Commander Paul Gosling raised himself up onto his elbows in Pilot Lab F, just long enough to nod to Traymore and Dorran on the Sphynx-V seats behind him. Their eyes were closed but he knew they would be able to see him through the lab's live visual logs. Satisfied that they had established peace amongst themselves, he lay back on his Sphynx-V chair and allowed its soft padded surface to wrap him in its warm embrace once more.
Gosling's neural implants reached out, connecting to the Heart as his awareness expanded to encompass ten Wasp Drones that were sitting on the ledge of the White Spear's landing bay. With remote piloting enabled, he initiated a launch sequence from the comfort of his chair.
The Wasp Drones jumped into the air, hovering a few centimetres above their landing pads as their beating transparent wings blurred around them. When the drones tilted forwards, their wings carried them up into the sky with a smooth ascent.
Twin dome-shaped pods mounted on the front of the Wasp Drones' empty pilot cabs gave them the appearance of giant insects with big green eyes. Their thin legs hung loose beneath their hulls as the Wasp Drones spread out, flying just beneath the surface of the Dome Shield. Splitting into two groups, they followed a wide circular path around the Behemoth's shield, maintaining a safe distance from the Walkers, as they observed it from afar.
Gosling let his mind fly with the Wasp Drones. He could feel the cool air outside and hear the buzzing of their wings overhead. It was a liberating experience, flying high beyond the confines of the towers.
The Wasp Drones scanned the Behemoth's shields, sending a rich data feed directly back to the towers. The Sphynx-V controller rack processed the data before piping a reformatted summary through Gosling's neural implants, allowing him to build a real-time model of the shield inside his mind. A mesh of fine blue and white lines appeared before him, taking shape as the data arrived. The shield had a familiar geometry. It was just like the Dome Shield overhead, only smaller, and with something odd inside it.
Gosling reached out to the Heart for help, sharing the data that surrounded him. The Heart fed on the data, supporting his analysis in ways that he could never understand. It had knowledge beyond anything he possessed. It could see things from a thousand different perspectives, each with its own rich, deep experience. It brought its strength to his analysis and it told him something that he could never have worked out for himself. The Behemoth's shield was alive with Lasrecon, just like the Dome Shield, but there was something wrong with them. They were tainted in a way that the Heart couldn't quantify.
Gosling felt emotions leaking through his neural implants. The Heart was appalled by how the Lasrecon had been altered. It was something so sick and wrong that it could only be the work of the war lords. Gosling struggled to comprehend what the Heart was telling him. He didn't know anything about the Lasrecon or their true nature, but he could feel the Heart's deep anger and disgust at what had been done to them. It was overwhelming. He had to try hard to separate his own emotions from those that he was feeling vicariously through the Heart.
'Is it the same technology?' General Markov said through an open comms channel that was piped straight into Gosling's neural implants.
Gosling was surprised to hear the General's voice. He had been so lost in his interaction with the Heart that he had almost lost contact with his true self. It was a dangerous thing at times, dealing with such complex, intelligent systems.
'It looks the same to me,' Gosling said. 'I shared my data with the Heart. It confirmed that Jacob's shield is based on Lord Wembern's original design, just as our own Dome Shield was.'
'That wasn't the answer I was hoping for,' Markov said.
Gosling distanced himself from the Heart's unusually violent mood swings and continued monitoring the Behemoth's shields from afar. Some of the Kamari's ground based droids fired up into the sky but Gosling had configured the Wasp Drones to perform evasive manoeuvres whenever required. They tilted their wings, whizzing quickly from side to side before any munitions could strike them.
Something registered in the back of Gosling's mind. Several Wasp Drones had noticed it at the same time. He tracked it across the sky as it approached from the South.
'General,' he said through his comms link. 'The Kamari have flying drones.'
As soon as the words left his mouth, a small black shape accelerated and opened fire. It was still over a kilometre away when a rocket appeared from its nose cone, speeding towards the Wasp Drones at incredible speed. It disappeared momentarily, then appeared five hundred metres away, still heading in the same direction. Gosling ordered the Wasp Drones to take evasive action but the rocket vanished once more, appearing just in front of them. It punctured one of the drone's reinforced armour with ease, and an explosion ripped it apart, sending debris spinning towards the ground.
'Unconventional munitions,' Gosling said, sounding out of breath. The explosion had unnerved his calm demeanour. The Wasp Drones should have been able to evade the incoming munitions, but clearly that hadn't been the case.
Another rocket darted across the sky, skipping patches of open space like a stitch through time. It struck its target much sooner than possible and another Wasp Drone exploded, splitting into burning pieces that plummeted towards the Old Quarter below.
'Two Wasp Drones destroyed,' Gosling said. 'I'm pulling the others back behind the tower shields until we know what we're dealing with.'
'Yes, pull them back,' Markov said through the comms channel. 'We should have enough data about the Behemoth's shields to be going on with.'
The remaining Wasp Drones turned around, heading for the safety of the tower shields. Gosling scanned the skies for any signs of danger. He had been unable to prevent two attacks so far. He had to do much better from now on. There had to be a way to anticipate what the Kamari were doing before it was too late.
A second black shape appeared on the horizon. It opened fire as soon as it was visible. Two rockets skipped across the sky, only visible for short periods of their trajectories. Sometimes the rockets were there, moving at incredible speed, and other times they were gone, not present at all. It reminded Gosling of the stitching he had seen on the hem of a merchant's jacket. Some of the thread had been visible above the surface of the fine cloth while some had been concealed beneath it.
The Wasp Drones accelerated, following swerving paths to avoid any straight lines, but the rockets still struck them like before. Two more Wasp Drones exploded before the others could reach the safety of the tower shields.
'Damn it! They turned.'
'What do you mean?' Markov said.
'The Kamari flying drones are firing rockets, but there's something different about them. The rockets don't cover the intervening space between themselves and their targets.'
'What?' Markov said. 'That doesn't make any sense.'
'It looks like the rockets make several short teleport jumps along the changing line of their trajectory in order to reach their targets much faster than would be possible with conventional munitions.'
'You're kidding me? How in the hell can they do that?'
'I don't know. Their technology is way more advanced than we first thought. The Wasp Drones were designed to deal with conventional weapons, not something like this.'
'Why would they make such complicated rockets? It must have taken a hell of a lot of time and resources to come up with technology like that.'
'It's a very effective weapon, General. It makes the rockets almost impossible to defend against. A weapon like that can cover great distances much faster than anything we know how to build, and there's no way to avoid them with evasive action. We've lost four Wasp Drones already because they couldn't react fast enough to get out of the way.'
'Get them behind the tower shields.'
'I've brought the Wasp Drones back now. We should be safe behind the shields. Hmm... that's strange.'
'What is?'
'One of their rockets just disappeared before it reached the tower shields. I can't see it anywhere now. I thought it would have exploded.'
'It's the tower shields,' Markov said. 'Parker has been sending me reports all day. One of them said something about the Kamari teleporting technology not being able to penetrate our shields. I guess that applies to teleporting rockets too.'
'Interesting,' Gosling said as he watched more rockets disappear and not return.
The Kamari black flying droids kept their distance, staying well away from the tower guns as Gosling tracked them on the horizon.