Lodestone TLR-99

Prototyping

As suddenly as the flashing and alarms had started, they now ceased, and everything went dark. Captain Alyona Zelenko stood as far from the elevator door as she could; the alarm wasn't supposed to go off with her clearance, but it did tonight, and she had no idea if her jig was up.

She braced herself as the door slid open, letting the light back in, along with the silhouette of a tall man in a dignified outfit. He reached around the doorway and pressed a few of the buttons without looking at them. When the regular lights came on, it was Colonel Howell ap Nestor, chief commander of the Sunnr Armed Forces' 1st Mechanized Research Detachment. "Captain." He looked quite unhappy to see her.

Zelenko's stance shifted awkwardly into a salute. "Colonel, what brings you tonight?" she somehow said, without sputtering or tripping over herself. He can't already know what happened. We've kept him in the dark so long.

"I came to figure out why the hell this elevator was going to the ninth floor basement, at half past midnight, without an order to deploy."

"I wanted to confirm--"

"For the fifth time this week."

"Sir, I--"

"You think you can come here by yourself, without express orders to be sent here, with no escort, four times, without being noticed? I set this alarm myself, you know. I wanted to know why."

"Prototyping, sir."

"Prototyping?" ap Nestor repeated, with a noticeable degree of doubt.

Zelenko's brain started moving in overdrive to try to flesh out her sudden excuse. "The lab boys and I have been prototyping some new remote protocols for the virtual cockpit, sir, I wasn't expecting to have to reveal them to you so soon." She also wasn't expecting him to come so close to finding out that Lodestone's pilots had defected. Lodestone itself had been declared KIA, after the Red Baron's attack, but she had to keep the cards close to her chest for as long as she could.

"Remote protocols?"

"Yes, sir." Thank the gods that's what he focused on. "We believe that one of the things that lead to the loss of our best unit was some degree of input latency. We're working on increasing the available cellular bandwidth and reducing response times to a sub-millisecond level, so that it will not happen again."

"It's going to be quite a while before another mech as advanced as the Lodestone can be manufactured, Captain."

"I know, sir. But if we can work on getting rid of the bottlenecks now, we may be able to work our new tech into the next unit when it's ready to build." The misdirect was working.

"What did you need to visit the virtual cockpit for, then?"

"I'm just going to take some measurements, sir, don't worry. I know I'm not authorized to operate it." She was, on multiple levels, jealous of Tech Sergeant Sherazi. About her posting as well as her defection.

"Fine, then. Normally I'd accompany you, but it's too damned late. I'm going back to bed." Colonel ap Nestor pivoted on a heel and started walking away. Only about five steps later, he stopped. Without turning back, he spoke - clearly audible, for how much echo the corridor walls gave off - "If that goes off again, the disarm code is 2-1-0-1." He power-walked around the corner and vanished in the direction of the officers' quarters.

Captain Zelenko had no idea how Katherine Niemeyer and Mehr Sherazi had vanished the way they did. Surely Lodestone wasn't still airtight enough to walk after what the logs showed. But at least the Colonel didn't know the particulars. Yet. She thanked her lucky stars that he hadn't somehow picked up on that. Losing two talented pilots was bad enough, but if they were still alive, they knew state secrets about Lodestone and its capabilities. And if Lodestone was still intact, who knew what kind of trouble the Southern Army could be in, if Lodestone should ever turn its weapons against them?