Leon and Zhang worked together on the nearby computer node that was hidden behind one of the walls in the basement. With a bit of tweaking and some creativity use of Commander Ella’s scanner, they were able to convince the Lethe’s sensors to set up in a false echo loop that showed no humans anywhere except where the androids expected them to be: inside the town on the main deck.
The team, led by Leon, cautiously left the building, which contained Leon’s watchmaking business on the first and second floors and his home on the third. The nearest stairway to the area “below decks” was on the edge of town, about 350 meters from Leon’s home. As the team moved quickly and quietly through the narrow streets to the outskirts of town, they continued to be impressed with how realistic everything seemed. They could hear birds singing in the distance, and bees buzzed by them on their way to and from their hives. If they had not known better, they would have been fully convinced that this town, this environment was all that there was.
As they neared the entrance to the lower decks, the team stopped and took cover behind some bushes. Two sentinels, dressed in security uniforms, stood on either side of the entrance to the stairs, which was disguised as a cave. Although the two sentinels stood at too great a distance for Dobbins to see their eyes, Ella’s scanner told him that the sentinels were androids.
“Mr. Zhang,” Dobbins whispered, “what is the effective range of the EMP this blaster emits?”
“I don’t know for sure, sir,” Zhang whispered back. “I would guess it to be 20, maybe 25 meters.”
“Well,” Dobbins whispered, “I guess we’re about to find out.” He pulled out his blaster and fired on the two guards. Other than a slight whine from the blaster, nothing else indicated that he had fired. The android guards still stood upright at their post.
“Make that 15 meters,” Zhang amended quietly.
“We can’t get any closer without being spotted. There’s simply no cover. We’re going to need to distract them somehow in order to get in range,” Dobbins said.
“I’ve got an idea,” Samuleson said. “Give me a minute, and I’ll draw them closer.”
He rose to his feet and walked straight through the bushes towards the androids. “Hey, you, there! Security guys!” he yelled. “Are you looking for Radioactives? Well, there’s one right here. Come get me! Come on, get me!”
Both guards drew their blasters and fired at Samuelson, who jumped out the way just in time. The location where he had been standing erupted into a small volcano of dirt. Once the dust settled, the androids left their posts and moved towards the spot where Samuelson had been standing.
Once they got within ten meters of Dobbins’s location, he fired. This time, both androids crumpled to the ground, knocked offline by the electromagnetic pulse. .
They all quickly moved up to the androids. Samuelson joined them from somewhere off to their left. He was covered in dust. “Okay,” he said sheepishly, “so maybe that didn’t quite go the way I had planned it. It still worked.
“Captain,” he added, “I don’t think that those blasters were set to stun.”
“I agree, Mr. Samuelson. That’s quite odd, since androids are supposed to be programmed not to injure humans. Something clearly has gone wrong.”
“Desmond’s work, no doubt,” observed Leon. “He needs some way to keep the population in line. Fear of death is a powerful weapon.” As he was speaking, he opened up the android’s chest cavities, and disconnected their main power packs. “Two less of the enemy to worry about,” he explained.
The team moved onward and into the cave. At the back of the cave stood a doorway that refused to open for them. Leon opened a panel to the left of the door, switched a couple of wires in a circuit panel, and the door slid open. The entire team walked through the door and down the steps to the levels below.
After taking the stairs down three levels, they exited the stairwell and found themselves in a hallway that looked identical to the one in which they had first stood after exiting the shuttle.
“Which way?” Dobbins asked Leon.
“The shuttle bay is to the right,” Leon responded. “The lower-decks entrance to the control center is to the left, and it’s quite a ways. We’d better get a move on before security realizes what’s happened to those two sentries.”
Ella and Skyler turned to the right and jogged off towards the shuttle, while the remainder of the team—Dobbins, Samuelson, Zhang, and Leon—headed left on the long walk towards the Control Center.
They moved quickly and quietly along the corridor, at least, as quickly as Leon could move. No sound could be heard ahead of them; if there were any androids below decks, they were far away. Within five minutes, they reached the doorway to the Control Center. The door refused to open for them initially, but Leon quickly removed a panel beside the door, switched a couple of wires, and the doors opened.
On the other side of the door were two human-looking figures which rose as the door opened. They drew their blasters, turning to face the door. As they turned to face the team, Dobbins could clearly see their purple eyes. Samuelson fired his blaster, and the androids crumpled to the ground.
Without delay, Zhang and Leon headed for the main computer terminal. Leon tried to log in to the system, which promptly refused his access.
“Desmond has disabled my access codes,” Leon said. “I can’t get in to the system.”
“Let me give it a try,” Zhang said. His hands flew over the controls with a fluency that came from much practice. Within two minutes, he had logged into the main computer system and was ready to search for the android shut down protocol.
“Do I want to know how you are so good at breaking into computer systems?” asked Dobbins.
“No, sir,” answered Zhang, “you don’t.”
He began his search for the necessary protocol, with Leon guiding him. Within seconds, the results screen appeared. It was blank.
“Captain!” Zhang exclaimed. “The android shutdown protocol is gone!”
“Gone?” asked Dobbins. “What do you mean gone?”
“It’s not there. Someone must have deleted it.”
“That’s not possible,” Leon said. “The only people who knew about the protocol were Captain Loman and me.”
“And Desmond,” an unfamiliar voice said from the main door.
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