My grip on the seat’s bolsters tightened as the shuttle bounced through the turbulent air of the troposphere. Keg swore loudly beside me as the shuttle abruptly dropped in the sky, only to catch itself again after a few meters. “Fuck sake, Mia! Have you ever flown before!” he yelled down the small shuttles inner bay toward the open cockpit.

“Fuck off keg, it’s a fucking storm out there! If you want to come and fly this old box you’re more than welcome!” Mia said, and my grip tightened further as she dropped her left hand from the controls to turn back to curse at Keg.

It had been a night and a day since I had spoken to Mia on the phone, and we were already deploying for our first intel-gathering mission. We had been startled while eating breakfast in the dining hall, by Jack rushing through the double doors and skidding to a halt before declaring, “We’re Oscar Mike! Finally. Mia, I’ve already requisitioned us a shuttle, go pick it up. Keg go get enough for two days bush, pack it light. Sam and Erick, brush up on your asset obtainment and interrogation tactics and meet us at the light docks.”

“Are we expecting combat?” Sam asked, an excited look in her eyes.

“Unsure, best to be prepared though,” he had said before running from the room again.

So now we headed through dark clouds towards the nearest bot infested city, Mia struggling to maintain a steady course as the powerful winds battered the aircraft. “I swear I’m going to be sick,” Keg muttered.

From beside him, Daron looked up at his greying face with a wide grin, “Honestly, I’m just happy to be here!” he said, his feet tapping on the floor to the rhythm of the erratic engine.

“Shut it, we need you to run comms and systems. Don’t look so stoked with yourself.” Keg muttered, leaning forward to place his head in his hands before abruptly regretting his decision and sitting back up with a groan.

“Mia, what’s the ETA? Keg really does look like he is about to kick the bucket,” Jack asked, looking up from his scanner's screen to call out to the cockpit.

“Tell him to drink some concrete! We only have a few minutes,” she called back, this time keeping her hands on the controls.

“I swear she hates me now. You forgave me for that little… incident, but I constantly worried she will put her spear in my back if I turn around now.” Keg whispered, looking over at me with bloodshot eyes.

“You’ll cope,” I said, “Jack, did you bring anything non-lethal?” I asked my brother.

“Just this,” Jack said, shaking a fist in front of him.

“Fuck it. Sam, did you have a chance to go over the security?”

“It’s airtight on the ground level, but if we can get to the roof?”

“So, a quick drop? Mia, how close can we get to the buildings?”

“If you don’t want to draw attention, then no more than one hundred feet.”

I swore, both at the situation and at the lack of time we had to prepare for this operation. The task had been a simple one, passed down from the campus administration. Get into the city, locate an individual named Terus, who was meant to have information on the layout of the nearest school, one buried in the marshes to our ­south west. They had given us an address but nothing else, and now they expected us to devise a plan to get him and the information with less than a days’ notice. What pissed me off further was that I would have bet my left nut that they already knew this information but had made it part of the mock war that we had to find out for ourselves.

“I have an idea, the nearest building is only twenty feet away, and it's currently under construction so it won’t be occupied,” Sam said with the same excited smile that had been hanging around all day.

“Okay, so it’s a go." I said nodding, Jack and Keg mirrored me, "Don’t forget that R.O.I states we are only allowed to return fire in self-defense,” I added, checking the magazine on my rifle before slamming it home, compressing the weapon and flipping it to my back.

“They’re bots! Why can’t we go in guns blazing? It’s ridiculous!” Keg complained, also checking his weapons.

“Because, you idiot. One day soon it won't be bots, it will be people…or aliens, and if we went around killing everyone we would have the firm fist of the law right up our arses,” Sam said, sliding her spear out then compressing it again with a press of a button. She stood and moved to the cockpit, stumbling slightly as the shuttle bumped around.

“Mia, park near this one,” Sam showed Mia her scanner screen.

Mia tapped on the console and nodded, “Right, hold on guys, E.T.A to the docks is forty-five seconds.”

