Talcros: Towerfall-Part 1
The briefing was a stark holo-projection, flickering in the Nomad's sterile command center. A rogue organization, known only as the Syndicate, had established a bastion of power on Talcador. A planet that had no treaties and ties with the Intergalactic Committee. A perfect cover.
The most damning piece of intel was an encrypted message only for Eve and Mira: mole high within the Intergalactic Committee. Someone was feeding the Syndicate information, protecting their haven.
"The mission parameters are impossible," Eve's technician, hacker, code breaker and analyst, Kai, stated, his fingers flying across a console. "Nomad's energy signature would trigger alarms the moment it breached the outer system. The Soul Drifter," he gestured to the very ship they were on, "would be vaporized by planetary defenses before we even achieved orbit. They've turned planet Talcador into a fortress."
Eve stood motionless, calculating the solution and strategy with her super mind.
The tower, a monolithic of black steel piercing the ochre clouds of Talcador, seemed unreachable. The objective was clear, but the path was non-existent.
"It has to be clean, covert, and clandestine," Eve's voice was calm, a stark contrast to the boiling complexities of the mission. "A ghost operation."
Her gunner, a grizzled veteran named Jax, looked at her. "A ghost can't fly a ship in."
"We use a drop pod," Eve replied, turning her gaze from the holographic projection to her team. "I'm going alone."
Mira pinched her lips.
The silence was heavy. They stood there, not wanting to hear this. They hated it everytime. They would die for her, but she's the captain and the commander, the brains, the maps and the waypoints.
She always knows the best way forward. And the team had learned to obey.
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Her descent was a controlled inferno. The one-woman insertion pod, nicknamed 'The Needle', sliced through Talcador's turbulent thermosphere, its ablative shielding burning red like a meteor. The needle crashed into a sand dune with a loud thud... tens of miles from any Syndcate patrol routes.
The desert was a harsh expense of sand and pointy rocks, dry and cold even in the daylight.
As the pod's hatch hissed open, Eve emerged, no armor or exosuit, just tactical crop top and cargo pants. Her body already adjusting to the planet's corrosive air and cold dry desert winds.
She took her hoverboard and started gliding over sand dunes, zizagging through rocks.
Bandits. They saw a lone figure and smelled profit. They were wrong. The first encounter was with a skiff of scavengers. They were loud, overconfident, and… dead before their leader finished his threat.
Eve moved through them whirlwind. She left no witnesses, only disabled vehicles and unconscious bodies that would wake with nothing but a headache and a terrifying memory.
Further on, a squad of heavily armed mercs tried to ambush her from a rocky canyon. The fight was over in three minutes.
Then the worst came. Hundreds of hover bikes. Trucks. Scavengers and mercs combined. Eve had no chance but to flee to save precious hours. She knew once she had reached the city, the thugs would stop chasing her miles before the borderline.
She had to fight through the chase, her hoverboard moving like a zim zoom swish swash between the hover bikes. She would jump from bike to bike, smash, slash, punch, kick and jump back on her board. The chase left a trail of havoc in the desert. Broken bikes, cyborgs, people.
Closing to the border. The lasers slammed the sands. Bandits disrupted. Eve took cover behind a broken hover truck. All the bandits finally fled dominated by laser canons.
She used her cloaking device and jumped on the hoverboard again. Moving slowly to avoid dust trails blowing in the air.
Near the border. She moved from cover to cover. Once inside the city, she won't need hiding. It was a human world.
Her plan worked. Bandits provided perfect distraction.
Inside the heavily monitored city, even small electronic devices were detectible, traceable. An advanced civilization.
No visor. HUD. No Exosuit. Just her mind map and memory. Eve's mental-scape... was overkill.
No plasma guns. Only analog high velocity dual-railguns, bombs and detonators.
The Syndicate tower dominated the city, a monument to arrogance and power.
She scaled maintenance shafts using grapplers and magnetic gloves, silent and fast. At the top, she breached into the lobby. With the sound of shattering glass echoing the hall, she landed on the floor like a detonating bomb.
Hundreds of Syndicate soldiers froze.
Security alarms screamed. Armed fighters turned in every direction, rifles snapping up toward her. At least two hundred Syndicate troops.
Advanced suppressor tech hummed in the overhead panels—it dampened her nanite-driven xenomorphosis. The nanobytes wouldn't respond. No xenomorphic shift. She was locked in her human form. She already knew it might happen knowing the Syndicate.
That didn't stop Eve.
She sprinted forward, diving behind a wide pillar as gunfire exploded. Shards of tile flew. She pulled out her twin railgun and fired back. Every shot was aimed. One to the visor. One to the throat. One to the power core of a trooper's suit.
Eve moved fast, always behind cover, closing the distance in short bursts. She slid across the floor, rolled between two guards, and knocked one out with the butt of her pistol. The second she kicked in the knee, spun, and sent flying into a pillar.
Grenades were thrown at her. She caught one midair, hurled it back. The explosion cracked the wall and flung several soldiers away.
Bullets from every direction.
She dived some 20 meters towards a wall dodging bullets and plasma rounds, then wall-running jumped to a pillar and used her feet to push the pillar away, shooting on the flight. She landed down on one hand upside down, pushing the floor... throwing herself back in the air, all the while shooting with her other hand.
The railgun rounds were armor piercing but some elite soldiers wore anti-railgun vests. That took manual work. She didn't know kungu, but she knew all the moves.
The elites dropped on the ground.
A turret above activated. Eve vaulted over a bench, aimed upward, and shot the lens clean out before it could lock.
She kept going. Blood on her arm. Scratches on her face. Eyes locked on the control deck above the lobby.
That was the Syndicate officer's nest. Someone stood at the balcony.
The report was right. It was a human member of the IC. That is why there was all the more pressure on Nomad. She had to defend her species she recognized herself as. It had to be covert, to identify the human stain and remove it.
In no time. She neutralized the soldiers and stepped into the chamber.
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A high-ranking Syndicate officer stepped forward—a member of the Intergalactic Committee. Soldiers behind him were ready to open fire. But he ordered them to hold the fire.
Eve slid into the center, blinking through the lights in the room, focusing on his face. She pointed at him: "You."
Eve instantly recognized him.