1 - Be Lucky
Udaev
Colonial Space
Midrim Desert
Early Morning
A chill wind blew betwixt the staked corners and slackened fabric edge of the heat-reflecting thermal cover. The gust shocked Zeouna out of an early morning daze. It was exhausting enough having evaded the Vikr corporate patrols this far out in the desiccated mid-desert rim, it had been harder still at five celsius and dropping.
There was rhythm to this pirouette, and she'd danced it before. Pairs of thermal-equipped drones patrolling the dunes in this sector in ninety-minute intervals. There would be about a forty-five minute window for her to make a rapid dash from one hand-selected waypoint to another before she'd have to conceal herself under the life-preserving tarpaulin. The drone's thermal sensors assessed anomalies, and seeing as she wasn't being prosecuted for being anomalous; things had gone reasonably well enough so far.
Like livestock, the drones were branded with ownership. Vikr Infinite Incorporated, a multisystem monopoly of terraforming and mining companies, ran the desert rim as a restricted area on Udaev. In fact, they ran the most of the extra-Lylat colonial regions in all but name.
Decades before Zeouna's time, the Lylation Union empowered a variety of multiplanetary corporations with rights de jure to "defend the Central System's resources," out in the colonial regions as soon as they were able to purchase a congressman or ten. All ignorant dogs from Corneria or their slack-jawed felid accomplices, of course.
Nobody of any importance questioned how the Lylations had miraculously eradicated poverty in twenty-years since gate travel opened. For colonials, it wasn't as much of a mystery; their lives were secondary to the commodities they produced or the resources they extracted. A tale perhaps older than recorde time.
All of this was widely known; some of it might even have been unpopular, Zeouna thought. Unfortunately for the left-behinds beyond the gates, Lylat swayed a bit more banana republic than democracy these days anyway so it seemed as if the general public's opinion didn't matter as much. Vikr provided a service, and they were rewarded for it. Simple as.
Reality was much more up-front to Rao Zeouna of Settler City, as most called her. Vikr was her legally syndicated oppressor; the last-standing monopolistic survivor in a long line of hungry tyrants.
Zeouna shifted onto her back, the coarse ground sand invaded her now-frizzled bun. She checked her wrist-mounted PDA for messages. It was an older model by two decades, at least, but much more rugged than whatever monolithic glass the Lylat yuppies were currently carrying. With a rhythmic double-tap with her finger, its hologram display projected itself with a soft blue hue. She was greeted with a group photo as her selected desktop image displaying what she valued most in her life: members of her family; a commune of free people known simply as 'Ketumati.'
She smiled as the photo breathed new life into her.
Photos with that many smiles were a rare possession on Udeav and Zeouna cherished them when she was able. The congregation assembled on-screen were the closest that she had to a lineage. Her scouts, her brothers and sisters-in-arms, who had met just outside Kam'Pa'Kar at the golden hour. No one got hurt that day, and they hadn't hurt anyone else; so there was much to be happy with that evening.
One smile stood out among the throng, a slight ferret standing centerframe next to Zeouna; her left hand holding not a weapon, but a Vikr no-trespass sign they'd defaced and pilfered together. Zeouna chortled as she fondly remembered where her own right hand had been.
Mindfulness. Presence. Timecheck. 0121 Lylat. No messages.
Ariane late as per usual.
Normally, she hated to involve other clan's peoples in Ketumat's business. Especially the Nurr and more especially Ariane Jean-Starkly. Vikr treated petty theft and vandalism with lethal force. And that was at the official level. On the ground, the reality was a lot more medieval. Zeouna could never really figure out whether Vikr's security team attracted psychopaths or if going corporate just turned sane men psychopathic. Honestly, she preferred never to find out.
Tonight wasn't really all that special for Zeo. Just another smash n' grab on an easy target before traveling South. She'd made this mad dash across the sixty-five kilometer desert rim so many times before, but never with Ari. The rim ran the length of Udaev's equatorial line, speckling the planet's midsection with dramatic sandstone mesas and hexagonal basalt rock formations. Nothing of note grew in these regions, but ironically there were large subterranean aquifers of freshwater which were much more readily accessible than those in the savannahs and badlands regions to the north.
Drone sweeps should be over right about now. Zeouna thought if on cue, the distant moan of magnetoplasmic engines howled through Zeouna's valley. The automated pair of Vikr's drones had completed this sector sweep and were returning to their origin point: A remote, automated reconnaissance facility. This, rather conveniently, happened to be Zeouna's next stop of the night.
The plan was simple. Zeouna and her accomplice would enter the unmanned facility, clone the latest drone guidance program and nab anything else of value. Predictable drones meant safer passage for Zeouna's smugglers and scouts.
Crunch.
She felt the vibration of footsteps on the sand. Zeouna, caressed the grip on her over-under shotgun. An elegantly carved, hopelessly obsolete, but still deadly weapon. The chrome barrels adorned with Zeouna's own engravings; including a very lewd depiction of a feminine figure she thought looked like herself. There was no safety other than Zeouna's hovering finger, but she wasn't often concerned for her own safety.
"Zeo?" A tender voice questioned. Ariane, of course. No one else could call Zeouna that. The reticent footsteps continued, some hesitation lowering their pace.
"Is that how we do passwords now?" Zeouna asked sarcastically. There was an awkward silence as the question had bite. Ariane froze, out of her element.
"Get in, Ari!"
Zeouna twisted her right arm over her chest and opened a porthole in the insulating blanket. Just enough so Ariane could see her face.
