Chapter 06: Drs. Kim and Tsukishima fulfil their obligation to the ISAF in the civil war of the Jezebel system - part 5

Landing

“Move, move, move, we’re not getting paid by the hour,” said Cole as everyone jumped out of the rear door of the dropship onto the small plateau in the side of the mountain. Frost crunched under Lauren’s boots as she bent her knees to absorb the impact. She looked up and saw the names of all the squad members above each member’s head projected onto her visor. The drop ship promptly took off and sped away from the mountain, the red dots of its jets being all that were visible. Malaya was already far ahead of the group.

“All clear,” whispered Malaya over the helmet comms.

“Try to keep up,” said Cole, navigating deftly between the rocks around the landing area.

Lauren tightened the straps holding her hard-case to her back and followed Cole.

The hike lasted about thirty minutes. The coverage of the forest was dense rendering most of the floor pitch black. Sprinkled like silver in a mine were tiny slivers of light: moonlight reflected by pine needles which also gave the air a sharp feeling when inhaled. The sound of crunching snow was a constant as the group trekked up the mountainside as was the whispering of the pine needles in the brisk wind, only occasionally punctuated by the sudden report of a twig snapping underfoot. Only the ghostly blue names floating above each of the squad members served to orient Lauren. Compared to the forests on her home planet, which she passed through to reach her own ancient structures, this forest felt cold and unwelcoming. Despite the constant climb, Lauren didn’t feel tired. She wondered if the bio-energy given off by the sensor array nearby might be giving off something that kept her stamina up. Two times, Malaya ordered the whole squad to stop when she detected motion somewhere nearby. Each time they waited until Malaya was able to establish that the motion came from a beuwap in a tree, its sleep disturbed by their advance. Once, Cole sent Jay up to the front to move a felled tree to make a bridge over a babbling stream. At the end of their hike, they were greeted by a sheer vertical facade of polymer concrete 30 meters high. It’s original color was impossible to guess as all of its paint was stripped off by the countless years and most of its surface was covered with lichen save for the large area of vents which murmured in a low drone, blowing out hot air. The area around the facade was devoid of snow and flowers bloomed, taking advantage of the microcosm of spring weather created by the beam scheduler building.

“This looks like the place,” said Cole, scanning the area, “can you confirm, Archival Officer?”

“I know you know th—” Lauren was cut off by a loud clang.

“What was that?” said Dineo, alarmed.

“A dusting robot,” said Lauren, “they travel through the ventilation ducts of the building to remove dust that would choke the building if left unchecked over the centuries.”

“Alright let’s get on with it, yeah?” asked Micah, looking at the facade.

“What should I expect inside, Archival Officer?” said Malaya, standing by the entrance, looking at Lauren.

“Lots of long hallways with lots of doors and the occasional huge machinery room,” said Lauren, “check the map I’ve sent you all, it has the path I want us to follow to the first maintenance panel.”

“Got it,” said Malaya.

The interior of the beam scheduler was dark. The night vision of Lauren’s helmet revealed stained polymer concrete floors and dented metal panels on the walls. Everywhere, there were drainage ditches on the floor that allowed water from melting snow to pass through the building without damaging it. A steady sound of trickling pervaded the building’s interior. Occasionally, the squad walked by a batch of mushrooms growing on the floor. Lauren started to wonder what the mushrooms were feeding on deep within the sunless building until the squeak of a rat answered her question: the corpses of lost animals seeking shelter in the relatively warm hallways.

At every intersection, Lauren had to stop and wait while two of the soldiers checked around the corners. Descending the stairs proved tricky as almost a whole flight was missing and the squad had to deploy a tensegrity bridge. After some more careful exploring, the squad had arrived at the area Lauren marked on their map, the middle of a long hallway.

“The panel has to be around here somewhere,” said Lauren looking around herself. She turned to Cole, “sir, permission to use a flashlight?”

Cole looked at both ends of the hallway before answering, “sure, there is a clamp point on your helmet to attach your flashlight to if you need it. Try and be quick about it.”

Lauren turned on her flashlight and panned it across the wall to her left. All of the paint that would have marked the location of the maintenance panel had long since been worn away, only random patterns of staining from the tricking water were visible. Lauren directed her flashlight to the right wall; more random patterns of stains. Micah and Malaya stood on the edge of the group each looking down a different end of the hallway. Lauren studied the patterns, there had to be something to give away the maintenance panel. Eventually Lauren found it, a set of stains that ended abruptly along a horizontal line. A line that must be the lower edge of a panel. Lauren clipped her flashlight into her helmet and pulled out her universal driver.

“Can I get a lift?” she asked the squad.

“Jay can do that,” said Cole.

Jay lumbered over next to Lauren and extended a hand, palm side up, around knee height. Lauren looked at Jay’s hand, then at him.

“Too high?” asked Jay.

“You want me to step on that?” returned Lauren.

“Do you know how exo-suits work?” said Jay.

Lauren carefully planted her boot on the metal-plated palm. The external pneumatic shape memory alloy artificial muscles around Jay’s arm contracted, propelling Lauren upwards with robotic strength. Lauren examined the line in the stains, looking for screw holes. She identified two screw heads with a bizarre shape on them. She adjusted her universal driver to the “record imprint” setting causing it to expose a supple cylinder. She pressed the cylinder firmly onto one of the screw heads until the driver’s LED went from red to green. She then adjusted her universal driver to “express imprint” causing it to produce the same shape in a metal bit. Armed with the correct screwdriver head, she loosened the two corner screws. Lauren stuck her finger into one of the holes and pulled. A one meter square panel swung up and towards her swiftly, its hinges squeaking loudly, giving her barely enough time for her to duck and almost causing Jay to lose his balance. Lauren noted that the hinge still moved quickly even after centuries of non-use.

“Be careful getting in there,” said Cole. Lauren hopped from Jay’s hand and perched herself on the lower edge of the maintenance hatch.

“Oh, okay, showoff,” muttered Cole.

“Can you hand me my hard case?” said Lauren before climbing down the rungs inside the cramped shaft which she estimated could not have a footprint of more than one meter by half a meter.

“Here,” said Dineo, peering in through the hatch opening. Lauren stretched out her hands to receive her case.

“Thanks, can you take this?” said Lauren bundling up her coat and holding it up.

