Mars:Resurrection

Journey Unexpected

July 2027

Northwest sss

Cold sweat enveloped Roco's entire body and drenched his thin shirt and tattered jacket as he stared at the darkening jungle around him, which he felt slowly strangling him as he frantically conceived ideas and scenarios on how to survive a night at least in the wilderness. It was the least of his worries. He had trained for this and even worse scenarios as a special tactical space marine.His body was prime and ready for the extreme. Venomous reptiles, no problem. Making a fire, maybe not now. He was injected, along with his comrades-now gone, with heat generating body vaccines that would activate as soon as he shivers in the cold.

In the gathering darkness, he was well aware of the overcast, grey sky looming and now threatening to engulf everything in a massive deluge. The present circumstances were not so pleasant at all. After swimming more than two hundred yards from their drop off point to the wave-battered shore and the desperate run across the muddy field strewn with debris, and the dying and the dead of the final remnants of their shattered Beta team, he had faint hopes of trying to take stock of the situation, of his unit, at least. Everything happened so fast. Not even time and opportunity to proceed to a fallback option, if there was one at all. At any rate, everyone seemed unprepared for any eventuality and everything seemed to go against their luck.

Everything happened so fast. One moment, they were ensconced in a nuclear sub that brought about three scores of marines, scouts and some other elite military personnel of the Union close to the unknown shore. The next moment, the entire team had been wiped out save himself and quite possibly, and hopefully, one or two other men. But he could not yet count on that, most of his survival gear in the bag was gone, probably scattered in the seabed beneath the furious waves. All he had was a long dagger and a wet laser pistol. But then, the world had become so unbearable since the era of the new dictatorship. The elite, those immensely powerful, well-connected , and obscenely rich controlled everything and every human being living within the very tethers of the global net. They literally owned the entire planet and the nameless masses cowered in terror at their mercy. A new world order held sway over humanity for decades after the first thermo-nuclear war in the middle of the 21st century.

The immediate past, not more than a couple of terrestrial hours ago, when about fifty Beta personnel finally reached the rendezvous point after singly solving the present tests and puzzles as part of the layered security measures installed by the server meeting A I. Did a computer worm break through their systems? Or had there been a deep penetration agent that was able to infiltrate their ranks despite the strictest screening processes to w**d out the undesirables and spies.

He had to know and he had to obtain the latest update from Socrates,-Beta A. I., if it was still functioning or connected to their ever diminishing neural network grid. Then, a thought hit him. Socrates might be compromised, so it would be safe to remain offline.

Gradually, above the growing cacophony of the forest , when nocturnal denizens were waking up from slumber and starting their "day", he became aware of the unmistakable "thump, thump" of various helodrones that seemed to come ever closer to his spot. He knew the drones were equipped with thermal sensors that detect human heat even from several miles away .

Feeling for his escape bag, his hands traced the sharp rectangular shape of the signal deflector, a very useful device invented by a brilliant tech cadre in the earliest days of the movement. It was the only one he had and just issued to each of the most vital personnel just days before their last bastions were besieged and overrun in the great conglomerate offensive. A new and unorthodox design, weighing just half a pound and packed with earth and ashes, the circuitry inside modulated minute frequencies that covered a bearer's heat and radiation signature by creating an invisible shield that made a quarry virtually unseen by even the most modern and powerful stealth drones.