"Get in, idiot! The drones are barely gone and we needed to leave, like, a minute ago!"
Behind Zeouna's frustration was a good deal of relief. It was better she arrived late than not at all.
Ariane dug under the blanket bringing splashes of coarse sand and pangs of nearly-freezing air with her while stamping down the edges to recreate Zeouna's meticulously applied heat seal. Zeouna reached into her right cargo pants pocket, retrieving the pocket drone. The little bastard buzzed nearly silently, its mounted flashlight initiating a soft whitelight.
Under the light, Ariane's hazel irises speckled with flecks of gold. A slight girl, for a ferret. Her soft, charcoal-gray fur interspersed by patches of white stripes. She was actually a similar color to Zeouna, despite their profound genus difference. Attractive in her own way, literate, smelled good. Though she wasn't the most reliable fighter available to the commune, she had the most adaptable mind among its members. Zeouna would often compare her to elemental gold: beautiful, malleable, hard to find, and desirable.
Ariane Vaughan Jean-Starkly.
Ari was Zeouna's closest confidant and was one of Ketumat's most "tenured" members at the ripe age of twenty-eight. She wasn't a Settler City girl like Zeouna; Ari was born with the central system's largest silver-spoon in her mouth.
Her father had apportioned her an inheritance that most inner-systems kids would have struggled to conceive. As a result, Ari had lived the early life Zeouna'd expected from one of the richest families in the central systems. She studied on Corneria, attended raucous parties on Aquas and spent most of her father-daughter bonding time on safari on Fortuna.
Until, one day, she'd grown a conscience. Her fall from grace was miraculous. There were none like her.
Ari was about two years older than Zeouna; though, no one really knew for sure. Zeouna's lot in life was so low that her birth was merely approximated by her earliest memories.
Zeouna, by contrast, was unaccompanied; Colonistics for an orphan with a youthful penchant for criminal activity.
She was lucky to have made it at all. Survival to adulthood for free people born in the colonies was less an expectation and more an exception. The rules on Udaev used to be simpler, if you couldn't afford food you starved. If you weren't brave enough to steal it, you worked yourself to death for scraps. If you weren't strong enough to defend yourself, you were murdered. Zeouna had done a bit of it all.
Now illuminated by the red-lens, Ari's rapid eye-movements indicated she was nervous tonight; but not more so than usual. Ari's low risk-tolerance was one of the traits that kept her alive for so long.
"You're late," Zeouna accused, mid-yawn, while trying to remove the gunk and sand caked around her eyes.
"Taking a nap?!" Ari muttered; "Out here? Really?"
"I get it in while I can. Under the tarp, they either see me or they don't. So what's the point?"
The ferret's eyes belied frustration in Zeouna's femme fatalism. With two fingers, she deftly pinched Zeouna's drone out of its flight and switched the white light to red light to preserve their night vision.
"I was only late because I thought one of those damned drones spotted me and I didn't want them leading to you!" Ari defended.
"And I appreciate that, love. I really do," Zeouna replied semi-sarcastically, now raised on one knee. "Now. Help me pack up so we can get out of this cold!"
Zeouna emerged from her mylar cocoon, kneeled on the shifting granules and stretched her back. Udeav's moon-of-choice tonight was Usva, the grandest of three and most superstitiously revered. As the only tidally locked moon in orbit, it was rare to see it at night, let alone as powerfully as it shone tonight. It reflected an eerie bluish light. A lucky omen, she thought to herself, rather uncharacteristically. Zeouna had grown up on Udaev, she didn't have the luxury to believe in childish things like luck; though she did believe in omens. Usva's omen for tonight was one of practicality; the flat, pale illumination meant they had one to two kilometers visibility outside the valleys.
Zeouna stretched her arms above her shoulders. After her back cracked just the right way, she stood and scanned the horizon with a monocular thermal optic she scavenged off an unlucky Vikr mercenary's rifle a few months back. Luckily, with the exception of some lower evolved lifeforms scurrying about, there was nothing else out here with them.
Down on the dirt, Ariane began stirring back to life as well.
From her vantage point, Ariane would have correctly estimated Zeouna at one-point-eight meters tall Vulpes; mid-to-late twenties, her eyes a stunningly teal litmus test to the beholder. Luminescent teal irises bouncing between blue, mercurial mischief and a green, colony-hardened gaze that could cut through stone.
Ari would describe Zeouna as 'elegant' to her Nurr comrades. A few drinks more, the blue-blooded ferret might even slip something as salacious as 'titillating' or 'splendid'. Zeouna wished her many other secret admirers would assign such gentle adjectives to her.
Continuing her study, Ariane would have seen that Zeouna possessed unusual features for a Vulpes. Firstly, Zeouna was not purebred; there were the results of hybridization displayed by her ears, which extended a few extra centimeters vertically in excess of the vulpes variety. They didn't flop like some canines did, either; they were just taller and sharper. As a result, she could pass as vaguely canine, if she tried.
Then, there was the fur. Pewter-gray, ostensibly, with a graceful white inlay running down her eyes, face and well down her neck. Upon closer inspection you'd see sparse follicles of mahogany red interspersed with the gray. In certain lighting; it'd shine through reddish bronze.
She typically kept her white hair long and free. Tonight, it was hoisted in a bun so as to not get caught up in any machinery they encountered. She also had two frontal braids tied off bobbing by her ears; elegant, background considered.
