Singularity (Chapters 6-7)

SIX _______________________

DEVILS HANDS



ACHERON core room
H hour -3

It took a while to get everyone together, some had been unconscious, some just reluctant, but they all found their way to the Core room. The tension in the air was thick to say the least.
The business-suited man broke the silence first.
“I’m not going to waste your time with useless rhetoric, so let’s...”
“What was your name again?” interrupted Steve, cradling his un-helmeted head in an armoured palm, “I didn’t quite catch it.”
The man, not used to being cut-off midsentence glared for a moment before speaking again.
“That’s because, Mr. Liedecker,” his friendly demeanour returning, “I didn’t say it.”
Steve mumbled something unintelligible and slouched back against the wall, his weary face reflecting the battered condition of his exoskeleton.

“I’m sure you’ve already met my associate,” the man continued, gesturing towards the opposite corner of the room, “he doesn’t have a name as such. I guess you could call it a serial number.”
“Which is?” sighed Steve, trying to speed things up.
“Echo-Zero-Five” growled a voice from the darkened corner. It leaned forward ever so slightly as if to emphasise its meaning, not that it really needed to in the first place.
Steve shuddered mentally when he felt the deep bass tone of its voice in his stomach. He had no doubt in his mind that the Silverback was doing it on purpose.
It was probably enjoying itself.
That thought made him shudder even more.
That same thought obviously hadn’t entered Epps’ mind, he was practically beside himself, eyes wide with childlike amazement as he studied the automaton.
“I can’t believe it. I mean, I thought all the production models were halted mid-construction. Especially after what happened...,” He trailed off awkwardly, eyes dimming at the memory.
“They were,” Riley said after a moment, “which makes this whole situation highly...”
“Fucked?” offered Steve, scratching absently at a gouge in his armour.
“I was going to say illegal, but you’ve got a point,” Riley turned his attention back to the hologram, “let’s get on with it, ok?”
“Straight to the point,” smirked the man, “I like that. Maybe you are the captain after all.”
Riley stared at him venomously by way of a response.

An instant later, a three-dimensional map exploded into life around where the man stood. He manipulated it with subtle gestures of his hands, magnifying a portion that looked just as desolate as the rest. An unornamented plain snap-zoomed into resolution, its breadth corrupted with deep fissures and surrounded by an imposing glacier field.
Steve Liedecker snorted in contempt at the man’s time-wasting holographic theatrics.
“A simple picture would suffice.”
The suited intruder shrugged at the remark and with practised ease and smoothly rolled into his prepared briefing.
“Who I am and who I represent is unimportant at this point of our... venture. The task you are about to carry out for my employer is what you should be more concerned about. Twenty four hours ago my employer lost contact with one of its facilities, Izanami station,” he indicated a point on the display, “here.”
“Shit” cursed Steve, letting his head sag. He knew exactly where this was heading.
“The Acheron is currently the only vessel within range that can offer assistance.”
“There must be a dozen other vessels within a light minute of here. Why not one of those?” spurted Epps.
“Those vessels are inadequately equipped to deal with this...development. I assure you, we would not be having this conversation if there were other options at my disposal. We are out past the line gentleman. For lack of a better phrase, I need your help. ”
“Seems we have you at a loss. What if we refuse?” Asked Epps.
“That’s a good question,” replied the man, “now let me answer your question with another question. What’s to stop me turning the Acheron into a rapidly expanding ball of hot gas?”
He paused momentarily, letting it all sink in.
“What?” Epps replied, practically choking on his bewilderment.
“I was remarking about how I could quite easily turn your vessel into a vapour cloud. Mr Epps, I’ve taken control of this ship from Anni, your Tier 2 Artificial Intelligence. Infiltrated the network and overpowered Mr. Liedeckers security team with my own Class-A combat chassis which I built under your very noses. Now please, pay attention.”
“I, uh...” stuttered Epps.
“Just shut it Epps. I don’t want him to sick his pet on me again” Steve said, exasperated.
“Well, maybe if you hadn’t been preoccupied with beating its fists with your fucking forehead we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Steve didn’t miss a beat.
“Yeah? Lucky your Manufactory didn’t get high-jacked by some shady corporate exec so he could build a Fucking Death-Bot, otherwise we’d be in some real pretty shit right now, hmm?”

