“Major Eisenherz.” The grinning, slick-haired suit extended one articulated, chrome-metal hand. “Johnathon Delaware. Pleasure to meet you.”
Standing in the open corridor, a handful of paces from the door to the Hephaestus’ auxiliary hangar bay, the Seindrive representative looked more like a nanoprojection holo-ad than a real human being, but as she reached out and shook his steel fist, it became immediately clear that the suit was as solid as she was.
“Same.” She nodded, then pushed a smile into her lips. Light caught the silver edge of the flash field-suspended against his chest, flickering and shifting quicksilver logo displaying Seindrive’s trademark razor lines overlaid with the shimmering letters that labeled him as part of the butchered and castrated company’s most promising research cabal, Nerodyne systems.
“I heard about what happened on Oridius, with the Erebus complex.” Everything about Delaware was facade, flash, grin, chrome and plastic. Tessa nodded, took it in stride. It was corporate’s equivalent of a uniform. You got used to seeing it. “I take it your recovery is going well.”
“Not bad, considering I was the only survivor.” She met his eyes evenly. “I was lucky, nobody else got out of that mess alive.”
“Yes, it was a tragedy.” Delaware said quickly, then grinned widely, fakely as he gestured toward the hangar bay. “Ready to see Seindrive’s latest product?”
“Sure.” Tessa couldn’t help the smile that crossed her face then, sure and genuine. “Lets see what kind of rig Seindrive has cooked up this time.” Delaware’s grin turned wry, amused at her slang.
“This way.”
When the hangar door opened, another grin crawled across her face, lingered. In the center of the bay, the main body of the new rig hovered almost five feet off the ground, suspended in air like a foil fan of folded wings. Sharp lines of chrome swept back, dialed sleek to razor-edged points as they crawled across every inch of fuselage, dropped straight to within a foot of the ground at their points on the bottom. The whole thing was still gunmetal gray and signed at the nose by a team of designers– all so new that they hadn’t even put squadron paint on it yet. Delaware caught her grin. “What do you think?”
“She’s beautiful.” Tessa crossed the distance between herself and the rig, took it in, gently ran a hand along the side, marveled at how little it disturbed the air around it as it sat in idle hover, the way it just floated, eerily still and stable. Not even the S-vectoring panels had a visible spread or flex to them. She turned back to Delaware, grinning. “Mind if I take a look inside?”
The suit grinned back, gestured. “By all means.”
The wing was warm to the touch as she swung up onto it, stepped gently across to the canopy and hunched down to peer inside at the snug-looking humanform socket of chrome and light that seemed to fill the entire space, leaving no room for controls, instruments, consoles. She frowned slightly. Only a single thin headset sat in the center of it all, vague and basic looking.
“So how does it fly? Wire?” She glanced back at Delaware. “Where are the controls? The instruments?”
“Completely internalized.” He grinned. “Everything is routed through the synth-neuron gel harness you see in there, and the headset is used as a neural booster to improve speed and feedback quality.” He gestured expansively, indicating the entire rig. “The entire product has been optimized to work with the Kvasir interface, so data transfer will come with a speed and ease that makes pilot handling seamless and reflexive.” Another grin, voice rich with the announcer tones of a sales pitch. “You won’t find a semiatmospheric with better response capability than the Seindrive five Stormfury.”
Tessa blinked, stared back at him for a moment, half hesitant, half confused. “You designed this rig to work exclusively with the Kvasir mind-machine interface?” She stood, an ironic smile playing across her face. “Only a couple of people have undergone the procedure. It’s still in clinical trials, right here.” She tapped the side of her head in soft emphasis.
“For the moment, yes, but not for long. Pilots like yourself are the future!” He closed to within a foot of the fighter, made an all encompassing gesture. “We plan to have at least six squadrons online with Kvasir and the Stormfury within six months.”
“Six months.” She grinned, laughed, squatted on the edge of the rig’s fuselage. “I know that, as a civilian, you don’t get all the up-to the minute loss data that we do,” She made a casual gesture. “But even the most disconnected colonist these days knows we could very well lose the war before then.”
“Maybe, but we’re still human, Major Eisenherz.” He gave her a vaguely optimistic smile. “We have to try.”
She nodded soberly, dropped back to the deck. “True.” She swallowed. “What else has it got?”
“Back-up suspensor landing systems, Nano-organic amorphous ceramic alloy control surfaces, boosted intelligent nanite self-repair systems, Daedalus X ico-bypass quantum hotcoil pods with spacial-translation/transition matrices, the newest in M-FAID argon ion sweep cannon technology, four heavy accelerated plasma repeaters with a one hundred-percent increase in the size and yield of the plasma slugs and a total rate of fire as a quad that outperforms single PD cannons mounted on older Seindrive models.” He paused, grinning, gestured. “She’s also equpped with a pair of overwing N-space sublayer warhead racks, and enough countermeasure security to make it virtually invulnerable to Coralate data infiltration attacks.”
“Impressive.” Tessa raised an eyebrow, grinned. “I’ve heard about the sublayer warheads. They punch through to N-space and emerge periodically to orient themselves until they emerge at or within their target and explode, right?”
Delaware nodded. “The very same.”
“The demos I’ve seen for the sweep cannon technology is impressive too.” She crossed along the side of the fuselage, ran one hand across the smooth surface of the fighter’s nose. “You said the control surfaces are NOACA?”
“That’s right.” He grinned, turned toward the fighter. “Stormfury: slim profile.”
The response was reflexive– in an instant, the fan-wing design had collapsed in on itself, leaving only a slick, blade-like fuselage that seemed improbably thin, sleek. Tessa swallowed, speechless.
“As you can see, the Stormfury is capable of a complete configuration change with no macroscale moving parts.” Delaware stated smoothly, smiling confidently as he continued his pitch. “The majority of the fuselage is self replicating composite nanotechnology.”
“I take it your people solved the cohesion problems of the older Nano Organic control surfaces” Tessa turned back, met his eyes. “Re-entry dispersal, Foreign Nodule Syndrome, that kind of thing.”
“Of course.” He grinned, and every inch of ivory he showed was salesman perfect. “The Stormfury’s systems have been rigorously tested in all kinds of environments, and I can say with a ninety-nine percent assurance that there will be no problems with any of the onboard systems, including the nanomechanical components.”
“Ninety-nine, eh? That’s pretty reassuring.” She looked back at the rig, ran a hand along the blade-narrow edge of the fuselage. “So when do I get to fly it.”
“Uh, soon. Soon.” He lifted his metallic arm, keying through a holographic display that sprung up in his palm. “We’ve scheduled a test flight for tomorrow morning, when the Hephaestus meets up with several other warships in the area.” He pushed through another couple of keystrokes, closed his palm on the projection. “You’ll be flying a demo for the entire mid-forward fleet.”
“Mid-forward.” She nodded approvingly, grinned. “So the Grandbois, the Luguvalium...”
“...The Wu Ang Hok, the Von der Tann IV, a few others you’ve flown with, yes.” He grinned. “It’ll be a regular homecoming for you. Just like old times, I bet.”
Just like old times.
Tessa swallowed. Looked away from the suit’s eyes as the familiar, dark chill came back, sank into her spine.
Just like old times.
