Chapter 10 - The Mission

  “Today's mission,” the Commander began, “is a difficult one. Intercepted communications during the combat operation yesterday confirm the presence of a large ammo dump in the cave system north and east of our current location.” the Commander waved a few gestures in the air, and with a snap, a section of the map highlighted and the overhead satellite image turned into a landscape portrait, and then zoomed in on a specific mountain, and then further onto a cave mouth nested in a tropical jungle at its foot. “Long-wave imaging and exploratory drones show a massive accumulation of arms, munitions, and ancillary supplies in this specific tunnel.” The Commander made a few more gestures and the screen turned wire-frame and began descending into the cave like a roller-coaster. The graphics then turned to a white-on-blue spider diagram of the entire tunnel system, an orange dot at the beginning of the line indicating the cave mouth. On the other end of the line, after following a few branches and off-shoots, was a green dot. “There is a second opening deep along the cave system that the combatants seem to be unaware of. It is completely unguarded. Sonar imaging of this area has regions that could potentially indicate Dale's Fissures.”

“Radioactivity?” Marion shifted in her seat uneasily. The long cable of her flight harness draped over her shoulder like a braid.

“Hopefully,” Standish said from the other side of the screen, looking exceptionally casual today in a tight blue v-neck pull-over and khaki slacks, the cleft of his prodigious pecs barely visible at the bottom of the V. Instead of his traditional fedora, he let his shining bald head lay bare, a rarity in and of itself, considering his usual ostentatious nature.

“After the release of the Adam bug,” the commander started, “it has been assumed most or all radioactive matériel had been consumed or eroded. However, the spider-web nature of the radial geological fractures are highly indicative of the creature's colonization patterns and corrosive excretions. If we can find a source of ground-based radiation, it would be a massive boon to the IA. Interplanetary harvesting of atomic fuel is one of our most costly endeavors, and the farther reaches of our solar system do not have as much access to solar energy sources. Reducing our need to send harvesters, that themselves run on nuclear fuel sources, would even further reduce our reliance on the stuff,”

“Isn't NRI the largest consumer of nuclear fuel in the IA? And isn't that one of the major resources we import from the non-Union territories,” Tomah, his green-white eyes obscured by his heavily-furrowed brow, cocked his head to the side, his tone interrogative and conspiratorial.

“New Roman Industries does indeed consume a large amount of nuclear fuel. And we do indeed import it from mostly non-territory regions who specialize in space-based harvesting,” Standish began pacing across the front of the room, the wood, pistol-gripped cane replacing his silver-topped black walking stick, clicking on the black-slate floor in rhythm with his pace. “And it is correct that if NRI were to acquire a planet-side source of nuclear fuel it would be a huge boon to our company. But, my good man, the point you fail to take into account is that, due to government restrictions, NRI is legally forced to pass almost all of those savings onto the IA as a whole. I won't go into the finer points, but the public/private setup between the IA and NRI means that we operate for you” Standish, the sarcasm almost overwhelming his indignance, retorted, a bit of feigned sadness creeping across his face as he addressed Carol, “I thought these were supposed to be the 'best and brightest' the IA had to offer.”

The Commander scoffed silently at Standish and turned to Tomah, “NRI and IA are inextricably linked, Tomah. It's just the nature of our system. Over the hundreds and thousands of years we spent subterranean, we developed a lot of complex and very nuanced governing systems. For us to have the agility, scalability, and technological devotion we want, we had to make sacrifices, both culturally and politically. That means eschewing a lot of the classical pure-governing systems and siding with a more hybridized public-private collaboration that allows for economic forces to drive political necessity, but also allows policy to minimize collateral damage to both the the people and the environment. It has its weaknesses,” She said with a sideways head-nod to Standish, “but the benefits far outweigh them, turning those weaknesses into strengths in disguise,” She made a head-nod forward to the group.

“So, what's the mission? Storm the back door, set some demos in the grotto, collapse the ammo dump, and investigate the Dale's Fissures?” Blaize asked as he leaned forward, the yellowish internal glow of his white eyes making them look cat-like in the dimmed room.

