Stepping off one of Affinity’s internal transits, my heels clack on the metal floor as I walk to my personal quarters. I need to prepare for this, I’ve been waiting for any actionable intelligence for what seems like forever. I only got information about this orb relic right before I got to the auction, which was part of the reason why I was so impatient.
One of the luxuries of a megalith class ship is the size of the living spaces, you aren’t confined to a single room as you are on a smaller vessel and it is much more economical than implementing substorage rooms for any wanted extra space. My personal quarters are about 2000 cubic meters, leaving more than enough room for a wastefully spacious bedroom, study, lavatory, and lounge. Even with about three-thousand personnel onboard, everyone stationed on Affinity has a minimum 1000 cubic meter living space. Living and working on a megalith is an interesting dynamic, there are facilities for sports and common areas such as bars and restaurants in addition to agricultural facilities and research labs. It is as if the people living on Affinity live in a little city of their own, slipping on and off ship to whatever worlds they please on the provided slip crafts. As long as they are back on ship during their scheduled duty times, they are free to live as they wish during their personal time. Most of the personnel live on ship in the provided living spaces, but all are free to commute using the provided slip crafts. The slip crafts, in addition to all food, drink, and amenities are free of charge to the personnel. To work on a megalith is a sought-after profession, as not many people acquire the wealth to acquire and command such vessels, so the available personnel slots are relatively few. All this being said, the benefits of providing thousands of people with livings spaces, access to a ludicrously expensive fleet of slip craft, and a thriving onboard ecosystem, is that I have a crew that is happy to bend over backwards to please me. My maintenance crews are diligent, my militia is driven, and my scientists and consultants are intelligent and engaged.
‘Jason, I need you to deploy recon sensors and start prepping ground teams to retrieve the relic on the planet we got intel from a couple hours ago. I’ll be up to the command deck in a little while,’ I comm. Jason is my operational supervisor, he handles forward ground teams and tactical missions.
‘I was only sent information regarding the location of the relic, how many people do we need here? Recon sensors should be up and broadcasting by the time you get to the command deck,’ he comms.
‘Three teams of one hundred should be more than enough to secure the relic and bounce, it’s just a relatively unprotected religious group. We will require some special cargo transport; the relic cannot be handled normally. I’m sending you details, have something prepared by the time I get to the deck,’ I comm. It’s unusual that Jason wasn’t sent this information already, oh well, he should be prepared by the time I get there. Entering my quarters, I walk up the stairs to my bedroom and then to the conjoined dressing and bathroom. I change out of my clothes from the introductions, not particularly suitable for commanding a deck of officers, but appropriate given my industry, flowing semi-transparent gown, stilettos, and such. I look at the mirror that covers the back wall of the dressing room, it reminds me how lucky I am. After having my body mutilated, ugly and scarred, I never forget to be grateful. I look young, beautiful, and as attractive as any of the girls on display at the auction. Edited genes accounted for, no one looks this good at my age of 739. All I can assume is that the relic I was touched by has lasting effects. Sometimes I wonder just how long those effects will last. Life is fleeting, even with advanced gene editing, medicine, and therapies, the most the human race has managed to squeeze out of one body is 1200 years, with quality of life declining slowly in the last 300 years. A consciousness can be copied but not transferred. The rich and the powerful can replicate their memories and personalities and everything that makes them who they are, but in the end, it still feels like dying and being replaced by someone just like you. Despite the dark fate that awaits us all, I plan on enjoying and utilizing every moment I’ve got. Right now, hundreds of years of my hard work are paying off; the empire I’ve built is finally serving its intended purpose.
Taking my commander’s uniform out of its compartment I start to suit up. I’m strapping up my boots when Jason lets me know the ground teams are ready. ‘Valerie, those ground teams are ready to go. Drafting for the relic transport container is done and it’s in the fabricator now. It should be done in a few minutes.’
‘Thank you for the update, I’m on my way over,’ I comm. Finishing with my boots, I stand up and go to exit my quarters. The administrative internal transport has an access point right outside my quarters, I only have to wait seconds for the access to open, revealing the inside of one of many transports. I step in and send a destination to the transport computer. These transports run on several intersecting ellipses distributed all throughout Affinity, they travel extraordinarily fast, requiring that they be treated with the same inertia dispelling technology as linear spacecraft. As a result, I’m only standing in the transport for a few seconds before the doors open and before me is the main command center.
