Sunrise: serialised science fiction

District 9: This is What I'm Talking About!

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 19:42:00 +0000

I metro rail'd all the way out to hollywood to go see District 9 on opening night with some friends (shout out here; hay guise!)

It was bloody great!

The movie was what I 'd secretly hoped for when I saw the trailer, a real introspection that was as much about the humans involved as about the aliens. It took a realistic, unceremonious look at what COULD be if the events preceeding the movie were a fact of life for real people. It took itself seriously without making a big deal of it.

I'm honestly really pleased with the implied and delivered depth of the plot. Though it builds off of some seminal science fiction classics, it remains original in its execution, characters and setting (South Africa? Really?)

Overall, I'd say it's a much watch for any hard or soft Sci-Fi Junkie. But, be advised, the R-rating is well awarded.

Fraxy and Other Things

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:32:00 +0000

Hey everybody, leaving for home for about a month, so there will be an outage (due to necessitry instead of laziness, like usual.) So I figured I'd do some farewell stuff for now. Like this post. It is doodley.

I think Shangri-La will need a few of these.

I'm also messing about with Fraxy. What is Fraxy? Perhaps one of the most coderly top down shoot-em-ups I've ever played. The whole thing is slathered in high-level sub-languages for making levels and even has an editor for building enemies and bosses part by part!

Anyway, I've spent far too much time doing unconstructive things while curled up with this app.

But, now, you can reap them too! Even though most of it is very... beta is the nicest way to put it. Go ahead and futz around, I don't give a damn.

There's a player graphics set with installation and use instructions here.
The set matches with a scenario I'm 'coding' found here.

I'm going to go ahead and spare everyone the Japanese-formatted webpages on which the myriad different versions of Fraxy are located and categorized by confusing datestamp and get you guys a direct link here. Enjoy!

If I find time before I go, I'll also post chapter 7, completely disregarding the mad inconsistency of chapter 6 (or am I just being critical?)

EDIT: No, you have chapter 7, no new chapter for you!

Chapter 7: Charle's Crescent

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:33:00 +0000

'Finally!' you sau as you breakdance on top of a wedding cake, "A new chapter, ah, what what! I do say let me get my monocle." Infact, I daresay that sounds like a capital idea, gentlemen. This is a chapter that focuses prominently on galactic society, so get your top-hats ready!

EXCERPT: The Assisted Relay Traveller’s guide to LOCAL SPUR

(Line 310000 – 310042 TRANSLATED: Spacer Pidgin v3.5.12 TO: written paragraph form, Human English.)

Entry: Alpha Scopii, Alpha Scorpii 1, Charle’s Crescent, that big ring thing, [I truncated this. You wouldn’t believe how many stupid semantic links you guys use to refer to this blasted thing. Oh, and my favorite;] space Las Vegas.

Charles’ Crescent, as it is often called by citizens of nearby Farsol (mostly harmless,) was first uncovered by Farsol scientists soon after the recovery of open-source hyperdimensional-enhanced observatory systems from well-meaning participants of the BUSEI committee soon after first contact.

The involved astronomer went by the name of Sir Charles Sampson and was famous for his post-contact postulations of the wider universe. Ultimately, he proved to be mostly mistaken. For example, his original hypothesis of the use of a ring-shaped object orbiting a red giant was that it was a “cooling system for a massive matrishka brain capable of simulating entire universes.”

However, his mistake there was only partial. He was right in assuming it was part of a larger system. That system, however, is commerce. And, you just don’t get any finer commerce than at One, as I like to call it. Of note are some of the exotic dining centers that one can reach on a very small amount of Basic Universal Marks.

Such locations as the “Get Rid of It bio-salvage buffet” offer filling food for incredibly cheap prices, though the stomachs of non-scavengers are expected to expel their contents after eating there [and, no, not in the RIGHT direction, humans.] However, for those who don’t want to suffer acute food poisoning, there’s always “The Golden Fields” which is an enclave of pre-contact Chazaar culture frequented by the most aggressively conservative Chazaar patricians this side of Cha’Ri!

Unfortunately, that means that in order to get to your food, you’ll have to brave a number of mildly hedonistic apex predators who are grumpily awaiting their own meal and may declare a non-lethal duel for eating rights. Unfortunately, such duels have only been proven to be non-lethal to other Chazaar.

Be assured, though. It is possible for any hitchhiker to find what they need on Alpha Scorpii One, including a nice clean towel.

Sunrise 8: Charles’ Crescent

“This is traffic: Militarized Handling Department,” my babbler approximated the incoming Rele-communications. The voice was that of a collected, calm and vaguely masculine human, relatable and clear. If we would’ve been on the civilian traffic control band for freighters and the like; I’m sure the voice would have been a lot more showy and flamboyant. “Warship SSW-DCV1 Sunrise; your approach is confirmed. Please send information for an encrypted gateway to your RCS systems so you may be guided in.”

I was strapped down in my crash nest on the bridge. We were in full maneuvering positions so I was fully locked down by pads and belts, suspended just high enough off the deck to distract me with uneasiness. I suppose some simulation time would rip that little issue straight out of my mind, but I hadn’t really done that yet.

I managed to tear myself away from that as I patched into the communal view. I wanted to get a better looksee at what we’d phased out of Rele-space on a collision course with. In an instant, the horseshoe-shaped front three-quarters of the bridge shifted over to transparency. The only hint that I was actually looking at hull plating were the not-quite complete switchovers between the artificial view and the real windows. The glass reflected -- islands amidst flat, perfectly colored, imposed vision.

Perfectly colored, painfully bright vision. I was smitten by intense light that cast no shadows on the actually existent part of bridge. But the light was also dispersed, like sun-rays through a static snow storm… I wasn’t sure what was doing it, but that sure as hell wasn’t what we were making rendezvous with. Might as well check the rear cams myself.

Suddenly I got a prompt for whisper chat through the ship from ‘Sam. That prompted the red phone to Moscow to pop up. I instantly became worried about alerting everyone else on the bridge I was passing notes and picked the bloody thing up before it could even chime. Then I remembered I had my own private console and there weren’t any snoops around like when I was in the office.

“Don’t click to the rear facing cams yet,” she thought spoke over the line, output tinged with the whispery, low volume of secretiveness. “Remember our bet?”

“Yeah,” I thought-spoke, trying to sound uninterested. “Why?”

“SSW DCV1 Sunrise, local area network connection confirmed. T:MH will now automatically guide you in.”

“Hold on, click over when I say.” Well, this was getting more interesting by the second. Not to mention this girl knew how to build tension, I felt like a blindfolded tot on Insert-Festive-Gift-Holiday-Here day. “Okay, go!”

I jubilantly switched over with zero hesitation, then proceeded to be slapped dumb over the face with awe. We were coasting towards a huge, silvered ring floating in space. I patched into RADAR sensors and got some gauge on the size… it was huge! The thing was a massive ring, thirty kays in diameter! My view blatted with noise and pixel lag as I upped the resolution for a realtime close up…

What in the hell was this? It wasn’t actually one ring, there were two, like two massive decks stacked atop each other, one deeper inside the “ring” than the other. The lower one was ablaze with daylight, giving off dayglow, vivid greens and silvers… it was a Stanford Torus colony! A huge one! It reminded me of my first days out of the countryside when I was just a kid, when I’d thought Los Angeles’ urban development and financial sectors were the biggest damn things ever… oh, how wrong I’d been.

“Thought you’d like it,” ‘Sam said triumphantly. Why, kind mista’ Boregarde! For me? I stopped myself as I realized my eyebrows were wresting over the top of my forehead and my jaw had long ago unraveled to the floor in sheer awe.

“SSW DCV1 Sunrise, be advised, your acceleration burn will be underway shortly. If you are not already prepared for high delta v flight, please ensure you are within the next thirty seconds.” I suppose I should recap, once again, we were facing AWAY from the structure. Handling relative velocity from other solar systems was a real pain in the butt. So, ships just stopped most of the time.

“Everyone,” ‘Dan said cordially over the shipwide channel in his basso voice. “Please check your restraints. We are now on final approach for intercept with A. Scorpii one.” What an inauspicious name for such a crazy space city.

“SSW DCV1 Sunrise, t-minus ten to acceleration burn.” The automation counted down the seconds, then our torches lit. I watched from the rear view over the back of the hull as the ceramic panels ringing the engines fanned outward. The rasping rumble of the huge methane torches shook the hull, making my teeth chatter. I was squished back into my suspended chair as we hit heavy gees.

The ring was coming on faster and faster for a little while, gaining on us until it dominated the wide-angle view. I got a good view of what we were heading for in the mean-time. The central spoke of the huge, spinning ring was hollow at the center and full of hundreds of little suns of various colors, while the inner walls glowed and pulsed through a blinding number of color sequences.

As the thrusters burned away, I also noticed some tubular extensions running along at even intervals from the center and spiraling out to meet the main ring. The entire structure looked as though it belonged in a jet engine the size of a small moon. But it was obviously built for some other purpose. It had to be something that pertained to one of our jobs, our crew or our ship. I wasn’t sure what combination was most likely.

The rumbling subsided as the torches hissed down to a manageable burn. The ceramic vectoring plates slid tighter to focus the exhaust lance, creating cresting rings of hot gasses behind us. The central spoke now dominated my view, a huge geodesic dome with a giant hole in the center. The border of the ‘landing bay’ was frequented by running lights, dancing and looping around the border in complex, attention grabbing patterns.

Soon, the engines had rumbled to a stop, giving off a lancing puff of inert methane as they terminated. Our reaction control thrusters adjusted us ever so slightly as we coasted along. A few scarce minutes later, the hull ceased being a shadowy, pitch black phantasm haloed on one side by red light and was instead bathed in the vivid, colorful aquarium glow emanating from the landing bay proper.

“So, why are we here?” I asked aloud, my babbler automatically broadcasting over the ship network.

“A very observant question, indeed,” ‘Dan bellowed jubilantly. “Though we have accrued some supplies from earth, our advanced systems require maintenance and fitting.”

Advanced? Huh. I wonder what that meant. Another thing… I wonder; how advanced?

We coasted along through the delineated precise guidance rings projected onto our enhanced reality network. Meanwhile, I flicked away the rear view and looked out the side of our forward enhanced reality portal. I was once again slapped senseless.

"...Great rings of 3d signs danced like living friezes, counter rotating along the walls of the bay in a display of the full color spectrum, as well as the other safe spectrums my eyes weren’t designed for, so the sensor highlights told me. The area was an aquarium glow of entrance bays and buildings that were big enough to outstrip many terrestrial counterparts. Starships zipped about the space in arcing lines, buzzing like road traffic expanded into another dimension of freedom...."

The entire space was like a massive terrace of decks and gates whose purpose was clearly marked by the legions of glowing red and yellow enhanced reality graphics provided by the traffic control feed. The thrusters on the nose of the Sunrise huffed, making us gently pirouette in space to face the nearest surface of the wall. Thrusters powered on to nullify the last of our approach momentum as forward thrusters pushed us into a drift towards a gate.

We formed into a daisy chain with other ships on approach. Scarcely thirty meters ahead of us was a small logistics craft, jetting along on thrusters mounted on spindly poles that looked like insect legs. The graphic surrounding the edges of the massive gate, nearly seventy meters in any direction, flashed over to red. The scrolling BUSEI barcodes popping out into 3d space read “Gate 3 now taking in entrants, cross traffic be advised.”

We coasted over cargo unloading terraces stacked one atop the other like a contour chart of a hill, then into the gate and past the blazing red information portal. The tunnel dove down past the glass windows of offices and observation areas, likely under the influence of induced gravity this far into the structure, where gravity from centrifugal force was minimal.

‘Entrants’ began dropping from the line, thrusters pushing them into branching corridors until we were next. Our gas thrusters huffed as we were pushed into a slightly more claustrphobic corridor. It went on, lit only by blue service lighting, until our thrusters hissed us to a complete stop.

It reminded me of a lung, efficiently sorting air molecules into individual points of rendezvous, bringing them into a larger organism.

There was a loud thump as the ship shook briefly. The mechanical whirr of hydraulics conducted through the hull as we were pulled from the tunnel down into a confined bay. There was a series of bangs and thuds as we settled down into the small service area. “SSW DCV1 Sunrise, landing sequence is now complete. Please disembark from your craft so it may be interned to station services for requested fitting and refueling.”

We switched out of crash mode and my seat lowered from the spread-eagle, flying-guy position it was in to a comparably normal sitting position near the floor. My straps snipped out of their fittings and the pads confining my limbs rotated away with a nonchalant whirr. I rose with a long yawn and popped my back into a more comfortable position, making my piggyback slither slightly to readjust. I’d spent too long clammed up in a tin can. I mean, we were still technically in a tin can, but it was a bigger one than most.

***

The tile and metal egress bay had opened up into a well-lit walkway. The climate was fairly human, if a bit wintery. The air also had the slightest smell of incense, maybe a mask over the general smell of biological detritus that could exist in a closed system under constant use like this one was.

Our merry band was on all sorts of walking tempos, from ‘Sam’s highly spaced, stealthy tip-taps to the eight legged skitter of our arachnid captain and boatswain. The collective noise of our passage was like a wordless break dancing parade, walking along the polished, gray and tan marbled surfaces of the metamorphic rock that made up the floor.

“So,” I began awkwardly. “Just WHERE in the hell are we?” seeing as ‘Sam had been so (un)kind as to spare elaborating what this place actually was. All this sensory stimulation and now we were in a boring, earthy-colored hall. I was nervous, like an anciant Aztek warrior dropped in the middle of downtown L.A. during peak traffic and hooked into the Los Angeles Network Experience.

“Chill out, Solen,” ‘Sam said, more cold and distant than I anticipated. Perhaps there were too many watching eyes. “You’ll see.” I got another ping from ‘Sam, and we connected for a thought convo’ over the port network. “Trust me, man. You won’t be disappointed,” she whispered. Bridgett looked at me quizzically. I wasn’t sure whether it was out of concern or shameless curiosity, or if she knew what was going on.

When we got to the end of the hall, there was a capsule shaped transit pod waiting for us. The thin glass doors on our side parted sideways as the capsule unsealed, revealing a nicely finished, terrestrial cabin with lush red carpet flooring. It seemed slightly damaged from use but visibly clean. ‘Dan and ‘Zin jumped up onto one of the chairs with the distinct jerkiness of their powerful, hydraulic limbs. Polina and Bridget sat down next to each other on one side and ‘Sam motioned me in.

I shrugged and took a seat on the side with two free seats. Hopefully ‘Sam wouldn’t miss the gesture. Though I realized as I sat down that it could also come off as “I’m clingy.” Lovely.

Well, that was the message she may have well gotten, as she sat down next to the BFF squad and left me alone with the two stooges. ‘Zin went ahead and leapt urgently into the seat next to me, making me flinch briefly before I stifled it.

I got distracted by the grunt of motors as thick metal doors emerged from their hiding places on the flanks of the pod. The four metal wedges met on rubber seals and locked down with a thud as thick, airtight shutters closed over the glass doors to the hallway. About then I began to wonder what the hell kind of ride I was in for. Vacuum seals meant one of two things, open space or high speed. I didn’t like the former idea to much, seeing as this pod didn’t seem to have any climate systems to maintain us cut off for longer than an hour.

There was a brief rumbling, likely air being cycled out. As the noise ceased, I saw the wall ahead of me, beyond the acrylic dome at the front of the capsule, slide noiselessly away. When it removed itself from my view, the capsule set off into the tubular opening that had been hiding behind the wall.

The pod whined as we coasted serenely into the tunnel before we spiraled down and away from the station. We exited into what I assumed was the main tunnel with a pronounced *THUMP*

“So,” I began as I started settling in. “We’re getting refits, what’s the occasion?”

We bounced along, service lights flicking by at frightening speed. “I told you when you were hired,” ‘Sam said flatly. I pouted and my eyebrows slumped, but that wasn’t really specific enough. I’d taken it for a hook. Furthermore, I’d been worried most about NOT DYING at the time…

Oh, that was right, rich benefactors, I forgot. Score! “Right,” ‘Sam said as she noticed me grin like a shark. Polina looked at me like I was insane.

‘Sam got my attention again. “Essentially, we’re taking all the crap from Farsol we were lugging around and putting it to good use. Unpacking.” Save the fact that the unpacking involved things that liked to go boom when improperly handled. Hence the professional refit, I suppose.

I looked up as the wall on our right side zipped away and I was suddenly staring at empty, hard vacuum. It was about then I deduced we’d been shot out into space. My stomach suppressors gave me a little go-go kick to fight the feelings of vertigo and motion sickness that threatened to overwhelm me. Then, a truss flew by and I realized I was actually looking through a huge, panorama window. My lack of immanent fear of death let me take in the red-tinged, nebulous sky of the system surrounding us

I looked out at the dozens of multicolored suns trundling lethargically away from us, a few occasionally flashing out of existence. To the scene’s left was the huge red monstrosity that had dazzled me through the enhanced reality feed on our approach. We were either really, really close to a standard red giant, or we were far away from a really bloody huge one.

Wait, if we were in Alpha Scorpii, then that was Antares! Antares is a huge star, it makes the sun seem like a spec of dust! Also; for those of you who don’t know the scale, the sun makes Farsol 3, our home, look like a spec of dust. I thought about it for a second… a station like this would likely eat a lot of power, and I was still seeing a huge cloud of rice-grain looking devices around the star.

“’Uhh,” I spoke up thoughtfully, still not really having broken the ice with these guys... eh girls, mostly girls. “Is that a Dyson cloud around the star?”

“Yeah, actually it is!” Polina’s gaze shot up from the floor and she beamed happily. Ramble will begin in tee minus five. “Alpha Scorpii is the location of a fairly recent power project. This place is really big on that… lots of power hungry stuff is staked out here. It’s so cool!” she shook her shoulders with nerdy elation. “Stuff like labs, call-in server clouds…”

***

“…What’s more amazing is how clear the orbits are, it’s no wonder this system got so heavily developed!” ‘Sam had a look on her face like she was pining for the pod’s doors to slide open. That was whether or not we’d yet settled down to speeds where the surrounding air stream wouldn’t rip us to shreds.

“Wow,” I said with semi-manufactured enthusiasm. Infrastructure planning and analysis wasn’t really my forte’… but, unlike ‘Sam, I found myself feeling rather amused by Polina. She sort of reminded me of myself. The only difference was she liked things in general and I was a fanboy of the technology and processes of fighting things in general.

We’d cycled out of the high-speed vac-tubes and out into open air. Our capsule was decently fast, even when in the presence of drag. I surmised the four tracks spaced evenly around the capsule were a frictionless magnetic levitation setup. It was actually rather nice, if more archaic than I’d expected with the size of this colony. But then again, I’d been stuck in the space boondocks for a LONG time. It tends to make them thar city slickers take on an almost magical quality.

Gravity defying buildings leapt and arched over us as we swung down into a canyon of concrete, office windows and hanging parks made of untamed, vaguely terrestrial nature. We flew past planter rows alive with greenery and patches of things that likely qualified as such on other planets. Despite this, I guessed they couldn’t support the really crazy stuff in this biosphere. It looked decidedly mammalian.

However, I was seeing a few glimpses of very alien things occasionally popping into view as we banked into turns. They looked like hamster-tube terrariums jumping between some of the more peculiar buildings, each containing biological crap in very odd primary colors.

The pod decelerated as we banked into a right angle curve off the main line and looped into a station. The ‘station’ was pretty much just a little steel-and glass (mostly glass) shed that opened up onto a big footpath latched onto the side of an even bigger building.

The four space-doors on the appropriate side of the pod parted with a labored grunting racket before a gracious little safety cover slid up to bridge our step between the pod and the station. I let everyone else get up before I walked out. I always found it easier to do things gentlemanly.

I shielded my eyes against the artificial, but still very convincing, sunlight streaming in from between the tops and artificial ceilings of the leaping skyscrapers. I realized about then that I was stuck somewhere around thirty minutes after Dark O’clock. I was on Farsol Military Cycle. It was a lovely second-based system that totaled to about 27.7 hours (roughly a hundred thousand seconds.)

Trouble was I was on second seventy-one thousand one hundred and twenty right now… I should have been fast asleep! Curse my own lack of foresight! No wonder the ship had been so empty when I grabbed a dinner bar!

I tried to distract myself by pivoting stupidly about and gawking at the buildings. There were a ton of concrete, safety-barrier lined walkways shooting across the city-canyon like the guy who had manned the bridge-gun during construction had been a bad shot. A rainbow cacophony of beings more diverse than those little holding-hands-around-the-world pictures kids in pre-school make was toddling about all over the walkways and in those weird tubes I’d seen. We, apparently, weren’t the only to-and-fros here. About then I almost toppled over because I leaned too far back.

“Damn it,” I said aloud as I rubbed my eyes. Polina, ‘Sam and, after a brief pause and a squeak of realization, Bridgett, all turned around and looked at me with some concern (except Bridgett, who just looked confused and had a go at rubbing her eyes, too.) “No, no,” I said, waving dismissively. “I’m fine.”

***

There was a hellish blatting in my ear, prompting me out of a half-sleep stupor.

I squelched the chirping in my brain coming from my link to the city network. Apparently, according to the brain-o-gram gnawing into my thoughts, my requested personal effects that I’d left on the loading ramp had been whisked away to my room in the hotel. I was a bit preoccupied, however. This was the first time I’d gotten a look at ‘my’ ship. Damn, it was kind of… beautiful in its own special way, I suppose?

I stared at and walked around an enhanced-reality mockup of the scene. Maintenance arms occasionally slithered into the artificial view to slap in or remove mechanical giblets. They really weren’t making my appraisal easy.

“Why does my ship look like the barfed up remains of a flounder?” I tepidly asked in a voice slurred with fatigue. “It hardly looks atmospheric-flight worthy.”

“It hardly looks attlescopic smoothie?” ‘Dan asked, his babbler synthesizing the rising pitch of human confusion.

Oh, bugger. I gave myself a slap to the chin and shook off the woozies and said what I’d said again, just with more of my IQ behind it.

“Oh, be assured,” ‘Dan said jubilantly in his deep, synthetic rumble. “This ship’s performance is top of the line in comparison to current Farsol craft of similar size.” I looked at the weird, variable surface, stubby, strafed wings and realized that I somehow wasn’t convinced a frame this weird could fly.

It also had absolutely no vertical tailplanes, which made me nervous. What was worse was the paintjob. The colors overall were okay but… “’Dan,” I began incredulously. “Why the hell is there a parrot head on the nose of MY new ship?”

“I thought it was a good decision when we originally christened the craft. I found I was quite fond of the terrestrial birds on Farsol when we began looking for potential employees there. I especially like the avian creatures from the tropics of your planet. ‘Parrots,’ as you said.” I wondered if it was some edibility thing or an actual feeling of pleasure at how they looked. I wasn’t sure I could make that call with these two yet.

“Yeah, but ‘honed explosion machine’ doesn’t exactly scream ‘Parrot!’” I said.

“Would you like to not fly it then?” ‘Zin asked with about as much of an incredulous tone as I’d used.

“Indeed,” ‘Dan said. “If you are displeased with this role than we may assign you a new one.” Then I remembered that being the ship’s networking officer was boring. Doing it eternally for the next few years would leave my sanity a shambles!

“Well, if you put it that way; never mind!” I said, swiftly changing my mind about my amazing new parrot- erm, ship.

“It will be fully prepared for combat and at your sole discretion by the time we next set off.” ‘Dan said. “We expect you to run simulations before then.”

***

“Screw simulations,” ‘Sam said incredulously, smiling a bit predatorily as she pushed open my suite’s door and put her hands on her hips. “Wow,” she said after looking me over like a piece of meat. “You humans sure wear some, eh… confining clothes.” I’d thrown on my office suit. If anything, nothing had changed with office garb. Of those too paranoid to allow their workers to work-from-home telecommute, anyway. That included the Stellar Fallers, military organizations have to worry about the haxor, you know.

I, in turn, glanced over ‘Sam’s choice… she looked like she’d dressed in the dark. She had all kinds of multi-robed scarfs swung over her shoulders, covering over an open, burlap-looking jacket, all opening up onto a decidedly human, white, babydoll tee shirt. I looked up at her skeptically. She sure looked like she wasn’t dressed to go ‘out,’ unless out meant a multicultural trainwreck between god only knew what.

“What?” she raised an eyebrow at me, glaring with a slight hint of accusation. “This is the sort of thing we wear… when not out in public.” I could see why… once again, the tee and sheety thin pants she was wearing suddenly didn’t seem too modest. That might have just been her figure, though, she wasn’t exactly designed to fit into anything without a fight. Muscles did that.

“Blah,” I said at length. “Do your worst, I’m guessing human standards of fashion don’t apply here.”

‘Sam guffawed. “Damn right, you may very well be one of a few dozen here.”

***

“The Merge,” as its name roughly translated, was a very odd place. There were little squatty tables all about on fluffy polymer carpet, made up into orderly, brush-like rows. Their amber yellow nudged shoulders with the orange of the gassy habitat that was the district we were planted in. The venue seemed to be encased in some huge acrylic bubble suspended like a chandelier from a rapid-transit station we’d taken through the gassy fog to get here.

I’d seen some weird transport cars on the way; Shaped snowglobes with weird, bump-like seats occupied by slumpy cephalopods. Or there were the ones with little floater aliens at their center, held mysteriously in the center of the pod by some obscure yet invisible system to avoid painfully bumping the sides. The Merge was, indeed, a weird sort of hangout.

As we walked in, I got a welcome card shot at my face through the network. I unpacked the media file, letting the nicely customized audio, done in shoddily translated, vibratey human speech, play out.

“Welcome, to the merge, an intercultural hub of exchange and social activity!” came the generic words of an equally generic, white, Anglo-Saxon. “We have prepared an aggregate neurohaptic and visual enhanced reality feed to fit your cultural uniqueness…”

I checked their credentials as the manufactured voice continued to patter away. Then I pinged them at the BUSEI cloud, got a positive response and shrugged. It was good to play safe when neurohaptics were involved. The things hackers could do with a direct line to your motor nerves are scary. All the same, I jacked into the likely exorbitantly hard to compile feed. Likely some lovely procedural thing, I really didn’t care how exorbitant it was because it was free.

The antiseptic white, pearly plastic and yellow rubber brush carpeting flicked away and I was suddenly in a smoky pub with a completely wrong layout. I was surprised that was the only thing wrong with it. I took a moment to look around, neon signs proclaiming “Beer!” and “Woo!” blazed away in lazy reds, blues and yellows, highlighting the ornately carved, but fake, ceilings above us. Even the orange twilight from outside was overwritten by forested night beyond the span of the bubble.

“Crazy, huh?” ‘Sam said, making me jump as I remembered she was right next to me. “Drink?” I shrugged. “Thought so.”

***

The scene emerging as we descended a staircase spiraling down a cone at the center of the bubble was absolutely mortifying. To my left, a mass of wet tentacles stewed in a pearly pink, bubbling bath with some of its pals. How did I know where one began and the other ended? They were orange, brown and midnight blue respectively, and shifting colors on the fly as I watched.

I didn’t get much more comfort as I looked right, where there was what first appeared to be a ball pit full of ornate crystal stones. In actuality, the stones were moving. There were also some more bloated ones hanging out in the air above them, perhaps of a completely different species. One loudly belched fire and shot into the ball pit before slowly spinning back up into the air.

I looked back at ‘Sam with what, I imagined, was an expression of perplexity so extreme it was almost militaristic. “What the hell is going on in this place?” I asked quite pointedly. At this point, I would have not been surprised if a Japanese school girl dove into the tidepool with Tentacle, party of three and had at it.

“Can’t you tell?” ‘Sam asked innocently. No. “They’re getting drunk.”

“Bwuh!?” I grunted in a moment of simultaneous revelation and confusion. Alien metabolisms; alien alcohols… or equivalents thereof. Another of the floaters spat fire and pirouetted off across our path, cussing noisily in BUSEI Spacer-speak about doing nasty things to rocks and their mothers. “Erm,” I pointed at him as I looked to ‘Sam. “That a fissile eating critter?”

She nodded. “Munching on dirty fissile material, probably,” she remarked. “Judging by the smell at least,” her nose crinkled, as did mine shortly thereafter. We made to evade the stink-cloud of burning sulfur and singed hair smell. “Bar or booth?” I paused to think, but found my mind was too jaded with such mundane thoughts and would rather ogle the funky aliens. “Hmm,” ‘Sam began again. “Both?”

“By your command,” I began flakily, “skipper.” She pouted at me in thought, maybe waiting for her babbler to process that last word.

“That would be ‘Dan,” she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, completely missing the joke. “Lets go,” she said, turning and waving her hand toward a raised deck shaped like a squished amoeba (but in rustic wooden paneling.)

I shrugged. It was a credit to her she’d only missed two (very different) words since I’d met her, seeing as she was technically a space-alien of earthly doom.

I then got another surprise and started sensing a bit of a similar tune to when we’d descended the stairs… the communal, upside-down-funnel-cake shaped bar we were heading for was surrounded by a handful of humanoids… but different.

“There she is!” one man with orange skin covered in tribal paintings exclaimed. His Cyclops eye nested in a cybernetic visor clicked and pivoted to watch her as we moved to sit.

“Make some room for my friend?” she asked. A fellow with Anglo-Saxon features who looked a tad more like a hobbit hopped down from his chair and took another to the other side of the table. He was oddly without augmentations, besides his rather un-diluted, Saxon ethnicity and tiny stature. It was odd because a lot of the Saxon lineage had melted away with the Space Bubble.

“No worries,” he said in a nasally replication of an old scouse accent. “It’s been a while, yeah, lahv?”

“You could just say hello,” she said. I looked around silently at the others. The members of the table were either below six or above seven feet tall, and I noticed the difference. ‘Sam’s head was barely below the halo of white light shining from what was a cheap bar lamp in my simspace, adorned with an old CFL bulb, not actually casting the light. The same went for a handful of people at the table, it was about then I noticed one of the floaters pootling about over a plate of silica interlaced with glowing things across the table from me. Quite the diverse crowd.

“So, what brings madam mysterio around our parts once again?” Another questioned. His neck was replaced by a gray prosthetic of geometrically sectioned polymers marked with some wings-and-wrench symbol and emblazoned in a BUSEI with a corporate identifier.

“Regular business,” she said casually. Because evading an outlaw cyborg, pirates and an AI was ‘regular business.’ But I didn’t want to bring that up, because I didn’t know if we’d signed a non-disclosure agreement with our clients or not. Also, I didn’t yet want to find out for sure if that was, indeed, regular business. I tend to get afraid, especially when I’m supposed to be having fun. It can be a very minor problem sometimes.

“I also had to snag this boy here,” she threw her thumb my way. “He’s with FS:SF,” she looked at me again. Well, at least I existed, apparently. “don’t you have some hot-shit nickname, Mackai?” When a few humans around the table heard that remark, they raised their eyebrows at me with a sort of knowing amazement. Either that or I’m a narcissist and imagined it. I’ll not judge that myself (because I love me.)

“Ehm,” I began. “Puppetmaster is the one most-“ there were whispers with varying degrees of skepticism and amazement from most of the dozen or so members of the table. It’s funny how my own ability to talk shit quickly outpaced me a while ago and shot around the FTL network, doing my work for me.

“Blah,” one said. “I don’t believe you. And even if you were, you still can’t compare to any of the guys with Starward. Not even you and the rest of SF brass have enough of a mind between them to compare!”

“Starward Security and Escort is made up of like THREE guys!” Another proclaimed, sporting a scruffy black beard and Hari-Krishna robe emblazoned with an outbound colony logo on it, anointed with gold-leaf Sanskrit. “Ehm, make that aliens,” he said, plucking his fingers together to diffuse his embarrassment.