“No,” Jim interrupted. “Look at the population map. That thing is a hive. They're aware of the rear exit too, and have a couple mobile platforms on defense,” Jim sat reclined in his chair, arms folded across his body. He lifted a hand and pointed at the map on-screen. “I'm guessing a 3-2 gatecrash, yeah?”

“Your signature style, no?” Standish said with a beaming grin.

“No, I'd run a 4-1, but you guys are a bit less aggressive than I am,” Jim flapped the back of his hand outward, as if brushing the comment away with a faux-sheepish smirk

“Pincer,” Marion mused aloud. “make a charge at the front to pull forces there and then sweep the rear with a covert assault team.”

“I am putting Marion and Blaize on rear guard. Marion will remain in Simo and Blaize will remain in Enlil. Simo is currently being fitted with a sharpshooter outfit, so you'll have an armor suit for this run, Marion. Enlil will again be our forerunner. We have several demolition charges to be placed,” A wire-frame of the grotto took over the screen. There were blinking red dots on several parts of the ceiling of the grotto, as well as a central pillar. There were various caches of goods scattered throughout the grotto and a small unit encampment behind a wall of mobile platforms, 7 in all. They were smaller-sized platforms , Mobile-3's and -5's, mostly, and appeared to be outfitted with close-quarters artillery, and not missile pods. “We'll have Adrian, Tomah and Jim in the vanguard. Adrian, You'll be in Cúchulainn, Tomah in Heimdall. You both will be escorting Jim in Vishnu,” the Commander said cooly as she cocked her hip out and crossed her arms. Her white shirt was down a few buttons and her khaki uniform pants were tucked into her black uniform boots, the vulcanized rubber making a squinching noise as her feet shifted into a T-stance.

“What?!” Marion exclaimed loudly, darting up so quickly her chair skidded back into the row behind her, creating a startling crash. “Vishnu has never been combat tested. This is Jim's second mission, EVER. He's never even piloted Vishnu! We can barely get him to move in training, let alone fight. And Jim is going in dry,” she exclaimed pointedly as she grabbed Jim's harness connector and flailed it around, an unceremonious drop jerking Jim's head back from the weight. “This is madness,” she stood with her hand on her own cocked-out hip, her other hand pleading with them for an answer.

“This one comes from way above our pay-grade, sugar,” Standish said condescendingly. “None of us get a say in this one. Dyman's orders. Besides, Tomah and Adrian can do this themselves. If Jim can't get Vishnu to behave, we can extract him in situ and drop him down in Musashi.”

“We haven't run Musashi in combat in a very long time. I don't even know if Jim knows how to pilot multi-class cores,” Marion countered, a bit defeatedly. “I can take Musashi and we can run formation like usual. Tomah in Heimdall, Adrian in Simo, and Jim in Cúchulainn.”

“I already offered this to the GA. Dyman was insistent that we take out Vishnu with Jim piloting,” the Commander replied in an equally-defeated tone. “Look, we're not even sure Vishnu will get going, let alone at an operational level commensurate with the combat theater. We'll put him in Musashi should that be the case, which it probably will. He will not be operating at an optimal level, but it will be good for Musashi to get some play again, and it will help increase Jim's skillset and make him a more valuable asset to the team,” the commander took on her most diplomatic of tones, face still unflinching.

“Yes, Sir,” Marion grabbed her chair and returned to her seat, a worried expression impossible to miss behind a forced-neutral face.

“Hold the line until Blaize and Marion confirm that the charges are in place,” Standish used his cane to point toward Blaize and Tomah as he spoke. “After that, Marion will engage the enemy as Blaize escapes and forces them into a siege position, hopefully pulling everyone into the central chamber. Our Geo-architects say that this explosives pattern should collapse the space in its entirety. Too bad you won't be topside. Gonna be a hell of a show. The geologists say that the cave-in may cause localized tremors that could affect the tunnel system so you should begin evacuating the tunnels as soon as the charges go off, if you can't find a break to get the hell out beforehand.”

