Jack paused, one eyebrow lifted. “Three. Why?”
“Because I heard the assassin say something when we fought, but it didn’t translate.” Ell shrugged. “I’d forgotten it until just now.”
“What were the words?” he asked.
“She said, ‘Zhídé de duìshǒu.’ Ring a bell?”
Jack’s other brow rose to meet the first one. “It does,” he nodded slowly. “Quite a compliment, actually, and in the High Tongue, too.”
“And?” she prompted when he didn’t go on.
Jack’s face broke into a grin. “And, she was only stating what the rest of us already knew.”
With a glance at Thad, he repeated the words. “Zhídé de duìshǒu. Worthy opponent.”
With a smile and a casual wave of his hand, Jack grabbed the last case on a nearby bench and jumped back up into the ship.
Ell blinked. That wasn’t what she’d expected, but what did she really know about Akkadian assassins anyway?
“Well,” she said, arms crossed as Thad stepped up beside her.
“Deep word,” he deadpanned, and then blocked the elbow she shot into his side. Turning, his eyes, suddenly serious, sought hers.
“It was good seeing you again, Elodie. You ever come to your senses, you ping me. It’d be an honor to have you on the team again.”
No one in the Unit saluted; it was never safe to do so in the places they usually went, where it could give the enemy a target lock on a fellow teammate.
She settled for a wordless nod, all she could manage past the lump in her throat.
“See ya round, Captain,” she whispered to his back as he strode off, swinging his muscled frame into the Helios with an athletic grace.
As she walked back to the NCIC offices, she turned the past few days over in her head. Could she go back to the team?
She rubbed absently at her leg. No. That phase of her life was past. But for the first time in a long while, Ell felt the weight of something intangible finally lift.
She smiled as she stepped through the office doors and heard Quinn’s voice call her name.
“I have Admiral Toland on comm, boss. You said you wanted to talk to her?”
Ell quickened her pace. “Actually, yes, I do. There’s an agent I want to recommend, someone I think would make a great addition to her team.”
Quinn appeared at the entrance to his office. One brow quirked at her, as he asked, “Wouldn’t that be you, boss? You know more about this case than anyone at this point.”
Ell shook her head, a wry twist to her lips. “Evidently, I’m already on their radar. No, she needs someone who can go deep undercover. Just in case….”
The adventure continues in The Chiral Agent….
Find out who goes undercover for Admiral Toland, and discover what befalls Micah Case and the SRU team in The Chiral Agent, book one in the Biogenesis War series.
If you’re curious about how Ell lost her leg, you can grab that story free, by joining my reader group’s mailing list, either at biogenesiswar.com or on Facebook.com/LLRichman.
TERMINOLOGY
DUET Wires (aka “the wire”) – DUET stands for Direct Uplink Evanescent Telecom. Much to the dismay of the corporation that invented the tech, that name never took hold. Commonly known simply as ‘the wire,’ a DUET implant is embedded within every human when they come of age, and is included as a part of the educational system of most sovereign star nations.
Receiving a wire must wait until the brain has reached certain development criteria, as its integration evolves after the initial implant.
Hawking’s Magnetic Sheath – Instead of a single magnetic source enveloping the entire cylinder, the Hawking cylinder has a protective sheath, made up of a series of overlapping magnetic fields that work together to project a protective bubble. The sheath’s sole job is to deflect high-energy particles from the nearby F-class star, protecting its citizens from deadly ionizing radiation.
The overlapping fields are generated by a series of magnetic-field tubes that bisect the habitat at regular intervals. Each tube is filled with an exotic, superconducting plasma.
No-wake zones – The biggest reason for a no-wake-zone around a space station is because of the amount of neutron radiation generated by a ship’s fission drive. As a precaution, all ships must maintain mandatory separation when operating fusion drives.
Scharnhorst Drive – The Scharnhorst is an interstellar drive that generates a Casimir bubble. This allows the drive to harness the Scharnhorst effect, a phenomenon in which light travels faster than c. The drive allows a ship inside its bubble to travel at triple the speed of light.
