by M. D. Cooper
The first thing it did was to seal her eyes shut, disallowing Jessica the muscle control to open them again. It then splayed her fingers and toes before a final wash sprayed over her body, removing the last remnants of dead skin and hair.
She knew if she could open her eyes she would look pink and raw, her skin smooth as a baby’s.
The next step was one that was both uncomfortable and enjoyable at the same time as a plate rose between her legs and attached to her, providing the plumbing she would require for her long stay in the suit. Next, the room signaled her body to open the IV ports on her forearms and shunts slid into them.
Two halves of a shell wrapped around her midsection, providing additional stability for her soft organs. She could feel tingling in her skin as filaments of nano grew into her mid-section, creating a latticework to support her organs.
As the nanostrands grew within her body, Jessica felt a mist spraying across her. This was the beginning of several layers of material which would form a tight sheath covering every inch of her body. At some point during the process tubes slid up her nostrils and down her throat where they threaded into her lungs.
Even though she expected it, Jessica had to resist a brief moment of panic as she lost the ability to breathe on her own, the suit’s systems taking over air regulation.
Her new epidermis began to tighten, compressing her body while the air flowing into her nostrils grew thicker. By the time she was inserted into her fighter she would be breathing liquid oxygen.
A thin tube slipped between her lips and filled her mouth with a thick setting gel, ensuring that her jaw couldn’t move and teeth wouldn’t shatter.
She felt slight pressure on her temples and knew optical sensors were being mounted on her head. A second later, vision came back, provided by the small cameras on her head. She glanced around the small chamber, becoming accustomed to the slightly wider stereo vision. It wasn’t ideal, but once in the ship she would use its sensors to see—the head-mounted cameras would just be in case of emergency.
With her vision returned she could see armatures holding more plates which would cover more soft tissue, keeping her body in one piece when it would weigh more than four metric tonnes.
In rapid succession, they covered her chest, neck, arms and legs. The suspension field diminished and she sank to the ground. She looked down, admiring her gleaming white body, a picture of feminine beauty encased in hard polymers, carbon nano, and suspension gel.
The door on the far side of the chamber opened and she walked out, taking a seat on the small tram awaiting the members of A wing.
Over the next fifteen minutes the rest of her wing joined her, an array of gleaming white human figures without eyes or mouths, tubes running from noses to small tanks on their backs.
Each had their name printed on their chests along with readout panels on their forearms showing vital statistics and progress of their internal organ support lattices.
Carson reached under his seat and pulled a small, three dimensional spray printer. He approached each member of the wing and sprayed the wing’s logo on their right shoulders before giving them a hard slap on the head.
Jessica took her badge with pride and could barely feel the slap through the hard shell of her Shoot Suit.
A minute later the tram took off, driving to the hanger bay where each pilot would be inserted into their ships. When they drove through the bay doors, Jessica couldn’t help but smile as she admired the sleek fighters.
At twenty meters long, the ships consisted of an oblong central pod with a series of tracks crisscrossing it. Engines, weapons, sensors and more engines all mounted to the tracks, able to spin around the pod and change vector or firing angles with a moment’s notice.
They were both graceful and deadly, an obsidian pearl bristling with weapons.
Jessica knew she would enjoy piloting one of these machines, and her avatar grinned at her fellow pilots on the tactical net.
Jason’s avatar smiled back at her.
Jessica replied.
Jessica couldn’t help but add to herself that they were also firing at live targets—though there was no need to state that, they were already all thinking it.
The squad members all gave Cordy their greetings and the AI’s avatar—a glowing hawk-woman that either inspired, or was inspired by, the emblem now sprayed on Jessica’s shoulder—greeted them in return.
The AI was a combat specialist, her mind created from a merge of Angela and several others on the Intrepid.
Her core would be distributed amongst the fighters with a dormant backup node on the Andromeda in case she suffered too much damage in combat.
Jessica hoped it wouldn’t be needed. If Cordy suffered too much damage out there it meant the pilots likely would too.
The tram stopped in front of Jessica’s ship and she stepped off, admiring the sleek black beauty in front of her. The ships were a matte material, nearly invisible to any passive sensors and most active ones as well.
The engines were powered by small anti-matter cores with small fusion backup generators. The pion drives also gave them the ability to use their engines as weapons. The energy stream that delivered the ship’s thrust traveled at near-light speed. Slamming that engine wash into an enemy ship would deal no small amount of damage to structure and organics alike.
It also meant that extreme caution had to be exercised. Entire vectors of travel would be restricted during the engagement to avoid damaging the Andromeda or killing their fellow pilots.
Jessica walked under the ship and a deck engineer gave her a reassuring nod. She stepped onto a holo grid and the bottom of the ship opened up. She disengaged the mag lock on her boots and a suspension field drew her inside the fighter.
A soft cocoon enveloped her and she stretched out in its embrace as the ship’s HUD came up. The life-support readout showed the biological hookups attaching to her body and then the neural hookups completed their initialization.
Even though she was prepared for it, the sensation always startled her.
One moment her mind was in her body, and the next it felt like it had expanded, like all the edges had been pushed out. She could still feel her limbs, but also new limbs, new eyes, new ears.
Gently testing, she moved several of the ship’s weapons and engines ever so slightly. The feedback was perfect and it felt no different than twitching a finger.
Jason commented.
>
Jessica’s mental HUD updated to provide a deployment count down. The engagement plan had the fifteen fighters dark with zero vector change for twenty-two hours after the drop.