On the wall across from the hatch was a rat’s nest of cables within which was a literal abandoned rat’s nest. Lauren sat down with her back against one of the walls so that the nest of cables was to her right and brought her knees up so that her toes were just touching the opposite wall. Lauren removed her laptop from her hardcase and brought up the wiring diagram for the server rack, squinting at the screen before she could turn the brightness all the way down. After studying the tangled cables for several minutes, she plugged her benji into the maintenance cable and then her computer, waited for all five lights on the microcontroller to light up, and then opened a connection to the building’s network.

“How’s it going in there?” asked Cole.

“I’ve just connected to the building,” said Lauren, “it’s going to take a bit longer before I’m done here if things go well.”

Lauren connected Jethro’s mini-computer to her laptop and started the decryption program. Jethro’s program took a few minutes this time while it flooded her terminal with status messages. At the end of it she was into the system and immediately greeted by the message

LAST LOGIN: 3070-03-30 UNI; 3009/05/30 25:22:29 FROM 0556:00:4000:D852:FC61:1D9:9EC0:6254 (ACCESS CONTROL OFFICE 03)

CORRUPTED MODULES: BASE CONTROL, MAPPING AND ACCESS CONTROL

BEGIN RECOVERY PROCESS? (Y/N)

“Well at least we know this is the right place,” she said to herself. The recovery process proved tricky and forced Lauren to consult one of her textbooks. She was reminded that she hated the style of reading where one has to scan through a book rapidly, extracting as much information while reading as little as possible. It felt rushed and incomplete, like spoiling a story without becoming invested in it. Cole wasn’t helping either.

“I don’t like this,” said Cole, “we’ve been in one place for far too long.” He shouldered his rifle, “we could be surrounded right now and not even know it.”

Lauren tabbed between her book and the command line, double checking that she was rewriting the network’s assembly code correctly.

“Malaya,” said Cole, “go check the end of the hallway. I think there were some large boxes there we could use for cover.”

“Sir,” said Malaya. She then jogged off the way the squad came into the hallway.

Lauren submitted the last line of commands. All of her windows suddenly disappeared.

“Ah!” exclaimed Lauren, worried that she had messed up.

“What! What is it?” said Cole, the impatience in his voice masking his antsy state of mind.

“Oh, sorry!” said Lauren, “my screen did a funny thing but it’s all okay now.” The windows returned as the screen finished changing its resolution.

“Gah! You’re actually killing me,” said Cole.

Malaya’s voice crackled over the radio, “I found the boxes, sarge. Seems like they’re made from thick steel. Nothing too heavy for Jay, though.”

“Good. Jay, go bring those boxes back here,” said Cole, “we want about four square meters of cover. Just so that we aren’t totally exposed if we get ambushed.”

“Will do, boss,” said Jay, walking the way Malaya went.

Lauren probed through the building’s network, looking for capabilities she might have just unlocked. She found the building’s security camera network and brought up a black and white infrared feed of the hallway the squad was in.

“I can see that Jay has reached the boxes,” said Lauren, looking at the camera feed.

“Did you just activate the radar?” asked Cole.

“No, just the security cameras,” said Lauren.

“Ah. Well that’s still helpful I guess,” said Cole, disappointed, “can you get back to working on getting the thing that is going to get us out of here?”

“I’m working on it,” said Lauren. She searched through the submenus, eventually finding a program labelled “Mapping and Access Control.” She activated the program. A map of the beam scheduler building appeared briefly on her screen. In the short time the map was on her screen, Lauren saw several yellow dots scattered throughout the building. The screen disappeared and she was greeted with the message:

CORRUPTED MODULES: MAPPING AND ACCESS CONTROL

BEGIN RECOVERY PROCESS? (Y/N)

Lauren pressed Y, “It seems the radar isn’t calibrated. I guess we have to fix it to get the access keys,” she thought to herself. The recovery process was more simple this time as it only required coding in a high level language which Lauren had been exposed to in graduate school. Meanwhile Jay had brought back the steel boxes.

“Put them here?” asked Jay.

“A little away from the wall, “said Cole, “no one is going to try and sneak a shot through a gap a few centimeters wide, especially with how deep this cover is.”

Lauren started working on fixing the map rendering function. “This should fix those scattered dots we saw earlier,” thought Lauren.

“Would you say we’re sitting ducks or fish in a barrel?” asked Micah.

Lauren finished repairing the function and started up the newly fixed program, a loading bar crept across the screen.

“With how narrow this hallway is, I’d say more like fish in a barrel,” said Cole.

The program finished loading. A map of the beam scheduler building appeared on her screen. Yellow dots moved about through the floorplan. Too many dots. A large group of dots was closing in on a smaller group of dots. Her mind started racing, so did her heart.

“Oh no,” was all Lauren could say.

Cole readied his rifle, “‘oh no’ what? Are we in danger?”

“There-there are people coming,” stammered Lauren.

All the other soldiers readied their rifles.

“From where, Lauren? Which end of the hallway?” said Cole in a less even than normal voice.

Lauren looked at the map, the dots were above them.

“Up!” shrieked Lauren, “I mean left. No, right. When you enter the hatch, no when you leave the hatch!”

“Give me a direction! North or South!” shouted Cole.

Lauren looked at the map, there was a button that said “show compass.” She tried to move her cursor over it but her hands were shaking so much, the cursor erratically moved around the button. With a deep breath, Lauren managed to click the button. Up was north.

“Nor—” Lauren was cut off by sharp reports of gunfire. All she could do was tab to the camera feed.

Dineo slumped to the ground, lifeless. Cole and Dineo were on the north side of the boxes while the rest were on the south side. Jay hopped behind one of the boxes. Micah and Malaya dove into the shadows of the boxes next to either wall of the hallway.

“It’s the north end!” said Cole, the most out of position. He dropped to the ground on his back. Lifting his head a little as possible, he pointed his arm at a point on the ground on the other side of the boxes. He made a fist and slid on the ground, pulled along by his glove faster than a sprinter until he was past the boxes. He crouched next to Micah.

“Of course up was north,” growled Cole, he almost sounded relieved to finally know the extent of his peril.

Malaya peered over the box and took a few shots. The loud bangs reverberated in Lauren’s hideaway, causing her to curl up before her helmet could activate its noise filter, making the explosions sound distant and muffled. Malaya ducked right before a few shots impacted the steel box.

