A/N - Sorry, this is my first story here, so I'm making mistakes, and going back to correct them takes a bit of time. There are terms and acronyms in here that may be unfamiliar; each chapter has a glossary at the end so you can flip down to the bottom, find out what it is, and then go back. (I tried it with the full name in parentheses, but found it too distracting to the scene and dialogue flow.)
This chapter is rated T for the postmortem butchery of geth.
*** Guart Blind ***
Kaidan put a hand over his omnitool. "Should we make a stretcher?"
"It would let us keep moving…at least until he's able to move on his own." Shepard raised his own arm. "I've got 82 available. You?"
"I've got 21."
"21?" Shepard squinted. "That blade you made was a little expensive, wasn't it?"
Kaidan shrugged. "It was the speed required. A lot of waste."
"Still, you can't beat the results. Is that on MilComReq?"
"No, actually...it's...from a hobbyist site. This one is my own modification of…um…a tastelessly named one. Want me to send my rewrite to you?"
Shepard nodded. "Yes, and right now." He touched his left thumb and ring finger, illuminating the gauntlet, which he extended toward the other man. Kaidan pinched an icon on his own omnitool, touched his clasped fingers to Shepard's outstretched arm and opened them. Both heard a four-note tune, indicating the file had been offered. Shepard touched the icon on his omnitool and another three-note tune played as the file was accepted. "Thanks."
"I have mine set to run if I clench my fist and twist it like this," Kaidan demonstrated with exaggerated slowness, "but your VI should pick it right up after a few uses." Shepard tapped the icon again, selected an option from the menu flyout, and made the same move. The omnitool twittered and glowed briefly green. Gesture association enabled in Firefight mode.
"Victor Indigo, remind me of this when I get back," Shepard said toward his forearm, "I want to drill with it." The tool squirkled in response.
"Okay, we still have to make the stretcher," Kaidan pointed to his omnitool, looked up at Shepard. "You should make the connector side."
"Yeah." Shepard spun through some menus, found a pattern, tapped it, and gripped the 3 centimeter rod loosely, allowing it to extrude though his hand.
"Can we get any omnigel from the bad guys?" Richard asked.
Shepard looked up as the fabrication continued. "Good thinking, Corporal. Don't know if I'd have thought of that until we were two klicks down the road." The omnitool buzzed quietly as it worked; the olive drab matte finish on the rod was a low enough resolution that Shepard could make out where the rotary head was glitching. A look toward Kaidan showed he was making a similar, smaller rod.
As Shepard's omnitool finished, he twisted the rod off the emitter and placed the end to where Kaidan could reach it. "Here, assemble this. I'm going to go investigate our attackers, see what I can salvage."
"Shouldn't we do that together? They might still be dangerous."
Shepard sighed heavily. "We need to keep moving," he thought aloud, "We're on the clock, and we now have hostiles to contend with." His eyes fell on their wounded cohort. "Jenkins, can you assemble this while we check the mechs…um…geth for salvage?" He waved toward where the geth had fallen.
"You bet, sir."
"Don't strain yourself," Kaidan said, "You're still Under Construction. Stay on your back and keep your head down; let gravity hold it in your hands."
"Got it, sir."
Shepard and Kaidan handed the freshly-fabricated rods down to the prone Jenkins. Kaidan generated a barrier and gestured to the nearer of the fallen androids. Weapons out, they approached the geth slowly, and from different angles. "This thing twitches, and I'll blow it to Mars." Kaidan's barrier made it almost impossible for him to hide. As they circled it, both men worked their omnitools carefully, checking multiple sensors against what they could see.
"Looks absolutely dark," Shepard observed, "No emissions I can detect."
"Nothing here, either." Kaidan stopped, looked up from his omnitool. "Wait…this is a geth. I mean, it's really a geth."
"Well, our VIs think so," Shepard clarified.
"Right. You know what I mean." Kaidan moved around to the other side of the fallen android. "Does that make this a First Contact sort of event? Should we save these things for study?"
"I don't see how we can. Our objective is to secure that beacon and get it aboard Normandy ASAP. Our secondary is to help the locals fight off whatever is attacking, and from what we can see here, that looks like a lot more than we can handle ourselves. Jenkins is broken, and even after we get him fixed, his armor is compromised. These things," Shepard indicated with his weapon's muzzle, "are probably responsible."
