It wasn't impossible and it was a fear they had to deal with on a daily basis, but compared to the fears the people Outside had to deal with, Sanctuary was a…well, sanctuary. It was safer than almost anywhere else in the world.
Still, she couldn't help but imagine what it would be like to live Outside. There were enough people out there that they didn’t die faster than they could reproduce. Maybe with no reproduction regulations, they simply had more kids?
While she didn't know, she had always wondered. She was a curious one. Everyone said that, and they always attributed it to her Athena genes.
She would have to imagine what it was like as well until she encountered a couple of people who could tell her more about what it was like out there. The peddlers always did have the best stories—and the best music.
Maybe they made music in the Cities-That-Were. They were into some crazy shit out there if the peddlers were to be believed. That would be something to see. People singing in the cities that were likely to have some of the Skyfall on them any day didn't seem overly nuts, comparatively speaking.
Maybe they had somewhere to hide?
Jessica13 placed a piece of paper over her cup of water almost before she realized what she was doing. It was an instinctive action since you didn’t want to have to drink water with dust in it, but she hadn’t really noticed that the ground was shaking far worse now.
The ripples in her cup became more and more intense, she realized and leaned in closer to investigate.
Another shudder followed. This time, it caught the attention of everyone present.
Jessica13 had already begun to push to her feet. Seismic activity wasn’t doing this. That could only mean one thing.
She was already halfway out of her seat when the lights flickered out, immediately replaced by flashing red that brought the whole mess hall to attention.
“Shit!” Armstrong7’s voice bellowed through the speakers in the room. “Attention. The Sanctuary is under attack! Repeat, under attack!”
Well, that wasn’t something anyone ever wanted to hear. She had been involved in attacks before but they had never amounted to much. Mostly, it was only scavengers and nothing the chavs who manned the mechs up top couldn’t handle.
It had been a while since she’d heard that kind of alarm in Armstrong7’s voice. In fact, she didn’t think she’d ever heard it at all. Hearing the guy who was usually calm now under a great deal of stress triggered an unsettling feeling.
It was easy to tell that the other people in the mess hall could feel it too. A stampede had begun to head toward the door but she was the first to reach it and slipped through.
There wasn’t any panic, she noted, not in anyone’s faces. Alarm, sure, but this was what they lived in the upper levels for. Protecting the rest of the bunker was their responsibility.
Jessica13 sprinted down the tight, concrete hallways until she reached her room and heaved the heavy metal door open with a sense of urgency.
It was a tight space but she had made it hers with a couple of small decorations here and there, items she had been able to pick up and get cleared by the AI running containment at the doors.
But she wasn’t there for any of that. She looked around the room and scanned the area quickly before she found the pieces she was looking for. The coding chips—used for the AIs that ran most of the mech suits they used—had been tossed onto her bed when she had elected to listen to music while reading.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
She snatched them up, left, and shut the door to her room smoothly behind her as the flashing red lights continued to suffuse the hallways with a sense of impending danger. This was made so much worse by the narrow spaces shaking while sheets of dust filtered from the ceiling with each strike.
The fight up top had grown more intense. She could tell.
“All teams to your stations!” Armstrong yelled over the speakers. “Damn it, get that crate up to the mechs now! Repeat, all teams to your stations!”
The CO had a habit of shouting orders to three different people at the same time, and this time was no different. While he called for everyone to get to their mechs, he shouted at those who were already in position to do their jobs.
Most of the folks up there would have no difficulty interpreting the relevant commands. They knew the man, but his mannerisms did take some getting used to.
Jessica13 fell in with a group of other bulletfoots headed toward the hangar to get involved in the defenses and snapped the chips into her headset along the way.
That done, she rebooted the headset and a few seconds later, a series of upbeat chirps could be heard through the speakers.
“Morning, Mini,” she whispered, mostly to herself. “Ready for some fun?”
Chapter Two
Armstrong7 no longer shouted through the speakers. Jessica13 guessed that he was too engrossed with what was happening above-ground to really pay attention to what was happening below. He still needed the reinforcements who were supposed to be on their way, but he also needed to trust that they knew what to do and would do it without him bellowing at them through the comms.
In fairness, they had been drilled through the procedure innumerable times before. Two dozen chavs were ready for action. Six were already Topside and engaged in the fighting that made the whole bunker shake above them. The rest were getting themselves prepped to join them. They had been drilled through what they needed to do time and time again over the years they had all worked on this level.
But there was drilling and then there was the real thing. You knew when it was a drill. You