“Hm, I wonder,” said Cole as he pressed a button on his rifle eliciting a low hum as its capacitors charged. He peered over his box and swept his rifle left to right. White flashes and screams came from the far end of the hallway.

“They don’t have reflective armor!” said Cole, “switch to laser mode!”

A vague shadow issued from the far end of the hall, headed towards the squad.

“Grenade!” shouted Malaya.

“I see it,” said Cole. He pointed his arm at the ball and made a fist. The grenade flew backwards, bouncing off the ceiling with a ping before exploding, briefly illuminating Lauren’s space. Cole ducked, then aimed his arm at Lauren’s hatch, made a fist, and slammed the hatch shut. Jay leaned out and started firing, sweeping from one wall of the hallway to the other. Three shots came in at a low angle and pierced him in the neck and torso. Jay fell with a thud. Malaya looked at her fallen comrade. A shot went through her helmet and she fell to the ground.

“They went around!” hissed Cole. He leaned against his box and fired toward the south end before six shots went through his chest. His lifeless body leaned against the large steel box.

Then everything was quiet.

6: Escape

Lauren felt like a hunted animal hiding in a bush. She was shaking and could feel sweat beading up on her skin. She was breathing too fast and her heart threatened to jump out of her chest. She heard footsteps approaching in the hallway on the other side of the thin metal wall. Her body and mind were in full fight-or-flight mode, but what she really needed was to hide. She curled up and held her breath. Gradually Lauren came to hear her heart beating in her ears. Then the beats became more spread out and as they did, her mind’s eye drifted. She saw herself at the bottom of a narrow shaft, barely illuminated by her laptop’s screen. Then she saw the long hallway outside her shaft, populated with the shadows of the enemy squad. Her mind continued to drift upwards through the bowels of the ancient building until it broke through the surface of the planet. And onwards she went into the night sky until her mind’s eye was floating amongst the stars. But all the while, she could still see herself curled up at the bottom of a dark shaft at the bottom of a dark building. Still though her mind drifted until she saw herself at basic training where she was told the phrase “in through the nose, out through the mouth.”

She opened her eyes to see the dimly lit interior of the shaft. Her heart was still racing and the footsteps were still approaching. With as much control as she could muster, she breathed out through her mouth. Then she inhaled deeply through her nose. She repeated this a few times until her heart returned to a relatively normal pace. She became aware of talking in the hallway in the local planetary language but she couldn’t concentrate enough to even attempt to translate it. For the moment, all she could manage was breathing.

Eventually, Lauren got the idea that knowing what the enemy soldiers were talking about could save her life. Still trembling, she reached into a pocket of her blazer and pulled out a pair of earbuds. She connected them to her computer. Never before did she have to be so certain of where the audio on her computer would play from, accidentally playing an embarrassing song in the library seemed inconsequential in comparison. She turned up the volume on her computer and watched the feed from the hallway security camera. A group of four soldiers stood around the boxes. One of them was inspecting Cole’s rifle. Lauren listened and did her best to translate despite at the moment forgetting most of what she learned from skimming Jezebel’s guide books.

“The something doesn’t work,” said the young soldier with Cole’s rifle.

“You need something something,” was all Lauren could translate from who she assumed was the leader. She guessed that something referred to fingerprints since all ISAF weapons require a registered user’s fingerprints to fire.

“They something something 11 of us,” said the leader, shaking her head.

“Whose is this?” said another soldier holding up Lauren’s coat.

“Something something 6?” suggested the fourth soldier.

“Something something where?” said the leader. She looked around the hallway, her gaze passing over Lauren’s hatch.

“We something return,” announced the leader, gesturing to everyone but the soldier with Cole’s rifle.

“You something here,” said the leader to the young soldier who placed Cole’s rifle on one of the boxes. Before he could protest, the other three left, heading down the north end of the hallway. The remaining soldier stationed himself looking at the south end of the hallway, putting the boxes between him and Lauren’s hatch. Lauren checked her watch, she had about an hour before she would have to leave to be picked up by the drop ship. She decided to wait as long as possible for the soldier to abandon his post to avoid taking her chances in combat.

As Lauren waited, she became aware of just how lonely she was. Everything she knew and loved was totally beyond her reach, and she beyond theirs. Nearly all of her friends and family were on different planets; she was hundreds of miles away from anyone she knew on this planet and she couldn’t use her phone let alone the Galactic Combined Comm Net because of the powerful waves coming from the nearby transmitter array. She realized that she was so alone that the one enemy soldier in the hallway presented a small comfort. Were she in any other place, he would have felt dangerous; were it any other person, they would have been a huge comfort. But why was it comforting to know that he was near? They never spoke a word to each other, they likely didn’t have any languages in common, them making eye contact would very well mean the death of one of them. In reality, it was a comfort to know that there was one other human near her in this dark place that time forgot to remind her of the world that she had to return to lest she become lost herself.

Eventually Lauren was able to settle down just enough to get back to work which served to restore more clarity of mind. After about 15 minutes of interacting with the Potesta system, she was able to obtain four access keys, set to expire in a year. She also spent a good while looking at the bio-radar map. She noticed that although there was only one soldier in the hallway, the map displayed four. She suspected that the map feed must have frozen up, but at that moment realized what the cautious thing to do in that moment was. To prove that the map was frozen, she had to unfreeze it and make all the dots in the hallway go away except one. After some time digging through the submenus, as if guaranteed by necessity, she found an option to refresh the feed of position data without going through the process of restarting the cumbersome program.

It was now just her and the one soldier. Lauren took several pictures of the map in addition to downloading snapshots of the continents just in case the access keys didn’t work. The soldier on guard gave no indication that he was going to leave anytime soon. Lauren realized that she would have to do something. She understood that the situation had a few things going for her, namely that the soldier had his back to her hatch and that there was a box between them. But the hatch was closed and noisy. It wouldn’t have been a problem if Cole hadn’t closed it but she might not be alive right now if he didn’t. Lauren thought of the common practice of masking one sound with a louder one. She searched the building network’s programs. She recalled the duct cleaning robots. Lauren could bring a robot to the duct directly over the hallway and have it make a sound. Lauren thought for a bit. But that would put the soldier on edge, make him more aware of his surroundings, which would not help Lauren. Although if she had the cleaning robot make noises several times, Lauren hoped she could desensitize the soldier to the noise of the cleaning robot, allowing her to open the hatch without him noticing.

