TS6 - Chapter 35

Kat took a deep breath, doing her best to steady her nerves.  The unfamiliar weight of metal and circuitry on her left arm didn’t do much to

Kat took a deep breath, doing her best to steady her nerves.  The unfamiliar weight of metal and circuitry on her left arm didn’t do much to help her calm down.

She glanced down at the portable shield.  Even without turning it on, Kat’s enhanced hearing could pick up the faint hum of the device's capacitors as they kept the complex block of machinery in standby mode.

“Ready?” Emma asked from across the room.

Kat looked up.  Emma and Whippoorwill were behind a large pane of bulletproof glass, tapping away at a bank of computers.  Inside the gymnasium with her, Heather stood about twenty paces away, looking unhappy but with her pistol dutifully drawn and at the ready.  In front of Kat was her usual 3D obstacle course.

A narrow path ran through the metal barriers, interspersed with rapidly moving metal pipes covered with just enough padding to prevent serious injury.  Kat took a deep breath as she traced her route through the course.  

Heather had reworked it at some point.  It looked like she would be starting out at ground level and engaging in some light parkour before she would need to affix herself to the underside of a couple shipping containers in order to move through a complex lattice of spinning and pistoning obstacles.  After that, the course truly opened up, forcing Kat to shift gravity multiple times in order to run along walls, angled slabs of steel, and at several points the ceiling itself.

“Ready,” Kat called back, dropping into a crouch as Heather stepped out into the open, uncertainty in her eyes and a pistol in her hands.

“On the count of three,” Emma said.  “Three.”

Kat tapped a green circle on the side of her gauntlet.  Almost immediately it seemed to call out for mana like a channeled spell.  Wordlessly, she began feeding power into the hungry machinery.

“Two.”  The lights in the gymnasium dimmed.  Distantly, Kat could hear the faint whir of motors as about twenty cameras activated, rotating slightly to track her as she stared at the obstacle course.

“One.”  Kat cast Pseudopod, wrapping the tentacle of water around her waist even as she reduced her personal gravity by half.

“Go!”

With Emma’s shout, Kat was off.  Almost immediately she noticed that the energy field from her shield was interfering with her gravity domain.  Not by much, but just enough for her to notice that the effect was active.

She flashed into motion, obstacles blurring past her as Kat jumped and wove her way through the course.  Just as she got to the first inflection point, her Pseudopod reaching up to grab hold of one of the hurdles above her and yanking upward even as Kat flipped her personal gravity, a gunshot rang out.

Kat jerked to the side from what felt like a sharp shove, almost missing her landing on the ceiling.  Her gauntlet warmed up noticeably, drawing heavily on Kat’s mana is it bled off the kinetic energy from the gunshot.

There wasn’t any time to hesitate.  Kat kept running, picking up momentum so that she could slide under a barrier even as Heather fired the pistol a second time.

The bullet missed, ricocheting off the metal grating Kat was running across and deflecting into the empty air.  She didn’t let it distract her, pushing forward with her eyes trained on the half wall in front of her that would force Kat to run across the surface of the wall on her left.

Before Kat developed her gravity domain, she had been able to wall run.  It was hard, involved moving incredibly fast before making the leap, and didn’t actually let her move all that far.  Sometimes it was useful for making it over a fence or short wall, but in reality, the ability was more of a party trick.  Something that was impressive in entertainment vids but not actually terribly useful in the real world.

After the gravity domain, it almost became too easy.  All Kat needed to do was switch her conception of down and fix it to the wall.  It took a couple of tries before she learned to get past the vertigo caused by the sudden change, but now she was able to adapt to the shift like a fish to water.

Another bullet hit the ground next to her followed a half second later by a blow to Kat’s shoulder, pushing her into the wall.  Her gauntlet grew warm as even more mana was forcefully pulled out of her.

She shifted gravity again, willing herself to run faster.  The machinery on her arm was hot but it was still bearable.  Shots rang out as Kat duck and wove through the course, pushing herself to try and beat her previous best despite the new equipment and interference from Heather.

A bullet hit her, knocking Kat slightly to the side and off of her optimal course.  She stacked gravity behind herself, letting herself ‘fall’ forward faster than she could’ve ever possibly run on her own.

Obstacles blurred past. Kat ducked under a pole before springing up and flipping herself so that she could run on the ceiling.  She contorted her body slipping between a field of pillars, each twice as big around as her wrist, all while moving at full speed.

Bullets whizzed past her as Kat screeched to a stop, jumping ‘upward’ toward the ground and switching the pull of gravity in order to direct herself through a narrow gap and into a tunnel below.  She dropped into a half crouch, moving as quickly as possible as the walls around her began to rotate.

