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Lovers Dancing

by Patch Ragswift

Character-Table:

Technical lead: Professor Sabbow (Sabb-oh) - lankey whitish-grey hare, older Lietenant: Beethoven Goyle, "Bobby", "Loot" (as in Lietenant), "Bait" - bobcat Scout1: N. Leo - white neko Scout2: Krevát Stacy-Steiglitz, "Stacy", "Steiglitz" - ram (Ovis canadensis) Scout3: Derick Stevenson, "Doug", "Dougless", "Stevens." (dogtag-abbreviation) - ? intel2: Sauda - striped tapir Boxer2: Lombardy - hare Boxer3: Cassie, "Cassidy", "Butch" - neko wetware1 intel3: Korra Kallay - neko wetware2: Ralieur Gehrtz, "Rali", "Ghost", "Raily" - possum

"So this is the next big thing huh?" Goyle laughed. "Quite the contrary." Dougless noted condescendingly. "So we're guineapigs?" Goyle again. "No... in neither sense of the phrase." Korra replied this time. "Are you sure about that?" Goyle again, ryely. "With all due respect, Captain, we all got the same information-packets." Leo. "Reading anything with that amount of redaction makes my head hurt." He retorted. It was all an annoying jest. His troupe had to put up with it. At least it beat having a completely stonewall ranking officer. Stevenson mumbled, "'Glad someone's in a good mood..."

"If this goes as well as the personal fields did, we just might get another halfday, Stevenson." "And what then? I go to the movies by myself?" He shot an exceedingly sour look. He was not feeling at all whimsical about it. They didn't prod at him any further, even though he was the team's whipping boy, being the greenest with the force. He had a vested interest in any technology that might allow them into the city. He still wore the engagement ring. It was the only piece of jewelry Goyle had allowed any of the troupe to carry while on duty. On hearing a few complaints he'd said, "You wanna chain a locket along with your dogtags? Be my guest." The piece was smooth, too simple to likely get caught on anything, and not appropriate to be used in place of any piece of standard equipment, so there was no temptation. Leo had wanted to use her own blade in place of the general-issue "Hookpoint" scout's knife she'd been assigned. Goyle had taken exception to it: "N, we have three scouts in our squad, what happens when another one of them needs to borrow your knife?" She had tried to explain that her own was of very high quality, and she had carried and praticed with it since she was young. "Now there are two problems with that, Leo. The first one is that if you learned any bad habits with that thing you're going to remember all of them when you try to use it. The second is that shit like that's still got you thinking this is like playing singles. Well, not anymore. We're playing ' doctor, ' now, and when your turn's over at it, and the relief surgeon asks you for a scalpel, you better not hand him a goddamn exacto-knife. I don't care if it can do the same thing or not - are you marking, soldier?" She had held face resistant for a second while processing. She relaxed it ,"Yes, sir." She made to hand him her knife in its sheath. He took it from her respectfully, and actually removed it from the soft case. He played with it a few moves that the whole crew had learned all too well before putting it away again. "Hell, Leo. If everyone else hadn't already been crosstrained on the Hookpoints, I'd get the nerds to copy this and reissue the other two." If it had been, it was a hell of a ruse just to give Leo peace of mind, which had occurred to her, but he'd seemed in earnest. Similarly, he always made Stevenson keep a glove on to cover the ring, even during the exercises where the others could remove both of theirs. Everyone was sure Goyle had checked his statistics along the way and found that they had remained acceptable. The lieutenant guessed the boy never took it off.

