Penny Drop
Monday, 07 Jun 2523
Lucifer's Landing, Angel
Kalidasa (Xuan Wu) system
0930hrs, local time
Not long after we'd kissed dirt and gotten everything squared away, I opened up my data book and started trawling the Cortex for news. Our two week flight from Aesir was a virtual news blackout and it was with some relief I latched onto Angel's Cortex repeater and began sifting through the veritable deluge of data. A blinker caught my attention—I had a message waiting for me. Opening the correct window, I saw it was from one of my contacts on the Ark. I rose and closed the door to my quarters and curled up on the bed with my back to the wall. Unless someone had mounted a pinhole camera in the headboard console, no one would be able to see what I read. I typed in my pass key and opened the message. A short note lay revealed: Thought you might be interested.
There was no personal information attached. I had no way of knowing who sent it. Scrolling past the bottom of the screen I saw the embedded video. Checking the room from habit, I confirmed it was empty and hit play…
The video is extremely low res," shaky-cam" in green light (light enhancement mode) from a headset camera as a small team begins a midnight raid on what appears to be an old style military fort. The team, about six people are visible, but there is evidence of more, moves slowly and methodically through a heavy protected area (including automated lasers on fence posts, sonic disruptors, razor wire, etc..) One soldier remarks about this being pretty heavily guarded for an academy. He is silenced by the squad leader. The team has very good intel, and seems able to get past every security barrier. They take out the two sentries (clearly soldiers, but not in Alliance uniforms) some kind of paramilitary.
They enter the building, and it is a pretty clean operation. They face some security but not much. It is nighttime most of the staff is gone. They stun a few staff people (orderlies, and such) and take stairs down into what appears to be a hospital. Then the film takes a strange turn. Glancing into the first room, a man is in hospital bed with bionics attached to amputated legs (just the connections). They moved on, passing room after room of young men and women with various cybernetic enhancements, then they come to another room and see a young man with part of his skull removed and there numerous wires, chips and stuff attached to his brain. Nearly all of them were getting infusions of some kind of bluish liquid. There is a quick still shot of the label on the IV (Arden or Kiera might make sense of it). They move to the next room and see what appears to be a perfectly healthy young woman, with her legs and arms marked as preparation for amputation. "Should we wake her and get her out of here?" One soldier asks. Before they can answer another soldier calls them into a room. It is designed like a dorm with ten low beds. On them are ten men and women (with no visible cybernetics) but wearing some kind of headsets with a variety of tubes and lights going into their heads. They appear to be asleep or in a trance and don't respond to the soldiers attempts to wake them. The team moves to what appears to be a nursing station and the tech begins to download data into his datebook, when they get a call of a ship approaching. They need to get out now. They stay as long as they can. When they do leave, they leave quickly, the cameraman pans back and forth from one room to another, with people in various states inside. As they get to off the academy grounds awaiting pickup, they decide to send the video in Low rez to through the planetary net,.. just in case they get captured. The image turns to a ship descending to a height of about 500m and suddenly it drops three bombs. They land dead on the old fort and the thing explodes, taking the team with them. The video ends there….
I confess I sat there staring at the blinking replay button for a good minute before I shook off the shock. A second later saw me shutting my databook and leaving my quarters. Nika has to see this. The way she's been going for the past year … She needs to see this. At this time of day and so soon after landing, I knew I would find her on the bridge. I kept an eye out for Joshua as I made my way forward. He would need to see this, too. Finding neither my Captain nor my fiancé on the way, I crossed my fingers as I crossed the threshold for the bridge. Luck was with me. Nika and Joshua were going over the finances when I entered and I gave them no time to wonder why I was there.
"Clear the deck." I swept their papers off the console and got that video going. "There's something you should see."
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