Sagitta by C. M. Benamati

Author:C. M. Benamati [Benamati, C. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781797505190
Published: 2019-02-17T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

It was nearly eleven o’clock at night, station time, when they stepped out on the observation ring. To Morgan’s relief, Victor was nowhere to be found.

They strolled around with the crowd, nodding and smiling at the uniformed men, women, and robots manning the exhibit booths. Every aspect of the ISF was represented.

They passed space marines in exoarmor, admired a salvaged deck gun from an ancient warship, and tried on various augmented reality graphical overlay programs. Morgan had to use a visor for this. The sudden appearance of thermal gradient vision, sound source localization, plus annotated tags on everything from the model and serial number of the waiter pouring coffee to the bearing of the nearest ISF starship was overwhelming.

He handed the visor back to the booth’s attendant with disgust. “Can't see a thing with all that stuff cluttering the view.”

“I thought it was fine,” said Liz. “Not much more than what I normally get, minus the space ship bearings. It must be tied to the station’s sensor grid.”

Morgan stared at her. “You have thermal vision?”

“Well, no,” she said. “Not exactly. But I can take spot measurements. I went with the light amplification lenses instead, since I like driving at night. My car has thermal scanners that I can link to if I want a heat map overlay.”

“Wow,” said Morgan. “I didn’t know retinal projectors had so many options.” He waited for Liz to speak. She had never asked him why he didn’t have any bioware, and he wasn’t sure how to bring it up. If she’s ever going to ask, it’ll be now.

But she didn’t ask. “You aren’t missing much,” she said. “Sometimes I shut it all off and enjoy my base senses. That’s nice too, and it’s all you need. After all, people have been getting by for thousands of years just fine without all these silly upgrades.”

Morgan nodded. Is she just saying that for my sake, or does she mean it?

At the engineering tables, cadets demonstrated self-sealing millimeter-thin pressure suits, super-conducting composite heat sinks, and micro-repulsors. Morgan wandered over to a young man who was jacked into a computer simulation. His closed eyelids twitched as he piloted an atmospheric attack ship. The sensor feed from the ship was projected above the booth. The man grunted, and the small oval-shaped ship deployed flaps, cutting sharply to the left. Vapor trails condensed off its wings as it raced towards a speck on the horizon.

There was a furious exchange of green and blue laser fire as the man engaged the enemy drone. Morgan watched, fascinated, as the enemy drone darted up into the cloud cover. The man’s ship followed, bursting into the upper atmosphere.

“Got you!” said the man, firing lasers. But, his target banked and disappeared into the glare of the sun.

“Crap,” said the man, trying to follow.

There was a pulse of blue light, and the man’s ship exploded. ‘Game Over’, flashed across the holographic display.

“That’s three times!” said the man, opening his eyes and grunting as he extracted the neural probe from his data port.

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