Luc’s head turned so fast it was a miracle it didn’t come off at the neck. His eyes burned into Steve with barely suppressed rage.
“Gentlemen,” interjected the suited man, “let’s not waste time laying blame. Maybe you feel I should have phoned ahead to warn you, for all the good it would have done. Do you really think you could have stopped me? Stopped him?”
He gestured at the BattleApe combat chassis, now in the opposite corner of the room from where it had been only a few moments before.
Nobody had seen it move.
The silence that followed was deafening. Steve glowered at Luc, who had found an unbelievably interesting piece of ground to his immediate front to examine.

“Please,” the man began again, “let’s talk facts. Where was I?”
“Vapour cloud.” Luc replied hollowly, still staring at the ground.
“Ah yes, the vapour cloud, I’ll come back to that.”
He walked casually around the pit, his finger moving seamlessly through the empty air, tracing the outlines of meaningless objects that littered the Core room.
“The company is very concerned with the status of one of its key facilities. One project in the facility, to be precise.”
“What kind of project?” Asked Riley.
The man pondered for a moment, weighing up the benefits of including the crew on the information he was privy to.
“What do you know about Quantum entanglement?”
“Next to nothing.”
“Nanoganic constructs?”
“About the same.”
“Coefficient Upload Protocol?”
John just stared blankly back at the last comment.
The man continued wandering around the chamber, “Well then, nothing you need to be too concerned about, really.”

The man’s path around the Core room brought him past where the BattleApe had positioned itself.
Riley watched as the holographic man strolled past his monstrous creation. There was a nod from the man, but the BattleApe had no visible reaction to him.
Riley heard a growl come from the construct as the man moved past its position. It was on the very edge of his hearing, straining against the background hum of the Acheron, but it was definitely there. He looked to see if the others had heard it too. If they had, none of them were shouting about it.
“Moving on,” said the suit, “my employer has requisitioned this ship and crew for the purposes of infiltrating the complex and investigating what has happened. You will assist my associate through whatever means necessary.
I understand that this may all sound doom and gloom, but this task is not without its rewards. I have been authorised to payout your current contracts...”
“We were going to get that anyway,” Riley interrupted, “before you arrived...”
“By a factor of ten.” The man rejoined slowly, cutting John off. “It is very rude to interrupt, Mr Riley. Be mindful of that in the future.”
“Why so much?” Steve asked, “What’s the catch?”
“Discretion.” The Suit responded simply.
“Oh, discretion,” Steve echoed sarcastically, “because so far you’ve been about as discreet as a Cuban-Fucking-Revolution.”
The man shrugged off Steve’s criticism.
“Prudence, circumspection, call it hush-money if you want to. Knock yourselves out, I don’t care. What I do care about is getting this done. The nature of the project is delicate, and you will deliver the desired result. And if you don’t...”
“If we don’t, what?” Steve cut him off.
“Well, Mr Liedecker,” the man replied condescendingly, “my employer likes to make money. And it is cheaper for them to contract you out then it is for them to save face.”
“How exactly do they save face?” John asked, attempting to diffuse Steve’s temper.
“Don’t think the money we’re paying you is the only thing motivating you.”

John felt the change in tone as the suited man laid it all down. Life or death situations did tend to crop up on these deep black runs. Corporate espionage missions and hostile takeovers from prototype machines, however, was a totally new experience for him.
“You’re a smart man, Mr Riley,” the man continued, casting a quick glance at the bristling Steve Liedecker, I have already mentioned the vapour cloud. Now add a crater to that and, well, I’m sure you’ll figure the rest out.”

With that last chilling comment, the holographic man had flickered spectacularly out of existence. The vacuum of his departure had left the members present in awkward silence, none of them feeling the need to move, speak or breathe loudly while the BattleApe still lurked in the shadows.

John was coming to grips with a world ripped out from under him like a tablecloth by a cheap backyard magician. No doubt that next would come the botched card tricks and balloon animals.
But maybe his tilted world was a breath of fresh air compared to whatever reality Epps was in, he looked absolutely gutted.
Steve was at odds with the scene, his face stoic as ever. John wasn’t surprised, really. He figured that after a lifetime of warlike service, Steve was used to not getting his own way. He looked far from impressed with the whole situation and probably imagining ways to regain balance. Ways that involved damage.

