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Description
THE CHEST

It's so dark in here that I can't make out more than the outlines of armour and the twin ice-blue eye sockets of the Scavengers' masks. They're all standing dead still, and I can see the thin red line of a sterilisation field advancing on us, removing any traces of Rust we could have brought in. I wait until it has cleared the room, and, following the examples of many Scavengers, begin to remove my helmet. The painkillers are wearing off, which isn't helping the scar on my face. As a soft light comes up, I apply a new gel patch to replace the worn out one.

We're in a large room which looks exactly like an airlock to me, with metallic walls that don't rise too high above our heads, but which could certainly accomodate the Prospector's walker if it was lying down. The field emitter hums softly behind us, barring the entrance, and a door opens in the far wall, similar to the one we just came through. It leads to a changing area, where, finally looking more relaxed, the Scavengers begin to take off the most cumbersome parts of their armour: shoulder pads, neck lock and respiratory aid system. Three lifts and a GravShaft make up the far wall, and my curiosity grows as I study the shaft's controls. It seems the bunker is only an interface for a much bigger underground complex, judging by the number of options listed, but I can't read the Arabic writing.

A thin finger points to one of the labels beside the shaft's access console.

-We're going there, Captain."

I turn around to discover the young black-haired woman who threw me against the wall aboard the zeppelin. And clearly, she didn't expect me to be here.

-Oh... That was you." She blushes. "I'm sorry about what happened up aboard, yeah? I just ran without looking, you know? You still OK?"

As I try to stem the flow of her excuses, her sergeant comes to my rescue by ordering his troops to form teams. A vague feeling of déjà vu strikes me as he splits them into twos. Thanks to the sadistic whim of fate I am paired with the walking green-eyed apology, who goes even more crimson. We head for the lifts, and I'm surprised to see her navigating through the controls (entirely in ancient Arabic) as if it was her PersoCom. As she regains a bit of her self-confidence, she explains that her language skills have earned her a few commendations in her short career. She also seems to be a habitually reckless person; as the doors close up on our group, I can hear the sergeant ordering "No heroics!" What have I landed myself into?

Our group heads out of the elevator as soon as the doors open. The same soft light bathes the short corridor that leads, according to my guide, to the control centre. This bunker, she explains, was meant to house a top-secret research factory. Her team, Gamma Three-One, was on an intelligence-gathering (which generally turns into proffing) mission in Cairo's Pan-African Federal Office, what replaced the short-lived Afro-European Union in the 2050's. The team found a computer, still in running order, which, after some decryption, revealed a truckload of classified US DoD documents. Amongst these, the geeks from Electronic Intel dug out a personnel and equipment request for what seemed like an important military base, although it did not appear on the old maps or satellite pictures. A squad sent on-site reported a fairly decrepit civilian radar station that turned out to be hiding a large, state-of-the-art communications centre, littered with the slaughtered bodies of CIA agents. Data and maps found at the place led them to a number of top-secret US facilities on Egyptian soil. The computer, it turned out, had belonged to the American military attaché, who was in charge of the joint venture between the Africans and the US. Considering their respective financial situations at the time of the Outbreak, it was unsurprising that the Americans had sought Cairo's help.

A simple five-digit code opens the door, and we step into a well-furnished room, equipped with a hefty number of screens, all showing different areas of the base. Scavengers are visible on a few of these, and despite the evident neglect, only a handful of monitors are down. Removing their helmets, the four armour-clad men who have accompanied us to the room sit down, put on the cordless surveillance headphones and begin coordinating operations.

My guide leads me away from the now-buzzing command centre, back to the lift. As she presses one of the lowest buttons, she explains that, due to the base being dormant, different teams have to directly reactivate various components such as the fusion power plant, communication array, security systems, environment controls, computer core, etc, so that the Scavengers can retrieve whatever they came to get. I presume it's data, as the main things to reactivate seem to be the main server and some of the lab equipment. But we're heading quite far down, about ten floors below the control centre, where, in my experience, the warehouses and food storage facilities should be. A relatively long corridor equipped with heavy blast doors on both sides and plunged in semi-darkness greets us. We make our way to the last set of blast doors, at the end of the walkway, and the Corporal keys in a much more complicated code than the one used to open the command centre.

-Dad told me right before we left that he wanted to know if you would like one of these..." she asks innocently, as the pneumatic system lifts the door ajar.

