Original Fan Fiction. E.Vent. Shadows of Ghosts [Prolouge]

[Dunne]

E.Vent.
Shadows of Ghosts

Dramatis Personae
Apperance in order
Lieutenant Shall (one time use character, never appears again)
Commander Jackson Gray (Father like figure to protagonist)
Jade Alana (Eughent, IE reference to Rei Ayanami in Evangelion in a way, becomes involved with Mark Kardon in a relationship)
Mark Kardon (hot shot loudmouth "Drooper" pilot, good friend to protagonist, becomes involved with Jada Alana)
Cale Macrynthl (Protagonist, an orphan and ward of the military)
Salen-no last name yet- (Protagonist's girlfriend, very unique in her own ways, surfer girl)


E.Vent.
Shadows of Ghosts




Preface and some Thoughts
Space is something we tend to ignore because we assume that we are satisfied with what we know about it. Well, if we are in the time when we have mapped out our entire planet, decided to finally conserve and clean it, mapped out our gene code and quit with our squabbles of cultural differences and religion, then wouldn?t we be looking up at the heavens and decide to expand ourselves over it and explore it further than our telescopes and unmanned probes have ever reached? If we hade what we needed, couldn?t we, wouldn?t we, go out there and try to see what else lies beyond Pluto and beyond, wear Pioneer 10 has actually touched the stars and further? Damn well we would!! Of course one thing for sure we need to solve our overpopulation problems first so then we should colonize then we should worry about all that exploring. But of course we always send the machine first then the animal then the man. So far robots have developed farther than Deep Blue, Cray, Sanio, Aibo and such simple man helpers and of course farther than the first legendary G5?s break thru in fiber optic communication and circuitry which we have applied here in our present time thru out all communication and technologies
With robots running tasks like accounting and basic maintenance and manufacturing and food processing, leaps in technology have been achieved: Communication has fast forward beyond county wide communication of cellular units to real time communication between the stars, the elusive theoretical hyper drive is created called, the Hyper Warp Fold Drive, lasers are used as weapons and still are applied in research, and the all sought for shield generator is made and the first sentient computer is created. Space flight is as common day as a plane ride and there are personal flying vehicles like cars for the general populace.
Health has increased and the cancer gene has been found and been destroyed. The common cold?s code is broken and prescription medication is made for every ailment. Even birth control is available and affordable for both sexes and can be used on and off on will by medium of a simple vaporization injection and some simple mind control. Breeding for jobs is done with injections too, and geniuses are more frequent and range from every class. Nanotechnology is a new advantages business and industry producing billions of new products every year for the consumer and megacorp industrial and military sectors.
Since the beginning of when the countries of Earth formed The United Earth Alliance or The U.E.A., had the race to live in space began. Two major leaders in space exploration, America and Russia, formed a new agency, International Space Aeronautics Services or ISAS, to provide for the people stacking their claim space. Once the cultural and language iron curtain had lifted, the world?s populace began mixing and a new race of people came forth, in fact Earth?s true human race, the human of no absolute back ground, came forth to colonize and explore space as a true representative of Earth for the cosmos. But even though people are free to do more there are still problems in the universe, controversy on how to preserve a new planets native inhabitants has arisen and the idea cessation in the colonial planets of the whole of the Colonial U.E.A.
The true human race began to come out the original names of races where now part of history book statistics. People had all kind of blood in them and Basic English became the standard language of all. Every other language was studied at choice resulting with in the general populace would usually have up to five different languages under their own tongue.
All of this cultural advancement allowed The U.E.A. to colonize Antarctica. All of this is quite wonderful to the people of Earth and the people that settle in to the true ?New Worlds? are even happier because man now knows that he can conquer any weather obstacle with just a little modification and adaptation of the gene and the mind?s will.
Though this a rosy picture of what I believe things to come will be, the setting in this book is what would be considering a rising shadow from an old ghost, one that mankind has always cast upon itself but now falls under, namely, the many shadows of the ghost of war.