Ariane would have appreciated the above, had she not been busy rolling up the shelter and placing it in Zeouna's three-day pack. After placing it in a mesh compartment, Ari went to sling the pack over her shoulder with one arm like it was a backpack. It hardly budged off the ground, and the slight ferret instead fell sideways onto her side.
"I thought you said 'pack light!'," Ariane exclaimed, taken aback by the weight of the pack.
Zeouna straddled her friend and properly placed the straps around her shoulders, buckling the chest strap across her lower chest.
"That is light. Water. Explosives. Socks. Just the basics, really," the hybrid supplied with a moderately cheeky undertone. Zeo clasped Ari's outstretched hand, lifted with her legs and helped her up off the dirt. Their eyes met briefly before Ari's shifted away for a moment.
After a few awkward moments arguing proper azimuth on their 'primitive' magnetic compasses, the two were off. A quick walk in the evening chill. The duo reached their destination twenty minutes and just under three kilometers later.
They paused for a moment under the rocky loop of a massive red-marbled mesa. Their target was four hundred meters over a small berm to the south. The girls knew it was wise to pause before direct visual range; they needed to be careful of early warning devices.
After halting briefly, Zeouna twisted the worn cap off her hip flask and went for a swig of water. Part of her wished it was rum instead.
She offered a sip to Ari, who thanked her with a curt smile but declined with a nod. The ferret was studying an offline map on her own PDA. In her other hand Ari held out an antique lensatic compass.
"If we're just south of the previous pass, what we're looking for should be…" she said, drifting off as she studied her compass intently. "Four hundred meters, that way! Bearing one-eighty-five."
She pointed through and past a much nonplussed Zeouna, directly towards their target.
"Not so instant without satellite, is it?" Zeouna commended.
"Speaking of that, I thought you said you had fixed that, yeah? If we are using pen and paper for much longer, I might as well pick up crochet or knitting," Ariane shot back, stashing her ancient compass back in her cargo pant's pocket.
It was a sore subject, to say the least.
"They cycled the security keys out after last month's ice fishing debacle. I just need more time to get back in. But, I can't say I'm not impressed. Map reading, sneaking about," Zeouna said, subtly turning her head to tease. "Not bad."
"Not bad?" Ari questioned, clearly insulted.
"Delicate little puff like you?" Zeouna clarified, digging further. She eyed her compatriot head-to-toe to send her point home before turning her back and continuing bearing one-eight-five south.
She knew Ari hated that word, puff, but Ari emitted the little laugh Zeouna loved to hate. That reward was always well worth the cost.
"One scurries about with you long enough you're bound to learn," Ari quipped back.
They ascended to the crest of the rocky outface, lowering their stance from a hunched walk to a crawl the closer to top they got. Above that, there was an octagonally-linked fence in their way. Vikr placed these at higher terrain points to make detecting intruders easier, as they'd have to cautiously summit and decline, exposing themselves for nearly a minute.
Past the fence, they could see the valley was absolutely desolate. A desired security characteristic which was deliberately chosen by Vikr's terraforming planners. The remote facility was remotely operated by an offworld crew. Sometimes there was the occasional maintenance team, accompanied with a security detail. Zeouna had a copy of their rotation schedule; there would be no other guests tonight.
The facility itself was an object of familiarity to Zeouna, just one of hundreds owned by Vikr for purposes varying from security operations, water management, or maintenance depots. Just a concrete and steel trapezoid with basic fenced security cordon. A nine-meter aluminum retracting door faced the duo, indicating they were at the rear of the structure; a loading dock.
The grounds itself were nothing more than crushed bluestone illuminated by several weak flood lights. These were more for worker safety than security.
Zeouna tapped the fence with a lede hooked to a universal port on her PDA. It didn't complete the circuit.
"Unalarmed?" Zeouna diagnosed, a single eyebrow raised in intrigue.
"Convenient." Ariane said, starting her search through the pack for a 'solution'.
After a brief moment fiddling around Zeouna's pack's mesh top-zip pouch, she chose the fusion micro-torch; a staple of Zeo's usual depravity.
"Stop."
Ari froze in place.
"The cold one please. Thermals," Zeouna warned. Moments earlier, she had noticed a pair of auto swiveling thermal-equipped cameras on top of the compound. Ari provided what she requested. The cold-cutting nitrogen jet would do the trick, albeit more slowly, but Zeouna did not want their plan ruined by some eager paperpusher pressing buttons on an offworld anomaly station.
"Always have fallbacks, don't we, Zeo?"
"'Scurry' about with me some more and you'll find out," Zeouna mocked, her own eyes fixed on the data of her own thermal optic.
They shared a brief chortle before cold-snapping a one-meter square port hole in the wire fence. The mesh linkage fell with a singular firm tug, bringing an attached Vikr emblazoned "Trespass Prohibited" sign with it. It dared them to go further.
Vikr's logo would have looked unremarkable to the plain Cornerian. Just typical stoic corporate art you see on an advert on the levitrain to work or as a sponsor on some sporting event. A soft "V", sans-serif, with rounded edges flanked with an infinity symbol. Green of course, to exude softness and respect for local environments. To Zeouna and Ari, the symbol was a reminder of their place in this world. Pests to be hunted and killed as obstacles to the brand.
"You ready? Last chance to back out." Zeouna confirmed, this time without teasing. This was more kinetic than Ari had ever been, she needed to be in or out.
"And risk having you hold that over my head for the next decade? Not an option."
