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1700 London, England. 010611
Ian charged up the stairs of the old church after his quarry. He's seen the black robed shadow of death moments ago. His heart pounded in his ears and his legs burned from the three-floor sprint. Then his implant communicator rang.
"Ian? Masque here." -- "Yeah what!" BBBRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPP, click. He dumped his whole clip at the shape far at the other end of the hallway as he got to the top of the stairs. Several rounds buried themselves into its hide and the rest blasted the ancient rock corner of the wall to shards.
"Damnit!" he cursed. That thing had a tough hide, maybe his 5.56 AP rounds in the Dyna-Carbine weren't getting through his armor. Nah. This thing could take down APC's, and there was no way anybody would wear that much armor...
"You busy??" asked Masque, calling from who in the hell knows where.
"Yeah, a little," he replied as he began pounding down the long corridor after this specter.
"Ok, I'll call back." BRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP, click. Ian dumped another magazine as he rounded the corner and spotted his quarry step into a huge corner room dimly lit by candles and then it closed the door. No ordinary door, but the heavy SOLID oak kind that was bound in iron from hundreds of years ago.
"That'd be good," Ian said in a heavy Irish accent, "I'll be busy for a while." He though about blowing the door, but then decided he obliterate it. Running up to it, he slapped on two bricks of C4, one at each hinge, roughly the size of an Easter egg. After those were connected by some instant detcord, he placed a large round charge on the center of the door and surrounded it with four other smaller fragmentary charges. Instant fuses that terminated in one second slow fuses connected these. He assembles these in seconds with the practiced precision of a master-mad-bomber. Finally he sunk two M4 pull detonators in the center charge, tied a string to them, and ran around the corner. Then he tugged.
The floor shook and a massive bellowing cloud filled the corridor he was in. The center charge and the two by the hinges flung the door into the room, then the surrounding frag charges blasted everything in the room into smithereens. He jogged cautiously into the room and surveyed it in a quick sweep as his barrel traversed the room. Shit, not a thing. No doors out, nothing open on the roof, no shattered windows. He places his seismic sensor on the wall, and it confirmed what his eyes told him; all the walls were solid, no secret passages.
The room was (emphasis on WAS) a humble clerics room. Spartan and simple like Puritans or Protestants favored, with just a bed, desk, laptop computer, and many books on shelves.
A thunderous crash filled the room, as the window behind him was shattered. A Giant flew through it with an unearthly grace. This giant carried a Dyna-Gattling and began spraying the room as soon as the muzzle cleared the window ledge.
The bullets walked across the room and shredded anything not already obliterated by the huge blast. "Shit!!!! Fuck!!! GODDAMNITITITITITITITITIT!!!!!!" Ian yelled as the stream crossed his body with one bullet hitting just to his right and another bullet hitting just to his left. Both sides of the room were literally ventilated. He felt like Bugs Bunny from Saturday morning cartoons, when Elmer Fud hosed him down, but only managed to trace his outline on the wall behind him. "Mother puss bucket!!! Don't you know that someday that SmartLink is going to fail!!! AND I'm going to be Swiss Cheese?!?!?!" he cursed at Atlas.
"Maybe, but if it were in here I wanted to make sure it was dead. I heard an explosion and I thought you were in trouble."
"You heard an explosion..." his face took on a cynically questioning look, "let's re-evaluate that statement..." he finished with a look of a genius berating a moron on his face. "Where ever he went, he's not here now, so lets go."
2000 London, England. 010613
Sitting around the small fire in the taverns hearth the five figures sat around the table in the empty greatroom. Outside the rain pounded the ages old glass at the front door that displayed a 'CLOSED' sign. Morgan knew the owner and had arranged for a "holiday" closing. She wore a Welsh wool turtleneck tan sweater with dark brown slacks and black fashionable boots; she looked as harmless as a 21 year old college gal. Beside her sat Atlas perched on a cut-off 55 gal drum holding a pint of Guineas gingerly in his hands. His bulk dwarfed everyone in the room and he definitely sat "Around" the table. Across from the big man sat Ian; the (crazy-mad) Irish bomber. His clean looks and dapper attire allowed him to blend in. Wearing a simple double breasted wool jacket over a dungaree shirt and heavy black wool pants he looked like any Londoner in this weather. He grinned a slightly deranged smile as he blasted down his fourth Guineas in less than thirty minutes, with no sign of slowing down.
"Ian, tell us how you got that thing again," inquired Morgan, looking over at him with a charm and easy grace he knew to be faker than the Crowns claim on Ireland. She was a cold-hearted slaughterhouse and could feel no emotion.
"Ok, it was pretty easy. I had to look for the variations in the monsters parameters, and then
convert them into most likely a sixth level linear differential equation. It made up an immensely large, and luckily, square matrix. I had to write a special program to find where he is most vulnerable, his basis vector. Once you have the basis, you have the key to his being. This takes many, many reductions of his matrix, to get the reduced row echelon form, or rref. Then of course since he was alive, he wasn't a homogeneous equation once I had him converted to a linear differential
equation. Then I had to find a particular solution, add it to the general solution, and compare the coefficients to the Cauchy-Euler type." The two combat ops listened with a glazed over look in their eyes that had nothing to do with the alcohol they'd consumed.
Ian continued in a almost unintelligible Irish accent that made the math-babble a stream of comments that none could understand. "Then I wrote another program to find his coefficients, and from there I made an extraction program that would allow me to block his re-entry into the matrix." He paused and got a look of real genius in his eyes, and obvious was impressed with him, "Once he came out of the matrix to kill/be killed by Atlas he would be trapped. His means of escape would be blocked and this had really frustrated Atlas and I early on. Arrrrr," he finished as he slugged down another Guineas. Quickly the young pretty serving girl brought another round of beers: three for Ian and one more for Morgan and Atlas Each.
With more beer on the table and a quick pat on her rear, he continued, "I did this after our
first attempt to kill the bastard led to him running with his yellow tail between his legs as Atlas tore him limb from limb. I coulda blowed him up, but no, the big guy wanted to kill." He paused and gave a quick glance to Atlas to disarm him of the idea there were any hard feelings between them. "And who am I to argue with authority, or well maybe really big deadly guys. So I had to refigure what I just told you, and that led to me blocking his/her/its-entry vector."
Now Ian looked really impressed with himself, "This stranded him to face Atlas to the death, which was his death. Poor fucker! ARRRRRgggghhhh!" Atlas reached over and they slapped each other on the shoulder. Ian didn't budge the tank and Atlas nearly knocked him off his chair. Picking himself and continuing to Morgan's smile, he said, "Of course I coulda solved this by entering his inverse matrix, which would have in matrix terms, blown his arse to itty bitty bits. Again, the big guy wouldn't let me. "Tha calcoolatioons vill take yoo toooo long lito man." Oops I shouldn't make fun of you..."
Having another swig of beer to wet his whistle, he started the finish of his story, "Well they
wouldn't have taken longer, in fact, a quick program would have made it much easier. Oh well. It woulda been a lot of fun to blow him up! Oh well, why do things the easy way. I luv blowin' thingzup!!!" With that he finished his beer and immediately grabbed the next with his other hand and drained it too.
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