He paused in thought for a moment. "Still, the intel to be collected is probably in the computing substrate. Which is…in the torso, I expect. I'd bet you we can 'gel the extremities and get both of us back to full." He holstered his pistol, pulled a 23cm combat knife off his right boot.
Kaidan looked up from his omnitool and nodded. "That's what my scanner shows. I'll log the GPS so you can and include it in your report."
Shepard nodded, still eyeing the geth. He frowned deeply. "This makes me…unhappy."
"What?" Kaidan looked up from his omnitool. "What do you mean?"
"They look enough like people…I feel like I'll be hacking arms and legs off." He shook his head. "Nope. Can't think like that. They tried to kill us, and they're probably part of the invasion. Damn, I wish we'd had more intel before landing." He knelt next to the geth and plunged the blade into its shoulder. White liquid gushed out and pooled beneath the cut; Shepard withdrew the knife quickly.
"They're almost organic," Kaidan sounded astonished.
"I expected muscle analogues…with this structure." Shepard waved his knife at the arm, "I didn't expect it to go so far." He steeled himself, sliced the arm the rest of the way off and impaled the knife into soft dirt. It came out clean.
"That's weird," Kaidan shook his head.
Shepard handed him the arm by its wrist. "Here, get started. You need more 'gel than I do."
Kaidan took the arm gingerly, shaking more of the "blood" out, and scanned it with his omnitool. "It sure is light," he observed, "Must be mostly composites. Or ceramics?"
Shepard was scanning the geth to determine where the computing center was actually housed. His VI converted the raw data into a more helpful analysis. "It looks like it's mostly plastics and…wait. Borophenes. The cores are full of them."
"Well, they still don't use very much. Look at how much the disassembler is rejecting."
Shepard looked up and saw the mass of gray non-metallic material collecting on the ground beneath Kaidan's omnitool as he fed the geth arm into the disassembler. "How much did you get?"
"Two. Maybe three."
"The scanner says there's no significant computing until you get to here," He pointed with the tip of the knife. "I'm hoping the legs will have more metals."
"One way to find out," Kaidan said. He rose from a crouch, walked to the extended leg of the geth, and started the disassembler on it. It looked very much as if the geth was being eaten by Kaidan's omnitool.
"This is a lot more disturbing than breaking down small arms," Shepard said through his teeth.
"Yeah… their arms are the same size as ours. Not that small at all."
Shepard gave him a look somewhere between a reprimand and exasperation.
Kaidan shrugged, "Hey, just trying to lighten things up."
Shepard grunted and turned back to where he had the geth under his knife. Allowing another centimeter of margin, he plunged the knife straight down, and proceeded to cut so as to keep the computing centers intact. It felt like cutting through celery.
"Seems to be even less metal here than in the arm," Kaidan noted, "Must be a composite endoskeleton." He focused on the display. "And there's nanofactured machinery in here; there's more usable material here than I thought."
Shepard detached the other arm and paused at the head. "We keep our brains in our heads; that doesn't mean they do."
Alenko glanced up only briefly from his disassembly. "Is that armor right there? On the head? Does it detach?"
Shepard pulled at the outer layer, and found that it slid off easily if pulled along the axis. "Guess so." He laid the two pieces aside and paused. "Wait a minute." As he rose, he spotted the enemy weapon. The broken pieces of his own rifle were just a short distance away; he detoured in that direction, picked them up and ran the fragments into his disassembler.
"They don't have much armor themselves, so they must rely heavily on shielding," he walked over to the geth rifle, "But it seems odd that they'd design ammo to work as well against their own defensive tech." He scanned the weapon, studied the results. "No booby-traps on the rifle…though that's almost always a bad idea."
"For unaugmented humans, yes. But these are machines."
Shepard nodded thoughtfully. He scanned the weapon again, more closely and thoroughly. "There just doesn't seem to be any exotic tech here." His VI identified and marked them in differing colors ThruView on his ARO, and he spoke the names aloud, "Power interface, sight computing, linac, ammo block, WINC..." He looked around, checking the map display for nearby threats while waiting for the suit VI to assemble and render a simulation of the weapon. "Alenko, can you stay on alert for a minute? I want to do a Firefight VRS on this thing."
"Wait a minute, let me finish this arm." Kaidan's disassembler spat out the last of the unusable material with a fizz and a chirp. He checked his rifle settings and fitted it to his shoulder, aiming at the horizon, though his eyes were on his ARO's sensor display. "Okay, I'm on."