Zeouna noted that Ari was a bit chipper for someone about to risk it all, but she'd done well enough tonight.
"And you know I will," Zeouna responded, still studying the site through her expensive glass.
"So. The plan?" Zeouna challenged her comrade. "Impress me, Countess."
"Just like we rehearsed. The principles of the raid are simple," Ariane began to recite. "First, Know your target's perimeter. Where the sentries work, where the maintenance staff smoke, cameras and drone patrols."
A whirring buzz emitted from her sister-in-arm's ruck told Ari she'd recited correctly.
Zeouna's quadrotor of choice tonight, Louiselle, lifted off the dirt and flew its assigned route. No more than a meter off the sand, the little drone zipped in an arcing trajectory to avoid the camera's ever-slewing line-of-site. To avoid sound and vibration sensors, Zeouna's programming avoided pushing the rotors too hard. After nimbly avoiding visual detection, it ascended to a halt from the far side of the trapezoid; parking itself behind a small air-conditioning unit.
Monitoring the process on her PDA from the fence line, Zeouna noticed the power was off on the building's heating element. Perfect, nobody's home tonight. From its perch, Loiselle deployed 'his' cluster of passive and active wireless scanning tools. With it, Zeouna could get to work testing the site's network.
"Second. Network reconnaissance. Is there anything you-" Ari said, punctuating briefly, "-We, can exploit. Anything we can use to distract or hide ourselves. Disable alarms, that kind of stuff."
"I'm impressed with what you've retained so far. So what do you recommend?" Zeouna asked, clearly anticipating some hesitation on the matter.
As expected, Ari hesitated, relating to her weaknesses in applied technology.
"Well, I'd hoped you had an idea there, Zeo."
"Well, of course I do," Zeouna scoffed, watching Louiselle's network scan complete on her PDA. While it took her over a decade of consuming pirated technical manuals to learn her craft, it paid for itself in full on a nearly daily basis. Staccato vibration from her PDA indicated the results were in.
My favorite, the hybrid thought, the Zitadelle camera firmware side channel attack.
She'd spare her friend the technical details, but Vikr still hadn't discovered their camera vendor had been slipshod with applying security updates. With a few swipes of her hands across the holo-interface, Zeouna loaded the exploit. She would keep the camera feed running for the users of course; she didn't want to alert the responding maintenance crew too much. Instead she'd stop their movement on the far side of the facility, keeping them out of view and giving them a few hours before a maintenance crew arrived.
She waited for the right moment before sending the command to Louiselle, who's wireless antenna mimicked a proprietary linking command. The cameras, indifferent to how the wireless traffic was received, now operated in debug mode with Zeouna as a new user in the 'technician' access role. She now had full control over the devices.
The two cameras froze at points opposite of Zeouna's desired approach to avoid detection. Zeouna's own subsequent thermal sweep of the building was more optimistic; no thermal anomalies on her scope. The only heat of note was this station's pair of drones, held captive in a small fenced enclosure, still radiating heat as they crackled cool from last hour's flight.
There was the possibility they had motion sensors in the dunes, but there was nothing she could do about those except suppress them on the alarm panel and delete logs.
Thirty minutes ahead of schedule.
"We're clear," Zeouna declared. "Let's go!"
She watched her slighter ferret comrade struggle with the pack again, Ari failing to lift herself off the ground and resting on her knees.
Zeo relieved her accomplice of the pack, sealing it and flopping it over her head and onto her shoulders.
"Worried?
The ferret looked back and nodded in the negative, unwilling to show any fear. Zeouna noticed her increased aspiration; the poor thing was clearly terrified but in control of herself.
"Yea, me neither," Zeouna fibbed, muttering under her breath.
Over the years Ariane had a reputation for sniffing out ambushes, traps and other unexpected tragedies before they occurred. But she had also been wrong before, as Zeouna well knew.
After a one-minute dash to the loading dock, the duo caught their breath in the shadow of the installation. Ariane put her ears to the thin aluminum door to see if there was movement on the other side while Zeouna prepared herself for what might be on the other side, dropping her the pack quietly while reaching for her holstered over-under shotgun. It slid free as she depressed the paddle.
She once preferred nonviolence. But once Vikr had needlessly moved in on the water, all bets were off. She broke open her shotgun's action and inspected both breaches. One less-lethal bean bag and one buckshot loaded side-by-side. If they didn't get the message from the first shot, the second would have to do. Business and Pleasure. She giggled to herself.
Ariane opted for an electrified pocket baton. With the toggle of a button it extended to half a meter. She wasn't a pacifist, no, she just preferred not to kill. Naive.
"Third principle," Ari picked up again, whispering this time, "Pick your entry point. It should be the most unexpected approach."
She pried open the retracting doors security keypad. Opting for a more physical form of decryption, Ariane crossed two wires in the now useless keypad's vacant outlet causing the door to fail open. Before the door was halfway up its rails, the fox and ferret were inside.
"Fourth, search and neutralize resistance quickly."
"Destroy," Zeouna corrected, caressing her weapon.
Zeouna led, clearing each corner of the loading dock. It wasn't empty as they had hoped; a regrav levitruck. Fortunately it seemed to be surplus stock. Engines are cool. Nothing's crackling. No leaks. Nobody's home. Zeouna closed the loading dock's door as they made their way into the central part of the building.
The interior Vikr's bunker-like edifices followed the same floor plan. One long hallway from end to end, with dubiously secured personnel doors on either side. A bunk and bathroom for four Vikr personnel on each side for a total of eight potential 'guests'. The center-left and right of the structure consisted of loading docs, sensor arrays and terraforming control rooms.
