— GRIDIRON, EIGHTEEN MONTHS AFTER THE FALL OF SPYGLASS —
The road was empty at this late an hour, save for the two armored 'Samson' class trucks rumbling down its stretch in the dead of night.
They drove cautiously, but with purpose; from the backseat of the vehicle in the rear, two men's gazes darted towards every shadow and tree next to the road, their branches hanging over the street like outstretched claws waiting to strike.
One held a rifle, one which he fidgeted with to no end- scratching notches into the stock, checking and rechecking the ammo counter. The other held no weapon- just a single steel-case box which sat on his lap. As the seconds ticked by, the first man peered keenly out of the tinted window as he had been doing for the last hour.
"Would you stop that?" the other snarled in a thick german accent, his own anxiety reaching peak levels at his companion's need for reassurance. The other snapped his gaze around, equally on edge.
"If you want to get jumped by the Network, be my guest; but until then, I'm going to keep making sure our route's secure-"
"Both of you, shut it," the driver ordered, trying to focus on the road. "Your barking at one another isn't going to help- we're less than five klicks from the meeting point, just hang tight and we'll all-"
SCREEEE.
Without warning, the brakes of the car in front kicked into full effect, and the driver swore as he was forced to use his as well in order to avoid crashing into the back of the other truck.
"Jesus, what the hell's wrong with them?" he growled, waiting for them to start moving again so they could continue.
The other Samson remained stationary, on and running- but refusing to move.
WHAM.
All three of them jerked in their seats and looked up to the roof of the car. Something had just landed on it- and whatever it was, they had a good feeling that it was the cause for the other car's sudden stop.
Slowly, the man in the back tightened his grip on his rifle.
The driver noticed and quietly hissed, "No, wait-"
The gunman raised it and yelled incoherently as he began firing through the roof at whatever was sitting up there. Bullet after bullet tore through the canopy as he held the trigger down until the gun began bleating an alarm that there was no ammo left in the magazine.
All three of them listened intently for sounds of movement. They heard nothing.
"You, stay in here," the driver order to the man holding the box. "You, with me." Drawing a sidearm from a holster on his leg, the driver opened his door and stepped out as the gunman did the same. The box-holder watched as they closed their respective doors, and moved around with their guns drawn and ready.
The gunman inspected the roof of the car- nothing there except for his bullets' exit holes. He looked all over the top of the Samson and near the ground for a trail of blood, footprints, anything- but he couldn't see any evidence that someone had been there.
"I'm thinkin' maybe it's just an animal," he muttered, half directed towards the driver but mostly said as an attempt to convince himself. "What about you?"
His answer came in the form a soft thud on the other side of the car. Hearing the noise, he quickly maneuvered to the opposite end and was rewarded with a sight of the driver lying face-down in the dirt … or technically face-up, thanks to a broken neck.
"Oh, shit."
Inside the car, the last man didn't see or hear much aside from watching the gunman get thrown into the side of the car with a resounding SLAM. He clutched the case tightly, willing it to protect him somehow from whatever was doing this to them-
Suddenly, he watched as his door was wrenched off its hinges and cast aside. That wasn't what worried him, however- what worried him was the fact that there was no one there.
"Ein geist," he muttered, his face turning pale as his body began to quiver.
"Of a sort."
A disembodied voice spoke seemingly from right in front of him, but he couldn't see them-
No- he could see something. Thin outlines of bluish light that bent around humanoid shapes, a silvery filter of wavering air akin to what one would see from a heat mirage.
"Cloaks, off."
"Copy."
One by one, people materialized before his eyes- first came two men, then a simulacrum, and finally a woman, the one who'd initially spoken to him. All of them seemed to be wearing Pilot armor- but more streamlined and advanced.
"I'll make you a deal," she said, stepping closer to him as he cowered in his seat with the case, no weapon to defend himself with. "You hand over that case, and you don't end up like your friends here." She gestured to the bodies of the driver and the riflemen near the car. "Sound good?"
Wordlessly, he handed it over to her with a shaking arm. Taking it from him, she hefted it in a satisfied manner- or at least he thought she was satisfied, he couldn't see her expression behind her helmet. "Alright. Vogel, bind him up and tag him for retrieval. You two, secure the other car and see if there's anything else that might be useful.
One of the men stepped forward to grab the lone survivor from the Samson while the other man and simulacrum followed the woman's orders and moved in to investigate the first car.
For her part, she knelt to the ground and placed the case down before opening it. Inspecting its contents, she gave a sigh of relief to see what they'd been looking for; a large, cylindrical vial of apparent nothingness. But if one heavily focused their eyes- or simply had thermal vision installed in their helmet- they'd be able to see the tiny specks of dust-like particles floating around within it, constantly flying about in their containment.
She opened her comlink again, having shut it off before to avoid detection. "Ghost-Actual, this is Ghost One."
"We're receiving. Do you have the package?"
"Affirmative. Intel was good- we have the vial. All NH forces are dead, aside from one survivor- no casualties."
New Humanity was nearly dead at this point- but a few stubborn vestiges of its influence remained on the frontier, occasionally rising out of the shadows to wreak what havoc they could. This time, the objective had been to stop a handoff from one group to another. The item of interest- a vial of nanites from Spyglass's original batch, still active and just waiting to multiply. She didn't even want to think of the potential repercussions that could be had if any of these things happened to have even a fragment of the AI's matrix on them …
"Good work, Ghost One. Mark the package for retrieval, and have your team ready to redeploy within the hour."
