Deliver Us Huis

The newscast was filled with pictures of the disintegrated building. Multiple people were being interviewed, from the shopkeeper next door, to a crazy hobo who claimed to be in the building before it exploded.

They ran reports on the Planet Guard’s findings, but there wasn’t much to tell. All they found was disintegrated pieces of building.

Newscasters were calling it a puzzle, the only real motive anyone had dreamed up was that someone was done with the old building and destroyed it rather than filing claims of Code breakage.

Between the elections, and the mysterious explosion, the press needed little else to talk about. Why waste time on boring natural resources when a building had just exploded in the middle of the night?

Petrus and I kept the news on, happy with our success, while we planned our next resource heist. There was a big reserve kept for a large company, only about 50 kilometers away. We had uploaded the company’s storage schematics, and were now working on a plan of how to, not only get into the building, but also get the resources out.

As far as we had seen the building was Huisic guarded, not machine monitored. Therefore, if we could get our Class A’s in they could use their Paracents to freeze the guards. From there we would have thirty minutes to get out all of the resources, and get well away, before the guards woke up and called the Planet Guard.

There were two guards at the front gate, easy enough for two Class A’s to freeze. From there two guards were on the roof, also easy for our Class A’s to swoop in and freeze. The guards we worried most about were the two on the inside, monitoring the security cameras.

It was all a matter of getting to them before we were spotted.

The guard room was on the first level, right inside of the lobby.

Any movement out of the ordinary would be caught on cameras. We had to take these guards out first, without giving them a chance to call the Planet Guard.

“Does this place ever receive any shipments?” I asked.

“Every now and then they have large cargo speeders come to bring or take away stock.” Petrus said.

“Any idea where they come from?”

“No, why don’t we just go ahead and snipe em with the Paracents?”

“How would we do that?”

“We come on a night they’re expecting a delivery. The way the cameras are angled you can’t see inside the guard booth, just whoever goes up to the booth. A Class A goes up to the guard house, placing hand inside. Presto, guards are frozen.”

“I just don’t see how that’s going to work…” I said, “I just think when the cameras are on it’s too much of a risk. If someone got suspicious we could be goners, I think we need to disable the cameras.”

“And how would we disable the cameras, without being caught on camera first?” Petrus asked.

At that moment O’Malley came in with water and some other kind of huisic food that I will figure out later. Sitting down he looked at the building schematic as we continued to talk.

“What if we had the Class A’s take out the cameras by shooting at them from a distance?”Petrus suggested.

“That seems way too suspicious.” I said, “A hurtling object, and the cameras go fuzzy? I would be calling the Planet Guard if I saw that happen.”

O’ Malley looked up from the schematic, “What if there was a power outage?”

“A power outage?” Petrus asked.

“Happens all the time,” O’Malley said, “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

I started nodding, “That makes sense. It wouldn’t be necessarily odd for the power to go out. No suspicions raised, then all of a sudden, they’re frozen. Then we can take what we need and be gone.”

“But how are we going to take the supplies?” Petrus asked, “If a dozen hover trucks are rented to your name, and a dozen hovercars worth of material is taken, I think it would be relatively obvious who’s to blame.”

“True,” I nodded, “How could we lead suspicions elsewhere?”

“Elsewhere as in who else, or why else?”

“Why else would someone steal from a building?”

“To take what is there.”

I sat up straight, “Unless we make them think we’re not taking anything at all.”

Petrus furrowed his brow, “And how would we do that?”

“Blow up the building!” I said, “Make it another one of the mysterious bombings. The news will catch that, not spend time looking at stock. We take what we need, and then we blow the place up.”

Petrus nodded,“Then no one will be looking at it as a robbery, just another one of the mysterious bombings. Perfect.”

“We’ll rent as many hover trucks as we need, the new Class A’s Nickolai has out will be enough to drive them. Two will fly ahead, work a power outage. By the time we get there the Class A’s will have been able to take out the guards. Using the rest of the Anthrolems we’ll load up the hover trucks. Once we’re driving back we’ll send a missile from a Class B. And behind we’ll leave another problem for the Planet Guard to solve.”

Petrus nodded, “How many Class A’s are we going to need to pull this off?”

“We’ll need as many as we can. The more Anthrolems, the more trucks. the more resources we can get away with.”

“He started production yesterday night, and he said earlier he could make 25 a day. At that rate, by tomorrow he should have 50 ready for us.”

“And how many hover trucks do you think we could bring through without being suspicious?”

Petrus shook his head, “I don’t know. It’s a fairly unpopulated area, but still, a regiment of hover trucks suddenly whipping through a peaceful town would probably bring quite a bit of attention.”

I looked at the route we had mapped out on the table.

“What if we sent the first Anthrolems out, stop the power, take the guards out, and by out I mean take them far away from the site that will later be destroyed.”

“Alright,” Petrus nodded.

“Then from there we’ll send the trucks through, one or two at a time, in fifteen minute cycles. The Class A’s will load as much material as they can to each truck, before the next one comes. There should never be more than three or four trucks there at any time.”

“And then once we’re ready we’ll send the Class B to the roof and have him fire.” Petrus finished.

“And we’ll have several hover trucks full of resources to make even more Anthrolems.”

“So, “Petrus said, “How many trucks are we going to need?”

“Well,” I said, “We’re going to need two Anthrollems to go ahead and take care of the guards. We’re also going to want at least three to help with loading the trucks there, and three to unload them on the roof, here, to keep the operation going quickly and smoothly.”

“So we’ll have forty two Anthrolems able to drive the trucks there and back.” Petrus said.

I nodded, “And then we’ll have forty two truckloads worth of supplies to make an army.”

“I’ll start working,” Petrus said, “Hiring hover trucks from several different companies, under several different names.”

“Be sure to make the orders as untraceable as possible.” I said, “Just in case.”

Petrus nodded, “Of course. We’ll also be sure to fly them far above normal altitude to make sure they don’t run into anyone, and no one see’s them coming here.”

“Perfect,” I said, “I’ll go make sure Nickolai will have the promised Anthrolems ready.”

And with that we parted ways, getting ready for the next night.