The hallway lights appeared to be dimmed to emergency lighting only, indicating the building was unoccupied.
The girls split up and checked each opposite bunk. As Zeouna cracked open the door to her selected bunk she found the room empty and meticulously clean. The bedding was folded and mattresses leaned against the walls. She backed out and peered down the hall at Ari, who was already on her way back.
The uneasy ferret halted halfway at a secured double-wide door as Zeouna made her way to the opposing side of the threshold.
"Control room?" Ari mouthed silently, pointing to the door.
Zeouna nodded, reaching into her cargo pockets and pulling out a cloned RFID card she had made a few months earlier. She placed it on the reader and was granted access with a short beep and green light. Primitive technology, primitive solutions.
This room's light was on when the doors brushed open. Two empty office chairs in the center abutting a rather minimalist desk. No knick knacks, home goods or anything indicating habitation to be found. The racks on each side of the control center were loaded with what Zeouna recognized as drone relay control systems; her priority for destruction for the night.
An additive planning table, center-room, was probably the most expensive object in the room and caught Ariane's eyes immediately. The table was a construction planning tool that could construct a scaled replica of any terrain and structure based on a mix of SONAR, LIDAR, RADAR and other composite imaging tools. The more civic-minded ferret was transfixed on it, absorbing its potential.
"Hello, machinist two John O'Halloran. Welcome to VECC-One-Seventeen," the facilities Virtual Intelligence greeted them. "How may I be of service?"
Zeouna relished in their success so far, ignoring the VI and placing her shotgun upright in one of the chairs and moving to the server rack. She slid her rucksack under the additive table.
This bunker's multiuse. Let's bring down the drones relay and see what we can get out of it. Zeouna thought, removing her PDA from her wrist clip. She placed it on one of the server cubes. Older model, but still a challenger. The fox, eager with anticipation, pulled a steel work stool from the corner and went straight to work on the server.
Five minutes later, Zeouna was so deep in her recce that she didn't notice Ari noisily rummaging through the cabinets, looking for any items of use. She was dumping the office supplies and other items on the floor looking for anything of value. If she had noticed earlier, Zeouna would have preferred a more subtle search pattern.
"Fifth order of business!" Ariane interrupted Zeouna's reading. "Always plan two ways out." The giddy ferret approached Zeouna from behind, grabbed her shoulder and dangled the keyfob to the levitruck in front of her face.
Zeouna turned her head and beamed back at her friend.
"And never plan on being able to use the first." Zeo remarked with a lopsided grin. At that moment, she promised herself she'd bring Ari along more often.
A few minutes later she was fully authenticated into Vikr's global patchwork of drone operations, and the news wasn't great. The next launch and sweep cycle was now less than ten minutes away, meaning the two might need to be here for upwards of an hour-and-a-half waiting for this station's drones to return and refuel. The drone flights overlapped sectors, so they'd really only have about forty-five minutes.
To make matters worse, Zeo had to create new user accounts to get into the system. This was akin to locking a metal door and ripping the outside handle off. Effective, but easily noticed. It was a time-buying move at best. However, her next trick would give them a clean way out.
"And the sixth and final step; my specialty," Zeouna grandstanded, waiting for her script to finish executing before delivering the rest.
"If you can't be good."
With a simple input, she'd capitalize on a vulnerability in the facility's log control functions. Months of successful testing in the wild proved it worked and would cover their tracks. Stopping drones for the night. Preventing maintenance from seeing error logs. Like none of this ever happened.
"Be lucky."
The sudden sound of an alarm klaxon and the rotating strobe of the emergency lighting caused her to leap out of her seat, kicking the metallic stool to the concrete floor. It looked like Vikr's software development team had apparently finally caught on to the flaw and installed countermeasures. The monitors and holo-displays locked out automatically, bathing the facility in a deep red. She buried her head in her hands; defeated.
Humiliated, Zeouna turned to her compatriot who gently dropped the PDA she was flicking through. A muscle in Zeouna's jaw twitched with embarrassment.
"That doesn't sound lucky to me," Ari observed nervously.
"Fuck off!"
"Plan B?" Ari carefully pivoted, avoiding pushing too hard. She knew Zeouna had her pride.
The gray fox held her tongue for a moment, but started to pack away her PDA. Faced with the false choice to stay and glean whatever information Vikr had on this sector or guarantee a way out for Ari; Zeouna chose Ariane. Her friend's life was more important than her bruised ego. They had to get out and clear ground fast, and this part of the rim made it hard to break out.
Zeouna pulled her rucksack over to her side of the room, searched through its contents and unfurled a rolled up waterproof bag.
"Grab everything of value you can find. PDAs, datadrives; anything that looks important! Put it in the bag and load up that truck." Zeouna barked, picking up her shotgun off the office chair she propped it on. Ari stood motionless, panic developing across her face.
"How much time do we have, Zeo?"
"I don't know; twenty?"
"Minutes?"
"Gods, Sure hope so," Zeouna muttered, stuffing a tray of tablet PCs into the bags.
After a moment of rushed scrounging for items of value, they stuffed what they could into the bag. Mostly light electronics and and PDA-type devices; they were hard to get on Udeav. Zeouna whipped the bag on the planning table, smashing the previously printed terrain map below it.
"Can you drive Regrav, princess?" Zeouna asked.
"Of course!" Ari returned.
"Okay, load up and get ready to split."
