Mirror Cycle

                            By:

                         Fox Cutter

    Chapter 8

I walked carefully down the tunnel, paw against one wall,
with the majority of my attention focused on watching where
I was placing my feet. The tunnel was carved out of rock and
unfinished, which left the walls jagged, and meant the floor
wasn't quite level and littered with debris.

The only light came from the occasional lamp in the ceiling,
placed every dozen feet. It was meager, hardly lighting more
than three feet of the floor under lamps.

Needless to say, it was slow going. The loose stones dug
into the pads of my feet. It made me wish Oria's species
wore shoes, but they do not. So to play Oria I had to be
barefoot, which was hindering me more than helping me much
at the moment.

I was also left with the problem of where I was going. If I
had made this tunnel, it would be geared more towards escape
than for anything else. Things would also be arranged so I
could cause some problems on my way out.

For Cain, I suspected things were arranged in the other
order, so that he could cause a lot of problems, up to, but
not limited to, destroying the base. Escape would be more of
an afterthought than a plan. Assuming, of course, my take on
my double was correct.

To be honest, I wasn't sure that I was correct. I hadn't
seen right through his trap, much to my great embarrassment,
but I had gotten out of his room. There was the possibility
that he had expected that, so I would have to keep him off
balance.

Walking around a sharp corner, I found myself in a darker
stretch of hallway, the only light was coming from a lone
source halfway down the tunnel. I shivered slightly, feeling
cold, but I mostly ignored it.

What was beginning to eat at me was the question of what did
Cain want? Why was he doing this in the first place? What
was he trying to accomplish from all of it? I knew that he
had attacked my other double, and nearly killed him, but he
had also had the chance to kill me, and did not take it.

I could just ask him, but he didn't seemed to be one to
gloat to his captives. He would keep me alive as long as it
suited him, or as long as he still believed me to be Oriana,
but he would not tell me his plan.

So I had a small advantage at the moment, I was out of my
prison, and was not who Cain thought I was. So what to do
next then? Well, the answer was to see where the tunnel led
me to, then cause some trouble if I could.

As I walked past the light source in the hall, I stumbled a
bit before coming to a stop, nearly falling in the process.
Thrashing my tail, I twisted my head back around, and looked
out... Far, far, out.

I was standing in front of an airlock, the top half of the
door was glass of some kind. Well, not glass, but something
transparent. On the far side was an awe-inspiring sight.

In the distance, but still taking up most of my view, was a
massive gas giant world. Split between day and night, it
still shone in dark reds with yellows, blacks, white, and a
few strains of blue. I had once seen Jupiter up close, and
what I was seeing now was almost as magnificent.

I reached out to touch the glass, finding it was so cold
that I pulled my paw away when I was a few inches from the
surface. The airlock was a single door, not the usual
double, and was just sucking out all of the heat from the
tunnel.

"There's the escape," I muttered to myself as I stepped
away. Then turning back around, I continued down the tunnel.
I had to give my double credit; it was one hell of a view. I
just hoped this rock was sitting outside of the radiation
belt, or else I just got a nice dose.

I kept walking, my paw still placed on the wall. Eventually
I rounded another corner, and found myself back on the
lighted path. It felt like the temperature was starting to
rise once more but I wasn't too sure yet.

After a few more minutes, I came to the end of the tunnel,
relatively speaking of course. There was a rock wall in
front of me, but it was cut smooth, as was the last ten feet
of the tunnel.

Also, carved into the wall was a handle. Wrapping my paw
around it, I felt a latch just under my fingers. I squeezed
the latch shut, and was rewarded with a soft snap and thump,
as the wall slipped a few inches back.

I pulled it open a few more inches, peeking into whatever
room was on the other side. It was mostly dark, with the
occasional light coming from different things on the wall. I
could not make out anything else except that there was no
one in the room.

I opened the door the rest of the way, stepping back to give
it space to open. The light from the hallway flooded into
what I now saw was a small room. Stepping inside I looked
around, and was surprised by what I found. Along three of
the walls were large racks of computer equipment. A thousand
different lines ran in through the top of the wall into a
rack of equipment. After a few seconds I recognized them as
network cables.

"Well, well, well," I said to myself with a slight smile.
"The computer room." Or rather cupboard-- damn thing was
small as hell, but there were at least three terminals I
could see. Now, if this was Cain's way of wreaking havoc, I
was pretty sure there wasn't an alarm on the room.

