It was very bright outside.
That was the first thought crossing Reverend Mother Asunciòn's mind when she stepped out of the cargo hold. A carpet of luscious grass swayed under the gentle breeze coming from the sea, a faint smell of decaying algae and wet moss drafting up from the waves in the pungent air of the cliff.
She shivered feeling the heavy, unfiltered atmosphere fill her lungs, and steeled herself against the urge to retreat back into the dim interior of the spaceship: Bears would have to depart as soon as they finished unloading the materials they needed to set up a base camp, to ensure that their supply line couldn't be cut off with a suborbital strike.
The four dozen men and women of the platoon were hard at work establishing a defensive perimeter around the hill and getting the various modules that formed the camp operational. They had chosen a sector of the western coast three and a half kilometres from the city limit, on a cliff overlooking the bulky structures of the ATOMAD refinery: it was an easily defensible position with unobstructed fields of view downhill, and they had already activated three anti aircraft gun emplacements to account for the unlikely possibility of a bombardment.
Edward, the young Mobile Brigada who was her second in command, didn't seem to be having any difficulties coordinating the operations, so she decided to head for the central structure of the camp, a bulky armored container that would house the command center and their Arachne node. The building had already been connected to the generator, and, inside, Sister Horqueta was trying to stabilize the local datasphere. Asunciòn stopped by the door, watching her best friend struggle with the interface panel on the large processing core with a slight smile. She had already rolled the sleeves of her habit up to her elbows, and was muttering something under her breath - surely prayers - while one of her many pink braids swayed before her brown-skinned face.
"Need a hand?" she offered, trying not to sound too amused. Horqueta jolted straight, and turned towards her with an exasperated look
"Yes! Please! This thing is SO infuriating, I don't know how you Custodiers manage to interface with the deep layers of the net every day."
Asunciòn shrugged and crouched beside her, opening her hacking interface.
"It's not so bad once you get to know it. Kinda like that AI that followed us here, Robin."
Horqueta, who had started straightening back her sleeves, shot her a sideways glance
"You're not serious. That thing's blasphemous."
"But it's helping us, and, unlike Aleph, it doesn't try to play God. I say it's enough to leave it be."
It was the Moira's turn to shrug, "Yeah, it's also a lot better than Svengali, I guess. And hey, you're the boss here after all." she winked, just as the local network successfully restarted with a brief jingle "Wow, that was really fast. Great, now I feel dumb." she groaned as they were getting up
"I'll go and see if I can find someone in need of my real talents, like moving boxes and assembling furniture. See you later Lieutenant, Ma'am!" She announced with a dramatic gesture of the hand that vaguely resembled a salute, as she headed for the door.
Now alone in the container, Asunción briefly inspected the room to see if there was anything else that needed doing, but it looked like all the communication equipment was in place, and even the holographic table and foldable chairs had been unpacked. She sat down, and opened a tactical map of New Hypatia, that flickered to life a few millimeters above the smooth projecting surface.
The situation in the city was tense, and the intel she got from the Concilium Coordinated Command suggested an imminent escalation of the crysis, with military forces of almost every nation converging to the area, and each of the Nomad mothership sending out teams to find out exactly where the Arachne-born AI, Brutus, had come from. That was their assignment too: after the situation in the Durgama region had stabilized, the newly appointed Independent Platoon 404 had been employed by the Nomad Coordinated Command to help with the repair work on Raveneye Station, but, with the start of the blockade and the following exchange of accusations among the Nomads, that had exacerbated the feelings of mistrust between motherships, the mixed nature of their force had pushed the Coordinated Command to assign them to the Hungry Walrus operation as a more impartial source of information.
Black Hand reports showed that Brutus had concentrated its military forces in the Caligo Hexadome while also seizing control of the Patricius Oceanographic Data Center, an Aleph-operated structure. Gathering intel on the rogue IA would surely prove difficult, as both sites were heavily defended by mercenary troops from the JSA and Ikari company; she would have to plan 404's deployments very carefully, especially given the fact that their base camp needed to remain well defended from espionage and hostile action… Edward would take care of that, she decided after a moment of thought.
This time, she would lead from the front.
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