The Silverback had walked casually into the dim lighting, easily dominating the centre of the room. It didn’t waste time with theatrics, it didn’t need to. This was the business end of the operation, save the grand gestures and threats for the suits.
“The mission data has been uploaded to your personal files.” The Silverback said to the group. Its voice permeated their consciousness at the most primal level, tearing their thoughts away from the other realities they were distracting themselves with. Countdowns until leave, girls that should have kissed but didn’t, the dinner menu.
“Hopefully it’s got more details then your friend had.” Epps said spitefully.
“He’s no friend of mine,” The Silverback replied after a pause. Everyone present was taken aback by the vehemence of the statement.
“Noted.” Epps said simply, hands held up placatingly.
A holographic blueprint of a structure flickered into life above the holo-pit, the Silverback made a sweeping gesture, encompassing the projected facility.
“This is Izanami Station. One of Jovian Industries outer research hubs. 24 hours ago an anomaly was recorded just before the station went offline.”
“What kind of anomaly?” Epps asked.
“An anomalous one,” The Silverback replied sarcastically, “any more intelligent questions?”
Epps dipped his head in defeat, miming ‘no’ to nobody but himself.

“From what data we have, there has been at least one casualty. Due to the isolated location, there is a high likelihood of more.”
“Jovian employ any families there?” Riley interrupted, out of nothing other than his own personal interest. It wasn’t uncommon for large corporations to drag whole families out to these outposts if only to increase production output by single digits. Sons-of-bitches.
“Including logistical elements, support staff and security…,” The BattleApe tilted its head slightly, calling up the data internally, “57 souls. No listed families.”
Riley didn’t like the way it had used the word souls, but despite himself whistled and leaned further back in his chair; impressed with the size of the work force for this installation. The lack of families was a small consolation; the last thing he wanted to imagine was separating them.

It was obvious to the casual observer that the Acheron was massive. Similar in size and tonnage to an aircraft carrier or cruise ship, but in this case, size didn’t mean a thing. Those vessels only had to travel a few thousand (not million) miles before resupply and they definitely didn’t need to be pressurised with oxygen. Throw in being surrounded by infinite nothingness in every direction and the similarities from that point onwards become few and far between.

This was a resources game. The Acheron could support an extra 237 people for about as long as a plastic bag would give John clean air.
“We don’t have the provisions for that many people,” John said. Obvious, he knew, but more so he could get his own head around the situation, “it’s an 8 month haul just to Phobos, we’d run out of air before we even got halfway there, let alone Earth…”
The word Souls found its way back into Johns thoughts, now accompanied by a new word; Triage.
“But this isn’t a rescue mission,” John said slowly, “is it?”
The Silverback said nothing for what felt like a long time. Its face betrayed almost nothing at all, that much was to be expected, of course. The thick armour was designed to defeat bullets, not impersonate feelings. But the incline of its head, the posture of its shoulders, the almost human way that his eyes locked onto Riley’s. It looked at him with what? Vindication?
“No.” It replied quietly.
Riley scrutinized its face as it spoke but the look disappeared before the word had finished echoing through shadows of the Core Room, the dispassionate mask returned.
“Our objective is silo 81,” the schematic lifted higher above the Holo-Pit as a previously unseen portion began to animate, pixel by pixel, into existence. An entire labyrinth manifested out from a central shaft that penetrated deep into the ice below the small surface facility. Generator rooms, accommodation areas, manufacturing facilities and other things that Riley couldn’t identify appeared as the schematic continued to grow, “it is located near the secondary research centre. We will have to infiltrate through multiple check points in order to get there.”
“Wouldn’t want to make things too easy would we?” interjected Steve, apparently taking interest in the conversation again.
“No,” the BattleApe replied flatly, sarcasm forgotten now, “however, assuming that lockdown isn’t in effect, they might not even be active.”
“But even if they were, my boys can handle themselves against station security,” Steve gave his battle-plate a tap, “these suits are old, but they’ll take a lot of punishment.”
“It’s not that simple; the security system operates via a tiered arrangement. It will only bring what resources it needs online to counter a specific threat,” The Silverback stared directly at Steve as he spoke, “The system is adaptive. Human security teams will be the lowest tier, the least dangerous. That love tap I gave you is the least you have to be worried about.”

