'Athena'

## The Pilot

Ciaran Hertz, prior to "The Fall" was a German Citizen living with two parents in the rural town of Coswig. Technically, however she wasn't German and if you were to ask her she would say that her "Nordic blood was stronger than any one elses you would find down here". As it was, she was born in an even smaller town behind the border of Norway. While she was still quite young her mother had made the decision to divorce her father and move to Germany , taking her daughter with her. Not long after she remarried and Ciaran was forced to change her last name.

Though her accent was now indistinguishable from anyone else you would find in that part of Germany and she spoke better German than she did Bokmål or Nynorsk she still longed for the day she could leave Germany and return home. In school, Ciaran had no option to continue her study of the Norwegian Languages and opted toward English instead, deciding that she would continue her other studies independent of school. Continuing her language studies throughout middle school, she decided shortly before the start of her sophomore year she decided that she would pursue a career in medicine, this prompted her to begin taking advanced courses in Biology, Anatomy, Physiology and even a prep course for Neurology.

It wasn't until her Junior year in which the event later designated "The Fall" occurred. Reports of the event had been broadcasted on every station for the past five hours, but to Ciaran, none of them were close enough to warrant enough concern out of her to head to a sheelter. Instead she decided that she would stay where she was and continue to study for the midterms which had been causing her anxiety for the past few weeks. Granted that the closest shelter was nearly two hours away, she probably thought that this was the smart decision, at least she did until mere minutes after turning off the television all the glass to the one side of her room shattered at once. Before should could even react to the sudden and loud shattering she was thrown to the opposite side of her bed and knocked to the floor.

It took her some time to collect herself and approach the now shattered window to the other side of her room. What she saw was the now ruined back yard of her parents home and in the middle of all that mayhem, a large metallic pod. Her mother and step father had left early in the morning to one of the larger towns in the country for what they called a "relaxing vacation" however they would undoubtedly be on their way back due to the numerous reports that were cluttering each and every station. Alone in the house, normally she may have hidden herself somewhere in her room and waited out whatever terrors might be lying in wait outside, today however she was overtaken with an unnatural curiosity of the object embedded in the middle of her mother's pitiful garden.

As she exited the back of her house through the now shattered sliding glass door she could almost feel as if the pod was pulsing. Not a kind of pulsing that made the metal move, but the same as a heartbeat inside a person's chest. She felt as if something "organic" were inside. She had intended to touch the pod, she had the desire to feel the metal and hopefully the beat of whatever was inside, but she didn't make it close enough. Once she had come within a few meters a precise light came from a new opening near the top of the pod. Immediately she stopped in her tracks and couldn't force herself to go any further.

The light, as quickly as it appeared thinned itself horizontally and shone from the edge of her toes to the top of her head and finally back down again before ceasing completely. After a moment a voice which could only be described as "alluring" yet without a hint of emotion in its voice spoke out "Approach". If she had been approaching the pod before out of a sense of simple desire she now felt the intense need to reach it.

Upon arriving less than a meter away from the object and observing the articulate yet subtle markings which were scrawled all over the pod she couldn't think of any other word to describe the thing aside from "Alien". As soon as this thought popped into her head a vertical piece of the pod raised to show an opening. Ignoring the fact that the missing piece seemed to have no where to go unless this thick and quite obviously very durable metal could bend like rubber, the inside of the pod was completely black. Even with what remained of the light bulbs that hadn't shattered immediately upon the impact of this thing it stayed as black as the abyss you'd find at the bottom of the ocean or a black hole completely devoid of light. However, without a second thought she stepped into that abyss to find what might lie beyond it.

## The Suit

The suit Ciaran found inside that pod turned out to be one of the smaller "variants" that were wreaking havoc about the Globe, the second smallest discovered to be precise. After some nerve racking testing of the suit's features, she discovered that the base suit was equipped with a re-breather, the gloves and boots were applied with a reactive compound that when stimulated by the suit allowed for her to stick to nearly any surface. She also found that the boots had been equipped with a sensor which monitored tremors in the ground and served as a sort of detection device for anything that moved across the ground.

On top of these base features, the suit also allowed for an integrated Heads Up Display or "HUD" which allowed for an incredibly detailed analysis of the suit's status as well as her own well-being. It also had an advanced comm relay and anti-virus software meant to ward off attempts to corrupt the internal computer of the suit. In the place of the kind of dangerous software that the anti-virus protected her suit from it had a form of spyware which proved to be quite effective on any nearby system she could think to test it on.