I'm gobsmacked as soon as the doors slide apart. The room has to be about twenty-five to thirty metres high, with at least twenty metres by twenty of floor space and a metal gangway running around the walls at mid-height. I can't see the ceiling, as it's too dark, but the enormous, glistening pneumatic arms anchored in the concrete make me think that it can open. A double slot containing a pair of heavy exoskeletons, of the type used for dangerous maintenance or construction work, is visible on the far side. But my attention is almost entirely focused on the central piece of equipment present in the room.

-Is that what I think it is, or am I going to wake up in the med centre again?"
-That's as real as it gets, Captain. Fully functional, as far as we could make out during our first visit. We're here to take it back, but there are three others of the same type here. These are big boys' toys, but Dad thought you could handle it..." She looks doubtfully at my bandages, and I notice something odd.
-Who's "Dad"?"
-I'm Corporal Clara Moreau... Name rings a bell?"

Moreau's daughter. Dammit. There isn't any real family resemblance between them, except for the colours. Her eyes and hair match his, but I'd never have had the dimmest of glimmers of an intuition. Moreau's wife did a "dive" from the Tigre's observation gallery, nearly ten years ago. That caused quite a stir back then, or so I was told. But nobody I know ever spoke about a daughter.

-So? What about the Dragon?" She asks.

I shift my gaze back from her eyes to the ones that look straight at the concrete, fifteen metres above my own. The Dragon, since a Dragon it is, has a freaky pair of peepers. One metre across, each. Jet black. Its body, camouflaged in a grey and beige digital scheme, seems like a mechanical perception of Zeus' own. The back of the giant is laden with four folded wings, mounted on a jetpack which appears to be a miniature fusion engine -what our researchers have been striving to put on our fighters for years, but can't quite get round to. Both legs and shoulders have thruster nozzles, and I'm about ready to bet that the feet, not touching the ground in the suspension field, have thrusters too. Forearm shield plates have this particular tint associated with ultraresistant quadanium steel, only ever mined on Mars or in the asteroid belt. The head assembly seems to bear at least a pair of 30mm cannons. There is no "mouth" or "nose"; it's hidden behind a white "mask". The Dragon seems to be wearing some sort of helmet with spikes (which, I guess, are part of its detection and communication system) protruding at the back. In its right hand, a strangely scoped 105mm long-barelled cannon, seeming like a grossly oversized sniper rifle. The left arm wields the thing's shield, a ten-metre by two metre rectangular slab of quadanium steel.

While I'm busy gulping down any stray flies, as I can't close my mouth, Clara has been grumbling over a set of readouts over to the side, changing a few settings. As she pulls one last lever, a low hum grows louder from the inside of the Dragon. A section of the torso, right below the head, slides down, and a small platform is lowered from the shadows.

-Want to take a look inside, Captain?"

Without any need of a repeat invitation, I jump on the platform that lifts us up to the gangway. A connecting spar penetrates the suspension field, leading to a manhole that has to be the cockpit. I slump into the G-absorbant seat, with Moreau's daughter looking from above. It appears to be a single-seater, with nearly twice as many displays as I'm accustomed to, but thankfully, it's all in English. The familiar shapes of a joystick and a throttle immediately seem to spring in my hands. The cockpit controls at least are well conceived.
Instructed by Clara, I start the APU. One by one, all the monitors come to life. The main ones, which transmit external views from the front and sides, have a breathtakingly high definition. On the internal one a menu appears, on which, still instructed by my guide, I load the default settings. The main power comes online, and various readouts begin to appear on all the screens. An eyepiece is lowered in front of my eyes, and a pulsing blue light briefly confirms a retina scan.

-Right. You're now the proud pilot of a Dragon-class gigantic power armour, or GPA as we now know them. As soon as we've taken it back onboard, you can take a few turns in the sim and select your settings. We'll need to grapple it immediately though. We won't risk exposing it to the Rust any more than necessary."
-Can't I fly it out directly? It seems to have reasonably simple controls, with standard avionics."
-With all due respect and utmost confidence in your abilities, Captain, I'd rather not. You're injured, and plus, there are a lot of things we don't yet know about the GPAs. The Americans were quite literally playing with fire when they first built the Dragons. That's why we're taking the lab data with us. We want to know if there are any flaws they knew of, how they're equipped, the performance data... But this could be the ultimate asset for us: try to imagine a unit equipped with these. We'd already picked you to be the first pilot and, more than likely, the leader, but this gave us the opportunity to arrange a meeting between man and machine."
-If I'm the team leader, I get to pick my pilots, right? How many?"
-This facility houses four completed Dragon pre-production frames, plus a test bed, but it's only a core unit. No limbs or flypack, just the cockpit and the computer with attachment points for experimental parts. We're taking it back up to the Tigre to use it as a simulator."
-Any more of these I should know about in other facilities?"
-Right now, it's only this facility which has been ascertained to contain GPAs. But there are six more facilities, of varying sizes, which were involved in the programme, but that we haven't explored yet. Each one is big enough to house at least two GPAs, but we can't be sure if there are any there until we've thoroughly checked them out. And I don't think I need to stress to you how important secrecy is. If the Feds learn that we're searching for these, there'll be a race to grab as many of them as we can. That would be... Bloody."