Shepard accelerated into VRS, interacting virtually with the alien weapon at four times normal speed; conservative but reliable…and it didn't make his head hurt. He picked up the virtualized weapon, examining it in minute detail. His engineering background made it apparent how it worked as a weapon; aside from its relative fragility as a club there was nothing out of the ordinary. (Shepard had been in the virtual meeting when the Avenger RFQ was being written; some curmudgeon had demanded a weapon that could be used to beat an enemy senseless and still be able to fire.)
The most interesting thing about the weapon was how compactly it could fold up. He noted that it was designed to be easily pincered at several places along its grip, and that if held in his open hand, he could activate it just by squeezing his hand closed; the grip opened right into his palm, and the minimum required components sprang into position fast enough that he didn't have to wait for it to finish once he'd lifted it to his shoulder.
He opened and closed the virtual weapon a few more times. The grip-first deployment was quite clever; as fast as it was, it still gave him instant control over where he could aim the weapon even before it was fully configured. The SmartPak was able to grip it, and it could be disassembled with one hand.
Finally, he squeezed the trigger, and a message appeared in his line of sight:
Test firing successful.
Estimated mean cyclic rate: 120 RPS
Muzzle velocity: 81814 m/s
Satisfied, he slid back down into realtime.
"Done," said Jenkins.
"Nice timing," Shepard knelt and picked up the geth weapon, raised it to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger carefully. The weapon was relatively quiet, and more stable than an Avenger.
Satisfied, he lifted it over his shoulder; the SmartPak grabbed it with a quick servo hum, and his ARO displayed the successful docking with a green status pixel that faded quickly. "Alenko, how are you for omnigel?"
"33," he answered. "Even that other mech…um, geth… will only get me to 45 or so."
"There's another one over there," Shepard pointed up the hill, "You need help?"
"No, I got it." Kaidan started toward the nearer enemy, "What do you think of their assault rifle?"
"I'm impressed," Shepard started walking back to where Richard lay. "Deploys faster than the Avenger, and grip first. Seems like it'd be better against shields. Not much good if you suddenly need a club, though."
Richard had laid the completed stretcher to his left, and was accessing civilian channels. The audio was limited to Jenkins' helmet, but the video showing on his omnitool's holographic interface showed the security camera view of another part of the colony.
Shepard crouched beside him. "How are they doing?"
"I think they're fine…my family is, anyway. I'm not seeing any fighting out west. We live far enough out that they may only have heard about the attack. My older sister would be over to see them today – because it's Sunday – and so she's fine, too. I think. My other brothers are still in school, so they live at home."
"Glad to hear your family's okay," Shepard agreed, "Do you have any intel on the colony?" He started picking up the damaged pieces of Jenkins' armor off the ground, and feeding them back into his disassembler.
Jenkins paused, gave Shepard a guilty look. "No, sir. I was trying to raise them directly. I haven't gotten through yet. Comm is either flooded or being deliberately jammed. But we live...I mean they live...on the other side of the colony from the spaceport, so I'm thinking they're okay." He shrugged, winced. "I'd rather know."
"But you know the geth landed at or near the spaceport?"
"Yes, sir. Uh…a local news says they crossed over the towers on the way in, and fired on approach, but set down at Douglas and deployed more ground troops from there. It looks like the ship they came in is huge…like…dreadnought size."
"They've landed a dreadnought?" Shepard wondered if the shape they had seen just before the transmission was cut off was what had landed. "I hope Trident can tell that from the—"
Nihlus' voice interrupted, "Lot of burned out buildings here, Shepard. A looooot of bodies. I'm going to check it out. I'll try to catch up with you at the dig site."
Jenkins turned his head toward Shepard, but there was no way to see his grin behind the breather. "Should we tell him the Captain said 'radio silence'?"
"You do that," Shepard replied.
"As soon as we get back," Jenkins agreed.
"Alenko, how you doing?"
"All done," came the reply. "Looks like you picked up the only working weapon, so I gelled one of the other two. I'm at 70. Jenkins, you want this other one? How much 'gel you got?"
The Corporal glanced at his omnitool. "94, but I'm good." He glanced at Shepard. "How you doin', sir?"
Shepard could hear Kaidan approaching; his ARO read, 78.
"Looks like it's yours, Lieutenant."
"Thanks, guys," Kaidan activated his Disassembler, shredding the geth weapon into component molecules. Shepard gestured with his head to Kaidan, "You want to get positioned down there to handle his leg? I suspect you're better trained."