Stepping over to the terminal, I glanced over the keys. To
my surprise, they were labeled in Prid Standard. Not
whatever language everyone was speaking. This was a great
benefit to me.

Kicking the screen on, I found myself at a login prompt.. I
thought for a few seconds, then tried a few logon names as
passwords. Nothing came of it.

Stepping back from the keyboard, I shook my head. "I'm not
going to get in that way," I scolded myself, then turned to
look at the network rack.

The cables were divided into three colors: yellow, blue and
green. Each was also a different thickness, which made
sense. One was pure data, the second I suspected was to a
security system, and the third a video system. About what I
would expect; my base had a room just like this one.

Which meant there was something else here I could use.
Glancing around the room, I found it stuck in the back
corner, a diagnostics tool for the video system.

Pulling it out of the case, I opened the cover and pulled up
the screen. It was about the size of a laptop, but not as
complex. It was just used to listen in and test lines. But
at the moment that would be to my advantage.

Removing the connector cord from the base, I picked one of
the video cables at random, and plugged it in. With a pop
and a flutter, the screen turned on. There was some static
before the image started to clear.

I was surprised to see a corner of a hallway, with people
walking along it. There was a number displayed as well,
which didn't match what I was expecting, but this was much
better. The video cabling was for the security cameras.

With a quick yank, I detached the tester, this time I took a
closer look at the lines. At each connection point was some
writing, once again in Prid standard. It took a little work
to get enough light to read the script by, but soon I was
able to find the camera for the operations center of the
base.

It was busy, a dozen people were moving around inside, half
were raccoons, the other a mix of different species. Cain
was there as well, talking with one person then another, all
speaking their language. I didn't pay much attention to it,
for now I was just listening. I wanted to get the translator
chip speaking that language before I had to deal with Cain.
If I wanted to know what was going on. I had to keep feeding
it the language for the next couple of hours.

While that played on in the background, I continued to look
though the rest of the room. Everything was pretty much as
expected; the door out into the base, a few more terminals,
and lots more equipment.

But I wasn't satisfied with that. There had to be something
else in here, something Cain had left for use when he needed
it, which meant I would need it as well.

Taking another survey of the room, I looked for things that
were out of place, or at least looked wrong. I checked all
the walls and behind the terminals, moving everything that I
could-- with no luck.

Finally I started to look over all the labels that covered
everything in the room. Some were hard to read from the lack
of light, others written so badly they hardly qualified as
writing. So once more I checked everything again, looking
over everything I could, pulling, pushing, and once kicking
one of the racks, again with no luck.

I stepped back with a sigh, shaking my head. "I feel like
I'm in a Zork game," I said, brushing my hair out of my
face. "Trying everything I can think of, and nothing at all
works."

I shook my head again, this time with a smile on my face.
Funny what one remembers at times like these. I could never
win any of the text adventures, I would get stuck somewhere,
trying to do everything I could think of, and nothing would
work. It would always turn out to be something obvious,
something right in front of my face that I could just never
see.

All right then, what was I looking 'through' instead of
'at'? I mentally stepped back, looking at everything in the
room, from the flicking of the monitor screen, to the
flashing of the lights on the network rack.

Something started to tickle at the back of my mind. I was on
to something with the network rack, but I wasn't sure what
yet. I looked once more over it, going slowly this time.
Each block of network adapters was on and working. The
lights of all the readouts were flashing in time to show how
busy the network currently was.

There was something about the lights. Something was wrong
somewhere, I just wasn't sure where it was. I knew I was
onto something with the lights... but what?

Stepping back again, I tried to see what else felt wrong. My
eyes were still being drawn back to the lights, but I tried
to ignore them. Instead I looked up at the cabling. Most of
the cables went up the wall, slipping in bunches into the
ceiling. A few bundles went down the wall and into the
floor.

I went along each bundle, tugging on each cable gently,
testing to see if they went anywhere. I was disappointed to
find they all did. So that wasn't it. Stepping back once
more, I looked over how the bundles we're arranged: ever few
inches one went up into the ceiling, or down the corners of
the rooms for what went into the floor.

Bending down, I looked into the two inch gap under the rack
to see if I could see anything at all. If there was
something there, it was too far back for me to see it.

Rolling back on my heels, I looked at the lights once more.
Crouching down, paws on the bottom self of the rack, I went
from one block of adapters to another, following the cables
up and out of the room.

