“I can manage this but I might need your help, wriggling.” Sofia flirted.
He was still too weak to walk, and she carried his entire weight with only one arm. The strength she exhibited was unbelievable to him in contrast to her dainty frame. Her soft body rubbed against his, and before he passed out from the pain, he thought,
“She’s fucking with my head! I know she does this on purpose, showing up to my rescue, naked. She even smells nice…”
Before ordering Sofia, Jason had taken a written survey, and was given a mind scan to help develop a compatible co-pilot. The SYNTECH Company, DPHQMS or Desired Preferential Human Qualities Mind Scan, guaranteed to produce the perfect Synthetic Woman. However, and for some strange reason, she just drove him absolutely crazy; all she did was argue. Her development cost him nearly three years of his salary, and was nearly the most expensive model SYNTECH had to offer. Now, the investment was paying off as she carried him back safely to the Chameleon.
A glow at the Earth’s edge indicated the coming scorcher of another Sun baked day. The still evening night was destroyed by an early morning wind; riding on its back a devilish heat hugged the ground’s surface.
Sofia woke Jason by speaking. “We have a progressive weather shift with a twelve degree temperature spike.”
“Yeah, I can feel it…how hot is it now?”
“One hundred thirty-six, point eight degrees,” she responded.
Suddenly, Sofia began to accelerate, her top speed was forty-three miles per hour, empty handed but much less with all the extra weight.
“What’s-s wrong?” Jason’s voice shook from the abrupt increase in speed.
“We have incoming, Jason.” Sofia’s internal sensors detected a vehicle closing in on them at high speed.
“L-land or air-r-r?
“An older Strike Drone but still deadly.”
“Are…we…n-e-a-r the ship, Sofia?”
“Less than two miles…ETA’s four minutes.”
“Are you in communication range yet?”
“Yes, I’m just in range now but it will take a few minutes to get the Chameleon’s defenses up.”
“Hurry!” Jason shouted.
“You should’ve had the defense system upgraded too.”
“Hindsight is…twenty-twenty.”
“What does that mean, Jason?”
“I… could-d only…afford one up-upgrade, and…and you…were it.”
The sleek ship was in a passive defense mode, and most of the systems needed to come online, including the active integrated defense logic control system; this would take over four minutes. Sofia’s sophisticated neural brain scanned three hundred and sixty degrees for up to two miles, but now, since she was linked into the Chameleon systems, she had unlimited computing power. She could even link up with off world vehicles, including satellites in low Earth orbit. From satellite imagery, she could identify a person walking in the open with 96.34% accuracy.
“I have detected a HEW leaving the drone’s cannon. Hold on! I have to deviate from our current path.” She adjusted her grip with the two men tucked under her arms, before making an almost impossible ninety-degree turn; trying to avoid the High Energy Wave.
“Wow! Talk about whiplash!” Jason yelled trying to hold on.
“Change of course.” Sofia again made another obtuse turn.
“BOOM!” Debris exploded skyward when the plasma weapon detonated behind them.
They were less than four hundred feet from the Chameleon when the exterior door opened upward. Steam pumped out from the turbine condenser that produced clean water. The camouflage Skin began to flicker, indicating the cloaking system was charged but it would not fully initiate cloak, until the exterior door was shut behind them.
“Hold on! Changing course again.” Sofia made another quick turn but this time, she angled straight for the open door of the Chameleon.
“BOOM!” The ground exploded to the front of them but not without injury.
Slicing clean through, the High Energy Wave tore off Sofia’s right arm at the shoulder. The heat of the plasma weapon instantly cauterized all genetically manufactured biological and organic material. However, her Nano-Carbon poly-blend humeral bone, popped right out of the shoulder’s socket.
Almost instantly, her internal gyroscope compensated the weight differential. She kept on running, leaving the unconscious Learner, and her arm on the ground.
“Your arm!” Jason screamed in shock as he watched Learner tumble end over end with her limb. “Wait, Sofia, we can’t leave your arm behind!”
