Snippet #2820361

The killer watched Maire fall for a long moment, the featureless black and white eyes of the mask narrowing slowly. Clearly the returning sword had caught her by surprise, and she drummed her fingers on the rail idly while the fingers of her free hand ran gently across the edge of the damage to her suit. After a while she sprayed the blood spatter on the catwalk with an unmarked can from a pouch on her belt, causing it to dissolve. One of the wasp-like Investigators swooped at her from above, blorting angrily (probably about destroying evidence).

A pair of gunshots rang out nearly on top of one another, blowing out the drone's visual receptors. A Tracer shrieked past, jettisoning something from its underside, which was intercepted by another bullet almost before it cleared the bay. She poised at the edge of the catwalk, ready to shoot down any other encroaching drones when she flinched, a confused face flashing across the mask. The rail had shocked her, and as she repositioned herself away from it, tendrils of electricity began to reach out towards her lazily. Her cloak began to billow upwards as she hastily looked around to find the source. The killer seemed to zero in on something in the distance and let four rounds fly.

The catwalk was engulfed in a bright flash, and then static consumed the screen. Sairyn pushed the floating data-slate to the side, so that one of the other dozen or so synchronized slates orbiting him could take its place. This one was a showing a view from much farther away, looking down on the slagged and smoking catwalk which was still glowing red.

"No special move call-out? That's going to hurt your views."

"Didn't want to tip my hand too early, Sai-guy... not that it mattered, I think she got away."

"This one is going to be hard to pin down," confirmed Sairyn as he was rolling back the footage frame by frame to try and confirm the hit. "Eleven frames. Killer reflexes," he chimed, clearly impressed.

"Did'ja see that quickdraw? Holy smokes! Think it was an automatic?"

"Mmm... two shots, .18 seconds is within the feasible human spectrum for that being a semi-automatic, or even a revolver. I'm still looking for an angle with a clear view of the weapon. The good news is there's only a handful of people on the planet that can shoot at that level, so if we can identify the gun we might be able to get a list of suspects," he explained.

"Whatever she's packin' has some serious reach. She hit me dead center four times, and I had to be over two-hundred meters away. If it weren't for these armored underoos," Ion paused for a second, then made a fart noise into the microphone. "Dead Ion."

Sairyn blinked, and then rolled the video back and shuffled the slates until he had an overhead view from one of the approaching Investigators. He watched Maire fall into the chasm, then a drone approached the suspect. Two shots. He slowed the video down: this is when he'd ordered the Tracer pack to drop a comm-buoy into the chasm so he could retain communications with Maire. The suspect swiveled towards it, pulling a weapon from a hip holster and fired. The gun was back in its holster very nearly in the next frame. He shifted the view focus to the buoy and rolled the video back again, rolling the point of the bullet impacting the device back and forth several times before pausing to scratch at the stubble on his chin with a concerned expression. The impact scatter was frozen on the screen in front of him, and the debris was spreading forward along the flight path of the device... perpendicular to the angle of the shot, as if the bullet had curved 90 degrees.

"Uh. I think the suspect can translocate bullets as they are leaving the barrel."

"Bull. Shit. I don't even think Chief can do that. She's the best blinker in the org... as far as I know at least"

"Be careful regardless. Fly Cap in the area for a while in case the suspect returns or Maire makes contact, you're the closest thing I have to a comm relay for a bit since you fried every drone in the fleet."

"You did say 'don't hold back,'" he chuckled. "What's a few bruised ribs and some angry Corpos between colleagues?"

Sairyn blew a sign and cut him off, spinning the array of slates around him while he drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair in silent thought for several minutes.

"Sovereign, what would it take to extend the network below the plate line?"

"Are you looking for a timeline? Or a list of materials, sir?"

"General level of complexity," Sairyn quipped back. Smartass computer.

"It would be faster and require less materials to build an entirely new network. Even utilizing existing infrastructure in the plates, our current wireless broadband solution is not designed to carry strong signal to the surface below plate level from the nearest feasible access point."

Sairyn snorted as he propped an ornate grimiore up in his lap and flipped idly through the metallic silver pages. Sovereign wasn't wrong though. The tower and the plates were all built with more or less blanket network coverage in mind. hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables were spiderwebbed throughout the structure, and practically every building on the plate superstructure had at least one access hardline where a wireless network point could be set up. Below plate level, however, was never intended to be living space: when the structure of the tower was conceptualized, the Union wasn't even sure the space would be inhabitable at all, so they just decided not to bother with it. Being off network had it's advantages, however if anything fell down there, regardless of the reason, it was effectively lost. He paused on a schematic and stared at it for a long time.

Project Sovereign.

"What if I just took you with me?" He mused aloud, with a raised eyebrow.

"I suppose, if you could find a way to fit an entire tower level inside your pocket, that I would be able to interface with whatever was connected to your personal network, communications included. Although, I don't think my creator would appreciate you running around with his 'magnum opus' in your pocket," replied Sovereign. Sairyn suddenly stopped drumming on the arm of his chair and flipped to the Grimiore's index. After a few moments of searching, he pulled an entry off the page and flicked a mannequin with an unfinished black Templar duster hanging on it into existence with a flash of white.

"Sovereign."

"Yes sir?"

"Remove this conversation from the record."