Incarna

Day 13: Early morning, JI Research Centre, Lake Katithandra Central Australia.

"Alert Mastah, AINGEL overflight imminent Mastah." Koora looked up from the darkness of her realisation and couldn't resist giggling at the CommBot.

"Ah here comes Harold in his sky chariot," Massi declared cheerily. "Come and take a look with me before you go across to Medical." Koora shrugged okay and Massimo quickly checked his screens. He looked up as she walked across and frowned at the lack of the usual roll to her hips. You are stressed aren't you, he thought aas he quickly read the alert from Max, damn it!

Koora stood at the door onto the office balcony and stared through the smart glass floor to ceiling windows. Her gaze drifted out across Lake Katithandra sparkling in glorious blue and turquoise in the mid morning sun. A light southerly was roughling the surface and scattering the sun sparkles in all directions.

Massi approached with jackets in hand and presented her with a pair of what appeared to be VR goggles. He helped her into one of the light weight hooded wind cheaters, then held out the VisSions.

"Smart glasses for extra frequency vision as well as data overlay." He bowed as he opened the glass door for her and she tremored momentarily as the cold southerly hit her. The jacket was effective and she would stay warm she knew that. She just hated the wind and the way it stripped you of warmth when it was cold or desiccated your skin when it was hot out of the desert. What she hated most was the way her mood changed when the wind hit her like that. She could feel herself retreating deeper into herself as if her mind or soul or whatever it was, buried itself under the layers of her flesh to gad against the wind and what it carried.

If Massi and Co were correct and this Incarna plague was some sort of dust born hallucinogen then she was infected and had been since that first encounter with her Alien. It had been the way he smiled, it had just drawn her in, and then his eyes, something about those eyes just melted her usually bloke facade. Well whatever it was, it wasn't going to change anything now however deep her awareness buried itself in her body. Whatever this stuff is, I'm stuffed full of it!

The cold Southerlies that come up from the Antarctic and the great encircling Southern Ocean usually brought rain and often snow here to the Red Centre. Massi remembered being with Max once as a storm swept over them. The'd been camping at the old One Thousand Step Temple site at Mt Connor and gone for walk out to the southern side cliffs ... The way the air had gone silent and heavy for a few moments and then the flakes had flurried around them. Massi shrugged himself out of that memory. That had been when he'd first fallen in love with the Temples and their mysteries and just before all this had started.

Still if he hadn't started leading tours to the sites, some of those idiots wouldn't have got themselves killed believing the old myths about having sex there or at Dragon nesting sites. Fuck it, people do some stupid things for sex. Still if Ashara hadn't got killed he wouldn't have met Koora, she wouldn't have talked Ashara's Dad into setting up the Temple Fund and he wouldn't have gone full time now with Jaeger International.

Shit, come on Massi out of the Rabbit Hole mate! He pulled himself out of the mind dive as he called that sort of free associative thinking. It could take him off for hours into some weird self directed but probably pointless research. He pulled his jacket close about him and made himself count the ten seconds the guarantee stated it would take to feel the jackets warmth storage capability kick in ...

"Eleven seconds, the bastards lied to me!" he said loudly over a gust. Koora gave him a wtf look and shook her head at him. She had no idea how he coped with his mind sometimes. The stuff he allowed himself to think through. Still geniuses were like that, well, in theory!

Massi pulled out his ePhone and swiped open the VisSions App. He showed Koora the settings and the adjustment touch pads on the arms. Massi lifted the ePhone and tracked it back and forward across the north west horizon. "Here he comes!"

Koora adjusted the VisSions as best she could as they a were little big for her. They had been made for Massi's broad face and she would need a narrower pair. Massi saw her her fiddling with them and reached across and tapped the centre section top rim and she felt the VisSions pull in closer to her temples. She turned and looked where he was pointing as her VisSions came alive with the UV spectrum additions.

"When you get used to them you can get nearly Mantis Shrimp spectrum visibility. I've got yours on a low setting so you can get used to it. They translate the UV or IR ends of the spectrum into different forms of our actual visual range." Koora used her right index and middle fingers on the up–down pads to find the right amount of electric blues and purples to add to her vision. Across the top of the visor area were displays showing what extra spectra she was seeing.

All around her took on amazing extra depth and detail. Koora had tired some previous vision enhancing and VR type goggles but this was clear and flawless. Her skin, the railing she was resting against, insects and flowers, everything sparkled or glowed in some way. A flock of lorikeets flashed like a lightning storm and the bush below them and spreading out to the edge of the lake a couple of hundred metres away, well it rippled and sparkled like the lake itself.

Massimo directed her gaze toward the horizon and a small icon appeared on her VisSions. As she focussed on it the VisSions read her eye movement and enhanced the icon up to an actual relayed mage. She used her left hand to adjust the magnification and there was the AINGEL and the Tug glinting in the sunlight with an occasional flash as ongoing corrections were made by thruster use.

"You can see the way the Tug is docked to the new engine section of the AINGEL. That way the AINGEL doesn't have to rotate after separation once the tug has completed the primary re-entry." Koora had seen the demonstration videos but didn't interrupt him. "The AINGEL will slow and pull away and then manouevre during the entire descent ..." "One day to perform mid air rescues ..." added Koora to stop herself quoting from the promotional video.

"Well, low orbit and upper atmosphere rescue definitely. Mid to low level, mmm. I think we're a few years away yet for that development. We'll need a much smaller and more capable AIME to run the whole show for the AINGEL to have the capacity to take people on board from mid air. "AINGELs are GO," Koora quipped.

Massimo barely had time to smirk and wink at her, "Urgent message, Mastah!" He tapped his VisSions to receive it. "Shit, one of our Asia teams has been attacked and is requesting air support. Fuck it, Max has transferred the AINGEL data management and laser transmission to me. Shit gotta go," and he spun on his heel and strode back inside.

Koora turned her face into the wind and let it caress her. The jacket was now her outer skin and she was warm and protected. She faced her foe and found it wanting. She smiled, her headache had gone since putting on the jacket and the VisSions. Time for some before and after scans and see, what, was what!