Project Cyrano: A Genetic Engineering Technothriller (Genetic Engineering, TechnoThriller) by Amy Taylor Page A

whirled on him. “No, you can’t. We don’t know what this place is. We are not getting near it. Its field almost took out the plane.”
     
    McKusick slapped her on the shoulder. “Then call your CIA director and get permission, but we’re going down there if I have to gag you and put you in a containment pod.”
     
    Her eyes seethed. She stomped to a room in the back of the plane. She returned a couple minutes later, dejected, and said, “He’s letting us go. What did I do to deserve this? I just wanted to go home. Five months undercover, and now this. We could be here for years.”
     
    Mader danced back to the cockpit. They touched down on the base, which Anders decided to call Cyrano. Sosa forced them to put their engagement suits on. The base of the suit was a thin, canvas-like fabric, though for all its lightness still proved incredibly tough in battle. It was fitting to the body, but not overly tight, and allowed full movement. Sosa and Mader’s suits were blue, while McKusick’s was green, and Anders’ was a light gray.
     
    Sosa gazed up at the huge hangar bay doors. They still had old type consoles, flat blue things where you had to actually press buttons instead of just thinking about the door opening. “How old do you think this is, Anders?”
     
    The man hovered a transparent tablet over the door console. “The data log says…wow. 2103. It’s two hundred years old. Could people even build a place like this in 2103? When was the gravity engine invented?”
     
    “2095.” Sosa said. “This is quite the find, McKusick. You found a piece of scientific history. What about a country of origin, Anders? And please get the door open. McKusick is about to burst into pieces.”
     
    “No country of origin listed, so if it’s governmental, they’re not saying.” Anders bent over the pad for some moments. “This code is so archaic. I may be a very good programmer in the CIA, but even I have trouble with old operating systems like Linux. It’s like the difference between an abacus and a computer. Give me a minute.”
     
    The hangar doors opened a few minutes later with a melodramatic screech. Anders was about to go in, but Sosa clamped a hand over his shoulder. “Don’t touch anything if you don’t know what it is.”
     
    Anders pouted. “That was three years ago, Sosa. You only lost a finger and you have a perfectly good replacement.”
     
    “I repeat. Don’t touch something if you don’t know what it is.” Sosa pulled her helmet on, initiated the night vision, and turned on her suit’s protective shield. She took out her beam pistol from its holster on her belt and held it in front of her. “Major Mader, please come with me up front. I don’t like surprises.”
     
    She and Mader took the fore with Anders and McKusick behind. They methodically searched every room and hallway they passed before progressing to the next. Anders spent his time finding a map of the Cyrano facility in the database, and this demonstrated to be more difficult than he thought. Once secured, he counted off places as they went. The place was gray, empty, and surprisingly uninteresting. Everything looked the same. Sosa surmised the architects put their energy elsewhere rather than  interior decorating.
     
    They came to a large, rather important looking door. “This goes into the main dome.” Anders said. “Everything branches off from it.”
     
    “Lock the other doors before we go in. You haven’t gotten the life detection system up, and I don’t want to be surprised.”
     
    He did so and then they entered forth. Morning light filtered down on them through the clear glass dome. They marveled at its height and brilliance. All the colors of the prism reflected off the soft outside dew and beamed into the dome. There was no furniture, but doors were every twenty or so feet on the perimeter wall. The map showed that all main halls converged on this one large dome.
     
    Sosa put her hands on her hips and