “I’m guessing you’re another of this place’s killer robots.” “Actually no,” the cyborgs P.I. answered. “I’m as interested as you are in what’s behind that door.” “You know anything about a missing girl called Ruby Waver?” “No. Is this the same Ruby Waver who made the news a while back when she accused Nats of molesting her?” “That’s our Ruby. She doesn’t do that now.” “And you think she’s in that vault?” There was a shriek of shearing metal as Tanner clawed through the locking mechanism of the vault door. “Nope. But I think that there’s stuff in here that ITC will trade her for to get back.” “Good thinking,” Yuki approved. “How did you get this far?” “I traced a van tag number, asked a few questions. The usual. And a colleague of mine drafted some calculations that confused the computers here. He’s good with math.” That explained the lag time, Yuki thought. Royd must be going crazy now the internal building scanners were fooled. “So Ruby’s your girlfriend?” Tanner glared back at the purple-haired woman in the security guard uniform. “Co-worker. You ask a lot of questions for a metal chick. If you’re going to jump me could you bring it on? Only I’ve got things I need to be doing.” Yuki picked up the intruder’s adrenaline surge when he offered to fight. Part of him was hoping she’d make a move. Instead she pulled the neutralised vault door open. The secret files and most restricted computer terminals were laid out in a sophisticated high-tech room. Four more sealed doors led out from it into more specialised holding areas. “Mind if I just check what they’re doing?” Yuki asked, uncoiling an I/O interface from her forearm hatch. “Watch for Shadrack’s calculations,” Tanner warned as she scanned the mainframe. Yuki saw what he meant at once. The system was in turmoil. “How did he do this?” Tanner shrugged. “Mathematics is his life. Literally. I don’t ask and he don’t tell. Now let’s see… ah, directors’ personnel jackets.” Yuki interrupted him with more urgent information. “I’ve found your missing person. She’s on level seventy-four, the operating theatre! And they’re… uh oh. So that’s what they’re up to! Al!” Tanner threw the files back in their drawer after a quick glance at the names. “Him. Huh. Figures. So what are you saying about Ruby?” “I know what they’re trying to do!” Yuki said, whirling round to leave. “We’ve got to stop them. We’ve got to get out of here and tell someone.” She thought this through further. “We need to call the Lair Legion!” The building shuddered momentarily. Tanner flinched. “Well good luck with that,” he told the P.I. “That felt like a dimensional shift. I don’t think this tower’s on Earth any more.” “Just a basic precaution,” Mr Royd told them, appearing to block the vault doorway. “Just until you two are safely slaughtered.” Tanner didn’t hesitate. He went for Royd’s throat. Royd slapped him away, but the Irishman pulled chunks of synthetic flesh away with him. “A lycanthrope,” Royd noted, his metallic face half exposed now. Tanner’s claws hadn’t even scored it. “I haven’t killed a lycanthrope before.” Yuki moved forward with lighting speed and hammered at the joints on the robot’s leg. They didn’t break. He didn’t flinch. His hand moved out and caught the P.I. by the neck. “I’m disappointed in you, Lee, if that’s your name. I thought you might have what it took to be one of the new citizens of Earth.” This close, with direct physical contact and no reason to conceal her scan, Yuki was able to get a proper surface reading of her enemy. He was made of adamantine, the unbreakable metal. There was only one adamantine robot, and he was encased in vanadium steel in the Safe. Or he had been. His name was Ultizon. Yuki knew that she was in a world of trouble. Next issue: EEE visits WeirdSciCon 2005. The Lair Legion visits WeirdSciCon 2005. The Baroness visits WeirdSciCon 2005. Ultizon visits WeirdSciCon 2005. And Al B. Harper gets creative. All the pyrotechnics you’re expecting in Untold Tales of WeirdSciCon 2005: Unconventional Behaviour. The Footnote That Burns Twice As Bright Burns Half As Long: Ruby Waver’s previous exploits were outlined in UT#152: Nats Ate My Gerbil and UT#187: The Stains of Evil. Laurie Leyton’s appalling experience was recounted in UT#142: The Destruction of Laurie Leyton. Roni Y. Avis, hook-handed inventor of internet spam and mastermind behind a thousand dodgy Parodyverse deals, is currently Marketing Director for ITC. Joshua Parkson is the previously-revealed real name of a major Parodyverse villain. Tanner is the name which the Irish lycanthrope working at Mr Lye’s Laundry of Doom goes under. His co-worker is the golem Shadrach, a being of clay given life by mathematical equations. Both of them debuted in UT#187: The Stains of Evil. Dr Rikki Ulz Hagen is, as described, a larcenous genius specialising in artificial intelligences. Much of her work is based on that of her deceased Nazi relative Dr Ernst Vishnar, the scientist who created Hallie. She came close to destroying the LL’s resident AI in A Trick of the Light – Part Three by Visionary. Ultizon is a psychopathic adamantine robot, controlled by the computer sentience previously known as Virtual Zemo. In his last attempt at world domination, UT#115: Head Games (Version One), he seized control of the world’s computer systems, defeated the Lair Legion in direct combat, and came close to establishing a technocracy where machines are ascendant. He feels he was robbed last time by the Resolution Prophecy’s interference. Next time he’ll do better. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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