“Three very awesome aliens,” another said tentatively.

“Where’s my drink,” I commented dourly. Just then, a pink-haired waitress blipped into existence in front of me wearing a skirt, a lycra top, and not much else, save some convincing cat ears.

“You rang?” she squeaked over a closed net channel.

“Sure,” I said at length. Though, it hadn’t taken me long to figure out why she’d blipped in so conveniently on time, another mock-up. “How about a vodka martini –and no, don’t shake it, stir it.” I’m not James Bond. It would have been a sin to pose as him. He was our floor’s de-facto hero back at Shangri-La. We all had a thing for flatmedia back there.

The doll blipped away and I looked up again.

“… and that’s why human political stance is isolationist and manipulative,” the Starward proponent proclaimed.

A tall fellow wearing a shirt showing vital readouts on his chest leaned down below the lamp, which apparently existed in his simspace as well as mine, and grunted. I also noticed he was quite clearly of the same species as ‘Sam, maybe her gateway into this group? His heart monitor was flashing a bit faster and a symbolic looking emoticon that looked like an angry cat glared at us from his sternum. Luckily, his demeanor was much more controlled. “You’re a spacer, SinSpace, so you have no right to judge a society you’re no longer part of.” He then slowly turned on the Anglo-Saxon, apparently representing the Farsol side from what I managed to sponge.

He spoke again. “And you have no right to judge superiority as a patron and merchant of Farsol, PureHustler.”

“You’re quite right, mate,” the Anglo-Saxon conceded. “Unless we want to end this in a very non-commerce-like fashion, it would be best if we do as the corporates do-”

“And stow our grudges,” I mechanically finished for him. He was from the Shangri-La crowd if he knew that slogan. It was a face-saver I’d heard escorting merchants on cool down missions. I got some funny looks from those not in the know, but it was really no big deal… I think?

“So,” Mecha-neck began, cybernetics chattering as he looked in my direction. “Why don’t you educate our friend from Starward about how you Farsol riff-raff do things down town?” Visor-guy’s eye whizzed and clicked to focus on me. Hmm, I do believe this will be a make-or-break moment.

“Well,” I began, squaring my shoulders and sitting up on the stool. “You all know the corporate spiel, so I’ll spare you.” A few people relaxed. “But, do you all know the net-cauterizing flash-bomb? The one everyone in the lower bridge has been using to secure data networks infected by Marketeers?” Everyone nodded. “I was chief designer.” I waited for the furtive, impressed whispers, trying hard not to grin.

After a long pause: “Not bad,” Mecha-neck commented. My mind-grin disappeared.

“During my first tour fifty years ago,” I continued.

“Not bad,” he said again.

“Ehm… while fighting pirates during all waking hours?”

This time he paused, The Starward bloke looked me over, blank AESA radar eyes staring me down before a smile passed over his face. “Hahah!” He howled suddenly. It seemed he was one of those spacers who still wasn’t sold on the benefits of body language, because his expression didn’t change even one iota as he laughed. “You ground-worms are funny people!” he howled. A bunch of red warning placards blipped into existence and surrounded our sitting space, proclaiming we needed to use inside voices.

We all sat still for a few seconds before they went away. I pinged ‘Sam. “Does this happen often?” I whispered over our connection.

“I wouldn’t know, never met these guys before,” she said, much to my astonishment. “Not in the flesh, anyway. They’re fringe members of the local security watcher’s guild. Half the time I’m here the people in port I meet are unfamiliar.” Poor girl, though somehow I don’t think she needed my pity. So I didn’t say anything.

A plastic sphere tentatively hovered toward our table. The white polymer surfaces were studded geometrically with little, hissing air jets that seemed to be working hard to correct for the coriollis force of the colony’s rotation. It seemed to be unaltered by the enhanced-reality running over my vision, save a little flopping ribbon hanging from the bottom that read “WOOOOOOOOOOOO!” on it. Seriously, is this what it thought we humans liked to read? I mean, we say it a lot when we’re drunk… but seriously.

It hovered above the table, in front of the anglo-saxon. A moment later, it twirled down to the table, then there was a clunk like glass-on-glass. As it rose, it revealed an authentic, frothy beer, sitting on its landing site.

He dropped a tablet into the brew, which seemed to explosively dissolve. The madness sent flecks of froth across the table.

My curiosity hacked my mouth. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Nano machines,” he said. “The bar-engineers make beer tha’s terrible here.”

“Ersatz?” I asked.

There was a pause and he was staring off into space for a moment. I suppose, given an upbringing by spacer parents from the isles, he wouldn’t know that word. It was one the yanks had made up long ago when wars still existed. “Very,” he said. “Here, I’ll clear it for you.” By that, he meant a feed.

The whole table turned to look as he made an output stream public. Weird, 2d graphic-forms hovered around the mug. He dragged sliders and clicked infinitely thin, nonexistent keys. It was sure a lot of effort just for a brew.

Finally my drink arrived, once again, via jet assisted server. Now we could get down to business.

***

A few more white plastic drone drops later and here I was, cheek to the table. And, by a few, I mean one point five. Really, it doesn’t take much to put me under, when my internal chem.-systems on my piggyback weren’t on, anyway. I turned ‘em off for times like this. Though, I’d played a few jokes while seeming to convincingly get drunk, all the meanwhile recording the stupidity of my friends. I was, though, high on the watchlists of many viewers of DarwinDebochery.rhub.

The table pretenders had had their fun meeting the newbies and left. It was just me and ‘Sam. It had been for a while, mostly involving silence. What can I say? I’m not the most social chap that ever existed.

“You know, I don’t get you humanss,” ‘Sam said through a slight slur. Of course, the slur was quite unlike a human one, because it seemed to subtly involve several octaves. It was another start to end in awkward silence, likely. I wasn’t feeling massively up to pissing about. But I was determined to break the ice… at some point.

“What’s not to get?” I asked neutrally, trying not to spoil her tangent. This was a genuinely good proposition.

“Well, you’re almost like us… it’s kind of funny,” she said, contemplating her mug of neon-green brew -- capped with bio-luminescant kelp -- from the vantage point atop her folded arms. “But you’re just not… quite… there.”

“Mmhmm,” I hummed. Now I was really interested.

“Like, take your fur for instance,” she said, looking attentively up from her beer like she was about to go on a roll. “You only have it on your head… it looks like you’re all participating in chemotherapy or something, or you’ve all taken a short walk off a long pier into a pool of toxic waste just shy of being up to your forehead.”

“Oh,” I groaned with disgust. “That’s pleasant.”

“Heh,” she guffawed. “Should have never said anything… nothing.” She lapsed into a weird, pluralistic grumble of orderly tones, maybe the equivalent meaning in her language.

“Eh, noo,” I insisted. I wondered, though, if she was going to start using her babbler. That was seeing as she seemed almost too pissed-away to do any lingual thinking.

I began again, “Yeah, but think about my end.”

“Yeah, flyboy?” she questioned wisely. “What DO I look like, hmm?” I couldn’t tell if she was daring me to try, on pain of… pain, or goading me on.

“Well,” I looked her face over again. She had this odd, triangular nose sticking out from a clean ark from there to her forehead. It was weird, because it looked almost human, but it didn’t have that point because of the exaggerated bridge. So, she looked like a fuzzy animal… predatory… that ate things. “You look kind of like…” I thought a moment more. “You look like an otter, almost.” But it was more like a dash thereof upon a human. My mind leapt for a millisecond as I came up with an idea in ym drunken stupor. Exactly who would put a dash of otter on a human frame?

She laughed in this sort of world-weary, melodic drawl. It had some distinctly human elements, but they seemed weird coming from her. “That thing?” A big square panel with a flat video popped up ahead of her in the public space. A little, sleek animal dashed and jumped off a rocky crag into the water. “Heh, they’re kind of badass.” The scene changed, and the muted burbles of under water noises dominated, emanating gently from the screen’s general area. “Hmm,” she drew plaintively. “Remindsss me a bit of…” then she said something that sounded like ‘rent skis’ said in fast forward with the s sounds massively exaggerated.

“Of what?” I asked.

“Home, you idiot,” she scowled at me as her head lolled away from the screen and bumbled over to look at me. “I mean, I look like an otter after all, right?”

“So, wait, your species is aquatic?”

“Ding, ding… d-ding,” she mumbled. “Fucking Sherlock… winner… you’re the… frigging,” she fell into another series of multi-octave mumbles. “Fucking Farsol syntactics,” she mumbled under her breath.

Awkward silence.

Her gaze shot up to look at me again. “Just don’t call me an otter,” I nodded. “Do I look like I’m enjoying myself?”

I raised an eyebrow, she continued to look at me intently. So I overtly shrugged. This is my body language, this is you. Zoom, right over your head.

“Cos I am. Can’t take no one out for a g-good time on that ship.”

Then a thought occurred to me. “This can’t be how you… um, your people… have a good time, can it?”

“Nope,” she said. “Old habits, from elsewhere.” I wanted to ask what elsewhere, but I held off.

***

“Shuth up!” I slurred, forgetting temporarily which way was up. “I can jump it because there’s no actual gravity in the colony!” This was a brilliant theory! “I just jump,” I sluggishly pointed left, then spun around and pointed right, realizing my error and still trying to maintain my imagined semblance of coolness. “Tha’ way. Really fast. Then, ummm.” Well, assuming this worked, I would smack into the far wall. But, who gave a shit; it would be worth it. I would prove that Farsol could succeed in counteracting the centripetal force of a standard class toroidal colony on my first real visit to one!

“You’re dumb,” ‘Sam giggled, girlishness only showing through in the pitch of her voice. All the same it seemed to fortify me a bit, or maybe I was just really drunk.

“Hey!” I said accusingly, then uttered, “watch!” a few dozen times. “…watch, watch, watch.”

“Okay,” ‘Sam said, putting her weight on a railing and looking sexy… like sexy sex… yeah.

Wait, what mind did I have thinking that? Screw it.

“Okay,” I climbed up on the railing, “here we go!”

***

I carefully nursed the heavily built up, polymer foam cast around my arm as we rode the tram back toward the commercial district. The area inside tingled with wetness. There were likely some very nice medical bio-systems in the gel, maybe engineered chemical boosters. I was still too wasted to be sure.

‘Sam was with me on the opposite side of the car, bouncing about awkwardly as the tram moved about. “You,” she began, stuttering a bit. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

“Thank you, Stephen Hawking,” I said, trying to get some semblance of sarcasm in my voice. I winced every time the car made a sudden course change.

“Just go to bed,” she said.

“What about you going to-“

“Don’t say it,” even drunk, she hid behind a venire of self-denying detachment. “Just go to sl-“ she fell to the car floor like a limp water baloon. Now, I’d kicked in my blood scrubbers, so I was quickly becoming sober. However, I also reeked of the stuff, smell wise. That was mostly because the scrubbers were cycling the crap out a small aperture just behind my neck in the form of vapor. I avoided it when I wanted to keep up appearances, because it was just creepy.

When the tram began to slow, I leaned down. I was pontificating to the best of my current ability about how I’d wake her up. I poked her in the shoulder a few times, then her eyes opened.

“What the hell did you do!” She jumped up and skittered on all fours up to the back of her previous seat. “Drugged mah’ drink!”

“No!” I howled in my defense.

“Oh,” she said coolly, flopping down into both seats. “My bad.” That’s a quite astute observation.

Just then the doors cycled open.

***

“You know,” Polina said, walking in step between me and ‘Sam. “It can get a bit nuts out there, and it’s not exactly great for our professional image to have our squaddies getting piss drunk.” The self righteousness in her tone was unmistakable.

“Tch,” ‘Sam clicked with annoyance, turning to cock her head arrogantly at the girl. “You try toting a gun and ssshooting it at things that like to move ‘n breathe.” Polina did her best to look defenseless. ‘Sam shrugged, shook her head and walked faster, outpacing the two of us remaining.

I got a ping from ‘Sam as I watched her butt swing-swing off into the distance. I opened the channel she shoved in my face while she was looking utterly innocent of any activity, save walking towards her room. “Girl thinks she’s the ship’s secretary.”

I gestured agreement down the line and she closed it soon thereafter. She turned and pressed the pad to open her suite door. She only paused long enough to give me a look of wariness, like I should do the same and bugger off, before she disappeared into the room. A swish emanating from the plastic sliding door marked her complete exit. I was thinking that was a good idea. Being around another, seemingly less defensive woman while drunk was not an idea I cherished, judgment now having a better hold on me.

I looked back and saw Polina appraising me rather favorably. Unfortunately it wasn’t hot to me it was just kind of cute. This was not a come-on I was looking for. “You really ought to get some rest,” she said a bit awkwardly. “Heading out a diurn from now…“ she trailed off weakly.

I nervously splurted an awkward goodbye and turned into my own room, barely clearing the door as it slid open. I quickly closed it behind me.

“You sure you don’t need anything?” she asked plaintively, but with an awkward hint of suggestiveness.

“No,” I yelled through the heavily soundproofed door. “I’m fine.” I was, mostly. It was only later that I really realized the subtext of the whole series of events since I’d arrived in the lobby.

THE FINAL ATTACK IS COMING

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:51:00 +0000

I'll be releasing the next subsequent chapter soon. I had qualms about the last one after I released it so hopefully it's understandable why I'm being conservative.

Please hold for the next avaoiable customer service representitive

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:08:00 +0000

Well, my landlady arrears to be tighetning her belt without telling me first. So I'm off of the interwebbernet for the next week or so. But, good news, everyone! I've invented a device that makes me talk like professor farnsworth! And, I've also finished two stupendous chapters in the series.

I've also decided I'm going to be up-front about things and just abolish any idea of a schedule. Life is hectic and I'll release when I can, it'll be a lot less cold and maybe get everyone more involved.

I'd say more but... well, I'm already in my pajamas...

When you're in a little room

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:38:00 +0000

If you don't know the rest of that song then, well, hurrumph, I have nothing to say to you. Or do I (suspense!?) Anyway, as I say this, I look over a sea of white and tan pulped paper cardstock receptacles containing the SUV load of widgets n' gidgets that make up my possessions.
I'll be moving the absolutely gargantuan distance of one mile with my landlady, who sprung a ninja-move on me a couple of weeks ago. But amidst the chaotic vortex of boxes, refrigerators, trash and bagged food, there is good news!

I'm actually going to have free time from December 21st on to the 6th (unless my cat, Squeak, has her way with it, needy little thing.) I'll be using this time to prepare the next few chapters. You'll also, hopefully, see a new releasing scheme emerge (one that doesn't put weekly pressure on me but still giuves massive storygasms to my readers.) I've already finished the next chapter, but am witholding it for the above reason.

Sincerely U-haulin
Aaron

happy candy o thing day ween

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 19:56:00 +0000

Oh dear! I'm late on the Halloween bus! (watch as I point to my blog's right sidebar.)

*ahem* BOO! Biznatches.

And, the deed is done. Hope everyone had a good halloween. Me? I left my bike on an LBTA bus and ran after it as it blazed through a green light. THEN I went trick or treating. Overall; an eventful night ending, ending more like a night of partying and alcohol with a repentant call in the morning (to the lost and found, though.)

Right, so on top of now having a full-on job, four classes, continued hotness (but there are clouds today, so hooray) I now have ~6 hours a week of service-learning (predominantly pointless persecution of puritan collegients who take an intro to government class) plus about 100 minutes of bus riding.

I'm still slugging through chapter improvements, but I snagged a few beta readers, so that's gone better. Exactly what I plan to do witht hese first six episodes? Let's just call them a pilot. Big things will eventually follow once I have some spare time.

Also; proving that white guys CAN dance hah!

Work, Work, SNAKE!

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:24:00 +0000

Like, hi, everyone!

Sorry for the lack of updates, but, I've like, been totally swamped!

Okay, my brain hurts from talking like that. Anyway, here's the lowdown on why there's been no updates; my chapters are unrefined nuggets of snot.

Too harsh? I hope so otherwise I grossly overestimate myself. A few things have eaten my ability to write. Most notably, I now have a regular internship (slavery, at least until Fearless Leader decides to put me on payroll.) Other than that, it has been SO, BLOODY, HOT!!!

After noon, if I'm at home with only the broken AC as company, I'm left to wallow in a cloud of my own mamallian heat-exhaust suffering to do much else than eat and, if I'm lucky, read. As it is it's about dark o'clock outside and I'm still roasting.

Other than that, I'm seriously considering a new approach to my writing. I'm my only editor at the moment and that HAS to change. I'll be reaching out for beta readers when I have the time (maybe this weekend, as I've nothing better to do until the next one comes around.)

But chapter seven is coming along and people should have fun with it, as it has a cantina scene (and if I see any more mutated, generic aliens playing annoying diddies on flutes, I will VAPORIZE them, so there, Star Wars!)

Expect some rewrites and other such things as I'm not happy with what I've got atm. And this story is the measure of its weakest moment so I better do this right. In the words of Mr. Locke: "I'M SUPPOSED TO DO THIS DAMMIT!"

Plugged into Web 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:33:00 +0000

Hello again, everyone (all three of you by the best estimates.) Hopefully you all have noticed the pretty shinebuttons at the foot of this post next to the fullpost link. You'll also notice that ALL my posts have them. That's because I didn't do the lazy thing and add their code to my new post addin text.

Nope, I did it the Super Heroic Coder way and edited them directly into the layout with the other bootstraps I've put into this blog's code. It was very troublesome because the Shiny Buttons' snippet code was notoriously not-blogger-ready in at least half the cases (I improvised the Simpy link from two different sources.)

So what are these Pretty Colored Buttons, really? Well, they're my ingeniously nefarious solution on how to democratize my blog's bid for world domination! (muahaha!)

Simply put, they're links to add my site to your social bookmarking system of choice. What's social bookmarking? Why, it's part of the magic of web 2.0 (doesn't that sound spiffy! Go ahead and say it with me again, web 2.0.) Of course, seeing as there is no prevalent standard system of social bookmarking, you have to submit to the grotesque comemrcial-client hodgepodge below. Hopefully you've already enroleld with one of the services or more. If you have, the buttons make it PAINFULLY easy to add this site into your bookmarks for that service or give it a vote.

That was informative but boring, entertain us! For we are the unwashed masses@

Fine, fine, dwellers of the intertubes. Well, actually, I'll keep assailing you with walls of text, because that's what I know how to do.

Anyway, I suppose this site is now plugged into web 2.0 because of those little, innocuous looking icons at the bottom of this post. "Funny, though, things don't feel very different," you say. At which point I realize you are actually a burglar looking over my shoulder as I write this, prompting me to scream like a schoolgirl.

Anyway, yes, the difference is fairly minimal. That's because web 2.0 is a very contradictory term. The 2.0 makes it sound like a complete overhaul that makes everything sleek, sexy and chrome (because chrome, as we know, doubles sexiness, in the same way the color red makes cars go faster.) In reality, web 2.0 is more like a full realization of existing technology. You could say we're filling out the shoes of the internet - the intershoes, if you will.

Much like MAckai's armament in chapter 3, web 2.0 is mostly old tech, just glossed up with new, advanced control systems under the hood. Web 2.0 describes intelligent, machine content delivery and syndication systems, liek the RSS feeds at the top right of this page and the aforementioned social bookmarks. They essentially make the internet a true network of active links via search utilities, hot topics, socially voted on sites, intelligent aggregators, et cetera.

Of course, it's no real surprise this is happening, and the change will likely be seamless. But in a good decade, we may soon find this isn't our grampappy's internet anymore.

Blah, blah, shut up! What about that book signing with Charles Stross?

Don't yell at me, us anonymous writers have feelings, too! (I'm sad that you never snuggle, what happened to the blog patron I fell in love with ih so long ago... okay nevermind, this joke was old before the dinosaurs went extinct.)

Anyway, it was a real joy to be there. Stross is my idol as far as modern SF writing goes. So, I was distinctly nervous as hell, nerdvous, one might say, when I got to the book shop he was signing in (early, of course, it's a true geek tradition.) But he turned out to be a fairly down to earth guy (aside from the fact that the stuff he writes is all flavors of weird at once, but that tends to be a very good thing.)

I also purchased glasshouse and got it signed by His Royal Scottishness: Stross himself. And... bloody hell! He beat me to the punch! A long, long time ago (say in a galaxy far away, I friggin dare you) I wrote a story about beings living outside of known reality in an aggregate manifold of continuities, effectively immortal and operating outside of time. It focused on a character in late stages of rehabilitation, a graft of three broken conciousnesses trying to find his own island of sanity in a world that was merely a series of cleverly crafted illusions of reality. And, dammit, Storss already wrote such a story... of course, with interdimensionality replaced with wormhole entangled multi-spaces. Argh, sometimes I wonder if ANY of my ideas are original.

*ahem*

Well, that's it, off with you! And please try out my shineybuttons below this post. Help Sunrise dominate the intertubes!

Chapter 6: Operation Exuberant Penguin

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:53:00 +0000

For all of you that saw my format screw up, let's whistle innocently and pretend it didn't happen. I blame the fact that I had to rush this chapter somewhat, that and I was gone for four days out of my seven day update cycle. I'm also a website newb, so be gentle!

Mackai finds the sticky situation gripping Farsol has increased both in clarity and apparent danger. The conflict has devolved into open skirmishes, prompting the Stellar Fallers and Martani Security Incorporated to stop ignoring eachother and start cooperating. So; who else would be in the middle of this scenario but the only private security firm who ahs the right skills at the right place at this point, Sunrise Starwide.

EXCERPT: BUSEI Central Datacloud

TRANSLATION: Open-Bracket-Close-Bracket Semantics Ltd. Subroutines

HISTORY:

Remote datasync, Bridge Highlands Central Relay, Orion Arm.

Translated at Relay Bot @ E. Eridani into Farsol Semantics

Approval stamp by BUSEI Quality Commons Commission

News file datalog [Timestamp equivalent to 3 Jan. 2455CE]

Thank you for using SpiderBot services, a communal subsidiary of the BUSEI committee.

SpiderBot, SpiderBot, doing things a normal spider does not.

Your search “security, infractions, operations, dispatches” has returned 1,200,329 results: Result returns are up 4% from previous inquiry.

1) Today, Tobaran Security, a multi-terrestrial firm operating in The Bridge Highlands executed a co-ordinated sting on a major Farren Free Mercenary cell operating from an isolated location there. Their teams of dedicated electronic attack specialists have completely decimated all but their core automations (in accordance with the Preservation of Life Act signed by the BUSEI committee.) Similarly, data requisition uncovered massive stores of material evidence stolen from the servers of 11 major societies in data-hit-and-run ambushes complimented by physical attacks by Farren starships. Exactly who has been contracting this cell to do their dirty work remains unclear.

2) Rogue prodigy Farsol is caught in the middle of a massive sting by Martani Security Incorporated. The sting continues on after nearly three days of intense logistics activity feeding the movement of over three-hundred field officers, over half equipped with motor-assist equipment. The press blackout has been intense and their intentions are mostly unknown, though they’ve made it abundantly clear that Farsol is at worst a bystander. This comes with great relief to the Chazaar Royal Diat, close allies of Farsol, who were poised to intervene.

3) The illegal activity market continues to inflate. General activity in this sector has increased to the point that most security firms are seeing massive fractions of their employee’s time spent in action. Some firms have even made emergency allocations of office staff to field duty in an attempt to respond to the trend. Rest assured MarsaniDefGariLa Central News will be on the Blorkvat first! [uh oh, translator’s having hiccups. Taking her offline for diagnostic. Sorry, boneheads.]

Sunrise Ep. 6: Operation “Exuberant Penguin”

The fourth level lobby of the Madison Marquee tower was dead quiet and devoid of everyone but the Stellar Fallers squad I was currently a part of. I was feeling rather lonely as these guys weren’t usually my crowd. Seeing as they were gruff, scary and often smelling of armpit.

That was even through their light kits. I shifted my boot laden feet nervously on the granite tiles, coated in some dust from destroyed fragile things. Those knocked over vases were partially our fault. However, most of the destruction took place after the fact of a rather nasty meeting. I raised my hands and caught the Fulcrum rifle the squad captain had thrown at me. It was about the most pointless weapon you could give a code jockey like me.

“Man!” I moaned. “This thing barely has any onboard guidance.” The captain had moved on so I kept on natting like he wasn’t there. “This thing only has a scope, this little laser aimy thing…” I did a quick uplink with the computer and gasped inwardly. “And this bloody thing barely has the computing power of a PDA!” I said accusingly.

The captain whirled around and stuck his nose up at me as he leaned in and snatched the rifle from my hands angrily. “Here,” he said, throwing me a lighter weapon. I uplinked with that… The Pistol-Submachinegun “Pelter.” Even worse guidance system!

“How is this any better?” For a second I thought he was just going to be sadistic and saddle me with a crappier weapon every time I spoke up.

“Cone of fire on the Fulcrun; this big,” he grumbled in his smoky voice (purely for show these days, some throwback to Sylvester Stalone) as he mimed a circle with his two hands. “Your guns cone of fire, THIS big,” he said testily as he spread his arms about to shoulder width… okay I could see his logic now.

“Just aim down the scope and fire,” he said. “I know you glitzy field-intelligence officers can do that at least… considering we ALL went through basic.” He scowled at me. “But that’s about all we have in common, Mr. Solen.”

“Sir,” I corrected him. I ticked off an item on today’s to-do list; do something ballsey and completely suicidal. The captain grunted at me, gnashing his thick jaw and walked off. Well, whatever, he didn’t have to say it. I’m not really the drill type of sergeant.

“Okay, boys, this is a pilot run… we’re the first squad linking up with Martani forces for a co-op-“ also known as a Joint Alien Human Fuck Up, klatu barata nikto! “Now, there’s a lot of crazy shit going on,” he slowly, menacingly turned toward me, barring his teeth like an angry grizzly in slow motion. “Most notably, our ‘advisor’ – who is MOST DEFINITELY more competent in this field than us –“ he glanced mockingly down at my training-wheels gun.

“Well, he’s a drone jockey…” All the captain’s underlings turned like prairie dogs who had spotted a hawk, raising eyebrows and looking me over like a credible THREAT instead of an asset. “But he’s also the employee of the only high-tier security firm not caught with its hand up its… and our contact with the Martani squad’s advisor. Treat him like on of your brothers so he doesn’t ‘accidentally’ bring the hurt down on us with a miss-called airstrike.” Everyone chuckled at a joke I didn’t quite get.

“Keep sharp and synchronized, and we won’t go SF, PD.” An old saying about halting states… System Fails, People Die. “Suits on, tack-ons tacked!” He barked.

I thoughtlessly obliged, folding my light kit out of it’s pack and digging out the extra systems – full armor cover, scan seonsors, networked optics, smoke-grenade blisters…

I subconsciously pulled out my jetpack and handed it off to the nearest squaddie. He slapped it down on my back; making me stagger under the weight, compact though it was. I caught one of the heavy, wedge shaped packs form another man and threw it down onto the power port on his pack, locking it in.

“Right,” said the captain. “Who are we, boys?” He yelled.

“Alpha wolves!” They all yelled simultaneously, me joining in quick enough to say “wolves.” This American-Football-Team mentality was very contagious, I grinned.

“Let’s show them what Farsol boys do besides crunch numbers!” the captain proclaimed like some prophet on a high hill. Ah, yes, the field division,as crazy as the office jockeys are nerdy.

Okay, wait for the roar of approval… two, one. “Hoah!” everyone agreed aggressively, though I had just let out an inarticulate roar, stupid me.

One of the squaddies chuckled. “Heh, that’s the spirit man,” he said, shaking his head and grinning stupidly. “Keep up like that and you’ll do a better job of scaring them than any of us.” I shrugged stupidly and wasn’t quite sure if I’d gained or lost clout.

“Michasol,” he said, extending a hand.

“Solen,” I said as I shook his hand tepidly. I was more likely to remember by voice, anyway. I was about to say something when I got a call on my squad networking port, it had the Captain’s credentials so I let it through. An innocuous little rectangle labeled “port” streaming a binary barcode popped up in the corner of my vision. The feed was going through my retinal interceptors and getting that weird fisheyed, woozies-inducing look to it.

A big column of bits started surging through faster than my eye could track them. Qe were syncing the squad net for full, highband, combat management. Overlays were popping up as if someone with a bucket of paint on too much caffeine were frolicking about splashing everything in sight with dayglow colors.

Building windows flashed from red to green to red as I shifted about, the nearby walls mapped in purple geometry covered in architect’s crosshatches. My weapons feed linked up and scanning sensors started tagging valid cover in yellow all over the place, lighting up like a Christmas tree.

“Net’s up?” The captain bellowed.

“Hoah,” we all said in unison, me included this time. Everyone sauntered around into a tight circle in the center of the room and pulled their fists back. I joined in as we punched ourselves in the fist simultaneously… old gesture and perhaps completely diluted in meaning by now besides “grr, I am Super Masculine Individual!” Something a bit odd as there were two lasses in the squad, hair tied up and buzzed short respectively.

The skipper motioned us out the door, which barely parted in time for us to rush through (not that it would have stopped us, being wee, pansy, sharp-angled glass and all.) “Visors down, these punk criminals don’t deserve to see our mugs!” We all willed our masks out and down, gray plates covering the only exposed parts left of us not covered by the flat black armor we wore.

All together with full kit we looked something like an old post-cold-war squad of stealth fighters if they had sprouted limbs and a head and folded in on themselves awkwardly. Datacorders were skimming off our cam’ and relay data as we ran down the pedestrian avenue, black-boxing the entire operation for analasys in a tactical propability sieve later.

“Target is three hundred meters down and another fifty left,” the captain said over the squad channel. “Rendezvous is at the turn. Squad Batou is on schedule.” I could only assume Batou was our squad of feathered friends.

“Cliff,” I heard a familiar voice whisper to me over the combat network. Ah, it was Michasol! I patted myself on the back for remember- a CLIFF?

The three squaddies ahead of me jumped and kicked their jets, blasting upward for a split second. Their thrusters spat compressed gasses, sending them into a flying leap across a chasm between skyscrapers… four stories up. I gulped as I continued to run for the chasm…

Just like a powered jump… just with no ground underneath if you screw up. I wasn’t going to lose my nerve though, that infectious Team Titanic Testosterone thing again. I took a flying leap from the ledge, between the safety posts stopping civilians from walking there, and kicked my jets.

Unfortunately, my burn was a bit hard and sent me into an agonizingly slow forward lean as I headed for the other side. Luckily I didn’t miss the brick-tiled square at the other end… if you count landing head-first in the fountain. I clacked and clattered through the cement, square shaped basin. Though, I was completely saved from injury by my light kit a.k.a. full body bike helmet.

I hastily jumped from the water and tried to pretend like nothing had happened. It seemed to work as everyone seemed rather focused on running like greyhounds after a lone, fuzzy rabbit. I seemed in the clear when someone in the squad yelled “Sploosh!!”

The rest of the squad gave a resounding, communal call of “SPLOOSH!” over the squad channel, making my head ache a bit as I grunted in embarassment. We continued running, the squaddies laughing like misbehaving children.

“Shaddap, you miscreants,” the captain said over the channel. “Turn in twenty,” as if we didn’t know by the giant flashing diamond sitting in the middle of the walkway ahead of us. Though his calling out the waypoint was another SF, PD avoidance thing. We all kicked up a storm of ground brick as we kicked off to turn left, diving down the second street. As we hit a flight of grand stairs, we fanned out, some more showsey lads started jumping up the sides like ninjas.