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The entire command center is designed to display the 360-degree field of view being captured by the recon sensors on the spherical interior of the room. The deck is transparent minus its edges and corners to enable you to know where the deck is and still see through to the displays. The deck extends into the middle of the spherical room, fully immersing and providing proper perspective for those on it.
“Dalton, I want a full introduction to this planet, specifically the area surrounding the religious group’s base of operations and the location of the relic. Then I want an in-depth look at the one hundred meters surrounding where the relic is,” I say. Dalton handles my field recon and air support, he’s a bit eccentric but he is second to none when it comes to manipulating a large group of drones for a strategic operation. He was bred for the job, his mind is impeccable, he handles simultaneous focus points and complex directives with ease.
“Give me twenty seconds and I’ll have your tour of the place started,” he says. It doesn’t take much longer than his estimate before I have the full planet sprawling out before me. We are cruising at an altitude of seven kilometers at a speed of seven kilometers per second. I won’t see the whole planet, but we’ve had an AI scan the planet in its entirety and it picked out the highlights. After each point of interest, the view switches to the next recon drone. It takes about twenty minutes of watching the feed to go through all the points of interest.
“And now for the up close and personal,” says Dalton as the view switches to a slow-moving stealth drone moving closer to a temple-like structure surrounded by an expanse of low-tech dwellings.
“The relic transport is fabricated, ready to deploy as soon as you feel like you’ve seen enough here,” says Jason, coming up from behind me.
“Alright, I’ll let you know, I shouldn’t need long,” I tell him. I can see the relic through the gaps in the pillars.
“Jason, have this structure scanned for integrity, we’re going to need to take the roof off this place, only temporarily, but I don’t want anything crumbling when it comes off. Go ahead and send in one of the three teams, I want them quickly deployed to the stairs of the temple, we are using nonlethal rounds, incapacitate only. Secure the area around the relic then send in the relic transport and have that roof removed once we get the scan back,” I say. This is going to be a quick and easy raid.
‘Make this clean people, no funny business here,’ I comm, switching to the mission comm line. These people don’t need to be fucking around, this is my moment.
‘Alright, you heard the lady, Alpha team, you’re up, Jack and Meredith, take your people and secure the relic. Everyone else, you’re watching the stairs,’ Jason comms.
We’re watching everything unfold right in front of us, it doesn’t take but another thirty seconds for the militia transport to get down to the stairs, the team files out ten at a time. Eighty of them file out across the stairs, and the remaining twenty jog into the temple. It takes only a couple seconds for some of the locals to realize what’s going on. As soon as they do, they start rushing the temple. The front line of defense starts firing, dropping the locals as they run. It’s only a few people at first but after a few minutes there’s a mob forming outside a perimeter the militia has established.
‘Temple is secure, we’ve got the relic surrounded, only a few locals inside. We’re ready for extraction.’
Displacement vessel is in place, scan came back a go, and there we go. The roof to the temple is gone, relic transport is inbound. The relic transport gets there a few seconds later, slowly lowering a large metal container over the pedestal the relic is positioned upon. The doors to the bottom of the container have teeth. When the container fully encapsulates the relic and pedestal, the teeth slowly close, digging through the earth under the pedestal. As soon as the container is sealed, the transport vessel is gone, rocketing back up into the atmosphere, it’ll be back to Affinity as soon as it escapes orbit and slips back. The displacement vessel returns the roof to the temple and Alpha team starts to file out of the temple, their carrier pulling back around, boarding ramp open. One of the locals in the back of the mob pulls out a gun and he manages to get a shot off before anyone can see it. The shot hits one of the militia right in the center of their breast plate, harmless, all its kinetic energy absorbed and stored. The man with the gun gets disabled a moment after the shot is fired. The rest of the locals all start throwing stones at the carrier and the militia, but everyone is loaded up in just a few more seconds and off the carrier goes, on its way to outer orbit where it can slip back to Affinity.
Mission complete, now for the good part…