Her earpiece chimes and she jumps back down onto the spar, as I take a moment to closely study the controls. Weaponry seems to be on the right-hand side, with arm control and weapon selection taking up two-fifths of the cockpit space. The centre is mostly dedicated to detection and readouts, with the main radar, heat and energy gauges being the three most important items. The left-hand side of the cockpit is occupied by flight controls, with throttle, secondary artificial horizon, APU control and autopilot featuring prominently.

As I run through the weaponry menus, I notice a fair number of grey entries that seem to be mostly about direct energy weapons; there is a laser beam, which can be either dorsal-mounted or hand-held, a plasma "scalpel", similar to the confined plasma bazooka the Scavengers are carrying, although it would not be blasting one single, heavy shot, but rather a thin beam that could last for a second or two. There also seem to be options for different types of hip- or shoulder-mounted multiple missile launchers and a pair of heavy railguns. The shield seems to be optional as well.The selections that aren't greyed-out are the 105mm cannon, with shoulder or hand position, the 30mm cannons (four of them, in the head assembly), a fixed heavy flamethrower that apparently runs in the left hand, three large grenades in the left leg storage compartment and a monomolecular combat knife mounted horizontally below the jump pack. A walking, flying arsenal.

A couple of thuds on the external hull pull me out of my exploration. I stick my head out.

-I think we can relax, Captain. There's the mother of all storms coming and the shuttle can't land. We don't know how long the blackout will last, but we've had to shelter the antennas so they wouldn't get wrecked. Seems we've got the base to ourselves for a while."
-Right. We don't have any clues of how and when the storm will blow over?"
-Not that I can say, sir. Best to sort yourself out with a bunk. I'll get you to the accomodation block, it's three levels above us.

As we exit, I sneak a last glance at the Dragon. I can't help but shudder at the alien look it throws back at me.

Description
THE CHEST

It's so dark in here that I can't make out more than the outlines of armour and the twin ice-blue eye sockets of the Scavengers' masks. They're all standing dead still, and I can see the thin red line of a sterilisation field advancing on us, removing any traces of Rust we could have brought in. I wait until it has cleared the room, and, following the examples of many Scavengers, begin to remove my helmet. The painkillers are wearing off, which isn't helping the scar on my face. As a soft light comes up, I apply a new gel patch to replace the worn out one.

We're in a large room which looks exactly like an airlock to me, with metallic walls that don't rise too high above our heads, but which could certainly accomodate the Prospector's walker if it was lying down. The field emitter hums softly behind us, barring the entrance, and a door opens in the far wall, similar to the one we just came through. It leads to a changing area, where, finally looking more relaxed, the Scavengers begin to take off the most cumbersome parts of their armour: shoulder pads, neck lock and respiratory aid system. Three lifts and a GravShaft make up the far wall, and my curiosity grows as I study the shaft's controls. It seems the bunker is only an interface for a much bigger underground complex, judging by the number of options listed, but I can't read the Arabic writing.

A thin finger points to one of the labels beside the shaft's access console.

-We're going there, Captain."

I turn around to discover the young black-haired woman who threw me against the wall aboard the zeppelin. And clearly, she didn't expect me to be here.

-Oh... That was you." She blushes. "I'm sorry about what happened up aboard, yeah? I just ran without looking, you know? You still OK?"

As I try to stem the flow of her excuses, her sergeant comes to my rescue by ordering his troops to form teams. A vague feeling of déjà vu strikes me as he splits them into twos. Thanks to the sadistic whim of fate I am paired with the walking green-eyed apology, who goes even more crimson. We head for the lifts, and I'm surprised to see her navigating through the controls (entirely in ancient Arabic) as if it was her PersoCom. As she regains a bit of her self-confidence, she explains that her language skills have earned her a few commendations in her short career. She also seems to be a habitually reckless person; as the doors close up on our group, I can hear the sergeant ordering "No heroics!" What have I landed myself into?