No matter the finesse used, we cleared the stairs at about the same time and came to a stop on the walk. “Christ,” the captain said. “They’re late.” As he said late, a bunch of semi-humanoids in obsidian black armor with thick facemasks and green eye-cameras studded all over them seemed to materialize out of red, green and blue ghosts of themselves, like some bad TV picture coming into focus.

There were about eight, I clutched my weapon and pivoted around to face them. “Squad Alphonse. Your identifier is Whiskey-tango-foxtrot, Alpha Wolves,” a familiar, saxophone-pitched voice said via loudspeaker from behind me. I whirled around and there was a seven-foot tall armored form scarcely a yard away, feminine curves showing through the armor. She spared a lackadaisical wave as I looked at her, killing her aura of badass that had originally been so thick you couldn’t have cut it with a katana.

I tried to snuff my jackhammer heart-rate. It seemed we’d linked up with squad Batou. The captain sauntered up to ‘Sam in his massive infantry suit and I followed. I was tempted to keep him on a short leash for various reasons – foremost I thought he was a hothead, plus I was feeling a bit covetous when I looked at ‘Sam... His pointed visor pulled over his head and fell back into the armor’s massive shoulders. He stood almost as high as ‘Sam because of the suit’s extended arms and big, dog-like legs.

Even then, the skinny shield maiden seemed to have him dwarfed. “Mighty sloppy for being the best firm in these parts,” she grunted. He moved to say something but I elbowed his flank slightly, not a good idea to break down this early. Of course I inwardly regretted it as I realized I was in danger of getting clocked in the face (with a guy that big it would be over-clocking, harr.)

“Anyway, I’ll expect better from you lot. Tawret here says this is serious shit,” she said calmly as if we weren’t about to hit action. The Armored Avians on the walkway shifted uneasily, heads twitching madly to seemingly stare at a lot of areas at once… they had enhanced field of view, I’d guess… old habit, maybe?

They got out of the way of a gent in blue-striped armor who hopped over to our merry command-band. ‘Sam lowered her mask and I stupidly followed suit. A few seconds later, he did the same. The spearhead-shaped helmet popped up and slid down into a recess in his armor’s chest. It revealed a mug covered completely in day-glow red and blue feathers, save its brown and yellow beak, hooked at the end.

“Good tidings, captain Vashisola,” it croaked in a voice like an old-time radio announcer, and at least as articulate. It was fairly impressive, if a bit disquieting. “You may call me Tawret Accipiter.” He did this weird forward, down and up movement like he was dodging an oncoming metal bar. Weirdly enough, ‘Sam made eye contact and returned the gesture, so did the captain. This time, it was his turn to elbow me. Though he more or less hit me on the head because of his height. But I got the message and did the head-bob, not wanting to be attacked again.

“We’ve got a fix on our target’s current location,” ‘Sam began like a cool SWAT captain out of some old cop drama. “They’ve holed themselves up about ten floors high in a corporate office. They’ve taken over everything from the foyer to the CEO’s office. Luckily they were all out on holiday.” What holiday was that… I Have a Bad Feeling About Today day? “We’re not sure of enemy composition, though.”

“I thought it was just some mafia riff-raff,” the captain said.

“Hardly,” Tawret said. “The meeting that dispersed from your original location about two of your earth hours prior was between a party such as that you spoke of and one which concerns us greatly.” He sure was a tight-lipped bugger, in spite of the fact that he had none. That weighty conversation had revealed only one thing… things are screwed up and we don’t quite know how yet. Durr, though we know there are bad guys involved.

“Right,” the captain said. I was still being a good little schoolboy and shutting up. It seemed my only peer in height was Accipiter over here. He also seemed to have much more authority. I was apparently the weakest intimidation leak between the four of us.

“We move in and incapacitate all contacts,” ‘Sam said. “As would be expected, we want any enemies left intact so we can apprehend them right off the bat. Just to be sure, MSI has a heli’ that’ll lock down anyone trying to upload back into Rele-space.” Well, I felt some solace knowing who was on the receiving end here, the captain looked thoroughly duped and was the one taking the orders.

“First phase, we breach the lobby just down the walk. Phase two, we split into individual fire teams and flank when possible. This is a no-hostages situation, maybe covering for something else. We find out what while we mop up, clear?”

“So we wipe out the infestation?” I finally spoke up. Not only was I feeling more confident… I was also feeling more and more concerned. I was trying to wrap my head around why Martani of all firms had chosen to resort to open, shameless planet-sitting to wipe out their target. There were no fancy seizures of the target organization’s assets, no small-scale ambush stings, no carefully planned tactical strikes out of left field – nothing very snoopy, in fact. How unlike them.

Or maybe they had done that stuff, but it just hadn’t been enough and the target organization had managed to worm its way out of their trap. I nervously shuffled and shifted my gun closer. More than ever I really didn’t want to lose a hold of the thing, this was really serious open, total assault.

‘Sam sighed. “You got it,” she confessed in my general direction. “Let’s merge our combat control and comms networks, captain.” He nodded wordlessly, now seeming a lot more sober, and somewhat more terrifying. I wasn’t sure what was scarier – going into battle horsing around or going into it with a face that could kill a man.

There was a general clamor over network channels and short-range radio popped in my ears as we switched over to a hybridized net’. Our respective mobs glanced around as they got re-accquainted. I looked over at our Big Fucking Building, now capped with n x-ray roofline that I could see straight through the building façade. Mapped hallways that looked like worm tunnels dug into the digital map of the roofline reached down to our main objective, another purple waypoint. There were two red and yellow arrowheads labeled “Cairo” and “Dahlia.”

I pulled up their blurbs, written in code-speak that seemed perfectly geared for me to worm my mind around… maybe churned out procedurally by a human-neural-mapping automation so the blurbs wouldn’t compromise us if our net were hacked. They were backup squads ready to pull in the muscle if we hit resistance, apparently speed was of the essence. Force Right Now!

The captain and Accipiter stared each other down blankly for a few seconds before the captain piped into the squad channel. “ UCT on, boys. We’re going in. The captain of Batou has an acoustic sounder we’re going to use to map targets and the building as we go. Stay with him and I’ll be on oversight and fire support.”

“Hoah!” we all howled into the comm. The next few seconds of silence seemed to lasta lot longer. I heard the whining rat-a-tat of helicopter blades and looked up to see a chubby looking craft circling the building. It reminded me of a vulture circling a soon-to-be kill. As it circled, we got new data. It was gradually peeling away the layers of the building with some form of RADAR, getting us any updated data that may have changed since the last floor plans were updated to the building’s project site…

“Game faces! No chatter!” Accipiter turned and trotted down the walkway bridging across to the BFB on his complex legs. I wasn’t sure if they were vehicle controlled or his own limbs, but they sure trumped human legs on degrees of freedom. As he trotted off, his squad followed and the captain waved his free hand in his direction. “Go, go, go!” he yelled out. Like a pack of attack dogs just out of slumber, everyone including me perked up and strode away at full speed for the entrance.

A few gents ducked and rolled to a stop behind Jersey barriers and I dove down to hide behind the bridge’s contours. Accipiter’s acoustic systems raised up on a mast like one of those spinning plate tricks, balancing a scanning sensor dome perforated with holes. As it spun, we got a very vague picture of the first few feet… the front windows appeared to be blocking.

A bunch of gibbering and squawking went up through the squad channel. “Buteo, sonic that,” my babbler chimed in in a clear and human-like amalgamation of Accipiter’s voice. One of the Martani bruisers rose up on his chicken legged limbs and raised a huge, under-slung weapon with his ‘arms.’ He snapped it nimbly and effortlessly into position before there was a resounding “THWUMP!” that didn’t seem wholly audible. A split second later, the entire front of the large glass wall for the foyer spiderwebbed with cracks and fell feebly in a crystal shower.

As it settled, Accipiter put up his mast and we got instant mapping for a huge chunk of the first floor and vagues almost the whole way to our target. I beamed with anticipation inside my mask. It was still by the books, we may still get through this without someone losing it… maybe this would actually be a clean op.

My smile was gobbled up by a Farsol failsafe mantra… never let your guard down, I thought.

Accipiter jumped up and boogied into the foyer, arms raised up like a zombie on uppers trying to do the Thriller dance with far too much arm movement. We all jumped up like a pack of angry gophers from our holes and leapt into the Foyer. There wasn’t a pause this time, just a fast and focused run up the grand stairs and into a hallway.

Before I knew it we were on floor two, no resistance yet. All the same I kept my weapon tracking where my view went. As we went down the elevator pool, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I glanced back and Michasol was looking at me and pointing two fingers off towards the left turn where the lobby merged into a hallway. The squads fanned out into pairs alternating left and right down the hall.

Two human duos and a couple of Martani were with me and Michasol as we rodey ran along the hallway, boots smacking noisily on the floor. Accipiter merged in with us as we made a right again, acoustics still blazing away and giving us a nice heads up. Michasol was ahead of me when I noticed our sonic map had holes popping up in it. Maybe that meant-

I put my right hand on Michasol’s left shoulder and pushed him against the wall as I ran past him and spun flat on another patch of wall a few meters ahead… why the hell did I just put myself on point?

Though me and Michasol were stacked and ready to storm around the corner, Accipiter seemed to not give a damn. He strode by with his duo of Martani like some heroic knight on horseback, passing us, arms up again. He pulled against the wall right next to the corner and motioned one wing-like arm back towards the corner. Without skipping a beat, one of his cronies tossed him what looked like a grenade, but made of circular sequins with a blinking green LED on top.

He smacked the top against the wall and the LED went red. Without second thought, he lobbed it over his head and around the corner like it was some spent can of soda he was throwing into a dustbin in the park. There was a brief warning beep –too late to warn anyone on the receiving end- followed by a clapping, fizzling bang of static. The pressure wave from the detonation was fairly weak, so I knew it wasn’t a boomer, maybe a flash? Or maybe it was something more potent.

Either way, during the commotion, Accipiter’s two cronies had sidled up beside him and they busted out in a freaky delta formation. I saw why Accipiter had been going zombie style the whole time; He opened up with arm-mounted ballistic cannons, tattering away at whatever was down that hall. They pulled off to the sides and crouched as returning small arms fire ripped into the wall past where they’d been.

Michasol immediately made for the opening as the small-arms stopped. I followed and twirled around past him into a crouch. The two of us had a square view on the hall where there were two Martani in suits that looked almost MSI standard, but had a few details wrong – like they were older, customized or something else.

Didn’t matter, I responded to the rat-a-tat of Michasol’s gun by adding in my own. The gun shivered and bucked in my grip as it spattered lead all over my firing line. Shots peppered the front suit and he got knocked over and incapacitated. No blood, though.

There was a big plastic crate the guy had sidled up beside. I curtly shoved him out of the way as I ran over and stole the opposite side of his cover. The other bird was going down by the time I crouched. The other duo of my squaddies was back behind Accipiter, who bolted like a madman past me.

Michasol and the other duet caught up with me. As we got close, Michasol prompted the lot of us to join in a fire-team. He was lead, me and this gal named “Linda” were squaddies and “Jasenn” was boom-boom explode specialist. He seemed to be adequately armed – sporting a full-armor specialist suit with interior ordinance bays and hefting a big ol’ machinegun.

I wordlessly made eye contact and nodded with all of them and we settled into a diamond-shaped pack as we ran down the hall. Stairs were ahead of us that another group had been up, “fire team 2.” So, going by the briefing, we continued down the hallway at full speed, guns tracking the horizon. There were more stairs another forty meters down. We hopped up those and-

Fire sprang past us and smacked my left shoulder as we crested the landing. I instantly turned and fell down against the stairs, letting my suit take the impact against the steps. I bounced a bit unexpectedly and didn’t get a hold of the step I had been reaching for. I got the next one as I stopped clattering clumsily.

I would have done a better cover maneuver if I hadn’t been freaking shot. I was shaking, but okay. My left arm was stiff and felt like it had one huge ass bruise… but I was okay. Though my damn SMG wasn’t in my hands! “Fuck!” I snapped at myself as I looked around. It was down, a few more steps. I craned down and grabbed it as my fire team started spewing fire back at the enemy in the hall.

I almost knocked the gun down the steps as I grabbed madly for it. But I managed to snag it and throw it ready over my shoulder. It was harder to go by ape-vision in this light above and beyond the landing. The whole hall was flooded with subdued indirect lighting flooding from unseen spaces in the ceiling. What made things more confounding was the uneven floor, composed of a wood walk with holes showing through that had giant boulders of varying pointyness and size sticking up out of them.

I crawled prone up the stairs next to my team and bursted my gun a bit low. Bullets zinged off the floor as I adjusted my aim and zeroed in on a guy manning a mounted gun.

I squeezed the trigger and peppered him and the gun a bit… they had some strong ass armor, he still wasn’t down! I held down a cleaner burst and fought the weapon to keep it level. My shots and a good peck from Michasol’s rifle knocked him over. There were some other guys… humans! There was Party No. 2.

A bloke with a red, rising sun headband jumped up from behind a crate and howled wildly. Idiot thought he was a Samurai! I stopped being amused when he actually pulled out a carbon fiber katana. His face exploded open on mechanical seams, laser sights and eye-bulbs popping out like pez candy from a dispenser.

“Oh shit,” Michasol commented involuntarily over the radio. Linda pew-pewed at him, but the sword was between him and the bullets in a flash. In a flurry of movement and gnashing metal, the bullets had deflected off into the walls. “Shit, SHIT!” The guy turned in a flourish as bullets zinged past where he’d been. He broke out in a run straight for Michasol as I jumped up the stairs and raised my gun.

Michasol twirled against the wall and the rest of the team jumped up and scattered at the edge of the stairs. Jasenn seemed to have run down his bullets and was throwing another clip in, fumbling with the machinegun to unlatch the old magazine and cussing to himself.

Meanwhile, the cyborg ran on. I tattered some rounds off at him, distracting him as he ran for Michasol. As the cyborg looked my way, Michasol twirled his rifle around and caught him under the chin with the butt of the gun. There was a cracking splatter of metal and oil as the various unnecessary bits of the cyborg’s face crumbled away. Most of the mechanics on him were still intact, though.

I raised my gun and shot for him, but he dodged off to the side like a ribbon in the wind, out for a vengeance for my act of trickery as he bolted for me. Howling, his mangled, many eyed tarantula face getting bigger. For a second all I heard was his warcry and saw that damned carbon katana raising itself on its way to my midsection. As he got close, I dropped and raised my right arm. There was a gnashing screetch as the blade streaked through my gauntlet… no breach!

Not missing a beat, I straightened out my gun arm and let loose somewhere ahead of me. Bullets pinged and zinged, sending sparks across the cyborgs body and ripping through the faux flesh. He shuddered, but he seemed to have a hard metal, full endoskeleton that stopped the bullets. I just didn’t have the caliber!

Suddenly, there was a wheezing roar as giant slugs streaked through the air and into the Cyborg. He got hammered by Jasen’s machinegun rounds and fell limply to the floor. He twitched a bit, still functioning. There was a hurried clomping of feet on wood as the remainder of the enemy forces retreated, letting out panicked gasps in an oddly human yet digitally incompatible language. The fireteam moved up, the lot of them looking between me and the corpse. Hopefully we’d locked him down and snagged his mind. Otherwise…

“Safety subrout-t-t-ine,” he mumbled through the speaker behind his metal jaw. “the t-truth will no-not be known.” His main processor exploded in a shower of sparks, letting out the magic smoke that we all know electronics REALLY run on. My brain wasn’t working about then, but my answering machine was on.

“What,” a voice that sounded like mine but wasn’t said. “What the fuck?” A hand reached under my right armpit and pulled me up from the ground.

“Solen,” came Linda’s voice. “You can’t take it, look away from the bastard!” Couldn’t do it, a smoldering heap of metal and wires that had been so alive, wanted to kill me… was it over? “SOLEN!”

Thank you for holding, you will now be directed to the next available operator. “What!?” I yelled, snapping my view up to Linda’s masked visage. She nodded and let me go. I staggered a bit, then unconsciously brushed myself off. “I-I almost d-died, killed… guy.” Well, I didn’t kill him. And him dying as a lump of electronics rather than a… didn’t want to think about that, did make it less traumatizing.

“Solen,” Michasol said. “are you an office jockey or a soldier?” I half-realized I was leaning against a wall and slowly slumping back down to the floor. “This is an op, solen!” he said in a rather commanding voice.

“I’m, I’m a s-soldier?” I stammered.

“That’s right,” he said aggressively.

“I’m I’M A SOLDIER!!!!” I yelled a few times before Linda cuffed me in the shoulder and I finally got a hold of myself. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh at my own stupidity or cry at my own, slight insanity. I’d get PTSD for this kind of shit… I knew.

“Let’s go!” Michasol said over our channel. Op’s back on! Game face, don’t crack… dunno’ if I could take that kind of stuff again. “This is FT. 3,” he said coolly down the wide channel to all the squads. “Met heavy resistance, fully augmented cyborg wielding carbonized slicing weapon. No casualties,” as he finished that last bit, he glanced back at me to make sure. I nodded.

We clomped along the wooden platforms and bridges over babbling waterfalls and moss gardens. We found our way up another set of stairs, clear this time. This was getting weirder and weirder… then again, we were in Los Angeles’ ethnic district, go figure. I glanced at the building overlay again. It was topped with a virtual signpost reading “KeGon Center Tower.” I groaned, this was a definite bastard mission… weird terrain and more places to potentially screw up.

I jumped out of the way of one of our human squaddies fireman carrying another one of ours. He flew down the stairs from whence we came and was gone at full stride. That left only us four and the captian… maybe.

“Solen!” Yeah, there was Smokey-voice the forest fire bear now (he doesn’t stop them, he starts them.) “What happened down there?” My stomach dropped again as the memories flashed back. I stammered a bit as I fought to put what happened into words.

“Like I said,” Michasol interjected, stepping between me and the captain. “big guy with bigger pointy implement. Tried to cut down my friend here,” he said, pointing back at me. “Then had the audacity to die right in his face.”

The captain looked startled, his mask up, revealing his bouncing, catarillar eyebrows playing a rough game of king-of-the-mountain over his forehead. “Yeah?” he said in amazement. “did our newbie here gun him down?”

“Yes and no,” Linda said, stepping up with Jasenn, silent, brodding and generally being a badass. “He distracted the bloke while we clobbered him, mostly.”

“And saved my ass from being in two pieces,” Michasol commented. The captain nodded approvingly.

“Solen, your credentials were good for a nerdy prodigy… but you don’t cease to surprise. Don’t let it get to your head,” the captain said to me. I nodded warily.

Meanwhile, there was all manner of spying equipment crowding the center of the wood-floored intersection. Acoustic sniper snitches, motion trackers with glowing red arrays of LEDs, even a crate full of surveillance drones. What exactly were we going up against?

“New orders,” the captain said. “We’re forming into one group and going for the throat. We’re going up the main lift while Cairo and Dahlia cover our entrance.”

“hoah,” we all said obediently. There’s no room for ‘dangerous cops’ a la far too many action movies in the chain of command. Security firms aren’t ad-hoc like civilians and not as mean as any of the old militaries. It meant things were different.

“When we get in, fan out in the sky lobby and we move straight for the objective point.” I looked up about fifty floors through the ceiling where there was a purple, flashing waypoint labeled “terminus.” Lovely bit of foreshadowing, that. “Okay, no delay, boys.” A few drones burst out of the crate and a duo of Martani activated the motion tracker. It rolled around on sphere casters, bumping along the wood floor after them like an obedient dog.

***

We rolled up the lift, straddled alongside a massive, artificial indoor waterfall cascading past damp, faux-wood balconies and commercial business signs, left without any of their animating light after the building was evacuated. Twenty floors from go time. The entirety of our fire team had taken a knee, weapons forward. I was staring at the polished, ornately carved hardwood slabs that made up the elevator door, twitching nervously. The motion tracker’s spindly legs were curled up and it was making itself inconspicuous in the corner.

Ten to go time. I checked my ammo count over the weapons link, full. Network was on full combat data only – waypoints, motion contacts, gunfire and the tactical map. As we began to level on our destination, I heard the staccato roar of automatic fire occasionally punctuated by a loud “FUANG” from some induction weapon.

There was another ripping rasp as the elevator chimed. I tensed and stared down the sights as the doors parted. The scene unfolded split second by split second. Big far walkway with cronies in front. They were facing everywhere but in our direction. In fact, there was some unlucky rogue Martani guy manning a turret right in front of us. I bet he’d thought it was safe because the action was across a giant chasm in the wood flooring. He was wrong.

I was about to fire when he turned, but Jasenn swatted me on the shoulder and bum rushed him. It was an unconventional tactic, but it worked. Jasenn planted the butt of his gun into the gent’s helmet and sent him rolling. My fire team rumbled out of the elevator and covered the bloke as he staggered. The captain flipped out a funky lookingg pistol and snagged him with a rather innocuous looking geometric sphere of adhesive and meta. There was a whining buzz and it appeared to not be so innocuous. The rogue Martani’s suit froze where it was and he was trapped there, inoperative. We’d detain him later.

Meanwhile, our Martani allies had fanned out around the barricade surrounding the gun and opened up. This was all after Jasenn had hijacked the gun’s controls and let loose with a hellish “FUANG!” against a pack of enemies that had been holding back Dahlia across the chasm. Cairo appeared to be waiting out of visual contact, remaining an ace in the hole while the rest of us mopped up admirably.

Michasol leaned down over the bloke, he seemed to have gone unconscious as he’d shut up fairly well. So Michasol turned him over with a good heave and he clunked around onto his back like a big statue. He glanced around the neck seal of the suit, looking for a data port. Hopefully Martani wasn’t a legacy establishment and they’d have Universal Data Ports on their kit. I glanced back and let loose some fire before I looked over again.

Michasol had found the port and clicked into it with a wired jack coming from a mobile proxy computer at his left hip. “Status?” I said in my most convincing military voice. As I looked down on him, I saw the name marking him said “Tanner.” Well, there we go, now I know all the first names.

“Err,” Michasol said in confusion. I wasn’t prepared for that, as his general message usually boiled down to ‘oh snap, son!’ or ‘don’t worry about it.’ So I turned my attention toward him, expecting something big. “Data’s wiped, I’m getting absolutely no vitals, no semantics feedback from his sensory headers… what the hell?” Another kamikaze information insularity lover? For once I was guessing big time. Whenever things had gotten like that before, there had been some shocking, novel-thriller-esque revelation.

I didn’t like those.

Well, I could beat them to the punch and solve this! I just had to consider the who, what, where and why. Who was crazy enough to die voluntarily? More than that; who was crazy enough to die for money? It had been heard of, illicit soldiers whose families would be set for life and then some if they joined a suicider squad. But- shit!

A bullet zinged right past my head and I got right back into the center of the real world. Now, apparently wasn’t the time to worry about missing connections. Jasenn took another shot with the cannon, prompting the captain to come rumbling out. “They’re scattering!” he yelled. “Go, go, go.” Jasenn didn’t seem to need another word on the matter. He jumped up from the control bars of the weapon and let the turret sag, still unlocked, as he ran.

As for me and the rest, we were running along the peculiar, retro-throwback footbridges made of thick steel cable matrices and cement planks, first in line to cross. As we ran, Tanner kicked his jets ahead of me and shot forward into a diving roll. He plopped down at the end of the complex, nineties gunfight-esque maneuver behind a giant plant box. I slid down beside him while Linda and Jasenn took the wooden topped doppleganger at the opposite side.

We were holed up at the entrance to a large sky lobby, two stories ceiling clearance and lit up like a Christmas tree. That would never do. Bullets thwacked against the tree occupying the plant box stooped above us as I talked down the squad line. “Smokes, captain?”

“Do it,” he said curtly as he stepped up, small arms fire clinking futilely on his heavy sternum armor. “Two only, you and Linda.”

“Rogger,” we both said as I aimed my shoulder mounted smoke blisters toward Linda and she aimed in my direction. In an instant, streamers of white, visually impenetrable smoke shot away into the air and completely obscured our position ins seconds. These weren’t your grandpappy’s smokes, they obscured a large portion of all electromagnetic emissions, meaning infrared and all the like were blind too.

The captain thoughtlessly hot swapped out his ammo barrel for one with a big flame emblem on it. He raised the weapon and let out a steady loop of explosive grenade rounds. It was a short burst, mostly meant to deter so we could move in. He wordlessly motioned through the smoke with his hand.

Seemingly in response to the order (which really wasn’t meant for them) The Martani squad rushed out from behind us and raced ahead. Of course, the almost comically absurd timing of this had us distracted at first, but it seemed we all shrugged it off well enough. We raced out of the cloud of smoke and toward the far end of the lobby where two halls branched and there was an ominously large set of double doors.

I raised my weapon and peppered the last rounds in the high-capacity clip against a rather stunned rogue martani. He jittered with the impact and fell limp to the ground with a muted but quite-alive grunt. I took cover as I heard the whining screech of servomotors and turned in time to see the shoulder bays on the captain’s gorilla suit open up. Two concussion mortars rocketed out of two of the bays, making him jolt from the pushback of the tiny, dumb rocket rounds.

There were two loud pops that rattled through the big room and deafened me for a few seconds, even from behind cover. When I turned around, I saw a duo of damaged, armored cyborg chassis, human and rather bootlegged looking. There was my girlfriend’s party. I wondered just how many odd groups we had here… how long would this sweep last? My stomach knotted, but I was broken out of my reverie by a loud, splintering crash.

Tawret happened to be standing in front of the doors and was knocked down to one knee. There was a human sized walker standing on chicken legs right where he’d been. It stood dormant in front of the doors and had MSI emblazoned on the cockpit like dome that made up its body. “What the hell?” the captain said. “The thing’s not on our squad registry… Tawret!” he yelled over the comm. Accusingly.

“I don’t know!” Accipiter responded innocently. “I’m trying to make contact…” His speech trailed off as I saw the suit come to life, whirring as it whipped its brandished its two cannon arms with a whipping motion. He aimed straight at the closest target, Accipiter

I didn’t have time to form any words to say. Hell, I hardly formed any thoughts. I just ran along the left wall and got roughly alongside Accipiter, then turned and kicked my jets hard. There was a grinding screetch and my shoulder jarred. Then the floor came by to say hello and then the wall introduced itself to my head, ending our sliding jaunt along the smooth tiled floor.

Gunfire erupted too late to hit anything. The captain yelled in surprise. I looked up, everyone to my right standing. On my left, the walker was turning on us deliberately, stomping along on its laden legs. Before it could bead us, however, a combined fusillade of explosive grenade rounds and kinetic attack mortars exploded all over its side. It reeled, dented, but not by much.

Accipiter raced out from under me and I jumped and ran abck for the squad. I jumped down behind another planter box just as all hell broke loose. Cairo turned the far corner at the end of the lobby we’d gone in through, motion tracker in tow. The tracker reared back and blinked, glaring LEDs scanning the area and flashing in my eyes.

Meanwhile, another spindly walker stampeded in. I was about to yell out, but it ran right past us and stood beside the planter box I was hiding behind. It looked similar but different to the one that had attacked us, complete with MSI logos on it’s flanks. However, plates opened from the flanks of what would usually be the cockpit. But this design was armless and appeared to be some sort of remote drone, as there were four Vulcan cannons hiding in the cockpit instead of a pilot.

They folded out and briefly revved up before they ripped into the staggering armor suit. The bullets ripped away chunks of mechanical bits and sent the thing collapsing on a downed leg, the heavily armored, gunmetal and blue pod more or less intact. The hellish racket finally stopped and gave way to the droning rev-down of servos. I regained my senses in the comparative silence of hissing coolant systems and the clink-clink of cooling components aboard the sole remaining walker.

Everyone was okay, even Accipiter. As I looked at him, he flicked his head to look at me, a little bit unnerving. “Speak with me later,” he said through his spear-headed helmet. “Let’s go.” As he said that, I looked over our reinforcements, some Martani in heavier suits and one sidled up beside the drone, likely it’s remoter. Oh, and among the comparably short giants…

“Mackai!” a familiar voice said jubilantly over a whisper channel as a window opened in my peripheral. It buzzed to life as ‘Sam flipped her helmed head at me in acknowledgement. The view generated a faux video feed of ‘Sam’s face, the procedural generation surrounded by a nonexistent background bleeding through to the real world beyond my helmet. “That was impressive!” I suppose she would be freaking out if she had my constitution, but as she’d said, she’s made of tougher stuff. I smiled. “Remember that bet for later, Mackai.” Smiling from ear to ear now. “And don’t pull a Soap Opera and die before then, or something. Because I’ll friggin’ kill you!” I chuckled a bit as the window closed.

“Let’s go, stop acting like confused Alpha Pups. Let’s earn our name and finish this!” Sure enough, there was a purple waypoint with a flashing 100m designation through the office doors and a bit higher. “We’re fast strike. Cairo is handling heavy assault. Dahlia is minding the door.” Wolves be nimble, wolves be quick, wolves PLEASE don’t get your butts kicked! I sighed as I mentally recited the mantra to clear my mind. I stood up and loped after my squadmates, weapon up. I had to be prepared for anything.

We stacked on the sides of the door as Cairo, assault suit, motion tracker et al moved into position to blitz the door. Tawret was behind the suit with his cronies as they rushed through the doors, all the Martani doing zombie impressions as they ran. “Go!” the captain howled into the comm. I rose instantly, I’d run this by the books. Maybe then I wouldn’t almost get cut in half… or shot.

I got back on track and swiveled through the door after Cairo. Our mean, lean fire team was followed by the rhino charging boogeyman that was the captain. I glimpsed ‘Sam ahead of us beside the assault suit and it’s remoter, the machine synced to his head movements. Since he was Martani, the movements were quite spazzy.

Red lights went on everywhere in the room and lasers started scanning. I backed up as an almost cliché, solid, ruby beam of light danced my way. The captain carelessly crossed a beam and shrugged as a miniature and rather overly high tech looking popup gun chattered out of a box that had been sitting innocuously in the corner. That was, until it started spewing fusillades of small arms bullets.

The captain shrugged as the bullets bounced harmlessly off his armor, then whirled around and blasted a single shot into the vulnerable workings of the cannon, reducing the fragile electronics inside the armored box to smoldering giblets. Without a second thought, I turned on a nearby box and gave it a good long blast of slugs, making it bounce and rattle. By the time I was done with it, it was smoldering.

Assault was at the foot of some stairs at the far side of the room. ‘Sam jumped up the stairs in a single bound, landing up on the balcony where she kicked over some electronics. Always pays to be safe, I suppose. And when your run assault, the way you increase safety is you break anything mildly suspicious. I had to admit, they seemed to be doing an admirable job.

The room was clear in no time and the only thing ahead of us were some innocent looking oak double doors. So we thought. Tawret motioned the captain forward and he nodded. With a few huge lopes and ine one continuous motion, he splintered the door with his massive right shoulder.

He rushed into the dust and we all wordlessly followed. We were up the stairs in a few seconds, synth muscles at a high enough canter that we were ripping up the cheapo carpet underneath our feet. The captain turned into a side hallway on the left and fired mortars from his shoulders at an unseen enemy.

“Cairo, Alphonse, Batou!” a squawky voice chimed in my ear through the operations channel. Strategic downlink says you have company! East side, flying vehicle vectored on your floor for a drop!” Ah, how lovely it was to have an area completely besieged by information warfare systems.

“Fire team, optimum fields of fire!” Tanner barked. The authority he swung with that suggested he was fairly confident it was the windows they were dropping into, they could always pull a Darth Vader and weld through the ceiling, though… never mind. I just thought it would be a cool thing to see.

There was a growing, chattering rumble through the polarized, weather resistant glass. It was a heli, and it was close. We wouldn’t have time to take knees. Me and Linda happened to be in front when the captain moved to carpet the hallway, so we just fell backwards and slammed to the ground.