Prologue

2315, May 7. U.E.A.
Space Sector Alpha, Planet Rallodawn
Continent Rence, Province Percival
Sphere of Influence: U.E.A. Enforcers, U.E.A Military Owned Planet
Subdivisions; UEA Enforcers training facilities
Local early Morning

?Red five, join up with the group, your straying too far off of formation? The flight squad officer said his voice laconic in any sort of feeling, an instilled habit drilled in to pilots since the emergence of the first flight school. The XJP-53 ?Drooper? fighter know as ?RED 5? was not joining up with the rest of formation, in fact, it began to peel off in a near tangent direction away from the heading of the main fighter formation group. The fighter streaked off, its powerful twin turbine frictionless counter rotating engines pouring on more power than the air show relic of an F-22 raptor on its afterburners full bore.
?Damn kid, goanna have to chasse him again. Lieutenant Shall, you have lead, proceed to planned target area and take out designated targets in range, then take group back to base as to plan.?
?Yes, sir. Red wing squad, on my lead, reform to formation change and lock me in as leader.? The original wing leader peeled off in his own command ship sweeping back the wings of the aerospace craft he piloted, the same as RED 5s and the rest of Red wing squad.
I just hate it when he takes ?targets of opportunity? to heart, damit!

PHWAAAAAAAAM! PHWAAAAAAAAM! PHERRRBREEEEIIIIIOOOOUUUUUMM! PHERRRBREEEEIIIIIOOOOUUUUUMM! ERRRRRNN! ERRRRRNN! BUWAAAAAAAAM! BUWAAAAAAAAM! It seemed the more alarms you used in the situation to get people awaked the more response and reaction you would get. In this case it was somewhat organized chaos. It will always seem like so much noise to the untrained air, especially the pencil pushing inspectors that came to visit once in a while, but each alarm had their own specific purpose; air attack, bring defenses online, all personnel to stations, code level red battle stations. It was a hot scramble in effect, though this scramble was not for air support, it was for the Mobile Weapon Unit or MWU in formal military specs, MU for slang and pilot communications. A team of five MUs began to suit up, each unit having its own pilot, the MU tuned to it?s pilot?s specific brain wavelength pattern for interface between the machine and the pilot. The MU was a somewhat beastly machine, but its internal systems where encased in a shell, very little of its internal components exposed. Bipedal and humanoid, it had the grace of a dancer and the dominating presence of a giant with contained power, raw, but tapped at the beck and call of the pilot?s request. It was nuclear powered, fusion powered to be exact, powered by a Mini Macro Fusion Reactor or an MMFR. The MU?s main components were interchangeable and every one of them was alike, which enabled the best in maintenance on the field. It stood at the most 18 meters tall, weighing in at around 50 metric tons in its basic configuration with no added weapons. All of the MUs present on the staging area where brought online and performed a quick tai-chi routine, easing out the musculature, servos and joints out of locked positions and back in to fluidity. One in particular was going thru the motions with more out of a session than a routine. It was considered better for every pilot to make their own routine up to make sure they get every joint that moves to bend or turn at least once in each direction.
All MU pilots wore two things: an Interface System Suit, and a Neural Command Helmet, both essential in reading the pilots body movements as the MU relied on the pilot?s moments to function and for balance and target assist, respectively. The particular MU that was going thru a session of tai-chi, different and more thorough, was female. A female pilot in anything was common, but in the most sense it was male pilots that worked in MUs, mostly for the needed strength and endurance, but it was for this particular female that broke the mold in more ways than one. A product of Project Eughence, Project E in codename; She was a Eughent. The only thing that would immediately set her different from other humans, those that knew what she was and those that did not, was her hair. Hair style her own, the color, not. A dark rich Jade green was the color of her hair, short cut with lengths of bangs coming down the sides of her head.
?Hal,? she prompted her onboard A.I. ?Run Mode 2 and 3? her voice was young but with authority and strength behind it, like a calculating Cheetah, but more with like a dralling aerospace traffic controller, cool, calm, collected, and never showing emotion. She walked the MU over to the assembly dock, ready to configure it for the moment, then calling back to the rest of assembling MU?s
