24991116 | 0412

  EVECorp SFTZ | Free Port 13 | City 05

  43°19.356' N

  5°21.036' E

  The onboard acoustics system played subdued, relaxing lounge music.

  Shirley took a sip of champagne, set her glass down, and sighed.

  The attendant stepped forward instinctively.

  Shirley waved her off with a polite smile.

  Beyond her viewport the landscape zipped by her in a blur as the train sped along.

  Her mind was on the mission ahead.

  Beyond her viewport, the landscape blurred past in streaks of dark and light.

  Her mind was on the mission ahead.

  Black tank top.

  Cargo pants.

  Military boots.

  A rugged beret.

  A black trenchcoat.

  Classic aviators.

  Le Fay had arranged for her to be seated in the Executive Lounge.

  Shirley sighed.

  She looked completely out of place.

  She would have preferred one of the Switchblade, she thought, pouting.

  Le Fey said none was available within the window of her rendezvous.

  Well, at least she did make it up to her, Shirley decided, lounging lazily back into her plush cushioned seat.

  She pouted again, irritably.

  For what it’s worth, it’s still a private ride.

  Pretty comfy one too, she conceded.

  This ultra-luxurious Hyperloop was reserved solely for high-level EVECorp executives.

  Shirley glanced around.

  She is the only passenger on the train.

  They bypassed every station between the capital and the port city.

  The pod began to decelerate long before she noticed.

  There was a gentle chime and a soothing feminine voice announcing the next stop.

  “EVECorp SFTZ: Free Port Thirteen. Arrival complete.”

  The blur outside her window softened, streaks collapsing into the sharp geometry of the SFTZ arrival tube.

  She had arrived.

  The Strategic Free Trade Zone.

  A faint shift in the air pressure tapped her ears signalling they had entered the station’s re-pressurization zone.

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  There was no audible mechanical grind of brakes, no vibration.

  Only the quiet, velvet pull of maglev deceleration guiding her into the station cradle.

  Soft white guide-lights lit up along the tunnel walls, pacing the pod’s final approach.

  The magnetic cradle rose from below, matching speed with eerie precision before catching the pod in a seamless hover-lock.

  There was a single, delicate click as the clamps engaged.

  An elegant, frictionless glide.

  Smooth as silk.

  The attendant brought her sling-bag as she rose from her seat.

  She took the bag off her as the doors slid open to a blast of sea air and cold industrial light.

  The attendant gave her a slight nod as she disembarked.

  Shirley stepped out.

  She stepped from the serene regulated climate into the SFTZ.

  Wind tore her trench coat sideways as she crossed into the dockside proper.

  A blast of the gale hit her, whipping her trenchcoat around her wildly.

  The arrival platform was deserted.

  The STFZ never had crowds, it belonged to EVECorp alone

  Cargo drones skimmed silently along overhead rails.

  Security turrets pivoted lazily, tracking no one but awake all the same.

  She walked towards the elevator and pressed the third floor.

  The door opened to a lone EVECorp employee in crisp grey uniform greeted her as she emerged.

  “Miss Tempess, Admiral Mercer is expecting you.” she greeted softly. If you will follow me.”

  Shirley nodded, tucking loose strands of hair behind her ear as she strode across the polished concrete toward the waiting Land Cruiser.

  The woman got in and they drove in silence towards a waiting Raven-6 VTOL.

  Sleek, armored, built for speed, not comfort.

  A pilot in a black flight suit snapped to attention, as the woman get onto the co-pilot seat.

  Shirley took a seat in the back, strapping herself into the harness.

  “Ma’am,” the pilot said, saluting. “Good to have you with us again.”

  Shirley gave him a nod. “Let’s not keep the Admiral waiting.”

  “Ma’am.”

  Within seconds, the helicopter lifted off the pad.

  Marseille’s coastline slid beneath them.

  Cranes, docks, stacked containers, and the glittering line of the Mediterranean.

  The morning was still hours away, the world half-awake.

  The city’s lights fell away until the coast became a smear of luminous gold upon the earth below.

  Above, the sky was a deep, bruised violet.

  The hour when the world felt suspended between yesterday and tomorrow.

  The pilot angled the craft upward.

  Clouds swallowed them.

  Shirley lifted her gaze as the cockpit glass dimmed itself automatically.

  A black shadow loomed above the clouds.

  At first, it was nothing but a darker shape carved into the night.

  A black silhouette so vast, so deep and so still that it could have been a murder of storm clouds.

  Blinking red lights traced the underside of something impossibly large in a slow, deliberate pulse.

  The heartbeat of a steel leviathan.

  The onboard gauge of the Raven-6’s altitude marker climbed steadily.

  Twelve thousand feet.

  Fifteen thousand feet.

  Eighteen thousand feet.

  The shape sharpened.

  The pilot murmured under his breath, barely audible through the headset.

  “Approaching the Ascendant Prime.”

  Their flight path crossed one of the massive engine blocks.

  The anti-grav repulsors came into view first, vast plates of shimmering distortion rippled through the air beneath the airborne behemoth.

  The Raven-6 shuddered.

  Shirley felt a low-frequency vibration in her bones.

  The pilot calmly course corrected, adjusting his flight vectors to avoid the pressure distortions.

  Moisture in the atmosphere twisted and bent around the invisible fields, forming halos of vapor that glowed faintly against the aircraft’s floodlights.

  A black monolith the size of a city block, hanging in the air with absolute disregard for physics.

  The supercarrier floated without the slightest drift, as though the sky had solidified to hold it in place.

  Long, segmented hull plating stretched across its belly like armored ribs.

  The blinking red safety lights cast eerie glints along the edges.

  The insignia of EVECorp stark-white against its matte-black hull.

  The pilot spoke into his comms, no doubt being hailed by the warship.

  The Raven-6 drew closer.

  The carrier’s lower deck came into full view:

  As they closed the last thousand meters, the underside lights brightened, illuminating docking pathways and the angular shapes of hangar apertures recessed into the hull.

  “Approach corridor acquired. Tarmac Seven, primary landing.”

  Tarmac Seven.

  Shirley watched the platform expand beneath them.

  A vast, hovering tarmac suspended in the sky, glowing with recessed guidance strips and rimmed with red hazard lights.

  Above them, the upper superstructure pierced the night like the shadow of a skyscraper.

  Narrow windows glimmered faintly. Antennae and communication spires reached upward like steel thorns.

  The platform swallowed their descent.

  The Raven-6 settled onto the deck with barely a tremor.

  As the twin VTOL engine blocks powered down, the night wind swept across the platform, carrying with it the cold scent of ionized air and the faint metallic tang of the repulsor fields.

  Crew worked tethered with a parachute strapped, lest a stray wind blow them to a steep drop.

  Shirley unbuckled her harness.

  She thanked the pilot, who merely nodded.

  Her boots touched the deck of Ascendant Prime.