Chapter 3: Lovely Angels / Falling into the Cockpit
While the Hawaiian islands had been devastated by the waves of Second Impact, the Honolulu-2 Arcoplex stood as an exemplar of humanity's efforts to rebuild. It was further inland than the old city, with arcoblocks built like giant sporting stadiums with opening roofs. The interiors mostly consisted of resorts incorporating artificial beaches with filtered (but not desalinated) water to replicate the experience of the old Hawaii.
The USS Girard A. Ryan and its associated carrier strike group maintained a patrolling formation near the island. While the early 2000s-era United States Navy forces were officially surrendered to the UN as part of the Valentine Treaty, there was no provision barring the country from building up a new fleet to defend itself. Named after the late president who was instrumental in guiding North America through the chaos of the Impact Wars, the Ryan was the lead ship of its class.
The Pearl Harbor naval base had been built up significantly since Second Impact, serving as a port for US and UN forces as well as a provisional facility for aquatic Shadow operations. Two dark blue Units were crouched on one of the docking platforms. Unlike the slender land-based Shadows, these ones had bulky torsos to house water-cooled internal reactors, as well as large turbines mounted on their shoulder pylons and legs for underwater propulsion.
A Nerv transport VTOL approached the island from the northeast and began to circle the airport between Pearl Harbor and Honolulu-2. After a few minutes, it banked toward the city, flying at full speed.
A trio of young women lounged on beach towels inside one of the open resort domes, soaking in the midday sun. They were well-tanned and wore sunglasses along with string bikinis that showed off enough skin to get at least a momentary glance from passing men. When those men were sufficiently attractive, they'd get a smile back.
"Hey, Regina. Your phone's vibrating," The bleach-blonde said to the brunette.
The black-haired girl on her other side giggled. "Could be that guy you met last night."
"Eww. No." Regina scrunched her face up.
"He had, like, the best body," the blonde recounted.
The two girls turned to her. "Come on, Trish! You say that about every semi-hot guy!"
"At least I actually check their face too, Rita!"
The black-haired girl looked away. "It was one time! Besides, those scars meant he was a fighter. I think that's kinda hot."
"Yeah." Regina giggled. "A tent city gladiator."
"So, that guy you were hitting on looked like he was a soldier or something," Rita said.
"He was a jarhead. My uncle had the same haircut and attitude," Trish pointed out.
"I don't care what he was. As soon as I tried to hook up with him, he went full retard," Regina explained.
"You think it's like that PTSD thing?" Rita asked.
"Or he was just a virgin and, like, freaked out or something," Trish speculated.
"Whatever. Phone's vibrating again." Regina reached into her bag and retrieved the phone, checking her messages.
"So, what is it?" the two girls asked.
"Sweet! Test results came back positive!" Regina exclaimed.
"That does not sound like a good thing," Rita commented.
Trish ran through some quick math in her head. "That's impossible. You haven't slept with anyone in, like, four months now. I heard some infections can have delayed symptoms, though."
"No! Not that sort of thing!" Regina was blushing bright red. "I'm sync-positive. It's this really cool brain thing that Nerv does a scan for."
"Nerv? Like, with the giant robots?" Trish asked.
Regina waved her hand in a dismissive manner. "Don't be silly, Trish. They get military-trained professionals to pilot those."
"What if that marine guy was one of them?" Rita wondered.
"Getting his brain fried by being inside a giant killer robot would explain why he thought making an unmoving duckface counts as kissing technique," Regina joked, sending the other girls into a giggling fit.
Suddenly, the roar of jet engines filled the air. The girls looked up to see a grey and red Nerv VTOL entering the open roof. The aircraft descended onto a concrete-floored plaza next to the beach, kicking up a sandstorm as it touched down.
Regina's hair whipped around in the wind as she shielded her face from the onslaught of sand. The rear ramp of the VTOL came down, revealing a pair of older men. One had a full head of brown hair and the same dark brown eyes as Regina. He wore an immaculate champagne-colored suit with a pale blue dress shirt and brown leather dress shoes. The other was clad in a dark grey Nerv uniform and showed his age more, with a wrinkled face, buzzed grey hair and stern grey eyes.