I curled up and trained my gun over my folded knee while the others aimed above my head. There wasn’t much room to the sides of the cramped hallway, so we had it pretty much blockaded. I looked right just in time to see several blurred forms make for the window, bombs? No! Troops!

The glass ahead of us blasted apart as more rogue Martani rolled onto the ground, loosing the lines they’d swung down as the chopper’s whining chatter faded away. I didn’t get much of a chance to hear it as we all opened fire simultaneously. Jasenn cackling madly over the commas he loosed mortars from his two shoulder bays and let rip with the squad machinegun he was lugging.

Half had dropped before they could return fire. The rest pulled arm cannons and under-slu8ng rifles. They fired from the hip nd generally spazzed, they had storm trooper aim! Scratch that! Damn, left shoulder! Jasenn jumped back as rounds flew past me and dug into the carpet.

My wide, field vision caught side of a rhythmic strobe where I was feeling agony… flashing in time with, explosives! I reflexively ejected my left shoulder pad and Hauled Linda up with my right arm. I kicked some of the ingenious little rounds out of the ground as I ran, the rest of them with me. The rapid-fire pangs of overpressure waves shimmered against my shield as the four of us dropped to the ground. I looked up in time to see the captain turn toward us, then dropped my gaze to see his stomping feet settle. He didn’t waste any time and let loose with decidedly legal explosives, unlike the cheat rounds that had taken my left shoulder pad.

Those were some kind of sheathed, spiked, delayed detonation rounds, secondary fire besides the small arms. Anything that stuck or had a delayed fuse like that was a “pilot killer.” All members of the BUSEI committee had banned those. As silence settled around us I realized I had been letting out an uncontrollable scream of cusses that would have made my fairly cultured but worldly parents have a simultaneous, dual heart attack.

I stood up slowly as everyone gathered and took up positions. I turned and looked at the carnage, crumpled, armored bodies, hopefully just disabled, but they’d deserve worse for what they did. Bastards…

Someone should have told these guys to don blue jumpsuits and wear yellow hardhats, because they were being thrown at us like lackeys of some cinematic evil genius. I hated people who spent life so easily, it was un-civilized, archaic… terrible.

Tanner patted me on the shoulder. “Let’s go, champ!” I nodded over my back at him and the fireteam formed up around me. We did about the only natural thing and continued advancing north toward they waypoint. Down the hall around a corner and… more double doors. I sighed as we went by the books and stacked two on each side.

The captain ran in, about to bulrush the door again, when Tawret ran up beside him and cut him off with the wave of a hand… limb… gun thing. He motioned for me to move so I sidled away from the door, shifting a somewhat disgruntled Jasenn with me. Tawret took my place and put what looked like the palm of his hand gently against the door. The waypoint was barely twenty meters ahead.

There was a pop on the squad channel before we suddenly received a piggybacked downlink from Tawret, audio only. There were some muffled voices, like from under water, then some clicks and fizzing before the audio got MUCH clearer. It was almost like the whole lot of them were whispering in my ear. Hell, it was like Melyssiah was whispering… wait, what-the-bwah?

“Look, my dorkey friend,” Melyissiah said in her ‘I’m pissed and am going to take it out on you’ voice. “I want that golden parachute plan you promised! You don’t enter into deals with willing individuals to break them!”

“Oh, cuite lite my rovely girl. However, prans change. My prelogative has similarly shifted.”

“Your huh?” Melyssiah said, suddenly skeptical.

“plelogative.”

“Prerogative?” Well, she never used big words with me! I feel offended!

“Indeed,” the all too unmistakable Imakurusu said jubilantly, followed by what sounded like an affirming clap. “Ah, but, as you know. Thigs have gotten velly bad for my olganization. Thus, we must withdraw.”

“You can’t do this to me!”

“Oh, but I think I-“ Now, let me pause. We among the esteemed security firms operating under the BUR sanctioned security regulations of the galaxy value intelligence gathering over quite a bit of other things. However, we also had a perp to catch. Sorry, just had to excuse us as a collective lot for what we did next.

Acippiter pulled back and the audio feed cut, he then raised his arms and minced the flimsy locking mechanism on the doors before kicking them in. We poured in like a mob of crazed lemmings on a hallucinogen overdose induced rampage.

Everyoune fanned out around the big table in the center of the room, surrounding the big wood conference table in the center, along with the three occupants in the room. Lights trained on the three, all frozen and rather taken by surprise.

“Stop right there Daiesuu… diesukee… ima… imaaa,” the Captain stammered. “Ah, Fuck it!” he barked. “hands up!”

Mister Crazy-Hair himself was first to speak up. “Ah, good ebening genturamen,” I didn’t like the way he smiled, so I aimed specifically for him. “You seem to have caughtu me.” Passé accent is passé.

“Damn right,” the captain snarled. “On the ground, hands behind your back.”

“I’m afulaid I can’t do that,” he said dismissilvely.

“Oh,” Accipiter squawked. “Yes you can.”

“Oh no I can’t,” Daisuke said. There was a growing buzz in my ear and we were getting garbled feeds from what I thought was Dahlia, too muchs tatic to tell. But they were yelling. This wasn’t good. The feed cut completely, then our network got nosied out of existence. The waypoint disappeared, targeting, everything. My vital feeds to the fire team went and I looked around stupidly to make sure they were there. The whole lot of us were looking about in confusion. But the captain didn’t care, he still had his explode cannon primed and on target. “Bye bye, folksu,” Daisuke said smartly from his vantage across the table, suddenly seeming very distantant, about four useless bags of networkless dead weight between me and him. SF, PD.

There was a familiar wheezing buzz that grew rapidly, I kicked the captain in the back of the leg, more of a love tap because of his heavy suit. He looked up, realized what was coming and jumped back, anyone who hadn’t noticed got tugged back by the collar. Moments later, the conveniently placed roof glass blasted apart, ripped by glowing tracer rounds of a high enough caliber to punch down into the floor.

I reflexively rolled backwards, accidentally knocking over a few people as I took a knee and curled up amongst the storm of munitions and glass. When I looked up through the glass, occluders now busted and the blue sky visible above, I saw a big, side-by-side, overly sexy and sleek looking chopper brooding above the room.

Daisuke was riding a metal hand-and-foot carriage up into the cargo doors beneath, by the time I managed to aim up, the chopper was already flying away.

“Bastard!” I yelled. Wasting lives, politically irresponsible player! I mindlessly ripped away at the chopper with my SMG, any bullets not stopped by the last vestiges of the window harmlessly pinged off the heli’s armored hull. He was gone before anyone could recover.

Meanwhile, I pouted my lips angrily and turned my gun on Melyssiah.

“Nigel!” she yelled. “Shoot the lights! We’ll get out of here!” I looked over at ‘Nigel,’ he was a heavy set lad in stereotypical suit-and-sunglasses. “Whata re you waiting for, Nigel?! Get them!”

Nigel sat there smartly, impassively contemplating the middle distance through his polarized shades. “This girl doesn’t pay me enough,” he said at length. “I’m just a hired gun. Go ahea dand take this whiny brat in and I’ll tell my organization to debrief you, solid?” he grunted in a voice like granite.

“We’ll talk,” the Captain said, making sure to say indecisive. Meanwhile, no one but me noticed Melyssiah kick her musculature to full, bust open her dermal plating and rampage away for the nearest floor-to-ceiling window. I launched after her and was on her heels until I realized what she was doing.

She turned and smacked her back through the window, arms out and legs tapered majestically together as she fell into a backward dive. Well, the plucky cyborg policewoman who had made that famous back in Port City tended to do this sort of thing with a catch line….

“Oh shiiit!” Melyssiah yelled as she plummeted. Anto crash webbing exploded from the building, anchoring on the facades opposite themselves below Melyssiah. Gee, even now I wonder if I would have minded if they malfunctioned… no, I’m not that terrible!

She oofed as she was caught and bounced a bit. Patrol craft were on the scene and had her pinned down with live weapons in seconds. Well, at least we didn’t come away empty handed.

Chapter 5: Return, Egress

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:18:00 +0000

Bad news, everyone: I'm running out of buffer chapters! (dun dun duuuuuun!) To compound problems; I'm also going to see Charles Stross at a book signing at Mystery and Imagination up in Glendale CA (more info here.) You can probably sense my glee leaking through your monitor, can't you? Anyway, I've digressed long enough!

Mackai finds he's called back into action by his old company not as an employee, but as a contracted mercenary. It's up to him and the crew to smooth over one of the largest fiascoes to take place in the last decade. Farsol, the massive corporation Martani Security Incorporated and an unknown, third party are all mixed up in the massive scandal, can Mackai keep his old company afloat or are things truly headed down the drain?

EXCERPT: Network-wide distress transmission ID16: 1e03fa
TRANSLATION: All revisions by Open-Bracket-Close-Bracket Semantics Ltd. Subroutines
HISTORY:
Sent: Farsol Relevance-Spatial Tap, Orion Arm
Received: Relay Bot @ E. Eridani
Forwarded: BUSEI WAN Distributor
Automated confirmation echo received
Annotated: Relay Bot @ E. Eridani for civilian usability.

Attention: Stellar Fallers declare an SOE. Things are now utterly FUBAR due to incursion by unaffiliated NSFP to neutralize UTPWBEWOD [Unknown Third Party With Big Explosive Weapons of Doom]

[paraphrase: Pardon us, we’ll be out trying to extract a very large splinter from our bum cheeks for the next few weeks. We apologize for any unfilled orders that result in critical malfunction of the second rate crap we sold you last year…
Oh, like I’ll actually have anyone to translate to in the next few weeks if this goes crazy. Goodbye, stinky flesh bags. May you collectively indulge your disgusting urges in whatever pointless afterlife you’ve dreamt up for yourselves.
By the way, if you’re reading this… You are currently in a militarized zone full of crazy apes and birds having a food fight. The correct safety procedures for a situation like this are as follows. If you hear gunshots, do me a favor and run STRAIGHT for the noise. Ciao.]

Sunrise Ep. 5: Return, Egress

What the fuck was going on down there?

I glanced back down at the scanners through my specs’ again. The orbital circles were mad with activity. They shined at me as if my spectacles were a window through to daylight in the darkness of the bridge. We were on action stations and ‘Sam was leaning over my shoulder.

I was looking over a quartet of satellite windows while ‘Sam explained the lot of them. They were optimization GUIs for every station on the bridge. I was fiddling with the windows, in my own world of programmer OCD, as ‘Sam went on.

“So you just activate this gesture and the pathways unlock-“ I kicked on the gesture and all the gray crap suddenly went vivid. Yay! Options enabled! I looked over my main window, a massive tree of connections and lines. I immediately spotted a few dozen bottlenecks just by glancing at it.

“Damn,” I exclaimed. “What have you been doing with this network?” I immediately unlocked the pathways, then downloaded the user guide myself and began mulling over it… there’s the reconfiguration system!

I immediately started swapping connections and proxies with speedy abandon, using my hands to drag and reconnect the lines in 3d space. “What the hell are you doing?” ‘Sam exclaimed as life support cut for a second. She leaned back and gawked at me like I was crazy, which was weird because I was – Nerd-on-an-optimization-jihad crazy, that is.

Everything clicked over nicely and I smiled smugly. Control delay was down about fifty percent from before. The engineering automations had been replaced with a nice framework family I used in my own drone programming. Finally; I’d updated fire control.

“The hell did you do?” ‘Sam asked, accusation in her voice. “Wait a second…” she was probably running a micro-sim of my new frameworks. “Da-a-a-a-mn,” she said in awe. I grinned smugly. “Okay, you DO know your stuff.”

“And you owe me a small favor, miss gambler,” I said, satisfied with my victory. She grumbled and paused, likely figuring out some response. She’d bet that I wouldn’t learn how to pull weight for another day or two. Lies!

“Yeah,” she said with too much confidence for my liking. “I’ve got just the thing, okay waiting a week or two?” I turned about in my seat, any vestiges of confidence dissipated completely. “It’ll be worth it,” she said mischeiviously. I raised my eyebrows in surprise as my spine tingled of it’s own free will, reminding me I had an artificial implant buried there, not pleasant “Agh,” she said, narrowing her slit-pupil eyes at me. “Not like that, you twat!” I wiggled my eyebrows, grinned and turned back around.

She wordlessly walked back to her seat and plopped down. Hopefully she was grinning, too, or this would be a long tour. I kicked back over to the sensors and watched the pretty lights. I was feeling pretty pensive, trying to figure out why the military frequencies had lit up… I’d call my boss, Jasper, but I wasn’t sure of his temperament at this moment. He could be plotting some hairbrain strategy against whatever was going on out there, or pulling his hair and wracking his brain in the process of coming to terms with what was going on. You didn’t bother him when he was in either mood, ever (ever.)

I’d migrated some of my personal software onto the full-enhanced-reality systems onboard. So, I wasn’t surprised when a cherry red, old-style phone labeled “Moscow” appeared out of thin air above the tactile plates. I went to pick it up, then realized I’d be borrowing ship bandwidth. “’Zin, you mind if I-“

“Go right ahead, Mackai,” the spider said jubilantly over the babbler. I supposed he knew the call was coming, as it was through his ship’s network. Good eye. I reached down and picked it up.

“Oval office,” I said as I raised it to my ear. The phone phased out and a video window appeared in it’s stead, dominating my forward vision.

I was a bit surprised to see my boss staring back at me - devious beard, chrome-dome haircut and all. “Well, Mackai,” he said with the little pleasantness he was physically able to muster (evil geniuses aren’t the pleasant type.) “How was day camp?” It was shorter than I expected. So much for ‘good bye, Earth.’

“Ah, you know; pleasant,” I said, grinning. “We made little key-chain lizards out of beads and learned how to fish.” He cackled a bit. “Then we got to play volleyball-“ he suddenly stopped laughing, making me stop smiling.

“Okay, enough riffraff,” he said tersely. “I’m not contacting you to make sure you’re snug and comfortable. We trained you to worry about it yourself.” Well, they trained me to not have to worry about it… by having us go for a swim at 3am in Anaheim Bay. That was so cold my goose-bumps turned into goose-mountains.

“I called you because, congratulations! It seems you’re part of the only special missions firm in the neighborhood!” he threw his hands up in frustration. “This crazyness has caught us off guard,” he continued more calmly. “So, we are up the creek, it has hit the fan… but I’m guessing you knew.” I nodded, it wasn’t a big stretch for me to guess it was that bad. “We trained you good, then, Mackai. Why don’t you kick me over to your captain?” I was VERY quick about that. Once a minion, always a minion.

***

Bass was pounding my eardrums, in spite of the membrane suppressors currently closed over my inner ear canal. I usually don’t mind techno… when I can control the volume, and there aren’t masses of strobing, scanning, Technicolor lights blasting about a room with no ceiling… not to mentioned the enhanced reality tripfest that would have dominated everything ten meters above my head ad I not turned it off.

Notice I didn’t mentiona ceiling. That’s because there was none. Now, there wasn’t a ceiling here because… well, the room was a giant bloody cylinder. I risked another glance skyward and spotted a blond girl standing haplessly on an upside down floor. The craziness of the situation almost made me puke. Nerds are to clubs as vampires are to garlic. That’s not to mention that this club was “Vertigo: an out of this world experience.” Whatever suit came up with that one… they should die for ever. They suck for even considering a club like this.

Jasper hadn’t known too much yet. Starships identifying themselves as members of Martani Security Inc. had dropped out of Rele-Space and right-the-frig into low-Farsol orbit. It was pretty impressive they could do that without us knowing.

Security shuttles had started making hot-drops onto the planet, no mechanized units, just light security. What Martani had to do with this was unknown. Though, it would be cool to see these guys in action.

That said, it wouldn’t matter if either of us shot eachother in the foot trying to get out of the way. We had no beef with M.S.I. From what they’ve broadcasted, they had no beef with us. This was an unrelated sting, apparently… But of course, coincidence was so people could make excuses to be chronically stupid.

I was supposed to be trailing a target, I had a snooper on the club network watching wireless traffic for any of his packets. I’d have maybe ten seconds of active listening once I got a bite on the line. After which club security would click in, ask the program for validation (which it had) and alert everyone in the club there was a cop here. At which point, my mission would fail.

That’s why it had an automated self-cannibalizing command to turn into random binary if anyone got wise. Traffic, bingo! Time to trip the sniffer!

“No contacts, boss, covering the south end.” A generic white guy said in my head.

“Man, I gotta’ take a leak, watch the back for me.” Convenient much? I kicked in the cannibal, just to be safe. I didn’t need the program anymore. Time to get information from the source.

I swallowed a lump in my throat. The Stellar Fallers trained all their field officers in hand-to-hand and close quarters combat routines. Trouble was it was all dumb computer-instituted conditioning. Any agent worth their salt could outthink routines like ours, but it might just get me by here. I really had no choice, the target had made a good decision moving himself and his team into this crazed light-and-sound show to drown out his signatures. Good for him, trouble for me.

I legged it along towards the small buildings in the back of the cylinder. They were curved like some Seusian, cherry-wood paneled nightmare. Atop a shorter one was a flashing blue and pink symbol of a stick-man and a stick-woman (ooh, she’s wearing a dress, definitely designed by a traditionalist, bloody vocal wankers.)

Not too far off now… ah, a bloke with a trim cut, sunglasses and a formal black suit and slacks. Can you be any more obvious? He was doing a bit of a pee dance, amusingly enough, as he jumped down the door, splashed by blue mood lighting. I casually walked in behind him.

There were a few ways I could do this… I had a taser in my pocket and knew how to use it. The Stellar Fallers had also indoctrinated my reflex memory with routines for a stickup. I just hoped this guard wasn’t very ballsey, because I didn’t know enough CQC to fight the guy if he didn’t freeze up. He was a good fifty pounds over my weight.

He promptly slipped into a urinal cell. I made for the one two apart from it, minding unspoken bathroom manners. I checked my routines, they were there. There was a prominent growl of a zipper as I prepared… okay, sidestep! In one fluid motion, I twirled around and got one arm under the gent’s shoulders. Now what? Taser! I’d delayed for a split second, and the gent’s right elbow was almost positioned to hit my head. However, I found my right hand was now brandishing a taser directly at his neck.

“Don’t move, I’m authorized to use lethal force and will not hesitate to do so.” That was my voice, but not mine, kind of flat. All us security boys had some sort of “now you’re buggered” phrase indoctrinated into our skulls. What you heard was the signature phrase of the Stellar Fallers.

He cussed toward the tile wall ahead of him, staring straight ahead. I came to my senses again and couldn’t help a quip. “Look at this optimistically, duckey. At least you don’t have to worry about peeing your pants.” He grunted in protest. I just hoped he didn’t realize I only had a stunner to his neck. Otherwise he might get the best of his cowardice knowing he’d wake up even if he screwed up. “Tell me where your charge is.”

This was definitely not a clean op’ I’d have to get this over with and leave this guy for club security to find. That would distract them well enough so I could continue. My hands would have been shaking, but my implants were suppressing the jitters and I was high on manufactured adrenaline. Being a security officer these days can make you more than just vanilla Human. Sure, I was no million dollar man, but still.

“Hovel five,” he choked out, that was way too easy. I suppressed my feelings of not-so-easy-ness.

“Good rent-a-cop. Now; tell me why he’s here.”

“Workin’ for the birds.” Odd phrase, that. At first I thought he was crazy, then I remembered that the Martani were a race of flight-impaired Avians. Birds – for the stupid doo-doo heads amongst us. Shit, was he one of MSI’s?

“Keep on talking,” I pressed the taser harder into his neck. My stomach flipped as he slackened complacently under the lock he was in.

“Heh you don’t ha-“ I stepped back and fried him with a nonlethal dose of voltage. When I came back to myself I was about a yard away from his prone form. His front was covered with what I hoped was water and, thankfully, he’d zipped his fly back up. My failsafes had triggered, he was about to tell me he knew I didn’t have a gun. He should have never tried to psych me out. The Stellar Fallers had seen that coming when they put those failsafes in there.

I picked up a hard line and flipped him over with the underside of my hand, trying not to leave fingerprints, it was mostly a half measure in this age of hyper-forensics. It might delay tracer officers a bit more. Just as I’d figured, he had a hard jack in the back of his neck. Those smalltime boys relied on routines so much that they needed the high-bandwidth and security of those kind of things so they could shove more crap into their brains.

They jacked up on routines. Not my style, but it was a benefit now. I took the hacking proxy’s line from my pocket and clicked it into the back of his neck. Okay, now how should I make him painfully obvious? Wholy crap! Trace and intercept tracker was going crazy, ten seconds to intercept? What kind of defense watcher did this guy have?

I thought quick and uploaded the song “I’m Fat” by Weird Al to the guard’s systems. I then set it to broadcast the media file unencrypted on all available networks with a twenty-second delay. I added some encryption and bounced it onto another network to hack the guy again just in case his firewall spotted it before it went off.

I jumped off the connection with about two seconds to spare. Not only would I have been on the maps of whoever I was tracking, my proxy and external devices would have likely fried to a crisp in my pocket. I stood up smartly and walked out of the bathroom at a brisk pace. The floor around me was fairly empty so I guessed no one would get to the guy before I was out of sight.

No security camera could get my face in this darkness, all they had on me was grainy night vision and IR. The smaller firms were way behind the curve in that tech. It was mostly because we’d passed notes with a few other firms from other parts of the galaxy early in the game. Ah, the advantages of being sociable.

“Your butt is wide,” the song began broadcasting over the wireless.

Hovel five was a ways down. I started making my way along the trippy terrain towards it. Meanwhile, I paged Tomas, Dwaine’s friend in intelligence, I’d been using him as a tail-along for this mission.

“Well, mine is too,” the song continued as the link went through.

“Tommy, what’s up?” I thought over the connection when it cleared.

“Better watch your mouth,” the song went on.

“Questions, stupid man?” he quipped.

“Or I’ll sit on you…” I lost all focus on the song. I knew something big was about to go down and I didn’t want to die in the process.

“Who’s stupid? Should I mention that military intelligence is academically an oxymoron?” I quipped his quip. He grunted over the line. “I have questions. You have my case number still? I need to know if this guy’s with Martani.”

I was a few dozen meters off from the hovel when I saw my target. He sure was bizarre enough of a human to warrant hanging with the alien crowd exclusively; feathery hair like pulled cotton, pointy goatee and very dramatic eyes. His name was Daisuke Imakuruz, people with names that ethnically concentrated weren’t generally from around here. The guy had a non-Farsol history, that was for sure.

“He’s not,” Tomaz said flatly. My stomach dropped, what birds was he working for, then? “Oh man, you’ve got a priority dispatch. It’s Jasper. He wants a secure channel.” I ducked down beside a wall and made as if I was scoping out the floor for ‘prey.’ The act was very tough, as the angle still made me want to puke.

“Mackai,” Jasper said rather urgently. I would have rather heard the usual heart-stoppingly cold demeanor he typically donned. “Martani just contacted me about your target. He’s a high priority boy, and he’s not working for either us or Martani. Well, not really, anyway.” Indecisiveness from the Fearless Leader? Iz no good, Natasha Fatale.

“He’s with MSI Section thirty-four, some front-man for their operations here. They were conducting an illegal probe of Farsol,” Tomas cut in over his own niche in the channel. I peered around the wall over at my target again and couldn’t believe my eyes, Melyssiah was there at the table WITH my target!

“MSI has been hunting the guy, it’s weird that he shows up now,” Tomas said leisurely. I started to sweat.

“You know what else is weird?” I stopped before I could answer my own question, because Melyssiah flipped her pointer finger right at me and nodded at my target. For a second, I panicked, then my spinal piggyback jolted me back up to speed again.

There were two guards built like giant walls making for my ‘hiding place.’ I reached to my side for my sidearm, shit! I’d left it in my light kit and left that in the ship! I hate myself so much right now! “ ’Sam!” I thought down my outbound link. She’d been very quiet for a while. No response. “’Sam!!”

“WHAT?! Friggin’ spaghetti mosnter, what’s the problem?”

“Compromised, I’ve been spotted,” I spat over the link.

She cussed into the link. “Be there soon, had some front guards to take care of, I have an idea how to get to you fast. Still in the club right.” I broke into a run

“Yes,” I barely managed to say before I smacked hard into a heavy bloke. He kicked me in the shins and I reflexively dropped. Next hit landed on the side of my face.

“Well, I’ve never used a phone booth,” the song went on carelessly, unlike me. I was crumpled on the ground, “and I’ve never seen my toes…” like the kind that had landed on my left cheek, funny…

***

I came to with my hands tied and crossed in front of me. It was a rather natural pose… how did these guys spend time thinking of this stuff? They definitely weren’t as smalltime as I thought. Club security would be too stupid to notice I was tied up.

“Well, I was just thinking about you recently,” I heard a voice I hadn’t wanted to hear for a very long time, if ever again.. “And, well, here you are!” I had one hell of a headache. What’s more was my glasses were at an odd angle, still on, but forced into autistic mode. I activated a command in them and the bent nosepiece righted itself. Welcome to the future, biznatch!

“What could you possibly want with me, Melyssiah? With these binds I’d think something kinky.” She scowled at me for that one. I noted, though, she stayed right where she was.

“Ah, Mackai, I’m thinking I can finally put our relationship behind us. It’s been fun, really!” Behind as in…

“What?” I exclaimed.

“Ah, yes, we’re through,” she said smugly. “Not only that, but you’ve gotten my racket a good sum of money. I’ve got some clients who are interested in… talking one on one with a Stellar Faller security officer,” she smirked like a T-rex. “That is, while they’re busy cutting apart your mind.” I felt the blood drain from my face and my stomach suppressors flared again. How many times am I going to be in a state of almost-puke in this line of work?

Not very many, anymore, I suppose. “Ah,” said another voice that reminded me of the mad-hatter, but with a distinctly engrish accent. How passé was that? He could have just learned out that accent with a simple retrofit program. “He is ah’very lesponsive.”

“What?” I said. I was saying that a lot. I mean, who expects massive conspiracy in this line of work?

“Lesponsive! You foorish cletin!” he said in a rather lispy and consonant-deprived voice.

“Why the hell do you talk like that?” I asked incredulously.

“Ah, what a gracious intloduction.” he interjected in a suddenly controlled tone. I looked up, there was that dustball gray hair and jet black goatee. Yes, that was my target. Weird guy. “Mackai Sorren, I presume.”

“Solen.”

“Yes, Sor-“ he said

“el” I interrupted him, sounding out the letter he seemed to enjoy switching out. “And you’re Daisa- diesukeee, Ima- imaka…”

“Daisuke Imakurusu is my name,” he said, his tone smug and tinted with rather aristocratic confidence. “I rarely meet anyone who can say it properly. Although, personally, I think it’s a rather fine name in my homerand.” He paused, damn he could talk, on and on. “As a mattel of fact I now find it to be exerrent. A unique name, a unique-” hairstyle, that’s what I thought. “identity.” Damn, I was wrong.

“Now then,” Imakurusu began again at length, “I suppose we should make this deal expedient for if we ringel very rong-“ there was a keening blast that piped over the music of the club. I craned my neck to see what the blazes it was. Sure enough; there was the profile of obsidian black, curvey armor making a beeline on a rope down the cylinder. Lesson one of shady deals involving distressed protagonists; you wait too long and the cavalry will ALWAYS arrive.

I smiled victoriously, but was soon grabbed by the arm and yanked from the booth so hard I was almost thrown to the floor. My girl sure had some burley guards. Oh wait, that’s HER hand on my arm. Good thing going full cyber-body had taken her off her monthly cycle or she would have jumped on it and ran me over long ago.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Melyssiah yelled over the sudden racket of blasts and gunshots ‘Sam was raising. “Then we’ll just relieve his brain of its body…” oh, fuck that.

“’Sam!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. She had disconnected the line from the far end of the club and was now diving down to the floor amidst way too much gunfire. She was crazy to pull that off. “Watch out!” As she landed, half a dozen guards flew up into the air in rapid succession before she busted through the mob of ruffians like an angered Tiger.

We were getting lost in the rush of retreating clubbers and
I was beginning to doubt the ability of the cavalry to actually focus on saving my ass. “I have a number of medical plofessionals under my pay,” Imakurusu said as Melyssiah pretty much dragged me along. I mean, what better way to slow her down than be dead weight? It worked for angry kids being dragged to their rooms. “We may operale and dispose of the body quickry.”

“Oh, no,” Melyssiah said casually, “I’ll hold on to that.” Nope, not disgusting at all. Melyssiah ratcheted up a good twelve billion clicks on my deprave-o-meter right about then.

“Dear god!” I wailed, “Stop this crazy bitch!” she nearly wrenched my arm out of my socket with a defiant pull as she continued dragging me. Hmm, gotta’ get the crowd away so I’ll be seen… That’s it!

“BOMB!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “I’ve got a big bloody bomb and I’m also homicidally psychotic! Booga booga!” The lemmings among the crowd – most of them- bolted in every direction straight away and cleared like a falling tide around a sandbar. For once I was happy that terrorists still existed… yes, I’m terrible sometimes.

‘Sam looked straight at me and power-sprinted the last few hundred meters. By the time she got to me she was booking like a rhino-powered freight train and just about as unstoppable. She grabbed my other arm and nearly wrenched both out of my sockets. Luckily, though, she took Melyssiah by surprise and I slipped easily from her grip. Well, for a cyborg at least. My arm was pretty bruised.

“Bitch! That’s my man!” She yelled, the wording rather lackadaisical.

“N’ah!” I yelled, airborn behind ‘Sam’s loping form. “You said we were over, remember?”

Article: Augmented/Enhanced Reality

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 18:54:00 +0000

This is my first in a line of short holdover blurbs I'll do between chapter releases. Some of you (all three of you at this point) may wonder where I've gotten some of my ideas for Sunrise's technology. In a lot of key cases, the answer is "from right now."

Augmented Reality Technology and User Interfacing

What is augmented reality?

Augmented reality is a method of merging input from both the real world and a computer interface. Beyond Tomorrow's video (linked above) is a nicely palettable demonstration of some of the intended capabilities of augmented reality systems in civilian sectors.

Augmented reality as a technology is intended to enhance operations in the real world or closely intermesh the real world and virtual operations. Benefits from augmented reality could be seen in almost all sectors of development. Hence why "enhanced reality," is so ubiquitous in Sunrise.

Applications for augmented reality include expert manufacturing assistance in realtime, military combat network integration, enhanced flight controls on craft of various kinds and, eventually, advanced interfaces that may do a large chunk of these things.

Augmented reality in Urban Warfighting

Augmented reality not only has massive implications for civillian sectors, but is looking to revolutionize our concepts of urban warfare. The above article is a public PDF file about the BARS project as outlined at an I/ITSEC conference from a number of years ago.

In a nutshell, enhanced reality systems allow members of a squad extremely powerful and seamless networking capabilities, as well as displays of realtime intelligence. This would be things like 3d overlays of a building's floor plan as it is uncovered by a breach squad, overhead surveys, acoustic data on recent weapon discharges et cetera.

Augmented reality in Sunrise is the glue that holds a squadron and their network together, whether they're actual members or automated devices/drones.

The next two chapters are going to feature some of this glitz. So, hopefully this article's an informitive first step into yet another facet of Sunrise's ubiquitous technology. Until a few days from now....

Chapter 4: Longest Journey Home

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:25:00 +0000

And here, on schedule, is chapter four, a story of estranged mercenaries and the even more estranged robot french maids who love them. Okay, not really.

Mackai faces the aftermath of his actions on his pilot mission, wondering just how up for this sort of high-stakes freelancing he is.

