Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Casket

"Excuse me, yeah, this is Rita from down in systems management, and my password doesn't seem to be working."

"Alright hold on, let me share your screen for a minute."

"No problem."

"What is your access ID number."

"2224201AX."

"Thank you."

"Well it doesn't look to me like we are having any issues with the password host. Do you wat to try resetting your password."

"That should be fine, thank you."

"here let me give you access to that screen, and there we go, why don't you try that."

"Ah, got it, looks like I am in, thank you very much for your help."

"No problem, have a nice day."

Paula Ramirez turned off her headset, eyes glowing brightly with light from her computer monitors. She had six of them all together, all arrayed in front of her in a collage of color and light, Behind her ambient sunlight filtered through the window and onto her keyboard shed as reflective light from the Lunar surface. Paula did her best not to look at the beautiful blue-green orb that stretched beneath her. It made her sad to think what earth had become, but it also made her homesick.

Behind the earth, blocked by its bulk earth's sun or Sol hung in the sky like it had done for thousands of years, burning away thousands of tons of hydrogen to produce the radioactive heat that kept earth alive. She missed Sol, missed its burning heat, and its light. She missed the water, and the tide of the ocean. She missed the hot desert sand.

She missed Earth.

As good as Arcadia was, it was a manufactured utopia, a paradise for those who wished to live in a waking dream.

Not her.

She missed Earth, but did her best to ignore it as she flipped through her computer screens, the entirety of the orbital defense Nexus arrayed before her, like a whole new world to explore and exploit. Earth's defense Nexus had a multitude of components, the most obvious of which was the grid of Anti Air energy cannons, tidally locked to the rotation of the earth, following that was the shielding system, a bright blue/purple sphere that was only visible when impacted by space debris. The Nexus was generated by fusion reactors which powered the orbital defense cannons, and it took two cannons to create one triangular sections of the nexus shield.

Nothing was allowed through that wasn't permitted.

The only legitimate way through the Nexus was through the shipping lanes. These shipping lanes appeared in a tight formation between earth and the Lunar surface (Which as a side note was almost as heavily guarded as earth. She had already hacked their orbital defense system some minutes ago, and had it up on her top right screen. The moon was a very important part of the earth's Ecosystem, controlling the tides, and keeping Earth's rotation consistently stable and tilted at the correct angle. If the moon were to be destroyed, earth would experience apocalyptic flooding, volcanic eruptions, and likely more untold devastation, so Earth was eager to keep her as well protected.

The shipping lanes were less, lanes, and more like a minutely controlled system of openings in the nexus field. Three of the Gun's would divert power away from three sides of a triangle, turning off the shielding to allow ships to pass through in either direction.

That was all fine and good, however, their biggest problem was the Bioscans.

The bioscans were not a new technology, they had been introduced to earth shortly after they joined the GA in accordance with interstellar law against the movement and transportation of unwanted alien life from one planet to another. Basically it was an advanced version of customs, except the orbital defense system was equipped with a scanner array that could read and detect all biological life aboard a ship in one sweep. Anything that wasn't supposed to be there would be immediately terminated.