Chapter six

The ARD dropped from where it had been hovering near the ceiling, crashing down onto some of the discarded beer cans that sat on the e-table before shooting forward at Claus. It's aim wasn't quite dead on, striking him a glancing blow on the shoulder, but the impact coupled with the sheer surprise sent Claus sprawling from his chair with a yelp. The ARD paused by the window, turning one way then the other as if getting its bearings. Its remote claw opened and closed, the arm it was on extending slowly, before the whole unit once again plunged towards the panicked looking German on the floor. Claus frantically attempted to crawl under the e-table, but not before the remote claw had grabbed a chunk of his suit jacket, cheap fabric giving way without much protest as he scuttled away.

Mike was up on his feet before Ling, the shock of the shuttle crash dampening her normally sharp reactions. The big American grabbed the chair he had been sat on and swung it over the e-table with a cry of anger. The rickety wood of the chair splinted over the ARD, but the force was enough to dislodge one of its external cameras, which now hung off the rim at a drunken angle by a single cable. The machine paused from its efforts to claw at Clause to attempt to turn a functioning camera towards its attacker. With no other obvious weapon to hand, Mike beat a tactical retreat, grabbing the slowly standing Ling by the shoulder and dragging her into the side office, slamming the door shut behind them. The ARD, with targets freshly acquired, shot after them, hitting the now closed door with a force enough to shake it inside the frame, dust and plaster falling from the ceiling.

Mike scrabbled around the office, throwing and kicking various detritus out of the way as he searched for something he had a vague recollection of being in there. Somewhere.

"What are you looking for" Ling turned her head from the door she was attempting to keep braced from another ARD ram.

"They're here somewhere. FUCK. I remember. SHIT. That dick the Germans sent to nanny be before Claus made me fill in the health and safety release for each SODDING one of them" on his knees Mike pulled aside an fusty beer crate, "A-HA, knew I'd find you bastards"

Ling strained to see what he'd come across, but his fat arse was in the way "WHAT?"

"SHITTING FUCKSTICKS" Mike tried to stand up quickly, but only succeed in smacking his head on the desk he'd had to climb under amid his hurried search, crying out in pain, but shuffling away to one side so that Ling finally got a view of what had annoyed him so much.

A weapons crate

A locked weapons crate.

"No key?" she enquired, just as the door rattled heavily again.

"It's coded to a permission on my IR specs" he was rubbing his head

"And the network's screwed" a statement rather than a question

"Yup"

"Lucky I came prepared then" putting her shoulder against the door to free an arm, Ling produced one of the largest handguns Mike had ever seen from the folds of her jacket. Mike was transfixed, not least because Ling had a slight figure and he could work out where she kept the weapon. "No need to thank me" Ling smiled at him and threw open the door. The gun thrust out in a double handed grip, legs braced apart, trigger pulled one, twice three times.

Nothing happened

"What the...?" Ling brought the gun close to her face to try and see what was wrong, forcing Mike to bodily shove her out the way as he again slammed the door shut in the face of the onrushing ARD.

Mike slumped down with his back to the door "shit", but the expletive was more half hearted this time

"I don't get it, I used this on the firing range at the embassy just this morning" Ling stood above him, still starring bemused at the gun

"The kill switch"

"What? That was for your military machines"

"Nah, it's an area of affect command. The Germans would have neutered every foreign owned weapon in the building as a precaution. I should have thought before, would have at least saved me the sore head" which he was again rubbing tentatively. While the kill switches could be manually reset on the MOP's by a trained on-site American operator, it was more complicated with the old fashioned hand weaponry. In order to prevent the user simply manually resetting the switch themselves, bypassing any benefit to the concerned host government, the gun had to be reset by the German authorities at one of their own weapon depots.

"Then my gun is screwed too"

"Uh-huh" Mike turned to look up at Ling, just as a new smile started to form on her face "Why are you so happy?"

"Because, Michael, the proud Chinese nation, how do you say? Ah yes, _don't take any shit_" she started fiddling with the gun, accessing a small keypad on the side of the grip, quickly tapping at the buttons. Mike frowned, but had no time to ask any more questions before Ling was shooing him out of the way and again opening the door.

This time the gun erupted into life, shot thudding against the body of the ARD, which, in the latest break from the action, had gone back to harassing Claus under the e-table. The first ricochet smashed the outside window, the second tore a large hole in the opposite wall, but the ARD remained airborne.

Once again Mike shoved Ling out of the way and slammed the increasingly distressed door closed. An even more distressed German whimpered from under the table.