Riley half choked and spat out a mouthful of Coke at the BattleApe’s last comment. An uneasy silence filled the room as Riley and Epps waited to see what Steve would do. Calling anything into play regarding his professionalism would put a man on tenuous ground. Saying he wasn’t a threat had put lesser men in intensive care.
Steve Liedecker found his way to his feet with some difficulty, the abused servomechanisms of his exoskeleton whining in protest. The grimace on his face matched the condition of the tattered battle-plate on his chest.
“So, what do I call you?”
The BattleApe regarded Steve for long moments before he said anything in response.
“My serial number is Echo-Zero-Five.”
Steve waved off the comment.
“Yeah, we got that. But me and team aren’t about to go on some clandestine mission with something that has no name, or doesn’t exist for that matter.”
Again, silence from the hulking construct. Steve wondered briefly if the machine actually had a name. He knew it had a model and series number, just like he had a first, middle and last name. However, nobody called him all of those at the same time, all the time. No one except his mother, that is and only when he’d screwed up royally.
“I’ll call you Tin-man or scrap-metal, unless you come up with something better.”
“You can call me E.”
“E,” Steve repeated, he moved closer to the towering golem, the height difference was impressive, but it didn’t diminish the venom in Steve’s voice as he brought his face to within inches on E’s own, “what are you E? Some kind of jumped up puppet? You walk and talk and pretend to think like a real boy?”
“Something like that.” E replied, impassively.
“You got the drop on us before, I’ll give you that,” Steve said levelly, “but understand me when I tell you; if you ever pull a stunt like what you did down on C-Deck, I’ll send you to whatever God you believe in. If you even believe in one at all. Are we clear?”

Epps and Riley sat there slack jawed in shock at Steve’s comment. Maybe the blow to the head he’d suffered had knocked something loose. Even if it hadn’t, he probably wouldn’t have his head attached at the neck for much longer anyway.
E considered Steve’s words before responding.
“Crystal.” E answered, grinning slowly.
Steve, satisfied with E’s response, nodded and sat back down again. Tension flowed out of the room like a waning tide. Epps, who hadn’t realised he had been holding his breath, exhaled slowly, relieved he didn’t have to be at ground zero for David and Goliath’s round two grudge match.

Something had happened between these two veterans, Riley was at a loss as to what exactly, but he assumed that they’d laid out some ground rules. He didn’t expect for a second that they’d play nice, but as long as they saved their own mutual destruction until after the job, it was all the same to him.
“We have a very small window to complete this mission. Prep your teams, we need to begin immediately.”
“I’m assuming,” Steve began, “that you have a plan for our insertion? That shuttle we have ain’t no Dropship. It’ll take either you or my team, not both at the same time.”
“You’ll insert alone,” E said derisively, “I’ll meet you there.”

THE CORE room had been empty for a while now. The surrounding hallways deserted; Riley had made sure of it. Vigilantly checked for signs of life, withdrawn the hatch quietly and locked the manual release. He’d used a well practised lie to the others, stating he needed to bring some of the tertiary systems back online and would be a while. Best to leave him to it. E had looked at him after he’d said it. Looked right through him. But he didn’t know, nobody knew. Riley had been careful.
He slid a small panel aside on the holo-pit. Reaching inside, his fingers found a small number pad. Riley entered the code without looking, he didn’t need to. He slid the panel back and waited.
Time passed mutely, the Acheron humming faithfully in the background. Purifiers whined, distant engines throbbed, fluorescent globes buzzed. And just as the rest of the Acheron hadn’t been idle, neither was the holo-pit. A series of interlocks and servomechanisms were running through pre-programmed routines.

A pneumatic hiss finally exhaled as the floor surrounding the base of the pit depressed with a jolt and withdrew slightly. The projector housing rose with a stutter into the ceiling, panels rattling awkwardly from the uncoordinated motors. Where the holographic projector had been a savage hole now remained. Something moved in the darkness.
Riley watched patiently as it rose from the gaping maw. The flat sides reflected sickly light from its dusty surfaces. Tangled wires and screens hung haphazardly from any available mounting point. Shielded piping coiled around it, cradling it in a bionic embrace. The device looked like a mechanical cocoon.
It was more like a steel casket.

Riley swiped his thumb across a biometric panel. Internal locks disengaged with a clunk before the cover separated and slid slowly apart.
Riley looked mournfully at the shivering form inside. Desecrated by tubes and cables, it laid there, curled foetus-like and vulnerable. Painful lumps and disfigurations appeared where the various apparatus had penetrated the pale white flesh. There were no sweeping effects across the skin now, no projected gull grey freckles or highlights. This body was tangible. She was tangible.
Anni turned her head slowly and looked reproachfully at Riley. Even though her face was slick with the amniotic fluid she lay in, John could tell she had been crying.

“Hey there kiddo,” he said sadly, trying on the best smile he could manage, “how ya holding up?”

















