Star Force: Divergent (SF74) (3 page)

She walked in a long circle around her octagonal
structure, placing the other three devices at approximate cardinal points while
curiously wondering how long she could tolerate the snow on her bare feet.
Residual heat would offer her a bit of a shield, but as it bled off she’d start
to get into trouble. She’d never tested that notion before to see how long it
would take, and to her surprise she was still ok by the time she completed her
circuit and got back to the door.

Jyra opened it and quickly got back inside then
wiggled her toes around, finding that her feet had already started to get numb.

She raised an eyebrow, making a mental note to not
trust her senses on that one in the future. If they were numbing up that would
allow her to move about in the snow better under combat conditions, but it
would also not inform her as to their condition and what damage could incur.
Cold wasn’t something that you could mess with and was as dangerous as heat in
ample amounts, but this environment wasn’t that frigid so she knew a little
exposure would be alright so long as she kept it brief.

Yet another razor’s edge to walk, but this little
barefoot mission hadn’t gone too far and now she had a baseline for the
future…though she hoped she was never caught without her boots or shoes in the
future, for that would be a major pain in the ass.

For that reason many Commandos slept in them when in
the field. After running for so many hours Jyra knew that would be a bad idea,
but if she kept her uniform shoes with her the perimeter sensors that she’d
just set up would hopefully give her a few seconds to slip them on if something
did happened.

It wasn’t a good situation to be in, for she was alone
and there was no one to take watch while she slept, but she had to make due and
didn’t want to sleep in either her boots or the shoes that slipped into them. A
few Commandos wore the boots without shoes underneath, and they were adjustable
for that purpose, but she never did, wanting to have them on for when she got
out of her armor.

Jyra configured another device she had plugged into
the floor to sound an alarm if any heat or technological signatures came within
scanning radius, excluding those already present and extending the minimum range
out to the confines of her building so if she moved around inside it wouldn’t
go off. If she stepped outside it would, but she also configured the alarm to
transmit to an earpiece that she slipped on rather than audible to everyone…which
in this case would be anyone outside trying to sneak up on her.

There was no one on Corneria to bother her, not even
any wildlife, but she wanted the extra layer of security regardless, for you
never knew what unknown factors were in play.

Jyra grabbed her shoes and stuffed her socks into them
as she set them to the side and unrolled her sleeping sleeve. She plugged it
into the a slot on the floor then slipped her bare feet inside and crawled into
the double-sided blanket that would regulate her internal temperature while
blocking her external heat signature. There was a head cover that she didn’t
bother using, but she did trigger the
underlayer
to
inflate and lift her an inch off the hard floor, along with a pillow section
that rose another couple inches up.

Keeping her shoes and socks next to her head and ready
to grab at a moment’s notice she closed her eyes and got to sleep quickly, not
intending to linger here any longer than necessary for her to rest and
recharge. The alarm system had also been configured to wake her in 7 hours,
meaning she’d be off before sunrise and onto the waypoint, hopefully, by the
end of the next day.

3

July 4, 2896

Epsilon Eridani
System

Corneria

Jyra had gotten up just before sunrise and taken off
on her second running segment of this journey but had found that she’d pressed
herself too much the previous day and intentionally cut it short after only a
few hours, took some downtime and a long nap, then went back out to complete
the rest of the first leg of this mission, eventually arriving at the
waypoint…which was floating in virtual form over top of a small frozen lake.

“So much for easy,” she told herself on the shore as a
weak beacon appeared beneath it, indicating that there was something under the
ice for her to get to. To that end she disconnected her pack and dropped it
into the thick snow before gingerly walking out onto the ice. It was frozen
thick enough to hold her, so she moved out further from shore until she was
directly over the beacon location and actually standing inside the virtual
waypoint. Shutting the vents on her mask and switching over to backup oxygen
Jyra jumped into the air, hearing the ice crack beneath her, then pulled her
knees up towards her chest midair before smashing her legs back down like a
jackhammer and breaking through.

The ice was thicker than she thought and only her legs
went through, with the jagged corners of the ice pinning her waist above water
level until she added a few fist smashes and her white armor sank below the ice
and out of view. All was quiet for more than a minute, but before the water could
begin to refreeze her helmet poked up through into the air and an arm came out,
pressing down and breaking off another piece of ice.

Jyra clawed further into that small indentation,
getting her elbow on one side and reached up out of the water with her other
arm to throw a small canister clear before using that hand as a counterbalance
to gently ease her upper body out of the water and onto the ice like a worm, crawling
inch by inch over cracking ice until she was completely out of the water and
could roll to the side a couple of turns and up onto her feet. She walked over
and picked up the canister while opening her air vents and allowing her
reserves to start gradually replenishing.

