The guard paused by the display and let her gloved fingers dance across the virtual keyboard, calling up the perimeter monitors. Equipped with multi-band active sweep sensors, as well as the standard passive array, the monitors could detect a molecule of air out of place from a previous sweep.
Yet, as the monitors had reported from her previous five enquiries, nothing out of the ordinary was stirring on the facility’s outer edges. If she had been capable of frowning, she would’ve. A veteran of three of the Au’six’ last four major wars, she had learned the hard way that things never stay quiet for very long. Especially when it came to the level of importance that the object they were guarding, had.
“Pree-ka reess ata.” She rasped into her throat mike. “Seventh cycle; all quiet on the perimeter.”
A moment to her right caught her attention. But a quick scan with her peripheral vision, made without turning her head, confirmed it was only her guard companion.
“V’et bor’or kaal. No chi’a’vess ket.” She rasped. “You know better than to try and sneak up on me, corporal.” Her fingers continued their dance across the filmy web of the virtual keyboard, formed by the intersect of sensor beams and coherent light holograms.
“I should shoot you in the face for even thinking of trying.”
The blow came without warning, a light brush against the back of her neck that almost didn’t warrant notice. And it wouldn’t have, if it hadn’t been accompanied by the merest flicker of pain. The skin around her eyes tightened with concern as the pain faded into a lingering tingle. What was that? Then she was collapsing towards the floor, her body abruptly refusing to answer her will.
Catching her armored form, the figure that had slipped up behind her, finished easing her to the unrelenting ceramo-steel floor, making sure the composite armor didn’t make a sound against the polished surface as it took the guard’s weight. Then, moving silently, the figure in the guard armor was back up, reaching out to let gauntleted fingers dance over the monitoring post’s virtual keyboard.
The display, also formed from coherent light, shimmered as new data was fed into the monitoring system. Then it was solidifying into multiple views of a number of entrances scattered around the facility. Apparently satisfied, the imposter again reached out with their hands and let their fingers silently dance over the virtual keys.
A moment’s furious work and the imposter looked back up at the display, which showed that none of the doors, massive, sliding constructs of multiple layers of metal and ceramic, had moved. Instead of showing any frustration at the doors’ failure to open, if that truly was its goal, it paused in its work to lift its hands to its helmet. Fingers deftly worked for a long moment then the helmet was unsealing with a soft hiss of escaping atmosphere and it was being lifted up and out of the way.
Revealed beneath was a hooded and masked face, sheathed in a dark material of some sort, interwoven with glowing threads of energy, which bespoke of some enhanced aspect to the clothing. Only the eyes were left free, twin orbs belonging to an oxygen breather, with its lids, opaque outer eye and clear aperture and lens, best suited to an oxygen blend atmosphere of relatively low density.
Now clear of the helmet, those pupils narrowed as the figure in dark fabric focused once more on the monitor in front of them. Instead of trying another key configuration, however, it reached behind its head to pull something out from the back of its neck. As it pressed it against the monitor’s metallic stand, the object was revealed as a tiny wireless adaptor. A softly glowing green light indicated that it was powered.
YOU ARE READING
A Whisper of War (ON HOLD)
Science FictionKoden Gaal was a sapient on a mission. He and his team of security specialists at Moonsteel Security, had been hired by the biggest and most powerful government in the Centarus Arm, the Au'six, to retrieve a stolen Progenitor artifact. But after w...