A flex from Kat’s mind increased her own gravity, gluing her feet to the ground and letting her push past the uncertain balance of the spinning tunnel.

Then, barely a second later she was in the open.  A bullet hammered into her as Heather hit her with a picture perfect shot, but with Kat’s increased weight she barely even flinched.  

Seconds later, Kat passed the finish line at a dead sprint, coming to a stop with her hands on her knees and gasping for breath.  She reached over, deactivating the gauntlet before waving a hand over her head.

“Time!” she called out.

“Twenty nine seconds,” Emma called from her perch behind the bullet proof glass.  “Not a course record, but you were close.  Pretty good for your first run with new equipment and under fire if you ask me.  How did the shield perform anyway?”

Kat glanced down at the contraption on her arm.  It was noticeably hot to the touch and smelled vaguely like burning plastic.  Hardly ideal, but it had managed to weather at least a half dozen shots all while she was moving at full speed. That was far better than anything her spells could do.

“The mana draw is pretty harsh,” she replied, straightening up as she finished recovering from her sprint.  “I could redirect the bullets for something like a quarter the mana cost with Gravity Plane back when I had the spell.  I think the wasted energy is turning into heat somehow.  It isn’t so hot that I can’t wear it, but the generator is pretty uncomfortable at the moment.  I don’t know how delicate the crystals in there are, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it Still, it seems to be able to stop direct hits and that’s not something that Gravity Plane could handle.  If R&D can figure out a way to fix the heat issue, it’s going to be a game changer for any player with a decent mana reservoir.”

“Do you think it’s ready for production?”  Emma asked.   “Obviously the shields aren’t perfect, but things are starting to boil over and-”

“Yeah,” Kat said, cutting Emma off with a quick nod.  “A hundred prototypes in the hands of some of our better players could go a long way.  We have no idea what Mr. Jackson and his crew are actually able to do, but I am pretty sure that he’s had access to some restricted stallesp files.  I don’t think he has the manufacturing base or supply chains that we do, but frankly I’d be surprised if he didn’t have a couple gadgets that can do the impossible in his tool kit.”

“Like whatever it is he keeps using to hack into our system,” Whippoorwill said unhappily.  “I get that he’s using alien technology but it still feels like he’s cheating.  Do you have any idea how long I worked with our cyber security teams to put those defenses up only for him to break through all of it without us even knowing how he did it?  Honestly, I understand that he’s using alien gizmos, but it still feels like cheating to me.”

“That’s because it is cheating,” Heather said with a grunt as she pulled the magazine from her pistol and racked its slide to clear the chamber.  “Most of what we do or try to do is cheating.  The key is to cheat better and harder than the other guy.”

“In that case,” Kat responded, “we should make sure to ship a couple crates of these to Belle.  We should make sure that half of them get lost in transit.  The last I heard, Nina’s crew have been putting the subscriptions that we’ve been funneling them to good use.   Twenty or so portable shield generators are enough to transform a couple samurai teams into elite light infantry.”

“Hopefully we won’t need them,” she continued, shrugging, “but Millennium has been way too quiet lately.  They clearly still have the infrastructure to reach Chiwaukee so that just means they’re up to something.”

“Can’t say I’m happy not knowing what they’re doing,” Whippoorwill replied, exiting the armored observation room.  “At times, I’d trade all of the fancy mercenaries with battle suits and tanks for a good insertion plan and a stealth op.”

“That’s because you aren’t the one that gets shot at on the stealth op,” Kat replied playfully.  “You get to sit around in a nice air conditioned room with a bottle of soda and some snacks while I get to crawl around in sweltering vents hiding from security guards.”

“Sweetie,” Whip said, batting her eyelashes at Kat.  “Someone has to be the brains of the operation.  Plus we both know that you’d get bored in that vent and stab the security guards to death within five minutes of being on site.  Stealth has always been more of a ‘general guideline’ than an actual mission parameter for you.”

“For us, princess,” Kat replied.  “When we work together to take down some of the most dangerous people in the world, we are a team.  The minute it's time for a critique of my technique, suddenly I am a solo operator, I see how it is.”

She stuck out her tongue at Whip and the other girl rolled her eyes, reaching up with a hand to flip her pink hair over a shoulder.

“Be careful with calling me princess,” Whippoorwill responded, with a smirk.  “That was only last night.  Plus, you weren’t exactly complaining about my technique then.”

Heather and Kat went beet red immediately.  She opened her mouth to say something, but it was like there was nothing but static between her ears.  Distantly she heard the sound of Emma sprinting out of the observation bunker.

