Arctic FOX (3)

“Hawk 1 reporting, we’re on site.”
“Copy, HAWK 1, what do you see?”
“Conditions are…less than favorable, Hawk 6, white-out on our cameras. Infrared is showing something big though.”
“Separatist?”
“Possibly. Hard to see the personnel around it, definitely not supposed to be well-known. Camouflage tarps and space blankets are wrapped on all the material I see, Hawk 6.”
“Our screens are fuzzing out, Hawk 1, we’ll need verbal description of the target object.”
“Copy, Hawk 6. The base is rectangular, like a barracks almost in size. Roughly 50 meters in width, looks like length too. There are about two dozen men moving around it. Most are in cold-weather gear, goggles, with scientific equipment. A handful are carrying automatic small arms – guard details. There’s a large cylindrical attachment upon the roof. It’s resting at a thirty degree angle, into the sky.”
“Repeat, please, Hawk 1, you mean like a fallen smokestack?”
“Negative…more like a…giant cannon…”
“…Copy.”

-SPETSNAZ RECON TEAM “HAWK” RADIO TRANSCRIPTS
-September 26th, 2036

Two of the workers drag on their cigarettes in the harsh winds of beneath the Urals. The taller one has a bushy beard, and light blue eyes. A fur parka wraps around his frame, particularly his head. His shaggy hair pokes out between the synthetic furs of his coat. He points his cigarette at his companion.

“I know you are not Russian, that you’re a foreigner, you know?” His voice is Russian, his accent sharp and tough. His name-tag reads “ALEKSANDR”

His companion, sitting against the steel frame of their project puffs a cloud of smoke. He turns lazily to his companion. With a similarly guttural accent he responds, “So?”

Aleksandr shrugs, making nothing of the comment. “I just thought I’d say. You know, your accent is very good, but from where I am from? I can tell.”

The sitting man nods. His face is hard, a thin moustache nips at the edges of his lips, while a thicker beard wraps around his jawline. He’s wearing a dark skullcap, and his earlobes are a bright pink, matching his nose and cheeks. His eyes are a darker blue, outlined with frost and black eyelids.

“You know I’ve heard some of the workers call you ‘Lisa’ behind your back, did you know that?” Aleksandr chortles, coughing on smoke. The sitting man chuckles himself too. “Lisa! It’s great, it’s great. But it bears a question to me, one I’ve wanted to ask you for a bit, my friend.”

“Yeah?”

“What is your name? You are not Mikhail, I can tell you as such. And you are most certainly not ‘Lisa’. Too feminine for your likings, I believe. So be straight me. I promise not to tell the others.” Aleksandr holds a hand to his chest.

“Mikhail” reflects, and then looks at Aleksandr. Sincerely, “Reynard.”

“Reynard,” Aleksandr lets it roll and then plummet off his tongue. The man called Reynard nods and stands up.

“We should get back.” Aleksandr extinguishes his cigarette in the snow.

“I’ll be there momentarily,” Reynard says with another drag.

Aleksandr waves him off and trudges through the white-out to the camouflaged tents that held their workstations. Reynard watches him leave. He balances his half-cigarette on a wooden palette nearby, still simmering at one end. He stands up, making sure Aleksandr retreated into the insulated tents and then moves around the edges of the base structure. A white bolted door greets him at the corner.

Reynard reaches into his pocket, pulling out a small case, the size of his palm. Flipping it open, he quickly jams two steel instruments into the lock of the door, and jimmies it loose. The latch clicks. He deftly swings the door open and disappears inside, the howling wind and chill masking his movements. His footprints have been erased before he’s even shut the door.

Inside, low blue lights illuminate the corridors. They were tighter than he expected, but it made no difference. Reynard quickly shed his heavy coat and slips off his second layer of pants and stuffed them in a janitorial closet immediately by the exit. He watches the numerous unmarked doors and turns and corners as he slips through the structure. The ground level was designed like a giant cross, with an perimeter corridor connecting each arm. He entered through one of the arms, and followed the outlying path around the center of the complex, to a single set of spiral stairs, heading up, to the only other floor in the base.

He climbs the stairs and guards his movements. The second floor was smaller than the first, a single room, thirty feet in diameter and circular in design. Nobody’s on it. Reynard lifted followed the stairs and then moved into the room. Two levels of computer stations, like irises in an eye, circled the center. There was a single glass partition in the middle of the floor, affectionately called “The Pupil”, which showcased several coolant-dipped mainframes and computer systems. Along the far edge of the “front” of the room, a banister shields against the coolant system grid, where several tanks and wires control the machines keeping the system cool. Beneath the overhang are pipes and valves controlling the flow of the coolant to The Pupil. The I/O stations surrounding Reynard blink and hum in their lifeless cycles. Reynard sits down at one. His fingers dance on the keys, quicker and quicker. The screen flashes green, then digits and commands flicker down through lists upon lists. He hits “Enter.”

Then it appears. The diagram. The text in the top corner reads “PROJECT WOLFRAM” An inventory manifest pops up on the monitor adjacent to Reynard’s. His eyes quickly scan it.

“Son of a bitch…” he whispers. The Russian accent gone. He pulls a flash drive out of his shirt pocket, jamming it into the machine. It blinks. A red warning flashes on a monitor. “I know…” Suddenly the blue lights shift to red. A klaxon goes off.

“Unauthorized transfer of data…in progress…”

Reynard watches the progress bar, painfully inch across the screen.

“Few more seconds…”

Boots echo in the corridors below. They start clamoring up the stairs. The bar finishes. Reynard’s fingers stretch, immediately shutting down the machines, back into their sleep mode. He vaults over the computer terminals, to the balcony over the exposed coolant tanks. He lifts himself over the banister, lowering where he can see the pipes and wires controlling The Pupil. He reaches out, gritting his teeth, and grabbing the nearest pipe. With hand over hand movement, he silently drifts away from the overhang. He pulls his body up, wrapping his legs around the pipe too, letting his hands drop and hanging by his feet.

Above, several men in snow camouflage with military rifles burst into the room, quickly scanning. Nothing. They spread out, looking under the computers, into the Pupil. Two guards lean over the edge of the balcony. A few flakes of snow drift lazily towards the tanks. They exit the room, reporting the all-clear. The lights and klaxon don’t continue.

Beneath, Reynard drops, rolls to his feet, and presses against one of the coolant tanks. He shivers involuntarily at its icy touch. When the boots start to spread out, he carefully steps over the low-end wires and piping and slips out a small maintenance hatch beneath the main coolant terminal. One level below the Command Stations, he drops out of the ceiling in a maintenance corridor. A supply closet, beside him connects to the main janitorial closet, and he retrieves his cold-weather gear, slipping out the exit in time to see the workers and scientists outside start to emerge from the tents and come see. Several of the guards try to wave them back in. Reynard picks up the cigarette he left hanging on the palette by the door, and takes a drag on it as Aleksandr comes to find him.

“What is happening?”

Reynard shrugs, extinguishing his cigarette. “I don’t know, sounds like an alarm in there though.”

“This is exciting! I love government work!” Aleksandr’s face beams. His wire-frame glasses fog up from the chill and his own heated breath. Reynard pulls out his pack of cigarettes. He extends it to Aleksandr.

“Want another one?”