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Old 2013-06-24, 06:39   Link #1120
wavehawk
Some say I'm the Reverse
 
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
What I'm working on so far.
Quote:
The Phantom Arc followed Icon flight's movements from above.

Elle's eyes rapidly flicked between the UCAV's readouts and the TSF head-mounted cameras. Each was a tiny picture in her peripheral vision, automatically resizing when her eyes rested on them.

The Watchtower sees all. The yellow-burnt and blasted terrain and the two TSFs that flew below. The blue sky empty of clouds. There was none of the romance of flying in these skies.

Elle had not been briefed on Icon Flight's mission profile, nor did she care. Her duty was to fly the UCAV and monitor both pilots and TSFs. And a small test unit would be easier on her workload than monitoring an entire squadron.

Readouts on the two TSFs' jump engines indicated the same FE119-PW-100 engine used in the F-22 Raptor series of TSFs. As such they cruised smoothly over the landscape, like mere airplanes and not giant avatars of men.

The French Bocage was a patchwork quilt of browns and greens, Burkhart remembered her father's words. Only a few kilometers away was what remained of Objective 12, the Lyons Hive in France. Elle could not reconcile the lifeless plains she saw below with the stories her father told her of this country.

Her mother's country. Elle switched off that part of her mind, that part that could feel.

Again, she checked the images of the TSF cockpits. The Pilots inside wore the same non-standard fortified suit and helmet as the dead Icon-1 pilot had. Burkhart could not see any facial features, and assumed they were male only because of the bulky suit they both wore.

No chatter. No glib conversation as expected of normal pilots. Elle thought it unnatural, as every flight she had worked with bonded with radio chatter. It was a reassurance, a verbal holding of hands between pilots that no one was fighting this war alone. That pilots and soldiers would always be there for each other.

The Icon pilots' mute actions were those of lonely, unmanned machines. Both went through the flight plan silently, almost mechanically. Professional, cool and quietly going through the flight without a gesture or remark. It didn't seem like either Icon pilot was doing anything but flying their TSFs, albeit with a silent intensity Elle had not seen before. As she thought this, her eye focused and highlighted another tiny screen of information.

The feedback information from both machines was anything but silent.

Icon-2 and 3 were consistently throwing virtual data at each other. Burkhart was not a programmer or analyst; she could not understand all of what was being transmitted, but some of it involved altitude and rangefinding data. The rest seemed like gibberish.

Not commands or code. It's like random garbage data. It was not a tit-for-tat exchange, but like a flood. Neither Icon-2 or 3 seemed interested in the information the other transmitted, only what was sent. As if the two machines were having a heated conversation. Or an argument.

Or they're sending this out for my benefit.

Elle then stopped, mentally.

She couldn't explain why, maybe it was an intuition. But she suddenly felt like the two machines had been feigning a conversation specifically for the benefit of an eavesdropper like herself. The emotional part of her brain accused herself of paranoia, but there was an odd certainty to this feeling. Burkhart wondered if it was a prank, or if the pilots and crew of Phantom Works were testing her on this flight.

The pilots in the machines remained starkly intent on their flying.

Still, she questioned the growing feeling. Though her senses and mind were immersed within the eyes and ears of Phantom Arc, her physical form was in the control seat back at base.

No, I'm back at base, where the Phantom Works team can see me. Burkhart corrected herself. Like TSFs, the high-end UCAVs presented their pilot with a realtime view of the current situation. But it wasn't as if she were actually in the Phantom Arc. Stop dissociating.

Maybe the one truly being observed was Elle herself.

A blue inverted pyramid appeared on the aerial map. There, Burkhart noted. It was a navigational waypoint, set for both Phantom Arcand Icon Flight. The barren wastes ahead were featureless save for hills of rubble and craters from distant artillery shelling. The waypoints were the only reference available to any of them.

The data flying between Icon-2 and 3 stopped as both machines acknowledged the waypoint, then continued their exchange. Burkhart saw no reaction from either pilot during this, which disturbed her.

A new initiative? Elle's brain wondered if this was it. TSF operation and systems were being continually improved. Controls began to be more immersive; Phantom Works may be experimenting with a new TSF interface. Possibly one more immersive than the UCAV helmet system Elle was using. Who was to say that the data streams she had seen weren't actually the communications of the pilots themselves? Like her, they may have subsumed themselves into the TSFs they piloted.

But no, Elle dismissed the idea. It didn't match with what she felt.

There was a sudden warning on her screen, blaring red. Elle's eyes flicked to the plan map, and a smaller shot from Phantom Arc's long-range tactical camera. The UCAV's image recognition caught it before she did.

CODE:991

"BETA spotted." Burkhart reported, unnaturally calm.
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