“This is going to be a tough mission, guys. You have your orders, let's get you guys jacked in and prepped. Dismissed,” the Commander sighed as she walked to the door, the crew raising to follow in tow as she passed by them.

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The flight plug was in-dock horizontally. It opened like a clamshell and Jim took up position inside the pillowy material that composed the nanomachine encasement. A tech jacked the cable attached to his flight harness into his helmet, and then his helmet into a large aperture at the top of the clamshell. He clipped the breather over his mouth and lowered the helmet's visor as the tech closed the hatch. The space went black and was so quiet Jim could hear a steady “wooshing” sound as the blood circulated through the veins in his ears. Jim began his preflight initiation sequences.

“Plug oxygenation commencing,” Jim said as he quickly turned on the breather's air circulator, evacuating the stale hot air away from his face. “Inertial dampeners online,” he recited again, as the tech outside the plug inspected the super-systems from a console. “Intercomm systems online.”

“You're currently registering at 35 Rands for your heuristic environmental simulations. You usually fly at a 15. You want us to increase sensitivity?” the tech inquired through Jim's intercom.

“Hard to say what this is going to be like, keep it dull and I'll increase it on the fly in the field if it's too little,” The screens in Jim's visor began to come online, scrolling by a series of checklists and sensor array's initiation sequences on the primary display. A screen in his periphery had a cartoonized model of the core, a similar rendering of Jim himself flanking the opposite side. Overlays began populating on top of the renderings full of figures like energy levels, quantized health indicators, and various control statistics like speed and the like at various locations on the readout. The crane began to transport the plug to the core. Once the plug had been dropped into it's fitting, a serious of internal hydraulics began “kutschhh”-ing into place, piping the plug into the core's various internal systems. “Plug is inflated,” Jim said as the nanomachines writhed and he felt the familiar out-of-body disconnect wash over him as the muscular overrides kicked into place, “commence screw-in.” A crane wheeled Vishnu's head over to the Core and dropped it onto the large fitting sticking out from the top of the plug. One more “kutschhh” And the video feed came online, populating Jim's visor with a view of the hangar, an objective mini-map on the lower corner of the visible screen, various overlays giving heads-up information on points of interest in front of him.

“I'm online. Begin syncing,” Jim recited to the tech.

“No.” A disembodied whisper breezed through Jim's intercom.
“We're getting weird feedback along the sensor channels, Jim. Can you hear anything?”

“Yeah,” Jim said, feeling a bit uneasy.

“Your cortisol levels are spiking, everything OK?”

“Yeah,” Jim responded. “Just getting antsy. Nothing to worry about. Begin sync.”

“If you insist,” the ephemeral voice seemed to say.

“Beginning sequence. Feedback seems to have normalized.”

Jim could feel the sensors make his body twitch as they started going through each muscle group and mapping it to the data core.

“This is going to be fun,” the breezy voice breathed into his ear. Jim swore he could almost feel the wind of the whisper on his earlobe.

“Are we getting any cross-talk on the intercom? I'm not sure, but I swear I'm hearing something come over the channel,” Jim was firmly locked in, so he couldn't squirm, but felt an unrequited urge to shake his head.

“No, sir. We are getting random feedback spikes, but those appear to be a result of the flight harness. This Core really was designed to be run Aug'd, it would appear. Some of the earlier Cores had unconstrained variables in the code that were causing some chatter on the line. I can do a global recompile on the codebase with the variables constrained if it's too much,” the tech's voice implied he knew the answer already, but he felt like he had to say what they both knew anyway.

“No, those constraints limit sync ratios by wide margins, which is why they were eventually backed out on Simo and Annie. I need as much as I can out of this thing. Leave it unconstrained, I'll just have to deal with the chatter.” The stress in Jim's voice was palpable. “Alright, Syncing is complete. 60%; it's bare minimum but I should be able to get this guy walking. Release the docking clamps and lets get this party started.”

“Aye sir, the rear guard should be at navpoint prime shortly and the vanguard is currently at navpoint alpha. Releasing docking clamps. This will be a mid-air deployment, so please make your way to the catapult,” the tech's instructions were followed by the loud sound of the hydraulic clamps releasing.