"You bet." Kaidan stepped over Richard as the last of the weapon dissolved into its raw materials. "How you feeling?"
"Worried about my family," Richard didn't look away from his omnitool, "Especially since I still can't reach them." His hands stopped moving briefly. "Kind of embarrassed about getting shot."
Kaidan snorted, "Yeah, like that was your fault. I saw what happened. You were outflanked by a microUAV. We didn't know they were so small or maneuverable. Don't worry about it."
"Yeah." Jenkins seemed unconvinced. "Still no more bad guys?"
Shepard was already watching his ARO, "Not yet. Gonna want you ERA soon, though."
"I feel good enough to walk," Jenkins objected.
Kaidan glanced at the medical data scrolling up part of his ARO and nodded. "I'm sure you do. And I'm sure you're not."
"We should only need 30 minutes for it to set up, right?" Shepard asked. "The braces holding your exoskeleton together will keep you mobile if we get in trouble after that."
Kaidan waved his lit gauntlet over Jenkins' leg, "Can you feel your lower leg yet?"
Richard didn't move, trying to feel without looking. "No, sir. Should I?"
Kaidan shook his head, "Not from what I see here, but I'm just a medtech. This thing says the bone is assembling well, but it'll still take a while for it to fully harden. The gel will actively maneuver recoverable tissue so it's correctly aligned, and force out any foreign matter like shrapnel or unsigned cybernetics. Then it decharges the rest of the gel and forms skin if it can. BioTape helps that a lot."
After placing Richard on the stretcher, Shepard rose and looked ahead. "Let's move." He pointed to Kaidan, then to the "foot" end of the stretcher. He moved to the "head end," bent and gripped the stretcher's lateral handle with his left hand, drew his pistol from its powerclip with the other.
Kaidan kept talking to Richard, "Also helps if you're on a PMA. I worked in a military hospital as a biotics liaison, got to know something about medigel. Even fulfilled a course requirement for my medical rating with some of my volunteer time in the ER. You still need fast, ultrahigh-resolution printers to make omnigel, but I'll tell ya, those things ran non-stop."
Shepard suspected Kaidan was demonstrating good bedside manner; talking to Richard to keep his mind off the weird itching and possible pain he would surely be feeling, even while his PMA was active.
He accelerated his awareness to 4x to give himself more time to evaluate their path forward while watching the sensors. Environmental noise continued to arrive at what sounded like a normal pitch, but the duration of sounds was slightly extended; his footfalls seemed strangely loud. He holstered the pistol, and took hold of the stretcher with both hands.
"Medigel has saved more lives in the thirty years it's been out than almost every other medical technology ever invented," Kaidan continued, "It never ceases to amaze me that Sirta practically gives the licenses – and the stuff itself – away." They continued to move uphill through the field of vertical outcroppings, and around to the right near the hill's crest.
As they approached the top of the hill, the obvious path veered right, through a small stand of trees.
"The trees look like they have wide bases…but they're flat," Kaidan observed.
Richard pointed. "Dad says this area floods pretty regularly, and you can tell which way the water goes by how the trees grow. It even affects how the rocks seem to line up…path of least resistance, you know?"
Shepard's ARO tagged a glint of metal at 11 meters; the suit indicated it smelled of explosives. "Hold," he said.
Behind him, Kaidan stopped.
Shepard's helmet optics zoomed and began to analyze it. Shepard weaved his head to the left and right slightly, giving the sensor better depth perception.
SLAPM, said his ARO. A Self-Launching Anti-Personnel Mine. Shepard didn't recognize the design, assumed it unfriendly.
He pointed. "Alenko, can you hit that thing in one shot? I can't see through the scope of the geth rifle."
"Hang on," said Kaidan, bringing his pistol to bear. Its scope looked straight down the linear accelerator; the view was displayed on his ARO. Kaidan put the crosshairs on it and squeezed the trigger.
The mine exploded in a burst of orange and a small black cloud.
"Nice shot, sir," Jenkins piped up.
"Expert," agreed Shepard. "Let's hope we don't miss any others. Can I have your eyes on this task?"
"Only if my life depends on it," Kaidan nodded.
Jenkins snorted a laugh. "'Only if my life depends on it,'" he giggled, "That's funny, sir."
Kaidan shook his head. "Nope…just so old, it's new again."
They went another 80 meters or so; Shepard spotted another object. "Hold."