Our group heads out of the elevator as soon as the doors open. The same soft light bathes the short corridor that leads, according to my guide, to the control centre. This bunker, she explains, was meant to house a top-secret research factory. Her team, Gamma Three-One, was on an intelligence-gathering (which generally turns into proffing) mission in Cairo's Pan-African Federal Office, what replaced the short-lived Afro-European Union in the 2050's. The team found a computer, still in running order, which, after some decryption, revealed a truckload of classified US DoD documents. Amongst these, the geeks from Electronic Intel dug out a personnel and equipment request for what seemed like an important military base, although it did not appear on the old maps or satellite pictures. A squad sent on-site reported a fairly decrepit civilian radar station that turned out to be hiding a large, state-of-the-art communications centre, littered with the slaughtered bodies of CIA agents. Data and maps found at the place led them to a number of top-secret US facilities on Egyptian soil. The computer, it turned out, had belonged to the American military attaché, who was in charge of the joint venture between the Africans and the US. Considering their respective financial situations at the time of the Outbreak, it was unsurprising that the Americans had sought Cairo's help.

A simple five-digit code opens the door, and we step into a well-furnished room, equipped with a hefty number of screens, all showing different areas of the base. Scavengers are visible on a few of these, and despite the evident neglect, only a handful of monitors are down. Removing their helmets, the four armour-clad men who have accompanied us to the room sit down, put on the cordless surveillance headphones and begin coordinating operations.

My guide leads me away from the now-buzzing command centre, back to the lift. As she presses one of the lowest buttons, she explains that, due to the base being dormant, different teams have to directly reactivate various components such as the fusion power plant, communication array, security systems, environment controls, computer core, etc, so that the Scavengers can retrieve whatever they came to get. I presume it's data, as the main things to reactivate seem to be the main server and some of the lab equipment. But we're heading quite far down, about ten floors below the control centre, where, in my experience, the warehouses and food storage facilities should be. A relatively long corridor equipped with heavy blast doors on both sides and plunged in semi-darkness greets us. We make our way to the last set of blast doors, at the end of the walkway, and the Corporal keys in a much more complicated code than the one used to open the command centre.

-Dad told me right before we left that he wanted to know if you would like one of these..." she asks innocently, as the pneumatic system lifts the door ajar.

I'm gobsmacked as soon as the doors slide apart. The room has to be about twenty-five to thirty metres high, with at least twenty metres by twenty of floor space and a metal gangway running around the walls at mid-height. I can't see the ceiling, as it's too dark, but the enormous, glistening pneumatic arms anchored in the concrete make me think that it can open. A double slot containing a pair of heavy exoskeletons, of the type used for dangerous maintenance or construction work, is visible on the far side. But my attention is almost entirely focused on the central piece of equipment present in the room.

-Is that what I think it is, or am I going to wake up in the med centre again?"
-That's as real as it gets, Captain. Fully functional, as far as we could make out during our first visit. We're here to take it back, but there are three others of the same type here. These are big boys' toys, but Dad thought you could handle it..." She looks doubtfully at my bandages, and I notice something odd.
-Who's "Dad"?"
-I'm Corporal Clara Moreau... Name rings a bell?"

Moreau's daughter. Dammit. There isn't any real family resemblance between them, except for the colours. Her eyes and hair match his, but I'd never have had the dimmest of glimmers of an intuition. Moreau's wife did a "dive" from the Tigre's observation gallery, nearly ten years ago. That caused quite a stir back then, or so I was told. But nobody I know ever spoke about a daughter.

-So? What about the Dragon?" She asks.

I shift my gaze back from her eyes to the ones that look straight at the concrete, fifteen metres above my own. The Dragon, since a Dragon it is, has a freaky pair of peepers. One metre across, each. Jet black. Its body, camouflaged in a grey and beige digital scheme, seems like a mechanical perception of Zeus' own. The back of the giant is laden with four folded wings, mounted on a jetpack which appears to be a miniature fusion engine -what our researchers have been striving to put on our fighters for years, but can't quite get round to. Both legs and shoulders have thruster nozzles, and I'm about ready to bet that the feet, not touching the ground in the suspension field, have thrusters too. Forearm shield plates have this particular tint associated with ultraresistant quadanium steel, only ever mined on Mars or in the asteroid belt. The head assembly seems to bear at least a pair of 30mm cannons. There is no "mouth" or "nose"; it's hidden behind a white "mask". The Dragon seems to be wearing some sort of helmet with spikes (which, I guess, are part of its detection and communication system) protruding at the back. In its right hand, a strangely scoped 105mm long-barelled cannon, seeming like a grossly oversized sniper rifle. The left arm wields the thing's shield, a ten-metre by two metre rectangular slab of quadanium steel.

