She continued to listen in as they talked about her lifestyle of partying hard and drinking people under the table. They compared her to a marine rather than someone in the navy. Captain Foster and the egghead scientist arrived sometime later, thus ending the chitchat as attention was directed to them.
“Coming with us, I hear?” Chevallier said to her.
“You heard correct.”
Chevallier grabbed two ePistols from the lockup and handed them to the Captain and the scientist, who introduced himself as Dr. Pierce. Not that she cared or would remember five minutes from now.
“I hope you know how to use these,” Chevallier said to the two.
“eWeapons,” Foster said as she holstered the weapon into her cargo pants. “I miss the old-world stuff.”
eWeapons were reverse engineered Radiance magnetic weapons. They fired bullets accelerated by magnetic fields toward a target. The weapons were wholly computerized and presented tactical data back to its user via a targeting screen. It was also capable of syncing with the computer systems within combat armor and relaying information gathered by the targeting scanner to the wearers HUD. Hunks of metal served as its ammunition, and the weapon sliced off pieces of the metal to form appropriate sized bullets for the encounter; no reloading required. The rail guns of the Carl Sagan and other ships functioned similarly but on a larger scale.
The weapons were indeed a huge step up from old-world guns used prior to the Hashmedai invasion of Earth, though it had its drawbacks, the biggest being power. If a rifle lost all power either from an EMP or low batteries, the weapon became useless. Computerized weapons also meant they were vulnerable to computer viruses or skilled hackers, though such incidents were extremely rare.
“Dr. Pierce?” Foster said, giving him a nudge.
Pierce looked at the weapon Chevallier had offered him, and did nothing but stare at it in awe. Chevallier suspected that a man with all his university degrees had never held a weapon, let alone looked at one. It was a troubling thought given his age, he had to have been alive during the invasion and lived through it. Every person she met that was an adult during 2018 had fired a gun or at least kept one on them on them for self-defense. Even cities that were never attacked during the war had a brief period of lawlessness when everyone had to look out for their own interests. Vancouver was clearly not one of those cities.
Pierce looked away from the ePistol and apprehensively glanced at Chevallier. “I’ve never held a weapon in my life.”
Yeah, no shit.
“Why do I need it? Aren’t you guys supposed to watch over us?”
Chevallier sighed and forced the weapon into his hands. “If we get separated, knocked out or killed, who will watch your ass?” She pointed to the pistol. “That will.”
McDowell, Chevallier, and Kingston armed themselves with eRifles before heading toward the open transport along with Foster and Pierce. A woman wearing an IESA uniform with the flag of the Philippines entered and shouted for the group to wait for her.
“Rivera, you coming with us too?” Foster said to her.
“Naw, my place is in engineering for now,” Rivera replied. “But I wanted you guys to have this.”
Rivera handed Foster and Pierce devices that looked like the holo pads everyone had been using. These however were different, smaller with a small sensor up top, similar in design to medical scanners.
“What the hell are these?” Foster said, eying the handheld device.
“Something I was working on during my shifts in and out of cryo on our trek here,” Rivera said. “It’s an EAD, Environment Analyzer Device. I took apart a few of the holo pads we had that had glitches and rebuilt them into these; you can use them to scan the area around you. It’s also linked with EVE’s processors aboard where she can perform a more detailed analysis as well as catalogue and store your findings.”
Foster activated the device, a small holographic window appeared above it, and it reported the findings the EAD detected. “Sounds handy.”
“Very handy,” Pierce said as he gave it a test. “I might be able to choose samples to bring back to study, rather than grab everything.”
Rivera gave them a quick rundown on how to use all the features of the device. It was a lengthy conversation that had her and Pierce spit out technobabble none of the military folks like Chevallier understood. Chevallier noticed that McDowell and Kingston had floated into the transport and took a seat up in the cockpit, she followed suit as well and hoped the IESA folks would hurry up and get on. Foster and Pierce eventually glided aboard, giving Kingston the green light to begin the transport’s prelaunch procedures as the doors slid shut.
“EVA suits are in the back,” Chevallier said to Foster and Pierce. “Make sure to keep your shields up, this planet is getting a nice dose of X-ray radiation from the star.”
“And we plan to harvest it for water?” Kingston said as he began to pilot the transport out and away from the Carl Sagan.
“We got some good water treatment systems on the colonization ring,” Foster said. “It should filter out all radiation and other contaminates that might be in the ice.”
Chevallier moved up front as Foster and Pierce began to suit up. She took a quick look at the planet as they began to descend through its dark clouds. Earthlike gravity took hold of them as the transport dipped into the planet’s exosphere, waves of red light splashed across the forward shields generated by its rapid entry into the atmosphere. Once past the cloud cover they got a better view of the surface and the scores of alien structures below them. Foster and Pierce entered the cockpit to observe their approach to the surface.
“Set us down over there,” Foster said and pointed. “It’s close to the frozen ocean and that structure.” Kingston complied and adjusted the transport’s course.
“Excited, Pierce?” Foster asked him.
“You have no idea. First contact with Radiance and Hashmedai was one thing, but this? No one from Radiance made it out here, we’ll be the first.”
Chevallier smirked. “Maybe the Empire did.”
“There’s no proof of that,” Pierce replied to her.
“Because the empire shares all their knowledge with Radiance, right?”
Kingston grimaced. “Running into Hashmedai out here would be—”
“Not boring like it is now?” Chevallier cut in.
“Bad was the word I had in mind ma’am.”
“Tolukei did say he detected psionic energy down here,” Foster said. “Radiance and the Hashmedai are the only two groups that could use such powers, if Radiance isn’t here then that kinda narrows it down.”
“Yes,” Pierce said snapping his fingers to the best of his ability considering they were wrapped inside of the gloves of his suit. “That would mean there’s another species out there that knows how to use psionic powers.”
“Didn’t psionics originate from Radiance? How would they get it?” Chevallier said.
As she recalled, Radiance legends told that their gods arrived at the Aryile home world and gave them all sorts of technology over the years, one of them being a device that could allow people to develop psionic powers. That same tech was shared with the Hashmedai Empire before the two species had a falling out and became enemies.
The transport landed on the icy surface as Pierce gave his answer to her question. “Only one way to find out!”
UNE TRANSPORT
Frozen tundra, SB-417, Sirius B system
May 19, 2050, 09:34 SST (Sol Standard Time)
McDowell, Chevallier and Kingston got up and began to place their combat helmets on. A holographic HUD interface confirmed to her that the suits life-support systems had activated. According to sensor scans the surface temperature was somewhere around -150 degrees Celsius and had very little breathable air. Dr. Pierce scampered to the entrance like an excited kid on Christmas morning. Chevallier took one look at the condition of Pierce’s suit, shook her head, and grabbed onto his arm, yanking his body to her.