Bravo Team's own Junebug had worked fast, the five Eye IIs in orbit gathering their scan data as a three dimensional map of what lay beneath the tarmac, and she directed her own ship to fire a single shot into the tarmac away from the civilians and troops, punching a hole into the tunnel below. As she painted her strike on their HUDs, several members of Bravo were already en route when the tarmac exploded again, a single ceramic cased tungsten shell cleanly blasting a hole into the drainage tunnel.
Boomer, Thud, and Spark took point, dropping into the tunnel and taking off at full sprint towards the nearest exit, but they were too late to intercept the Alpha squad, and the three Revenant clad troopers watched the nearby friendly markers go blank. They were too late. Boomer let a grenade fly at the gunship, but the round wouldn't do more than put a scratch in the hull, and the three could no longer fire without risking the lives of Nora and her child.
So they retreated back into the tunnel and watched, cloaked.
"Junebug, Spark. There's a gunship cloaked on my position. I need active scan and follow, but do not engage, VIPs are aboard. I want jump vector, signature, and anything you can get on it. I need to know what it is and where it's going, and I need that data in Jack Pine's hand five minutes ago. Let Rose know what's going on, and tell her we need a higher power shield for the Revenants."
"Roger, Spark. Junebug's on it." Aster's voice cut through the radio. "Get back here and don't put yourselves at risk. We've got dead and wounded, here, and one Hell of a mess to clean up."
"Spark, confirming. Boomer and Thud, you heard her."
"We're letting them get away?"
"The personal body shield module for the Revenant isn't deployable even to us, Boomer. We can't engage that gunship, even if there weren't VIPs on board."
"But--"
"Can it. We're retreating."
"Belay that, Spark." Aster's voice again. "Stay in the AO, do not engage. Your detachment is on body recovery detail for Alpha."
~~~
Something beeped as something connected to the comm relay in Rose's car, and she was suddenly aware of her car connecting to her Geist, and a mass of data from an Eye II flooding her mind. She shook off the feeling and began sifting through the data, and included helmet camera images from Bravo Team and Alpha Squad as Rorik and his men were cut down, and Junebug's own sensor sweeps of the incident.
Some part of her was enraged that someone would be audacious enough to make the attack, and wanted to flood the scene with orbital munitions, but she carefully detatched that, letting her logical scientific mindset take over, and exploring options. Her personal shield project was almost ready, just needing Aster's hand for a power supply. She could have Bravo and another strike team outfitted with them within a week, if her lab on the Anvil was still fully operational. Moreover, they needed more detection, and resolved to get the Eye II frames the team was using upgraded, either through IIS or through their own means. They also needed more, which meant negotiating a construction license and getting every ship in the fleet outfitted with a new sensor package to ensure something didn't slip by again.
With the expansion of AI use in the fleet, she could network sensor data and get the the ships to navigate and network to get a better image that a distributed intelligence could respond to. Her brain punched up quick proposals and courses of action for a technical side response before forwarding the data to Jack Pine and Mark Oaklen, in a message titled "Bravo Team Report and A-R&D response to immediate crisis. More data to follow."
Thistle made a hungry, upset noise, and Rose snapped back to reality, noting that Michael was now asleep and done. With a gentle smile, she hid how these events had disturbed her and went back to tending her children, a shadow passing over the passenger compartment of the car as a satellite nearby blocked the sun for a moment.
