It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

John And Mike Take A Holiday (Part I)

Adelaide was nice. Small, mild climate (summer notwithstanding) and Erin was there. John and Mike had decided that a mid-year trip to visit Erin was in order. Jayne had obviously had the same idea because she was there in rehearsals for a play. The opening night of which John and Mike had managed to attend with Erin before leaving. A nice relaxing holiday seemed just the ticket. It would have worked out perfectly, and it did, save for the few days they'd been pulled back into UNIT business. It had started with an electromagnetic pulse.

"Say what you like about old school tech," John had said when the entirety of Flinders University had ceased to function, "but at least it isn't so easily knocked out."

As it turned out it wasn't aliens. And that was a surprisingly rare statement when one was associated with UNIT. It had in fact been a careless student in the Engineering building who had neglected to close the door of the perfectly shielded room where he was testing his electromagnetic pulse emitter. It worked. Indeed, it worked well enough to fry the computer operated systems throughout the campus, which effectively shut down the campus for a week and a half. He'd been damn lucky the servers that ran critical systems at the attached medical centre and the ones that housed the academic records and system backups for the University were independently shielded.

Once the students and most of the faculty had cleared the campus it was eerie, usually so full of activity everything was oddly still. Jayne, Erin, John and Mike were just about to leave when a thought occurred to Erin.

"Crap," she said, "The UNIT guys."

"What?" Mike replied.

"There's a UNIT facility under the Engineering building," Jayne said.

"Oh yea," said John remembering the resistance The Brigadier had expressed towards the idea at the time. "How do you know about that?"

"We worked on a translation for UNIT a while ago, that's how I came to be involved with UNIT. Anyway, the entire facility is deep underground. If their computers are down they can't get out and they won't get any new air. It's a huge facility so they won't asphyxiate any time soon but we should probably go rescue them," Erin said.

"How are we going to do that exactly? If the whole system's down..." Mike said.

"The whole system isn't down. Only the computer controlled portions," Jayne corrected.

"You just said that was the entire system."

"No, I said it was effectively the whole system," Erin said.

"The original systems are still in place they can't be initiated from within the facility, and even if they could I doubt anyone down there can operate them or even knows they still exist," Jayne said.

"How do you know? I mean, no offence but you're not exactly a member of UNIT, let alone a high ranking one."

"No, but I am an Eastick and I've done guard duty down there a couple of times since I got clearance for the translation. The CO thought I was a fairly useful person to know about it seeing as I'm on campus fairly often while not actually on duty."

The four of them made their way up the hill to the engineering department. The building was deserted, having been the first cleared. Jayne used her UNIT master key to let them in, first to the building itself and then to the secure stairwell that lead to the control panel that would allow her to initiate the system to release the UNIT people trapped in the facility.

It took Jayne about ten minutes to initiate the original security system. She'd been able to get into the control panel with her UNIT master key but, as an added security measure she had to wire everything manually. Finally, she pricked her finger and dripped a small sample of blood onto a slide. Mike and John looked confused.

"There's a chemical marker in my blood. The system can identify it. It's a bit like a DNA scan but not as refined. If the system doesn't get a sample with the marker the whole thing locks itself down."

"Serum G38, The Doctor designed it. I didn't know it was still in use."

"It isn't, not really. Only for backups like this. They have only put about eight new people through the regime since UNIT started using DNA and retinal print scans."

When the system registered the serum in Jayne's blood the panel lit up and released the door locks.

"Now," Jayne said securing the door and leading them down the stairwell, "What we need to do is clear the facility. Before we do that all the projects need to be secured and everyone needs to be accounted for. Id be grateful if you boys would lend a hand."

"You've done this before," Mike observed.

"This isn't even the first time this year we've had to do this. We had a state-wide blackout during a freak storm a month or so ago. Normally we'd have backup generator but the one at the medical centre failed and we had to divert the power from our generators to them. Because there was virtually no warning there was no time to secure all the projects before the system shut down I had to come and let everyone out. Like I said, the facility is huge, nobody is going to asphyxiate very quickly but there probably isn't enough food and water to last very long. Not to mention the lack of sleeping quarters. There are a couple of couches in the break rooms but that's about it."

"That was The Brig's main objection to the proposal," John recalled.

They were met outside another door, that Jayne needed to open with a small blood sample, by an anxious looking commanding officer. Captain Julian Meyrick, while a member of the Australian Army, spoke with a distinctly English accent.

"Jayne," he said, "Vincent's been in an accident and Helen's in Ballarat can you handle things here?"

Vincent was Julian's thirteen year old son.

"Of course, go. We'll be fine. Give our best to Vincent."

"Thanks, will do."

Julian left with that and John reflected on how much the man reminded him of Mike.