The suit also had a number of additional modular upgrades which she added to the suit not long after the original stress testing. These upgrades were, an Environmental Control system which allowed for the inside of the suit to be completely isolated from the outside in order to keep out liquid, unwanted chemicals or even allow survival in the event of entering a space of vacuum, it also supported an internal heating and cooling system and pressure resistant plating was added to the outside of the suit so that it could withstand the high pressure depths often found in the deeper parts of the ocean. It also came with an upgrade which could be directly applied to the power source allowing for a much longer uptime before the suit needed to be charged. A camouflage system which would allow for the reflection of light around it in order to become practically invisible. Kinetic stabilizers to allow for the suit to move at higher speeds and allow the joints of the suit to withstand much more intense impacts. Finally, the suit came with a control device that allowed it to be shrunk down to a much smaller size and restructured to fit around the arm of a person. This was a feat that made no sense logically to Ciaran, though she decided it was best not to think too hard into it.

The suit was not the only thing that she received, there were a number of changes made to her body as well. A brain implant was placed at stem which allowed for remote control of the suit and the ability to view the Heads Up Display at anytime. Her blood had also been injected with a number of hyper advanced nanites. The first of the nanite groups which was later designated "Hydra" allowed for extreme resistance to any and all diseases and poisons, it also allowed for a near instantaneous healing of wounds and even the regrowing of lost limbs, hence the name. The second group of nanites were later designated "Progenitor" and drastically increased the lifespan of the host and would modify their appearance to what would later be discovered as the same as a humanoid race which appeared around the time as the pod drops. The final group nanites which were later given the designation "Canvas" allowed for the change of facial features and in some cases, body structure of the host. In this case they had counter-acted the appearance changes made by the "Progenitor" nanites and allowed for Ciaran to retain her original appearance.

The final discovery along with the pod was an AI or "Artificial Intelligence" embedded in the suit. This AI was original tasked with overseeing the biological changes to be made to whoever stumbled upon the pod, after completing this task it would assist the pilot in any way possible. Upon being asked by Ciaran for a name the AI responded with the name "Siri", this was something Ciaran couldn't help but find funny and when opted by Siri to designate a name to the suit she chose "Iris".

Certain modifications have since been made to the suit including the removal of the compound previously found on the gloves and boots of the suit, the removal of the re-breather and the deletion of the spyware which was stored on the internal computer. Not all changes were removals however, later Ciaran was able to make use of a second drone similar to the first stored with her suit. Both drones have canine like exoskeletons, sharpened blades which act as the teeth and claws of the would be animal and a single Ion Cannon each which is attached to their unexpectedly powerful tails.

## Medium Combat Drones - Designation: H.O.U.N.D.S.

There are multiple variations of drones that can be linked to suits, while not all variations are used for combat, the H.O.U.N.D.S. are of the medium sized combat variant. Each hound utilizes sharpened blade like claws or teeth in close range engagements and Ion Cannons for mid range engagements. Each hound is also controlled by a LI or "Limited Intelligence" allowing it to assess a situation and respond to it accordingly so long as there is an acceptable response. In order for the LI to make a decision it must assess the situation and check its database for any reference to its current situation, if there is an entry with an appropriate response the LI will act accordingly. Should an instance occur where the LI does not have information that pertains to the current situation, it will by default attempt to remain undetected and/or avoid advancing the situation in any way. As there is still much room for improvement, the LI it has been dubbed Version I.

After the arguable failure of the Unlikely Heroes operation, Ciaran decided that the Version I of the LI needed to be reworked. The Version II of the H.O.U.N.D.S. LI allowed for a more dynamic growth of information in the memory of each unit. Each unit controlled by the Version II behaved in a near identical way to a unit controlled by a Version I, the key difference however was that once a new situation had been given a solution by the handler, it would store this information for further use. In theory this would allow it to learn how to handle any situation without the need for in depth programming in between operations, however it was a flawed system. There were many situations that might seem very similar but require much more varied responses, with the Version I each of these situations had to be inputted into the memory of the unit with a specific solution, otherwise the unit would consider it to be a new situation. Because of the strict parameters required for the Version I to function, there was also very little room for error. The Version II however was much more error prone, this was because in those situations that were so similar it would still reference the first solution, something that could very often be the wrong way to handle it and end up being a detriment to the operation. With the failure of the Version II of the LI, most units kept the Version I for their control system.

## Operations

Over the course of her career as a pilot Ciaran was often prompted to identify herself, when this situation arose she would often utilize the alias "Athena".

### Operation: Unlikely Heroes

During the operation "Unlikely Heroes" Athena was integrated into the defense forces for the FOB or Forward Operating Post designated Aegis. Aegis would be the operations site for the spectre and talon forces to jump off from in their attempts to rescue the civilians held in the nearby town of Kent, as well as an arguably more important task of retrieving a VIP. Though no casualties were taken on the Aegis' side, the only rescue made was that of the VIP. After the operation, Ciaran decided that the current version of her H.O.U.N.D.S. LI was insufficient and that it needed to be modified, this led to the planning and implementation of the Version II LI, however it has since been considered a failure.