by M. D. Cooper
* * * * *
The craft was ah-ma-zing. Jason couldn’t take his eyes off the thing. Draped in the blackest of black materials, it actually kind of hurt his eyes to look at.
Calista motioned him toward the lift and rode up with him. Carefully, she took Tobias’s cylinder and installed him into the module built to house an AI—a design feature common to all Enfield craft.
Tobias ran a systems check then whistled into Jason’s mind.
Calista joined their Link and ran through where everything was with the two men. Even though the fighter was technically a clean sheet design—meaning that it had been designed from scratch versus a modification of an existing craft—the ‘clean sheet’ part had more to do with the airframe and powerplant, and less to do with the plas cockpit.
There, the fighter shared many similarities with various decommissioned military craft that Jason had flown in the past.
In less than half an hour, Calista was satisfied he wasn’t going to break her latest toy, and left him to get suited up.
* * * * *
The sensation was an interesting one, rather intimate, actually. He could sense Eric on the edges of his thoughts, waiting patiently—politely—for Terrance to acknowledge him.
Just then, Ben entered his field of view. He looked relieved. “The medunit reports all vitals are within norms—for both of you,” the analyst said with a smile.
Terrance rotated his head from side to side, then shrugged his shoulders, testing for any residual pain. There was none.
Still, he took his time sitting up, accepting Ben’s assistance. There were no negative side effects, that he could see.
No double vision or vertigo. No seeing things from the perspective of two minds. Terrance snorted.
“What’s so funny?” Ben asked.
“Just thinking of all the propaganda about AI implants from those Humanity First idiots. Why am I not surprised to find out that it’s all total rubbish?” He shook his head as he stood, reaching for the shirt he’d slung over a chair before the procedure. “Where are the twins?” he asked as he finished dressing.
Ben grinned. “And they look scary as shit.”
Ben was right, Terrance thought as he caught sight of Landon and Logan in the passageway.
Each AI looked very impressive, clad in matching stealth frames that were faintly reminiscent of centaurs. Four articulated arms sprung from a torso that appeared headless. These allowed for the handling, aiming and discharging of weaponry that no human could manage outside of powered armor.
Where the torso bent horizontally to the ground, it was supported by ‘four on the floor’: sturdy, reinforced legs that Terrance was sure provided both strength and speed.
As he gawked, Eric helpfully supplied his HUD with a schematic that showed where the brains of the operation—the AI's cylinder—was located, deep inside. He saw that it was secured behind a heavy, deflective coating, and had active countermeasures for extra protection.
The frame itself was finished in a reflective, heat dispersing skin, which masked EM signatures, then overlaid with an ablative layer.
All told, Terrance had to admit these two were primed for some serious infiltration.
“OK, guys, let’s head over to the armory and get you all kitted out,” Ben said, waving a hand as he trotted down the hall.
Eric chuckled again as Terrance gaped at the twins when they turned to follow. Their movements were surprisingly graceful.
Graceful, silent, and deadly, he amended to himself as he trailed behind.
Once in the armory, Terrance was fitted with a base layer, and then Eric guided him over to the powered armor.
As he suited up, Landon and Logan selected two rifles each, expertly checking and then loading them with ammo.
After, Logan silently checked Terrance's armor, confirming its ready status—despite the fact that Terrance had told him the suit reported all green. Eric just laughed quietly in his head as Landon handed the man a railgun and an ammo pouch.
Terrance just shook his head as Ben led the way to the secured bay that the base reserved exclusively for the Secret Intelligence Services.
There, resting in one of the bay’s cradles, was Icarus.
The sleek, Elastene-clad fighter's design implied a speed that its new engines promised to deliver. Its recently applied ultra-coating was made from one of the blackest materials known to man, and he could tell Ben found it uncomfortable to look at.
Parked next to the fighter prototype rested a smaller shuttle that Terrance knew the team had just finished outfitting with the same shape-memory metal foam and surface substrate that the fighter was made of.
Calista was standing next to the fighter, and she nodded to him as they approached.
“Sir,” she said by way of greeting. This time, the honorific sounded…right, somehow. “Shannon’s embedded in the shuttle; she’ll drop your team off, then join Jason out in NorthStar space. She’ll be the AIs’ ticket out of there, once they’re located. I’ll be flying the fighter as escort.”
Terrance nodded in response. “Did you bring along the package?”
Calista lifted the canister she held in one hand, and he reached out and took it from her.
“Good, thanks.”
Gladys reported over the team’s Link.
Calista nodded and activated the lift that would insert her into the pilot’s seat.
Terrance returned the nod, and he and Eric joined the twins on the shuttle.