“What!”  Emma shouted.  “Come on, I need to know more.  You can’t say something that juicy and then just pass it off as nothing.”

“It was just,” Kat began, mind whirring.  Anything she said was just going to sound like an excuse or lead to further innuendo.  There was no winning play here.  The only way to get ahead in this game was not to play.

“Come on,” Emma pouted.  “You honestly can’t do this.  I’m pretty sure it’s a violation of my employment contract.  It clearly states that I need to get first look at any gossip.”

“A girl doesn’t kiss and tell,” Whippoorwill said with a wink.  Kat’s face almost started on fire.  Whip was only talking about their time in the Tower last night but of course everyone else would think that the conversation was something much more salacious.  Almost instantly she found herself regretting calling Whippoorwill a princess.  There was no way that Emma was going to let this go.

  She coughed, doing her best to avoid Heather’s horrified gaze as she tried to change the subject.

“How are things with Millennium anyway?”  Kat asked.  “I heard that there were some updates on the observation front.  I’ve made progress on increasing my level, but I honestly don’t know if it will be enough.  I’m on the twenty third floor right now so theoretically I can advance to the twenty fourth floor and challenge the ascension ritual at any point in time, but that would mean crippling both my development and the development of everyone else on my team.  It just seems wrong to make them give up so much for me.  If we can root out Millennium and eliminate Mr. Jackson’s threat the old fashioned way, that would be much better.  I don’t think there’s any way that I’ll be able to sleep easily with him still on the move.”

“Fine,” Emma responded, disgruntled to the point where she was bordering on surly.  “Be a spoil sport.  I was going to do a big build up and reveal for the good news, but if you’re going to hide all of your secrets and tidbits from me, you’re not going to get any sort of theatrics or production out of me.”

“We found them,” she continued, a smug smile on her face.  “Our informants were able to trace some shipments of construction material and ammunition deep into the Amazon.  Later we were able to use satellite footage to confirm where the base was being built.  I can’t tell you whether or not Mr. Jackson is there at precisely this minute, but I can all but confirm that it is Millennium’s current headquarters.”

Kat glanced over at Whippoorwill, her flush fading as she forced her mind to focus on business.

“Do they know we’re spying on them?”  She questioned.  “I know that Millennium seems to live inside our computer network.  If we’re gathering this much information on them, they have to be aware that something is going on.  Even if we’re using couriers wherever possible, there’s no way to do that with a satellite unless you sent someone up there to pick up a thumb drive in person.”

Emma’s smug smile disappeared, replaced by a scowl for a fraction of a second until she was able to smooth it out into something more akin to a neutral expression.

“Honestly, I can’t guarantee anything,” she responded.  “We know that they’re spying on us but we don’t know how they’re doing it or how deeply they’ve penetrated our system.  We were able to pull a fast one during the arbitration, but there’s no promise that they haven’t figured out that we are using a separate duplicate system.  I don’t know how they’d manage to get around an air gap, but they’re using stallesp technology so I suppose its possible.”

“As for the intelligence we gathered,” Emma continued, “we had slightly falsified reports sent via normal means and while the actual reports came in via courier.  Publicly we’re narrowing down our search but we haven’t found Millennium yet.  I think we have to work off of the assumption that they have copies of the reconnaissance photos too, but those were intentionally done as routine surveys.  They aren’t anywhere near as precise as we would like, all we have for sure is that there are some buildings on the spot where our informants found their base, but there’s a decent chance they don’t realize we found them.  Those pictures cover a lot of ground and it looks like we’re on a fishing expedition.”

Kat nodded to herself, her brain working in overdrive as she thought over Emma’s report.  After a long pause she spoke up, ending the heavy silence that had settled over the room.

“What do you think Heather?  Is that enough data for you to put together a strike on Millennium?  We have no idea how many are left.  It could be thirty or it could be an entire brigade.  It sounds like we’re more or less going in blind, but I don’t want to lose troops due to overconfidence.”

“Agreed,” Heather replied, her eyes losing focus as she began taking notes on her smartpanel.  “Corporate security, 3445 or both?”

Kat bit her lower lip, once again weighing her options.  The 3445 were mercenaries, technically not part of the GroCorp hierarchy.  They were also better armed and equipped than average corporate security.  That said, they didn’t really have enough transportation capacity to move the entire force on the drop of a hat.  Hover tanks could hover, but that wasn’t enough to drive them all the way from North American to South America.  Kat would need planes, boats or trains to make that happen, and that meant tapping into GroCorp resources.

“Send them both,” Kat said finally.  “Don’t take any chances.  Mr. Jackson has tried to kill me close to a half dozen times now.  I think it’s only fair that he gets to be on the receiving end of an operation for a change.”

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