“An intelligence of this type had never been developed before. The prototypes were promising. They were not inferior intellects as the company had everyone believe, but an evolution, a union of machine efficiency and awareness.
We have had no exposure to any intelligence other than our own, so obviously, the only roadmap we had was us, and it was this one that we used. Willingly I might add. The excitement was palpable; of course the warning signs were ignored.
And in our arrogance, our misplaced perception of control, we green-lit the project...
…We ignored the implications of a machine intelligence modelled on human awareness.
We ignored the fact that our most powerful instinct is fear.”

-Irvine Report 2053












SEVEN­_______________________

DIRTSIDE



UPPER ATMO, EUROPA
H hour

A mechanical comet plummeted towards the desolate ice fields of the Galilean satellite, flame erupting from it as it traced an aggravated scar across the horizon. Smaller pieces ripped away by the ferocious atmosphere sought individual trajectories, burning out like flares from a fighter jet, each losing their battle to gravity and friction. Tell-tale plumes of ash and smoke blossomed in the shuttles wake as it rode the sonic shockwave towards the rushing ice.

The interior of the shuttle convulsed with the violence of re-entry. The security team gripped their crash harnesses with white knuckled fury as the cabin tried to shake itself to pieces. Veterans of multiple combat drops in their previous life, they knew better than to not wedge themselves against something, Dentists were a hard thing to come by out beyond the line.
“Jesus!” Jamie snarled as a massive jolt shook the compartment, “we’ll be fucking parachuting to the drop zone if this keeps up!”
“She will hold together,” Aleksey over-articulated, patting the hull “My mother worked on production line. Very strong.”
“Your mother or the shuttle?” Jamie quipped.
“She would break you in half,” Aleksey smiled, holding up his finger and thumb, “like little twig.”
“Aww, don’t talk dirty to me Alex. You know it’s been a while.”
The big man laughed above the roar of the descent, his suit’s shoulders mimicking the movements awkwardly.
“She’d probably eat me!” Jamie added, making Nizienko laugh even louder, if it were possible.
“Maybe not you,” Aleksey half chuckled, “but definitely Kai, she likes cute things.”
Sato was sitting across from the pair, looking out the viewport. He sighed quietly and glanced at the weapon stowed in the rack next to his crash harness.
“You won’t be calling me cute when I cut loose with this baby.”
“The Yak-B?” Jamie replied, incredulous, “why do you even bother with that paper weight?”
“Liedecker said we’re rolling in heavy.”
“Steve always says we’re rolling in heavy. He’s ex commando, if there wasn’t a smoking crater in their grid-square then they hadn’t arrived yet. We got our MS-80’s, what else could we possibly need?”
“We’ll see.” Kai replied simply, looking once more at the weapon.

Four dull grey barrels glinted in the shaky light that stuttered in time to the rocking cabin. Once upon a time in what had been named Russia it may have been slaved to a helicopter gunships targeting computer. Compared to modern electrically operated assault rifles, is now only fit to be a museum piece.
Built to pummel targets to dust, nothing about it boasted cosmetic appeal. Its gas-operated rate of fire would bankrupt a third world country and the weight would crush an unsuited man. But for a purest, these things just made it more attractive.
“Maybe I should carry it,” Aleksey rumbled.
“Why?” Kai asked, temper flaring.
“Here we go” Jamie sighed, rolling his eyes.
“The big Russian guy has to carry the Gatling gun, is that it?”
“I told you not to say anything man” Jamie whispered to Aleksey.
“What? The little Asian guy can’t carry the big gun? Maybe I should have a sword instead. Jump backwards into trees and shit? Would that be stereotypical enough for you?”
“No,” Nizienko replied, “you just look like little child with a big school bag."
Jamie smacked Nizienko across the back of the head, glaring at the big Russian.
“Shutup before he gives us all the shit jobs, would you?” Jamie hissed. Pissing off his squad leader was the furthest thing from his mind. Given the right reasons, the only thing that would limit the reprisals was Kai’s imagination.
“Looks good on him,” came a low voice from the opposite side of the cabin.
Kai redirected his attention to the corner where John Byrnes sat, the suggestion of a grin on the edge of his face as he looked out through the armoured portal. The fiery exterior licked at the glass and threw him into deep flickering relief. Much like everything Kai knew of the man, he was wreathed in fire and violence.