The only problem was that it would take more time than she had. That and the question of what she would do once the hatch was open. Lauren considered her options. She could try to sneak away without confronting the soldier, but there were a lot of things that could happen that would result in a dead Lauren. Knocking out the soldier wasn’t an option since he was wearing a helmet. She could try disarming the soldier, she had the advantage of surprise, but that was a risky operation. The advantage of surprise also played into the last option: she could kill the soldier. Lauren felt her side for her Gladius Laser Pistol. Having hunted for dinner with her parents before, Lauren was no stranger to guns. It was the ISAF standard issue sidearm and this particular version was overpowered according to all those whose opinions she trusted when it came to such matters. The idea didn’t sit well with Lauren. She didn’t like to think that there existed situations involving two people where one of them had to die. She liked to believe that killing someone was always taking the “easy way” out of a difficult situation. But what was she going to do? Talk to the soldier? They might not even speak the same language. Lauren put her head in her hands. She looked at her watch, five minutes until extraction, she wasn’t going to make it. But she had to at least get out of here, she didn’t know when Ashley’s mission would take place. That and her back was starting to hurt from being curled up in the shaft.

Lauren looked at the camera footage, the soldier stood shuffling their feet, looking at different parts of the hallway but never behind their back. Lauren set about searching the building network for a way to control the cleaning robots. She found a program titled “Ventilation Maintenance.” After opening it, Lauren was presented with a map and an options list. Lauren cycled through the different views: heat map (“so that’s where the energy converter is”), cleanliness status, and cleaner locations. Lauren saw several dots moving throughout the floorplan and after searching around the map, selected the one closest to her position. Lauren thought the robot looked a little funny. It was two interlocked tetrahedral frames connected by cables and the whole thing was covered in dusters. She gave it a move command. The dot moved painfully slowly towards her hallway. Eventually the robot was in the duct above the hallway and next to Lauren’s hatch.

“Now how do I get it to make noise?” she thought. She deactivated the sound filter on her helmet, she had to be able to hear everything.

Lauren had a few buttons at her disposal: clean, move, status, and advanced mode. She clicked on advanced mode which brought up many more buttons. Lauren clicked on one of the bars and clicked “contract.” Even though she couldn’t hear any whirring, the bar shortened and Lauren now had the option to make one of the tetrahedrons move about. She commanded the tetrahedron to swing into the side of the duct wall. Lauren could hear a muffled knocking from above. On the camera feed, Lauren saw the soldier look up and around himself. Lauren noted that unlike Cole, the soldier’s immediate response wasn’t to ready his rifle. He looked towards the north end of the hallway perplexed.

“Well, he heard it. But this won’t mask the sound of the hatch opening,” though Lauren. Lauren racked her brain trying to figure out how to get a bigger sound out of this robot. Lauren thought back to her conversations in grad school with a friend who studied robotics. She remembered that he once told her that special purpose robots are usually designed to be as weak as possible while still being able to accomplish their task. But this robot’s job was dusting; what a delicate task. The most force this robot needs is probably when it’s lifting itself—

“Ah,” thought Lauren. Lauren clicked on the other bar that was holding up the robot by pressing against the walls of the duct and clicked contract. The robot lost its grip and fell with a thunderous crash, the thin walls of the duct reverberating like a drum. The crash was so violent that Lauren was worried that the robot got damaged by the fall. The soldier was also caught by surprise. He jumped at the sound and fumbled for his rifle. He then checked behind each of the boxes, ready to shoot whatever he found behind it. When he inspected the last box, he looked down, shaking his head and rubbed the back of his neck. He walked back to his post and shouldered his gun again. In a corner of her mind, Lauren felt sorry for what she was putting the young soldier through. She then checked in on the robot: all systems ok.

“Now just to repeat this a couple of times,” thought Lauren.

Lauren waited ten minutes before making the next crash. The second crash elicited a relatively lively response from the soldier. He was more prepared that time, checking behind the boxes more quickly, but also less spooked. The third time, the soldier merely looked over his shoulder.

“Getting there,” thought Lauren. She tried to not think about how the air in her little space was getting stale. She was tempted to wait less than ten minutes for the next crash, but she resisted; the crashes need to be a regular occurrence, by being as consistent as possible, anything will lose its novelty and come to be ignored. On the fourth crash, the soldier ignored the cacophony.

After another ten minutes, Lauren got up, careful to not make any noise. Holding her laptop in one hand, she reached for the panel with her other. The tips of her fingers could just barely reach the bottom panel. Lauren poised her thumb over the trackpad. She tested the weight of the panel, moving it imperceptibly to gauge how much force she would need. Then she raised her heels off the ground and pushed the panel out. At the same time she clicked “contract,” causing the hapless robot to fall a fifth time. Lauren thought she could just make out the low creaking of the panel’s hinges from the crashing noises of the robot and air ducts. She quickly sat down again and checked the camera feed. The soldier was cleaning his glasses, either oblivious to the creaking or choosing to ignore it.

Lauren put her laptop down and prepared to climb the ladder. She paused. How was she going to get down? Jay lifted her up on the way in, but he was dead now.

“I need to jump. Silently,” she thought. She took off her boots, putting them next to her hard case. She checked her pistol, turned off the safety. Lauren climbed the ladder, she peered over the edge of the hatch, she couldn’t see the soldier from her vantage point but could hear him shuffling in place. Lauren perched herself on the edge of the hatch, feeling the rough metal scratch the balls of her feet. Then Lauren jumped. She extended her legs as much as she could before her feet touched the floor, then curled her legs to slow her descent to a stop, the experience of years of climbing trees was paid off in an instant. She took a step forward. Her foot landed in a puddle of blood, making the smallest splash. Lauren froze, she heard footsteps.

“I need my pistol,” she thought. She unholstered her pistol and aimed at the corner of the box separating her from the advancing soldier. The soldier rounded the corner and checked behind the box opposite her. For a moment she had a clear shot at his back. Then he checked her corner. The flashlight on his gun blinded her.