?The rest of you pick up standard anti aerospace packs; I am going out for the main leader on this one?
?Yes commander.?
?Whatever you say chief?
?Sure boss?
?Right-o, drop back and take Aerospace defensive positions? they chimed, walking over to the enclosing assembly area. She walked to her own and began scrolling thru the equipment combinations that where listed.
?Hal, custom pack today: Double rotaries, hyperdensity type, Hell dart hacker pack, long bow EMP and one XM-109 Sniper cannon. Arrangement of packs, long bow on left, hell dart on right and both rotaries standard configuration and sniper cannon for right handed use. Include one aerospace HiMAS pack? The HiMAS pack stood for Hi Mobility Aeronautics Space, it was a backpack that had two main thrusters on a backpack like location on the back part on the MU, plus two outrigger thrusters left and right of the two main thrusters for greater turning and speed. The basic thruster packs in an MU had a set of jump jets one above the other in the small of the back, one on each of the calves and two in each foot.
?Yes commander, setting configuration for custom air defense.? The enclosed assembly area began to hum loudly. Locker like slide panels from above opened up and lowered hell dart and long bow packs in to their respective places and a longer arm lowering and latching in to place the sniper cannon to the right shoulder blade hard point. Two assembly panels to the left and right of the arms of the MU began to unfold and reveal two double rotaries with extra ammunition canisters, each of them being placed on hard points in to place respectively by smaller sets of arms. A larger assembly panel slid open, bringing an over head crane to place the HiMAS pack on the two appropriate hard points on the back of the MU, locking it in to place. Internal gyros began to calculate and hum, adjusting to the appropriate weight shifting of the weapons and equipment added to the frame of the MU. The locker like assembly doors slid closed and silenced.
?Release assembly locks and run Mode 4? The AI responded to her verbal command quickly, as the sounds of heavy metal clanked and reseeded from the assembly cage dock and closed all doors and cages. She moved her MU forward; heavy and slightly clumsy steps rocked out, but then straightened and smoothed out to a more casual gait on the third and fourth steps. Walking the MU outside of the hanger, she brought up her OHUD and began to asses all around her. She keyed the Aerospace Con. Tower, closing her eyes and going in to a trance like state, then opening them, and started to begin to resume her normal actions. Her voice opened up in side the tower speakers.
?A. Con. Tower, what is the status on IDless bogies??
?They have breached the first, second, and third defense lines and are on approach to a route of a Northwest direction, and will be on your four relative?
?Right Tower, I can get the rest from here? she disconnected from the tower by blinking her eyes for a half a second and went back to work. She glanced the OHUD and began to set her Double Rotary cannons on her wrists in to firing positions. She pointed both her hands up and released the lower locks on the joints of the DRs and then pointed her hands down, the DR barrels pointing down and rotating on their second set of joints. She then pointed forwards with her hands and leveled her hands paralleled to the ground and brought them back in a snapping motion towards herself, locking both DRs in to place with a ?Ker-shak!?
Tag and ID search on both bogies Hal she though inside of her head, letting the NCH pickup her thoughts on the receptors imbedded in her helmet and the LightWare Chip implanted under her skin behind her right ear. Two distant specks began to appear on the monitor and using the NCH, she had the AI render a 3-D Hologram landscape of the area, giving her a good visual estimate and location of both ships. Both where IDeed and appeared before her with a brief data sliver panel of each pilots information. Bogie 1 was IDeed as ?Commander Jackson Gray? and Bogie 2 was simply labeled ?RED 5, EVCS engaged.? She could of engaged her own detection system but decided not to; her AI processor was more powerful that of most capitol ship sensors. She drew a bead on Bogie 2 and fired at it, the computer already calculating for lead settings and aimed for the rear engine housing. Bogie 2, ?RED 5? dogged, going hypersonic and barrel rolling, while pulling up.