"What about you?"
"If we can't get anything from this place we're blowing it and taking those goddamned drones with it."
She was frozen again, her eyes wide open.
"The hell are you waiting for?!" Zeouna castigated, "A good luck kiss? GO!"
The outburst finally woke Ariane up, as the ferret briskly jogged off to the loading dock.
Zeouna unzipped the ruck sack, pulling out an improvised explosive from a protective nylon sheath. It was a Lylat Wars era nova bomb without its protective coating; unstable but effective. They usually required an electronically primed arming sequence to arm, time and detonate. What was once a state secret was now child's play; and Zeouna wasn't a child anymore.
She placed the cone-shaped explosive under the table and set the timer for five minutes. Waste of a good PDA, she thought as she crimped the lead wire on the device. She was considerate enough to program a timer app; which started counting down from five minutes immediately. She slung her rucksack on her right shoulder, shotgun back in its carbon-fiber home. Time to leave.
She was no less than a meter from the double doors when bolted shut; an emergency lockout.
"Intrusion detected. Facility Lockdown," the now hyper-masculine VI informed Zeouna.
Really?! Now?
Zeouna searched for the emergency release. Usually a pull tab on bottom right, the tab would detonate small explosives in the door, 'overriding' the lockdown. It took her only a moment to locate the tab. She pulled it.
As expected, the sealed doors blasted open on their emergency charge.
She was greeted with the unexpected visage of Vikr technician; unarmed. Overalls with blue with black accents. The man wearing it was some sort of vulpes variety.
He was just as shocked to see her as she was to see him.
They waltzed two different reactions; her left and aggressive, him right and defensive. As a matter of instinct she fumbled for her gun, dropping her rucksack, which spilled some of its contents onto the floor.
"Wh- Stop!" He stammered, holding out his hands.
He similarly stumbled for something in his waistband as she reached her scabbard's release panel.
"Wait!"
It all happened so fast. One hand cradled around the craned stock as she looped her finger across the trigger. She discharged whatever round was available on the first pull.
Bang. It hit him square in the chest. Sending him to the floor.
The tech screamed, coughed and went to the ground as deadweight. Ears ringing, Zeouna had reacquired her ruck, leaving some of the fallen contents strewn about. She stepped over him, and swept her shotgun across the room as she made her way to the loading dock door across the hall; his wheezing the soundtrack to her escape.
Ariane, hearing the blast, poked her head through the loading dock door. She took only a moment to process the events.
"How did he sneak up on us?" Ariane asked.
"I told you to check every nook and cranny!"
"I did!" Ari defended.
"Next time search harder!"
Zeouna knew for sure she had fired the bean bag, otherwise he'd have been pulped. Probably some nasty broken and bruised ribs is all he has.
"What about him?" Ari asked.
Zeouna looked back down the hallway, the tech was still writhing. Probably a good sign. She slammed the door opening. They made their way to the truck as the aluminum door raised.
"He's fine for the next four minutes."
Ariane looked back with regret. Zeouna knew she wanted to help the man, but she couldn't risk it. Not even for Ari. She didn't feel much disgust herself. She mostly questioned why the tech was alone in such a dangerous place.
"Can you drive?" She asked.
"Of course, I-"
"Good!" Zeouna declared, opening the cab door for her friend. "Get us south as fast as you can!" Zeouna demanded.
Ariane did as she was ordered, swiping the key fob across the dash as the dash panel and HUD trickled alive.
"Will he make it?" Ariane asked, adjusting the mirrors.
Ariane didn't get an answer.
The duo had bigger problems on the horizon. The ferret opened up the throttle and burst forth from the compound. She climbed the maximum twenty meter ceiling and glanced at her compass to locate general magnetic south.
Zeouna set a timer and watched the facility, the technician and bits of her pride disappear in the distance.
Now dozens of kilometers away, Zeouna sat on the bed of the truck rattled about but not yet in terrible discomfort. Ari was a good driver, not that driving a regrav vehicle was as much a challenge as anything wheeled. There was still some skill to it, especially trying to avoid overspeeding into rapid 'jumps' over elevation in terrain. The fox looked down at her PDA, synced up with the detonation time.
0:03
0:02
0:01
0:00
Nothing.
No quake, no reverberation.
Zeouna expected to see some dust clouds and feel a shockwave at any moment, but the moment never came.
"Son of a bitch," Zeouna chided to herself. Oh-and-two tonight.
She leaned back, poking her muzzle through the back window of the truck. Her long ears failed to make it through and were pulled back by the cold steel frame. The cab environment wasn't much better, it lacked doors and was thus extremely loud.
"Hey Ari!" She yelled. Ari didn't react, her hands stuck in a death grip on the control sticks.
"ARI!" This time she reached through the window and squeezed her friend's shoulder.
"What?!" The ferret replied, taking her golden eyes off the road for a moment.
"I think your tech support friend lived to fight another day."
"The bomb?" Ari questioned, trying to avoid triggering Zeouna's pride again.
"Yeah," Zeouna replied with a little sadness in her voice. Finding another warhead like that won't be cheap, either.
"It's karma, Zeo. Bloody karma."
Zeouna returned to her seat on a tool box in the truck bed. She swiped her hand over her wrist PDA to wake it up and was about to give Ari more precise directions. When she thought she might have heard the familiar tremor of a magnetoplasma engine in the aft-most position of the clearing they were in.
No way. She thought, praying it was paranoia or sobriety kicking in.