“Never again” had been John’s reply to Steve Liedecker when he was offered the position of squad leader. Steve had simply nodded and given it to Kai instead. Kai could never shake the feeling that Steve had left Byrnes in Kai’s squad to watch out for them.
Kai didn’t know much about the man, but what he did know made him happy to have him along for the ride. Multiple rotations on the frontier for the Canadian military had made him a reliable and tenacious if quiet soldier. Kai had long suspected that wasn’t always the case.

John turned and gave Kai a curt nod before returning to his thoughts, once again staring out the window. Kai felt the need to talk to him, establish some kind of rapport, but where could he go from; “so, you watched the world end?”.
Liedecker cut those thoughts short as his voice abruptly broadcast across the team’s internal frequency. Kai almost thanked him for the intrusion.

“We’re about ten minutes out. We’ve got nothing on the thermal and no transmissions of any kind. Not even a beacon. The spooks must want this place kept nice and tight,” a particularly savage blow rocked the shuttle and the team grinned as they heard Steve reprimand the unlucky pilot, he continued a moment later after a suitable amount of cursing.
“You’ve been briefed. We get in there, secure whatever it is this machine wants and we exfil. No fucking around, no questions. We don’t know enough about what it is we’re up against so expect the worst.
We can’t risk the shuttle, so once we’re dirtside, we’re on our own. So you keep an eye on that BattleApe thing. You saw what it did to us. If it tries the same thing again, he comes back as fucking scrap metal. Clear?”

The last comment brought a smirk to everybody’s face, the situation was bad enough without having the humiliation of cooperating with a machine that up until a short time ago, had been their enemy.
Each of them would have been happy for some payback, but none more so than Steve Liedecker. They would happily wait their turn while he had first serve.
He was from the old school, and these things ran deep.
He never reminded anyone about just where he’d been. They all knew the score. The European insurgency, Pakistan.
The Fall.
He walked away from that.
When they had told him to take a commission or retire, he’d politely told them to fuck off.

Asking the world to stop turning would have been a simpler task then telling Steve to give up the soldiering game, the man was at odds with the world he existed in, clearly misplaced by a few centuries. He would have been more at home storming the ramparts of an ancient castle, battle-axe in hand. Instead, he had to make do with guided tactical munitions and assault rifles.
Such was life.

Forced retirement and civilian recruitment into private security had it perks, the exoskeletons would grant him a few more years and these little excursions would tie him over. But ultimately, it was a slow death for the seasoned veteran.
A particularly vicious patch of turbulence jolted Steve out of his reverie, he clipped the pilot across the back of the head with a snarl.
“Hit me again and see what happens,” growled Riley as he wrestled with the controls.
“Stop bitching and get us on the ground already. Then you can fly as badly as like.”
“You mean like this?” John asked, letting go of the control yoke. The shuttle banked wildly, engines screaming. Steve’s hands flew up reflexively, trying to brace himself inside the cockpit.
“Bloody Hell!”
“So you going to shut-up and sit down now?” John queried as he wrenched the ship back onto its entry vector.
“Yeah, alright…” Steve replied begrudgingly, strapping himself into the crash harness.

Silence gripped the form as it floated, suspended in the darkness. Above it lurked the silhouetted hull of the Acheron, silent and purposeful. Below it, the white body of Europa. Horizon to curved horizon of ice fields, mile-wide fissures and impact craters. His eyes missed nothing, however, for hidden in plain sight was a death-world. Deserts of granite-hard ice, temperatures low enough to liquefy oxygen and an absolute remoteness in almost perfect contrast to its beauty.

E hung there in the black, eyes tracking the shuttle as it tore a flaming wound across the Europan sky. It had been making tedious progress towards the drop site for some time now. That much was to be expected, of course. Things happened much slower when people were involved. They weren’t able to match the suicidal re-entry vectors that his body was tailor-made to endure.
It did give him time to appreciate his surroundings.
Had he been so inclined, he could have shushed the throng of electronic returns on his sensor-suite and waited in absolute silence.
But such sentiments had long since grown tiresome; the subconscious portion of his mind would’ve just focused on heuristic probabilities.
He noted the readout on his internal clock and took a moment to take in his surroundings, cross-checking his position against the most suitable entry vector.

It was time.

A puff of exhaust spun him slowly into position, laying his back towards the ground. A longer, harder burn fired to adjust his velocity and the awesome bulk of the Acheron rocketed past, pulling hard. But it wasn’t accelerating away from him. Like a ball on a line it swung in its geosynchronous position, the invisible thread of gravity holding it in place.

He was the one moving away.

