Mindshard (ON HOLD)

Pursuit Team

     The rest of the pursuit team were already filing into the shuttle by the time Vaughn staggered into Bay 2 two dead ends and ten minutes later.  Deks threw her a quick smile from the hatch as she jogged up to the shuttle’s boarding ramp.

  “Oversleep?”  He asked lightly and laughed out loud at the grimace she threw him on the way by.

     Once inside she quickly found a spot and sat down.  Unfortunately the only open slot was with the handful of Teserin on the team, each favoring her with a hard, unrelenting stare.  To see such a look from such beautiful and handsome faces, made strangely more so by the shocks of white hair each had, was chilling.  Only Brin, having discovered some commonality with Vaughn the day before, showed her kindness, flashing a quick smile in her direction before settling in herself.

     Returning the smile, Vaughn pushed her unease aside and shoved her gear under her seat as the others had done and sat back.  At least she had one ally here.  Then she was being pushed down into her chair as the shuttle activated its maneuvering thrusters and lifted off the ground.

     As rapidly as the shuttle brought Vaughn and Deks to Viper Island, this one left, pushing rapidly through the variable density bay roof and into the air beyond, thrusters smoothly lifting them to 500 metres before racing off towards distant Ven Cor’brin.  Thankfully it was only a heartbeat’s hesitation between the shuttle’s shift in flight path and its gravitational compensators and inertial dampeners coming online, the battering ram pressure pushing Vaughn back into her seat instantly easing.  And she thought the Naval Arm pilots were bad!

     Now a little more comfortable in the loose fitting tunic, dark leather jacket and baggy pants she found waiting for her upon stepping out of the sonic shower, skin tingling, Vaughn took a quick moment to examine the mission package that had sat on top of the clothing.  It wasn’t much larger than the wallet Brin had passed her the day before.  But, as she discovered with the Kesinoa’s unfolding, appearances were often deceiving in this world.  She wasn’t going to take anything for granted.

     Intently she watched her fingers quickly examine the package, wrapped in a material much like the leather in her coat and her gun holster, now snuggled up under her left arm, the Kesinoa a rather comforting presence against her body.  Hmmm, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.  Momentarily satisfied that nothing was going to blow up in her face, Vaughn undid the simple tie holding the package closed and reached inside.  She took hold of what her fingertips found there and, after a slight hesitation, pulled it out.

     And felt her eyebrow rise at what was pulled into sight.  Like she had told herself before, appearances were deceiving in this world.  The material inside the package proved it once more; several folded sheets of a dense, plastic-like material and a flattened disk just larger than a coin stuck in their midst.  Definitely not what she had expected as a mission brief.

     Not wanting to appear amateur in front of the Teserin operatives, Vaughn quashed the urge to open the plastic sheets, choosing instead to focus on the coin-like disk.  A quick turn over in her hands gave her the impression it was much like the compressed Kesinoa in its dormant lozenge mode.  Hopefully that meant it was activated in the same way.  She gave the disk a squeeze to test her hypothesis and felt a tingle of satisfaction when the edge of the disk flared and several holographic sheets of information appeared.  The tingle quickly disappeared when she realized the sheets were not in front of her, but inside her eye!

     Somehow the disk had tapped into her visual cortex or was projecting a holographic image either into the fluid-filled space behind her lens, or just on top of the lens to create the illusion she was looking at several pages of information.  Regardless of how it was happening, Vaughn swiftly learned it was indeed the mission brief she was looking at.  It also told her what the plastic sheets were for: hard copy maps in the case of electronic failure.  Satisfied with that, she returned her attention to the disk and its wondrous intrusion into her brain.