"That ain't gonna work" Mike faced a perturbed looking Ling

"Well feel free to tackle it with bad breath and a surely attitude, but I shall stick with my gun"

"Give the gun to me" Mike held out a hand and looked her in the eye

"You're crazy, why am I going to give you my gun? Who is the trained agent here and who is the fat janitor? Now get out of the way and let me finish this. I've more important things to be doing than babysit your incompetent ass" she chose her words to wound; Mike was starting to irritate her.

Mike ignored the gibe "I operate that thing every day, I know how to take it down"

"Then tell me"

"Too hard to describe. Besides, I need you running decoy"

Ling frowned in thought, but still holding Mike's gaze. Handing over Chinese tech to the Americans was one of the biggest breach of protocol in her line of service. But it was Mike. She'd known him for close on 10 years now, since she first came to Berlin. He was the guy that had effectively cost her any hope of career progression. But he was also the guy that had probably saved her life.

Her very first mission on arriving in Berlin had been to infiltrate the American base of operations in the city; having just taken delivery of the latest MOPs the Chinese were keen to get the technical specifications. Electronic infiltration had proved too difficult to manage undetected so Ling had decided to go after what she and her superiors saw as the weak link, the disillusioned ex-serviceman given the bum job of supervising the MOP transfer. Mike. Getting in to the warehouse was easy enough, Mike seemed almost desperate for English speaking company as Jack could hardly be classed as intellectually stimulating (the Americans didn't even trust him with access to the specifications). Getting Mike drunk was even easier; China produced more - and in Ling's opinion better - whisky than Scotland these days.

But getting him to talk was almost impossible.

She tried persuasion, she tried bribery, she hinted at threats. She even tried flirting, but that was before she'd commissioned the deeper search into his background. Even having done that, her attempts to use his homosexuality against him just felt clumsy; to Mike it wasn't an issue he or the people close to him cared about. This was all taking time, her superiors were starting to get frustrated with the lack of progress of the agent they had been told had enormous potential. Ling's star began to wane, her frustration increase. Eventually she had asked to be taken off the mission, to try and claw back her reputation somewhere else in the Berlin intelligence circles. But the damage had been done. The opportunities for career progression began to close in front of her. She was stuck in Berlin as her more successful peers were invited back to senior position back on the Chinese mainland.

The thing was, Mike had been ordered to pass on the tech specs.

Ling found this out some years later over one of their now regular card and whisky sessions. Almost as soon as Ling had first started the mission, Mike had been called for a briefing with his own superiors. He was to allow the Chinese to get hold of the specs, but without it looking like he was giving them away freely. This wasn't out of some sort of international benevolence, no, this was because of a nifty little programme they had planted within the (incomplete) tech specs. A programme that would quietly embed itself in the Chinese electronic systems and feed back any tasty information which it unearthed.

But that wasn't Mike's style.

He was a more of a head on sort of guy. The sort of guy that hadn't adjusted to the virtual age very well. Part of his actions came out of petty rebellion, a minor display of power in the face if his military career being subsumed by the latest generation of MOP. The men and women earning the medals these days were sat behind a control system 3,000 miles away rather than actually on the battlefield. Another part came out of a childish attempt to get back at his ex-husband, the politician, who he often drunkenly blamed for his being sent to Berlin. But most of all Mike justified his actions on the basis that this sort of thing just wasn't playing fair.

And that stubbornness had saved Ling's life

The programme the American's had wanted to smuggle into the Chinese systems wasn't as clever as they thought. It was eventually passed over to the Chinese via another agent once Mike's intransigence had become apparent. It lasted three days before Chinese technicians had discovered it. It was then traced back to source. While the Chinese couldn't outright confront the American's over it - after all, both sides had been doing this sort of thing for decades - they could probe the Chinese agent that had been tricked into passing the infiltration programme on.

That agent disappeared.

Ling could never be sure if some other dirt had come to light on the agent in question, perhaps they were guilty of some other crime. But she could never shake the feeling that the agent had been removed (permanently) in order for her superiors to save face. She'd seen it before; the Chinese intelligence service was a harsh and unforgiving environment. Mike didn't know any of this of course, and so it wasn't as if he had heroically saved her. But she had come to admire his stubborn streak, his determination to play it straight (in his career rather than personal life, that was). That was the sort of stability that she had never felt within her job, came with the territory she figured. And so the two of them had formed an odd sort of friendship.

Ling passed over the gun.

