Six Months Later…
Outer Space — Vanu Orbital Headquarters, 1100 hours
Edward looked over the device with restrained enthusiasm, watching as the two Sovereignty engineers under his instruction installed it in its custom-built slot in the data-transfer relay of one of the space station's banks of Reconstruction Tubes. Transferring the entire human genome from a databank to the world's most complex 3D printer took time; three to four days to be exact, he thought. Transmitting all that data, regardless of distance, was the single largest bottleneck in the process. After all the developments in quantum computing over the centuries, it had come down to the point where fiber optics had reached their limit, and with any luck, he and his crew were on the verge of surpassing that limit.
"You really think this is going to work, doctor Saller?" one of the engineers idly asked, his deft hands flying over the alien device to get it connected to the data relay. "I mean, the principles seem sound, but using the original Vanu hardware… that doesn't seem sketchy in the slightest? I mean, what if this thing straight nukes the entire station, or-"
Edward laughed. "I trust the Vanu a hell of a lot more than I trust myself, Jimmy. If anything, I'd be afraid that something with MY name on it ends up blowing us up, not some long-dead alien race. It's a transmitter from an original Vanu comms relay, we know that, and that's exactly what we were looking for. If we're right, we'll be cutting down the redeploy time of our soldiers from days to minutes. If that doesn't give you chills of excitement, then you must have the world's most hottest sex life instead, 'cause this is as good as it gets."
"He's just nervous," the other engineer said, looking up from the data relay's control panel. "Personally can't wait to fire her up myself. No more missing TV episodes when you catch shrapnel in the dome or some other BS!"
"Not for a while, Bill, not for a while," Edward replied. "Even if we get this up and running, you know they're only going to let the top brass use it. She's the going to turn this entire bank into the gold-plated limousine of Reconstruction Tubes, so only the best of the best will get 'em," he added, nodding toward the alien device now mounted. "Hell, even I only get to be the guinea pig once or twice, to make sure it isn't going to shit out on us mid-reconstruction and leave some angry field captain disfigured enough to be shitting out his innards. The ground team should be retrieving the rest of these relay modules, but even if we get all three of the ones we didn't break, it'll be a while before we build our own for the rest of the banks of Tubes."
"Yeah, I don't envy you at all some times," the engineer named Jimmy said with a sigh. "So, you just going to run off somewhere and put a bullet in your noggin to test the Tubes out? With your recent combat records, I'd be worried about the TR or NC running out of guys to throw at you!"
"Hah! I wish," Edward replied. "Nah, I'll figure something out." He knew his recent combat records were a lie, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Every mission he had been on since finding Charlotte in Lab 69, he had taken her with him, and her combat prowess from her implanted memories and instincts showed. Almost anyone else might have had issues explaining how they killed two hundred and fifty men from almost a kilometer away in the span of a few hours, but Edward's combat record after fighting for the entirety of the war thus far, and perhaps his ties to the Council, had let his illicit protégé fly under the radar while at his side.
The engineer at the data relay's control panel waited for his companion to stand clear of the exposed circuitry wired to the alien device before flipping the single physical switch on the device's exterior. The hum of dangerously high-voltage transformers filled the hall as the massive machine began its startup sequence, displaying the entire process on the screen as it went through each step. "Seems like she's running smoothly so far, Ed," Bill said, nodding in harmony with the device as new notifications scrolled by on the screen. "I guess Jimmy and I will keep her running smooth while you do your thing."
"Thanks, guys," Edward said, patting them both on the back. "When you get the chance, run down to the mess hall down by my office and steal the coffee machine — oh, and look in the cabinet right above the second fridge from the right, I keep part of my secret coffee stash in there behind a fake wall, so help yourself to some of that in the meantime. I'll want a cup or two after I get out, if I'm not rushed to the ER from internal bleeding." Their work with him over the past few days deserved a bit of a treat, and with the war making any sort of agriculture outside of the absolutely necessary nigh impossible, the twenty-pound bags of fresh coffee beans he kept stashed around the space station were worth their weight in gold. Many hours of work had gone into paying for bribing his fellow scientists into sneakily growing the beans in the back corners of Biolab greenhouses, and they were his pride and joy, a celebration treat better than aged wine to him.
Watching the two engineers fistbump each other in celebration, Edward headed for the door, stepping out into one of the three long, circular hallways that ran around the station. Idly browsing his email on his phone as he walked, he backtracked his way around the station to his office, the small glass window in his office door covered with a singular sheet of paper that read "do not disturb" in large block font.
Sliding his security key into the door, the two thick plates of metal slid open, revealing a pitch-black room inside. The doors slid shut behind him as he reached for the light switch, filling the room with cold, blue-ish halogen light. The office had hardly changed over the past six months, with the exception of a penned-off area in the back-right corner of the room, surrounded by a small jury-rigged curtain. He stepped over to the curtain and poked his head inside, finding a mound of blankets piled on top of an improvised bed on top of a spare desk he nicked from an empty office. "Hey, Char, time to get up. We've got a job," he said.
The blankets shuffled and parted as Charlotte poked her head up, her short, silvery-grey hair frizzled from a bad case of bedhead. Rubbing her eyes open, she stared back with her striking blue eyes, silently questioning his decision to wake her up.
"Yeah, you heard me," Edward insisted. "Gotta go get ourselves killed for the great name of Vanu. Might as well knock a few heads while we're at it."
