Kayelin’s testing my pupil reflexes and asking me to squeeze her fingers. She’s examining me fleetingly, avoiding my penis. It’s capable of an indefinite erection of 22.95 centimetres in length and 16.19 centimetres in girth. Admittedly a luxury organ, serves no purpose beyond recreational pleasure. Kayelin appears indifferent. She’s detaching the drip from the cephalic vein port in my right forearm and unshackling me. I’m stepping forward. Pod area is 35.04 square metres. Thermoregulation is kicking in, warming the soles of my feet to compensate for the cold floor. Deploying assembler. Builder particles are oozing out of the pores of my skin, swathing me in a pliable black membrane. Hood is fusing to the collar and integrating with the neural display, initialising augmented reality. Should check the memory stack and debug the communications.727Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbddsJBSgAJ
Console: Get {sys_sum}
Kernel: Boomer
Event driver: Dozer IV 0.9.13.0
Modules installed: 161
Modules enabled: 161
Latency: 0.87
Processors: 1.00
Memory: 0.99
Alternator: 1.00
Battery A: 225.52 hours
Battery B: 246.12 hours
Battery C: 870.92 hours
Elapsed: 0.03 ms
Configuration is unmodified. Hardly impractical, but not really normal. No traces of cube leakage or bandwidth fading. Latency thirteen percent decayed, memory thrashing. Meteorological gauges and geomatics software for supplying aerial surveillance and navigation are repeatedly attempting to access the orbnet, causing a looped queue of instructions and a misallocation glitch, jittery transceiver problems symptomatic of an atmospheric obstruction. Blank memory cache is unresolvable. Not worth troubleshooting further.
Danger value: 0.21
Performance is scarcely exceeding required benchmarks. Should’ve received substantiated intelligence in advance and optimised the settings accordingly. Juventia, vector (15, 11). Mission 04442, rescuing the Cordelian embassy. SABRE-1 punched us in blind on unconfirmed reports of fierce resistance. We were still in stasis during the descent, recharging the batteries, ignorant of the circumstances. On the ground I had the team engage the warrior suit with a bundle of lavish enhancements including swarm deflector shield, cloaking and superfine levitation skill, none of which were necessary. Resources ended up being unduly encumbered and we extricated forty-seven minutes behind schedule, an unacceptable delay, especially when a single millisecond of deviation can jeopardise the strategy and reduce success probability to zero. I’d be a poor captain if I allowed even the smallest margin of random chance to influence the outcome of the mission and dictate the fate of my men.
Flash incoming ... !
Moving to scratch space ... done
Pinging source ... done
Echo reply ... SABRE3ANTX
Searching database ... done
Result: [Host: 1.00]
Verifying hash ... done
Serialising code ... done
Running decryption ... done
Console: Extract {in: vlt_mem (to: tsk_prt)}
Extracting to vault memory ... done
Moving to task partition ... done
Console: Simulate {tsk_prt (filter: opt)}
Running theoretic ... done
Elapsed: 2920 ms
Packet evaluated. Solitary objective, tactically undemanding, but as suspected, challenging conditions. Mobilising commando suit. Action particles are spilling out of the assembler and encasing me in composite layers of polymer, gel armour and ballistic rubber. Boots are tightening at my calves. Gauntlets fastening and helmet docking. Mass of the ensemble nominally increasing. A momentary freeze in upgrade to plus strength. Must decongest the buffers and eradicate the lag. Visor is closing and changing view to 360 degree panoramic. I’m selecting the air-purifying respirator. Not essential, but removing aerosols at the first opportunity will conserve energy and delegate surplus juice to the accelerators. Into the task partition. Browsing geospatial imagery. A savage and grey place. Should be easy blending in to such a drab landscape.
Console: CMYK {m7hsm.ise (filter: best)}
Running colouristic ... done
Result: [Cyan: 0.0000] [Magenta: 0.0866] [Yellow: 0.1969] [Black: 0.5020]
Elapsed: 1.01 ms
Applying sandstone hue to the suit. Stopping adaptive camouflage. Optical instruments are stable. Kayelin’s gesturing to a hard protector case fixed to a rack at the back of the pod. Flipping the catches. Equipment is CR-10, the assimilable combat rifle, and MPAP-12, the portable artillery piece affectionately nicknamed HEAVY HAIL by the SABRE-3 teams. A rudimentary mortar concept encompassed in a typically sensible design; six extendable steel alloy tubes joined to a ruggedised box housing a remote guidance computer. It’s a disposable unit, foldable and carried over the shoulder. I have twelve projectiles, each containing a cluster of thirty kinetic bomblets no bigger than a pistol bullet, but manufactured from ultra dense ruspil. When dropped from the middle of the troposphere a ruspil bomblet will crush a vehicle’s engine block or penetrate twelve metres of flesh and innards, slicing bone in half and burrowing deep into the hulk of the largest animals. Kayelin’s next to me, her hand on my elbow. ‘Stay put,’ I’m telling her. ‘And keep off the radio.’ Taking the weapons and entering the decontamination chamber. Plug door is swinging shut and gaskets inflating, sealing the pod interior. Outer panel unlatching.727Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEGaHLNTLCg
