"Here they come."

At Kyle's words, Face, Maggie and Kyle all looked up at the big screen, that now showed sensor readings of an approaching ship. Alarms beeped softly on the control console.

"Just coming up to midnight," Kyle said, and then sneered. "Smith likes his drama way too much."

"It's definitely them?" Maggie asked.

"Matches the details of the one from the power plant," Kyle confirmed. He looked over at Face and smirked. "That was a hell of a ride wasn't it, Lieutenant? Your friends doing their very best to blow you out of the sky."

Face glared at him. It had been a hell of a ride and he'd spent it on the floor of Kyle's flight deck, chained to a seat. He still had plans to fire a few choice remarks at the team, on the theme of "were you trying to rescue me or kill me?"

"They're hailing." Kyle flicked a button and an audio transmission started. No video, but Face couldn't mistake Hannibal's voice.

"Kyle, you get one chance to surrender and release Face. And he'd better be unharmed."

"Colonel!" Face called. "Reporting. Alpha, beta, beta."

Maggie frowned at Face's mysterious words. "What was that?"

"Just some code," Kyle said, not apparently caring. "Shut up, Peck. Sorry, Smith, no surrender. I lost my white flag."

"Okay, pal, then I'm coming in to take him. Maggie, if you're there too, we need to have a conversation."

Maggie blushed and looked down. Kyle saw that and scowled.

"You can't get in here, Smith, don't waste your time. If you try too hard I'm prepared to put a bullet in your man's head."

"You forget I've got one of your men too," Hannibal reminded him.

Kyle just laughed. "Oh, yeah," he said, with extra sarcasm. "I'm so worried about Leto, please don't hurt him."

"Damn, there goes your Boss of the Year award," Face muttered.

"See you soon, Face," Hannibal said and the transmission cut off. Face gave a small smile at that. His little coded message had told Hannibal that though he fit to fight, he was restrained. But now, with Hannibal so close, Face wanted the hell out of these chains before Hannibal got to him, or he'd never hear the end of it.

"They're powering weapons," Kyle said. "Aiming for the landing bay doors. Firing." A second later, the room shook. Stone dust rained down from the ceiling. "No effect on the doors." Kyle grinned. "They're increasing power. Don't worry," he said to Maggie. "There's no way they'll get through those doors." The room shook again, harder.

"Doug, we should go," Maggie said, grabbing the back of his chair, squeezing it hard. The shaking went, grew more intense with each impact on as the Chicago fired blast after blast at the bay doors.

"Maggie, they can do that all day, it won't -"

A much larger tremor shook the room and Face fell back down to a sitting position. He curled himself against the wall to avoid being thrown around. Kyle grabbed Maggie and pulled her down under the shelter of the console, holding on to her tight.

"They dropped a mine." He had to shout over the noise. "Hang on there'll be more!"

Another impact made bits of rock fall this time, crashing to the floor. Face wrapped his arms over his head. If the roof fell down, he'd be even more pissed than when the team had been firing on Kyle's ship with him aboard.

"Doug!" Maggie yelled above the noise. "We have to go!"

"No!" Kyle yelled. "Sit tight! They'll run out of mines in a minute." Mixed in with the racket, alarms howled and the voices of Kyle's men shouted over the intercom.

Then the shuddering stopped. Alarms still rang, and people still yelled over the intercom, but the terrifying sound of trembling rock died away. All three people in the room let out long sighs of relief. Maggie pulled away from Kyle and stood up.

Kyle climbed out and brushed stone dust and chips of rock from his console. "They still didn't break through the bay doors. There's some damage, but we're intact." He sneered at Face. "That the best your colonel's got?"

Face didn't answer, but he feared the answer could be 'yes'.

"Firing again," Kyle looked at his console as the minor tremors started up again. "Not a chance in hell. Right." He stood up. "I'm going to go check out the damage. Maggie --"

"I'm going to check on the injuries." She glared at him.

"Okay, you do that," he said, not even noticing her glare. More points knocked off the Boss of the Year rating, Face thought. Kyle and Maggie left the room and Face sighed.