While I'm busy gulping down any stray flies, as I can't close my mouth, Clara has been grumbling over a set of readouts over to the side, changing a few settings. As she pulls one last lever, a low hum grows louder from the inside of the Dragon. A section of the torso, right below the head, slides down, and a small platform is lowered from the shadows.

-Want to take a look inside, Captain?"

Without any need of a repeat invitation, I jump on the platform that lifts us up to the gangway. A connecting spar penetrates the suspension field, leading to a manhole that has to be the cockpit. I slump into the G-absorbant seat, with Moreau's daughter looking from above. It appears to be a single-seater, with nearly twice as many displays as I'm accustomed to, but thankfully, it's all in English. The familiar shapes of a joystick and a throttle immediately seem to spring in my hands. The cockpit controls at least are well conceived.
Instructed by Clara, I start the APU. One by one, all the monitors come to life. The main ones, which transmit external views from the front and sides, have a breathtakingly high definition. On the internal one a menu appears, on which, still instructed by my guide, I load the default settings. The main power comes online, and various readouts begin to appear on all the screens. An eyepiece is lowered in front of my eyes, and a pulsing blue light briefly confirms a retina scan.

-Right. You're now the proud pilot of a Dragon-class gigantic power armour, or GPA as we now know them. As soon as we've taken it back onboard, you can take a few turns in the sim and select your settings. We'll need to grapple it immediately though. We won't risk exposing it to the Rust any more than necessary."
-Can't I fly it out directly? It seems to have reasonably simple controls, with standard avionics."
-With all due respect and utmost confidence in your abilities, Captain, I'd rather not. You're injured, and plus, there are a lot of things we don't yet know about the GPAs. The Americans were quite literally playing with fire when they first built the Dragons. That's why we're taking the lab data with us. We want to know if there are any flaws they knew of, how they're equipped, the performance data... But this could be the ultimate asset for us: try to imagine a unit equipped with these. We'd already picked you to be the first pilot and, more than likely, the leader, but this gave us the opportunity to arrange a meeting between man and machine."
-If I'm the team leader, I get to pick my pilots, right? How many?"
-This facility houses four completed Dragon pre-production frames, plus a test bed, but it's only a core unit. No limbs or flypack, just the cockpit and the computer with attachment points for experimental parts. We're taking it back up to the Tigre to use it as a simulator."
-Any more of these I should know about in other facilities?"
-Right now, it's only this facility which has been ascertained to contain GPAs. But there are six more facilities, of varying sizes, which were involved in the programme, but that we haven't explored yet. Each one is big enough to house at least two GPAs, but we can't be sure if there are any there until we've thoroughly checked them out. And I don't think I need to stress to you how important secrecy is. If the Feds learn that we're searching for these, there'll be a race to grab as many of them as we can. That would be... Bloody."

Her earpiece chimes and she jumps back down onto the spar, as I take a moment to closely study the controls. Weaponry seems to be on the right-hand side, with arm control and weapon selection taking up two-fifths of the cockpit space. The centre is mostly dedicated to detection and readouts, with the main radar, heat and energy gauges being the three most important items. The left-hand side of the cockpit is occupied by flight controls, with throttle, secondary artificial horizon, APU control and autopilot featuring prominently.

As I run through the weaponry menus, I notice a fair number of grey entries that seem to be mostly about direct energy weapons; there is a laser beam, which can be either dorsal-mounted or hand-held, a plasma "scalpel", similar to the confined plasma bazooka the Scavengers are carrying, although it would not be blasting one single, heavy shot, but rather a thin beam that could last for a second or two. There also seem to be options for different types of hip- or shoulder-mounted multiple missile launchers and a pair of heavy railguns. The shield seems to be optional as well.The selections that aren't greyed-out are the 105mm cannon, with shoulder or hand position, the 30mm cannons (four of them, in the head assembly), a fixed heavy flamethrower that apparently runs in the left hand, three large grenades in the left leg storage compartment and a monomolecular combat knife mounted horizontally below the jump pack. A walking, flying arsenal.

A couple of thuds on the external hull pull me out of my exploration. I stick my head out.

-I think we can relax, Captain. There's the mother of all storms coming and the shuttle can't land. We don't know how long the blackout will last, but we've had to shelter the antennas so they wouldn't get wrecked. Seems we've got the base to ourselves for a while."
-Right. We don't have any clues of how and when the storm will blow over?"
-Not that I can say, sir. Best to sort yourself out with a bunk. I'll get you to the accomodation block, it's three levels above us.

As we exit, I sneak a last glance at the Dragon. I can't help but shudder at the alien look it throws back at me.