"Miss Stanford! Please come with us!" the Nerv man shouted over the whine of the turbines.
"Dad! What's going on?" Regina asked, standing up shakily.
"There's no time to explain, sweetie! I need you to trust me!" Mr. Stanford urged.
The girl realized the reason behind this. "Is this about the test?"
"I'll tell you everything on the way! Just come with me!" her father shouted.
"On the way to where?"
"Somewhere you're very underdressed for!" the officer yelled.
"Story of my life," Regina said to herself as she ran over to the VTOL. The ramp closed the moment she got inside and the aircraft took off, leaving the other beachgoers covered in sand and very confused.
After entering the rear cargo hold, Regina went into the passenger cabin through a pressure door. The cabin interior was reminiscent of a business jet, but this was clearly an aftermarket feature, along with the pressurized divider that separated it from the bare-bones military style of the cargo hold. She sat down and strapped herself in at a table opposite her father as the VTOL took off.
As soon as they were flying level, the businessman went to the minibar and poured himself a generous amount of Scotch.
"Easy on that, Theodore," the Nerv officer cautioned.
Theodore Stanford took a long sip, then gestured to the officer with his glass. "Regina, meet Lieutenant Colonel Bertram Fuller."
Lt. Col. Fuller offered a hand, and Regina gave a firm shake. "You're with Nerv, right?" the girl asked.
"Correct. And what have you heard about us?"
"Just the public information. Protecting humanity against... something by using giant robots-"
Cyborgs. The officer reflexively cleared his throat, but contained his urge to make the correction out loud.
"Anyway, why do you guys want me?"
"It's because of your test results, sweetie. I don't quite get it myself, but the r-... cyborgs can only be piloted by people with a specific mental pattern that manifests in people born after Second Impact," Theodore explained.
While Regina was hardly the best academic, she was excellent at reading people. When her father made the correction himself, Fuller's irritation with her terminology became apparent.
Those things. They're alive? There's... something under that armor?
"Sweetie?" Her father's voice seemed quieter.
They want me to pilot one? Get inside it?
"Look at me, are you alright?" The ringing got louder.
They said I need to have a mental pattern. Does it plug into my brain? Is it gross? Does it require surgery? Does it hurt? Will I hear its thoughts? Does it even have thoughts?
"She's hyperventilating." Fuller's voice was barely audible.
If I back out, will they just take some other girl my age and make her do it? Or is one of them unique to me? Will it recognize me? Did they train other pilots from birth? Do I have to do it because they all died? I don't want to die, at least not in some freaky cyborg monster!
"I won't get in it. I'm not going to pilot one of those... things," she whimpered. The pain under her eyes finally registered, and she pulled her fingers away from her cheeks, leaving imprints from where she had dug her fingernails into the skin.
Theodore tried to give a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Regina. It's perfectly safe."
The lieutenant colonel's face remained neutral. "This is why we avoid correcting people who don't have the proper security clearance. They assume the worst."
The businessman continued his emotional appeal to his daughter. "Look, it's going to be scary at first, but you can do it. You're special, sweetie, like I always told you."
"The piloting process itself is quite comfortable. Almost like playing a video game," Fuller added.
Regina started to perk up again. "R-really? I guess I freaked out over nothing. So, where are these things uh... parked?"
Electronic beats blasted in the dark room, almost drowning out the constant sound of keystrokes. The light of a monitor was reflected in Matrix-green eyes that were scanning lines of code displayed on it. The hacker paused to tuck a loose strand of wavy blonde hair behind her ear, then put her pale fingers back on the keys.
"Come on, show me a vulnerable node," she said with a hint of a Russian accent.
She opened another window and typed more commands, showing a video display.
"Hmm. I can get into current camera feeds. Looks like cleanup is underway. Footprints everywhere, but no mechs. DREAM must've cut the crypto here as soon as there's nothing to see. The servers storing those recordings, on the other hand..."
