Carbon Life

by HR Ringer

  Additionally, everyone’s training weapons were equipped with micro-computers that could sense whether the targeted object was organic or not; an organic target would cause an instant modification of the weapon, significantly lowering the velocity of the round while preventing the weapon from firing at anything not protected by ceramic armor. Attempted headshots that would have been lethal under actual conditions would be recorded in the weapon’s computer memory, even though the weapon would not fire the shot.

  Xiùlán remembered just how much a non-lethal round could hurt after taking a rifle bullet in her chestplate during a moon base exercise her first few weeks in the program. She didn’t intend to let that happen on this exercise.

  They had the building’s entrance in sight, where two Marines were standing guard, each about 2-meters to either side of the hatch; neither appeared to be aware of Yuán’s approach, which probably meant the other Marines were patrolling the vicinity. Xiùlán had no trouble spotting the booby traps laid to hinder their progress – most were small charges buried in the soil with combination motion and proximity detectors for triggers.

  As she and Aglyna were well-hidden in the sparse brush and tree-like shrubs, Xiùlán chose a trap on the far side of the building; activating her omni-tool, she hacked the detector to detonate the charge ten seconds after being released from standby mode. She picked out three others, one more near her first choice and two on the far opposite side of the building entrance; using progressively shorter delay times for each, the timing of each explosion when they detonated would hopefully simulate someone or something progressively disturbing the detectors.

  She hacked each of the three detectors in the immediate path to the entrance, setting them to go off progressively at half-second intervals. Looking at Aglyna, she smiled and winked as she said into her comm, “Here we go…”

  They activated their cloaks as they rose and began trotting towards the entrance. Xiùlán had a haptic ‘hammer switch’ in her right hand – a near invisible extension of her omni-tool; punching the ‘switch’ released the traps from standby, causing the ones at the rear of the building to explode in her chosen sequence. The explosions did little more than stir up a great cloud of dust, which would reveal the presence of the intruders if they walked into it; they also drew the attention of the two Marines that had remained hidden while patrolling the downhill parameters on each side. Xiùlán paused just long enough to aim and fire one round to the left as Aglyna fired to the right; each of them scored a direct hit in the chest plates of their respective targets. Additionally, Xiùlán had pulled her trigger while targeting the Marine’s helmet. The gun had not fired, as designed, and Xiùlán had instantly corrected and targeted the man’s chest. She was credited with a kill for the head shot and a ‘down and out’ for the chest shot.

  Xiùlán swapped her rifle for her shotgun as the pair continued their run for the main entrance; the two Marines were moving towards their downed buddies when Xiùlán triggered the rest of the hacked traps, now behind their position near the entrance hatch. The clouds of smoke and dust drew the attention of the other Marines, who immediately turned and ran towards the dust clouds.

  By this time, Xiùlán and Aglyna had reached the front of the building; crouching on one side of the entrance, Aglyna raised her rifle and quickly took out the pair of Marines to their right, then swiftly re-sighted and downed the two on her left. While Aglyna was defending their position and watching Xiùlán’s back, the human was employing her hard-learned knowledge to hack into the complex haptic lock keeping them out of the building.

  ‘Gotcha’, Xiùlán thought jubilantly as the device changed colors from red to amber to green. With a whispered “Let’s go, Aglyna,” Xiùlán readied her shotgun, rose into a semi-crouch and opened the hatch; leading with her shoulder, she virtually leapt into the entryway, encountering a pair of mechs. As they both raised assault rifles, one of the pair announced, “End this illegal action or be terminated.”

  As the human and asari were under no restrictions concerning mechs, Xiùlán’s answer was to target the mech on her right as T’Sega hit them both with an overload. Xiùlán’s shot took the head off the mech on her right; T’Sega followed up her overload with a warp aimed at the mech on the left. The biotic attack induced a violent vibration throughout the mech’s structure, causing it to explode within seconds… Aglyna’s barrier prevented the flying debris from reaching either of them.