Kaidan also squinted at the white box, "Could they have deployed more than one type of automated RPG?"
"To use against civilians?" Jenkins was aghast. "That…that's just barbaric!"
Shepard frowned and sighed. "Yeah…welcome to your first shooting war, Corporal. It gets worse. It always gets worse."
Richard had elevated his rifle above his body and aimed it at the object so he could see it without getting up. "That's not a weapon. It's an unused box…of…" He couldn't quite read the lettering, "Aw, I can't tell. But I know the store that wrapped it. Mussy's is a sports and fitness equipment group. It's…well, if it is what it looks like, it's harmless. It looks like someone just left it. Or dropped it."
"Let's set him down," Kaidan said. As they set down the stretcher, Kaidan raised his weapon, but continued to look for other objects.
Shepard drew his sniper rifle, sighted down the unknown. "They've distracted us before," he said, "I'm starting to think they travel in threes so that one can draw fire, the second can locate the target, and the third can flank it. They might swap data by CobbleStone, or something like it."
Kaidan moved as he spoke, "What one sees, all see?"
"It's a good idea, if you can avoid data overload." As Shepard's VI took and analyzed Doppler readings, the Certainty Level was rising on his ARO.
Kaidan, looking through his scope, read from the side of the box, "Guh-wart Camouflage, Scorpion all-weather…?"
Richard was the expert again, "Guwart hunters?" He stretched his rifle up as high as he could, but still could not see past or over enough of the tall, yellow grasses. "Somebody left a guwart-hunting suit in the original box?"
"It's got a Qcode and a TID," Shepard observed. "It looks like a sealed shipping box, all right." He drew his pistol, aimed beside the box and fired a single shot next to it.
Nothing happened.
Shepard remained suspicious. "It can't be anything we'll care about."
"Couldn't hurt to look," Kaidan suggested.
"Then I'll do it. Cover me." As Shepard approached the white packing container, he spun up his shields, reached for the foil seal of the box with the acceleration tuner on the muzzle of his rifle. The seal crumpled and tore, the lid sprang open when he released it. Inside was what looked like desert camouflage armor. Shepard tipped the box over, prodded the armor.
Watching closely from his relatively safe distance, Kaidan shook his head. "You actually need armor to hunt these goo-art things?"
"Yeah, you actually do," Jenkins replied, "But the weekend warriors like to dress up like soldiers anyway. It's kind of like a bear, and if you don't take out the eyes, it'll tear you apart. But they're night hunters, and they have big eyes, so it's not that hard…you just have to not get confused by the nostrils. They drop right out of the trees. Usually, they crush or stun whatever they drop on. The armor can save your life…if you're all that stupid about it. But the armor looks all hooah…I think that's the real reason why they buy it."
"You be okay here for a minute?"
"Sure thing, sir." He glanced around at his surroundings, and suddenly pointed. "Hey, look…that's a guwart blind! Someone must have stashed this stuff up here. And those trees we just came through…that's the sort of place where you'd find 'em."
Kaidan sauntered over to where Shepard was inspecting the armor. He reached into the blind and lifted out a few ammo modifiers. "Chemical and antipersonnel ammo mods."
"Yeah, you need that," Jenkins continued, "If you miss the eyes, they'll get real mad. Run you down. Really tough and really, really aggressive. That's why the guart blinds are like that…it's like a reinforced bunker. Might even be a grenade in there."
There was; Kaidan held it up. "Hunting with grenades? Isn't that like fishing with dynamite?"
Jenkins was shaking his head. "Sir…you do not want one of these things to get you. They're all teeth and claws. Climbs those trees like…at a run, and will attack things bigger than itself if it's desperate or threatened. They work in groups, too. Intelligent. Mean." He paused thoughtfully. "Sorta like Captain Krause."
"I thought you said these hunter guys wear the armor to feel all tough."
"You wear the armor if you have Brain One in your head because it'll save your life. It just also happens to a big ego booster, too. Why even bother to hunt them in the first place?" He was on a rant now, his self-restraint relaxed by the PMA. "You can print out almost anything you care to eat anymore, and there are easier ways to keep the things from wandering into town. Nobody hunts because they have to, or because they're hungry...they hunt because it's a big oo-look-what-a-tough-guy-I-am thing. Idiots."
Shepard looked up from the box. "I was going to 'gel it, but this description says it has shields and medigel conduits. It just doesn't have adaptive camouflage."
