RP 2010 Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Atlas had just retired from his post for the night and waved goodbye to the guard for the night shift. He sauntered back to the locker room and packed his gear into a duffle bag before zipping it up and heading toward his dorm. As he lay in bed, he staired out the window at the moon.

It had been a few decades since they started building large scale structures on the moon. Construction was different in lunar gravity. Atlas had been fascinated with the prospect of transferring to the military installations on the moon but his commanding officer was resistant to his requests for transfer. After all, it was normally the higher ranking officials and those who scored the highest on skill exams that were chosen for positions in orbital and lunar bases.

He sighed. Maybe if I up my game, I can get the higher ups to agree to send me there for at least some grunt position, he thought to himself.

Dr. Maelstrom had just departed the pneumatic transport tube station and headed into the space port. His body had adjusted to lunar gravity - and to the culture of the lunar colonies. Life on the moon was different. In the ultra-modern facilities and living spaces, Dr. Maelstrom found most people to be of the neat-freak variety, compared to the slightly grittier, independent style of living that many people on the Earth's surface lived.

Of course, he couldn't return to Earth under just any circumstances. He had been involved in research for Exodus, a company specializing in massive weaponry. Dr. Maelstrom had been directly involved in developing the "exclusion drive", a device that could tap into energy from an unseen, unexplained source. The weapons Exodus had developed based on his work were capable of vaporizing entire cities. Although Dr. Maelstrom hadn't intended his research to be used for weapons of mass destruction, he was publicly outed as the man responsible for the controversial military weapon after hackers breached Exodus servers.

Dr. Maelstrom's desired claim to fame was the implementation of the exclusion drive in military combat mecha. Instead of destroying entire cities, powered suits could harness the exclusion drive in order to maneuver quickly and eliminate targets surgically. In his mind, the doctor saw this as a way to save lives in combat.

The doctor checked his feet. Being a cyborg, he had to make sure his hardware remained in working order.

About due for an upgrade, he thought to himself.

A woman in a military uniform, wearing an eye patch and bearing a large scar over half her face entered the main concourse. She was small in stature but carried herself with the posture of a strictly-trained military type. Her expression was mostly emotionless except for a few slight expressions of annoyance.

Alice calmly looked around the lunar space port, observing the crowds and looking for the man she was supposed to escort back to Earth.

Figures, she mused. The doctor isn't the punctual type.

A few moments later, she saw a cyborg fitting the description of the person she was supposed to meet.

"You were supposed to be here an hour ago," she said, calmly but with a hint of rebuke.

"I apologize," replied the doctor. "There were certain... precautions that needed to be taken before I went out in public."

Alice shook her head.

"I'm sorry. I'm Dr. Maelstrom. Judging from the uniform, you are my escort, correct? If I'm not mistaken, we're going to board one of the shuttles back to Earth around 14:00, correct? I'd assume it's an advanced military aircraft with adequate defensive and evasive capabilities."

Alice gave a stifled sigh. "First of all, these aren't aircraft. They're spacecraft, doctor."

She looked the doctor over, noticing his outdated hardware and dissheveled appearance.

"Second," she added, "I am your escort and you'd do well to be on time when we're expected to board a specially commissioned military transport."