The Commando waited until she was back on shore before
she chanced to open it, finding only a small
databurst
module inside. She toggled it on and linked to it via her HUD and got the flash
transmission of data…which in this case was just another set of coordinates for
the next leg of her mission.

“52 miles. They’re making this too easy,” she said,
closing the lid on the canister and leaving it on the lake shore as she grabbed
her pack, intending to get another couple hours of running in before she
stopped for a rest. Not knowing what would be at this waypoint she’d conserved
energy so she could run or fight if necessary, but now that that appeared to be
unnecessary she might as well get a move on.

It was already dark, so she took to the forest again
using her
nightvision
before eventually stopping 18
miles later and setting up camp. She took a longer rest there then hit the next
section in the daylight and made it all the way up to within a kilometer of the
2nd waypoint before stopping again. Maybe it was another navigational marker,
perhaps it was something else, but she might as well find out with a fresh set
of legs than when exhausted, so Jyra pulled out her tent canister again and
repeated the process that was now becoming routine.

She ate and went to sleep, then woke up hours later
when it was dark and packed up, traveling the last kilometer on foot and ready
for action when the waypoint guided her to an anonymous bit of forest that had
a speeder bike laying on the ground.

“Hello,” she said, cautiously approaching and looking
for any booby-traps when she noticed the crate sitting behind it with another
databurst
module on top inside a clear case sleeve. She
pulled the coordinates from it, finding that there were actually 18 different
waypoints updated, all of which were scattered around her current position and
not in order. No further information was given, and it seemed to her that this
was a collection mission now. For what she didn’t know, but having the speeder
meant she could avoid having to run out to all of them…which was fortunate, for
they were spread over an area with a radius of 130 miles.

Jyra flicked the ‘on’ switch but the speeder didn’t
respond, drawing a sinking feeling from the commando. She tried again but
nothing, then pulled open the front panel and saw that the bike was in
mechanical disarray with missing components and disconnected wires…including a
burnt out chunk that functioned as the cooling unit for the gravity drive.

Her eyes flicked to the crate.

“You had better be spare parts,” she said, opening it
and sighing with relief when she saw that was just the case. Apparently she had
to repair the speeder or submit herself to hiking the insane back and forth
distance, for which she probably would have to ration her supplies. That wasn’t
doable when one was physically propelling oneself across miles of forest,
meaning that if she didn’t get the bike fixed she was in a world of hurt.

Mechanical repair wasn’t something Commandos were
heavily trained in, but they were taught the basics of how to tinker with their
equipment in the field. That underlying knowledge had been expanded upon
heavily in her Arc Commando training, giving her more options for situations
just like this. She didn’t carry a full tech rating, but repairing speeders was
one of a handful of tasks that she had been taught how to do, along with
bypassing the control interface to circumvent any locking mechanisms if
necessary, though today that didn’t seem to be an issue. Star Force speeders
were typically free use and had no key sequences required, but a lot of
civilian craft did, including those that Star Force produced and sold on the
open market.

Those didn’t have weapons, but this one did. A single
sammy barrel mounted on the front of the bike. Jyra knew it was more powerful
than a sniper blast, but not as potent. More for blowing away a chunk of mass
than punching a small hole through armor. Why this was an armed variety made
her wonder if combat wasn’t forthcoming on this mission…or more likely some type
of impediment that would difficult to remove without the weapon.

Didn’t matter now, for if she couldn’t repair the bike
she wasn’t going anywhere with it, for the gravity drive would overheat even if
she got the power supply hooked up, and it was missing several conduits to both
the drive and the controls, which was why she hadn’t been able to turn it on.
Going back to the bike she pulled out all the damaged components and made a
mental list of everything that was missing, then starting fishing items out of
the crate and assembling them up until her gloved hands became too thick to get
into some of the smaller areas.

Jyra disconnected her right glove but kept her left
on, allowing her thin fingers to slip into certain crevices and keep working up
until the cold started to numb her touch, then she switched hands, putting her
glove back on and taking the other off. She kept switching back and forth until
she got the bike working, then started it up and ran it through some basic
diagnostics ensuring that all functions were operational.

With it floating half a meter off the ground she
closed the access panel and grabbed her own pack, which she’d taken off when
she realized it wasn’t going to be a quick fix. Checking her internal clock she
noted that she’d spent some 4 hours working on the bike, most of which was due
to a number of unforeseen problems with components that appeared to be intact
but were really sabotaged in a subtle manner…and then she had to fix two pieces
that she didn’t have replacements for.

Whoever had set this up had made it difficult on
purpose, but Jyra thought she finally had everything working and was glad to
hear the faint hum of the cooling device and no extraneous noise, suggesting to
her that it was, in fact, now working properly. After reattaching her pack she
slid onto the small seat that could accommodate two people in a crunch, she
gripped the control bars and elevated the speeder up through a small gap in the
canopy that she had to search around for, passing through the snow-covered
branches and dumping a lot of it off onto the ground as she pushed through…then
she was above the treetops looking out at the snow-covered landscape that
showed little bits of green in between the white dunes covering the branches.