That's when I finally saw the pattern. It had been there all
along, and some part of my mind had seen it, but now I was
seeing it with my eyes. On one block of adapters the lights
were not flashing randomly, like the others. True, there
were a few seconds before the flashes repeated, but they
were not random.

Each cable was labeled as controlling part of the
environmental systems. That didn't seem strange, but I did
follow the cables back up to where they vanished in the
ceiling. Tugging each one gently, they felt like any other.
So I took one cable, and gave it a hard yank. There was a
moment of resistance, then a dozen feet of cable came
sliding out of the ceiling.

I keep pulling it out until I came to the end. It was left
open, like it might have been connected to something, but
glancing down at the adapter it was plugged into, it was
still showing there was traffic on the cable.

"Very good, Cain," I said with a smirk, as I started to undo
the thumb screws that held the block onto the rack. "I'm
impressed! I almost missed it," I grinned, slipping the
block out and disconnecting it from the power supply.

After a few more seconds I had found the latch that held the
top on, and I had opened the small box. Inside was a gun,
(good), a few control cards for the computers, some
explosives, and a detonator.

I chuckled. "Very good, Cain, excellent, in fact. This is
better than I expected."

Removing everything from the box, I sorted through the
contents. The explosive looked like leftovers from the
creation of the base. Hard pack high gain stuff, the
detonator was wireless and had a range of a several thousand
feet. It also had five different detonation circuits.

Taking a single bar of the explosive, I packed the rest back
into the box, attaching it to one of the detonator circuits,
then I returned it to the network rack, shoving the cord
back up into the ceiling so it looked like nothing was
disturbed.

Next I took the control cards, plugging them into the
diagnostic ports of one of the terminals. Turning them on,
the terminal hummed, and I found myself looking at a
cluttered screen that had a representation of a dozen
instruments on it.

Running through the list, I noticed there was a
communication system, a map of everything in the local area,
environmental controls, and the security system.

I decided it would be best not to play around just yet. I
adjusted some settings, cooling the base down a few degrees,
and turned off some of the security system, so that no one
could be tracked inside the base, myself included.

I thought about doing something more, but I decided not to.
I wasn't sure how much I could get away with before my
tampering was noticed.

With that much done so far, I sat back and relaxed, focusing
a bit on the video tester, watching everyone move around in
the control center. Cain was still there, looking a bit
worried, and barking out the occasional order.

As I waited, I took one of my pills; it was a bit soon by my
watch, but better to be safe. Then I reached into my pocket
and removed my wallet. I decided it was time to take a look
at this ID that Oria had created for me. Flipping it open, I
was surprised to have something fall out into my lap.

Picking it up, I held it to the light, the ID forgotten for
the moment. It was my gem, the norm-shift stone. Hot damn,
Oria must have stuck it in there. This was fantastic, it
would give me even more of an advantage!

Grabbing a loose strand of cable, I worked it though the
gem's mounting, making a quick necklace. Dropping it around
my neck, I tucked it under my shirt.

My attention was then turned to the screen on the tester.
The command center was suddenly busy, and to go with it, I
was able to understand what everyone was saying. I smiled as
I found out what was going on. My ships had finally arrived.

Turning to the terminal, I confirmed it with the local area
map. The four ships had just slipped into range.

Back in the command center, Cain was standing up, arguing
with a few of his underlings about what to do. He said he
was going to come and fetch me.

Swearing softly, I ran back into the tunnel. As I dashed
down it's length, I checked to see if the gun was loaded as.
Once I was sure it would work, I shoved it in my pocket.

Running past the airlock, I left the other explosives there,
so I could blow it open if I needed to, covering them
slightly to keep them from being noticed. I was glad the
detonator had enough control to allow me to do something
like this; I might be needing it.

Once back at the far end of the tunnel, I opened the door
into Cain's room. Closing it behind me, I went around his
desk, and slid into the bed, curling up under the covers,
moving the pillows I had left there a few hours before.

Forcing myself to breathe slowly, I waited for Cain to
return. He had this game all planned out... he thought there
was nothing I could do to win. It was time to start changing
the rules so I would win.

It was time to start cheating.

   To Be Continued...

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This story is copyright 2000 by Fox Cutter. Hardcopy
reprints limited to one per person, all other rights
reserved. This story may not be distributed for a fee except
by permission of the author, and this copyright notice may
not be removed.