The shuttle dropped again and kept on dropping and the metal walls began to roar as heavy rain pelted the outside and the engine hummed as the vertical thrusters fought against gravity. The view hole framed waterlogged building tops as the shuttle descended into their midst. Finally unbattered by the howling winds the shuttle flew smoothly through the air, Mia shushed us all as she deftly moved the controls, her fingers twitching the ship it slid into a hold in one of the buildings, coming to a stop with a thick clang and thug into the dock.

“Cover up guys!” Jack said, he draped a grey silken cloak around his shoulders, it pinning it in place with a Grey Scarred emblem over his right breast. Then he tossed us all one of our own. The Cloaks were from the guild hall where they stored stacks of them. They made me feel like a medieval rogue, but the actual purpose was to cover any weapons, the real downside was that swords had to go on my waist. It’s not like going around armed in most of the galaxy was unusual, in fact, it was only outlawed on two planets, but there were often times when not displaying arms added to a sense of calm in public. This was one of those times.

I threw the cloak over my shoulders and clipped it in place, “oh how dashing,” Mia joked, leaning on the back of her pilot’s chair. I walked to the front of the shuttle and Mia pulled an extra full magazine from a box on the wall, stuffing it into a pouch on my lower back. “Have fun,” she whispered, giving me a quick kiss. “Let me know when you’re on your way up and I’ll swing past,” she called to the others.

“See you in a bit,” I said, over the hiss of the back door sliding open. I followed Sam out of the shuttle and into a steel-lined dock room, then into a wide hallway, the carpets stained from use. I tapped my scanner as I followed Sam, pulling up a local map of the building and transposing known Grey Scarred data gathered from previous recruits, it showed two security cameras around the corner and one checkpoint. I paid them no mind, there was nothing we needed to worry about currently as these docks were two blocks from the target site. We pushed past two civilians, loading cargo into a shuttle from a service elevator, and stepped into the neighboring elevator.

“Daron, I need you to find the entry codes for this building,” I said, isolating a location from my map and sending it to Daron with a swipe of my scanner.

“On, it,” Daron muttered, sticking close behind Keg as he began rapidly tapping on his scanner's screen. “Oh this will be easy, I’ll have them in a couple of minutes.”

“I want them before we hit the doors, we can’t wait around on the street,” I said. Plus, it was raining heavily out there.

We exited the lift into a crowded mall. Rows of shops, five floors deep all centered around a wide opening. The place was full of bots, all covered with synthetic skin, scales or hair, and indistinguishable from real life.

We moved confidently through the crowds a scaly couple passed us by arguing about where to have lunch. The individuals around us shone in my EM sense, their wires and circuit boards all actively transporting life-giving electricity. We stepped out into the street, immediately shielding our heads from the deluge from the dark sky. Leading the way Sam set off to the south. Bots in the street rushing along the sidewalks, eager to be inside and dry. Two blocks down I hesitated at the street corner shielded by a row of street vendors my mind screaming a warning at something irregular. Across the street, stood two men and two women. All with their four arms folded over their heads to cover themselves from the rain while deep brown silken cloaks protected their bodies. They were organic life, appearing dim in my EM sense compared to the surrounding bots. They were oblivious to our presence, looking up a tall tower. The building that we were planning to infiltrate. The one where our target lived. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

“Looks like we have some competition,” I said, nudging Jack and nodding across the road to the individuals.

Peering under Jacks's shoulder, Daron asked; “Can’t just take them out now can we?”

“No,” I replied, it went against the rules of engagement and was illegal within city limits.

“They’re heading into the alley; we could risk it now as long as we stay out of sight,” Sam said.

“No. We continue as planned,” Jack said. He reached behind his back and pulled out a tiny drone, tossing it into the air it zoomed off into the rain haze after the group. “Keep going. Daron, you have fifteen seconds with those doors.”

“Already got them, go to the northwestern door, there is a service elevator close by,” Daron said, Jack grunted and lead the way across the street and further down the road. The building we were heading for stood out like a sore thumb, the first fifteen floors were coated in scaffolding and the building was the only one unlit in the dim stormy light.