Then, with careful nudging of their antimatter pion drives they would shift vector and align with the Sirian scout ships. The pion drive washes were so narrow they could apply nearly any level of thrust and remain undetected; the fighters were large enough to hide the ion streams behind them—at least from passive sensors.
Once her preflight checks were done, Jessica reached out to Trist over the Link.
Jessica chuckled.
Jessica’s avatar gave Trist’s a flirtatious look.
Jessica snorted.
They talked idly for several more minutes before Jessica realized that none of the other pilots were allowed to talk to the rest of the crew about their mission. She felt a bit guilty and bid Trist a final farewell before turning her attention back to the tactical net.
The squadron leaders were reviewing tactics with Pearson and adjusting wing assignments. Jessica saw that she had been placed on Carson’s wing. For a moment she bristled at being given the rookie position, but then relaxed.
Carson likely had the most experience pairing with new wingmen. Plus, it wouldn’t hurt to have the most experienced pilot nearby at all times.
The commander would fly out with the X wing, protecting the Andromeda. From here on out A and C wings were on their own.
She felt the ship move, the motion not sensed her body inside the cocoon, but with her new skin and limbs; the ship itself. She was the ship, she was speed, power, and death.
Outside she could see the other fighters line up for their ladders. Jessica was third on hers and when the count hit zero she only had to wait ten seconds for her ship to drop down the ladder and out into space.
Outside the Andromeda, her full sensor array came online and she felt the emptiness around her. It’s cold was acute and took a moment for her to adjust. Then she felt and saw her squadron around her and the feeling diminished.
Jessica brought up several entertainment vids she had stored away for later and read part of a book she was working through before falling asleep.
The ship’s NSAI woke her several hours later and Jessica saw that the time-to-burn was still over ten hours. No updates showed from Rock, Cordy, or the Andromeda, so she whiled away the hours running combat simulations and playing twitch reflex games.
When the time for burn came, it was anticlimactic to say the least. Tight beam communication from Cordy ensured the ships were synchronized and stayed in formation and on the correct vector as they accelerated toward the three Sirian ships.
Her mental HUD showed A and C squadrons, the projected location of the Andromeda, and the Sirian ships. She examined it closely, checking the projections, though she knew smarter minds than hers—like Cordy’s—had provided the data.
Joe was right, it was different in the deep black. Out here there was nothing. Every ship was running dark, if it wasn’t for Cordy maintaining tight beam between the two wings, she wouldn’t even know C-wing was nearby.
Their meager sensors couldn’t see the Sirian ships, or the Andromeda. When the time came to engage the enemy vessels they would have to take it on faith that everyone was where they were supposed to be.
If the Andromeda wasn’t there, the fifteen fighters stood a poor chance of taking out three enemy ships.
Joe better be there, Jessica asserted to herself more than once.
Jessica knew that to be true. Joe would sacrifice an attack on the Sirians if the alternative was the total loss of his fighters. It was one of the things that made him a good CO. He valued the lives of those under him far more than most.
Some would argue that it was a weakness, but the fierce loyalty it garnered him paid its own dividends.
Jessica nodded. She knew all of this, it was psych 101.
Jessica replied.
Jessica let that sink in. She would never have considered optimism to be one of the most unfathomable aspects of humanity, but maybe it was.
The squadron’s pion drives ran at low thrust for sixteen hours before shutting down, the fighters once again drifting through the black—this time at just over 0.3c.
Time to contact with their enemy was on the HUD at just over two hours. Cordy reported picking up sensor ghosts that were probably the Sirian ships—exactly where they were expected to be. The news was reassuring—it meant the plan was on track, but knowing that the enemy awaited now shifted her anxiety in a new direction.
Over the next hour, Jessica was able to discern the three scout ships with her own ship’s sensors. She studied Cordy’s assessments of the ship’s tonnage and weaponry. Rock sent updated tactical plans to the squadro
n and Jessica reviewed them with Carson.
The Sirian ships were in a V formation and A wing was assigned the lead ship. The squadron would split their attack between what Cordy had identified as the forward weapons pods and the engines.
The goal was to go in for the kill on the first ship. If the Andromeda was in position, hopefully it would be able to take out the engines of one or both of the trailing ships.
Jessica knew the battle may not last more than one run, the relative v between the fighters and the Sirians was nearly relativistic. It benefited the fighters greatly as time dilation would make them almost invisible until they struck.
The countdown went from hours to minutes, then to seconds.
Cordy sent the signal and the fighters swung their engine’s around the central hull, directing the ionized particle discharges from their drives at the Sirian ships. Within the engine’s cores, matter met antimatter and the resultant pions lanced out at the speed of light, slashing through the lead enemy vessel’s shields with almost no resistance.
At least that was the hope.
They wouldn’t know for fifteen more minutes if the beams struck, let alone penetrated shields. Tanis started her jinking maneuvers, shifting her ship around in a seemingly random pattern, yet one that was well coordinated with the rest of the squadron.
It wouldn’t do to remain on a consistent vector with one’s engine pointed at the enemy.
Cordy called over the combat net a mere second before the fighters flashed by a series of nuclear blooms in the darkness.
She flinched in her soft cocoon as the light and heat washed across the skin of the ship, blinding her sensors for a moment.
The it was gone; the fighters were a million miles past the expanding clouds of dust and radiation.
Jessica hoped he could slow his fighter and get into an elliptical around the Kap. At a fifth the speed of light he could fly clear across the system before a rescue could be mounted.