Here's hoping you don't move, Jim thought. He began to try and walk. Disappointingly, Vishnu began to walk as well. It felt like trying to walk along the bottom of a swimming pool with his legs attached to the wall by thin rubber cords, but it was walking no less. The effort was monumental, but with every plodding footstep Jim tried started to make, the computer intercepted the command, initiated the sequence in the Core's feet, and then, using a series of nerve-ending-like sensors and elaborate algorithms, gave feedback to Jim's limbs via the nanoclusters in the Plug, giving him the sensation that Jim was, in fact, the thing moving, not the core.

“Congratulations Commander Ross, our systems are registering full autonomy. How are the feedback levels?” the tech's voice sounded genuinely surprised.

“I'm going to leave them at 35 Rands. This is hell trying to get this thing to respond. I've already lost 3% of my metabolic energy, and I ate so much I was uncomfortable this morning. Any more sensitivity and the resistance will drain me before we even get there,” Jim said through heavy pants. With labored movement, Jim walked the core over to the flight catapult. With considerable effort, he squatted the core down, resembling a sprinter on the blocks. Once in position, two robot arms clipped a pair of giant intertial sinks to the Core's legs. “Launch any time,” Jim informed the tech. With that, a siren began to blare and Jim braced himself. He felt the pressure against his feet as he flexed his legs against the catapult. With incredible shock and velocity, the block sprung into action, hurtling the core along a long rail as it gained momentum, the magnets in the railgun rapidly increasing their velocity. The technology used on the deployment catapult didn't differ much from the mass drivers used in weapons, in truth.

After a significant length of track had been progressed, Jim stood his core up against the blocks at his feet, riding the block like a surfer, the centripetal force holding him tight to the catapult as he put his arms to his side to increase the aerodynamics. With a great “thud,” the block slammed against the stopping element. However, the Core had no such restraint and was hurled off the block and out the opened hatch, sent plummeting at intense velocity. He kept the core in his bullet-dive position as he descended the various layers of atmosphere, wiggling his hands and feet slightly to correct his flight trajectory. The Valiant flew at just below Low Earth Orbit, giving Jim and his core roughly seven minutes before he touched down. As he flew through increasingly-dense atmosphere, the air in front of his core began to compress and ignite, a shell of heat, raising external temperatures dramatically and slowing his progress. “Engage dissipation fields,” Jim commanded the computer. The temperature readings on the core diagram began to drop rapidly as the systems engaged the disruptor fields around the core. Jim's ETA dropped drastically as his drag factor reduced to near-0, the fireball in front of him turning into a shimmering wave, “3 minutes ETA, guys,” Jim said over the intercom.

“Bull-team has a visual. Vishnu or Musashi?” Tomah's voice questioned.

“Tiger-team has a visual as well,” Blaize's echoed, “Long-range visual sensors look like Vishnu.”

“How is it, Bull-seven?” Marion's voice sounded scared.

“I feel like I'm trying to swim through a pool of molasses, but so far everything is operating within specification. I'm currently at 61% sync at 35 Rands. I could probably get into the 70's if I dropped down to 25, but I burnt 4% of my personal energy levels just getting into the air,” Jim flexed his head, wiggled his ears, and made some darting eye movements -methods used to control the flight computer- and brought up an overlay underneath the down-ticking ETA clock. “I should be landing within a hundred yards of Bull-five. Internal inertial dampeners will hit 3000% capacity on impact. External inertial dampeners will hit 86% and internal dampeners 20% with compensation. Flight correction thrusters are at 70% energy. I was a little early engaging my disruptor field so I will need to make some extra in-flight corrections, but thrusters should hold throughout.”

“Roger that, Bull-seven. We'll see you when you touch down,” Marion's voice sounded slightly reassured.