Then Lauren’s finger pulled the trigger. A hole appeared in the dead center of the soldier’s chest, lined with a white light more brilliant than the soldier’s flashlight. The soldier screamed, Lauren’s pistol clicked to indicate that its capacitors were charged again and ready for the next shot. And Lauren pulled the trigger again. Another hole appeared just to the right of the first one. No scream this time, just the click of her gun.

Lauren screamed at herself in her head,“he’s dead, he’s dead!” She pulled the trigger again. Another hole appeared, bordered with white light, almost reaching the side of the soldier’s torso. Click. The air smelled of charred meat like some grotesque barbecue. Lauren retched at the smell while the soldier’s corpse fell backwards. Everything was silent save for the rattling of her pistol in her grip. Slowly, she turned on the safety of her sidearm and placed it back in her holster. Lauren noticed that her vision was blurry. She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. After replacing her glasses, Lauren looked around herself and beheld the collection of dead bodies.

“What have I done?” she thought.

Five of these people were dead due to her carelessness and the sixth died by her hands because Lauren couldn’t think of a better way out, if it even existed. But for the time being, Lauren had to try and get back to the defense headquarters so that at least some good could come out of this nightmare. Lauren hoisted herself up onto the ledge of the hatch and climbed back into the shaft. She checked her computer: the camera feeds, the bio radar map, her saved access keys. She closed her session with the building network, powered off her Benji, unplugged the microcomputer, and turned off her computer. She placed all of her things in her hard case. She climbed the ladder and dropped her case back in the hallway, taking care to keep it dry. She found her coat draped on the side of one of the steel boxes, somehow still dry. Lauren checked her watch, two hours past the extraction time. Lauren found Cole’s body and, while trying to be as respectful as possible, searched through his pockets until she found a pair of flares. Not sure what to expect, Lauren left for the exit.

Halfway through evacuating the building, Lauren started carrying her pistol in her hand. She was suddenly aware of how many noises were in this building that weren’t from her. The squeak of a rodent. The creak of a panel. The clanking of a cleaning robot. The whooshing of the ducts. After what felt like forever, Lauren was back out in the cold mountain air. She opened the valve on her coat and started jogging down the mountain. By recalling all of the landmarks that Cole pointed out along the way up, Lauren was making good progress towards the extraction point, that lonely cliffside plateau that she could just make out over the trees. Lauren thought about Cole. She thought about how he, in the midst of combat, took the risk to close her hatch. To the very end, Cole did his job and protected her right after she failed him in the one time he needed her.

Lauren arrived at the extraction point, which was empty as she expected. She stood there for a while, suddenly unsure of what to do. For the first time, there wasn’t a clear next step. Trying to walk back seemed unrealistic and she didn’t know how long she would have to wait for the next mission to come here, if they even planned on arriving at the same point. Lauren sat down next to a rock and hugged her legs, not because she decided that waiting was the best option but because she didn’t want to make a decision.

* * *

Lauren shivered as another breeze blew over her, but she resisted the temptation to increase the heat provided by her regulator vest. Lauren thought about what had happened that night. She thought about what Neil had said to her in the cafe, that by anticipating the worst case scenario, you won’t be caught off guard when it happens. Off guard was an apt descriptor for how she behaved back in the building. The least she could do was check which way was north on the map. The cost of that was a single click but it would have saved the squad from being ambushed, it would have given Dineo the chance to survive instead of being killed by an invisible force. She should have been tipped off by the fact that she saw too many dots in the building on the bio radar map before it crashed instead of just dismissing it as being caused by memory corruption. She could have checked the map during the fight and warn Cole that the enemy was circling around. Lauren was starting to realize that she had countless opportunities to prevent the elimination of her squad and she managed to ignore all of them. She looked up at the night sky. With the clear weather and thin mountain air, Lauren could see a beautiful yet foreign set of constellations. Lauren never considered the prospect that she might die under a different sky than the one she was born which she now recognized as naivete. Lauren pulled her legs in closer and buried her face in her knees.

“Maybe it’s just as well that I die here,” she thought. Of all the people that went in, Cole should have been the one to survive. After an hour of watching the young soldier, Lauren realized just how competent a fighter her bodyguard was. And yet she was the one to survive because of quick, level-headed thinking by him. And why did he do that? Because he was fulfilling his duty. And why was that his duty? Because Lauren went to school for six more years than him? It didn’t seem fair. Lauren felt like she didn’t deserve Cole’s protection, or the terrifyingly powerful pistol, or the special reflective plates that were in her vest, or to even be picked up. Lauren thought about what she told Neil, that all clouds, no matter how dark or gloomy, have a bright blue sky above them. What was the blue sky in this situation? The fact that she survived? Lauren wasn’t sure how she felt about surviving.

“Maybe there isn’t a blue sky,” said Lauren, “maybe there are just some situations with no good in them. Maybe there are some situations where someone has to be killed... No it can’t be.” Lauren challenged herself to come up with a counterpoint, something to prove that her beliefs were true and not just naive thinking. But she couldn’t come up with anything.

* * *

The moon rose, marking the start of the second night that Lauren had been camped out on the plateau. Earlier that day, Lauren collected some fallen branches and arranged them near her rock to make a crude windscreen. She also carefully scratched in the characters of one of the access keys onto the underside of her gun with a piece of flint, just in case her body was somehow found by her allies.

Lauren thought she heard the wind howling again but then realized that she didn’t feel anything. She lifted her hand, the air was still. She got up and looked away from the mountain. She discerned a pair of red and green lights in the distance moving north.

“They’re here!” thought Lauren. She didn’t stop to ask why, she fumbled for the flares while trying to contain her excitement. She removed the cap and pulled on the cord. A brilliant red light bathed the small plateau. She raised the flare in her hand and hoped the craft would see it. A few moments passed and the flare went out. The lights changed direction and started moving towards her. Lauren hopped in place twice. She put the flare on the rock and slung her hard case to her side. As the lights neared, Lauren was able to see the craft itself. It was not the dropship that brought her here, not even the same type.

Lauren’s heart sank.