Without so much as a word spoken, she sat up in bed, holding blankets to her chest. Edward closed the heavy curtain and waited for her to get re-dressed, idly listening to his wall clock as it ticked away the seconds. Soon, she emerged from her curtained-off "room" dressed in her usual outfit of a white button-up blouse, dark black dress pants and black low-heel dress shoes — her only outfit, a spare secretary's uniform borrowed from Cecilia Monaghan, the gunner of Felix's Valkyrie aircraft. Her striking silver hair never ceased to catch his eye. Combined with her light blue eyes, he had initially suspected a malfunction in the Reconstruction Tubes when her body was created that had led to albinism, but she hadn't seemed to suffer from any other otherwise obvious effects of the condition, like the need for sunglasses nearly everywhere, so he wasn't quite sure.
"Got your ID?" he asked. The young lady withdrew her keycard from her pants pocket, holding it up for him to see. "Alright, just checking," he conceded, holding his hands up in defeat. "Can't be too sure. Last thing we need is you getting locked in somewhere you shouldn't be and getting in trouble."
Standing in the doorway to block the automatic steel door's sensor, he followed Charlotte out of his office, walking alongside her. Silently, the two walked along the outer ring corridor of the station, transferring to one of the inner "rings" of the station on their way toward the orbital station's armory. "She still has barely spoken since those first few days," he thought as he walked, looking down at his younger companion. "She was pretty sassy for about a month, but even what's left of her old personality has decayed after her vocabulary went. She seems to understand me just fine, and she's done fine with language lessons when I force her to, just to make sure she doesn't totally regress to a caveman, but… maybe she's just not comfortable speaking or something…"
Soon, the two reached the armory, its imposing blast doors locked shut before them. Removing his keycard from the small carabiner clipped to one of the belt loops of his pants, he slid the carbon-fiber-encased computer chip into the reader and held it there until a small light on the reader flashed green. The hiss and clatter of hydraulic locks undoing themselves rang out from the thick steel moments before the blast doors parted, revealing the locker-room-like facilities inside.
Walking along the rows of storage lockers, his eyes scanned the bold stenciled numbers on the tall metal doors until he found the few assigned to him. Most soldiers only had one or two lockers, but he usually had anywhere between three and five, depending on how many weapons projects he had lined up for testing on that particular day. Today, he only had four: one for his suit and engineering gear, one for the bulky "Archer" anti-materiel rifle and its submachine gun complement, and the other for his other current project, codenamed "Phaseshift". That one was Charlotte's go-to weapon. The fourth held Charlotte's "infiltrator" type combat suit; the locker was under his name because only soldiers with upper clearance could have a locker at the station. Any soldier without VS-3 clearance simply kept their combat suit with them in their barracks and grabbed a fresh weapon from one of the many weapons construction terminals found at any ground base, so they had no need for a locker with which to store personalized gear. "I still don't even think she has VS-1 clearance yet. It got her into the ranks, but even Joey's forgery jobs aren't good enough to get you any kind of clearance," he thought.
Sliding his keycard into the three lockers' readers one by one, he swung the metal doors open and withdrew his combat suit, the purple plate armor glistening in the unnatural light of the armory's halogen bulbs. Charlotte quickly retrieved hers and pushed past him, disappearing around a corner to go get changed. Hastily unbuttoning his shirt, he slipped out of his lab coat and the rest of his work outfit before sliding into his combat suit, the black form-fitting fabric jumpsuit underneath the armor like silk against his skin. He hastily zipped up the suit and slid his helmet over his head before pressing a button on the side of his helmet, booting up the onboard computer. He could feel the custom-fitted armor clamp down around his body as his chest armor latched into place, the suit's nanoweave force shield generator coming online within seconds.
As the heads-up display popped up on his visor, Charlotte returned with her clothes in her hand, wearing her own form-fitting combat suit, sans the helmet. "I never thought about it, but I guess they made her short and slender on purpose," he thought as he retrieved his heavy rifle and submachine gun from their locker, looking over his companion from the corner of his eye. "Smaller body means her suit's cloaking device doesn't spend as much energy keeping her cloaked. Crack shot with a rifle, too. Born and bred 'Infiltrator' type soldier from day one…"
Edward returned his attention to his rifle, checking that the magnified optics were exactly as he left them from the last mission. Attaching the small auto-pistol to the magnetic hardpoint on his right thigh, he set the butt of the heavy rifle against his leg and racked the bolt, loading a fresh cartridge. "Smoother than silk," he thought as he attached the rifle to his back and fished out the rest of his engineering gear: his Nanite repair tool, a few single-use constructing devices built to construct automated sentries, his specially modified beacon, a pouch of basic hand-tools, and a bandolier of grenades. "Fifty years, and it never gets any lighter," he grumbled as he strapped on the last of his gear to their magnetic hardpoints on his armor.
Testing to ensure that his weapons were secured tightly, he looked over to Charlotte to make sure that she was ready. She had donned her helmet, her soft-looking face sealed behind a mono-body mask of nanoweave carbon fiber and layered matrix steel. The green crystalline three-prong design on her faceplate glowed dimly, matching the Vanu logo on her carbon-nanoweave breastplate. "Pure nightmare fuel for anyone on her bad side," he thought as he watched her pull her rifle out of its locker, loading one of her three nuclear-powered capacitors into the prototype weapon before affixing it to her back.
"Ready?" She asked softly.
"Ready as always, Char."