Jim was having a hard time staying focused. He'd run a flight-pattern in the simulators more times than he could recount, but actually seeing the planet from up so high was intensely distracting. The clouds scrolling over brown, green, and blue tracts were hypnotizing. The elements of the quickly-approaching ground beneath him began to resolve as he got closer, changing from blue-grey splashes of color through a green sploch into a mountain range full of valleys and canyons amongst an impenetrable jungle, to a couple of mountains surrounded by a large clearing. Jim again resisted the urge to shake his head, for fear of falsely indicating to the computer, and snapped himself back to the mission. With impact a few seconds away, Jim pitched his body forward, disengaged his disruptor field, and front-flipped at the last instant, knees bent and body pitched back as his feet connected with the ground. Jim felt the feed back in his legs as they slammed into the earth,. The indicator bar for the inertial dampeners Jim had brought up on his display spiked into the red-zone as the indicator bar for Vishnu's dampeners remained in the green, leaving the earth underneath Jim's feet barely marred, save for a set of giant footprints in the grassy undergrowth.

“I have touchdown,” Jim said through the intercom. “Dampeners overcompensated and absorbed 92% of impact force. Jettisoning now,” A puff of steam plumed up as the air escaped from the hydraulic latches, pushing the grass down and shaking the trees around the clearing as the drop dampeners ejected. Blue jets sparkled out of the rear thrusters as the kinetic energy stored from the landing pushed the dampeners upward back toward the Valiant. “I'm a bit low on potential energy reserves because of the dampeners, I'll need to take a minute when I get to you guys to let the generators build up stores.”

**************************************************************************************************************************

Marion made a sweep of the hole they were standing over. She had just completed setting up the rappelling gear. She and Blaize were clipped in and ready to begin descent. The body armor on Simo always made him feel different, no matter how many hours she logged with it on. Mass driver rifles felt equally as weird, the balance and weight very different than her light and long energy rifles. Enlil had a harness over his flowing chameleon-cloth shift, bunching it up in certain spots, the satchel strewn across his shoulder dangling freely behind him as he stood on the lip of the cave, perpendicular to the planet, the cables they were to descend on swaying similarly as they disappeared into a seemingly-endlessly dark abyss.

“I have reconnoitered with Bull-team, Gold-one,” Jim came over the intercom into Marion's headset. “I still need a little bit to build up intertial force, but I should be ready to mobilize in thirty.”

“Roger that. Cool your heals Bull-team. Tiger-team is aweigh. Tiger-three, let's begin descent,” Marion addressed Blaize as they began to abseil off the lip of the cave's horizontal mouth and into the tube's dramatic depths.

Marion made a few gestures with her head inside her Plug, “Initiate low-light gamma correction.” As they continued their descent deeper into the blackness, the rendering on Marion's screens never darkened as the extremely sensitive cameras in the external sensors processed the data and corrected on the fly. The cave was brown and hollow and enormous, even in comparison to the large size of the Cores themselves. So big, in fact, that the Cores looked like regular people spelunking, not machines ten-times those regular people's size. They descended deeper, the echoes of rushing water starting to be slightly detectable and gradually growing to a voluminous roar as it sliced it's way through the cavernous depths, the stony shores on either of its sides diminishing as erosion took its toll.

“Touching down now,” Blaize announced as Marion did the same herself. “Beginning advanced scanning of the area.” After a brief period Blaize came back over, “Thermal and long-wave mapping is complete, I am going to upload the data to our mission server for distribution.”

“Syncing now.” Marion initiated the download and updated the credentials into her nav computer. The mini-map in her screen's lower corner changed from a wire diagram to a cartoonified map of the area with details filled in and the objectives overlaid. Her heads-up display began populating objective points and routes onto her heads-up in ghostly digitized blue.

“Let's get moving, I've got your six. Take point, Tiger-three,” Marion wheeled Simo around and began walking in reverse, butting her carbine-style rifle against her the shoulder-pad on the heavy body armor suit in preparation, muzzle angled downard. They moved carefully down the thin rocky bank that extended deep into the tube system and eventually connected with the grotto they would be bringing down when Bull-team stormed in from the other end.

“Up here and to the left is where we diverge from the river so we can analyze the fracturing,” Blaize instructed into the intercom. Just within eyeshot, a wide path branched off to the right, perpendicular to the river bank, an orange line following it on the HUD as it itself branched off from the blue primary route line.