“That is an enemy ship, Lauren!” she thought. The gun attached to the underside of the craft swiveled to point at her. Lauren ran back towards the rock she had rested against but the hard case was making it hard to run. Lauren heard a clank from the craft which prompted her to dive into the shadow of her rock just before a hail of bullets surrounded it. She made herself as small as possible and closed her eyes. She could hear bullets burying themselves into the snow around her and could feel the bullets hitting the rock through the vibrations reaching her back. She opened her eyes to see large shards of her rock littering the area, its soft sedimentary composition being no match for the heavy rounds of the craft. Lauren heard the whoosh of a missile being launched followed by an explosion. She shrieked but then realized she was still alive. She peeked over what was left of her rock to see a descending fireball where the enemy craft had just been. Lauren looked around, confused and afraid, as if the fish that had been chasing her was just swallowed by a larger fish. Another craft zoomed towards her. Lauren could only look at it. The ship spun laterally so that it approached the edge of the plateau backwards to put itself into position for a floating pickup. Its rear door opened, revealing several soldiers.

Ashley’s voice crackled over Lauren’s helmet speaker, “I’m glad we could find you.” Lauren’s heart jumped. She was rescued. Lauren scrambled to her feet and ran to the edge of the plateau to get onto the ship. The ramp-door of the dropship was hovering at about chest level, forcing Lauren to raise her arms over her head to reach for the outstretched hand of one of the soldiers. Lauren struggled to free her hard case which had gotten stuck on the bottom edge of the ramp while also trying to pull herself up.

“Wait, just take my case,” said Lauren.

“Shut up, it’s useless without you,” replied the soldier. Another soldier that was manning the rear gun started firing at the woods behind the plateau.

“Hold on, let me adju— Aaugh!!” Lauren felt two hard impacts on her back and an incredible pain from her waist as three bullets hit her in the back. Lauren felt her right leg give out as another bullet ripped through her shin. Lauren started falling to the ground. The soldier tightened their grip on Lauren’s limp wrist. Another soldier grabbed onto the first’s belt with one hand and onto a handle with the other. The first soldier used both hands to try and pull Lauren up but her hard case was firmly lodged against the lower edge of the ramp.

Ashley squeezed her way to the edge of the ramp and saw what was holding Lauren down. Ashley paused for a second before adopting a low, crouching stance. She made both of her hands into a fist which she held close to her chest. Ashley took a moment to focus on her wielding, searching for the body of mass that was Lauren’s hard case. Then she thrust her hands forward, moving the case just enough for it to become dislodged from under the ramp and for Lauren to be jerked into the ship. The two soldiers fell backwards and threw Lauren into the back of the drop ship. Lauren’s visor cracked as her helmet impacted the metal floor.

“Move!” shouted one of the standing soldiers. Lauren felt herself being pressed into the floor as the craft took off. Lauren felt a growing patch of warmth on her skin around her wound as her life drained and soaked her clothes. Ashley scrambled to Lauren’s side.

“Oh, ah, are you okay?” said Ashley, panicking.

Lauren whimpered, not as an answer but rather in response to the answer she got from asking the same question to herself. The best she could do was focus on the pain as it was in the moment to avoid thinking about what it predicted for her immediate future.

“What kind of question is that?” said the soldier that appeared to be the squad leader and who had pulled her into the ship, “she’s dead, she took three armor piercing shots to the back, one of those shots put a hole in our ship!”

“I’m really sorry Lauren,” said Ashley, “but I need you to tell me, were you able to get at least one access key?”

Lauren managed a small but definite nod, using the last of her strength or at least the strength that she could muster voluntarily.

“What?” said the leader shocked. They turned to another soldier, “get the first aid kit! No, not yours, the big one!” One of the soldiers removed the white box attached to the front wall of the dropship.

“Out of the way, specialist,” said the leader. They gently rolled Lauren onto her back and removed or cut away her coat, blazer and vest as well as the part of her pants around her shin, putting the clothes into a soggy, red pile. Lauren felt like a sheared sheep, robbed of warmth and dignity.

“It’s ridiculous how much better your armor is than ours,” said the leader, taking a medical foam canister and vacuum sealed plastic tube out of the white box. They opened the bag, the word “sterilized” written in green on the side of the vacuum sealed bag instantly changed to “biohazard” in red upon exposure to the air. The squad leader poked the threaded end of the tube out of the bag and screwed it onto the nozzle of the foam canister before completely pulling the bag off the tube, taking care to not let the tube touch anything.

“The antiseptic in this foam will probably cause her to flinch,” said the leader, pressing the trigger once to replace the air in the tube with foam, “Jamie, hold her legs. Archival Officer, hold her shoulders.”

Lauren felt pressure on her legs and saw Ashley lean over and place her palms on her shoulders.

“Move your hand please,” said the squad leader. Lauren realized that she had covered both ends of her wound with each of her hands. Reluctantly, Lauren moved the hand from her front wound.

Carefully, the leader inserted the plastic tube into the bullet wound on the lower part of Lauren’s waist. When they reached the bottom of the wound, the leader pressed the trigger a small amount, a small amount of blood flowed from her wound as it was displaced by the slow influx of foam. The antiseptic stung Lauren’s insides, she wanted out of the first aid procedure, she tried to double over, unused to feeling such stinging anywhere but on her skin. Ashley and the other soldier prevented Lauren’s reflex from disrupting the delicate procedure. With an even motion that betrayed thorough practice, the leader lifted the tube out of the wound until the hole had been replaced by a pliant pillar of foam. Despite knowing that it might save her life, Lauren felt violated by the whole procedure. The embedded coagulant and analgesic quickly stopped Lauren’s bleeding and replaced the stinging sensation with one of numbness. Little by little, Lauren’s vision darkened until at last she fell asleep.

Ashley took off Lauren’s glasses and placed them in her pocket, “will she be okay?” she asked the leader.

“Hard to say,” said the leader, “she’s lost the threshold amount of blood so it could go either way.”

They took a different spray canister from the first aid kit, spraying it at the floor to clean the nozzle. The leader applied antiseptic and bandages to the leg wound then sprayed Lauren’s shin, covering it with a thin layer of gel that quickly dried to become a hard, clear shell immobilizing her shin.

“Look at that.”

“How did it not shatter?” Two soldiers were inspecting the back armor plate of Lauren’s vest. Two spider-web patterns of fracture lines radiated from the two bullet impacts, the pattern becoming very fine grained in the area where the two patterns collided. The cracked reflective plate cast tiny spots of light all over the interior of the dropship.

