Fabienne Gschwind - The Fallen Heroine

Ghostys are small, agile dualcopters and are actually called Spidercopters. They were developed for street fighting in the first Trireligion War.

Think of it as a car-sized helicopter with short, ultra-powerful dual rotors.

The interesting thing is that the whole copter has no casing or windows for weight reasons, but is held together only by powerful beams of foamed aluminum. The pilots sit in a small transparent foil dome and at the rear the gunner also sits in a combat seat. The powerfull fluoride-ion batteries and engines are crammed in somewhere. The Ghosty is designed to provide tremendous flexibility in street combat for soldiers who are tethered to the copter with ropes. With trained fighters, it looks like old Spiderman movies. They jump off buildings and back up again, leap over them or swing through urban canyons. The Ghosty is above the buildings and can pull the fighters up at any time. In any case, the thing is so cool that Ghosty units have star status and they are the heroes in every action movie.

Flying with a Ghosty is something I've wanted to do for a long time. I could see myself sailing through urban canyons with my Pox9 in my hands, shooting down a repro gull in flight that was attacking a stroller ...

So I was daydreaming while we stood around until the Ghosty arrived. This one did not keep waiting, but approached at breakneck speed. With a phenomenal braking action, it came to a stop just above our heads. The pilots lowered the special ropes. It was the jetcopter crew that had rescued us in Auvergne. Tamara had only wanted these three pilots who had helped us out of the cave at the risk of their own lives. The boss chopped me in, "Well, since you're not trained for this, I'll take your control. Hold on here and don't touch anything else."

Then we were off. I didn't even have time to get excited about my first Ghosty trip. Because as I hung in the air, secured only by a few thin ropes, I was suddenly afraid of heights. But that's exactly what I didn't want to have, because actually I found it super great to fly around with a Ghosty.

Between joy and fear, I missed all the announcements Thibault made to us about the chateau, and only got that it was a castle with an attached hotel. Some people had been attacked by repro cats and were hiding in the wine cellar. We would have to evacuate them.

For a change, a mission without drama. Thirty minutes later, we were done. After that we returned to the cellar “to check on hidden repros” but in reality Tamara studied exactly which bottles were in the wine cellar.

But just as she was about to demonstrate how to open a bottle with a machete while Gabin was filming, the radio crackled.

"Okay, guys," came Thibault's voice over the radio. "The one gardener hasn't shown up yet. He may be hiding in a room in the castle. Or in one of the tool sheds. So you'll have to search everything there."

Tartelette groaned and put the bottle back. We walked back to the courtyard where soldiers and other units had gathered. She then looked around the the scattered people. She quickly assembled the search teams with the R-soldiers and other ReS units.

R-soldiers were specialists who had undergone special training in repro combat, except that they could not detect the smell of repro. Their main weapon was the STEZ, a short machine gun with powerful zappers that fired in a beam pattern, covering a large area with a single shot. This required these fighters to carry ammunition and battery packs on their backs.

I envied them this weapon, it was quite different from our primitive machete.

"No way," Tartelette said when I told her my wish, "Just check the statistics and see how many people have been killed by STEZ fire. Those things are only good when there's nobody around for miles."

"Our zappers kill too, don't they?", I asked doubtfully.

"Yes, but we can switch them to minimum power when there are crowds. A shot at minimal power, is just very painful, but people do not die from it. You'd better learn the theory units! Didn't you learn accelerated learning and speed-reading in school?”

I didn't get to do anything to defend myself. Unfortunately, I had been in an old-fashioned school just as in past centuries with teachers and classes. An not in one of the standard school that support children with trained learning coach and only regarded subject experts gave compact and exceedingly exciting lessons. The main feature was to teach children to learn how to learn so that they left the school as highly motivated autodidacts. I had always envied them. I vowed to catch up quickly on these techniques, Tamara had certainly suitable learning materials.

Together with some R-soldiers we searched the hotel. All rooms had to be searched individually for the lost gardener. But except for a repro cat, we found nothing.

Finally, the resolution came from Thibault:

"Hey guys, news from the Arcachon ReS unit. They found the gardener. He was holed up in a vacant garden tower and is fine."

We had searched the last room. "Well, let's take a break. Let's go to the kitchen," Tartelette said, opening her visor.

A little later, we helped ourselves to the warming buffet, where the arranged plates were still under the infrared heater. I caught a lamb carré with a deluxe potato gratin; it was really good. Tartelette and Gabin discovered a Chateau Briand in one of the convectomats and shared it, while the soldiers went for the various fish dishes. Emily found the cheese and cake buffet.

In the meantime, we listened to Thibault's reports. The ocelot had still not been found, and the muffled rumbling we heard was satellite shots of the surrounding fields, where an entire colony of repro-vole had spread.

Tartelette ran more simulations based on the information of where which repro had been killed.

I emptied another bowl of chocolate mousse and asked Tartelette for permission to briefly link me to my family.

After the chat with my family, I went through our private video footage with Gabin (that is, the ones we had privatly recorded and not already confined by ReS headquarters) and Gabin started editing the scene with the employer being choked by Tartelette. It was unbelievable how skilled he was at it. With effort I also got a clip together, but when I wanted to upload it, I was almost slain by the thousands of messages in my new account. Most of them were positive, but also negative ones, some called me a clumsy fool or made fun of my Alsatian accent.

But one link piqued my curiosity: "How long will the new trainee live?" it led to a betting shop where people were betting on my lifetime. That hit me. I was suddenly tired of all this social media stuff. But Gabin offered to do it for me. He said to just let him have my video footage and he would share the profits fraternally. I was delighted with this offer. But then it was time for work.

The ocelot had been spotted disappearing into the forest and running toward the coast. Tamara immediately gave orders:

"That means we'll follow its trail. If you're tired, take a shot of Adalin. R-soldiers you can join their ReS units and clean up here properly. Thanks for your help."

I instructed my battle suit to give me a few milligrams of Adalin. And quickly scrolled through the side effect list, only to see that Emiliy might have been exaggerating.

Adalin was a sleep inhibitor that was pretty much completely harmless. It worked great and had few side effects. Nevertheless, it was hardly available outside the military, because there was a risk of abuse. At most, doctors could still get it, for example, to get through an eighteen-hour surgery.

When Adalin was introduced, it was seen as a solution to the many labor shortages after the repro-apocalypse. Factory workers were sometimes forced to take it in order to complete 24-hour shifts. After that, some started taking it in their free time as well. After all, they wanted to do something instead of sleeping after all that work. And after some crazy people had been taking it for years to stay awake, going crazy, it was just banned.