“Roger that,” Marion acknowledged. “Central command, do we have an objectives overlay for the waypoint Beta?”

“We do. I am uploading the criteria sheet now,” Standish came over the intercom as Marion's nav computer began populating with mission information. “We need you to follow the fissures to the source of the spidering. Our drone was in a bit of a hurry so we weren't able to take any measurements. Once you're at the fissures, we would like a full imaging suite run on the surrounding area. We've had one of our cyber-warfare specialists repurpose one of our server clusters into an image processor designed to identify the geological pattern and generate inspection points. Tiger-three has a sampling drone with him, we'll upload the the collection points to it once the processing finishes. Our imaging satellites are showing a lot of organic activity in your general vicinity. The team is working on a patch to push the data to your nav computers now. I'll let you know when we can push up the program. If you're quick, it shouldn't be a big deal. Tiger Prime, out.”

“You heard the man,” Marion came over the intercom as she and Blaize resumed their approach. The tips of the fissures were pushing onto the main path and were pretty hard to miss. They were deep and started out small, getting wider and wider as they zig-zagged closer to the source like a sunbeam as they followed the tendrils of radioactivity. “Are you getting the feed, Tiger Prime?”

“Roger that, Tiger team. Those are pretty unmistakable,” the commander's voice came over. “The bacteria absorb the radioactive discharge and use it to power it's photosynthesis. The waste product is an extremely caustic acid that erodes the rock. That pattern emerges as it crawls along the natural topology in the shortest path to the source, growing more potent as it gets closer, causing that etched crater.” The lines got deeper and wider as they moved along the path. Eventually the individual canyons merged together into a single sloping decent. The cavern itself slowly began to bubble out at the base. “It looks like there was a large body of water at one point. The Adam Bug is environment-agnostic. They probably increased the acidity in the water source enough to begin eating at the limestone formations. I'm willing to bet there's a cistern breach toward the back of this chamber that caused the stagnated water to evacuate.”

“Commander,” Blaize interrupted. The path they were on continued to slope ever downward as the ramping path took them deeper under “water level.” “We're in the middle of the cistern. I am going to deploy the imaging sphere. Once the servers have processed the data, please upload it to our nav computers. Gold-one, I recommend we cool our heels for the data dump before we proceed.”

“Acknowledged. Good idea. Deploy imaging when ready.” Marion assumed a kneeling position, weapon trained at the entrance.

Blaize reached into the bag slung over Enlil's shoulder and pulled out a round black orb. “Dispatching now,” Blaize declared as he threw chucked the orb into the air. Tiny levitation thrusters kicked into action, glowing blue, holding the ball aloft. Soundlessly, the ball moved to the center of the geofront and spun rapidly, the points of the thruster's glow morphing into blue rings. The orb began to wobble as it gradually spun down, it's energy source finally depleted. As it soundlessly plummeted to the cave's floor, it slowly disintegrated into a black mist, leaving a comet-tail behind it, quickly turning into nothing more than a puff of dust before it reached the ground.

“Data received,” Standish's voice came through. “We finished coding up the software patch. We've already uploaded it to your nav systems. Force a refresh if the points haven't already populated onto your screen. We've marked the five most-important points of interest for Enlil to collect samples from and identified the potential source of the radioactivity. Survey the points and you'll be all set. Oh, and if you were feeling left out, Gold-one, that organic activity looks like it'll be on top of you guys shortly. Have fun! Try not to make too big of a commotion or the guys up the cave might hear you. Tiger Prime out.”