“Jason, we have a full compliment of Vril Troopers inbound; I will survive until it is replaced.”
“What is the Trooper’s mode of transportation?” Jason asked.
“Land vehicles...ETA, nine minutes.”
“OK, take us into the Chameleon.” Jason capitulated.
Sofia smoothly ducked inside the door and had the Chameleon moving before the door shut behind them.
“Knock that drone out of the sky!” Jason ordered as she gently helped him into his chair.
“My pleasure, Jason.”
He then complained, “I can hardly feel my arms.”
“That’s to be expected from the ordeal you just went through,” she replied motherly from the co-pilot seat, and continued, “Drone targeted, and Voice Command needed to dispatch missile.”
“Missile one, and Missile two go on my command…” Two ports opened on top of the ship. “Missiles launch!” Jason’s command woke two small missiles inside, sending them supersonic in a blink of an eye; they then blasted the Strike Drone from the sky.
Jason exhaustingly turned in the cockpit and gazed upon Sofia’s naked body next to him. He could hardly look at her right side without picturing her tissue dying on the ground; lying there with Learner. It was as if he was looking at a mannequin’s arm.
“We can’t use the Pipe; Fissure Point Council troops will be waiting for us, Sofia. We’ll have to circumvent the Point’s Pipe by traveling across the surface… Calculate a return to the nearest Polaris Pipe Portico.”
“Navigation searching…multiple routes possible,” Sofia calmly replied.
“Sofia, let’s backtrack towards the Fissure Point Pipe, and we’ll leave them an electronic impression…like we’re going to MAGLEV...”
“All war is based on deception.”
“Very good, Sofia, where did you get that from?”
“From Sun Tzu’s book, ‘Art of War,’ published in 513 BC...” Sofia replied and hesitated to look him. She then continued saying, “He was a great Chinese General.”
“How are the systems?” he weakly asked.
“All systems nominal, and we’ve gone stealth,” answered Sofia.
“Get ready to deploy EMPM.” Jason enhanced the heads-up display, zooming in on the fast moving convoy of Vril Troopers.
“I have the vehicles targeted…Jason, give the voice command to dispatch EMPM.”
“EMPM one, go on my command…” Again, a small port opened up on top of the ship. He then gave the command, “EMPM launch!”
The missile launched out at hypersonic speed and in no time the Electromagnetic Pulse Missile exploded above the convoy; immediately stopping the pursuing Vril contingent dead in their tracks. The EMPM did not kill but only disabled the vehicles’ electronics.
“They’re going to see that from space…they’ll question me about our weapons’ expenditures, and it won’t take them long to connect this event with me.”
Sofia turned, compassionately grabbed on to his forearm, deeply stared into his eyes, and said, “Jason, I won’t let any harm come to you…even if the threat comes from the Polaris Corporation.”
“Why’ve you slowed our progress, Sofia?” Jason’s voice wavered looking at the Skin. He winced from his own touch while rubbing at his sore shoulder.
“Jason, we are about to enter the Alkali Endorheic Salt Lake.”
“Ah yes, traveling across there would definitely give our position away. Hello, Devonian Scum, see our giant red rooster tail? Come and get us!” Jason’s off kilter comment was more self-deprecating in nature; because he could not believe that he was about to make a huge error.
“Should I do an end around?”
“What does that mean?” Jason ignorantly inquired.
“The ‘end around,’ is a tactical phrase used during the twentieth century, I pulled it from a strategist handbook relating to a physical sport called football. Meaning, we should go wide around the line of pursuing Vril.”
“Yes, we’ll head west for the Pacific Rim, then go southeast until we hit the Polaris’s Southern Hemisphere Pipe.”
P
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EVONIAN
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“We have a situation!” Learner nervously uttered in a tautly grated high pitched tone. The squamous cells layering inside his mouth, begged for moisture; the dryness of his throat caused his words to sound scabby and hoarse.
