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Chapter 46

Chapter 46

January 30th, 2158 (station time)

Dusk was attempting to make itself present as Mike and Logan reached the base camp.  If night had fallen to pitch black, Logan wouldn't have noticed.  Logan had become completely immersed in studding the data collected from the cave.

Logan was so preoccupied that he could have continued running indefinitely, if it hadn't been for the message that appeared on his heads up display.

DESTINATION ETA 2 MINUTES

To Logan, it only seemed like ten or fifteen minutes had passed since leaving the area were they found the parts of the rover.  In reality it had been closer to two hours.

Cresting the next hill, Logan saw Gantulga in his mech close to three kilometers away.  Rather, his own mech suit picked up Gantulga using the network of transmitters previously placed in perimeter around the base camp.  Hunched over, he seamed to be doing maintenance on one of the transmitters that made up the bases parameter.

In less than a minute, Logan's sensors had picked up all of the transmitting beacons, as well as every active and inactive mech suit in the general area.  The system of transmitters was a simple, yet effective network.  As long as a user was connected to the network, they could send real time messages and information to anyone else in the network.

The transmitters were also equipped with a full array of sensors, allowing for real time security surveillance.  With as little as three active transmitters, anyone with the clearance could receive real time intel.  At present time, only the security officers had access to that intel.  However for safety reasons, it would become available to everyone at the base in case of emergency.

Other than the information that he was receiving from the transmitters, there was no clue that the base camp was in the next valley.  With so many identical valleys on the same side of the large mountains, Logan could have spent all day looking without finding anything.

As Mike and Logan crested the final ridge before the camp, Logan was not surprised to see several people waiting for them.  As head of the security force, it would have been a surprised if Taavi were not there.  But also present was Manuel, Mika, and Aashif.

All of the data that had been collected, from the wreckage of the rover to the images of the cave had already been sent via satellite to the base for Taavi and anyone else who cared to comb through it.  Still, Taavi began to debrief Mike on the mission.  Logan wondered if this were out of habit and tradition, or if redundancy of information helped reduce errors, or maybe for some other unknown reason.  Logan and the others waited patiently as Mike summarized the trip.

"We had a second transmitter destroyed about forty minutes ago," Taavi said.

Taavi had directed the statement to both Mike and Logan.  Logan was slightly staggered by what seamed a rather abrupt topic change.  Logan hadn't been paying too close attention to Mike as he spoke.  It was possible that he had missed the segue into this new topic.

"Wait," Logan said attempting to catch up to the conversation.  "Second transmitter destroyed?"

"Yes," replied Taavi.  "Two of our transmitters have been attacked and destroyed.  The first happened shortly after the two of you left, and the second was just a short time..." Taavi didn't have time to finish the sentence before Logan cut him off.

"Attacked by what?"

Instead of answering Logan, Taavi entered a command on his DNAC.  Instantly Logan received a single image.  The image was slightly blurry, and Logan didn't know what he was looking at.  The lighting was poor; a large object obscured the sun creating a silhouette.  The object took up close to eighty percent of the image