Marion scrutinized her mini-map. As Strandish had stated, there was a large amorphous heat signature moving up the shore bank from behind their drop zone and converging onto their current target. “I think we have bugs,” Marion announced to Blaize. “Prepare for engagement. Tiger-three, hurry up and collect those samples, now! Converge on beta-6 way point afterward and be prepared for engagement.” Marion invoked the targeting system and adjusted the gamma settings on her display, the darkness taking on a shadowy whiteness. The heat signatures on her display slowly emerged from behind the veil of ghostly darkness. Sitting low and squat to the ground, crawling on 6 legs, each attached to a segment veiled beneath a smooth carapace shrouded in a veil so dark it seemed to soak up the light around it like a sponge. Marion locked her targeting reticule onto the gigantic beetle, the size of a small people-carrier, and pulled the trigger. A red tracking swept verticly from Marion's position and disappeared into the inky aura surrounding the creature. With a trigger pull, the plasma rifle discharged near-silently. Instantly, the bug flashed white and vaporized into a miasma of gooey blackness and whispy, carbony smoke.

“I am at the first point,” Blaize's voice rang through Marion's flight rig. He withdrew the first surveyor probe from his satchel. He threw the long torpedo-shaped tube into the air and locked his target reticule onto the first harvest point. The characteristic blue thruster kicked on, as the item spun at high velocity, drilling a core-sample of the geology and then rapidly exiting the cave to eventually rendezvous with the Valiant. “Sample is away. Reconnoitering the beta-2.”

Marion watched the drone scuttle away, hugging the contours of the cave's ceiling, as she retrained her targeting reticule on the next heat signature to come around the corner. This time, several of the inky beetles emerged from the curtain of darkness. With surgical precision, Marion used the eye-tracking targeter to lock a reticule onto the targets. Marion pulled the trigger, the core's targeting computer swiveling her arms and torso into position so that she was perfectly aligned for her next shot, a flashing reticule indicating when to pull the trigger again. A second pull swept the core automatically into the third shooting position. Marion pulled the trigger like an instrument, the core popping into action and then locking into position like a dancer synchronized to some unheard bass line. Another wave plowed through the beetles rushed Marion's position from the blackness, this time many more than just 3. With deft precision she targeted each beetle individually, leaving a red reticule on each insect, trying to minimize the travel distance between each jump to optimize mobile efficiency. Marion pulled the trigger, initiation the script. With rapid precision, the bugs would vaporize into coiling smoke with a loud hissing sound, Marion slowly dropping back as two more white torpedo drones soundlessly fled the site.

“Beta-2 and -3 are away,” Adrian calmly narrated through the channel. “Reconnoitering beta-4 and -5, then falling back to beta-6.”

“Roger that, it looks like there is still a lot of the heat signature remaining and rapidly approaching, pulling back to beta-6 now.” Marion pulled Simo out of his crouch and began strafing backward toward the way point. The chasm itself was about a couple dozen strides from one end to the other at full tilt, about the size of a warehouse, proportionally. The last way point was in the far back of the chasm. She sprinted to there, across the empty expanse that once was a pool of water, to the back of the cistern. As expected, a large hole, taller than Simo, had been eroded through the cistern. Marion rolled forward and then planted into a prone shooting position. The remainder of the heat signature swarmed into view, dozens, maybe hundreds, of the tarry black beetles covered the floor like an oil slick. “Switching to manual targeting,” Marion announced as she disengaged her targeting computer. She clicked her rifle into semi-automatic mode by having Simo depress a switch at his thumb. Marion forcibly pulled the trigger and let out a few blasts of energy. Even in spite of not being able to use her red-dot laser sight, each trigger pull evaporated another beetle into its own cloud of elementary particles and whatever remained of the misty shadow on its back.

At length, two more little white tubes jetted by along the ceiling and out of the entry point. “beta-4 and -5 collections complete. Heading to beta-6 now,” Adrian stated the obvious. Enlil withdrew the energy pistols strapped just within reach underneath the slit running along the length on either side of his long flowing shift. He, too, fired wantonly into the roiling black mess, each shot soundlessly turning a critter into shattered particles. At length, he and Marion had cleared out all of the critters, the the heat signature having quite literally dissolving off his map overlay. He turned to address the large hole as Simo returned to its feet. It look like the cistern they were in was abutted against another large chamber, into which all of the water had flooded after what seems like the thin sandstone wall separating the two was eroded away. Adrian lobbed an imager probe into the expanse. The spinning black orb did it's duty and, just as before, evaporated before it could land. “beta-6 surveyed. I think we're good, Gold-one.”