?Damn, guess he knows his basics? she chided herself. She clicked the small lever toggle on her joystick assembly built on her IS Suit and fired the index trigger on her right hand releasing five Hell Dart Hacker missiles. They jumped out with multiple small fumpoosh! noises and left five contrails in a spiral like formation and then proceeded to streak towards the target designated as ?RED 5.? ?RED 5? dropped 2 flares and then masked his engine exhaust by cooling the exhaust with a EVCM feature, leaving white cloud crystal streaks behind the craft. ?RED 5? turned about and she received a warning tone that said she was under target lock.
?Shit!? was all she had time to say. She crossed her arms in a guard position in front of her face then swung them out and to the sides. That motion activated her personal Particle and Ray shield field and a shimmer appeared in a hemisphere around her. Her shields were pelted with slugs and laser fire from ?RED 5?s cannons. The pilot pulled off from the strafing pass and let loose a Particle missile as the Drooper pulled upwards. She heard the target lock tone. Her pupils contracted to pinpoints then relaxed to normal, as she called up her Eughent abilities; calling on motor skills and reflexes. She clenched both joysticks on her IS Suit, the metal shod hands doing the same out side. The action blew explosive hard point pins, releasing the DRs on both her wrists and at the same time she pointed her left hand at the incoming missile, releasing two EMP Long Bow missiles. She activated her HiMAS pack, bending her knees and leapt in to the air leaving a heat wave signature and a small charred area of pavement both HiMAS and integrated systems charging full bore with a humming rumble instead of a rumbling whoosh. She looked down at the scene bellow her and saw the pilot pulling the Drooper up at her. She grimaced at the coming machine, charging her HiMAS in to overdrive and leading ahead of ?RED 5.? She saw that the EMP Long Bows had detonated to disable the missile and have it skid harmlessly on the tarmac. She swung her right arm out, the motion command embedded in the MU system brought out the sniper cannon on an extension arm. She positioned the SC and sighted the scope; she turned about and looked down on the coming fighter. She adjusted for the bullet?s trajectory and aimed for the outer casing of the left engine casing, her right hand side. She drew a breath, held it, and slowly pressed the trigger, the metal show hands moving with the same motions that where depicted by her IS Suit the her hand. The hammer struck casing and released the powder charge?s explosive contents to expand then push out in the only direction it could go, punching the MU scale bullet through the rifling, exiting thru the muzzle and grazing the casing just as she wanted to on the Drooper. The imbalance threw the Dropper for a lateral spin going up. She took advantage of the moment, diving down away from the craft and landing back on the ground one foot at a time. She shrugged her right shoulder blade, explosive hard point pins detonated, dropping the large scale XM-109 Sniper Cannon. The fighter craft above her began to stabilize, though she really did not think it was important, she noticed that it stabilized faster than most other pilots would have it leveled out. She brought her hands up below her shoulder, panels in the arms rotating open and popping out two sticks. She took the sticks and activated them, each one of them releasing a beam of white light. They where energy blades, MU sized katana used for formal battles between MU?s in hand to hand combat. She crossed them over each other then pointed them down and out, looking up for the Drooper. She saw three stray missiles from the Drooper streak towards the fuel dump, ammo dump, and the final one ?with a graceful smoke trail- landed on the shower rooms.
?You bastard!! You know how long I had to wait for the order to come in for my own personal shower station!?? She let off the remaining missiles in both her packs toward the now level Drooper and flexed her shoulders, the pins releasing the missile packs off of the hard points. The Drooper began to make another strafing run again, she noticed that the chain guns on the Drooper where rotating but not firing. She did a scan on the system and it said that they where disabled she knew that the other ship hovering above on hover thrusters was the command ship. She took advantage of the momentary frustration that the pilot did in futility trying to fire missiles that only dropped and skidded on the tarmac. She gritted her teeth and activated the HiMAS again, leaping up. She was glad she had released all of the missiles; any sort of weapon system aboard the Drooper was disabled, except for the particle and energy shields, she hadn?t programmed the Hell Fire hacker missiles for it, but was glad EMP Long Bows always did their job right. At the height of her jump she cut the HiMAS off. She pointed down with the energy blade katanas and let her MU?s weight bring her down with the brunt force she would need. She watched as the pilot of the fighter did nothing in dodging or countermeasures.