“I’ll need to recover that vest,” thought Ashley, “Lauren’s black-box is in it. Plus it would be a pain if she had to apply for replacement bartering items. Hopefully they will get bored of it and I can take it without causing a fuss.”

“Get your hands off of that,” barked the squad leader, they took the vest and all the scraps of clothing except the coat and put it all into a sealable bag from the first aid kit, “this belongs to the Knowledge Corps.”

“Well,” thought Ashley, “that was easy.” She removed Lauren’s badge and phone from the damp clothes, wiped them off, and placed them in plastic bags and into her pockets.

Ashley spent the next half hour sitting on one of the benches and keeping an eye on Lauren. The other soldiers talked amongst themselves and were of a much lighter mood than Ashley. Things were good from their perspective: they had the access keys and they didn’t even have to go on the originally planned mission, and no one died.

Ashley heard one half of a conversation coming from the cockpit. She got up and made her way to the cockpit. She stood behind the two pilots on the threshold of the door.

“Have you reestablished radio contact with defense headquarters?” she asked the copilot.

“At last, yes,” said the copilot.

“I’m going to need to use the radio,” said Ashley.

“I’m not sure if you’re allowed to,” began the copilot.

“That wasn’t a request,” stated Ashley. The radio handpiece flew off its hook into her waiting hand, which was hot from wielding. Ashley dialed the number for Susan’s direct line and plugged the handpiece into her helmet.

“What’s this?” said Susan, “why are you back so early? Did you even land?”

“We found Lauren at the insertion point,” said Ashley, turning around to look at Lauren, “the Separatists showed up at the same time as we did and started firing on us. We were able to get out with Lauren but she’s injured badly. Can you reroute us to Waverton University Hospital so she can get treatment immediately?”

“Hold on there,” said Susan, “I don’t have that sort of ability you know.”

“Well can you get General Albritton to do it?”

“I can try but she’s going to say no, especially since the follow up mission had to be aborted.”

“Tell her that we have the access keys.”

“Are you positive?”

“Yes, I asked Lauren while she was still conscious and she told me she got at least one key.”

Ashley heard Susan move her phone away from her face and say “Yes!” before the Chief Warrant Officer continued, “well why didn’t you say so in the first place? I’ll call the general right now. See you at the hospital.”

“Are we being rerouted?” asked the pilot.

“Not yet,” said Ashley, “we still need to get confirmation from the general.”

“The general, huh?” said the copilot, “wow.”

The dropship made a gentle landing on the Waverton University Hospital helipad, a team of medics moved in with a gurney as soon as the jetwash from the craft abated.

“Take her to the robotic operating room,” said one of the doctors. Ashley grabbed Lauren’s hard case and bag of clothing and chased after the gurney. She reached the elevators to find that the doors had just closed. She waited to watch the display next to the door to see what floor the elevator stopped at then raced down the stairs. Exiting the stairwell, Ashley just caught the gurney disappearing around a corner. She ran through the hallway, dodging and passing doctors, nurses, and soldiers.

“Shorty! Over here!” Ashley planted her feet and skidded to a halt. She turned around to see Susan sticking her head out of one of the doorways, flanked by two soldiers. She also saw, at the opposite end of the hall, a familiar looking GCP reporter.

“Hey!” called Brett, “what the hell are you doing here?” They strode towards Ashley.

“Can’t talk now,” said Ashley. She dashed through the doorway.

Ashley jogged into the observation room, “where’s Lauren?”

“She should be entering the operating room shortly,” said Susan, “just as soon as the lead surgeon gets here. Hey, what’s all that noise?”

Ashley looked back at the door and saw green and grey clothes flash across the window.

“Let me go! This is an obstruction of the press!”

“I’m sorry but you can’t come in here.”

A GCP reporter burst through the door trailed by two soldiers.

“Now where did she go off to?” Brett straightened their hat. They surveyed the room and saw Ashley, a high ranking soldier, and finally Lauren being pushed into the operating room.

“Hm,” said Brett.

“Susan, that’s the reporter we ran into!” exclaimed Ashley.

“Get ‘em boys!” said Susan pointing at the reporter.

Swiftly, Brett sidestepped one of the soldiers and made a break for the door. Ashley planted one foot back and moving both of her palms forwards, pushed the door shut via wielding. Brett yanked at the door to no avail. The two soldiers tore the reporter away from the door and brought them in front of Susan.

“You’re overstepping your authority and you know it,” said Brett, struggling with the soldiers.

“Quite the contrary,” said Susan, calmly, “temporary detainment is permitted when it is necessary to ensure the safeguarding of vital military intelligence. You should have stayed outside like you were told to, reporter.”

“And how are you going to prove that detaining a Galactic Combined Press reporter was absolutely necessary?” contended Brett.

“Feel free to challenge us in court after we’re done here. I’ll see to it that you are treated well,” said Susan turning her back on him.

“What about that great story you promised me? Is this it?” said Brett to Ashley as they were being pulled towards the door.

“You’ll get your story in due time,” said Ashley. The door closed. Ashley went to join Susan at the window into the operating room. An enormous surgical robot was mounted to the ceiling and hovered over the operating table. Various robotic arms sprouted from it giving it the appearance of a mechanical spider. Ashley listened to the chatter among the doctors.

“How are the vitals?” asked one of the doctors.

“Stable, for now,” said the anesthesiologist, “is the wielding machine set up?”

“Yes ma’am, we’re running the Kensington first degree waveform of the first kind and the Kensington third degree waveform of the second kind, holding steady at 30 calories per second,” replied the wielding specialist, “we can remotely staunch the bleeding and have the biochemistry of the operating area isolated from the rest of the body for about an hour with how things are looking right now.”

“Are the haptics calibrated?” asked the lead surgeon, putting on his gloves.

“Force feedback resolution at most 2 millinewtons, end effector position accurate to within 10 micrometers, and latency is less than or equal to 5 milliseconds,” replied the roboticist.

“Let’s see, the only internal organ that was damaged was the cecum. We can patch that up with artificial epithelials, can someone get a reel of intestinal and dermal epithelials? What’s the size of the entry wound?”

“We have one centimeter diameter holes at the entry and exit points,” said the resident.

“Oh, that’s pretty big,” said the lead surgeon, “but we should have just enough time once we dissolve the foam assuming everything goes smoothly. You, start by removing the medical foam.”

