File 1.6 - Jumping at Shadows

Piercing the empty silence of the airways was the solitary transport plane carrying with it Aerona and her Skadi. Once they entered the last known reported readings of the unknown ship entering the atmosphere Air approached the cockpit. While she strolled she put on her helmet, covering her short, light brown hair. The glass visor remained open, but the communication set built into the helmet allowed her to listen to the transmissions between Command and them.

Even before the plane had entered the search area their scanning equipment ran at maximum range. The few things they picked up only amounted to registered civilian vehicles with it being sensitive enough to find cars and trucks on the ground below. However, once in the region they were unable to find anything from an immediate scan. It left them forced to circle in a wide path while they executed more intense searches.

“SEA Sector E14 scan completed, nothing. Moving to E15…” the co-pilot said as he ran through the search protocols.

“Command, the unknown ship may not even be here,” said Air calmly in an almost clinical tone. “It has been almost three hours since it was detected entering the atmosphere and the search radius does not account for the time.”

The same man that had talked to her in the hangar came over the line. “We’re aware of that, Air. However, we don’t have the resources for such a search radius.”

“Ensign Toule, would it not be a better use of the resources to search the locations where they could be in three hours travel?”

“Command believes the origination to be more important.” In the travel time the main command staff had arrived taking over from the maintained skeleton crew. The orders that they had given changed from the initial plans. It left some confused, but it was simply their task to follow orders and not question.

“Command! Faint heat and energy being detected in E15!”

“Source?”

There was a long delay after the communications from Command as the co-pilot ran the readings that he was getting through the database. “There’s no match, sir!”

“How’s that possible?” the pilot said with equal surprise as his partner.

“Commander Tulother!” called Rinn coming over the communication’s line into his Skin. “I’ve narrowed down the problems. Most of the repairs will require replacements.”

Callein turned his head up out of habit listening to the sound only line. “Understood. You have my team to use as you need.” There was suddenly an alert popping up on the screen of Callein’s Skin. An unknown object approached them. He began turning on his systems in preparation. The computer already tried to identify the object, but he knew it would be a futile effort since anything on Earth wouldn’t be in the library. Even without an identifier the system could get a shape, size and energy readings to give him an idea of what he faced.

His hand tightened around the thruster and arm controls feeling his nerves rise in tension as his mission came under risk. “Rinn, looks like we might have been spotted. I’m picking up what looks like a plane and judging by its size a cargo transport. Hurry on the repairs.”

“Understood, Commander.” The line went silent afterwards as Rinn left his chair going to the storage supply of parts. He grabbed the rest of Terra One Team to help him.

The commander opened a line through their suits to one of his team. “Rivers get to your Skin and start the initialization procedures. Keep it in conservation mode until I give you orders!”

“Yes, sir!” complied Rivers as he snapped the collar of his pilot suit back into place. He ran over to his Skin, a JAS-1503 Jade Jiaolong machine like the rest of the team apart from the Commander, a Peng from Jade as well. The base body for the Skins came fitted to function in a gravity environment, but beyond that they customized their Skins to suit their combat style. This flexibility was more due to the Jade Corporation’s designs and less with the military granting freedoms to its pilots.

All of the machines came identical without base equipment, but designed to allow a wide variety of attachments to connect to the hull of the machine. For Rivers he preferred defense over strength and fitted accordingly with the SET-J21 Siege Targe ‘Set’ and the SSHS-J102 Solid Shift Sword ‘Triple S’. In addition for defense he had additional armor plating as well as leg thrusters to make up for the weight increase. His Jiaolong was slower than the others, but in battles he usually came out with the least damage with his more conservative approach.

Rivers dropped down the shaft into his seat feeling the lower back chair plug of his suit locking into the seat’s back support. He brushed aside his blonde hair out of eyes focused on the start-up.

“Second heat source detected, sir!” the co-pilot of Air’s transport reported in, “The first heat source is increasing.”

“Air! Get Skadi started! Don’t launch though,” Toule ordered, having received the confirmation.

“Yes, sir!” Aerona left the front cabin and marched back to the truck holding her machine. The solid black with white highlights machine held a jarring similarity in form to a human. It seemed created to be as similar in appearance as a human even down to having fingers and a sculpted face. She leapt up to the chest of the machine walking up its thick, but slim figure towards its head. Dark soulless blue eyes staring into the distance as she looked down. A seam in the face formed suddenly at Air’s approach that widened and lengthened from the eyes to the bottom of the chin. The section of metal pivoted open from the chin granting access inside where a seat waited.

She entered the chamber in the head allowing the hatch to close casting the small space into darkness before a complete three-hundred sixty spherical display monitor flickered. The operating system began its boot process displaying in the front in a window, on the display the words All-purpose Equipment for Self Interfacing Response, ‘AESIR’. All of the cameras became active displaying the plane’s interior on the monitor along with core readings for the reactor start up and battery charge. “Thirty seconds to start up completion,” she informed those on the line.

“Commander!” Rivers yelped almost jumping when he saw a new energy and heat source on the display.

Callein narrowed his eyes, feeling the uneasy dread in his stomach further building. The feeling was only one that he sensed when going into a battle that he was uncertain of its outcome. “Yes, I see it. It looks like they’re reacting to us.”

“If that’s the case we should just show those devils who should be afraid!” Wells shouted over the suit’s communication. There was a pause in response that made Wells frustrated at the indecision. “Commander!”