"Ok, this is how it's going to work. You open the door, catch its attention and get it in here" Mike was bending down to sit on the floor next to the door as he was describing the plan

"While you have a nice lie down?" Ling cast a suspicious gaze on the now sat form of Mike, with his back to her at the door.

"That's about it, yup. You ready?"

She shook her head, but agreed to the affirmative "yeah".

Ling threw the door open once again, Claus' yelps again filtering into the side office as he attempted to ward off the ARD's claw arm with a broken chair leg from under the table.

"HEY! OVER HERE" Ling yelled, waving her arms. The ARD turned, front camera focussing on the door way. With a slight wobble, it shot towards the doorway. Ling, realising just how little confidence she had in Mike's plan hurriedly backed off in the office, bumping against the desk. The ARD came into the doorway just as Mike lay down underneath it, gun pointed into the air above him.

The thing with the ARDs was that they were built to be robust. As the mainstay of many civilian authorities monitoring and enforcement divisions, as well as widely used by the military, they had to be tough. Outer rim re-enforced cryo-steel, inner blades and control surfaces designed to fly whatever the weather.

However, this one was slightly different, thanks to Jack. A couple of weeks previously the bored American technician had been attempting to impress some visiting German school children in the firing range by using an MOP gun system to shoot an apple off the top of the ARD. Why the hell he'd tried to do this using armour piecing rounds rather than something slightly less destructive, Mike wasn't sure. Anyway, Jack had - oh so predictably - missed, ripping out some of the airblade housing. Rather than have to send back the ARD to the central repair depot in Colorado, along with an awkward damage explanation report, Mike had attempted to fix the ARD himself. Neither his skill or equipment were as sophisticated as those available back in the US, but an hour's welding later and the ARD was at least airborne again.

The welding had, however, left a weak point on the underside of the ARD, one Mike was now lining up along the sites of Ling's gun. The weapon barked its response as he pulled the trigger, once, twice. The second shot found its mark, and with a harsh metallic crunch, the ARD veered to the left, slammed into the wall and fell to the floor behind the desk. A slim trail of smoke lazily drifted into the room above it. Mike regained his feet, brushing the dust and other dirt from his clothes as Ling was peering over the desk at the wreckage.

"Not bad. My gun, please" she held a hand towards him, in which Mike placed the gun

"Could say the same about your gun. It's a beast"

"Finest Chinese tech, crafted rather than manufactured like your tat" she was still looking at the ARD

"Mmm-hmm. Claus, you ok?" Mike wandered back into the control room.

"Is it gone?" Claus wasn't in a hurry to get back out from under the e-table

"Yup" Mike turned back upright one of the chairs he hadn't smashed over the ARD and sat down with a tired sigh.

"So what the hell is going on?" Ling stood at the doorway, rubbing her eyes "My IR is still down"

"Mine too, I can't reach central command" Claus tentatively pulled himself out from under the table, eyes darting around the room as if searching for the next object that was going to attack him.

"Ok" Mike was rubbing his head again "We're under some kind of attack, but we don't know by who" although with this he cast a glance of slight suspicion at Ling. "But we're unable to use the MOPs to defend ourselves" this with a glance at Claus

"Likewise the MOPs can't be used to attack us" it wasn't often Ling defended Claus, but after the ARD attack she was glad they weren't also having to deal with an errant MOP or two.

"So with no communication and basically no means of defence, what do we do?" Claus asked nervously

"I need to get back to my embassy" Ling walked over to the broken window, but a crash from inside the warehouse caused her to swing around. Claus froze, as if torn between heading back under the table, or jumping out of the window. But Mike was back on his feet, heading to the door linking the room to the stairs down into the main warehouse.

"JACK? YOU OK BOY?" another crash. Mike attempted to peer into the dimly lit warehouse, but couldn't see where the noises were coming from.

Ling had come up behind him, once again with her gun out "Need me to get your back, again?"

"If it's an MOP it wouldn't matter who has my back as we'd all be screwed. JACK?!"

A running shape shot under one of the lights and back into shadow accompanied by a dull clanking noise

"What was THAT?" Claus had now joined them, although making sure to keep Mike and Ling between him and the stairs into the warehouse.

"Rogue MOP. SHIT" Mike crept forward, right foot poised over the top step

"Hang on, I've seen you guys operating those things, we're not going to be able to do anything about it, so why not just stay here? Or leave down the fire escape?" Claus sounded desperate

"I've got to see what happened to Jack. You guys go if you want" Mike started down the stairs.

Ling gave a shrug, and followed. Claus gave a shiver, and followed.