TAKEDOWN
STELLAR DATE: 07.07.3189 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Norden Cartel Headquarters
REGION: El Dorado Ring, El Dorado, Alpha Centauri System
“Being a warrior in peacetime means you clock a lot of sim time. And then, of course, we have the CHO—that’s the tactical training environment the ESF has set up on their L5 base, not the old hab around Callisto in Sol, but I guess you knew that already.
That course is probably most helpful
to the El Dorado Peacekeepers, who use it to hone their skills in urban law enforcement techniques.
And of course I can’t comment on the SIS and ESF special ops teams….”
Terrance stood behind Enfield's head of security, as Daniel watched the ring grow larger in the Icarus shuttle’s forward view screen. Shannon was guiding it toward the outer skin of the ring, angling toward a small landing pad that hung off a kilometer-long spire.
He wondered if they’d be the first humans to ever set foot on the landing pad. Because much of the ring had been built by machines, vast regions had never been touched by human hands until the colonists arrived; it was more than likely that this pad was one such place.
The incongruity of a human megastructure that was all but unexplored by humans brought a smile to his lips, as the shuttle touched down on the pad and the team did a final equipment check before exiting the craft.
The shuttle’s door opened, and the team filed out onto the exposed pad. Above hung the outward-facing side of the ring, with black space stretching away on every side—bar the one occupied by the spire.
The upside down nature of spires hanging off the outside of the ring always felt wrong to Terrance, not to mention that the further down the spire you went—away from the skin of the ring—the stronger the centrifugal force made gravity feel.
Landon and Logan moved ahead, the two AIs moving with practiced ease in their centaur-like bodies.
Each one held their two rifles level, barrels sweeping through the air in front of them as they advanced on the entrance into the spire. Landon opened the airlock and checked it over before Logan moved through.
A minute later, Logan gave the all clear from inside the spire, and Landon opened the airlock, beckoning for Terrance to join him.
Terrance glanced back at the shuttle and saw Daniel wave farewell. He returned a mock salute, and the nav lights flashed before the shuttle lifted off the pad and disappeared into the darkness.
Good hunting, he thought, as Landon closed the airlock behind them. A minute later, they joined Logan on the short walk to the spire’s lift.
Terrance took a moment to consider whether or not that was the first time he’d heard Logan speak. He was pretty sure it was.
Two minutes later, the lift stopped on the seventh ‘level’ inside the ring, and the team got out.
The ring possessed eleven levels stretching from its surface to the thick base. Each one of the levels was ninety meters high, and consisted of mostly empty space that could be turned into anything from multiple-level housing or entertainment areas, to additional greenspace within the ring itself.
The space they stared out into was no different: wide and mostly empty, though sections of the deck were all but covered in conduit and pipes that served to keep the ring running smoothly.
Gladys fed a detailed map to the team, and Terrance set it as an overlay on his visual HUD.
If the enemy had sentries that Gladys didn’t detect, the team would have little cover.
As they crept along the deck, Terrance cast his gaze at the structural pillars that were effectively the bones of the ring. Catwalks ringed them, and high above, gantries connected them in an overhead grid.
After a kilometer, the team reached the maglev line that ran toward the Norden Cartel’s secret location, and moved to its leeward side, using its visual obstruction, as well as the magnetic interference it produced, for cover.
Ahead, an NSAI node tower loomed, rising from the deck, all the way to the overhead. The area around the node tower had a more ‘complete’ feel, with several levels and bays built into the tower’s structure—what would eventually function as a maintenance and ring-operations management center for this segment of the megastructure.
It was in these bays that the cartel had set up shop, moving at random between the dozens of such structures in the ring’s unoccupied regions.
Terrance unslung his pack and removed the canister Calista had brought him. Kneeling, he rested its base against the floor of the walkway where they stood, and pressed a sequence on the pad in its lid.
This released another gift Terrance had brought to the party—a prototype batch of microdrones that Enfield Aerospace’s sister company, Enfield Research, had just developed. These drones spun filaments of nano that could infiltrate any system—with the help of Gladys.
Gladys responded.
She paused for a beat, then continued.
Eric placed an icon behind the far wall on the other side of the tower.
Eric’s avatar nodded.
Exfil. Exfiltrate. Terrance tried not to show the very non-businessmanlike thrill he felt hearing that word. This is serious, we could get killed, he tried telling himself. But damn, it just sounded so hardcore.
Eric’s voice sounded pleased.
Logan, Eric, and Terrance waited as Gladys finished setting up the reconnaissance with Enfield’s new drones.
A few minutes later, they began receiving feeds.
Terrance tagged heat signatures. He highlighted the three IR blobs down in the cavernous, mostly empty bay.