CROSSFIRE - Atlantis DSV - New Cape Quest

Captain Ezard had granted it however was enough reason for him to simply allow them their
work, even if he did so with a hand not six inches from his sidearm. In truth, the longer he
remained on Ezard‟s project, the more he disliked what he saw. Among the other things he
had learnt never to ask was why the project existed at all. His selection to be part of this
operation was because his loyalty was never questioned – his belief in the UEO, and what it
stood for being unshakeable and his will to defend it second to none. Only the foolishly
idealistic would think that hard things weren‟t necessary in its defence, as the reality of the
world painted a picture of powers that would happily see the UEO destroyed, perhaps first
amongst them the Alliance of Macronesia...
...Although the UEO General Assembly would never openly admit it. Sometimes, the
UEO, in its idealism, had to be protected from itself.
And so it fell to a few. Those few who were willing to put all other considerations
second in place of the one, incontrovertible truth that the world was a cruel, sometimes
unfair place where the only rule was to survive, no matter what the cost.
It was a strange symmetry, thought Callaghan, that they wound find such a literal
definition of that ideal in the smouldering ruins of the African continent. That those downtrodden
and wretched souls such as those who lived in South Africa could be the salvation of
the stagnating and too-proud UEO was ironic to say the least, yet this was the way it was
going to be.
The loss of the Nycarus Labs in Sierra Leone had put the entire project on-edge,
although Captain Ezard and his staff knew far more about that issue than was openly
admitted. Three years before, lines of communication with the labs had been cut as soon as
they had learnt the extent of the uprising, championed by someone by the name of
„Neureon‟. Like terrorists, the Nycarians demands had been simple – leave, or die.
This left the Proteus the last bastion of Ezard‟s great plan.
Callaghan surveyed the bridge around him once more before he gave a cursory nod
to one of the Ensigns who sat at operations. The officer gave Callaghan a knowing smile,
and he then turned and left the bridge, walking down the pristine hallways past a few
marines and a dozen scientists before coming getting on the mag-lev tube, and riding it
down to the sea deck laboratories.
As the doors slid open, Callaghan was greeted once again by the eerily-white walls
of a Nycarus lab. The design seemed alien to Callaghan when compared to the usual,
industrial lines of a UEO DSV‟s hydrosphere facilities. What should have been a missile prep
room was now a smooth, sleek laboratory with every medical facility the geneticists working
there could ever need. He could imagine the catwalks that ringed the vast chamber once
having encircled a series of massive ICBM silos common to the seaQuest-class design.
Now, where the missiles should have been was a single great cavern on the lower floor of
which was the main control facility for the operation. Above it, suspended eerily from
scaffolding in frozen, steaming tubes of glass and ice, were rack upon racks of those
“Nycarian” subjects that had proven to be successful... and their number was practically
legion. True to his word, Doctor van der Weer had delivered results after a string of costly
and grotesque failures in Sierra Leone. The project was now entering its final stages for van
der Weer, and what defined a “Nycarian” was becoming a formula, rather than a series of
cooperative errors. Heightened awareness, incredible intelligence, intuition, improved motor
control, stamina and perfect senses had created a more impressive weapon that any one on
the project could have imagined.
Where the infamous „Daggers‟ of the early 21 st century had been a polar extreme of
the Nycarians, representing a kind of untempered strength that could breed shock troopers,
a finer mastery of the human brain and its functions had always eluded the GELF engineers.
In the end, it did not matter how much muscle tissue you wrapped a skeleton in or
how dense you could make a bone – a human was still an inherently fragile form, and the
most basic assault rifles could rend flesh from bone in an instant. Bodies were an
instrument. But an instrument was still only second-place to that which was man‟s greatest
gift: the weapon of the mind. Of those weapons, Nycarus was the final word.
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