  Xiùlán remained in a semi-crouch as she left the entryway and led them into a small, windowless room. Their objective was in the center of the room, seated in a chair. There was a black hood over the person’s head, their arms were bound to the arms of the chair and their legs were similarly bound to the chair’s front legs.

  Xiùlán made a ‘vee’ with two fingers on her right hand, pointed at her eyes, then pointed at the prisoner. T’Sega nodded understanding and began moving cautiously around to the back of the prisoner’s chair as Xiùlán carefully investigated the rest of the room. Coming to a locked door, she used her omni-tool to hack the lock – this done, she looked at Aglyna, who nodded again. Xiùlán squatted beside the door and reached around the frame, hitting the door with the butt of her shotgun.

  The door swung inward, only to be shredded by a blast of bullets from an automatic weapon of some sort. Xiùlán grabbed a grenade from her equipment belt, thumbed the arming switch and tossed it into the room. The answering volley of bullets was short-lived… the grenade exploded, destroying the gun emplacement and whomever was inside with it. Xiùlán backed away from the door frame, performed a combat roll to her right and unloaded her shotgun into the room.

  She cautiously walked up to the door and peered inside; she sensed she could have saved her ammo block, as there was nothing left inside except blackened walls and a destroyed turret. Turning back to see how Aglyna was doing, she said quietly, “Let’s grab ‘im and get outta here.”

  T’Sega had inspected the restraints holding their prisoner in place. “We have a problem, Ai’a me… I am unable to see it, but my omni-tool has detected a seriously powerful explosive device in the seat of this chair. It appears to be weight sensitive, so any lessening of load on the seat will most certainly set off the charge.” Aglyna paused, then continued with, “Of course, since this is an exercise and no one is supposed to killed or seriously injured, it may only be a pressure switch with a dusting of explosive residue to fool our sensors.”

  Xiùlán took notice of Aglyna’s use of the Thessian word for ‘a trusted friend’, but chose to say nothing for now. She looked questioningly at her companion as she indicated the hood over their subject’s head. “It can be safely removed… there are no trip wires. Still, we should exercise caution… and we are running out of time. Surely there must be reinforcements being sent here in response to the explosions and gunfire.”

  “Agreed. So, let’s just…” Xiùlán pulled the hood off their kidnap victim’s head, nearly falling over in surprise as she learned the identity of the reason behind this exercise. “General Park! How in the hell…?” It turned out their victim was not real… just a very realistic representation of the general’s face grafted onto a clothing store manikin, which explained the total lack of movement, the lack of any attempt to speak, even past a gag in the mouth. “Well, that is certainly special,” Xiùlán huffed. “I guess they don’t want to risk blowing up a living person, huh?”

  Aglyna was studying the manikin, attempting to find a way to deactivate the trigger for the explosive seat cushion as Xiùlán cut the plastic ties holding it tightly to the chair. “I am unable to see any method of removing this… person’s… weight… without triggering the charge. What do we do?”

  Xiùlán brought up her omni-tool. “Only thing we can do. We scramble everything. Shield your eyes, just in case I’m wrong.”

  Xiùlán activated a small program Traynor had insisted on installing. It would freeze any targeted electronic device, including detonators. For this pressure switch, lack o
f a load would collapse the circuit; Traynor’s program would electronically ‘freeze’ the circuit in place for forty-five seconds, giving them enough time to get the ‘general’ out of the chair and out of the room before it could activate. “Ready?”

  T’Sega nodded once as she grabbed the manikin’s arms. Xiùlán triggered the program, then nodded at T’Sega as she helped pull the manikin from the chair. “Damn! Thing’s as heavy as a human!” The pair struggled to drag the uncooperative body back to the front of the entryway, far enough from the lethal chair to avoid injuries from the expected explosion. Aglyna grabbed the manikin around its waist and hung on as Xiùlán reopened the main entry door. Shields and cloaks engaged, the pair dragged their burden through the door, expecting to have to fight their way through more Marines. Surprisingly, all was quiet outside the building. All the soldiers they had downed on their way in were gone, replaced with markers on the ground to show where they had been ‘killed’.