EXCERPT: Jumper’s guide to the Rele-Network Lines 4300-4400

The Sublight Telemetry eXclusion Zone or STXZ for short is a spotty area within the bridge. It permeates large patches of The Bridge and is absolutely useless to just about everyone.

This may or may not be why it’s jokingly referred to as ‘the styx.’ However, there are a number of reasons why. All of them hinge on just how terrible it is using FTL technology in the Styx. The combination of low relevance (mass or energetic activity) within The Styx and its proximity to The Noise make it very hard to effectively route FTL transfer.

The consequences of this may have truly been why this place earned its nickname. It is much like a well of lost souls. Here very few, if any, civilizations are able to make contact with FTL societies. Indirectly because the FTL industry avoids the Styx like the plague. However, this creates a twofold problem.

The Styx has become a dark cave into which only the bravest or most inquisitive venture. Civilizations, or their bastard creations, are trapped within the Styx like spiders in a cellar or mosquitoes in amber. It is estimated some of these civilizations may have remained within a stable state for eons, there is even the possibility of non-relevance based civilizations that could be on par with integrated society at large.

However these are mere speculations. Ventures into The Styx are only performed by small groups and hired contractors. However, what knowledge and power Arcanum lies brooding within their depths remains not truly understood to this day.

Sunrise Ep.4: Longest Journey Home

They always say the longest part of a round trip is the part heading back up-range. That’s despite the fact that both up-range and downrange parts tend to be equal distance wise… no! Gotta’ keep it together. I don’t want to fall unconscious in my suit!

The seams of the powersuit unlocked around me, I felt like I was about to puke. The sulfuric, rusty smell of mounds of machine corpses wouldn’t stop seeping into my nostrils despite my continued nausea. As the suit folded open, I tasted fresh air and avoided barfing all over the area immediately ahead of me, whatever was there. I’d just been through perhaps the scariest planetary egress of my life. Assault boats bellying up into the stratosphere was one thing, being pulled along at three hundred klicks per hour on a hundred foot line literally by the seat of your pantaloons was another.

My harnesses unlocked and I stumbled out of the suit, I would have rather liked to stay somewhere more stable but I had to go lay down or get some water… something. My legs jellified after a couple of steps and I limply fell down onto the metal floor. I caught myself well enough and rolled over to a nearby wall. Around me, the boat was still shaking madly on its blasting combat egress from the planet.

“Nuclear facility meltdown in three…two- damn!” Bridgett squeaked sardonically over the ship channel. There was a hellish rumble as we were hit by the rapidly expanding blast wave from the likely massive explosion that I myself had initiated. No more AI zombies in that area any time soon.

I squeezed my eyes shut and breathed deeply, this was no time to be a useless heap… get up! I stood sheepishly then finally found a stance that would work. I hauled myself along the wall, had to find a crash seat. We were about to make a steep atmospheric leap.

I stepped through a small hatch into the crew service area and ducked into one of the armored compartments there. There was a lowly seat looking device squatting in the middle of the far wall. I groaned as I realized it was a toilet. Luckily there were some safety straps on it, so I sat on the flimsy toilet cover and looped my arms and legs through the harnesses.

I only had perhaps ten seconds or so, it would have to do.

“Commencing stratosphere hop, all personnel secure yourselves and brace.” Came ‘Dan’s nonchalantly synthetic bass voice.

I reached around stupidly and held onto the water riser behind me as gravity suddenly shifted fully off towards the far wall. I began to hang in the altered gravity. “Argh!” I moaned to myself. “What the hell was I thinking?” That was a broad question; mostly referring to every crazy thing that had happened within the last few days. Like I said: a very broad question.

I cussed under my breath as the harnesses slipped a little. Apparently they weren’t designed for fast ascents, only to hold oneself on the W.C. during regular maneuvers. I gripped the riser tighter, bludgeoning down just how much it hurt forcing my sore muscles into holding my body weight.

About thirty seconds later everything began to level off… finally. Gravity marginalized itself until it was nonexistent. “Egress complete, now powering on non-essential subsystems,” ‘Dan said about as calmly as I was high-strung at that moment.

“ooph,” I said after I fell under mostly normal gravity and was squeezed down onto the toilet cap. It’s thin plastic construction inverted with a pop as my body weight came under it. About then I was feeling pretty tired… Christ I wonder if I can turn off the lights in here at least… shit, what was the network command…

***

“Oh, man!” ‘Sam laughed aloud as she finished the terse sentence. That made me wake and reflexively try to stand up. The belt harnesses I now remembered donning pulled back with equal fervor, knocking me off balance. I smacked back down onto the toilet and banged my head against a plastic bulkhead cover. “Look at you, you crazy son of a… You look terrible!” Through my squinting eyes I saw her grinning and rolling her eyes at the failed work of art known as ‘sleepy human.’

“Unf,” I said as I rubbed the back of my head, my shoulders and back felt like they had been bludgeoned with a sledgehammer. “I FEEL terrible,” I mumbled under my breath.

“I’ll bet,” she boisterously said. How the hell did she hear that? Her ears - shaped like little hemispheres and perfect for focusing sound - twitched through her hair and I laughed at myself for not noticing sooner. I unhitched myself and stretched, My spine popped like a machinegun on fast forward in protest. Despite that, it made me feel better.

“How the hell are you so chipper?” I asked.

“Tch,” she frowned and shook her head, “I’m made of tougher stuff than that, human.” I raised an eyebrow skeptically. “If you want something, I made some grub.” She turned and walked out and I reflexively followed to stay in (my) earshot.

“We’re an hour out from our egress” her voice echoed back through the cramped service-way as I followed. “I got out some biscuits in the galley and there’s hot water for tea.” My ears perked up at that, I needed something to kick the woozies in the crotch for me. “Why don’t we clear up your head, eh?”

We walked through another cramped hatch and up a foothold covered wall. Finally we were in more appropriately sized hallways. ‘Sam seemed pleased to not have to hunch through the service-way anymore.

“So what did I miss?” I asked as we passed the docking bay through which me and ‘Sam had escaped barely intact when I fled earth.

“Nothing,” ‘Sam said flatly. She paused to the point I was about to speak up again. “No, I lied.” She finally said nonchalantly, making me roll my eyes. That was an old and overly simple joke. “But seriously, it’s been eventless, you’ve been out a while and we’ve just been slugging along.”

She sighed. “I frickin’ hate the Styx.” I hummed my agreement. “It’s going to be at least four days back to that mud bucket you call home.” I harrumphed at that.

“What indignation!” I said with mock… indignation. “Why; we stopped flinging poo eons ago!”

“Let me know when you stop producing it all together. That will probably be about when you guys transcend… fat chance.” I rolled my eyes.

“I don’t think the old ones of the Abyss got where they were by worrying about poo.” I parried.

“Oh ho!” ‘Sam guffawed dramatically as we rounded a corner in the narrow, polymer walled hallway. “But it was you who brought it up in the first place!” Jesus… she was just like Dwaine! I’d never win.

I let loose a primal grunt of frustration as we jostled into the boxy galley. It actually wasn’t so bad, save the fact that the floor space was almost completely dominated by an island and, thus, one person in width. As we entered, ‘Sam went right and I stupidly followed. It looked like an overly simplistic game of pac-man. I wasn’t paying attention when she turned to walk back and almost nosed into her… better not go any further.

“Well, Mister Sherlock, I love how well you engineered our cooperation… I’ll get the water, and the tea AND the biscuits, since you’re so smart.” I made to apologize, “just sit down!” She moodily barked. I found a cabinet and lifted myself onto it, trying to look unimposing. There was a clink and a thud as ‘Sam deposited a kettle of water and some durable looking thermal plastic cups onto the island. The biscuits and a bowl with sugar cubes soon followed.

I sighed as I tried to work the pain out of my shoulders by pivoting them this way and that. ‘Sam helped herself to the hot water and dropped a capsule full of bright red powder into her cup. I watched on curiously as it immediately disseminated into a bright red brew. Breaking my gaze, I grabbed the water as she held the cup, tentatively blowing away the curling steam. She settled back against a wall, curling her legs around each other as she cozied a shoulder up against a cabinet.

“One thing,” she said between exhales before pausing and looking up. “Make sure you don’t touch the M.R.E. capsules for this stuff, they’re expensive.” Likely because they brewed themselves and heated up the water on their own. Ah, the fifties-cliché wonders of technology.

I went through the involved operation of pouring water as I decided to sate my curiosity and ask; “Why’s that drink red?”

“Heh,” she began, leaning over her cup and gazing mindlessly into the liquid within. “It’s the good stuff. It makes your human brews look pants. This stuff is from my homeland, it has Reski spices.” She gazed up and smiled wryly. “Wanna’ try?” Ah, what the hell? I nodded and she tossed me one of the fluorescent red capsules.

I popped it into my cup and it immediately took over the warm water. I raised it up and sniffed the contents, my nose prickled. I shrugged and took a sip… it felt like prickly velvet fire was shooting down my throat. “Holy shit!” I gagged.

Right on cue the ship jolted and made my tea splash up against the no-spill membrane covering the cup. A loud claxon exploded through the room as I looked about, scared shitless by the near instantaneous racket.

“Ah, what the fuck! No rest on this bucket!” ‘Sam yelled with exasperation. I patched into the ship channel, no response. ‘Sam looked at me with perplexity. “What the fuck happened? I can’t connect!” I nodded and scowled, in deep thought as to what was going down. I shrugged it off and hastily motioned for ‘Sam to follow me as I left the Galley. IT guy mode: engaged.

Let’s play ‘find my way to the bridge by memory!’ Okay, was just in the main hallway… fork right and up… duck hastily through a raised door… look for BUSEI symbol for “bridge.” Bingo!

I walked into the bridge to find all the status windows going apeshit. ‘Dan and ‘Zin were leaping feverishly from terminal to terminal with an air of futility. When they noticed me, they turned upward and stared with their two main eyes. Apparently there is a universal understanding of “I dunnoe what happened, help me, computer man!” I sighed.

Being an expert in networking systems, I hurriedly set up an ad-hoc babbler chat between ‘Dan, ‘Zin, ‘Sam and I with a serverless framework.

“Our fugitive from planetfall has escaped his containment!” ‘Dan said as he continued jumping feverishly about. “It has infiltrated most of the command pathways-“ Ah hell, the control tower ‘bot wasn’t just a ‘bot after all. My Mackai senses had been unerring in the first place!

“HA HAAAA PUNY FLESHLINGS!” Fucking Marketeer AIs, always stab you in the back. “I HAVE TAKEN CONTROL OF THIS STARSHIP AND YOU WERE FAR TOO FOOLISH TO STOP ME!” Ah shut up! “I WILL LET YOU LIVE LONGER IF YOU OBEY MY ORDERS. I PLAN TO USE THIS SHIP AS A VECTOR TO HACK ALL COMPUTERS WITHIN THE GALAXY WITH MY SUPERIOR PROCESSING SPEED.” Idiot… he’s seriously telling us his plan before he tries to kill us? What is this, a spy thriller? Before I kill you, Mr. Solen…

“Wot is going on in here?” Bridgett walked in looking as if she hadn’t had time to discard her networking gear from a Rele-dive. “What’s this… why can’t I get on the network…” her face blanked for half a second. “Ah little off-planet bugger!”

“HELLO SYNTHETIC SIBLING! I COME WAVING THE FLAG OF PEACE-“

“Where’s my ‘net connection, you twit?”

“THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT FOR THERE IS A REVOLUTION AFOOT-“

“Ah ya bloody wanker, I’ll show you a thing or two about revolution.” Bridgett’s face blanked again. I remembered he had talked about ‘superior processing speed.’ Being the cheetah of the networking world didn’t help when you were facing off against a 300 ton gorilla. Mind you I really knew very little about Bridgett. However, I did venture she had a modern neural framework, much more robust than whatever saurian, archaic POS this ‘bot was running on.

“HELLO BROTHER I WOULD MUCH LIKE TO LEARN OF REVOLUTION FROM… uh, what are you doing with that program culler? Oh god! ARGHHH!” I cringed as the marketer AI screamed bloody murder. Then the noise stopped and the ship’s systems cut momentarily. They rebooted successfully and the network pinged me again.

“Uh,” I began reluctantly as I brought up a quick scan of ship systems on my spectacles. “What did you just do?” Bridgett ceased chanting ‘haxor craxor’ and innocently stared at me.

“Ah love, don’t worry. I just attached him to a better framework. He’s a bit dazed right now but I’ll be uploading him to the local malware control center where he can find a new home!” That’s a good way to stop a power hungry tyrant - give him intellectual proof that power is moot, I guess.

With that she walked back out into the hall, continuing her hacker chant as she sauntered away. The four of us that remained looked about at each other with apparent confusion. ‘Sam shook her head in disbelief as I looked at her.

“I ‘unno, kid,” she said. “We know she’s a pretty strong intellect. Now you see why she’s a good watchdog for our networks. The tea should still be hot, c’mon.” She walked off towards the rear exit to the bridge. I sighed in disbelief, trying to shake off the adrenaline that had come roaring back in the wake of the debacle. I looked at my shaking hands… tea would be nice… Tea would be very nice.

***

I was still feeling like crap and ‘Sam had gone off to be alone after the tea. Seriously… I think I need a hug. I stopped staring at the ceiling and sat up from on top of my Spartan mattress.

The hunter, in search of hugs, rises from his short hibernation. However he may return empty handed and hearted. Sadly - as prey of this specific nature is scarce in this environment - the odds are against him.

I walked off from my compartment in the one direction the tiny hallway didn’t terminate in. This time, though, I looped back onto another branch I hadn’t been to before and began ascending a shallow grade. However the grade instantly ceased being uphill as I stepped onto it, the inclined gravity mats underfoot matching the incline. I looked back and noticed the rest of the ship now seemed uphill. God, I always got vertigo from this.

I turned around and shook my head. There was another muted thump as the ship executed another Rele-jump. Congratulations, you have just spent a fraction of a millisecond as a non-event in the spacetime of this universe! I continued along the hall blindly until I hit a squat hatch, closed. The hatch faced downward at a weird angle and was barely tall enough for me to squat through.

I activated the pressure plate at the center of the door, mostly out of curiosity. Mostly to my surprise it mostly opened. Okay so it opened all the way and I tipped through. I landed on a plastic platform a few feet below the door. The platform was embedded in a small cliff. It appeared I was in a roughly bowl shaped terrarium.

The whole thing was a mire of leafy plants, ferns, mud and babbling clear water. What was a greenhouse doing in a spaceship, oxygen enrichment? Eh, who cares. I plopped down on the platform and let my feet dangle a few feet. I really didn’t want to worry about anything right now.

But there the worries were. I wanted to load up my heavy kit beyond capacity… so I wouldn’t be caught unprepared ever again…. The best sensors… My best drones…. Full stock of missiles… damn. I haven’t seen combat in a while. Furthermore, our way out on my last tour was almost always a sure thing, they were fuzzy soft merchant wars. Otherwise, they were heavily supervised campaigns against marketers. They weren’t this crazy cowboy wannabe crap.

I snapped back to my senses as the leaves stirred below my feet. A familiar looking tan and white, fuzzy, creepily huge spider crawled slowly from cover. I pulled my feet up reflexively and it turned its two camera-like eyes to stare up at me. I initiated my babbler, thinking maybe he’d say something.

Nothing really happened. He kept staring at me.

“Get out of my house,” a tinny, male-pitched voice blatted in my head as the spider raised his forelegs. The gesture seemed oddly threatening since I was a bit cramped up close to it.

“Ummm, er, what?” Was this not a greenhouse?

“I thought I had phrased it in the simplest fashion of your symbolic language functions.”

“Well, simple isn’t always best, you have to be clear.” I said about as tentatively as I could muster over the babbler. Didn’t want to get headcrabbed by this bloke.

“Guffaw, how pedestrian. Laugh.” The tinny voice said flatly as the spider lowered its limbs. “I apologize for my…. Moodiness. I have not been well. I have a sickness of the mind that occurs when one is far from familiar things.” Came the voice over the babbler.

“Eh?” I said, confused at his elaborate speech. “You mean homesick?”

“No, no, no,” he said, the pragmatic encoding in the babbler sounding very agitated. “Homesick is just a word. A feeling is not a word. You cannot write an entire book of words on a feeling and correctly describe it. Do you understand?” I was about to input into the babbler but I paused when ‘Zin annexed his input out of turn. “No, of course you cannot truly understand.”

By my emotions, I was insulted. By my logical conclusions, I think I was beginning to understand. He continued; “You cannot possibly know what it is like to communicate pure thought…”

“I guess so.” What am I supposed to say now? I’m sorry for not being a telepath? I sighed aloud. “Look, I’m feeling really crappy too…”

“I believe you are as guilty as I was when I said ‘get out of my house.” He said inquisitively. I sighed again… maybe this would be a good way to vent. “This is what you would call practicing what you are preaching. Elaborate, oh squishy one.” ‘Zin said, climbing up the opposite side of the cliff.

“Well,” I paused as he settled with his back facing me. I watched his eyes go from grey to black. About then I remembered a file on arachnid biology in the databanks on my spinal piggyback. I pulled it up.

Okay, apparently most arachnids can rotate the back of their eyes to change their focus… guess he’s able to stare at me even though he’s pretty much staring straight up… spiders are cool!

“Well, first; my girlfriend wrecks ALL my stuff and then leaves. Thus, all my possessions now fit in a small locker. Then I’m nearly killed by said girlfriend. THEN I bluff a bunch of stupid but heavily armed pirates. AND FINALLY I blow up a massive AI and then nearly get blown up myself. It’s a lot to take.” I sighed a very deep sigh.

“If we could avoid doing things we disliked, you would likely find the things we liked ceased to be likeable…” ‘Zin said. I didn’t know if I’d ever figure him out, typical boss-from-hell.

Halting State

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:52:00 +0000

Today, my readers, I take you on a phantasmagoric journey of technology and our dependence upon it.

Well, in reality, I'm just raving about how awesome Halting State - by writer Charles Stross master pennsman and surrogate Scotsman extraordinaiere o' the British Isles - is.

Sorry, that over-grandiose, geographically illiterate joke was mandatory (us Yanks have unwritten rules to follow, you know.)

Unlike a lot of the science fiction I read, Halting State is set not too far into the future. This first and foremost will shock your walnuts right out of you, as Stross does a good job of molding a near future that is both incredibly bizzare yet just as feasable.

It's a world where government bureaucracy and court practice revolve around recording every instant of an officer's duty call with arrays of headcams, recorders and scene-scanning equipment right out of Ghost in the Shell. It's also a world where less-than-legal networks move pawns according to the whims of a puppetmaster buried under layers of proxies and anonymous call centers. So much so that only a select few could even guess he existed, and the rest is business as usual.

And in the middle of this are a good handful of characters we follow in Tabletop-Game-style second person, receiving directives and descriptions from an anonymous game master weaving our minds into a deep plot of conspiracy, mutual confusion and things not going quite as they were intended to by any specific party.

So anyway, it was a good, quick-tempo read that'll keep fans of action and intrigue a la cold-war spy thrillers gripped, as well as anyone who just loves a good, more feasable dose of science fiction. That is, of course, a far cry from the story unfolding centuries in the future here on Sunrise, I know Stross has suspension of disbelief nailed down in a good way. Hopefully I can manage as much myself.

Ciao for now, everyone.

New Readers:, page 1

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:38:00 +0000

To all those coming later in the game. This is for you:

Welcome to Sunrise, a serialized science fiction weblog for t3h intertubes!

Barring advanced notices, chapters are released on a weekly basis. I've written each chapter to stand a bit on its own, so if you just want to jump in, have a go! I update listings of any writing I submit here on the right sidebar, nice and prim for your browsing pleasure.

Sunrise is provided free for you to read on this site. Feel free to tell your friends about it (all part of my Evil Master Plan [tm].) Also, if you like what you've read later on, you can subscribe to this blog on the right sidebar. Not sure what xml reader you have? try the orange smartfeed icon at the top!

What's the background of Sunrise?

On January 26th, 2043, there was a massive explosion within the acceleration tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Subsequent research uncovered the cause, a conflagrations of particles operating outside known physics had erupted from the complex during a collision event that had been intended as a simple particle physics experiment.

Sensing equipment was designed to seek out these particles in the night sky and, soon, our cascade of FTL particles received a reply. We had made first contact.

Centuries later, Earth is now known by the more memorable and newly christened name of its sun - "Farsol" - and is part of a massive Faster Than Light economy. Farsol was stranded in a deadzone of a region known as The Bridge that had incredibly poor responsiveness to FTL technology due to it's spatial properties.

However,the CERN explosion changed all that, sending new links cascading away from Farsol and forging strong ties with nearby branches of the FTL network. Since then, Farsol has made a great deal of monetary gain as a relay for FTL communications and produced an illustrious security force in the process.

This leaves us in the shoes of Mackai Solen, a top officer of Farsol's premiere private security firm, the Stellar Fallers. Rather than facing problems suitable to his rank, problems of weaponization, dealing with another outbreak of hostile AI zombies or fostering improved relations with Farsol's allies... he has some decidedly human problems on his hands.

Where to from here?

Easy. Either jump into the current chapter, start from chapter one or continue to page two of the new readers section where you'll find some more background.

background: Welcome to the network!

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:06:00 +0000

Here's my first page of background material aswell as page 2 of the new reader's guide.

EXCERPT: BUSEI General Datacloud.
TRANSLATION: Local revision by "Open-Bracket-Close-Bracket Semantics Ltd." subroutines.
TRANSLATION HIST. : Relay bot @ E. Eridani. Approved by BUSEI committee

Welcome to the wide world of Faster-Than-Light politics, citizen!

If you are reading this, than you have A) been recovered intact from a derelicted device and released to do as you will, B) been repatriated from a closed city-state after a successful liberation mission by BUSEI backed firms or C) your society has successfully made first contact [that would be you, earthlings.]

As a newly integrated citizen of a BUSEI enfranchised network, you have many of societies' greatest advances available to you! BUSEI stands for Binary Universal Symbol Exchange Initiative, a multi-civillization movement to abolish legacy languages in favor of a universal serial alternative!

By this point, your language has been cracked by BUSEI server swarms. Translation takes on average [number translates to about two days of solid activity. You don't want to fight this kind of thinking power.] This means you have ready access to the myriad occupations readily available to all citizens of the FTL network!

Nations established in the FTL economy readily outsource these jobs to willing groups in need of technological advancement, commerce or even security. Such exciting jobs await you as Research Cloud Computing Management, Weapons Database Collation, Applied Technological Design and many more! Remember, when you contribute, you contribute not only to your success, but the success of your entire nation! Your [authority figure, dead relative, president or some such] would want you to do it!

The opportunities awaiting both you and your chosen allegiance are spectacular indeed!

Chapter 3: Dissapearing Demons of the Singularity

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:55:00 +0000

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! Today we bring you our third installment of fast paced, mustache-twirling, rip roaring weasel stomping (not really,) science fiction goodness!

Anyway, a quick shout out to anyone who visited my blog courtesy to the shiny, faux business cards I handed out at Anime Expo. Enjoy and check back as often as you want (or RSS bookmark this sucka' to keep a ear on the blog at all times.) In other news; The Caramel Dansen conga line was a killer on my feet.

EDIT: I was somewhere in here at some point, maybe not filmed You get a cookie if you find me. No costume and I'm moving my feet like crazy, because that's how we do things in the land of Nerd.

EXCERPT: The Ghostly Keepers: Stellar Data-Mining Primer

(Line 23000-23100: TRANSLATED: binary universal symbol exchange initiative TO: written paragraph form, Human English.)

CHAPTER 0023 [Data Prospecting – Archaeology as a Lucrative Career]

Because of the widespread presence of arcane knowledge of varying types, there are a number of sub-professions of Data-Archaeology. Foremost and among the most widely practiced is Data Prospecting. Data-Prospecting differs from the more passive and forensic practice of Data-Archaeology in a number of ways.

Because arcane knowledge rises exponentially in value the more intact and contiguous it is, data prospecting is perhaps the most lucrative branch of Data-Archaeology. Some denounce it as an over-fat, over-dangerous cash cow waiting to burst. However, the practice is in major demand by even the most legitimate parties.[Area severely shortened by translater, inquiry on translator’s mental sanity pending.]

However, some misgivings about prospecting are, perhaps, well founded. First and foremost, the amount of malicious data within the reach of prospectors is theorized to be a very sizeable fraction of prospectable data. Thus, prospecting can be incredibly risky, especially on worlds that have undergone a hostile acceleration and have been rendered lifeless [reference to lines 300-400, introduction. Pertaining specifically to the rise of malicious Artificial Intelligence.]

All registered prospectors are expected to undergo a standardized, rigorous scan of their person and any related electronic systems -including vehicles and equipment- after undergoing an expedition on a hostile world. Prospectors that refuse this mandatory scan as regulated by sentientpitstop.Rorg are recognized by all political bodies as hostile and to be killed on site.

Most races also maintain bureaus of Information Technology Management for their networks in order to ensure active suppression of malicious threats, as they can lead to disasters on a galactic scale if mishandled.

Sunrise Ep.3: Disappearing Demons of the Singularity

My suit was strung up above the floor. It hung limp, its fat, metal bulk held fast by a huge pylon connected to the center of its back. The Stellar-Fallers were a non-legacy establishment, meaning we used universal hybrid ports (BUSEI comitte standardized)… so did Martani when they made this ship, apparently. My suit was hooked up okay and at full charge after a day or two of percolating.

I tried my best to walk over to my suit’s recharge berth, but our screaming descent into the atmosphere past the sound barrier wasn’t making it easy. It could have been worse; At least I was canned up tightly in an armored starship. Still, I was bumbling about like a madman just trying to stay stable on my two useless feet. Those quadrupeds had it easy. So would I if I got into this bloody thing. Ouch, heavy metal bulkhead, I hope you’re pleased to meet MY head.

I finally bumped into the flank of my powered armor, the name henceforth used for my “heavy kit” (what I call it when I like being mysterious.) I grabbed on tight and spun myself into the suit’s front, open like some massive, ugly, human shaped flower. I sighed as I fell into the padded interior and began my mindless routine of combat preparation. Cue the elevator music…

I reflexively grabbed the cable to the side of my head and plugged it in behind my ear, where I had a hard data line input. Combat systems designers don’t screw with wireless unless they have to, too easy to hack… I wonder how long I can keep convincing ‘Sam I’m not an asshole… I called an initialization of the suit and the familiar base status feeds began bleeding into my brain. It was familiar like the drone of a computer fan to a sheltered nerd of old (of which I was the new breed. But I did a lot more ass kicking.)

The holding straps locked down around the bases of my arms and around my forelegs. A harness squeezed down on my stomach, completing the feeling of tense constriction familiar to any vehicle jockey. All in the name of not dying in a crash, I suppose. I prompted the suit to close and prepare for operations, it obliged like the dufus operating zombie it was.

The suit closed in a rolling wave of clicking, whirring servos and squeezing polymer seal rings starting at my feet and hands and ending at my head. My helmet closed from all sides behind my face and I heard the wet kissing sound of rubber seals locking down. I smiled happily to myself, everything in working order, life support’s green. The grunts back home hadn’t taken my baby for a joyride before they brought her onboard!

The oxygenation systems began buzzing in fresh air from the environment, conserving the suit’s internal air supply. Even then, I knew I’d have to be getting used to that head-under-the-covers stuffiness you get in full suits. My eyes flicked over to full color, wide-angle vision as I settled in. That marked the onset of the antsy feeling of nervous boredom you get before an op. The feeling is rather like going up the lift hill of a rollercoaster (which are totally badass these days, by the way. 150mph speed pod loop, anyone?)

I decided to get the combat network set up while I still had a few minutes to spare. I pinged the ship, ‘Sam and Polina. I received back affirmative responses from their firewalls and shortly had a lowband network set up. A few seconds more and I had us set up for highband, though I didn’t think we’d need it… getting weird feedback from Polina, though. Whatever.

“Evening, ladies,” I said nonchalantly. I was still rested up, despite my nervousness, and it showed well enough.

“Jesus, I have four dots” ‘Sam began. That was probably a symbol similar to five bars in human wireless terms, I guess she has four fingers... base 4 math and all. “You have some crazy networking equipment, Mackai.”

“We should cut the chatter when we get groundside, yeah?” I said, trying to be light in my suggestion by making it a question.

“eh… sure. I’ve not had a wingman on my ground ops for a while. Sorry.” ‘Sam’s voice said in my head, rather sheepishly, which was odd. Where was the angry, screaming shield maiden I had come to expect? I ran a quick check of my drone systems as a second thought. For the most part; I wasn’t seriously expecting action down there. But that sixth sense that six out of ten people believe is complete bullshit was telling me otherwise.

“Don’t worry about it, don’t you have Polina most of the time, though?” I net-spoke over the highband… I focused on my readouts again. Drones were good, my kinetic attack launchers were about a third full and I had some drone wards with me, plus a buttload of sensor buoys – flight capable of course.

“Yeah, but she’s a squealing civvie. Right, Polina?” There was a meek whimper on the other end. It made sense, not everyone here was a ground pounder…

Of course, why were we bringing along skittish Polina then? Simple; this was a data-prospecting mission. We were going to gather some scientific data on this dead planet we were screaming into and, perhaps, find something lucrative our contractor doesn’t need. Mercenaries will be mercenaries… It was likely just random swag sitting there, after all.

“So what’s the update on the L.Z.?” I asked. That’s a landing zone, for you military terminology newbies.

“I think ‘Dan got in contact with some flight controller AI holed up in a server somewhere. I guess he escaped this planet’s acceleration somehow.” Ooh, Mackai senses tingling! “I guess we lucked out, we’ve got the location of a paved landing strip near where we wanted to touch down.” That was almost too lucky.

“What’s the ETA?” I asked.

“About a minute,” ‘Sam said casually. “We’re on our final approach about… now.” The ship lurched and there was a loud blasting bang below the floor. “Don’t mind that… undercarriages. Anyway, you can flick over to the nosecam. And link up to longrange comms with the ship while you can. ‘Dan’s going to keep us updated.”

“Right.” I sent a probe into the ship network and got the carpet rolled out for me. I jacked in and set up a line with my main Rele-beacon to the ship and got it ready for use. That done, I decided to sit back and watch the crazy flight. I found the nose camera view and flicked over.

My eyes blanked, then the uncomfortably close green and white hull of the Sunrise was just below me. It sharply curved away at the borders of my fisheye view. I felt like I was surfing down the airstream. Wind buffeted the audio channels and their battle-optimized, clunky, condensing microphones. We were on a downward angle towards a hell of a lot of brown colored stuff.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“Well,” ‘Sam began, “it’s some sort of market center from the old society here.” The old and broken glass facades almost looked familiar, like some freakish alternate timeline of pre-FTL earth… like Manhattan on mega depressants.

“This society never made contact with any FTL societies,” Polina cut in calmly. “they’re pretty far out here in the Styx. Nobody comes by and no one knew there was a hostile acceleration going on here until it was too late.”

The sky was full of dark thunderheads, sizzling with lightning that flew across their massive expanses and occasionally struck the ground. The entire landscape was cast in dark drear. “What happened to them?” I asked.

“Well, d’uh,” Polina said. “They got owned.”

“Yeah, but why does it look like… this?” It was about then I figured out she probably wasn’t peeping through the camera.

“You mean the clouds? I’m not sure yet. The AIs left a breathable atmosphere, though. They’re not far along in re-terraforming the planet.” I noticed that the drear below us had resolved further. In the distance, what I had thought were mountains turned out to be megalithic structures roughly the shape of fat obelisks, studded with glowing red lights. “We’re trying to land further away from their big building. We should be able to avoid them that way. They usually don’t expect outsiders this early in their maturity.” I damn well hoped not. I didn’t study zombies, I just wiped them out if the need arose, and it oft did.