Over the next minute, the vibrations grew louder still, reverberating off the canyon walls to their right. She wasn't hallucinating.
"No, no, no!" She said aloud this time. It's too early for this. She turned back into the cab, squeezing Ari's shoulder again.
"Ari, low and fast! Vikr's ahead of schedule tonight!"
"Drones?" Ari confirmed.
A quick burst of green laser bolts missed high and ten meters to Zeouna's right, blasting bits of stone off a mesa. As a testament to the energy they carried, she felt the spray of sharp detritus on her shoulder as they sped past. They'd have to use the terrain to their advantage; speed wasn't going to cut it.
The same drone's they'd been avoiding all night were in pursuit. Patrol Drones, Zeouna'd hadn't ever seen them flying this close before. Chromed spheres with one bright-red optical sensor central and four protruding winglets mindlessly pursued them. Unambitious, cheap defenders of the corporate midrim, these drones carried a single unstabilized blaster in their undercarriage. Zeouna wasn't thinking it, but It could have been worse. The drones were barely faster than their truck and couldn't follow for long.
"Ari, lose them in the canyons! Don't worry about where you're going, just stay out of the open."
There was no audible reply from Ari, but she clearly got the message. The regrav generators on the truck sharply dropped speed with outspurred airbrakes as Ari adeptly swung the vehicle to its port and entered a five meter wide canyon at their eleven o'clock. Quick thinking aside, her experience on the Cornerian airway prepared her for this.
The canyon walls got smaller and smaller and Zeouna was sure they'd collide. But Ari's driving was true, and the drones couldn't navigate them well enough to be bothered to follow. The duo capitalized on this lull to lower airspeed and strategize.
Ariane glanced in the rearview mirror and witnessed Zeouna remove two rough-looking aluminum tubes from her pack. She pulled a ring tab in the middle, expanding the tube several centimeters and exposing some rudimentary sights.
"Zeo! You sure those are ready?" She asked.
"Uh. Yeah," Zeouna replied tepidly, removing the safety pin from one. She remembered they didn't have guidance, so her shots would have to fly true.
"You don't sound so sure."
"Of course I am!" Zeouna coped, "I made them myself!"
"That's what I'm worried about."
If Zeouna's legs weren't shaking with adrenaline she'd have laughed. Guess we're skipping accelerating the testing phase then.
"Shut up and drive, Ari!"
She looked down at the launcher, mentally recollecting that the aluminum tube was constructed from recycled Vikr street signs she "acquired". She could still read the 'assers' segment of "no trespassers'' on part of the launch tube. Bad omen.
"Please be fine, baby." She whispered to her weapon.
"Get ready!" Ariane yelled. They were powering through the canyon and well near the end of their sandstone refuge. Another five kilometer open area lay ahead, and Zeouna'd need to make it count.
"I'm gonna' stay low and kick up some dust!"
With a few flips of her wrists, Zeouna pulled up a three-dimensional topographic map on her PDA. She oriented it to the truck's twelve-o'clock and sent it to Ariane, who speedily linked it up with the dashboard.
Ari hammered upward on both sticks and throttled up, kicking up a kilometer long cloud of undisturbed dust into the air behind them. This, of course, further announced their presence to the drones.
The spherical drones emerged one-by-one about two seconds apart over the mesa they had driven through, hugging the terrain in a flight path of extreme precision. Zeouna could see the pale blue of Usva glint off their metallic coating. The drones were on their tails faster than they had anticipated, but they couldn't get a good thermal read out in the dust cloud.
A litany of green blaster bolts penetrated the dusty fog, again missing high and right.
The drones virtual pilot software, reacting to input suggesting adjustments to hit their target, problem solved. Predictably, one drone gingerly popped out of the cloud and tried to engage the truck from its top. It's red 'eyes' staring down on them like an angel of death. Zeouna could feel the heat radiating off the beast's powerpack.
She shouldered her weapon and aimed skyward.
One shot. Don't miss.
She lined up the rudimentary front post and rear peep aperture sights; zeroed to fifty or so meters. Aiming low, she compressed the pressure switch she'd fastened together just days earlier.
A deafening rush of hot air erupted from the bed overwhelming, well, everyone. Drones included.
The rocket armed and fired properly, its aim dead on. The warhead squashed and detonated on impact with the drone's front glacis. The secondary explosive did its work; injecting two-hundred grams of molten copper into the drones carapass. Shaped charges almost always did the trick, though they were a little tricky to machine when drunk.
The drone fell inert and rolled away from the speeding levitruck, kicking rocks, sand and bits of superheated steel into the flight path of its now single companion.
Relieved of her creation's success, Zeouna dropped the hot tube off the side of the truck's bed. Free of doubt, she glanced back to the cab for approval, the duo's eyes locking on to each other in the truck's rear view mirror. Zeouna took a bow as Ari's panicked eyes continued to scan for threats.
"Zeo, Lookout!"
The second drone pushed through the smokey debris left by its comrade. Emotionlessly focusing on the origin point of the rocket. This wasn't normal, and Zeouna's thoughts scrambled for a diagnosis.
Ignoring protocol? It should break off its attack after losing a wingmate. The 'Preserve reconnaissance data' function! It didn't take long for Zeouna to piece it all together.
Manual control, Zeouna fumed. Somewhere off-world, some shift-working bootlicker assumed control over the metallic pest. No doubt in large part due to the alerts resulting from Zeouna and Ari's actions. The drone was no longer in "deterrent" mode, and there would be no mercy if the drone continued to operate. This automaton was their last eyes in the region.