Kaidan held a piece of the armor up so they could see it, and waved it toward Richard. "He could use a new leg. Will it integrate with an Onyx?"
Shepard consulted his omnitool's Library. After a pause, he shook his head. "No, it won't."
"How about this…the camouflage on this suit is optimal for this environment. I'll bet I can get the outer layer of that armor on in three minutes, and we can get Jenkins into new leg pieces."
Shepard noted that the specs were almost twice what the Onyx armor offered. He looked up from his omnitool. "You've got two minutes. Get that leg off first and I can get it on Jenkins." He walked over to where the young man lay on the stretcher.
"Keep an eye on the radar," Kaidan said as he began to remove the outer layer of his own armor, "And you don't want to put it on him yet; the braces are still holding him together."
Shepard waved his omnitool over Jenkins, read the results. "Looks like you're moving right along," he said, "Your suit's telling me you'll be ready to walk in another few minutes."
"Here it is; just put it on the stretcher with him." Kaidan tossed the lower leg armor so it landed next to Shepard, scattering dirt as it did.
Jenkins was getting talkative, "Hey, Lieutenant? Remember when you asked if I could feel my leg? I can't feel my leg, but I can feel my big toe. And a couple of others. Wow, this is so konko. I can't feel my leg, but I can feel my toes."
"Can you wiggle them?"
A pause. "No…I can't." He sounded worried.
"That's good, that's really good," Kaidan reassured him. "Don't worry. I'm changing into the goo-wart hunting armor and you can use the leg plates from mine."
"It's guwart, sir. It's the sound they make."
"You say potato," Kaidan hefted a large piece of the armor, "I say spud."
*** Glossary ***
ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay; an implanted Augmented Reality system
CobbleStone: a visual-data aggregation software module developed in the 2060s that allows swarms to collect environmental information from multiple camera angles (or other scanning media) and thereby build up a cohesive 3D map of an area relatively quickly.
DKT: Digital Knowledge Transfer; neuroloearning, or some other means of direct data transfer to an organic brain. Retention and efficiency levels of any given transfer vary from one individual to the next, or even in the same individual depending on what they've eaten, how well they slept, or even what sort of day they're having. Under most circumstances, DKT will provide a general understanding on a diversity of topics, including but not limited to first aid, electromechanical repair, vehicle operation, and the care and feeding of tropical fish. To a degree, it can also reduce cognitive biases, and increase Type II thinking (at the cost of Type I thinking; this may seem like an overall slowdown, but deliberate, critical thinking more often yields better decisions. It just takes a little longer to transfer a reliable process or action to the faster Type 1.) What 2180s DKT cannot do is make someone smarter, more ethical, or more responsible.
ER: Emergency Room
ERA: Expert, ready and able – The phrase "ready and able" has seen use in the military for centuries; the recent addition of "Expert" arose during the advent of neurolearning, or Digital Knowledge Transfer (DKT). Whether by DKT or experience, "Expert" indicates both field-specific knowledge, and the possessor if it.
linac: linear accelerator
MilComReq: Military Command Requisitions. A database of apps and printable devices approved/recommended for Alliance operations.
NNP: Nanotech Neurological Preservative. After the rise in popularity of cryogenic preservation, a short-term "last aid" solution appeared for people who die quite remote from a cryo facility to prevent damage to the brain while awaiting transport. As of 2180, NNP is effective for about five to seven months, depending on the conditions at death (hydration, temperature, type of damage if any, etc.) Normally a 2cc cell of NNP is integrated into a user's omnitool, but First Responders (paramedics, SAR, CFR, and other First Aid Personnel) are nearly always equipped with NNP injectors.
PMA: Pain Management Application
RFQ: Request For Quote. A document issued to potential contractors for production or design of a product. Often includes design requirements and operational constraints.
SmartPak: an integrated weapons carrier worn as the back panel for compatible standard armor types. Active hardpoint controllers are linked to standard combat VIs so that a soldier has only to reach for the weapon for it to unlock and begin decompaction. Also automatically connects to weapons and allows them to finish compaction when being secured.
TID: Thing Identifier: A unique base-36 identifier for products or unique pieces that uses RFID [Radio Frequency ID] when polled to identify itself. Number is often printed or otherwise applied to the object.
VRS: Virtual Reality Simulation. A simulation of a process or device in VR for analytical purposes.
WINC: Weapons Intelligence Network Computing