  Yuán was damned if she was going to carry the ‘dead’ weight of an unconscious person, which was exactly what the manikin was meant to represent. She reached behind her and unclipped her personal ME generator; hooking the device to the manikin’s belt, she activated her omni-tool and set it to negate 80% of the manikin’s weight. Guessing the dummy weighed about 80 Kg. in Earth normal gravity, she figured it would weigh about 90 to 95 Kg. in this higher gravity environment; 19 to 20 Kg. was much more manageable slung over her shoulder.

  Xiùlán shifted the awkward but now lighter manikin so she could lift it onto her right shoulder, grabbed her shotgun and looked at Aglyna. “It’ll be up to you to protect us, especially from the rear. Raise your barrier and let’s move.”

  T’Sega placed a hand on the human’s backplate, brought up a biotic barrier and said, “Go!”

  As they started to head back for the brush, they heard – and felt – a dull thud from inside the building. “Sounds like this general was expendable after all!” was Xiùlán’s only comment. The pair trotted back to the tree line and crouched at the edge. “We have to make it another 25 meters in order to finish,” Xiùlán panted. “Give me a minute…” she gulped down an energy drink as she caught her breath.

  Her asari companion had dropped her barrier in order to be fresh for the final dash, so continued to look around, keeping silent watch on their ‘four through eight’ as Yuán caught her breath. After a minute, Xiùlán nodded, then stood in a semi-crouch and shouldered their rescued ‘prisoner’ as T’Sega raised her barrier. Both of them trotted back the way they’d entered the area, only to be engulfed in a massive cloud of dirt, dust and debris kicked up by a pair of explosives buried on either side of the trail. Aglyna cried out as the massive amount of debris rained down on her barrier – fortunately, it protected them from both the debris and the twin shock waves; the pair was shaken but unhurt, so ran the final several meters to their egress point. Xiùlán carefully set her burden down on the ground, retrieved her ME generator and plopped down beside the manikin.

  Aglyna stood bent over nearby, panting from the exertion as she supported her upper body with her hands on her knees. “Obviously someone planted those charges after we entered the compound, Ai’a me… but I do not know what set them off.”

  Xiùlán grinned up at her. “Trip wire. Oldest and simplest actuator there is. Virtually invisible, even when you’re looking right at it.” Activating her omni-tool, Xiùlán sent a message to the instructors monitoring their exercise, informing them of their success in extracting the prisoner. She was so ready for a soothing shower and a hot meal…

  * * *

  TECHNICAL SECTION – DOME THREE

  While her lover was working her way through the uncomfortable environment of the combat simulator, Samantha Traynor was moving through a ‘server’ compartment – actually a 90 by 35 meter room housing a large number of servers. As it wouldn’t be good for students to be trashing the servers on which the entire facility depended, these were not hard-wired to anything in the complex except the interfaces in the analysis office at the far end.

  She had been tasked with hacking certain ones, which she would have to find by scanning output data strings from each nine-server group. Sam had quickly worked her way through a third of the groups when she was struck and thrown to the floor by a power surge from the first server in a group she had yet to scan.

  ‘Shit! That did not feel nice at all!’ she thought. She attempted to get to her feet, only to be hit by another power surge from the same machine. ‘Dammit! Looks like I’m meant to crawl through this section. That’s going to really slow me down.’ Thinking about her situation for a moment, she decided to raise her kinetic barrier and energize her cloak, just to see if that made a difference. She was still facing the source of the power surges, so rose slowly to her knees. Having done this with no reaction from the server, she slowly stood to her full height… still no reaction.