As we reached the door Daron hopped forward and tapped his scanner against the door's handle. It clicked unlocked and he twisted the handle. Jack's hand darted out and grabbed Daron’s shoulder. “We clear?” he asked me. I nodded my head and Jack pulled past Daron, ever cautious he pulled the door open with one hand and drew a piston from behind his back with the other.

The first floor of the building was empty as were the next three. We moved silently to an elevator and Daron began tapping on his scanner and the doors slip open with a ding.

“Floor?” he asked. Looking up at Sam and I.

“Seventy…two,” Sam said, contemplating the question in her head.

The Elevator shook then began rising rapidly as we all began drawing weapons from behind out backs, I pulled my rifle free and it popped open and into shape with a tap on the side.

When the elevator slowed to a stop and the doors dinged open, Jack and Keg pushed out the door scanning left and right like mirror images of each other, their rifles raised and ready. “Clear.” I stepped from the elevator, scanning the hallway with my eyes while my EM sense scanned the nearest rooms for life, the floor was empty. We cut through the hallways until we reached a large window. Shining out across from us was a lit-up apartment block, the windows frosted over. Sam looked at her scanner nodded to Jack, “open the window.” She said, slamming her hand against the glass.

Jack pulled out what looked like a pen from his pocket and began tracing around the edge of the glass pane. When he finished, Sam’s arm flexed, and the glass pulled free. The Wind howled through the hole in the wall, whipping our cloaks and hair from side to side as it and the rain infiltrated the building. Sam carried the glass to the nearest wall and placed it gently down. Where her hand had been there was now a haze of scratches where her implant had stabbed thousands of tiny claws into the glass. Jack handed the glass cutter to Sam who stored it in her pocket. “Don’t get the wrong window. And don’t make too much noise,” I looked out the window to the building opposite, it was only twenty feet away and if it wasn’t for the storm I probably would have been able to hear the people moving around their apartments. I could see silhouettes moving on the other sides of the frosted windows, separated by thick panels of steel.

I stepped to the side and out of the way as Sam ran from the center of the room and leap out into the wind. There was a small thud as she hit the steel beam of the building, followed by a short intake of breath from Jack as she slid down the side of the building. The wet steel squeaked under her hands as she began dropping towards the ground, then the stopped with a jerk, her augmented hands finding purchase. Her feet slipped from the steel and she dangled from the side of the building while the rest of us signed in relief.

Sam climbed up a floor of the building until she was level with a lit window. Hanging from one hand, she pulled the glass cutter from her pocket and carved a crude cross into the glass.

“Is she going to go in alone?” Daron asked, his voice pitched higher than normal.

“No, we’re going to jump,” Jack said.

“No one said anything about jumping across buildings seventy floors up! I can’t make that. Surely there is another way?” Daron squealed.

“We’re jumping!” Jack said, “Ericks going first, I’ll follow. Keg will make sure you get across alright. Here,” he said pulling out a small box. He clipped the box to Daron’s belt and tied the other end to himself. “If you fall, I’ll catch you.”

Daron swallowed and nodded hurriedly. His face quickly draining of colour.

Jack stopped at the edge of the window and stared out, his eyes glazed over, “Erick, hurry. We have activity from our friends on the street. Bloody hell, they are going in guns blazing. Talk about drawing attention.” Jack said, waving me to get across between the buildings.

I took a deep breath and stowed my rifle on my back as I walked to the middle of the room. Then I looked out the opening, felt the wind rushing past and the rain bucketing down. I stared straight through it at the cross Sam had drawn in the glass. Without another thought I rocketed forward at a spring, my toe finding the edge of the window frame as I leap. The rain stung my face and I forced myself not to blink and maintain focus on the cross as it drew closer and closer.

Then I smashed through it, the glass giving way where it had been cut and the window shattered around me. I hit the floor and rolled before slamming into a wall which halted my momentum. Swords drawn, I evaluated my surroundings. Our point of entry had been the bathroom, a hole in the floor where a toilet would have been on earth and a square metal tub in the corner. An instant later Sam slid through the window and we kicked through a door and burst into a living room, right into the barrel of a gun.