E was falling. His velocity no longer enough to keep him from the moon’s grasp. The Acheron continued to withdraw into the darkness until only the artificial range of his electronic eyes could see it.
And with fingers of certainty, Europa’s thin atmosphere reached up and claimed its prize.

Its prodigal son had returned.

"HOLD ON!" was all Riley had time to scream before he threw the antique shuttle into brutal turn.
Steve tried to ask what was going on but had the wind knocked from his lungs as the shuttle rolled upside down and plunged into a steep dive then another banking turn. He gritted his teeth and tried to recall his high-G manoeuvre training, contracting his stomach, fighting the blackout that was coming.

Riley yelled something at him like a man trying to lift too much weight, his flight suit had inflated to stop the blood rushing from his brain. Steve focused again on what John had said, processing the information.

They’d been painted.

The shrill alarm from the sensor suit had only blared for an instant before John had pulled the shuttle into these punishing turns. Steve hated fly boys, a pack of arrogant wankers if you asked him. But he gave credit where it was due. Riley was one of the better ones.
Something on the ground had them lit up with Radar or Lidar and it was only a matter of time before it swatted them out of the sky. This was a shuttle, not a fighter craft.
“What’ve we got?” Steve growled from gritted teeth.
“We’re painted,” Riley said simply. He was focusing on other things, “something on the horizon. It’s got us triangulated.”
“Missiles?” Steve asked as he started checking the sensor screen himself.
Riley jinked the craft left and something flashed past the right viewport. Steve tried to blink the afterimage out of his eyes as Riley screamed at him.
“Does that look like a fucking missile?”

Steve quickly assessed the readout on the sensor suite. Some sort of electromagnetic weapon. One hit from it, or even near-miss would short the electrics, maybe even touch-off the fuel. They’d either crash, dead-stick, or explode.
“EMP.” He said simply.
So much for options.
“Great,” Riley replied, taking in the implications instantly, “prep your team for a hot-drop.”
“At this altitude?” Steve choked by way of reply, “are you insane?”
Steve braced himself as the shuttle rolled into another steep dive and series of turns.
“You either jump out now and possibly die,” John snarled, “or we all stay together and definitely die!”
As if to emphasise his point a painfully bright beam obliterated a section of sky that, until a moment before, the shuttle had been occupying.
“Either way,” Riley glanced over his shoulder, “you’ll be kissing dirt shortly.”

Riley was trying to get them below the arc of whatever weapon system was trained on them, it had barely missed them that time. The BattleApe was right, it was only a matter of time before the installation’s security system anticipated their next move.
“I’ll Prep for a hot-drop,” Steve said levelly. He wasn’t happy about it, but he’d rather take his chances in free-fall.
The alarm wailed again and Steve’s eyes darted back to the display; proximity alarm, his heart sank.
“Missiles!”
“We’d already be dead if they were missiles, that’s something else. What’s the vector?”
“It’s coming from behind us. Fast, real fast.”

Steve found and pulled up a feed from the Acheron; hundreds of kilometres above them, high definition cameras swivelled into position and began broadcasting information to the endangered shuttlecraft. Steve wondered momentarily why Anni wasn’t keeping tabs on them. A simplified tactical overlay showed the shuttle and the unknown contact, the almost vertical trajectory of the projectile-track showed that it would miss them, but barely.
“Time?” Riley growled over the groaning cockpit.
“Five seconds.” Steve answered as he slammed his palm down on the General Alarm button, behind him in the passenger compartment, his team would be bracing themselves. Either that or they would become man-sized armoured projectiles.
“Brace!” Riley choked out like a man punched in the stomach; initiating a hard roll and dive manoeuvre, discharging a blazing stream of Infra-Red flares and Radar reflecting chaff in his wake. Phosphorous smoke drifted lazily downwards, framing the shuttle with angelic white wings. The scene lasting but an instant before the trailing object exploded through it.

The shuttle rocked violently as it blitzed past them, the shockwave and turbulence of its wake setting off another series of alarms as Riley fought for control. Whatever this thing was, it was in a hurry.
Steve ignored the shouts over the comm from his squad and focused again on the Acheron feed. He called up a pixelated image of the target. It took a moment to discern it against the heat wash from the fiery contrail. It took another moment for his mind to dismiss the impossible scene it was witnessing.
Steve almost half smirked. Almost.
Falling backwards at nearly 60,000kph without a re-entry vehicle, was what looked to be a man.
“Son-of-a-bitch.”