She paused for a moment. "Repeat again, Ghost-Actual … redeploy?"
"Affirmative. The retrieval team will be coming shortly to evac you and the package off-world."
"What about the drop-point? We're supposed to-"
"Another team is handling that. Your team is being sent to investigate a disturbance aboard the FDN Jericho."
She remembered that ship- it had been assigned to pick up the sensitive cargo she and her team had marked for retrieval on an operation a week ago. "What kind of disturbance?"
"Classified. The Jericho will fill in the details."
Abruptly, the connection was cut.
Left alone with her thoughts, she was silent for a moment or two, pondering the implications of what she'd just been told. A disturbance aboard a high-priority frigate, one that was severe enough to render any kind of briefing classified?
She usually had a good feel for these kinds of things … and right now her gut was telling her that things were about to get weird.
— FDN VESSEL "JERICHO", EN ROUTE TO HARMONY —
"What exactly am I looking at?"
The scene before her left a lot of questions, many of which just simply didn't have an answer. As such, she was forced to review the few facts she had at the moment.
Just under six hours ago, the FDN Jericho stopped broadcasting with assigned observers on all communication frequencies during a standard transport assignment. Within ten minutes, it had reappeared on sensors and activated its emergency distress beacon.
It appeared that the ship had been completely disabled via unknown means, though the probable culprit was an advanced EMP-like emission. Other FDN ships responded to the call, finding all occupants alive and well, though without any clue as to why their ship had suddenly ceased to function.
That was it. Those were all the facts she had.
Despite the clear lack of anything substantial to go off of, it had fallen to her team to investigate the matter and determine what events had transpired aboard the Jericho during its short blackout. So now she stood before the first officer with the rest of her team standing behind her, waiting to see if he could provide any insight into this investigation.
"Well ma'am," he started, "that's exactly the problem; nothing. This is all the cargo we have, and we've cross-checked our inventory- not a thing is out of place. All salvage and other items are accounted for."
"What did your sensors say during the outage?"
"They were nonfunctional, ma'am."
She sighed frustratedly. "You could almost believe that nobody was here." She waved her hand once in a circle, and the rest of her team began sweeping the area for anything out of the ordinary.
He raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean? There's evidence someone was here?"
She shook her head. "No, and that's precisely it- there's no sign at all that anyone entered this area, so whoever did enter is obviously well-trained in stealth and espionage."
"I … don't follow."
She patiently explained her thought process to him like a mother would to her child. "No matter the outcome, there had to be a reason for your ship being disabled. As it wasn't something you did yourselves, that only leaves an external entity as the source of the disruption. If you were a random civilian ship, maybe I'd say otherwise- that the reason for your blackout was your attacker merely conducting a test of the evidently advanced EMP they've developed."
She shook her head. "But your mission was far from low-priority, and your cargo even more so. In my line of work, I've found it's safer to assume that there's no such thing as coincidences."
The hangar bay was full of trophies from that raid she and her team had pulled off against a New Humanity compound- spectre and stalker bodies, hard drives and retrievable memory banks, cortexes of destroyed simulacrums, and other evidence that would need to be kept from the public eye. If any of this had gone missing, the results could have been disastrous.
So why attack a ship that you don't intend to steal from?
"Lieutenant!"
She turned towards the direction of the team member who'd called out to her. Her eyes fixated on Husher, his bright blue optic illuminating the poor lighting of the hangar as he waved her over. Following the simulacrum's request, she walked over to where he was.
"Found something?"
"Maybe," he muttered, "I'm not sure. Don't know what it means, but I was scanning for temperature abnormalities in the room- and I found this."
He pointed out a small section of the floor near the center of the room. At first, she saw nothing- then her HUD highlighted a minute discrepancy in the smoothness of the metal.
In the floor, the letters 'V' and 'I' had been emblazoned sharply and clearly with some kind of heating tool. They were no larger than an inch or so in width and length, almost unnoticeable had someone not been actively looking for them.
It was at times like these that she was grateful he was part of the team- he'd been trained to noticed things exactly like this, tiny details that would elude anyone else.
He looked at her. "Could they be initials? A calling card of some kind?"
"That's one plausible theory," she murmured, bending down to look more closely. "But with the lack of separation and how they're positioned, I'd wager it's the roman numeral for 'six'."
"Six? So then what are we dealing with here? A countdown?"
"Could be," she mused. "Could be any number of things. Depends on if any other ships get hit like this one."
"You think there will be other incidents?"
She sighed, standing up with a hint of resignation in her tone. "With everything I've experienced … I like to hope for the best, but it's generally safer to prepare for the worst. Tell Vogel and Danvers to pack it up and head back to the ship, we've got a briefing to prepare."
"You got it, Gray."
A/N: I never advertised this as much on here, but I have a discord server for those who enjoy my content!
If you want updates the moment a chapter goes live, previews of chapters before they get posted, ARG's for stories that have real rewards when you solve them, and conversations with other members who love these stories like you do, feel free to join using the link below!
discord . gg / 6nwfXCj
Just remove those spaces, put it in the URL bar, and you should be good to go! Hope to see you there.
- Matteoarts