Chapter 510 - Far Future Ch. 220 - Infiltration (1/2)
Getting into the place was going to be annoying, but it was part of the job. Being the Dark Angel shooting the enemies of the Empire was just going to have to be on hold for a while.
Hey, I was being nice. They were already looking for me, and I was going right to them. They should be thanking me for what I was going to do!
It worked out that going in over the obviously stupid points to do so was actually the better play. Someone with too much time and infiltration experts on hand had rather zealously gone over all the possible ways in, and then put some really, really annoying stuff in the way to catch anyone trying to do so.
Even the drow and Tekrons would have conniptions trying to get into this place, because the whole place was Interdicted. Without being able to use sub-dimensions to bypass defenses, that lot wasn't actually that sneaky on average, relying too much on hypertech to bypass security precautions. Sure, they were good enough to defeat Joe Sentry #3, but brainboxes on 24/7? Not so easy...
The main thoroughfares were naturally closely monitored, and everyone entering was genescanned up and down, if subtly, and there were all kinds of monitors around.
But Vampire's Veil was designed to work against all manner of visual inspections, the primary defenses here. Other locations got into all kinds of sidereal senses which were extremely annoying to overcome.
So, taking the main way in... was actually the safest way in. All I had to do was evade the living eyes and bypass the psi-boosted surveillance cameras trying to deal with the normal people there.
In short, this wasn't about whose tech found the other, a yes/no scenario. This was about comparing Stealth against Perception, with Vampire's Veil basically offsetting any bonuses for equipment and leaving it a test of pure skill against skill.
Stealth was one of my Primary Skills, and I'd kept it maxed out. With 14 Ranks, I could basically walk through the main door of a crowded room and out the other side, and nobody would actually see me.
Yeah, it was unreal, but any Ranks past Six started getting into unnatural stuff.
As for modifiers... 14 Ranks, +3 Class Skill, +5 Mastery, +6 & 4 Feats, +20 Dex, and a short-term +10 Insight bonus from Soul, +4 Cunning, and +5 for being such a charming ExLite, was a nice +67. Stealth Mastery meant I could Take 10, and remove chance from the equation with pure skill.
A 77 was not something anyone under Ten and lacking major buffs had a hope of overcoming.
Thus, piercing the perimeter of the Crater was a surreal dance of moving into and through a supply caravan delivering goods to the place, flitting from place to place as the angles of observation from every possible source slid past and around me like I wasn't there. I was behind everybody, nothing more than a shadow of a cloud passing by as I moved by the people, the inspectors, the walls, the cameras, and the inevitably bored sentries who just couldn't maintain anywhere close to the focus they would need to get lucky enough to see me.
It didn't hurt that the tech they had was concealed, and so not as effective as it might have been. It was fine, I forgave them, as I avoided air pressure sensors, split sound waves around myself, neutralized magnetic readers, walked above the ground sensors, conducted microwaves and electrical fields right through my Vajra, and the thermal sensors just thought I was the air.
I found myself a mile outside the checkpoint city, moving above their transportation tube, as I certainly wasn't going inside of it. Yeah, it was two hundred miles on foot to where I needed to go, but there was a reason ol' Sama has her lightfoot up to the 210' range. I could walk faster than the best unbuffed human could sprint, sprint in the neighborhood of 150 mph under my own power... and maintain Stealth while moving at full speed.
The power circuits of the buried transport tunnel made it very easy to follow in my Trembling Domain, even as it was buried deeply, humming as they did through the ground. I was matching up a lot of the schematics I'd gotten off Bob with the surveillance networks to the landscapes to either side of me... which I didn't know if I should care about, although I was sure young Voids in training were in them, doing... whatever they were supposed to be doing. Hunting alien enemies of mankind or something...
Speed and VV-blurring meant I was less than a breeze passing to the occasional camera with me in their area. The landscape was passing by on either side of me, shielded away by force screens (damn, lots of energy being wasted here... well, not much different from a city dome, I supposed...), a strange and foggy broken landscape on my right, and a miserably hot and vine-filled jungle on my left.
It should change in about twenty miles or so...
Smiling to myself, I ran along the border between the two zones, towards the great looming sphere of the arcology at the center of the crater.
The Mountain. My smile grew wider. Little Brothers, big sister Sama is coming, don't you worry about anything...
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The zones changed three times before I got to the edge of the Dome proper, and it loomed up above me, a dark sphere blocking any observation from without.
It had to be more than that, if it was a place that could brainwash Voids.
There were a lot of sensors around, but I had the distinct impression that they were more for observing Voids released from the city to have fun, and not infiltrators who should have been exposed way before this. Strange matter sensors, psionic radar, thought detectors, transchronal monitors... there was some seriously weird high-end stuff here and there, and anything relying just on innate abilities and tech trying to get here would have been found out long before they reached this far.
Orbital satellite death ray follow-up would have been prompt in such a case.