After a few more keystrokes and an old exploit, she was in.
"Stored data from that time is encrypted. Makes sense, but it also makes it glaringly obvious compared to day-to-day recordings. I'll grab it just in case I end up getting a key or something later."
A warning flashed at the bottom of her monitor.
- PERIMETER BREACH -
"Fuck!" She quickly closed all the windows on her screen, leaving the fake code windows of her wallpaper showing. Without missing a beat, she grabbed her pillow and put it where she was seated, along with a blonde wig resembling her mid-back length hair.
With the decoy set up, she pressed herself against the wall next to the front door of her studio apartment. In one hand, she held a folding knife. In the other, a smartphone that showed several camera feeds from outside her apartment.
Several masked men, dressed in street clothes and carrying assault rifles with wooden furniture, stalked down the hallway. Without warning, suppressed gunshots came from outside the building, cutting the intruders down before they had a chance to realize what was going on.
The hacker ducked instinctively, then switched her phone to a camera feed of the exterior wall. Surely enough, there was a man hanging from a rappelling line and holding a pair of SIG Sauer MPX submachine guns. He wore a trench coat and sunglasses, and had parted brown hair.
"Fucking wallhax Neo." She pocketed her knife, went over to the window, pulled up the blinds and opened it to shout outside and gesture angrily. "Hey, wallhax fucker! Get in here before you embarrass me!"
"How did you know I wouldn't shoot you?" the deep-voiced man asked as he climbed inside and unclipped his harness.
"Figured you're here with Nerv. Also, if you wanted to, you'd just use that cheap wallhax trick again," the blonde explained.
"Doesn't come cheap." He pulled down his shades, revealing red cybereyes. "I'm Captain Roland Metzger."
"Kasparova, Nadezhda Mikhailovna. My friends call me Nadya. I'd rather not shake, in case your grip is augmented."
Metzger didn't laugh. "No time for that anyway. I need to bring you in."
"Is this about that datasteal? Or the DDOS? Was it the power words I shared on the deep web?" Nadya asked with a smirk. "I can give you free long distance, but it's trickier than playing a harmonica at a phone these days."
"No, Miss Kasparova. Nerv needs your assistance. That said, if you refuse to comply, I can detain you indefinitely under the Nerv Security Act of oh-five for breaching our VPN last year," Metzger explained.
"Alright, fine. Let me get my gear." Nadya went over to her wardrobe and threw on a blue-lined black leather duster over her black T-shirt with green code. She then tucked her tight leather pants into her combat boots and belted them up. Grabbing a shoulder bag, she unplugged her external drives and stuffed them inside, along with a laptop. "Can your dudes send the rest to wherever I'll be working?" she asked, taking a look around and checking for other essential items. Finally, she put on her own pair of mirrorshades before heading out the door.
"I'll send someone," Metzger replied.
Nadya hated being in public, but riding the monorail through the Anchorage dome with a fellow longcoat-clad cyberpunk was admittedly pretty schway. Rain washed down the sides of the glass constantly, making it necessary to artificially light the streets all day and adding to the futuristic noir atmosphere. The pair stepped out of the elevated train near the local Nerv branch, then took a funicular to the underground provisional facility, which mostly resembled the one in Vegas.
"Wow, this place could hold an entire original Xbox." Nadya commented as she entered the expansive hangar. "So, where is my workstation gonna be?"
"We didn't come to you for your hacking skills, Miss Kasparova," Metzger pointed out.
The hacker's eyes went wide. "Fuck me sideways. You want me to pilot a mech?"
"It's called a Shadow Cybernetic Humanoid Combat Unit," Metzger corrected. "I'll leave you in the ready room with a manual on it. Get familiar with its workings while the techs prepare for synchronization testing."
"Should've given it a name that spells out S-C-H-W-A-Y because that's how fucking epic those things are," Nadya joked.
Regina entered the ready room, shivering and trying to keep herself covered with her father's suit jacket. Nadya was sitting on a couch that faced the entrance while she watched her laptop. The hacker looked up from her screen and laughed.