“Is this something you can handle?”
a thick voice asked over Learner’s communicator.
“I need more assets in the mix!” he pleaded while scratching at the hives covering his epidermis as his skin-crawling anxiety plagued him; the pressure was on to open the cargo container.
“One question… do you have the package?”
The secretive man spoke regarding the NEPRs.
“Yes…”
“So what is the situation?”
“It’s complicated!” he declared.
“Just bring us what you have, and we’ll discuss the particulars later.”
“Negative, I need to take care of the…situation first.”
“Expenditures are higher than you’ve previous accounted…”
“Listen, if I don’t take care of this…the whole thing will go sideways, jeopardizing everything.”
The voice on the other end hesitated before answering.
“You’ll get the assets needed to clean things up…however, you better succeed; because when the smoke clears, a thorough investigation will be done on your activities and you’ll pay the ultimate price for failure.”
“Fine but you better hope I succeed!” Learner said plaintively before disconnecting his communicator.
The sling supporting Learner’s injury only made walking through the entryway of the Tactical Communication Pod difficult. Squeezing through the tight space leading to where Mitchell worked, he flinched from the pain after bumping his elbow into one the many rows of computer and communications equipment towers. The dingy room was darkly brown in color, and covered in dust. Equipment faceplates danced in spectral lights of red and green wavelengths. Speakers popped, hissed, and clicked, in a symphonic madness of harmonic squelches as they continually frequency hopped. The old equipment continually struggled to hack into Polaris satellites and off world communications networks.
Compared to the sophisticated onboard equipment of the Chameleon, there was no match. The outdated equipment was many generations older, and could easily be defeated by Polaris spoofing; at least that is what the Security Specialist at the Polaris Corporation liked to believe. However, Mitchell Thacker, a certifiable genius, overhauled the entire Vril network, modifying their antiquated equipment to predict, with modest results, the encoded frequency changes before they occurred. This would allow them a window into all secured transmissions.
“How are you feeling Mitchell?” Learner asked the injured man who now reclined in a chair.
“Better now that I have painkillers coursing through my veins, but it hurts when I move,” he said while thinking about the well-placed kick Jason Bjorn’s SYN put to his chest, cracking a hairline fracture to his sternum.
“Just take it easy…however, don’t take too many pills…I’m going to need your help tracking Bjorn.”
Sitting behind a set of keyboards, Learner began his request for men, and specific equipment. He also needed iOSAT Potassium Iodine because their medical kit was out from the constant use. iOSAT Potassium Iodine was used to counteract mild radiation poisoning, and Learner suspected he might have been exposed when left lying unconscious in the early morning Sun.
“Tracking down Jason Bjorn won’t be easy, Mitchell,” Learner said while trying to rub away the pain in his temples; he was suffering from a mild concussion too.
“That bitch, throwing me around like I was some piece of trash…and what did she mean, I am an insignificant bug?”
Learner wasn’t really thinking straight. His memory of being assaulted by Sofia only angered him, flummoxing his train of thought.
“The Fissure Point Pipe is not a viable option for him…so I am calculating possible routes to the nearest Polaris Portico,” said Mitchell in a wobbly voice.
Feeling the effects of radiation poisoning, Learner turned and vomited into a trashcan. After wiping his chin, he responded in a guttural voice, “We’ll need to block all egress points, that’s for sure.”
“Sir, we need to get you to a de-particle emission unit.”
“I have ordered a portable unit from the Devonian Enclave, including an Emergency Medical Staff to administer DNA reactive agents to heal our injuries. They should be here within the hour…”
“Where are you getting the funds for all this, sir?” asked Mitchell. It was obvious he did not hear the conversation Learner just had outside with the Vril superior.
“Don’t you worry about the small stuff, Mitchell, you just stay on top of the analytical and technological aspects of what we’re doing. Just be ready to haul ass, because as soon as we get treated, we’ll be heading towards the Pacific Pipe Portico but fast.”