***
Alright, I don't know how canon this is going to be, but I really wanted to write this story, so I was damn well going to
![Smile :-)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
Having said that, I give you the first snippet:
Sixty Minutes to Hanukah
xx years after the war
Outside the forcewall-protected windows an uncounted number of stars twinkled in the cool lunar night, and were rivaled in their brightness by the luminescence of New Adelaide’s hundred million lights. A riot of wanton high-rise, the thousand kilometer-high spires of the solar system’s third-largest city pulsed with multi-colored lasers, the thrusters of descending cruisers, pale floodlights and strobing advertisements in infinitely-recurring neon movements. Certainly there was no such thing as a dark side of the moon, not any longer. Luna never slept, and even at night New Adelaide’s streets and skies were a warren of people, vehicles, starships and robots all clamoring for attention in a billion different voices.
But on the 132nd floor of the orbit-piercing Hyde & Croft apartment spire at the edge of Independence Boulevard and 3rd Street, serenity reigned supreme. The bedroom of the luxury penthouse was only halfway through its simulated night-cycle, perfectly dark and isolated from all the noises generated by a metropolis with a ten-digit populace. Nothing could pierce the peace and quiet of the tastefully decorated apartment- nothing - except the sort of high-technology intrusion for which people so gladly pay good money.
The vidphone chimed noisily, a glaring machinal racket with preciously little regard for the sanctity of human sleep. Under the black satin sheets, a solitary figure whimpered, curled up, and drew a pillow over her head. Then when the noise would not abate even after half a minute, the woman –thirty-something and dressed in nothing but a set of boxers- drew herself upright with a softly moaned complaint, and finally scrambled for the hammered copper voice-only button on the expensive comms-set set atop the table next to the bed.
‘Yeah?’ she groaned.
‘Colonel Grissom-McDonnell, Marine Corps?’ an unfamiliar voice questioned from the other side of the line.
‘Retired,’ stressed Sarah Grissom warily. ‘Who is this? How did you get this number?’
‘Colonel, this is the Cadre for Tactical Intelligence speaking. Check the ident-key we’re pinging to your VP in case you don’t believe us--we’re reactivating your commission and transferring you back to active duty, effectively immediately,’ the voice on the other side replied completely deadpan. ‘Oh, and you’re going to need guns.’
‘Wait, hold it right there,’ replied Grissom, more awake with each passing second. ‘You could be multisexual space gods from beyond the pillars of creation for all I care. I’m retired. I like being retired. I want to stay retired.’
‘Colonel, we have a situation in your immediate vicinity. We require your help in the next sixty minutes or lots of people are going to die. You’re the galaxy’s best sniper. We need you on-site.’
‘Bugger,’ sighed Sarah, staring at the rotating CTI eagle of glowing gold the ID-ping had produced on her vidphone’s liquid crystal display. ‘Fine, if you want to put it like that, I’ll get the rifle out.’
The voice on the other side of the line sounded relieved. ‘Fantastic colonel. You have to get going right away - we’ll brief you en route.
***
The black luxury sedan drove itself, which was all too good because its single occupant was far too busy making final checks on the collection of military-grade fire-arms displayed on the back seat to keep an eye on the road. Its engine humming gently, the car zoomed across the high-priority VIP strips of the autoroad at speeds in excess of three hundred miles per hour. A single green blip blinked on its navigational display as the target location.
‘The indicated point is a medical facility no fifty miles from your current position,’ echoed the voice of the CTI operator across the comms. ‘As far as we can tell it has been taken over by a group of ONI agents-’
‘Say what?’ said Sarah incredulously, diverting her attention from the guns for a moment. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Everybody knows ONI was disbanded years ago, after the war, after everyone got wind of all the bullfuckery they pulled. Don’t tell me you guys didn’t get the memo.’
'Colonel, let me ask you something...’ the remote voice crackled with static as the black sedan slid into a high-speed mag-tunnel. ‘Did ONI ever strike you as a group of people that'd let themselves be disbanded?'
Sarah frowned, then shrugged and rammed the firing pin back into an impressive-looking SMG. 'Good point.'
‘The facility itself is not very noteworthy, except for the fact that it is directly underneath a high-level government relay backbone. The agents have taken the staff and patients hostage and are using a quantum virus to hack their way into the ISAF restricted network. They’ve wired the building with explosives and are threatening to blow everything to kingdom come should we intervene. Our best estimates predict it will take them another fifty minutes to penetrate the mainframe. After which they’ll make their getaway and, knowing ONI, detonate the charges anyway, to cover their retreat.’
‘Fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t, eh?’ said Sarah, not taking her eyes off the scope she was calibrating.
‘Something like that. Just to add, we’re not sure what they’re after exactly—this is ONI after all—but we know it can’t be good.’
‘So where do I come in?’
‘These people are well-prepared, and probably monitoring our communications, but they are not all-knowing. As long as we stay outside the regular channels, we think we should be able to slip in a small team unnoticed to take them out. You were one of the only two assets in the area with a low enough response time.’
‘Who’s the other one?’
'He’s already on-site. His name is Maciej,’ said the operator, pronouncing the name as 'magic'. ‘He’s going to be your wingman on this one. And colonel, I think you'll like him.'