Ari steered the vehicle in the direction of another canyon. It only took a few seconds to close the distance, but she'd probably wished she'd chosen differently; this one was only four meters wide!
Two more blasts hit low, sending bits of black sand into the bed and Zeouna's eyes. As she blinked her way back to normal vision. She noticed the dark basalt deposits on her left and right; the tail lights reflecting red off the mineral deposits. Usva's gentle moonlight poked over her head. Ari was driving lightning fast now.
Zeouna unpacked the other launcher from the ruck. She'd finished this one the night prior, hoping the ale she'd finished brewing the night prior didn't affect the quality of her work.
An awful whine of magnetoplasma alerted them that the drone was close. This was confirmed by the presence of the red eye on their tail. The beast followed! Only an organic pilot would be fool enough to do so.
Zeouna readied her second launcher, seeing the red lights brighten as she anticipated the drone's arrival.
Say goodnight, prick. She depressed the trigger.
Click.
The open-bolt striker slammed home with no effect, jerking her forward a bit. Precious milliseconds lapsed. The primitive rocket failed to ignite in the tube. Zeouna gulped.
She lowered the tube away from her face, watching the drone line itself up for another shot, confident that her shoddy craftsmanship had killed them both. She hesitated but a moment before the remote operator retaliated in kind. There would be no mechanical failure from the drone.
"Ari, get down!"
A burst of blaster bolts ripped past her shoulder. One so close that the heat ignited the upper sleeve of her jacket. Flame evaporating the synthetic fibers before being extinguished by the one-hundred ninety KPH crosswind. For the remote pilot; the downside of organic control was organic imprecision. This was not a noticeable problem as far as Zeouna's overactive adrenal glands were concerned.
Ari's driving had proven much better than expected. She hovered the truck central in the canyon, spitting its back end out but never quite losing the counter magnetic traction. But they were out of obstacles. It would only take one lucky shot to stop this.
I hope this works. Zeouna desperately thought. The rocket was still live, technically.
Zeouna angled her body a brisk forty-five degrees, pushed her right leg back. Swinging her tail for increased leverage raised the tube above her head, business end to target, and threw the tube with a convincingly decent spiral.
If you can't be good, be lucky. She thought, filled with too much adrenaline to realize she had been neither tonight.
Predictably, the tube missed by a dozen meters or more.
However, the sudden jolt on impact detonated the secondary charge in the warhead. Arming issues or not, physics just did what it did best. The concussion was closer than was safe, knocking Zeouna into the back of the bed and singing some surface fur around her ears.
Zeouna couldn't assess the effectiveness of the blast, but it turned out to be her first bit of real luck tonight. In the chaos, the pyroclastic flow of superheated copper had partially penetrated the drones number-two engine intake, sending it into an unrecoverable left-ward spin. The drone veered hard-left, impacting off some rather spectacular hexagonal basalt outcroppings. Zeouna watched it roll off the rocks and shear off its stabilizers in a satisfying manner. It spun helplessly as it tried to recover on the ground before igniting into a destabilized fireball.
Maybe there will be some luck tonight.Zeouna thought, rewarding herself with a smile.
Zeouna strapped her remaining gear down in the truck's bed, noticing several orange-hot holes poking through some of the aluminum body work as she tied it down. This had been closer than preferred, but they made it.
Grasping the skeletal cabin frame, she rocked herself around the B-pillar and carefully lowered herself into the cabin's passenger seat. Ari jumped, a bit surprised by her friend's askew entrance.
"Like you said," Zeouna mused, interrupted by a sudden jolt in the levicoils, "the arming needed a little work."
Ari laughed, letting bits of adrenaline release with breath.
"I told you not to drink while we work."
"While we work?" Zeouna shot back sarcastically, more than a little aware of who engineered most of the explosives in use with her fighters.
"Who else will listen to you babble on about applied sintering?"
"I'm sure I can find someone else to spend my time with," Zeouna said, not even a bit serious.
"Can you?" Ari challenged.
Zeouna leered at her friend, rolling her eyes. Ari retorted by sticking out her tongue.
Their window was even smaller now. Less than twenty minutes before Vikr's 'reaction force' arrived. There was only one way out of this alive now. It wasn't what Zeouna would consider a gamble, per se, but it would be a riskier extraction than Zeouna had hoped for.
Zeouna swept her hand across her PDA and poked and prodded around the three-dimensional map that cast itself into orbit around her wrists. She'd done enough exploring in the rim to know where the entrances to the underworld were; they were simply impossible to forget.
"How fast to that point?" Zeo asked.
Ari studied the image cast to the dashboard. A topographic map morphed into satellite imagery as her face changed from neutral pondering to confusion and then to fearfulness.
"Zeo… You're not actually considering this, right?"
Zeouna placed her hand on her friend's shoulder to calm her.
She was right to be scared. The aqueous caverns were dangerous, and you never knew where you'd end up. Native Udeavans gave them a wide berth; mostly out of superstitious belief, but also to avoid two-hundred meter sinkholes and a long fall into blackness. And whether she liked it or not, Ari knew Zeouna had used the caverns as exits before.
"Race for the rim border?" Zeouna argued, "We lose that everytime this far out, love. Besides, I choose to look at it as a bonding experience."
"Problem?"
"With you?" Ari asked to clarify, with disdain bouncing around her eyes.
Zeouna's hand was still on her old friend's shoulder.
"Always."