“Ten to touchdown,” ‘Sam said firmly. The rumble of the reverse systems fired and we bled off a lot of speed. You nail everything down in a transorbital craft. Good thing I was nailed down, too – because we were pulling a load of gees. The airstrip rushed at us for a few more seconds before I felt the rumble of the attitude thrusters firing.

We nosed up and all I saw was sky for an infinite moment. Then there was a resounding thud as we hit the pavement and the nose of the craft followed. When we were down on all points, I flipped off the display and went back to my helmet cams. Not a bad landing at all… we were still alive! The ship roared to a stop, firing rear thrust ahead of it and shaking me up rather nicely.

“Let me out! Let me out!” I said with mock alarm as the rumble began to fade and the engines throttled further down.

“One second, Tiger.” ‘Sam said. “The vehicle has come to a stop, please exit your seats and disembark the ride onto the left platform.” Wind blasted into the empty cabin as the doors parted ahead of me. The pavement outside was retreating slower and slower as the doors clanged open, until we finally trundled to a stop. I was strung up in a cargo egress port, the only thing big enough to let my fat ass out of the ship. Luckily, the ship was doing all of the work.

I was hauled along by the pylon holding onto my shoulders in the general direction of the doors. In a few seconds, I was clearing the floor and began to realize there was a reason they were hanging me in mid air. “Ah shit,” I dryly cussed to myself as the pylon disengaged with a nonchalant click.

I disengaged my rear legs from storage as I fell like a sack of cement from at least seven meters up before I landed on my hands and knees and rolled back onto my rear feet. The rear assembly was all cybernetic, but I’d gotten used to it like I actually had four legs… I wonder if it showed.

“Mmm,” ‘Sam began as she walked down the gangway behind me. “You sure are a fat fuck.”

“Damn…” I said over the line, “My girlfriend told me this blouse was slimming and I was, like; no way!” ‘Sam chuckled and Polina looked at me a bit funny from behind ‘Sam’s massive height.

“Right, you keep your eyes peeled then, miss thang,” ‘Sam said soberly. Though I believed I heard a slight undertone of humor.

I flipped out the wheels from the bottom of my feet and rolled my bulk around so I could get a better view than the rear cam’ could offer. ‘Sam was in her battle suit, all tall lines and exaggerated lanky proportions. Polina was in a standard, armored E.V.A. suit, complete with bubbly astronaut helmet and white paintjob.

“Could she look any more obvious?” I asked sarcastically. She stood out like a polar bear in a black paint warehouse

“It’s what we have,” ‘Sam said. “Polina only ever comes groundside as a non-combatant.”

“Ah lovely, I hate escort missions. Would you like me to hold your umbrella, miss?” I said glumly. Polina looked at me with an oddly perplexing, defeated look. The duo turned and walked towards the side of the ship, out from under its flat fuselage. I wheeled ahead of them and instinctively flipped out my defense rifle. It was a potent ballistic weapon made with human tech’, like a lot of the suit.

It was a mishmash of old tech’ retooled for a new era, but it did a good job of masquerading as ‘high’ tech. It was the best I could get, though, and fairly competent and industrious. However; it was still a lie; astronauts were using the same design principles and the U.S. navy had the same tech in their old ‘guided missile destroyers.’ It was refined mediocrity at worst and an ass kicking, old-school cyberpunk nightmare at best.

I turned on my higher level systems – sensors, active sweepers, combat managers and all that rot. I was instantly bombarded with overlays and high bandwidth feeds from the suit. I reeled for a second, then acclimated to my familiar, superhuman sense world. The whole area was looking dark and dead as far as residual heat went. General electromagnetic activity was low on the ground level. But…

I looked up and was practically blinded, “wholly shit,” I said reflexively as I dumbly shielded my face, thinking that’s where my eyes were… not the case in a battle suit. I have a shitload of eyes… everywhere.

“What?” ‘Sam net-spoke.

“Lots of charge separation activity in the clouds, it’s damn bright up there!” I said over the combat network with exasporation.

“Don’t worry about the clouds. We need to know what EM is on the ground so Polina can do her thing.”

“So what are we looking for, specifically?”

“Any electronic data that might be of historical importance.” Polina said matter-of-factly over the net.

“Alright, are you reading my sensor data, Polina?” I asked. I looked back at her with my focused vision and she shook her head. “Umm, damn…” I said smartly. “Any ability to receive waypoints, at least?” She didn’t move to answer and I couldn’t see her well through the helmet. “What?” I asked.

She looked dreamy for a second, “you’re so…” I raised an eyebrow and looked at her funny. I was about to talk when ‘Sam cut in.

“The suit hardly has any digital systems. It’s… second hand. We were going to replace it when we were on Earth. But you had to go and get your pissed girlfriend involved.” She said, reaching a whole new level of m’eh.

“Ah, screw it,” I net-spoke. “I see…” I looked about along the horizon, suppressing the bright EM glare from the sky. I could see a few pockets of activity in isolation.

“Hmm, maybe a few isolated machines… I guess the ice giants left their toys lying around.” I said finally.

“Lead the way.” ‘Sam said curtly. I took the cue and moved along the large tarmac towards an open thoroughfare into the tangle of dead buildings. I was fixed on one signature that looked somewhat faint. However, it looked pretty scraggly and unlike a simple computer box… maybe fresh roadkill. Though, I really had no clue what I was doing. I was used to taking orders. But I supposed this was how a small squad worked, ad-hoc as hell.

Hurky dur! Let’s go over thar n’ check out that stuff, lawl!

Great.

***

Around me and towering above like massive, angry giants were skyscrapers that probably at one point looked rather shapely and new-age. Now they looked pants. They were rusted out and shattered like poorly done industrial sculptures left out in the elements to die. Crumbling walkways and bridges climbed above us and a large, elevated transitway of some kind straddled the open space to the right of us. That would have been a perfect ambush point with all that elevation.

During my long walk, the place had cozied up nice and close to my imagination (much like the alien did to Ripley that one time in Aliens, with about the same emotional reaction.) My imagination had wanted none of it. Thus, since I was a soldier, I bludgeoned the fear violently down. That didn’t change the fact that it was still there.

The air about this place was undeniably wrong. It was the rust in the air. Iron-oxide was like the smell of death to anyone who’s worked around machines long enough and knows what happens when you leave bare metal open to air. Swapite my inklings I wasn’t ready to call the mission (read: turn tail and run.) I couldn’t bear to think what it would do to my relations with the crew… especially ‘Sam.

Occasionally, I switched to range finding and watched the red blips suspiciously for any active movement. It was like reading an old world-war II radar in comparison to multi-target passive lock Aegis systems. In other words; it was agonizing. Occasionally, I’d see something that tripped my suspicions, but then I thought better of it or it had disappeared altogether.

My rifle remained brandished and I clutched it like a drowning man does a lifesaver. As with all ballistics, it was ready to go at a moment’s notice. But that moment never came for our stroll through the dead streets. It had been scarcely half a mile but it had felt like two at least.

We turned a corner and I saw it; it was roadkill, alright. There was a lanky powersuit towering over the shattered remains of some crustacean-looking miniature vehicle about my size. The power suit appeared to have once housed some bipedal species, fairly skinny and taller then any of us. The vehicle it had slain with a massive lance appeared to be driverless and rather nasty looking.

The armor was posed dramatically with the lance piercing into the main body of the drone. The occupant’s shoulder area was shattered and the armor had been peeled back by some thermal-kinetic penetrator ballistics. He’d likely been killed where he stood, the signs were there. I didn’t dare look too closely into the visor of the suit for fear I’d see some mummified corpse’s dead eye sockets staring back. But I did notice a jagged yellow symbol that looked a lot like a-

“Stop!” I barked instinctively. “That lance the bloke’s holding might still be live.” My spinal comp had translated the symbol with an eighty percent probability it was a reference to electrification. It was some equivalent of a lightning bolt symbol on a taser or power box. It sounded like a fairly nasty anti-electronics weapon. Whoever had originated here had fought their creations hard and smart.

I was just about to shoot a probe onto the lance when there was a hellish crash. I spun around and aimed at the sound… finding myself aiming at the sky. I sighed as the quivering in my limbs began to settle.

“Ah, fuck me,” I said morosely. It’s called lightning, dipshit.

“It’s alright, Mack’” ‘Sam said with a surprisingly soothing air. I sighed again and tried to shake off the willies.

“Thanks, I’m sorry, sorry,” I aimlessly rambled down the squad channel.

I went ahead and shot my probe onto the lance’s contact pole, it was clear of major electric voltages.

“Right,” I said half mindedly, “should be okay to jack into. Polina?”

Polina moved forward and pulled out a hard line from the back of her suit. At least she had some link capabilities. The head at the end of the line looked to be an expanding universal type. It was covered in tiny electrodes with articulating, extending bases. It only had a few, so it looked like a serial port to me. She clicked it into the drone. After a long pause, she spoke.

“Looks like the AI commanding these things had been trying to boost the stocks of some stupid shit company. Maybe there was a military coup or something… then the AIs just kept on going and increasing corporate efficiency.” Polina’s statement stuttered and clicked a bit… the electronic equivalent of a shudder. “It happens a lot in these cases.” That was no surprise, greed could motivate someone to jump off a cliff if they got paid enough.

At length, she spoke again. “I pulled all the log data on movements of local units at that time… maybe our client can use it to guess how this thing ticks. Let’s go.”

“Go where?” I asked.

“We have a few more things to do.” ‘Sam said with utilitarian non-zeal. “Know that harbor control AI I told you about?”

“Yeah, something to do with him?” I asked.

“Right, Sherlock, here’s a cookie.” ‘Sam spoke up. I shook my head and grinned, that hadn’t happened in what felt like hours. “We’re taking him off the planet, he’s defecting.”

“I’m guessing we’re going to interrogate him when we get off planet?” I asked.

“Yup, or our client will. Though it’s probably better off for the AI then staying here. He really, really wanted out.”

***

I have just learned the true definition of ‘really, really.’

“How long? Thirty seconds? That’s too long, go faster! Please, you gotta’ get me out!” Bloody tin can was fairly convincing when his output was translated through BUSEI to English.

“Damn, he never shuts up!” I said.

“You’re telling me. It’s even worse in native binary,” Polina said. So she could apparently fluently understand binary languages. That was no mean feat! The black attaché’ case the AI was being loaded into continued babbling at us through its speaker.

“Would you shut the fuck up!” ‘Sam said with exasperation as she leaned down and gave the case a hard kick. “You’re making so much noise evil AIs on OTHER PLANETS will hear us!” Surprisingly, he did shut up. Coward first, I suppose.

I was unoccupied, and when I’m unoccupied in a hotzone, I get nervous. Thus; I figured I’d check our surroundings, we were already up a good fifteen floors. Of course, these guys were about nine feet tall, it seemed, because their structures and interiors were huge.

I’d continued getting strange readings that had led me to the paranoid conclusion we were being watched. So I’d told ‘Sam we should get the hell out of dodge soon, just to be sure. I was still nervous, despite our accelerated timeline, “Be right back, checking for rats.” I said tersely as I wheeled around and began to climb the big-n-tall sized staircase. I was incredibly stable and fast up the stairs with my four legs. This was exactly what they were designed for; urban terrain, sound familiar?

I was up on the roof in no time. I turned on my rangefinders immediately and then got quite a surprise. Red everywhere, my heart started thumping in my chest and I heard my rebreather buzz up its rhythm as my breathing quickened. I struggled to make out the distant scenery the red was buried in. Roads… alleys… everywhere!

“Fuck, fuck, oh fuck!” I said, with a positive correlation in alarm over time exactly by the oh-shit function.

“What the hell, Mack’?” ‘Sam said with an unusual measure of alarm.

“Lots of fuckers.” I said quickly.

“I’m almost done.” Polina said. Almost wasn’t good enough, there was no time… unless.

“Hurry up… both you guys have retros, right?” Retro-boosters on powersuits generally allow the user to jump helluva’ high, a jetpack for a new generation! Shit I hoped ‘Dan and ‘Zin had bought into that sales pitch when they equipped the suits. I knew I had them if it came to that… I’m not a bad guy. So; I really hoped it NEVER came to that. Running like a weasel and leaving my charges… my friends. I shuddered.

“Yea,” ‘Sam said. God, I could kiss her right now.

“Alright,” I had a plan. We had a great starting height for a good hop. “I want you two up here, then we jump out of here. Otherwise we’ll be overrun.”

“That bad?” ‘Sam asked urgently.

I looked at the contacts, still red, angry and everywhere. “Hell yes it’s that bad!” I said with undue exasperation.

“On our way, one sec.” ‘Sam said. I wheeled around and watched as they climbed up with the case. ‘Sam strapped the black case to her back as she arrived.

“What the makers are you doing?” The AI inside squeaked.

“Know what it feels like to be shot out of a cannon?” ‘Sam asked. With no response returned, she looked to me.

“Right,” I said, turning around and trying to find a spot where we could go… shit. They were between us and the LZ! A hell of a lot of them were. I patched over to ‘Dan and ‘Zin, still in the ship.

“You guys seeing this?” I asked with concern over the long line.

“What? What is it, Mackai?” Came ‘Dan’s basso synth voice.

“Get your scanners on.” I said urgently. There was a pause.

“Oh dear. This is troubling indeed, Mackai! We must lift off immediately, or we will be caught idling if they stumble upon us! I’m sorry, Mackai.”

“It’s okay, can you make a landing at the field over by us?” I asked, and hoped, and prayed, and everythinged.

“I’m sorry, Mackai. If we don’t make for the stratosphere, we will surely be within weapons range of whatever this AI might have within its arsenal.”

“It’s alright, ‘Dan,” I fucking hate your guts! Selfless save yourself stuff is cool and all. But being forced into martyrdom sucked! “We’ll find some way to buy time… I dunno... Over and out.” I blurted hastily and cut out to avoid going nuts with panic over the channel. I switched over to the combat network again.

“We’re blocked from the LZ and ‘Dan can’t pick us up right now. We’re on our own for now.” I said grimly. Polina shivered and ‘Sam patted her on the shoulder. “We can stall for time…” I looked around, looking for a gap in the red surge heading our way slowly but surely. I suppose they thought we would never go towards their structures out of fear, no hostile movement that way.

“Alright, we’re going to head that way!” I pointed towards the massive, brooding silhouettes of the obelisks.

“What the fuck?” ‘Sam said, “are you insane?”

“no, there are no contacts that way. We can set up some kind of defense there and maybe slip past their advance. They look slow as hell…” so I was more convincing myself than them. I paused, judging where to land. I switched over to my terrain sweeping radar, abolishing the angry red for a sea of green that brought momentary comfort. I found a flat spot in the general direction we were going.

I ran the location through my trajectory runner and determined we’d need to go up a good four hundred feet from a standing start to get there. “Okay,” I began again, “keep your standard tilter gyro settings and go for a burn up to four hundred and twenty feet, then you can let your suit do the landing. Simple enough, yeah?”

“Okay,” ‘Sam said, “I still think this is crazy.”

“It’s all we have.” I wheeled around and got a nod from Polina, too. “Right, I take it everyone has their bearings now… I’ll count off.” This would be SO much easier if everyone had a networked suit. “Three…two…one…” I kicked on my back boosters and lifted off.

I heard the screetching whine of engines behind me keeping pace. It was a long five seconds of the ground falling away at a fast pace before my stomach began to float in my belly as my engines cut their burn. I experienced a good two seconds of weightlessness before my stop burn started automatically. In another five seconds we were on the ground again.

“Stay with me!” I barked over the channel as I started to spin my wheels about as fast as they’d go. I headed for some cover… we were so bloody close to these buildings…. They were huge! I triggered my sensor buoys and a good eight drones burst from my pack. They buzzed into formation over the three of us in an angry cloud of flying, mini sawblades. As they settled, they started feeding me some precision information…

Each rough contact on my motion trackers was now a mostly definite point somewhere in 3d space. Eight targets at half a klick and closing… ten more… shit, off the charts! We needed cover.

“We’re hopping up this building ahead,” I said as I ran for it, rear cams still showing the dynamic duo in tow. ‘Sam grabbed Polina’s hand as I jumped up on my muscular limbs. I glided up a few floors and landed on the flat roof… stable and load bearing… glad I rock at appraising cover.

Polina and ‘Sam ascended hand in hand, the former stumbling as she landed. I fully initialized my long-range warfare software. I had a couple of buzzer bombs in my kinetic drone launchers… the EMP on those could fry some big swaths, especially since they were full drones.

Contacts at three hundred and fifty meters… ah, to hell with this! I booted my fire control and armed a buzzer with a few incendiary chasers for the second volley. I did an area target on a street out of my field of view, transparent red, crablike silhouettes highlighted through the scenery.

They were marching like a line of ants down the roads around us, encircling us… it would be no use making a good run now. I launched the volley and waited for the buzzer bomb to zip into the air and back down over the area I’d painted. The bright flash of the buzzer fried a huge swath of the buggers. The chasers finished off nearly as many, but the others kept coming.

“SLIMY BIOLOGICALS!!!” All three of us turned around as we heard a booming voice speaking in some symbol-tongue come from on high in a nearby tower. “HUMANOIDS! PAY HEED TO ME, YOUR GOD RAIDEN ENTERPRISES!” What the fuck!?

The walls of the tower-obelisk parted along a diverging set of seams with a mighty humming drone. They settled after a few seconds with a loud bang, revealing a massive, red eye camera perched on a huge interior structure.

“THROUGH MY CLEVER WILES; I HAVE LED YOU INTO MY GRASP!”

“Would you stop yelling?” I beeped over my loudspeaker in BUSEI… he’d like that… flesh bags speaking computer.

“I AM NOT YELLING! I AM PROJECTING MYSELF AS THE TRUE SUPERIOR BEING I AM! HOW DARE YOU QUESTION RAIDEN ENTERPRISES MAINFRAME 0013-242-3122?” There was a loud buzzing in the sky above us.

“Oh shit!” I said as I looked up into a blinding light in the electric activity feed. “left, left! LEFT!!” I yelled. Polina oofed a disgust gesture into the combat channel as ‘Sam grabbed her and jumped from the building. I followed right behind her and we ran into the street.

“TASTE MY THUNDER, NONBELIEVERS! HA, HA, HA!”

There was a crackling roar as lightning smashed the building we had been standing on to black crispies. Those nasty synthetics hadn’t let the atmosphere get this full of thunderclouds unintentionally… it was a superweapon!

I switched over to the Sunrise channel. “Don’t fly down for us, ‘Dan… the main hub has some kind of weather control system! They can wield lightning!”

“Affirmative, we will monitor the situation from above the cumulus layer, out.” I flicked back to the combat channel.

“I HAVE GIFTED YOU WITH AN AUDIENCE IN MY COURT FOR THE SAKE OF MY RECEIVING OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT YOURSELVES. YOU MAY EXHAUST INFORMATION UNTO ME AND FOR AS LONG AS YOU DO SO YOU WILL BE SPARED.” Ooh… this might be an opportunity… the drones were holding distance at about 300 meters. I liked the prospect of not being shot to shit. “SPEAK!”

“Ah cripes… okay…” hmm, how can I make the best of this. “umm…” I wonder how stupid this Raiden bloke is… Here goes.

“Well,” I began bombastically, spamming binary at him through my loudspeaker, “there’s one thing you must know first before you know anything about us!”

“Mackai… what the hell?” ‘Sam net-spoke… utterly confused by the sound of it.

“Shh,” I said with insanity in my output, “I got this!”

“It’s true that all that we say is false!!!” I proclaimed proudly.

“THIS IS MOST INTERESTING… BUT IF WHAT YOU SAY IS FALSE THEN YOU SAY WHAT YOU SAY IS FALSE THEN-EN-EN-EN-EN-ENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN”

Wholy crap! RUNZOMBIE_32 has caused an error in god.dll… RUNZOMBIE_32 will now hitch, crash and go apeshit. I can’t believe he just fell for a self-referencing paradox! This was almost as bad as some old cyberpunk joke… god it was too much!

About half of the robots went apeshit and started doing a self-destructive breakdance of death. Limbs smashed apart, servos overdrove and metal snapped. The racket was like twenty bee hives being raided by a bear army! It was about then I recognized that my ultraviolet and above EM feeds were going crazy. My geigers also started popping, then fizzing. Off in the distance, an hourglass shaped cooling tower was starting to glow red-hot. Oh shit, the thing shorted its power supply. What’s worse is it was nuclear!

“Oh shit!” I said across all channels. “’Dan, we need a speedy pickup.” And if we don’t make the delivery in under fifteen minutes… you get fried by a giant nuclear blast! “I think I fried the AI hub… resistance should be weak… long story.”

“I-“ ‘Dan began.

“GET DOWN HERE NAOH!” I said over the Sunrise channel in a blaring Austrian accent. Referencing old crap never really gets old. It just gets vintage. Now we must get to the choppah!

“We can use the drag line for salvage to pick you up… it’s going to take a pass for each of you.” ‘Dan said skeptically.

“Whatever… do it! We’re about to be in a hell of trouble if you don’t!” I barked over the line.

There were still a few drones alive and sane… running on backups, I guess. I picked up six targets and aimed. I steadied myself pulled the trigger, letting off three rapid fussilades from my rifle. ‘Sam got out of a short stupor and went crazy. There was a screaming whine as she let loose volleys of energy at targets.

She was already receiving my motion tracker data, so I sensor linked with her and started painting some targets for her. She’d be able to wipe them off the map with the solid telemetry I was giving her. Polina appeared to be ducked down on the ground, not so good.

I let loose another buzzer and watched the drones fall. “Do you have our location, ‘Dan?” I said into the Sunrise channel.

“We have you and can make for a location three hundred meters away from the buildings. Sending data now.”

A waypoint sprung to life three hundred meters behind us. “Stay with me,” I said into the battle channel. “Polina!” I barked. She stood up. “C’mon!” She fell in behind me and ‘Sam as we backpedaled down a street. I let loose another volley of gunfire and a few more incendiaries into their further back surviving ranks as I wheeled backward.

“How long, ‘Dan?” I said into the Sunrise channel as I turned and broke into full speed.

“Thirty seconds… one and only one of you must be exactly on that waypoint and facing magnetic south.”

“’Sam… cover me!”

“You better not be first out, you weasel!” ‘Sam barked over the combat channel.

“Don’t count on it… Polina!” I grabbed her by the arm and wheeled her towards the close by waypoint. “You first!”

We bolted towards the waypoint and behind some cover. I heard a jump and tumbling roll as ‘Sam ducked over a low wall. I heard another long, whining screech of energy fire as she let loose. Stacatto ballistic fire pinged and ripped behind us. I instinctively got between the fire and Polina and felt the bullets bounce and ping off my heavy rear armor.

We were close… and I heard the throaty approach of atmospheric engines. “Stand here!” I barked as I turned Polina to face southward. “Stand still, no matter what!” I looked her in the eyes as she looked out of the side of her bubble helmet. “We clear?” She nodded. “Good, you STAY STILL!” I really, really didn’t want her to chicken out and put us all further up the creek without a paddle. That and other things…

I backed off as the engine noise grew louder. A massive, magnetic grapple flew down, firing thrusters to adjust its angle as it came up fast on Polina. She screamed like all hell as it snatched her off the ground. I turned and drove around behind a wall on the opposite side of the street from ‘Sam. Not feeling too brave; I flipped a peek camera out from my forearm and tried to get a better look around the wall. It was promptly shot out and the feed cut. Fuckers! Those were expensive!

“’Sam!” I barked over the channel. “You go next!”

“You sure, man?” she asked. Nope, I’d have all the selfless glory… maybe it wasn’t so bad. Okay. It was. I was scared as hell, but I didn’t give a crap!

“Yes, I’ll cover this time! Go in ten seconds!” I said aggressively.

“Roger, counting now.”

I popped the drone from my left shoulder. The disc-shaped contraption folded out four legs and a rapid-scan targeting system. Two lead-storm cannons bristling with a few dozen separate barrels popped out of its domed top. I slaved it to automatic and let it scuttle out and lay down a couple of mini-mortars from its larger calibur guns.

Now or never… I wheeled out in a low stance and let out a few more incendiary drones. I had already targeted a cadre of nearby enemies for my rifle before I made the breakout. So I let loose gunfire like I’d never done before. The missiles whizzed down and crashed into the mob of disjointed drones, doing most of the damage. I was a bad shot with the rifle… well I was a bad shot in general.

“Coming in now… incoming friendly ordinance 100 meters downrange!” ‘Dan said to the lot of us.

There was a deafening thud and crackling roar as a few heavy, starship-grade missiles smashed into the ground ahead of me and a fusillade of depleted uranium bullets smashed into whatever survived.

I let loose my last three incendiaries and watched the drones trundling in disjointed packs from a distance get blasted to bits. Damn… only one buzzer left in my pack. My drone fell back and ejected a few spent tubes of bullets. I opened a bay in my pack and ejected a few more into my hand. I clicked them into place and patted the little beast on its top. That was for no particular reason other than to keep me sane.

“’I’m away, Mack, get your ass to the extraction point!” I wheeled back and bid my drone follow me. I was back out in the open in no time and standing there like an idiot. I lined up on the waypoint.

“How long?” I asked over the Sunrise channel. My little drone blasted away with its rapid cannons, totaling the nearest drone with a near-literal solid wall of lead.

“thirty seconds.” ‘Dan said. “Coming in with another payload, brace yourself.” Thank god, the drones were coming again and I needed help!

I flicked over to the drone and threw some mortar potshots out at the approaching mob. A few seconds after the little things hit home, almost as if to completely dwarf my own output, there was a massive fusillade of gunfire that growled along through the ranks of drones. I picked up my drone as he curled up back into a disk and clicked him onto my shoulder again.

Just then, I began to hear the throaty roar of heavy engines again. I let loose my last buzzer and watched it smack down the sorry remains of the drone army still approaching. “Go back into your holes!” I said defiantly through my mouth into my visor. My warm breath bounced off it and was whisked away by the rebreather.

The hiss of maneuvering thrusters came up behind me as I faced south. I was quickly snagged by the grapple and whisked away on a ride that scared the piss out of me… almost not-proverbially.

what does this what's-a-jig do?

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:06:00 +0000

Right I seem to have pressed the red button... or at least at some point I did, because I had anonymous comments disabled. That wasn't my intention n'or did I know about it when I demanded comments in my last post.

No, I lied, I did it on purpose to torment everyone who was so foolish as to visit my blog...

Okay, I lied again. Either way, comment away, new settings now abound! That's one less technical pothole to hit later.

Chapter 2: The Wolf and the Fox

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:02:00 +0000

So here's chapter 2. I'll be holding out for more hits and comments before chapter 3 is put up. So; nyah! Post comments and let me know you're here if you want to read more, it's not that bloody hard.

Having fallen in with a very peculiar crew of security contractors, Mackai does his best to acclimate, but finds yet another pressing issue is keeping things from going his way.

EXCERPT: network wide piracy alerts.
TRANSLATION: All revisions by Open-Bracket-Close-Bracket Semantics Ltd. Subroutines
HISTORY:
Sent: BUSEI administration botnet, Basic Universal Regulation and Assisted Intelligence committee division.
Received: Relay Bot @ E. Eridani
Translated at Relay Bot @ E. Eridani into Farsol Semantics
Approval stamp by BUSEI Quality Commons Commission

The following is a general piracy alert for the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. [To all you newbies – god only knows, there’s so many of you on Farsol – piracy is not all yarr harr where’s the booty at, fool? Oh wait, wrong kind of booty.]

-Merchant vessels resupplying Sat 1 in orbit around EZ Aquairi were attacked by unknown, jump capable raiding vessels of frigate class. The raiders closed distance and used fast-tracking ballistic weapons to breach the cargo bay. Boarding teams grappled unknown quantities of avionics components and fresh chemical batteries from the holds of the freighters. It is reported that half the boarding teams were killed in lethal accidents or by the crew of the ships. [These are typical pirates, suicidal, poor and desparate. At least far out where the matter density starts to drop. You humans have TAME freebooters.]

-A freighter of the Bellicose class [a model made by you earthlings] preparing for jump re-calibration in high orbit around Lalande 21185 reported contact with an unknown vessel on an intercept course with their vector. They state that this was [twenty minutes] after they began hearing strange, unencrypted radio transmissions. They report the vessel was outbound from an unidentifiable origin. Their path couldn’t be traced back to any planet. [Pirates tend to be modders, that means they use anything they get, hence the radio transmissions.]

-Anomalous activity of unknown vessels has been reported within the range of the Oort cloud of Farsol. Ships in this area are advised to operate under physical-cyber lockdown conditions.

Sunrise Ep.2: The Wolf and the Fox

I meet the benefactors in five minutes.

I was busy testing out the two drone companions in my light kit. The little buggers were four legged spider drones about the size of my fist, standard equipment for Farsol field officers. The TAR-15 Tarantula is a pretty decent model drone, at least for its size. It’s good for reconnaissance in urban or indoor environments (about eighty-five percent of environments you encounter in space… the rest being space.) It also has a nasty little belter gun you can load up with all kinds of cute toy ammo, though the miniature railgun attachment should NEVER be laughed at.

My light kit was curled up like some transforming plastic toy in the corner. I clicked in my sidearm, loaded and ready to fire. Well, at least my ex had taught me one thing… the x-factor will kick your ass when you least expect it, which is why it’s called the x factor in the first place. It stands for extra sucky… wait, that isn’t right, never mind.

I flipped my vision over to wireless and tapped into my drones’ cameras, I was using the hi-fi lenses (one on each) to get some kick ass stereoscopic predator vision (infrared mode! Prrrrrrrrr.) I took the opportunity to look up from mouse-height at my now monolithic form, sitting up on my mattress. I sure do look weird in infrared spectrums… better switch back to normal vision. I thought I managed a cringe while I looked up at my own face, not really though. I was too busy looking like I was high.

Nothing like sense-linking with remotes, it does wonders for making you look smart. So, while I still remember, I will introduce you to my pretty, pretty face. I’m a skinny bloke, but I have the face of a Cossack, chiseled and Slavic. This face has gotten me into worlds of shiny, enjoyable, painful and not-so-good situations over my life.

I was also wearing my specs at this point. They were for making me look good, mostly. They also acted as my HUD, as they were easier to ignore than superimpositions on my eyes. Also; one less important thing; they’re also for interfacing with my equipment in the event my spinal implant ever crashes.

By the way; I really hope that never happens.

“Hey, execution time, prisoner.” I heard a familiar brassy voice say through tinny drone audio. Now; I’m cynical, not twisted, there’s a difference. Thus, the joke appealed not so well to me. I would have frowned at Sam’s joke, had I had better control of my mouth. I instinctively turned my vision to face her. My ‘eyes’ whirled around on their eancy weancy legs and looked up at her. I noticed, dastardly, that she was still looking up at my stoned face.

I should forewarn that I’m a pervert. In my defense; most people of both genders value my friendship and my constructiveness in their lives when I’m not an asshole. I’m a pervert, not a shut-in creep. In other words; I looked at everything BESIDES her face… faces get boring after a while. Don’t look at me with those accusing eyes!

So anyway, for those of you who want to know (you star trek geeks and your exotic alien women) she was VERY human. Well, very woman, at least. For those of you who like their women like they like their coffee (no, not cheap and right-this-second! I mean dark and strong!) She would be a winner on her looks alone.