"So if this works, doc, and we maybe can't evac in time somewhen, what happens? Do we get to do a Ferris Beuller out of the ducts at the stroke of midnight?" "Now that's a mixed metaphor if I've ever heard one. Why don't you try rephrasing that for the good doctor?" The answer came before they could get into it, "Hardly," the chief scientist began as he now doublechecked some of the equipment, still performing the somewhat nervous tick of trying to pull his glasses down, as if to look over them, then shove them back higher up on his nose. Both to no avail now that he'd had the corrective surgery. Kalay had suggested that he keep using his frames just empty of lenses, which had been spurned with a "How rediculous!" Goyle also saw him still doing the habit and grinned. He still envisioned the doc with those small, black libriarian specs whenever thinking of him. The rapport continued. "During miniturization, following the nominal catalytic energy required to initiate the process, energy is actually removed. For the procedure to reverse itself spontaneously would be... quite remarkable." "No yin and yang realizing we have fallen out of perspective with the universe?" "I'm afraid not. Infact if energy were somehow indisciminately extracted from a subject's immediate surroundings to do so, the effects might be quite destructive," said the lithe, labcoated hare, penciling down some measurements. He wasn't the type to leave any comment without a response if someone else didn't give one, even a quip that didn't deserve an answer. It made him likable, despite whatever other pretenses he carried. Like the distillation of the genius-father the way that children must perceive their own at his best moments: slightly fickle like knowledge itself, but also soaring and wondrous and caring and unlimited.

It was scary the way they were doing it. They had already miniturized a number of test-animals, and had consistently had good results, even with the few that were bigger than any one of the soldiers. However, due to the large energy-drain invoked by restoring a given subject back again, they had never reversed the process with anything larger than a mouse. Since the requirements increased greatly with larger subjects, their parent organization had disallowed them from doing so until now. So now it seemed quite do-or-die. With hope not literally. They were rushed. There were Four other parallel projects competing for supremacy in a solution. This lab had already failed once, although as far as they knew, so had the other Four, though it was possible perhaps one or two of them simply had something big stuck in implementation somewhere. The doc knew, or atleast had significant amounts of information, given that he was not only head of one research arm, but was also tasked with peer-reviewing some of the engineering and technical findings of the competing branches, yet he said nothing. His whole life, since the beginning of the research six years ago, was under observation. He spent almost all of his time in the facility, which had all the necessary tools to keep a close eye on him. This was aside from the odd meeting with the higher-ups. He bore it very well. He never let anything slip. Some suspected he had some super state-of-the-art or perhaps even cannibalized or reverse-engineered alien tech implants that were so well hidden to help him censor himself, among other things. The tech would have needed to be advanced; he seemed like he was 100% natural. But that could not have been so. He must have had some symbol-manipulation installed somewhere, but no-one ever saw him plug in to offload or reference his data. Anyone would be insane to fit such an individual with a wireless interface whatsoever, no matter how much encryption it required. A single security-hole not related to the encryption algorithm itself could result in the whole project (and more) being blown. Could he still be inputting things by hand? It was impossible that the bureaucrats would allow it, given the time-sensitivity matters appeared to be gaining to them. This added a layer of mistery and speculation to the doc. A standard Type A would have cracked by now. But the hare was something special. It seemed almost that he kept his quirks as a matter of pride, or perhaps also as focus on the more important matters of research, such that his untraining himself at some social awkwardness would be beside the point.

The show had to go on. Really that day, they only needed two volunteers from the unit, but they all had to be there for moral support. Goyle would have ordered it anyway. They had already been briefed once or twice on the risks, and given a reasonable understanding of the science. It was straightforward, there were mostly just a few garbage numbertheory tricks that they didn't get. Really, probably no-one atall ever got them, however they were stumbled across and put into the public sphere. A few minutes with a sheet of paper was enough to convince most who doubted any given property, nevermind the proof; math was meta-logic or meta-science anyway. It only had to be as regular as the fabric of time and space, which was abhorrently irr egular. So they knew the task already. Now that they were there it was merely to continue the regular toughguy -banter. Anyone from any of Goyle's previous units would have said that they were all run the same way. Nobody liked sissies. Unending jokes tested for cracks. As macho as the Lieutenant acted sometimes, he really put his money in having a rugged, brainy outfit than a brutish one. He wanted everyone to have that spark. Having a pack of wild boars was great in some situations, but nowadays, close combat came only as a rarity, and even then, troops would be useless if they got scared, or flew into a rage. Having a pack of brains on swift ostrich-legs was the ticket, he just had to keep the included strongwilledness in check. Meat-shields were outdated. Goyle wasn't in this to send kids to their deaths anyway. The newer androids could now bleed quite convincingly anyway - to the point that the enemy would think they scored a good hit for long enough they were bitten for it. The philosophy was even more appropriate now. They were done killing eachother on Biecseuk (for now) and had another foe. One not of their world. So all the evidence seemed to indicate.