?Kono yarou!? she yelled. The language classes she taken when she was younger allowed her to cuss profusely when she was mad. She cussed at the pilot in Japanese over an open channel, knowing it would be the last thing he would hear before the blades would strike at the engine thrust vector rings.
The blades slivered the engine thrust vectoring rings cleanly. The Drooper was entirely reliant on hover thrusters for the rest of the way home. She landed on the ground hard, letting the shock be absorbed by the ground and the hover thruster shock absorbers. Her arms where swept back, the energy blade cutting edge pointing down slowly arcing up. She took a deep breath and relaxed herself, her motor and reflexes dropping back to normal levels. She looked up at the command ship, which did a stationary barrel roll; she then heard a private transmission inside her head that was received by her LWC.
?Thanks Jade, the kid always takes the ?targets of opportunity? thing a bit too well to heart.? Commander Jackson Gray said. She responded verbally on the open channel,
?This is MU Commander Alana, I get you Jack. Hope he pays out his orifice for my new private shower station, including the new ones.?
?Common Jade, the least I can do is having him clean his and the rest of the base?s barracks and mess duty for at the least a two week period, including anytime he is off, at a stretch.?
?Yeah, yeah. But next if I see him, I am not holding back.?
?Alana, you know what you are, you can?t scare him like that, and I?ll loose him faster than I do in briefings?
?You wont, I?ll just remind him whose private shower station he cratered in to the ground.?
?Well I?ll make it easier for you; he is in the upcoming air show, just let the Kid fixer have him first, he is the one that has to deal with him when he gets back. You should have enough clearance to get his ID and holopic.?
?So-ka, I do?
?Reviewing for something??
?No. Actually I am just pissed, I find Japanese more expressive than Spanish or French, but Cantonese works just as well?
?Right, just don?t play twenty questions with your own mechanics and techs OK??
?So-ka?
?Right, Gray out? and with that he pushed the throttle home, letting his own NVC helmet guide his command Drooper home. She let the MU stand up,
?Hal, cancel modes 1, 2, 3, and 4, store arm blades and reset to Neutral disembark shut down, no bridge lift dock is available right now.?
?Yes commander? The computer canceled modes 1-4 then kneeled on the ground, bringing the left knee down while bending the right knee, then it released the outer hatch, a small foot and cable crane lowered enough for her to disembark the rest of the distance to the ground. It replaced the blades, switching them off and storing back in to place.
?Hal, run search on pilot profile ?RED 5??
?Searching?.found?.presenting data? The AI had two lines that appeared in space before her view, both tracing perimeters and area lay outs and sentence locations and lengths.
?Essentials please, sex, age, name, and picture, include work schedule? she prompted. The two lines began scribbling again and deleted, retyped and reformatted the screen for viewing. The lines finished and the holopic gave a small tone. She read,
??Mark Kardon, Male, RED 5 call sign, 25 years of age.? Well then, brown eyes, black hair, and ?best in class!?? I?ll show you best in class!!? She punched the Holopic, it dissolving and scattering away, the AI taking the sign that she was done with it. She took a foot hold of the cable and gripped it with her right hand and clicked the helmet on her belt clip on the right side of her hip. She descended and gave a mental command for the MU to bring up modes 1-3 and park it self in the hanger. Her MU, decorated specifically to what she wanted, with single green stripes near the wrists and ankles, walked off, small robotic crews trailing after it with pieces of equipment that where ejected during the battle along with the EMPed missiles that where scattered further down field. She thought to herself, switching the LWC off by mental command I am not cutting my hair for a while, not until I get my private station back and have my hands wringing his neck for the trouble he caused me for it! Jade Alana walked off, wishing the Kid fixer would be somewhat more merciful than she was with him if she ever encountered him.