  Traynor cautiously activated her omni-tool while observing the server. Again, no reaction. She quickly hacked into its processor and inserted an electronic worm designed to take down any defenses that had been intended to keep people from traversing the compartment. While she had access to its programming, she queried its memory to see if any of the other servers were similarly equipped with proximity defenses; discovering several more along her intended path, she disabled the sub-routines in all of them, then removed the evidence of her intrusion, disconnected and began moving.

  Traynor quickly worked her way through the rest of the servers, successfully hacking each of her assigned targets. When she reached the end, she logged into the last server that had been programmed to defend against intruders. Sam reactivated the defensive routine in all of the servers where it had originally resided, then added the sub-routine to additional servers near the start of the test course. ‘Bastards want to play dirty…’ She added a randomizer that would make the program skip around to different servers each time one was activated. ‘…I’ll show ‘em how it’s done!’ she smirked to herself as she removed all traces of her intrusion and disengaged her omni-tool.

  Quickly hacking the door lock, she exited the compartment and relocked the door behind her, then left to find the people monitoring her exercise.

  * * *

  OMEGA STATION – NEAR SPIRIT WORLD BAR, LOWER LEVELS

  K’ath Din’sari remained hidden in the shadows across the poorly lit alley from the entrance to the bar called Spirit World. She had directed a very intoxicated (and heavily drugged) Ugrolya Rarfenak to meet a potential buyer of an ancient artifact… Rarfenak was brokering the sale for another batarian – Kryllê Ghydgryz, a pirate captain that had been operating in the Terminus.

  Din’sari had failed to inform Rarfenak the potential buyer was a member of the Blue Suns; the Blue Suns would not pay for anything they could obtain by subterfuge – failing that, their backup negotiating method would be violence. K’ath did not care how they worked it out, as long as she was paid by one side or the other for setting up the meet.

  She held her breath and drew back a bit deeper into the shadow as she spotted Ugrolya strolling towards the bar’s entrance. He was met from inside by a surly looking human as he attempted to enter. The man inside, whom K’ath had seen when she’d talked to her contact in the Blue Suns, pushed Rarfenak back, keeping him from entering the bar. After exchanging a few words, K’ath watched in amazement as the unknown man held up an ID chip, apparently the same one she herself had handed to a big turian just three hours before. ‘What the n’Tuj raugh…? They’ve made some kind of switch!’

  K’ath didn’t dare get involved at this point – she didn’t know if the human had seen her when she met the turian to set up the meeting, and she was afraid she’d get Ugrolya injured or killed if either of them saw her. She continued to watch the pair, realizing as she did the human was not capable of successfully negotiating with a shrewd batarian such as Ugrolya Rarfenak. After talking for several more minutes, the human appeared to shrug his shoulders as he activated his o
mni-tool. After making several entries, Rarfenak’s tool illuminated in reply… Rarfenak made several entries, as if to confirm payment had been received; he then made a few more entries, shut down his omni-tool, said a few more words to the human, then casually strolled into the bar.

  The gruff looking human produced a cigarette from somewhere in his overcoat, lit it with a tiny flame from his omni-tool, then proceeded to pace back and forth in front of the bar as he fouled his lungs and the outside air – itself not the freshest for being endlessly recycled – for several minutes, as if he was waiting for… something.

  The ‘something’, it turned out, was an incoming message on his omni-tool. Apparently satisfied with the message, he dropped his cigarette to the pavement, looked around the alley and then started walking to the ‘southwest’. On a whim, K’ath decided to follow him, flitting from shadow to shadow at a discreet distance. The human had neglected to thoroughly inspect the ID chip he’d been given by the turian; K’ath had inserted a tiny transmitter in one end. It would allow her to track its movements for a full day before the tiny power cell died.

  * * *

  ALLIANCE SPEC OPS TRAINING FACILITY – MARS

  2180 / 08 / 03 – EARLY EVENING