Highlighting the nearest waypoint, Jyra accelerated
the nearly silent bike in its direction and began covering ground in a blink of
an eye compared to her having had to run it on foot. Skimming the treetops also
allowed her to make a straight line path rather than the weave she had to make
around trees and up and down over hills on foot, making her appreciate the
speeder for all it was worth as she headed for the waypoint.

Knowing not to run up on top of it, Jyra stopped early
and landed, choosing to approach on foot and finding another beacon…but this
one was coming from underground. It was two meters down, but there was no
visible way to get at it. Frowning, Jyra pulled her pack off and got a small
cubical rectangle out that unfolded into a shovel. She began digging, immediately
finding the ground frozen and having to chip away at it until the soil softened
with depth, but even then it was still firm and didn’t look to have been
recently dug up anytime soon.

When she got down to the depth that the beacon was
coming from, for she could measure it to the inch on her HUD, she found
absolutely nothing. It took her a moment to dig a little deeper, then she
tossed the shovel out of the hole and angrily climbed out of it.

“Shit…I’m so stupid,” she said, looking around in the
trees above her and in the scrub brush nearby. At first she couldn’t find
anything, but eventually she stumbled across a tiny box stuck in the side of
one of the tree trunks some 20 meters off, virtually unnoticeable, and Jyra
knew it was a signal misdirection device. The actual beacon signal was coming
from somewhere else, but with this one transmitting a counter signal it had
altered the calculations her helmet was making and caused it to indicate a
position that was where neither device existed.

Knowing that she could do the math and use the false
point and the actual one of the disrupter to determine the true location of the
beacon, she input a waypoint on top of the tiny device and had her helmet do
the calculations…which resulted in a third waypoint that she walked over to,
finding a ditch that was almost completely filled with snow. She scooped it out
with her hands like a dog digging down through sand and eventually found the
book-sized box at the bottom. Pulling it out she headed back to where she’d dropped
her pack and subsequently retrieved her shovel before kneeling down and opening
the box.

Inside it was two foodstuff packets, a small amount of
ambrosia, and a puzzle piece-like component that she guessed would interlink
with others found to form something, but at the moment she had no clue what it
was, for it had no buttons or markings of any kind.

Jyra sighed. “Scavenger hunt indeed,” she said,
looking over to the spot where she’d dug that unnecessary hole and wasted so
much time. “Guess that’s my punishment for being stupid…all self-imposed.”

Grabbing the items and stowing them in her pack, Jyra
took a moment to rest and clear her head before getting back on the bike and
heading towards the next waypoint, plotting out a course that would mean the
least amount of travel, for her power cell on the bike hadn’t been fully
charged and if she wandered around too much she’d end up finishing this hunt on
foot. That was another facepalm moment that she was glad she spotted before
it’d bitch-slapped her…and she assumed there were probably many more coming her
way with equal subtlety.

It was becoming clear this mission wasn’t about
overcoming obvious challenges, but rather in picking up on the small ones that
could easily go unnoticed. Warning herself to be extra observant, Jyra took off
back up through the treetops then accelerated heavily until she could feel the
tug of the air against her helmet and torso and held that velocity. The bike
could go faster, but the last thing she wanted was to get knocked off it by the
turbulence and fall down through the forest only to go on a multiple mile hunt
for the bike that would cut thrust and coast to a stop when her hands left the
controls.

And anti-
grav
craft had a
tendency to coast a really long ways before coming to a stop…not to mention
this bike didn’t have a homing beacon, so all around it was better to keep it
fast, but not too fast.

Jyra got through three more locations before calling
it quits and setting up camp. Each was different, with one going so far as to
have her climbing through the snow in the treetops to find a case that had a
vague beacon that was highlighting a region rather than a point. It took her
more than two hours to find it, and had she not been wearing armor she would
have been frozen stiff by that point crawling across branches that held the
snow aloft and even having to dig tunnels through some of the deeper sections.

She fell four times, counting on a branch to be there
then finding a way to slip through where she thought her body would catch. If
there was an easy way to find that one she missed it entirely and ended up
slipping into her blanket sleeve more frustrated than tired. In each of the
boxes, though, there were bits and pieces of supplies, which gave her the
impression that this mission was going to last long beyond this current
scavenger hunt.

Taking that into consideration she decided to pull
back on her pace a bit and work through the upcoming waypoints with a bit of
ease rather than urgency. Knowing that these challenges were more brain oriented
than combat, she told herself to take the advantage of the lack of schedule and
work in some down time…else she’d go crazy with frustration at not being able
to find these damn boxes in any predictable manner.