Cassie stepped forward. "Alright, let's get this overwith," gruffly. "Are you volunteering, Casidy?" Goyle hated formal callsigns, and hated movies even more, but he had a softspot for fictional, alternate-universe characters, plus it was close enough to her real name anyway that it hardly mattered, moreso it actually sounded like a last name, rather than a first, and seemed to match her toughness better. Every one of Goyle's unspoken ' rules ' seemed to have an exception, such as ' no callsigns '. Since his rules were mostly unspoken, they were hardly rules to begin with, but they never had big exceptions. He had said that if the first name were used (' Butch ') she could call it off whenever she wanted, as with anyone could with an unwanted nickname. Knowing this, everyone had behaved themselves, and titles stayed reasonable. "Well, boss," she looked at him oddly with one eye part-open, trying to seem grizzly, paws up behind her head. "It's more like I'm the only one who's not dragging my heels. I guess that makes me look fast." She shrugged. Goyle looked at the rest. It was more like a runner's fault than a reluctant volunteering. "No backing out then." "That's a good one, Sundance." He rolled his eyes. "Listen, if this beast is going to choke on a hardsuit, we might as well know now. When's the last time we tested atmo in there anyway? We might all be wearing 'em." She was talking about the city now, actually making a valid point and question. Resources had indeed been turned inward in serach of a solution. Conditions were not being monitored as closely as they could have been. "Maybe we can even lose two INTJs at the same time," it was Stevenson. Talking about himself. "Plus I've got the best chance of coming back after Butch here drains more than her fair share of the juice." A short pause for effect. "Those hardsuits aren't light." Cassie took a few steps over and punched him in the arm anyway. She was one of the more ' built ' members of the squad. A boy's name really almost did fit her better. She'd learned to make her voice gravelly enough (which probably only Goyle was sure was just an affectation she'd gotten good at.) He was confident Stevenson wouldn't try to hit back, and that Cassidy wouldn't try to hit him again but he spoke just to make sure they were in line, "Now, no roughhousing. Save it for the badguys." Cassidy: "If there even are any badguys. No-one's shown that this isn't all some big goddamn glitch." This was a devil's advocate speaking; the events in Onr had been too mysterious to just randomly coincide with the detection of what appeared for all intents and purposes appeared to be an alien installation a few planets over. A number of events in the city had also been correlated with spikes on the sensors directed at the installation, with otherwise maintained a very regular state. "Although it beats calling them aliens, I guess. But it is exciting to think that over just some misplaced sentry*." * sentry variable

"Oh, it's clearly a Russian conspiracy, I think. Someone should tell the General." Sauda the Tapir chimed in. He didn't read or watch much fantasy, but knew there were such extensive stories about the post-war exploits of some general who persued traitors to his nation until the very end, driving the entire population to hurl accusations that their fellow citizens might have ties to the ' Soviet ' ideological/political system. Saunda had only read synopses, but the politcal philosophy appeared very solid, and lead him quite to wonder whether the proposed really would only work on paper. Few pushed that it be attempted. Some even believed that the Soviets were real and that they hid among the populace, weaving their malevolence. Even here there was argument as to whether the Soviet Empire had existed long ago on Biecseuk, or whether they were from another world. Either way, there were indeed plenty of parallels here that could be likened to realworld events, but those who meant that real Soviets indeed drove these events were very much crazies, taking enjoyment of a good story a step too far. This was Saunda's implication. Here both Cassidy and Goyle shot him looks for poking any fun at their shared hobby. It was fair enough, though. He was an intel officer, so fact-stickling was supposed part of his personality.