This is originally stored in my dokuwiki instance that I use to keep track of the world I'm building through this solo experience. Anywhere you see mention of a specific place or technology, I try to make a separate page to give a couple details about that, which is why it may seem sort of. . .wordy in some places.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

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Common Year 203, 5th cycle

Location: Summit, Everest, New Sol, Silent Song

I looked back up toward the sky as I rappelled down. The cliff face was smooth as cliff faces go, so I could enjoy the view of the nearby nebula in Everest's skies. I was fast approaching the new and thus unmapped crag that would cloak me in rock as I moved down to toward my target. I took a last wistful look at the sky before I embedded a new piton and swung into the crevice.

The rest of my descent was in eerie false color, with the major handholds and obstacles outlined in stark, crisp lines. Finally I reached the point where the newly-formed fault opened out behind the laser fence guarding the opening of the cave system. After placing a final piton and securing my extra cordage, I peeked my head out of the crack.

The airfield which made up the bulk of the wide mouth of the cavern was abuzz with automated activity. Security drones flitted about in their chaotic, non-deterministic patterns. Loading mechs prepared various classes of ships, from surface hoppers to a single interstellar pinnace, for departure. It was easy to pick out the parts of the field which had been damaged by the recent tectonic activity, as the dark stone of the surrounding caverns marred the pristine silvery alloy of the field's floor.

I needed to find a way into the greater facility. The most obvious path forward was a set of massive, vault-like cargo doors set into the far wall. Fortunately, toward the western end of the field I spotted a more human-sized entrance, an airlock which, most likely, would lead to administrative offices. Just the sort of offices which may have a clue about where I could find my target.

I kicked off from the ceiling, hard. Plummeting toward the ground, I pivoted with practiced ease, and engaged my coat's fall arresting shell a meter or so above the ground. The coat's flapping tail stiffened as a pulse of electricity rippled through it, causing it to spread out to its full four-meter radius, revealing and temporarily charging its ascension pads and catching the air, depositing me silently on the field below. It retracted itself as soon as my boots touched the ground.

The expert system was very focused on external threats; it was obvious from the RF chatter that there was no active scanning within the confines of the laser grid. I slinked off to the building I had identified earlier, careful to stay out of the cone of visual sensors on the drones. They were a standard model, equipped with non-lethal stun cannons and HumanLike™️ sensor packages.

As long as I tracked where the sensors were looking, I'd be able to stay unseen fairly easily. Again, fortune smiled upon me, as I found a lone figure out for a lunch-time stroll. Upon interrogation, he revealed to me the location of the data core. It's in the primary facility, air-gapped from the systems in this compound. He was unable to provide me with access to the primary facility, and thus provided no further utility. While I managed to execute him, he caused just enough of a stir to raise the attention of a nearby drone.

The drone approached, obviously unsure what specifically was happening. I let loose my daggers, though the sensors managed to pick up on them and dodge out of the ay. With their signature trill as they whirled through the air, my daggers returned to my hands.

The drone charged its stun cannon, and I managed to duck into an alley way between outbuildings just in time to miss being stunned. But now I was cornered, no way out of this alleyway except through the drone. I feinted toward it, causing it to discharge its stun cannon early, and spun toward the wall, kicking off of it and pinwheeling through the air, throwing my daggers while just outside of the drone's visual sensor cone. The daggers, absorbing non-visible electromagnetic radiation, were completely invisible to the active sensors the drone would have engaged during the conflict. Both daggers struck home, embedding themselves up to the hilts, one cutting off the drone's primary power supply and the other disabling one of its ascension pads, causing it to drift to the ground. Before the drone could engage its secondary power supply, I quickly dispatched it with a twist of one of the daggers.

While I was doing this, another drone joined the fray. It charged, this one obviously being directly controlled by the expert system in charge of the security for the compound. It left no openings for me to take advantage of, but it was also too cautious for it to be able to gain any ground. We went back and forth for many precious minutes before, finally, I identified an opening. I danced backwards, baiting a partially-charged stun cannon shot which I was able to shunt into my coat's systems, quickly pushing me off the ground and giving me the angle to throw both daggers as hard as I could, shearing through a specific weak point that is almost never patched correctly in this model of defense drone.

Over the base's public address system, the expert system informed all personnel to take shelter and prepare for a directed military action. There were more drones on the way. I needed to get out, and I needed to do it fast.

My only real hope was to get back to the crag I entered from. It was about 60 meters above the field, and the only way to get to it required sacrificing my ascension pads. I purposefully took a half dozen nearly-fully-charged stun cannon blasts, managing to again shunt the energy into my ascension pads capacitors, and then releasing the energy through the pads all at once, burning them out in the process, but shooting me straight up at breakneck speed to my waiting cordage. I managed to grab on to the rope and pull myself into the crevice. I knew that I wouldn't be able to get back in this way, and reinfiltrating this compound would be extremely difficult.

It wasn't failure of the mission, and I did now know exactly where I needed to go to find the data I needed. But it was going to take a lot more planning and effort than I originally envisioned. As I climbed, I made sure to leave behind some primed grenades with proximity triggers, just in case. I didn't think the drones would follow me, as I hadn't actually been able to reach any critical areas, and therefore wouldn't be worth the potential expenditure of resources.

I was wrong, at least partially. I distinctly heard one of my grenades go off below, though no more after that.

I needed to find a place to hole up until the heat died down.