Ashley clutched the bag of Lauren’s belongings, squeezing so tightly that she felt the hard edges of Lauren’s pistol. The robot’s arms sprung to life with a series of small, precise movements. One of the arms held the area around the wound while another inserted a thin tube deep into the foam. A third arm containing a wielding emitter started spraying a liquid that dissolved the foam. The tube turned gray as it sucked up the resulting solution.

“Well,” said Susan to Ashley, “it looks like things are out of our hands now. I need to go take care of some things. Search her belongings if she doesn’t make it.” Ashley pulled a chair up to the window and continued to watch the operation.

“Eliza, are you picking this up?” said the wielding specialist to the anaesthesiologist, looking at his screen.

“Yeah, her vitals are picking up. Nowhere near conscious though.”

“I know but I’m going to have to de-isolate the operating area in two minutes at this rate,” said the wielding specialist, “Io, how close are you to removing the medical foam?”

“Aaahhh,” said the resident, “definitely more than two minutes, the foam has gotten in a lot of nooks and crannies.”

“What will happen if we delay de-isolation?” asked the lead surgeon.

“For this case, we’re looking at cell die off in the border region,” said the wielding specialist.

“Okay here is what we’ll do,” said the lead surgeon, “Io, remove all of the solution but don’t dissolve any more foam.”

The resident nodded and redirected their attention at their surgical station.

“Once that’s done, we de-isolate the area and wait for the vitals to go back down. As long as the foam is solid, it can’t get mixed up with the rest of the body.”

“Scan finished,” said the resident, “no wound treatment solution present.” The wielding specialist flicked a toggle switch. A hum that had been pervading the air faded away leaving the room silent save for beeps coming from the equipment.

Ashley felt a buzz from one of her pockets. She found that Lauren’s phone had received a message from Neil Wu, Lauren’s long time friend. Out of respect for Lauren’s privacy, she placed the phone back in her pocket.

“The vitals haven’t budged,” said the anaesthesiologist, breaking the silence.

“Let’s induce a quick hibernation in the body,” said the lead surgeon.

The wielding specialist flicked some switches and two more robotic arms with wielding emitters descended and pointed themselves at Lauren. Humming returned to the room stronger than before.

“Alright, that’s enough,” said the anaesthesiologist after a spell. Switches were flipped, the humming weakened.

“Going back to the K 1-1 and K 3-2 waveforms in the wound area,” announced the wielding specialist.

“Alright Io,” said the lead surgeon, “just a little more to go.”

Everyone waited while the resident directed the robot arms to spray solvent at the last veins of medical foam and suck up the resulting solution. The wielding specialist’s knee bounced in anticipation.

“Scans complete,” said the resident at last, “no remaining foam or solution.”

“Excellent,” said the lead surgeon, “let’s move on to phase 2.”

“Alright,” said the wielding specialist, “switching to first degree waveform of the second kind. We don’t need biochemical isolation anymore right?”

“Correct, we’re good on simple hibernation from here up until the end of the operation,” said the lead surgeon. The wielding specialist took a breath and leaned back in his chair. A nurse entered the room carrying two flat cylinders which looked to be very cold based on the condensation forming around them.

“Ah, perfect timing,” said the lead surgeon, “load that into the robot, turn on the heater, and we can get started with patching the intestines and the skin.

Once the two drums were loaded, another arm moved towards the table. A clear ribbon was attached to it, carrying the strip of artificial tissue, it looked funny to Ashley as it was the only thing that jiggled around on an otherwise rock steady machine.

Ashley watched them patch the skin on Lauren’s back, then the tissue of her intestines, and finally the skin on her front.

“Okay, Vel,” said the lead surgeon, “activate the tissues.”

The arms of the robot one by one retracted from the table into their coiled up positions near the main body of the robot.

The wielding specialist pressed several buttons and turned a knob on the console in front of him, “alright doing a soft switch to Kensington fifth degree waveform of the first kind, 2.4 kilocalories per second. The artificial cells should be up and running in twenty-ish minutes. I’ll let you know.” The long cylinder that had been pointed at Lauren’s wound started to glow a soft red.

Ashley recalled her college biology class that talked about artificial cells. Their key function was to mimic nearby cells however they could not reproduce as they were supposed to be replaced by the recipient’s own cells. Similar to a glowstick, all of the different parts of the cell that are supposed to interact are initially separated from each other. A specific wielding waveform is required to break those separators, bringing the cell to life so to speak.

“Io, see to it that she gets a follow up appointment in four days to make sure that all of the artificial cells in the cecum have been replaced, then again in two weeks for the skin cells,” said the lead surgeon, checking all of his monitors. The atmosphere around the operating table now seemed more relaxed and less focused.

“Alright, now to work on the leg,” said the orthopedist. The doctors moved the table so that Lauren’s right shin was directly under the giant robot. One arm descended with a small vibrating saw that cut away the resinous coating over Lauren’s leg without so much as scratching her skin.

“We have another large wound to work with,” said the lead surgeon. Two new arms descended to the table.

The orthopedist looked at the x-ray photos, “between the fibula and tibia, it seems we only have five shards to put back together. We can use micro-screws and an internal splint for all of them.”

Through the doctors’ screens, Ashley watched them reassemble Lauren’s leg bones like a puzzle. The orthopedist then proceeded to drill holes into each of the fragments and fasten them to titanium splints with screws that Ashley couldn’t see from her window. At one point, ten robot arms were extended, all of them passing through a single bullet wound to reach the damaged bones.

“How about that?” said the orthopedist, getting up from the control panel.

“Looks pretty good, Denice,” said the lead surgeon, looking at the monitors, “bonus points for not making any incisions. Alright, let’s put her leg on risers and patch the skin up.”

The resident put three blocks under Lauren’s right leg so that the robot could access both wounds. Ashley followed the motions of one of the robot’s arms as it bent in 5 places in order to approach Lauren’s bottom wound from the correct angle. After that, the wielding specialist worked on the console a little bit while the rest of the doctors waited for the artificial skin cells to be awakened. Meanwhile the resident put Lauren’s leg into a cast.

“All done,” said the wielding specialist, “the artificial cells have joined up to the patient ones.”

“Okay,” said the lead surgeon, “take her to the recovery room. Good job everyone.”