E did his best to ride out the cruel re-entry track the Metis had picked for him. He had withdrawn himself almost completely from his external sensoria, his perception of the outside world dwindled to that of a cave-diver. The electronic equivalent of being deaf and blind as the fiery wash of re-entry enveloped him.

The overlay he’d hacked from the Acheron was his only link to the overall tactical situation while dropping. Basic would’ve been a generous title for it considering the level of information that was usually available to him. He could have worked with less; the heuristic nature of the Metis could project with unnerving accuracy with even the most basic of input.
He spun up the T-Core.

It analysed the range, output and accuracy of the defensive EMP emitter that was targeting the Acheron’s shuttle. Another path played out, cross-referencing that data against known models and identifying vulnerable sections. He shuffled a separate portion of his awareness to develop a working model of the stations security layout, protocols and probable weapon emplacements. Finally, he tasked another subroutine to infiltrate the shuttle’s sensor array through an unsecure navigation node.

Approximately three nanoseconds had passed.

The Metis devoured the data, instantly developing pathways of action. From the limited evidence available, it projected seventy-eight possible emplacements (further input pending) with a ninety-two per cent chance that the device in action was a Rencorp TRS or Fushikawa EMSAT.
E ignored the option to peruse the product line-ups for 2094, or read the mission statements from both companies.
The hack from the Acheron pinged him and he immediately linked in with it. A moment later, through eyes hundreds of kilometres above him he observed another flare lance across the landscape towards the embattled shuttle.

E’s awareness instantly erased all probable turret emplacements bar two; the hacked node from the shuttle had been unable to provide the vital triangulation necessary to target the now confirmed EMSAT emitter. The other slivers of consciousness offered nothing E could use to confirm with one hundred per cent certainty.

He committed a further two cycles of runtime to assess further options. He needed to lockdown the position of this turret before it turned his rabbit into a scorching trail of shattered heat shield and body parts.
In the meantime he removed the safety interlocks on his fuel cell and flash charged the capacitors connected to his primary weapon. He cancelled the temperature warning that appeared in his field of view. He was about to kiss dirt on an Ice-world, overheating was the least of his concerns. Finally, his altimeter chimed.

Showtime.

A mental impulse contracted his blast-shield into its stored position and spun E around until he was facing the rushing ground. He noted his airspeed had dropped significantly with the increased drag, G-forces had risen above thirty, but still well within his chassis safety limits.
He scanned the target area against his existing overlays. It offered him nothing new as far as hard data went. But something pestered him from below his normal levels of awareness.
Intuition.

It drew his eyes to the northern most turret emplacement. He battled with the notion for a moment, willing it to offer something, anything that would give him any more certainty than what the Metis had already offered. It was, of course, a wasted notion as he was nearly always left in this situation; Relying on a hunch.
All outcomes seemed to flow towards the northern emplacement and E made his decision. The T-core offered E an estimated targeting solution, he accepted it and unpacked his primary.

The gauntlet on his right arm blossomed like mechanical origami. His hand locked closed and depressed unnaturally, its final position resembling the fore grip of a pump-action shotgun. Where his hand had been, a snub-nosed barrel extended, glowing menacingly. More panels across his arm and back extracted themselves as he prepared to fire, revealing capacitors and heat syncs that glowed with barely contained energy. Static discharges arced excitedly across exposed power conduits and armour as the charge reached firing strength.

E braced himself as best as one could in free-fall, confirmed his target once more and triggered the weapon system.
Two things happened within a split second of each other.
The first was the airspeed indicator on E’s visual display dropping to virtually zero.
The Second was the complete annihilation of a camouflaged mk IV Fushikawa EMSAT Pulse emitter. Accelerated to over 100 kilometres per second by a series of superconductive magnets; the Tungsten Carbide projectile hit it like a freight train carrying a 5 thousand pound bomb, throwing out a ragged shockwave of crushed componentry and armour.

E only had a few moments to savour the destruction wrought by his rail-gun before his cooling system overloaded and initiated a hard override. He had just enough time before complete shutdown to note, with some dissatisfaction, his new trajectory and project an impact point. He could’ve easily ignored the override, but would risk irreparable damage in doing so. The deviation from the Metis was inside acceptable margins.
He gave in to the black.
Power seeped from his cortex and his electronic perception of the outside world dwindled again, his own feeling of identity faded to a tiny flicker of light. E imagined the distant grip of gravity reassert itself, imagined the whistle of air, the rushing ground.
He imagined a smile.

And for the second time, E fell.