"Hannibal," he said, to the air. "I hope like hell that you have a plan B." Then he smiled and shook his head. What was he thinking? All of Hannibal's plans were Plan B.

-o-O-o-

On the Chicago Amy, Joy Frost, and Seth Calvin manned the flight deck.

"Power is down to sixty percent," Calvin advised.

"We can reduce weapons power now," Joy said. "Use just enough to keep them interested. I hope Colonel Smith got his timing right."

"Hannibal's got great timing," Amy said. She sighed and wished they could call Hannibal to check, but couldn't risk Kyle intercepting the transmission and figuring out where Hannibal and the guys really were.

"Reducing weapons power," Joy said, making the adjustments. She grinned. "Who wants to lay down a few dollars on how long it will take them to figure out we're not actually trying to get in?"

"I think our real intention might occur to them at the point they decide they want to leave," Calvin said, and then leaned back in the co-pilot's chair. He glanced at Joy and Amy saw him give a small smile. "By the way, I've been thinking, Joy, and I'm afraid I've been forced to reach the conclusion that this whole thing is your fault." He made his face serious when she turned to him, frowning.

"My fault? And how do you figure that?"

"Well if you'd asked me long ago about the doctor supposedly visiting me, then we'd have worked out what was going on even before Kyle started his harassment."

"Oh, well excuse me for respecting your privacy."

"I wouldn't have minded."

"You say that now... Okay, buster, if you don't mind personal questions, let's try a few. Like how many times have you been married?"

"Once too often." He gave a sly smile when Joy snorted with annoyance.

Amy grinned, but tuned them out and bent over the sensors scanning the base and monitored the communications panel. She wanted to be down there in the thick of it, but all she could do was wait for Hannibal's signal.

-o-O-o-

"BA," Hannibal said, his voice hushed. "Get this thing shut down. And I mean all the way, not on standby. Can't risk the power source being detected."

"I know man," BA said.

"Hannibal, can we get the heck outta here, I'd like to breathe again sometime today," Murdock said, his voice appealing.

Hannibal could quite understand his desire and he opened the door and slid it aside. The four men, Hannibal, BA, Murdock and Ted almost tumbled out, grateful to no longer be crushed together.

Stretching gratefully, Hannibal looked back at their transport. The Tunnel-Ore machine they had borrowed from Mr Lambert consisted of a small cylindrical, control capsule mounted behind a huge drill bit. That capsule had been designed for only two operators, so the four of them and their weapons had been cramped to say the least. A useful piece of kit though, Hannibal thought. BA would be sad to give it back.

Behind the machine lay a tunnel tens of miles long through the rock. The Chicago had dropped off the tunnelling machine and flown on to the base while Hannibal's squad headed for the same place, by drilling down into and then through the rock. At one point, they'd stopped to plug the tunnel, with rapidly hardening foam that extruded from a tank on the back of the tunnelled, to prevent the room they drilled into losing its air.

He'd talked to Kyle via a transmission, rerouted to appear to come from the ship hovering above, but that actually came from the tunnelling machine sitting only metres from the base, waiting for its moment. And when Kyle had, as Hannibal expected, refused to surrender the Chicago's attack had provided the cover needed to allow the tunnelling machine to break through into the base, its noise and vibration masked by the attack.

Somewhere around here, Kyle sat laughing at the Chicago's useless firing on his blast doors. On the other hand, perhaps he'd already stopped laughing, had already worked out at the ship wasn't in fact trying to get in. Rather it was keeping Kyle from getting out.

The four men checked their rifles and stood ready to go. Hannibal looked around at the large open space. Boxes stacked high told him it was the storeroom, they'd been aiming for. The best place, Hannibal had figured. Nobody would be down here retrieving supplies during an attack.

"Okay," Hannibal said, "our priority is to find Face and to secure the control centre. Once we do that..." He grinned. "I'll just bet Kyle's got lots of anti-intruder measures that we can use on his own people. So let's be nice and quiet. Incapacitate as many of them as you can without drawing too much attention."

The other three nodded. Penetrating deep into the target, undetected by the inhabitants, well that was just bread and butter to all of them.

"Get into your teams and move out."