The Riddled Post - Aaron Rosenberg [21]
After she finished, Sonya noticed Fabian was staring off to the side. She’d seen that look before, usually in the mirror. “Fabian, you’ve got an idea?”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “It’s a little crazy, but I think it’d work. Only thing is, I need someone who’s good at targeting—a lot better than I am. Someone who can pick off a small, high-velocity target without hesitation.”
They all turned to look at the tall blond security chief, who actually grinned in return.
“What do you want me to shoot?”
* * *
“Everybody ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Ready here.”
“Affirmative.”
“All set.”
“Let’s do it.”
Sonya smiled with pride. This was her team. “All right, here we go. Kieran, hit it.”
At the communications console, Kieran flipped a switch. Instantly a signal went out, beaming at a set frequency—the frequency that recalled Madl’r’s sensor device.
“I’m detecting movement, Commander,” Pattie announced from the sensors. “Small object, picking up speed. The dimensions match those of the device.” She checked her readings. “Stevens, I’m showing the device was seventeen centimeters from your projected location.”
Fabian grinned but didn’t say anything.
Sonya spoke up to keep them focused. “Okay, here it comes. Fabian, how are our shields?”
“Full power, Commander. That thing’ll bounce like a rubber ball.”
“Perfect. Corsi, you ready?”
“Standing by, Commander.”
They all waited, watching the screen. “One thousand meters and closing,” Pattie announced, as the dot appeared on the screen’s periphery. “Eight hundred. Five hundred. Three hundred. Impact.”
Sonya thought she felt the shield ripple, but it was probably her imagination. On the screen, she watched as the device hit the shield and rebounded, then disappeared.
“Got it!” Corsi shouted through the link—she had used the impact to pinpoint its location, and had locked the transporters on it, catching and sending it in one quick motion. “Sending it to—”
“I have the device, Commander,” Soloman announced from the power station. “It appeared as planned, and I have now removed its command board.”
“Great.” Sonya let out a sigh, and allowed herself a smile. “Okay, team, everybody to the shuttlecraft. Time to get back to our ship.”
* * *
“It was the failsafe again,” Sonya explained to Gold once they’d returned to the da Vinci. “Madl’r didn’t want to risk any chance of dilithium explosion or damage, so he set the device to avoid direct contact with a deposit. But if it did wind up too close for safety, the device was set to deactivate—immediate shutdown of all systems—so that it couldn’t accidentally bump anything. Corsi transported it into the outpost’s power plant, and it shut itself off the minute it appeared. Then we just pulled the plug on it.”
“Risky plan,” Gold pointed out, “trusting a feature you’d only read about in the plans of a dead scientist whose writing you could barely understand. What if he’d forgotten that feature, or left it out, or altered the programming?”
He glanced down at the device itself, now sitting safely in its cradle. Deactivated, the thing looked harmless enough, its dull metal surface pocked by inset sensors, with ridges swirled about them. Those ridges were cutting surfaces—once the device activated, it began to spin, and the ridges functioned as a drill, corkscrewing through solid rock as if it were paper. Small jets were set about as well, interspersed with the sensors and also inset to avoid interfering with the ridges. The jets were used to maneuver, and with so many of them, the device could change direction at a phenomenal speed. It could even stop and reverse, all in less than a meter.
Sonya shook her head. “The thing already avoided the power plant like the plague when it was first activated. It was just too well-built. Madl’r included every safety he could think of.”
“It’s sad, really,” Gold commented, running a finger absently along one ridge. “If he hadn’t built it so well, Madl’r would probably still be alive, and so would the rest of Acid Camp. But he made it so effective it destroyed