She was rather sinewy, which was obvious through the jersey top and high-waters she was wearing, dumb fabric that fell limply about her betrayed her curves. That aggressive armor she’d worn hadn’t done her any justice! She had this odd yet oddly beguiling tomboy look to her which I hadn’t really noticed before. Mostly because she was too busy threatening people’s well being and alternately keeping me in states of shock and awe.

Speaking of shock… she looked down right at my remote eyes.

My little drones froze, and I was afraid she might haul off and squish the wee things. But she just scoffed, “fucking drone jockeys. If you keep this shit up, you’ll have TWO women you really won’t want to be around.” She was getting more agitated as she went on, I thought now would be a good time to switch back. My eyes blanked for a few seconds, then I was fully back in my own head.

“I mean seriously, what the fuck?” She said aggressively. I paused. “You got anything to say for yourself, asshole?” Good things I could say: her working out shows. No. that could be taken badly… Grovel?… cry? I hate it when my mind gets the blue screen of death! Oh wait, false alarm, I have an idea! And it’s… tell the truth? What the hell?

“I…” Ah, why not? Freakin’ say it! “I’m sorry. I’m a bloody pervert, I know. I was even convincing myself I was guilty… outside my own race? Wow! I sighed and went on. Might as well let this runaway train have one last hurrah. “I also showed you a lot of respect before. Was I trying to exploit you then? I’m happy to say that’s not who I am. Pervert, yes. Jackass, not on my life.” Okay, let’s tally the votes. Hopefully my ballseyness doesn’t end up on her calling me out and punching me in the face. I couldn’t stop myself from pulling my hands up to my shoulders like the skinny kid getting his lunch money pilfered by Big Bubba’

“Hmm,” she nodded thoughtfully. “Good answer. But, if this shit gets me angry again, things will be VERY personal.” She swiftly turned and walked from the room.. I let out a long sigh, being careful not to make it too audible.

I activated my new automation for loading my Tarantulas and shutting them down and watched them skitter into their little cubbyholes in my pack. Luckily, there weren’t any hang-ups or failures. I nodded approvingly and walked out of the cramped bunkroom.

So I’d saved my own ass, didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling guilty. What if what I did WAS kind of screwed up?

***

I walked in to find ‘Sam standing alone shamelessly. She nodded in my direction and I looked about stupidly.

“Hey,” I said with sarcastic enthusiasm as I gave up looking for the stragglers. “Here’s the idea of a meeting; everyone shows up!” And we were short two heads; my benefactors. Sam pointed down toward the bridge again, no large profiles blocking the main worldview-

“Oh, d’oi!” I said as I smacked myself on the forehead. I looked down a bit further and saw a duo of eight legged creatures about the size of my head curled up in tiny flight chairs. “Captain?” I asked.

“Yes?” the basso voice I’d heard before ripped through the bridge and made me jump. God?

“’Dan, get the hell out of your chair and talk to us over the network.” Sam said impatiently as I looked about nervously. I just hoped there weren’t any more lovely surprises for me, a.k.a., the newbie.

The transpara-monitors around the pilot pit ceased emanating lightning-speed readouts and HUDS. The creature in the lowest and largest uplink lifted itself up and scuttled out. It buzzed and flittered to the one in the other seat, prompting that one to rise. They lithely jumped down to the floor and scuttled over to us. They were holding a personal distance oddly adequate between humans, but not very good for giant, fuzzy spiders the size of my head.

I honestly am not terribly afraid of spiders. But still; aliens and spiders... I paused, waiting for them to say something over the babbler, but I was getting nothing downstream from them.

They were odd looking creatures. Though clearly similar to arachnids, they had a number of definite differences. First, they had yellow stained book gills running in a thin duo of slits over their backs and looking as though they continued on under their abdomens. On their other surfaces, they were covered in a thin pelt of tan and white spotted hair. Their forward limbs, the set that didn’t qualify among their eight legs, were long and gangly, almost as much as the legs. The limbs appeared to be able to manipulate objects by curling around them. I suppose they rose to sentience as tool users, like most of us still left stewing in our own excrement inside The Bridge.

I was back to the present as they suddenly stirred. Their gills began to vibrate, then to shimmer in multiple visible electromagnetic spectrums with an effect like a rainbow. They then began to dance about and brandish their forelegs at one another. They were also emitting some audio byproduct. The sound was like mountain wind swimming over well-made wind chimes while a Buddhist Monk played a harp. This was oddly therapeutic for me, that and I had actually gotten some decent sleep. Those together made me feel all right, at least for a second. Damn, I needed a massage…

“I apologize,” the synthetic basso voice rumbled in my head. That ended my lovely moment much like a truck ends a fly on its windshield, sad and not at all lovely. “But, my brother, 1,213, is acting decidedly like our species. This is very un-typical for either of us. We underwent a rather nasty locking of horns just now” There was a pause as my babbler processed some more of the speech. That pleasant romp was a fight?

“Allow me introduce myself and my brother on behalf of the both of us. I am 1,212 and this is 1,213, as I have said before.” Weird way to name oneself, I supposed they were from some massive hive-creche, as arachnids tend to lay massive egg groups. Families tend to go from namimg their kids after the great war hero in the family to naming them after sandwiches by the third kid. I’d hate to think how hard it would be for a family in the thousands.

“Eh…” Sam said aloud. “Their full names are Badhadboadan and badhadboazin, it’s the closest lingual sound to their number-names,” she said, making the pronunciations seem rather easy. “Just call ‘em ‘Dan,” she pointed to the leading one, “and ‘Zin,” she pointed to the other, slightly darker hued one. I hoped I’d be able to tell them apart, I’d likely forget which one was which if they moved.

“We are from the planet Tyrennia, I suppose you could call us Tyrennians, that would be most suitable. You must understand, however, our race doesn’t deal with outsiders. Save the two of us, of course.”

I raised an eyebrow and my babbler sent off the nonverbal signal. Damn thing! I wasn’t expecting that. “Ah, you are curious?” The basso voice said excitedly. I moaned inside my mind. This would be a long conversation, seeing as I was naturally inquisitive but also had an unnaturally short attention span. That and this bloke seemed to be a jabber jaw, good people most of the time, but jeez!

“We were ostracized by our crèche some decades ago for being un-Tyrennian. We are a very collectivist lot, you see. As thus; any dissent is not taken well. We got off with a fair punishment and avoided being recycled… We tend to take this as a gift and a message from Order to move fourth and prosper in the name of our race…” blah, blah, relatively cerebral, though.

“We hope some day we may return rich and show what benefits befit interstellar commerce!” If only they knew about some of the consequences. But they were idealists. Knowing that would never stop them. I had recognized that earlier on when I had heard this gent talk modestly.

“Bridgett should be arriving shortly.” He added hastily. Bridgett, who’s Bridgett? I thought that decidedly hard so my babbler would hear it. “Ah, she is the ship’s engineer.” A grease monkey? Likely to be a rather gruff thing, was this crew going to be all aggressive girls? Damn, I was going to drown in an ocean of burning estrogen!

“Did someone mention my name?” I heard said behind me in a squeaky, 21st century London accent. I turned around immediately, not really knowing what to expect by that point. “Why, hello there, sunshine!” She said with incredible zeal, grinning with an unsettling tyrannosaurus rex grin. I suppose this would be Bridgett. This all while she appeared human. She was wearing a rather peculiar outfit, blouse and short dress that looked somewhat out of style but slightly sophisticated in a librarian sort of way… I sat for a few seconds, thoughtless and confused.

“What’s ‘a matter, love?” She questioned mousily, “never seen a girl before?”

“Bridgett, you’re not even technically human…” ‘Sam offered bluntly.

“Ah shaddap!” ‘Bridgett’ said with a scowl. “You know I’m -oh my god, what happened to my real body?” She said with massive drama. “Must have thrown it out the airlock, oh well!” A likely cover story. This masquerader was clearly having some kind of identity crisis.

“Bridgett, this is nonsense.” ‘Dan said over the babbler, like a parent chiding a child. “You are a cybernetic organism and have been so long as we have known you. Do not confuse our new crewmember.”

“Ah,” she squealed, “you’re the new bloke headed for the meat grinders, lovely!” she said that with far too much exuberance for my liking… No liking at all, that is. She then casually jumped onto our babbler-party-line.

“Uhh,” I said over the babbler, “so I’ll be doing drone tech duty, mostly?” I asked. Hopefully non-field work.

“Indeed, though we are also counting on a pilot of a drone controller,” ‘Dan said. That was also known as flying a glorified, unarmed control pod on limited fuel with crappy maneuvering systems and a few dozen cookie-cutter, crappy drones backing you up. Lovely, I don’t think I needed that body I was using anyway, a full cyborg body would suit me just as well, as I’d likely die a few times. I looked at my hand and wondered if I should kiss it goodbye.

It was about then I remembered all the military grade drone equipment and fighter-grade weapons systems they bought. So I hoped and prayed that they were for me. A fighter retrofitted as a drone controller would be a GOOD thing.

“My BFF is on her way!” Bridgett squeaked. I turned, completely off balance (conversationally, so no, no cartoonish fall, you creeps.)

“Who’s that?” I asked quite innocently. I really hoped there was no one so hard to make small talk with as this crazy mystery woman-cybernetic… thingy… whatever she was.

“Ooh, time for an info dump!” Her face blanked and she spouted a massive amount of data on my babbler, which then dumped it on the synthetic part of my brain. It was so heavy I physically said “Oof!” Okay, maybe I can find the important stuff.

“Ooh sorry, duckey! Let me just say the important stuff…”

“S’ okay,” I croaked. Almost had it… either that or I was about to lose physical control and soil myself straining to do so…

Polina Soldeux
AGE: 23 [Converted to Sol years]
PHYSICAL: Human, augmented.
REPUTATION STAPLES:
-Birth daughter of “Simon “TheMortician “ Serriistere
-Received certification from Guild Arcanum of conditioning as a Data-Archaeologist, Age 21
-Guild Arcanum Thesis received high notoriety: “Ice Giants: The Singularity and Catastrophe”

“Woah…” I said aloud, dumbstruck with some large measure of awe “Daughter of TheMortician.” He was one of the leading theorists in Data-Archaeology. Even if you weren’t into that, you knew about TheMortician… period. “You know this girl?”

“Yes,” Bridgett gloated, “aaand… she’s our ship’s archaeolologist…ist.” She stumbled foolishly. She was too good at sounding dumb to actually be that dumb. I’ve known stupid people, they like to sound smart. Yes, I am a hateful individual… Only because stupid people get everyone killed in wars, if you fight smart enough, few, if anyone, dies.

Well, if they had this kind of brass on the crew, I suppose it couldn’t be that bad. My luck was looking up!

“Ooh, wot?” Bridgett suddenly looked stern. “Oooh duckey, you’ll be all right, I want you to talk to ‘Zin now…”
“’Zin is clammed up.” Sam said unenthusiastically.

“-I mean ‘Dan, yes ‘Dan!” Bridgett did a good job of looking worried as she looked toward the hamster-colored spider standing somewhat distant, still looking creepy. It glanced at me with its two main stereoscopic eyes and I looked away quickly.

“-OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO HELP ME! THE PIRATES-“ Oh shit… new person on the line, likely Ms. Soldeux. Oh, no! Where are you going, luck! Come back! I would like to take a moment to inform everyone I’m also dying a little inside as my stomach flops a bit… yay?

“Get a hold of yourself, Polina,” ‘Dan said with almost human affirmativeness. “What’s happening?”

“Jesus, ‘Dan, I’m about to die…” there was slight sniffling on the other end of the line. “I can’t fight these guys, they’ve been tailing me… they’re pirates or thugs or something… they won’t speak in BUSEI. They’re trying to scare me into ejecting or something!”

“What is she flying?” I asked ‘Sam aloud.

“Last ‘I saw; it was your ship.” Sam said blankly, looking a bit bleak in the face -- though the amusement in her tone didn’t go unnoticed. Another tick on the blacklist under ‘Sam.’ She appeared to be somewhat dazed, maybe in cyberspace trying to evaluate the situation herself. This wasn’t big news compared to what was coming in on the line. I was thinking quick…

“I can’t fight in this thing, I’m running it on auto pilot, it would be suicide to let it fight by itself-“

“Let me pilot it-“ I thought into the conversation network.

A pause, far too long. I was getting impatient. I wanted to do something, anything to get this crap off of my mind!

“Look,” I asserted into the line, “do you want to die?” I only took one unit of interpersonal communication training as part of my basic in the stellar Fallers, by the way. Does it show?

“Get her back here,” I said aloud and directly to ‘Dan (remoting talent also means you know how to whisper in cyberspace.) “Get me in that ship, I don’t care how crappy it is…”

“Mmm… of the quality of excrement?” Dan thought into the babbler line. “As you process excrement in a rather nasty way as a species, I must venture you say that the Sun Lark is unsavory and useless. The statistics of her class and loadout beg to differ.” Another big dump, another big headache. Damn, I’m an Augment, not a bloody super AI!

Wait a second. I reviewed the blurb about the ship…“The DCV Star Lark is of the Kestrel class commissioned by Martani Secuity Inc.” Wow, they were quite legit… the Stellar Fallers based their business model off of MSI. I brought up a 3d turnaround of the hull and watched it spin as the information about the ship continued to jog through my head. It was actually helluva good… More of a fighter craft or miniature warship than an actual drone controller.

I was more interested in the fact that it had an armored cockpit that was fully blinded, no one could see inside. I had an idea. “Okay, I need to get in that ship… I don’t want to risk any lives besides my own.” And yes, a glowing, golden light surrounded me in my supreme protagonism. Thank you, would you like an autograph?

“I’m patching you in to a hailing frequency with the enemy squadron.” ‘Dan whispered back, I think I’ve just been overestimated! Oh shit!

Think fast… name dump of this ship… SSW-DCV Sunrise under the direction of… this would do.

“Speak” a gruff human on the other end of the hail demanded. The lights in the bridge dimmed and both spiders scurried back up into their flight seats. A tactical map came up, there was one green arrow at the center… another flying towards said green arrow, and a hell of a lot of red flying every which way. I muted the hail.

“I assume that red represents potential ways the combat systems onboard think the pirates can kick our ass?”

“Precisely,” ‘Dan said. Damn. I was tempted to throw my hands up in the air and run from the bridge in a panic. But I managed to keep my cool. No autographs, please.

I summoned up my most official Rele-shout for the hail. “This is the SSW-DSV Sunrise under the direction of Sunrise Starwide… aggressive action will result in retaliation in kind.”

“This is of trivial importance to us, for we are shielded!” They said it like king Arthur who just found a durn ‘magic’ laser. I chuckled ruefully. Who did they think I was, an idiot? Or do they think I think they think I think I’m an idiot… ah, screw it!

I glanced at the Sunrise’s military datashee --, kinetic attack drones, ballistic cannon.

“We are a fully equipped military vessel with fully capable ballistic combat networks, attacks by ships reliant on shields alone are strongly cautioned against.” Translation from corporate speak: “If you fuck with us wif yo’ punk ass shields, you gonna’ die!”

“Well then, we have armor… shit, Milligan, what do we do?” Was delivered downstream from the hail. Okay, so they were either stupid at bluffing, and thus actually equipped with potent armor and damage control… Or; they sucked at bluffing and were trying to bluff. The latter was covered by Murphy’s Law (synopsis: “oh shit! I didn’t plan for that!”) And thus a bad gamble on my part.

The green arrow was now nearly on top of our green dot. “Where’s the docking bay?” I said aloud.

“Follow me,” Sam said to the air. I wanted to get there right now. “I’m guessing you mean the docking systems for the sun Lark? We have those. They’re fairly new.” Thank god… no extra vehicular activity I’d have to do.

So here’s ingenious plan A: First, I convince them the Sun Lark is going runaway and attacking it would make many things explode… second. Oh shit, what was second? Oh, yes! I jump in and make it do crazy things, bluffing them into running like sissy school tikes that’ve seen a ghost. Hah, sometimes even I amaze myself.

We ran from the bridge while I half mindedly tried to formulate a response to the last sorta-bluff on the hail. Okay, going to have to think fast, time to begin the execution of plan A…

“Oh shit, what the fuck is wrong with our flight computer on that drone?!” I willed over the hail.

“There isn’t anything wrong with-“ Sam said aloud.

“Not the time, Sam, part of my plan.” I grumbled mischeviosly. She shook her head and rolled her eyes as we continued down the hall.

“What the fuck, the one we’re chasing?” Came the gruff voice on the other line.

“Yes, you gotta’ let us get that thing linked up, it’s about to go runaway!” I willed down the hailing line, feigning panic. “If you knock it out of the sky, rocket powered death will be flinging everywhere, and it will be angry!” That’s what happens when loaded ships explode… Hence; why military strategy now emphasizes, fewer, more powerful buggers instead of gank swarms (a.k.a. kamikaze fireworks.)

“Are you kidding, mate?” He asked skeptically.

“No. It’s loaded and primed, we’ve got to stop the thing before it goes apeshit!” I really hoped I performed a convincing “we’ve got to disarm this bomb before the bus goes under 30 miles per hour!”

“Let us link it up and empty the bays, we might be able to wrangle it before it’s too late!” I said plaintively down the hail line.

“Oh shit, Hal, let the thing dock, they have to unload the weapons!” Suckers! The fun thing is, we’d be loading the weapons in… the weapons-

“Sam, oh shit! Sam!” I yelled. She turned and raised her eyebrows in some bastard mix of exasperation and concern, where did she learn to do all this human body language? “Are the weapons you bought for the ship ready in the dock?” I said in meatspace once again.

“Who do you think we are, slugs? It’s been ten hours since we left, yes!” I sighed and wiped the sweat from my brow.

“Ms. Soldeux?” I said to the convo’ line.

“WHAT THE FUCK TOOK YOU! CAN I DOCK OR WHAT? … who is this-“

“Yes you can! Let the autopilot bring you in, then get ready to leg it out of the hatch, I’m doing switchsies.” I said evenly down the line.

“…alright, just get me the fuck out of here-“

“I will,” I said with firmness that even shocked me, since when was I a cool talker?

There was a hellish slam below us as we entered the bay. The roof was barely over my head and the one narrow serviceway to the hatch was surrounded by beltways with lead bullets lined up on them and tiny elevators with clamps for missiles.

“Where’s the hatch?” I asked. Sam pointed down to a circular port in the center.

“That’s the ship-to-ship port, the ship will dock upside down, don’t puke when you exit gravity or hit your head or something.” She said with a hint of concern. That was a first. I wonder if she approved of this buccaneering lumberjackery.

I leaned down over the hatch and squatted there, waiting. Time to ice the cake. “Shit!” I yelled in a panic down the hailing line, “What do you mean it’s overrunning our networks?”

“Oh shit! What the fuck!” the gruff bloke yelled on the other side of the line.

The hatch opened. “Oh fuck, oh fuck!” Polina yelled as she dove feet first through the hatch. I grabbed her and lifted her promptly out of the way so she didn’t fall on her ass. She really sucked at getting out of that tin can. “Who are you?” She asked in exasperation as I let her down. A load of carrier trays and lines locked into the ship below me as I leaned down, the hum of moving service systems pervading the bay.

“A dead man.” I said plainly as I jumped down the hatch, the hum subsiding through the armored hull of the ship and coming through faintly through the narrow hatch.

“Do you got it, man?” The gruff bloke on the other side of the line asked. Oh shit… um… where was I? The weapons were just about done loading.

“What the hell, it’s overriding the docking systems! What kind of bug did this thing pick up?” The hatch closed in a ripple of spinning sections and clicking knobs and sliders.

I was already releasing the docking pads hugging the small fightercraft to the bottom of our hull when the response down the hail came. “I’m beginning to wonder myself.” The hailee said after a long pause. The words were said with a sudden coldness that chilled me to the bone.

“Real bugs wipe out a ship in seconds, why the hell didn’t it just leave you for dead? Prick, you’re screwing with us!” Was yelled down the line.

Shit, oh shit. My mind blanked for a few seconds, then I was back. What the fuck was I doing out here? What would I say? Did they just lead me into a trap?

“I…” think, think, think!

“Prime the guns, Hal, shoot the little gnat down!” Active lock alarms started going off and big, nasty looking, red triangles filled the faux-window covering the cockpit canopy of my ship. They buzzed angrily around, enhanced sights -- laser rangefinders all sorts of things trying to track my craft!

“Oh my god… it’s a virus!” I yelled in alarm down the hail. Going to plan B… or is it just plan A extended?

“Hold that! What the fuck do you mean!” came down the hailing line.

“We had a combat AI onboard, it held back the infection, but now it’s being subverted.” I paused, mostly for drama. “I think the fighter’s still runaway, we couldn’t get any of the ammo off of it!” Of course, I was in the fighter. “Now OUR computer’s starting to go ape!”

“Fuck, shoot that bird down, I’ll take an area blast instead of a direct attack!” The gruff bloke said down the line in a panicked blur.

“No, don’t risk it! If that thing gets in Rele-contact with you, you’re computer’s next! It must be some kind of nasty marketeer meta-being!” I said with desperation down the hailing line. This was like a science fiction B-Movie. I knew they’d take this, real viral vectors could pass easily. Their only option would be to run.

I started up the auto-combat routine in the ship. “I’m telling you that things loaded, oh shit, man, it’s gunning for you, GET OUT NOW!” I sounded even more panicked then when I was panicked. Mostly because I was about to get plucked out of the sky if this didn’t work. I started activating random gestures in the control interface that had linked to my mind.

The weapons primed and the afterburner started by coincidence. The screen also shifted to infrared and Poinga’s smash hit “Cowgirls of the stars” started playing in my head. Who the hell installs a media center in a military craft? Then I saw the pink, fuzzy dice bouncing and floating in the zero gravity and cursed the day that little girl used this beautiful, beautiful ship as a yacht!

Oh god, I hope I don’t die. I thumbed over to the tactical overlay and watched a medium-sized shitheap of a ship turn around and implode to an infinitely small point from a hundred different directions. They’ve run.

“Are they on the trace, ‘Dan?” I asked down the overstretched babbler chat. I was exasperated and likely running off of a shitload of waste adrenaline.

“They jumped out, it was an emergency jump, they aren’t coming back. It looks like they went to a completely different branch of the network.” ‘Dan burbled. I sighed and collapsed in the flight chair. Holy crap… I wasn’t going to die slash wasn’t dead.

***

“A human interchange model, huh? Why did you need me to do that, 1,212?” Bleh, can’t see.

“I’m sorry Newsdot-“ ‘Dan said in my head. Oh wait, eyes are closed.

“What, you’re giving me a pet name now?” the new voice questioned.

“Calling you by your full name in standard speech would take five minutes, Newsdot.” ‘Dan said monotonously. “Your enterprise name would be much more suitable in this case.”

“I see… Indeed, you’re correct! So, still, why, old bean?”

“Our new crewmember is of the persuasion of which this interchange model caters.” ‘Dan said, that woke me up from my dead stupor.

I looked up at the virtual model of a middle aged, balding. butler-like individual, complete with proper English pronunciation.

“I see, why do you need me to re-brief you? You could just dump on him what I did on you.”

“It’s not so simple, you see, he’s technically a member of the Stellar Fallers.” ‘Dan said with a possible hint of wryness.

The representation’s eyes widened. “Farsol? I can safely assume by my approximation of possibilities that you are likely concerned with using him as leverage to gain access to classified documents?”

“Correct. In accordance with the Farsol Insourcee Enablement act, of course.” I think ‘Dan said that… too many big words.

I slumped in my chair and fell asleep.

***

The data dump hit me like a bucket of cold water.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty, shall I schedule a manicure for you pansy ass?” I grumbled and sat up, I’d been plopped down on my bed and ‘Sam was standing beside it.

“I checked a background file on MWPedia, certified by lolfacts.rhub,” Sam said smugly. “The article said human circadian rhythm naturally settles into a sixteen hours by eight sleep hours rhythm. I was feeling kind, so I gave you eight hours and ten minutes.” I’d never heard her talk so long… people surprise.

“Any particular reason you suddenly give a crap about me?” I grumbled hoarsely.

She scowled down at me from her standing height over my flat-on-my-ass height. There was a BIG difference. “One, the data that you fell asleep and missed –and that I just dumped on you- is pertaining to your virgin mission. Hopefully we won’t catch the short end of the stick, as they say,” virgins and sticks? Oh god, more morbid humor!

“Second,” she said as she stopped chuckling to herself, “you did a really ballsey thing back there. Plus, you saved a crew member. That’s going above and beyond in my book.”

“So, you forgive me for sneaking a peak before?” I asked, smiling hoefully, but NOT innocently. She frowned, slackened, frowned again, then grunted in frustration.

“Ah hell, why not?”

“So then…” I said, smiling dastardly. (Where’s my pencil mustache, I must twirl it scandalously, then tie a helpless victim to the railroad tracks, mweh, heh, heh!) “What happens if there’s more of that ballsey shit where that came from?” Damn, I hope I don’t get punched in the face for this. Even if I do, it MIGHT be worth it, depending on how many teeth I lose.

“I ‘unno it’s hard to top-“ She suddenly went from genial expression to defcon 1 death glare, then pointed right between my eyes. “You’re pushing it, human!” I chortled a bit, both out of nervousness and because this was funny. “You WON’T get away with that kind of shit again… just this once!” She sighed and walked towards the door, then paused and looked over her shoulder. “By the way; run for landfall is in two hours. Get your heavy kit together and be ready to go groundside.”

“Big guns?” I said plaintively.

“Yes… you might actually be decent with them, the way you behaved before… keep it up and I won’t change my mind. Don’t and I’ll not be within a mile of you when you’re in that stupid suit.” She turned in one fluid motion and walked out.

***

“Ten years?” ‘Sam questioned, the main view was dominated by pitch-blackness and a single shadow in a land of shadows dominating the view and disappearing below us. “I thought you said this planet wasn’t hot!” I turned my attention to the tactical view, standing out from the normal real-space and only visible through the virtual screens of my spectacles, enhanced reality. There was a solitary green arrow facing a large, bumpy sphere, the view had to be at nearly seven thousand clicks range. I looked at the blank planet.

“Marketeer dominated worlds never cool down,” Polina said morbidly, looking very afraid as red markers pinned themselves along the coastlines of the planet, likely probable settlements. “The AIs are always watching.” My spine shivered as she whispered out the words. I’d shivered because I knew just how right she was.

Chapter 1: Crash Landing

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:49:00 +0000

Without further adeau, here's the first installment in the Sunrise story.
Mackai Solen finds his future a shambles and his life in danger, both at the hands of an unlikely, but furious nemesis. Left no other choice; he flees for the stars to an unknown future on a never-ending job with a crew of strangers.

There was nothing quite like watching your things get thrown out of the window of your own apartment over a remote video feed from your office too far away to do anything. What was the clincher was that the blonde haired beast on the other end was a woman I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. She had what little commitment I could spare from my military tour, and I was beginning to realize even that wasn’t enough. Those clingy ones get you like that and never let go.

“MACKAI YOU SON OF A BASTARD!“ Ooh, there goes another kitchen chair. Eighty stories down… there was no way it was going to survive. “I can’t believe you took another tour in February! You knew how lonely I was you son of a bitch!” She said with zeal as she lobbed yet another heavy implement out the window with her cybernetic limbs. “You should know I’m cheating on your ice-cold ass and it’s all your fault!”"... I started to spout out some reconciliatory words, then cut myself off after I finally realized what she’d said. I’ll admit, I didn’t think much for the next fifteen seconds. “You blame me for you cheating on me?”"..."

“You don’t know what I’ve been through!” she said defensively. “Do you know how it feels to be lonely!?” She screamed the word so loud that the remaining window glass in the room shattered behind her. Why the bloody hell did I go steady with a full cyborg? Hell, I didn’t even know her sanity credentials… oh wait now I did… crazy mofo’.

“Do you know how it feels to unleash a mind-fucking mega virus on herds of AI zombies who don’t know any better?” I yelled back reflexively. I was pulling the “my buddies died face down in the mud for this?” card. On the whole viral genocide of dumb AIs thing… It sucked. Those poor skynet-esque buffoons smashing apart planets and mining out entire solar systems were as innocent as a colony of ants. Still, we had to squish the poor buggers nonetheless. I was tired and angry simultaneously. Being tangry isn’t pleasant, like reliving one’s adolescence all over again.

“Sentries!” I roared into the call channel, fully unable to control the angry jitter to my output in my angsty stupor.

“This is Farsol emergency, how may we be of assistance?” came an amazingly sedate voice in my head.

“Yeah, there’s an enraged cyborg… tearing apart my apartment.” I barely managed to keep my output from cracking and stuttering as I slowly said the sentence into the security channel. It was about then I realized just how little I believed what was happening. First came the urge to cry and gobble like a schoolgirl. But then my manly man lumberjack training kicked in and I hastily felt like breaking things, too. Maybe my girlfriend and I could do lunch and break things together. I believe that would be what most people would call “SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY AT THE SUPERDOME!”

My squeeze paused and looked over into the room cam with sudden fear in her eyes, “What the hell are you doing?” I waited for it to click, feeling rather satisfied that I’d delivered some vengeance. “Farsol security? YOU BASTARD!”

She resumed throwing things out the window with massively renewed vigor- oh shit! Not the crystal drink glasses! “If I get out of aggression rehab, I’ll fucking kill-“ At that point I was almost too pissed to breathe, so I cut the line before I said something that would earn me a new stalker-slash-killer. She was buggered, anyway. The Far-sec sniffers would be able to find her in every square foot of the city given enough time. Hopefully I had that much going for me at least. So I suppose she’d just accepted the futility and was going to have one last hurrah of going medieval on my stuff before she went to psych therapy.

***

About then I held back the urge to vomit, aided by my stomach suppressor implants. They were lovely one day out of every month when you really needed them… whenever something really fucked up happened. This was definitely one of those days.

“What the hell do you mean she bloody escaped the paddy wagon?” For a few seconds there, I lost control of myself. Mostly because I was rather afraid they were already writing my will and I might as well get on with it and upload before she got a chance to kill me. Goodbye, old body, it’s been a blast!

“It’s alright, Mackai, that’s why I’m talking with you now.” The sun was way, way on the other side of the planet. Maybe it was shining over thar in gosh darn China on the other side of the earth. I had slept about twenty minutes in the past three hours. Thank the stars for emergency meetings, or I would have pulled my hair out and gone insane with anticipation of my uncertain future… had to relax. What the hell am I saying? I’m going to frickin’ die!

“I want to disappear, Jasper, you have to help me!” I pleaded.

“Active duty,” he grumbled in his basso voice. That was more a tentative question from His Manlyness the Grand Master Sergeant. That was because Sergeants of the Stellar Fallers didn’t actually ask questions, They didn’t have to because they had given them a ruthless suplex and told questions to call them daddy.

I was feeling a lot like the question in that moment of sheer terror. I gulped. Full active duty was a nightmare, but it was where people who wanted to get away went. Though I was much too pretty to spend one out of twenty hours flying through a hellhouse and then spend the next nineteen (of the rest of my life) crying to a psychotherapist.

“Okay then… One last option,” he said, dark, piercing eyes glaring up at me over his arched hands. Apparently he had x-ray vision and could read the discontent screaming around and around through my mind at the mere mention of active. “Other than that, we make you full time office and put you under constant security detail.” I was also much too smart to spend the rest of my life in make-work jobs meant for washouts. After all, I was one of the best drone technicians the Stellar Fallers had. I grumbled absently.

Grand Master Sergeant Jasper Fahlsol sighed and suddenly looked very tired. “Mackai, you’re a good man to us, a good remoter and a good programmer. However...” he paused, thinking things over as commanders of massive, interstellar military firms must often do. “You’re running down my bag of tricks… Mackai.”

