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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 5796098" data-attributes="member: 60965">Found Another Orphan<img src="http://i41.servimg.com/u/f41/17/01/16/56/_back_10.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no credits in my account and nothing particular to interest me on Mars, I thought I would travel about a little and see the void between the worlds. It is a way I have of driving off the melancholy and regulating the circulation.Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly Fall in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every resleeving I attend; and especially whenever my hypodermics get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's heads off – then, I account it high time to get to space as soon as I can.  This is my substitute for Petals and VR. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all Egos in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feeling towards the void with me.  I'll have that written on my tombstone. Yes, I want a tombstone. Give a man his little sentimentalities; though we must outgrow the outmoded clinging to our limited preconceptions of this defective, half-hazard vessels into which we ground our roaming spirits, there are bits here and there that are quaint and entertaining.  Which brings me to my current situation. Lady Lillian, the one to whom the message from one "Helios" portends, dives behind the pseudo-wood bar as delicate spun-glass bottles shatter about her. The figure of liquid silver in the door that I at first thought was the foe of which I was forewarned releases a rapid hail of super-sonic slugs from – if I'm not mistaken – a heavy Remlar-Gorgon Mach10 Ultravelocity Pistol, slivers of metal traveling so fast you can feel the micro sonic-booms of their wake.  My compact DA9 Burstlite does the same, the hail of hyper-velocity needles passing easily through the flimsy prefab walls of Madelaine's House and probably through the next two or three buildings besides.  I can state all this with clear certainty since the physiology, musculature, and neurochemistry of my hard-earned, custom-designed morph allow me to act at a speed far beyond the capabilities of the crude Pods or common genetically-enhanced Splicer morph you see packing the throngs of humanity's habitats in the inner system. To them I am nearly a blur, moving faster than most senses and reactions can track.  The primitive robotic Case morphs that kicked in the back door with their crude assortment of decrepit ballistic weaponry are no exception, relying on volume of fire alone for effect with little more result than pock-marking the heavy synthetics of the tabletop I crouch behind, a tabletop designed to support the weight of a pleasure Pod or two dancing – or doing more expensive things – atop it. The rest of the room doesn't fare as well, but who cares?  I've blasted holes in two of the Cases and the Morph behind me that I think of as Quicksilver has blown another in half, a satisfying spray of gears, wires, and sparks flying out in slow-moving clouds to my highly enhanced perceptions, but Lady Lillian's morph is designed for preternatural levels of persuasion and seduction, not for singing in the lead rain.  My micro-grenade bounces off the head of the one in the door and lands just outside as I cross the room in one fast low-gravity bound, throw the stunned Lillian over my shoulder, and duck under Quicksilver's arm as he lays down an burst of suppressing fire. We're half-a-block down the street – me still carrying Lillian – when the thumb-sized high-explosive grenade goes off, slagging the back half of the building and sending Case fragments and bits of fab sailing in the graceful, slow arc of low-g ballistics.  I finally remove the automatic combat information reduction filters I put on my muse and Ahab promptly responds by informing me that New Sicily's mesh is so overrun by viruses, worms, trojans, DoS attacks,  "terrorAIst" programs, and active hackers, crackers, and scripters of all varieties searching for any exposed target and that leaving my mesh in Active mode is like walking around on stilts in a war zone.The sporadic flashes of explosions, the retina-searing laser-straight lines of beam weapons, darting firefly-tracers and glowing smart-round propellant arcs, and the constant crack and rumble of gunfire saturating the whole visible sphere of New Sicily stretching out before, behind, beside, and above us indicate that a war zone is not far off the mark. Criminal politics in its truest, most honest expression. It's beautiful in its own way.  But I'm not here to play politics, I'm here to go elsewhere.  I let Ahab grant tacticalShared and AR overlay to Lillian and Quicksilver – whose real name seems to be "Davin Newport" according to his MeshID – then flip my mesh access to Hidden as I set Lillian down in the alley by a half-melting building that smells like an overheating nano-recycling plant full of plastic and old Pod morphs and looks as though it was still occupied by its residents when a large-caliber incendiary round slagged it.Lillian's nose wrinkles up at the smell and even that is cute and endearing despite my knowledge that every facet of her morph was designed to elicit such protective, attractive responses. My morph is at the far upper edges of what might be classified as human, but human it yet remains.  As Davin's tacticalShared program syncs, both of my companions are overlaid with a faint blue AR halo that is also relayed to the SmartGuard on my DA9's trigger that will keep me from accidentally shooting them even if they run in front of me as I'm firing on full-auto. I also can shift to the view from their variously-enhanced eyes, the SmartLink on the end of Davin's gun, or the myriad of t-ray, infrared, x-ray, visual, audio, and chemical sensors carried by Lillian's GuardianAngel drone that hovers ten meters above us.  "Where is Ring Four?" I ask the woman I'm trying to protect.  She looks at me suspiciously – but I forgive her instantly thanks to her custom genetics and a decent dose of tailored pheromones besides that make even that look hot – and look at Davin's blue AR halo as his negIndex active camo has rendered him otherwise invisible to our sight."Why are you helping me?"  "Well, pardner, I had Trojan forward Helios' message to you when I got it back at your House," Davin's voice comes in on com over tacticalShared, a strange, faintly twangy accent in his tone.  "I blocked it all since a bunch of worker Cases were suddenly playing hitman and trying to kill me," she said. She quickly calmed herself and there was a brief pause, presumably as she quickly skimmed through the messages her muse had suppressed when the shooting started. "I see. So Helios offered both of you free passage to Extropia if you got me off this rock?"  "You know who this Helios is, ma'am?" Davin's voice twanged.  "Of course, Helios is my-"  At first I think the little girl that bounds around the corner across the street is being chased by the two brutish-looking thugs close behind her, but when she stops and points the hand that isn't carrying a Guardian Systems LS2 "Alley Sweeper" micro-flechette shotgun at the door of a cheap hab, they kick it down for her and they all duck inside, one of the two bodyguards clutching what looks like a nasty, still-bubbling energy-weapon burn on his leg as he does so.  "Neotenic" I say unnecessarily, referring to the child-like morph the individual across the street is wearing. At the same time, Lillian takes a sharp intake of breath that has me – and Davin too by the shift in his posture and attitude I can observe on tacticalShared – ready to kill whatever it is that has her angry or afraid or whatever it is she's feeling. I just want to protect her and dammit all even if it is just her expensive finely-crafted Sylph morph that's manipulating me to making me feel this way.A moment later tacticalShared lights up in yellow and red.  Yellow for danger, red for hostile...</blockquote>

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