POD (The Pattern Universe) Read Online Free Page A

it off. He removed his jacket, then replaced his lab coat.
    “Let's see if we can cook that alien out of its skin,” he bawled confidently. “Set up a Needlegun mounting over here, we will add to the pressure on its shield,” he added pointing to the front of the tear shape.
    He called back to the scientist still monitoring the 3D image. “Are you logging all the data readings?”
    Lockwood nodded. “Yep! And it's pretty interesting stuff, way off our normal scale of operation. This is some tough cookie we are dealing with here.”
    “Let me know when it starts to cook,” Goeth called back to him as activity in the room increased. He went around the trapped unit to supervise.
    Lockwood watched the 3D thermal screen image as the heat signature of the shield continued to climb. The NRG was having a limited effect, but the laser was building up an increasing level of pressure which was turning the local area an expanding deep red covering an increasingly wider radius.
    He thought that if the shield were to collapse the damage might be significant. He chewed his lip debating whether to point it out to Goeth. In the end, he decided to wait a bit. It was to prove a fatal decision.
    Lockwood was still watching the screen when the invisible tractor fields collapsed. Whatever they had been holding onto was no longer there. The whine of the electric motors increased in pitch as their operators sought to quickly turn them off before they damaged something.
    The NRG beam, having lost its target, and with nothing to halt its path, cut across the room wounding the laser operator in the arm and leg.
    The laser, also having no object to focus its power on, beamed its deadly ray straight across the laboratory, drilling an explosive hole straight through Lockwood’s' head. It continued to traverse the wall behind his still upright corpse, creating a melted strip of concrete and mesh in its wake.
    Both beams continued to inflict considerable damage on the room and its occupants, before eventually being switched off by Goeth and another team member.
    The captured object, they had presumed to be completely under their control, had simply disappeared.
    Goeth looked around at the resulting confusion furious at having lost a prized possession. He also knew Ferris was going have his hide.
     
    Pod wasn't amused but wasn't particularly unimpressed either. They were causing significant discomfort and it wasn't easy venting the excess heat from the shield. It was, in fact, trapped. Not inextricably, but it didn't want to do any damage to itself, or the laboratory, even though it intended to leave soon. Timing was essential.
    Thanks to Lockwood logging in to the network, it had infiltrated most of the computers in the room with a monitoring program developed during its days of eavesdropping on world events, a 'worm' they called it. The last thing Pod wanted was for them to replace equipment and somehow discover it.
    It needed the worm to spread to other computers on the system, but these ones were isolated. It would need to be patient and await for manual dispersal of the worm across their networks.
    Pod had already updated its data banks with the latest from their research and designs. It was extremely disturbed to discover many of the devices they had developed were primarily directed towards on-planet warfare, which was supposed to have halted with the implementation and increased use of personal shields.
    Here, though, the Fortress was concentrating on weapons to overcome those shields and other devices using the new technology. There were some unpleasant weapons in their arsenal. Pod needed to know more about their intentions; it felt that Zeke and Space Island might be the intended targets of much of this.
    It was downloading the logs of communications and files from the administration side, but needed just a few more minutes before it could begin to extricate itself from this attempt to create a trap. It had listened to the conversations