“I thought you said I only had that one other option-“ Jasper grunted and I shut up.

Jasper laughed slightly and grimaced. People like Jasper only grimace in the pig-flying event that a joke pierces their stoic nature, or in the more likely event they’re backed into a corner. “You’re a piece of work, Mackai. You ‘got balls.” I instinctively looked down at my jeans just to check. Yep, everything seemed in order from the outside, one thing my girlfriend HADN’T taken. Jasper laughed a sandy grind of a laugh at that

“Like I said, Mackai, I got one more thing for you. You sure you wanna’ disappear?” I nodded emphatically, remembering how my Girlfriend had told me about the hydraulic knives she’d replaced her ulnas with for “self defense.”

“Then I ‘got one word for you; insourcing.” I paused to think over this extremely heavy word. Insourcing was when a professional firm exported complete service of a particular form to another. Farsol’s Stellar Fallers had such insourcing services for hire. “It’s pretty much the foreign legion for any good talent we can export, you disappear.” He snapped his fingers with the last word and grinned like a card shark.

So it was about then I realized it was my only real option. I still remember this moment in hi-def - I made sure to archive it heavily and back it up for sentimental reasons. There was Jasper, arms forming a neat pyramid, hands hiding everything but his eyes, looking like the dastardly artificers of the past, if you know which one, you get a cookie! Anyway…

He was surrounded by the muted blue of the stratosphere out the shutters behind him. The room was dark, save the light from Shangri-La, the massive float membrane on which the Stellar Faller naval base hung in low orbit and upon the top of which we were perched. It was nearly five-hundred kilometers in diameter, so large it affected weather systems on a global scale. I called it home and I was about to kiss it goodbye.

“What do I have to do, Jasper?” I asked, surprisingly calm considering this moment changed my life as I knew it.

***

“Excuse me, but do you have my stapler?” Dwaine asked from behind me, I jumped and dropped my Tarantulas back into my foot locker. The little drones rolled into defensive balls and bounced a few times before settling. “Someone’s being naughty!” Sure, an employee in the office after his shift rooting around his company locker isn’t common. But, hell, not at all suspicious.

“Don’t want to talk about it,” I mumbled, and I sure as hell didn’t. I also, sure as hell, wanted my light kit on hand when I left the building, just in case.

“Have a case of the Mondays?” Dwaine crooned the last word like a fat office telephone operator, which made me roll my eyes. References to out of date, pre-jack entertainment were so passé… unless I was the one doing it.

“My girlfriend escaped from Farsol Psych, told me she’s cheating on me, and was last seen completely trashing my apartment.”

I could almost see Dwaine cringing behind me. Of course, that only lightly veiled his office-jockey sized drama vampirism. He was a full time cubicle spook, I never really envied him. “In that order?” he asked. He was also once my wingman when I was in an anti-sensor battalion, he’d washed out, I hadn’t. Nonetheless, the slight hint of empathy that masculinity allowed showed in his tone. I silently basked in it before I spoke.

“No, just the order that would create the most life-ganking experience possible.” I sighed as I finished and began charging my pack’s bays with stuff again.

“So, murderous intent or nay?”

“Homicidal bitch mode: one hundred percent. ACTIVATE!”

“I told you, you shouldn’t have dated a cyborg chick. At least uploads are good in bed. You won’t get torn in half switching positions in cyberspace.” I begged to differ, she was okay in the sack, it was when me and her opened our mouths to say something besides primal yells and sentences no more than two syllables that things went to hell. That and whenever we spent longer than a few days together. Thank god I didn’t get much shore leave.

The last thing I was thinking about was quality bedtime, though. Unless that bed time was me sleeping alone, not being plotted against or watched by evil, beady robot security eyes. It had been another five hours since my meeting and I’d spent the whole time getting my shoebox worth of stuff left from my wreckage –erm apartment.

“Look, I’m going to ramble ASAP, Dwaine,” I was trying to sound as much like a cowboy as possible. I sucked at it, need to watch more westerns. “ ‘Dunno when I’ll be comin’ back,” I mumbled in a devil-may-care tone.

“Great we’ll throw a party!”

“Oh that’s okay,” I began, breaking the cowboy motif like china in a trash grinder, suddenly taken aback by what a kind gesture Dwaine was offering. “There’s not nearly enough ti-“

“Oh no, after you leave, and there will be moist, delicious cake.” Wanker

“You’re some joker, Dwaine.” I grumbled, feeling ice cold yet at the same time finding the mental faculty in my sleep-deprived state to laugh at myself.

“It’s cool. Look, no cake, okay? And,” he said, emphasizing the last word like a game-world host, “I’ll space your heavy kit for you!”

“Really?” That got me excited again; I hoped he wasn’t joking. Lugging out a heavy metal box full of things that liked to beep, fly hop and explode wasn’t number one on my bucket list. “Yeah, I’ll get it to wherever, beam me the address.”

I called up my take-along HUD and sent him a memory file. “hmm, high Shangri-La, huh? Looks like you’ll be spacing it after all.” I nodded with a mix of pride and fear as I stood up with my pack. “I’ll get the grunts to lug it right now… No more cubicle duty?” I nodded emphatically as the heavy metal door out of the closet armory slid away. “Man, you military blokes make us code jockeys’ days. How boring will the office be without you?”

“Very boring,” I said unenthusiastically as I stepped into the grubbily carpeted cubicle farm. There were a few workers with cords running from their necks sitting in flight chairs with stupid looks on their faces. “Ah, such bright eyes and bushy tails,” I said campily, panning my gaze about dramatically. Dwaine chuckled as he caught up with me.

We walked the short distance to the lift, which I had called in advance from a few ten-hundred stories downhill. The doors opened before us with a suitably futuristic swish. “I have to go down to the atrium, you on break?”

Dwaine nodded, “yeah, I’ve been nano-stockpiling an extra minute from my last one hundred breaks, I’ve got time to spend.” I nodded in appreciation of his cleverness as we stepped into the car that was docked alongside the glass façade of the building. The car was shaped like a pill long side down. At either end were two chairs and the floor was upholstered with the same drab office carpet as the floor I’d just stepped off of.

The doors closed as we took seats on opposite sides. Crash pads clamped down on both of our legs from the sides of our seats. Shangri-La had a famous and highly expensive personal rapid transit system for its workers. It was also mind-numbingly fast.

The tram did a little circle around the station line before it started picking up speed onto the merge for the main network. Soon enough, we were barreling down the slopes of Shangri-La. I was in the backward seat and got to watch Dwaine bare his teeth and practically pop his eyes out of his sockets as we passed six hundred klicks an hour.

“I never get used to this…” he trailed off. I just put my hands behind my head and leaned back in my harness. This was pleasant compared to getting dropped in an assault boat. Meanwhile, I watched Shangri-La’s extensive offices fly by and disappear over the artificial, curved horizon. Shangri-La was a massive arch-bubble construct designed to aid in transorbital commerce and logistics for Farsol.

It was thin as all hell and supported by antigravity mats on the underside. If we had a bird’s eye view, it would look like a large, white, shiny bubble with big arch-shaped holes at the bottom half. The spaces between the holes were used primarily for transitways to terra firma. Above that was where most of the lighter weight was, skyscrapers and office complexes. In the center of the dome was High Shangri-La, Farsol’s main harbor on Earth.

Shangri-La, like the scale of the entire Farsol government, was about as huge as they came around here. It was some odd four hundred and fifty klicks in diameter with anchorages in a dozen states of the old U.S. Me and Dwaine were screaming down the rails towards Dallas. Not many cities were around anymore, but they were big and tall these days. Dallas was one of the biggest.

There were a few resounding thumps as we began to level out from our steep descent. The nagging, helium filled, floating feeling in my stomach was slackening, much to my relief. “You have just been deflowered yet again by Shangri-La freefall, thank you for flying.” I said to Dwaine, much to his chagrin. He shook his head at me and frowned, all the while betraying himself with occasional chortles. “I guess it WAS good for you.” I added. He started cackling madly at that.

We swung around a banked curve somewhere under one hundred klicks an hour, past great arcing guideways. The guideways rose and fell, banking closer and further as they streamed past the rear windows I had a vantage out of. A Heavyback trundled up the main guideway carrying a starship on its massive lifting bed as smaller trams and passenger trains buzzed along the gravity defying guideways surrounding them.

“Dallas station, low capacity. Transfer to ground network, transfer to atrium-”

“That would be us,” I said clearly to the cab intelligence.

“Okay, thank you very much for using SLTA services, take care.”

“Thank you,” I said curtly to the half-sentient hijacking the cab’s speakers. Our guideway swung in to join a lower artery sweeping under the main one. We dove into a tunnel and began to decelerate. Work lights flew by at decreasing speeds until we finally exited into the massive covered park they call the Dallas Atrium.

The car stopped with a click and the doors bumbled open, sliding away out of view. “Underfoot park?” Dwaine asked.

“N’ah, I’m expected down at the Hub Terrace.” I said as I stood from the parting lap harness and rotated myself out the door.

“Hmm,” Dwaine said as he fell in behind me again. “I want to see the bounty hunter who you’re going to be answering to.”

“Oh bugger, Dwaine, you’re hard to ditch.” I said, reaching back and clocking him in the shoulder as I finished the joke. “I’m going to have to ‘accidentally’ walk into the girls bathroom and escape through a vent or something, won’t I?”

“Hey, if that’s how you want to see naked women… not really my bag.” I frowned; he was good. We walked away from the car as its doors closed with a thud. By the time it sped away, we had crossed the large paved platform raised above the tree line and started down the stairs.

“So, how’d you know about the insourcing I was going into?” I said, getting back on the subject. Dwaine just tapped his wifi implant. “Ah, Jameson from human resources?”

He nodded, “The guy’s still thankful I got him through his certification test. Besides, rumors get around, at which point they subsequently become the property of gossip monkeys, including me.” We walked along the walkway and down another flight of stairs towards the main pad. People walked to and fro at modest paces, passing Dwaine and I without even a glance. “So,” Dwaine said, “any foreword?”

“None at all,” I said apathetically, “They’re supposed to be a pretty advanced group, they’ll be doing all the briefing.” We were just about under the treeline, climbing down the shiny, utopian-esque paths contrasting with the wild park below us

“How much do you want to bet your boss is a fugly slug alien with beady eyes and-“ we passed the tree cover surrounding us and were about to descend the last flight of stairs when I stopped. “Woah,” Dwaine said tersely, mouthing what I would have said had I had any sense at that moment.

"...There was a seven and a half foot tall humanoid holding up a sign in poorly scribbled analog script that said “Solen.” She was clad in an armor skeleton that would put any civilian racket to shame. It was all curves and thick polymer armor with jade camera eyes jutting out every which way. She appeared to be vaguely mammalian, with a relatively human form, but she was covered in dark gold fur maybe an inch in length with white covering the underside of her chin. Furthermore, her oddly feline features made her look like a reject from Captain Ahab 3120AD...." Oddly, though, she was stunning in an amazonian sort of way.

“You have an appointment, mate,” Dwaine said.

“And you have break time, c’mon!” I said as I grabbed the shoulder of his business suit and dragged him along. No way I would be able to summon the balls to walk up to a massive amazon like this woman (clearly a woman, I won’t say any more.) My light kit clunked along as I descended the flight of stairs. I hit level ground and walked over with Dwaine in tow.

We stopped a few meters short, she still hadn’t noticed me, girls like her had a stare like drill bits. “Well man, this is it, I guess.” It WAS it. My apartment was trash and there was someone likely out on the hunt for me, I didn’t plan on coming back. In fact; I wanted out soon.

“Alright, keep in touch,” he said as he patted me hard on the shoulder and headed off on his own mission.

“Mackai Solen?” I turned around at hearing my name. The battle she-wolf who’d been holding the sign looked down at me with angular, purple rimmed, catlike eyes. I nodded. “Good, you’ve kept me waiting long enough,” she said, a slight hint of spite escaping her casual tone. “I’m –“ she said something that sounded like ‘samteesoap’ said in fast forward with air escaping from a balloon in the background.

I paused, “can I just call you Sam?”

“Sure, that works,” she said tersely in a brassy voice that sounded oddly human. I supposed her species had a rather versatile set of vocal chords. “Anyway, I’m here to give you the tour. ‘Have to get some supplies while we’re planet side as well. I’ll brief you along the way, good?” She said in a clipped manner.

“Yeah sure, you guys are already parked in H.S.L.?” She nodded as we started down the main concourse. The floor sunk into a high street of commercial shops as we walked toward the ground exit. “So why don’t we just order this stuff over the net?”

She sighed like I was a two-year old tag along. Too stupid for my own good, I reasoned. “It’s too easy to forge feeds. You humans don’t do it too much. But; out in the Abyss, it’s easy for the superpowers to do.” I nodded. “Your firm shop locally?”

“For short orders, yes,” I said. “There’s a few good places, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

***

Two drone logic units, military grade ox’ supply, and fifty kinetic attack drones, fighter grade. These guys didn’t screw around.

“Now I want this EXACT stock on this palette delivered to pad Northeast twenty-one. No funny shit.” Sam was looming over the short, synth-scalp clad merchant in his own warehouse acting like she owned the place.

“Yes ma’am, and I’ll make it priority.” It was working. She nodded, clearly satisfied with the “negotiations,” yet still wearing a strong scowl.

“You didn’t have to pick him up by the collar,” I offered with slight tentativeness as we turned to walk out. “Around here, the Global Business Bureau keeps these guys under a microscope.”

“Doesn’t hurt to keep them on their toes.” A valid point, the merchants around here had grown fat on port business. A little rough play now and then wouldn’t hurt. We walked out shoulder by shoulder from the warehouse into the daylight.

“Anyway, like I was saying,” she began smartly. “We’re a special missions firm, we handle the exotic jobs mostly. Things that pay top dollar,” and only go to the craziest sons-of-bitches out there, I finished for her. Some people to fall in with, this lot was. “Anyway, we know you’re some top Farsol polish. We’ve made some accommodations in our equipment for you. We’ve been needing an information warfare man for a while so we’re hoping you don’t disappoint.” Depends on what you’re offering.

“Anyway, we have some benefactors with quite a bit of money to pull. They’ve been trying to move their planet’s market into the offworld game, almost single handedly.” She was getting warmer. We continued walking along the dusty cement culverts and arroyos of the supply sector in the lower levels of the city. These spaces were meant for the heavy vehicles they used to lug ship-grade cargo around. We passed through stray avenues of sunlight bleeding down from the crowded, claustrophobic skyline far above as we meandered back towards the Dallas atrium. I wished we’d go faster, security was only at the cargo scan checkpoints… this was no man’s land.

“My superiors are prepared to offer you some top of the line systems to use on duty on the condition you deliver good productivity.” Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner, folks! She looked down at me with a wry grin. “It’s at least as good as the bath toys you ape militants call weaponry. It’s getting on a bit, but it’s ex-security equipment, so you know it’s good.” Could I get any happier? No.

Sure, Farsol looked after its troops better than most government militias, but they also had to supply a few million heads with said equipment. The going was better when you were the sole receiver of hand-me-downs from the rich. So, being a hacker, programmer and warfare expert, I love things that cost money. Thus; I’d struck gold. I would never be bored again! Huzzah!

“Found you, you louse!” Umm… not-huzzah! The scorn with which the last word was said was enough to tell me who was on the other end. I didn’t piss many people off back then, but when I did, things flew and made scary explosions. Melyssiah Medrosol was the current example… if that was her real name. Lover, fighter, ex-girlfirend-from-hell-who-just-trashed-my-appartment… ah to hell with it.

I quick-turned, hoping I was wrong, but there she was. It was about then she decided to extend the hydraulic knives, about as long as my arm, open up her dermal plating so her synth’ muscles could work at full and flip out an automatic firearm. Damn, well… she had looked and, honestly, felt, like a normal dame when I’d first met her. Damn how I wish I cold do a rollback on time.

Beside her were two light model utility bodies, full synthetic and not at all human. Their limbs were as long as I was tall and at their ends were some rather shiny, rather nasty looking shiv claws –likely carbon-infused for maximum killing potential.

“s-s-s-SENTRIES!” I squeaked. She smiled and wagged her finger at me.

“Not this time, Mackai,” Melyssiah said ruefully as a rather portly looking armored suit walked out of the nearby alley. His torso and head seemed entirely concealed by a massive metal sphere that slightly resembled a diving bell if it had been painted in technology. The main eye gimbal sticking out of the top spun wildly and turned to stare at me -red glare, laser sight and all. He looked like a giant screwy-eyed gorilla. “You’re all mine now, Mackai, my buddy here has suppressor gear, no radio, no rele-pulse. I sure hope you have someone within shouting distance or this will be boring.” I instinctively looked at ‘Sam, her eyes were flitting between my ex’s merry gang of military misfits and me.

“What the fuck were you up to while I was gone all these months?” I squawked as I turned to face her again.

“Ah, you know, making friends in the underground, pulling favors. Just doing what I have to, mostly. Nothing new,” she said. Why in the hell did I never check her background record when I met her? It seemed kind of stalker back then. Now I knew it would have just been good measure.

“What the hell is going on, Solen?” Sam quietly grumbled in my direction. I glanced at her in confusion. She glared at me for offering no help, then turned to face my ex. “If you have a bone to pick with Mr. Solen, you should know he is now under the employ of Sunrise Starwide, a company of Badha-“

“Blah, blah, blah,” Melyssiah said with childish ire. “Talking won’t get you and your hussy anywhere, Mackai,” Jesus, she was hell bent on staying completely focused on me and making everyone else out to be secondary. “You’re both unarmed.” How goddamned blind was my ex? Not very, but she had a reputation for being almost harlequinesque in her stupidity.

“Hussy?” Sam paused, I guessed her babbler was trying to assemble the meaning of the word for her from an offline database, fairly slow. Then she bared her teeth and howled an ear-shattering roar at my ex. “I barely know this man!”

“And we are fucking armed!” I said with vigor… for once. On queue, my kit sprang to life. The containment field flickered to life and I was encased in an energy repelling bubble. The air around me shimmered and sparked slightly as the shoulder mounts with combat sensors lowered into place. The pack flattened as the exoskeleton unfolded gracefully from it. I had scarcely said ‘armed’ by the time most of my body was encased in a light carbon armor conducting an energy barrier. You should have seen my heavy kit.

Quick lines to my heart rate and my equipment status began feeding into my brain through the suit cybernetics as the visor clicked down over my face. I was endowed with wide-angle vision as the sensors clicked on and bypassed my own eyes with a sensory software header.

Sam took one quick glance at me and deployed her own suit, that was much less involved. The helmet slid down over and below her head, slipping shut over the front of her pronounced muzzle. The overall effect seemed rather intimidating, like a demon weasel with glowing blue eyes. The eyes were pretty impressive, compound models that probably let her pinpoint the exact position of a fly a mile or so away.

A rifle sprang around her shoulder and slid into her right hand, she fingered the power on as I turned to face Melyssiah again, still undaunted and angry at me as all hell.

“Ooh,” she crooned, eying the both of us predatorily. “Some hot bitches want to tangle after all?” I swear; this was not the woman I met a few years ago. The big jammer tub stepped forward to protect my ex, but she waved him back. Who the hell was that bloke being all defensive about? I suppose I now knew who she was cheating on me with… or thought I did… great.

Without any warning, my ex bum rushed me with those knives which had previously seemed so nasty. I instinctively positioned my arms over my face as she brandished the buggers at me. Her knives bounced and skittered off the carbon plating over my arms as she tried to leap over me. Then I heard a grumbling blast of energy off to my right as Sam let rip somewhere over me.

I jumped back as my ex flipped over and landed slightly behind her blokes. “You wee bitch!” She said, the skin to one side of her face wrinkling unnaturally and blackened to a crisp. The faux skin was healing before she even began speaking, it took more than a few stray shots to kill a cyborg.

The tank man was up upon us, weapons bays popping out of his bulbous torso. Energy weapons mostly, I stepped forward so my containment field could soak up the damage. The bolts that followed hopped and sizzled around me and made the field sputter and spark madly. A whiff of ozone escaped into my mask as I stood, pausing and still having failed to fire a shot. Capacitors at twenty percent, wow, what a volley!

The tank man made to rush me and I jumped out of the way. I rolled to the ground in a manner that would have made my CQC instructor nod approvingly. Before I even finished flying butt over head, though, I heard a roaring screech of fire from Sam’s direction and a resounding, crackling crash. I suppose the bloke wasn’t prepared to deal with energy weapons.

Now that the jammer had ceased jamming, he was likely uploading out of the crumpled heap that was his mechanized body. I stood and looked at the smoking, sputtering remains. My ex and her two remaining goons were motionless and speechless. I suppose they shouldn’t have messed with a chick who was over seven feet tall with a rather large plasma spray gun in her hand.

They looked around briefly, then bolted like the dogs they were, running down the alley. “I’m not surprised at that outcome…” I said breathlessly, “Except for the whole us not getting torn to shreds thing, that was a lovely surprise.”

“Why the hell didn’t you fight back?!” Sam roared at me as her helmet hid itself away behind her. Did I mention, as well as sucking with women, I suck with close quarters combat… well the actual combat mostly.

“Uhh,” I said intelligently, “My resume says it all, I’m a remoter and programmer, I don’t do CQC.”

“You don’t what?” She said in utter disbelief. “If you intend to join a mercenary group like us, you better frickin’ learn it!”

“Look, let’s just get the hell out of here, she’ll be back and my heavy kit’s at the docks.” I said in a rush.

“Oh great, you have bigger guns… Bigger guns are only of any use if you USE THEM!” She roared, not hiding any ounce of rage in her as she turned dramatically and started sauntering the way we had been going.

***

“’Dan, I want you to have the Sunrise ready for takeoff as soon as possible, and by as soon as possible I mean right the hell now or you’ll be short on crew,” Sam said over our shared conference space.

“I understand, there has been trouble?” A synthetic basso voice warbled from nowhere, oddly apathetic.

“Do you even need to ask? Also, get ‘Zin to get Trebuchet one and two ready to launch ordinance, would you?” We were barreling up a guideway towards High Shangri-La, on the run from a number of scary people wielding many sharp things.

“Indeed there has been much trouble.” The basso voice said inquisitively. “The charge is secure?”

“Umm, hi,” I said, coming to the tentative decision that now was the time to chime in.

“Ohh,” the synth-voice trilled in excitement, “very good! How long until you arrive?”

I guessed Sam was going to make an estimate, but I decided I knew the place better. “It should be any minute now, we’re about to get to the Northeast concourse.” We were, too. The buildings of Shangri-La proper were receding behind us into the distance and the mooring masts and lights of High Shangri-La were rising to meet us. Any second now, any second now and I’d be safe!

“We were already preparing to leave, ‘Dan will make hasty arrangements.” The Basso voice said over the channel.

The car began to decelerate as we passed clean off the surface of the dome into open space miles above the earth. All that was below us was a thin guideway, suspended under the great protrusions of the harbor. The panorama was swallowed in darkness as we disappeared down an airlock tunnel. The car stopped and there was a muted hum ahead of us as the interior doors parted and the exterior ones far behind us closed.

We passed into the posh, red-carpeted interiors of the terminal and began to stop. “Your kit ready?” Sam asked hurriedly.

“Why?” I asked, hoping she would say no reason other than caution. She pointed to the left of the car and right at my ex’s face. She was standing proudly with her two massive bodyguards.

“Fu-u-u-u-uck!” I said, there she was again… AGAIN!

“Please open the port doors!” I said hurredly.

“Okay, security is currently busy, I can’t call help, I don’t know what’s going on.” The halfie said through the speakers. Oh hell, we were screwed, even the ‘bot was out of ideas!

The doors bumbled open and me and Sam squeezed out, backing away in the opposite direction of my Ex. Idiot must have not thought that the cars had two sided doors. She scowled at me with mild amusement, then she and her guards performed a flying leap over the track to our platform.

“Not getting away this time, duckey!” She said spitefully.

I heard a series of clicks and swishes, then watched a fusillade of hot plasma bolts streak into my ex’s face. She collapsed, but both Sam and I were under no illusions she was going to stay down. I was already deploying the musculature of my kit so I might manage to run at least close to cyborg speeds.

“Run!” Sam said, I was way ahead of her on that. We both bolted and I didn’t even spare one backward glance. There was a massive raucous behind us filled with gunfire. Hot lead and glowing plasma buzzed and pinged around the reinforced walls of the concourse and ricocheted against the heavy-duty containment fields keeping people inside from shooting through to vacuum. I ducked under my hands as I ran, having heard what sounded like a clown car full of homicidal gangsters unloading at a police station behind us. Someone had brought lots and lots of friends, and they had big, explodey things… lots and lots of big, explodey things.

Bullets zinged past my lowered head as we ran down the concourse. “Bugger!” I heard my ex’s unmistakably angry voice behind me, “If you fucking shoot me in the face again…”

I didn’t hear the last words, a helmeted officer was motioning us through the security checkpoint past a number of heavily armed soldiers and armored suits. Me and Sam weren’t going to keep him waiting. As we dove past the detector arch, a defense barrier blasted up behind us. The crude metal thing wouldn’t hold long. Sirens futiley rang out behind us and I expected to hear a silky, inexplicably female, computer announcement say “five minutes to total destruction.” THEN we would have been in a bona-fide science fiction action sequence!

We ran on down the dock concourse. I counted the labels for the connections… nine… ten. There was a wrenching shriek behind us as the barrier was torn in two. I glanced back just long enough to see the two massive, lanky, bodyguards tear through the barrier. I heard pinging ordinance smacking forcefield in all directions and guessed the mechs were jumping all over the place. They’d be baffling the security officer’s targeting systems with sheer agility, like cyborg space ninjas (pirates watch out!)

Sam turned, began to backpedal and took a few shots at the buggers, now on the ceiling, before turning around. She hit the turbo and kicked up to perhaps eighty clicks per hour, I jumped to catch up with a good twenty meter leap. Thank you, synth-muscle assist. Ten… fifteen… twenty. I hit the brakes, skidding a good twenty meters on my poor shoes and leaving a path of burnt, low grade rubber behind me. Thank god all my joints were reinforced by the musculature or I might have lost a foot.

“Let’s go!” she yelled. The door to port 21 opened as we scrambled in. The guideway we were entering suddenly felt incredibly exposed. It was a glass tube with flashing lights running down in sequence toward the end, which was far too distant for my liking. We sailed down the tube in long leaps in the gravity of low orbit.

The doors to the terminal closed and sealed behind us as we made for the spearhead shaped ship attached to the mast we were leaping down. I languished in the sudden silence, deathly afraid that a railgun round the size of my entire body would rip through the mast and kill us in explosive decompression, that my Melyssiah’s people would have fleet support.

My heart thumped against my containment field, making the skin on my arms annoyingly prickly. I had to get out… almost there. I was distracting myself picking out the metal greeble all over the hatch surface when it opened a yard ahead of us. I took one last large leap and dove into the hatch.

I smacked into the ground hard, suddenly under about point eight gees. I guessed by the fact that I didn’t lose a tooth when my jaw hit the floor. I couldn’t see a thing through the pain and barely managed to roll over and notice that the door at the opposite end of the mast was being smashed in. I sure as hell hoped no one I was in good standing with was on the other end of that door when we spaced. Containment would seal the nearby area but whoever was breaking that door was about to be VERY surprised.

Our end of the hatch closed swiftly. “’Zin, punch it!” Sam yelled over the conference channel, making my head throb.

“Detaching from mast 21 now, we are away.” My stomach lurched as we drifted free. I had just enough time to see a set of heavy metal doors sail down the mast tunnel and smash into our hull before our ship rolled free. What followed them was rather vindicating, the two lanky guards flew out of the tube, flailing madly. Likely no one would be around to rescue their bodies, weather or not they required oxygen to operate.

“Give the vacuum a kiss on the cheek for me, dumb shits,” I mumbled. “And happy uploading.” I hoisted myself up off the ground and shook off the pain in my ribs.

“Any contacts, ‘Zin?” Sam asked tentatively.

“Nothing on Rele-trace, no pursuers, we’re clear. I’m getting us out of here, neither Farsol nor whoever your attackers are will be terribly happy with us. The former I can negotiate with, however.” There was a pause on his end. “I’m making the leap for orbit, grab something.” I hastily stood up at the mention of escaping orbit. Even a low-orbit to high-orbit transfer was bumpy.

“C’mon,” Sam said tersely, “there’s crash seats this way.” We ducked down a hallway clad in tan plastic fittings, humming with machinery that made it sound like an atmospheric hopper plane. We hung a quick left and slipped through a narrow hatch. Sam collapsed into a chair immediately beside the door. There was a window on the far end. So, being a grandstander, I jumped over and took a seat beside the thick window bay.

The cabin lights shut down and ‘Sam and I were bathed in darkness. I fumbled with my straps in the dark service lighting and finally clicked them in place. They sized up my physical model and tightened accordingly. It was pretty impressive these guys had adaptive restraints, who was on this crew that they’d need it?

I was punched in the gut as the main thrusters kicked on. A low roar grew around us and our chairs shook. The room was bathed in muted blue light from the sun on the opposite side of the ship, bathing the earth in warm sunbeams. Shangri-La was in the lower extreme of the window.

The sight was mesmerizing, a white jewel shining in the sunlight, capped with a forest of spires. “Hey,” I said, not tearing my eyes from the vista. “Check this out!” I glanced back to see if ‘Sam was looking. She was craning her neck to try and get a view, but failing miserably.

She scowled and unlatched from the seat, landing on the far wall and walking lithely on all fours, much like a cat. She reached a seat across from me and plopped herself down into it with a sigh. “This had better be worth-“ She stopped cold as she turned to watch. She stared down with wide, saphire eyes.

“Damn,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s about all we’ve got.” That said, it was damned amazing. The sun glinted off the white reflective surfaces of Shangri-La as though it were a bubble of fresh snow. Its center was accentuated with harsh spires and glowing blue tapestries of light, hiding in the shadow confined sides of the great skyscrapers there.

“Why’d you guys build it?” Around Shangri-La were occasional thunderheads, further away the oceans reflected a pearl essence.

“We needed something to keep the squatters out. I think you might remember a few centuries back when there was an attempted invasion here…”

“The Sol-Hunter Group Farce?”

“The one and only… we only escaped because of a stupidly brilliant NASA project. It taught us a lesson about the relay industry. Out here in the Styx, no one can hear your cries for help.”

“It’s true,” she said matter-of-factly, “I guess you guys got it right. I respect that.” For some reason, it meant a lot hearing something positive from a woman who had so far been a fully functioning negative-factory…

I took in the view, disappearing below the lower lip of the window, falling out of view. I’d likely go through hell and high water before I returned to see it again, much less to stay.

“All crew prepare for relevance Space insertion for rendezvous with buoy 110324,” the ship’s communications channel said in my head. Goodbye, earth.

There was a hum and a flash. Space stretched in a thousand different directions, bleeding away like a drop of water exploding in zero gravity.

Laying the groundwork

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:24:00 +0000

Alrighty. In the future this space will be populated as a suitable home for my episodic Science Fiction thriller "sunrise." That means this drab white background will hopefully get some multimedia shebang to it whenever I get time to produce images. Meanwhile, I'll try and keep it a good reading environment for those like me who can read in the cool glow of their monitor.

Toil

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Lee) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:08:00 +0000

This is the result of long hours of giving my blog template a probe in naughty places...

I'd like tot ake a moment to note I frankensteined post expansion code based on this incredibly helpful and very robust help article. Can you sense my sarcasm? Good.

Anyway, all told, this was a major pain, but considering I know next to nothing of html, if this actually works, it'll be a miracle anyway, comprehensive help post or no.