SmartCarbyne Nanofloss – Carbyne, a chain of single carbon atoms, has twice the tensile strength of graphene. A lattice of ultrafine carbyne filaments, when implanted, will reinforce bone, muscle, and sinew.
Some branches of the Geminate Navy receive a variant of carbyne nanofloss, which functions as an endoskeleton implant.
SmartCarbyne is a unique variant, capable of altering its state. It was originally created to protect military pilots during high-g maneuvers. Its ability to turn ‘on’ and ‘off’ made it ideal for protecting the soft tissues of vital organs.
A SmartCarbyne lattice is controlled by an implanted accelerometer. When disengaged, the atoms are in a disorganized, soft state. When experiencing acceleration greater than what the human body can withstand, the lattice automatically hardens, protecting the pilot.
Superconducting Plasma – Made from the laboratory creation of a novel, artificial element, the SC plasma used to generate Hawking’s artificial magnetosphere has a low atomic number and, when heated through its phase change, in an environment with no turbulence, its resistivity plummets to zero.
Ziptie – The Ziptie is a nano breach application used as a restraint. Once placed onto exposed flesh, the app immediately unpacks itself, blocking an individual’s wire from transmitting a call for help, and rendering body augmentation inert. A military version can take control of a soldier’s SmartCarbyne endoskeleton, rendering the victim temporarily immobile.
WEAPONRY & ARMOR
CUSP – Compact Ultra-Short Pulse pistol uses a pulsed, laser-induced plasma to either paralyze, flash-bang, flash-blind, or deliver searing pain, depending on the weapon’s setting.
P-SCAR – Pulsed Special Combat Assault Rifle.
RAU-19 – Railgun mounted on DAP Helios attack craft.
Drakeskin armor – A carbyne-reinforced synthsilk skinsuit, used by special operations forces when infiltrating hostile territory.
Drakeskin stealth suit – A Drakeskin suit with a nanoweave embedded into the topmost layer of fabric that is tunable to the environment, providing visible-spectrum stealth. The underlayers are made of metamaterials, which use transformation optics to shield the wearer from view by controlling electromagnetic radiation and guiding incident waves around the wearer.
Yinshen – Akkadian stealth suit, comparable to the Alliance Navy’s Drakeskin, with a nanoweave embedded into the topmost layer of fabric that is tunable to the environment, and providing visible-spectrum stealth. The underlayers are made of metamaterials, which used transformation optics, to shield the wearer from view by controlling electromagnetic radiation and guiding incident waves around the wearer.
ALSO BY LL RICHMAN
To keep up to date with what is new in the Biogenesis War Universe, go to the author’s website at biogenesiswar.com, click on the newsletter tab, and sign up.
The Biogenesis War
- Book 1: The Chiral Agent (Summer 2020)
- Book 2: The Chiral Protocol (Fall 2020)
- Book 3: Chiral Justice (Winter 2020)
The Micah Case Chronicles
- Book 1 (Spring 2021)
- Book 2 (Summer 2021)
- Book 3 (Fall 2021)
The Elodie Cyr/Thaddaeus Severance series
- Book 1 (Winter 2021)
- Book 2 (Spring 2022)
- Book 3 (Summer 2022)
&n
bsp; The Gabriel Alvarez/Katie Hyer series
- Book 1 (Fall 2022)
- Book 2 (Winter 2022)
- Book 3 (Spring 2023)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L.L. Richman has a diverse career background, having spent more than a decade working in radiation physics, and twice that as a director of film and video. An avid pilot and photographer, Richman can often be found flying a Piper Cherokee or photographing Deep Sky Objects (DSOs) late at night.
For more information on upcoming releases or the latest news on space science and technology, like LL Richman’s Facebook page, or join the Biogenesis War Friends and Fans group.
The Chiral Conspiracy – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: A Biogenesis War Prequel (The Biogenesis War Book 0) Page 15