"Hey, looks like we have a fanservice character!"
"I was taken from a beach, okay?" Regina huffed as she sat down opposite Nadya, folding her arms to keep the jacket closed.
"Wow, that's a tough break. I'm Nadya, by the way."
"I'm Regina. Are they, like, making you pilot the cyborg too?"
Nadya gave a confused look. "Pilot Metzger? I didn't even know he had a remote control option."
"Who is Metzger?" Regina asked, now similarly befuddled.
"Cyborg dude." Nadya paused, then realized the intended meaning. "Oh wait, you mean the mech?"
"Yeah. And there's a human cyborg too? Is he scary?"
"He's a trench coat-wearing dude who shoots people using wallhax. I'd say he's pretty schway, but most people would be scared when they see him for the first time."
"What's that mean?"
"Wallhax?"
"No, the other thing... but that one too."
"Schway? It's another word for cool or fashionable or high-tech. And wallhax is when you see people through walls and shoot them," Nadya explained.
"I think I get it. Anyway, what do you like to do in your free time?" Regina tried to steer the topic toward something more comprehensible to her.
"I'm a hacker. Remember when a bunch of media companies went full clickbait in the mid-tens?" Getting a nod, Nadya continued. "Suddenly, all their native ads got wiped, and the sidebar ads failed to display, leading to massive losses. When they were forced to go public, the stock exchange crashed due to a zero-day exploit in the system clock, leading to the share prices dropping even further. That was all me."
"Oh, cool! My dad was the one who bought them out on the cheap and had all their sites renovated into something more, like, professional. He's Chairman of the Stanford Media Group."
"You're that Regina Stanford? Now it all makes sense. Nerv's personal PR firm must be pulling some serious strings."
"Hey, I never asked for this!" Regina complained, eliciting a chuckle from Nadya.
"Fortunately for you, I managed to pull up video of the last fight by hacking into this base's network," Nadya said as she turned the laptop around. "Watch how the pros do it."
"I'm not sure why you think they're pros. Camo guy got beat up pretty bad, and bee guy almost got tangled up in his own tail," Regina commented as she watched.
"Watch it again. Look at the stances and footwork. Also, I think tactical sword dude is the designated tank, which is why his mech has a stronger build. Notice how Human Revolution drew aggro when he saw that his buddy was in trouble, then baited the monster into attacking a predictable point," Nadya explained.
"I guess that makes sense. Brrr, it's hard to think when I'm so cold." Regina shivered and rubbed her bare legs. "They told me I'd get a change of clothes. Any idea when that's gonna happen?"
"It'll probably be a piloting suit of some kind, so out of the cold, into the giant cyborg death machine," Nadya teased.
Regina pulled up her knees and tried to hug them inside the jacket. "How can you be so calm about this?"
"I'm Russian. Things stop freaking us out after having to fight bear for third time in month," Nadya joked, emphasizing her accent.
Regina giggled. "Really? Your life is this crazy every day?"
"Pretty much. Earlier today I had to fight off a squad of Chinese internet assassins sent by a rival hacker. Metzger helped, but I would've been fine by myself."
"Why am I getting the feeling that piloting those things is meant for people who don't have a normal life?"
A cheery female voice from the entrance to the ready room interrupted them. "Hey, girls. It's time to suit up. Changing room is across the hall."
The two new arrivals turned to see Lt. Lawson entering the room with a pair of colorful garments hanging over her arm. She handed one to each of them, smiling and mouthing "good luck" before leaving.
"When I asked for some new clothes, this wasn't what I had in mind," Regina said as she held up the latex-like material.
"Sorry, only fanservice outfits for you from now on," Nadya replied as she went to change.
"How can you be okay with wearing that thing?" Regina asked as she exited the changing room, holding up her sagging silver and orange plugsuit to keep her body covered.
"For starters, it's cyberpunk as fuck. And it shows off my curves rather well, don't you think?" Nadya posed in the dark purple and navy blue suit, showing off her slender yet busty body. The female plugsuits lacked the prominent chest pieces of the male ones, having a pair of rib-like structures under the breasts instead. They were also more dominated by one color, with only small shoulder stripes, the inner sides of the arms and the front sections of the rib structures displaying the secondary colors.
"How come yours fits so well?"
"Well, they probably got my measurements by looking at who bought clothes in Anchorage using cryptocurrency. I guess I was the only one taking advantage of the anonymity, which actually made it more obvious," Nadya speculated. "As for getting it skin-tight, come here." She grabbed the other girl's hand and pressed a button on the hexagonal wrist cuff.
"Oh! That feels wrong!" Regina squirmed and grasped at the sides of her suit as it hugged her model-thin physique.
"Just be thankful that it doesn't have an integrated corset or something. Then again, the manual said that the suit can be tightened to restrict blood flow to injury sites. I'm sure I could reverse-engineer that feature to provide some extra pinch or lift," Nadya suggested.
Regina blushed. "Hey! It's not like I'm going to be hooking up in this outfit or anything. It's so not my style."
"It is, however, time for you to be piloting in it," Metzger said, looking into the hallway from the hangar.
The two new pilots followed him into the hangar, rode an elevator up to the Shadows' chest level and entered the first cage.
Unit 3-07 was a bulky shadow with a metallic silver and high-visibility orange paint job. In addition to the heavy armor, its torso was made thicker by housing a pair of internal A2 reactors.
"Stanford, this is your Unit. It's a field type - designed to work on internal power instead of relying on an umbilical cable. It's powered by a pair of antimatter-catalyzed proton-boron fusion reactors, with electricity being obtained by direct conversion, minimizing the moving parts involved," Metzger explained.
Regina cocked her head to the side. "Shouldn't the science geek have the fancy science machine?"
"It's the ideal newcomer machine since you don't need to worry about cable management. Also, the synchronization circuits are a new design that should give higher sync ratios for inexperienced pilots, and the targeting system includes assisted aiming."
"Giving the newb an aimbot. Sounds about right," Nadya commented.
"Hey! You're a newb too!" Regina responded.
"I used to play FPS games professionally, and I'm a good shot with a Mosin-Nagant IRL," Nadya boasted.
Metzger motioned for them to enter the next cage. "That, Kasparova, is why you're getting Unit four-oh-four, a sniper type."
The hacker followed him, coming face-to-face with the Shadow. "Schway. As. Fuck," she whispered as she stared at the dark purple Unit with navy blue accents. The right shoulder pylon had been modified into a folded-up robotic armature, and the Shadow sported a straight horn rising up from its forehead.
"The Sniper type features a specialized support system for a long-ranged weapon, giving it a hardwired connection to the firing controls. We've also fine-tuned the neural control circuits, providing a more responsive Unit. The horned head armor is popular for its aesthetics, but should actually serve a purpose here, allowing you to steady a scope against it." The captain fished around in the pocket of his coat and produced two pairs of the high-tech hairclips. "Take these and put them on. For most pilots, the best synchronization comes when wearing them above the motor cortex, but you can try out other positions when we're doing more in-depth sync testing later."
"Huh, Nerv sure knows how to accessorize," Regina snarked as she put on the interface clips a fair bit further back than the motor cortex would be, essentially using them to keep her hair away from her face.
"I figured this would require jacking in or something," Nadya pointed out while fiddling to get the clips lined up properly.
"First generation interface hardware was implanted inside the skull, while the second generation resembled an EEG setup. Fortunately for the two of you, the third generation is the most convenient for pilots with long hair." Metzger finished his explanation and looked away, touching his ear. "Lawson, get the entry plugs ready. I'll join you in the CIC momentarily.
The lieutenant's voice came over the PA. "Attention pilots! Please proceed to the backs of your Units via the walkways and enter the capsule-shaped entry plugs."
"Maximum fucking hype!" Nadya exclaimed as she walked around her Unit.
"Here goes nothing," Regina whispered as she went to the back of her Unit's cage.