Since Armor 2.0's introduction, Guardians have been flooded with armor that has random distributions of numbers across the six character stats of Mobility, Resilience, Recovery, Discipline, Intellect, and Strength. Opinions about Armor are like any other opinion: everyone has one. There are plenty of other guides on building loadouts in Destiny 2, and this guide is built upon the shoulders of many of these guides. I will give credit to those other guides as I go, but please feel free to provide links to other guides and write-ups below.
With so many great guides and so many different criteria for what is considered a "great loadout", I wanted to share my methods for 1) determining what to hold onto when you're Vault is full of armor that you kept because "the roll looks good" and 2) how to organize and utilize the gear you keep in building the basis of your "great loadout".

TL;DR

1) 20+/15+: Keep all armor that has one stat above 20 and another stat above 15 (regardless of the stat). Probably keep anything with just one stat above 20. 15+/15+ splits are situational but usually great, too. Everything else? Seriously consider sharding it.
2) Use DIM LO to help you start building goods loadouts from your overloaded Vault.
3) Scroll to the bottom for my excel template and guide that helps quickly add useful notes (based on common searches) to your armor in DIM.

Armor Stats and Tier Bonuses: A Primer

Totaled together, your armor's base stats influence your character's total base stat values, with possible values for each stat being 0-100. Every 10 points, each stat grants a "bonus" to your character in the form of an improvement to one or more of your in-game abilities.
These 10 point breaks are referred to as "Tiers". Tier 0 is total stat value of 0-9 (no bonus), Tier 1 is total stat value of 10-19 (first bonus), Tier 2 is total stat value of 20-29, and so on to Tier 10, which requires 100+ in the stat and provides the "best" bonus. (Note: any points above 100 is considered "wasted" and grants no further bonus.) You can view these in-game on your character screen by moving your cursor over each stat to the right of your character.
For example, every character in destiny has a base Super Ability Cooldown of 7:12. This means standing still, not slaying, not picking up orbs of light, it takes 7 minutes and 12 seconds for your super to recharge after use. Increasing your character's total Intellect stat value to 10-19 grants the Tier 1 bonus, which decreases your Super Ability Cooldown to 6:22. Here's some tables that shows the bonus provided for each stat at each tier by class (original template courtesy of doormango, I adjusted Resilience tier values since it appears Resilience Tiers 5-8 were changed, I did a full verification of Hunter (spotted a nerf in Hunter melee cooldown compared to other classes), spot checked Titan/Warlock values, and gathered numbers for class ability cooldown tiers for Hunter, Warlock and Titan):
Hunter

Tier	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Stat	0-9	10-19	20-29	30-39	40-49	50-59	60-69	70-79	80-89	90-99	100+
Mobility (Base Speed Increase)	0%	4%	8%	12%	16%	20%	24%	28%	32%	36%	40%
Mobility (Class Ability Cooldown)	0:28	0:26	0:25	0:24	0:22	0:20	0:18	0:16	0:13	0:11	0:09
Resilience (Shield Capacity Increase)	0%	1%	2%	3%	4%	5%	6%	8%	10%	12%	13%
Recovery (Recovery Rate Increase)	0%	3%	6%	9%	11%	14%	17%	23%	29%	34%	43%
Discipline (Grenade Ability Cooldown)	1:43	1:33	1:25	1:22	1:08	0:59	0:51	0:45	0:41	0:37	0:32
Intellect (Super Ability Cooldown)	7:12	6:22	5:43	5:00	4:45	4:31	4:18	4:07	4:00	3:52	3:48
Strength (Melee Ability Cooldown)*	2:00	1:49	1:40	1:36	1:20	1:09	1:00	0:53	0:48	0:44	0:37

* It appears that Hunters have longer Melee ability cooldowns compared to Warlock/Titan. I couldn't find patch notes for this. It appears that this may have been introduced with Season of Dawn (unconfirmed). I suppose this is because Hunter Melee can be fully recharged with Gambler's Dodge and the weighted throwing knife is a ranged OHK.
Warlock

Tier	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Stat	0-9	10-19	20-29	30-39	40-49	50-59	60-69	70-79	80-89	90-99	100+
Mobility (Base Speed Increase)	0%	4%	8%	12%	16%	20%	24%	28%	32%	36%	40%
Resilience (Shield Capacity Increase)	0%	1%	2%	3%	4%	5%	6%	8%	10%	12%	13%
Recovery (Recovery Rate Increase)	0%	3%	6%	9%	11%	14%	17%	23%	29%	34%	43%
Recovery (Class Ability Cooldown)	(can't get my stat this low!)	1:43	1:31	1:22	1:15	1:08	1:03	0:59	0:51	0:46	0:41
Discipline (Grenade Ability Cooldown)	1:43	1:33	1:25	1:22	1:08	0:59	0:51	0:45	0:41	0:37	0:32
Intellect (Super Ability Cooldown)	7:12	6:22	5:43	5:00	4:45	4:31	4:18	4:07	4:00	3:52	3:48
Strength (Melee Ability Cooldown)	1:43	1:33	1:25	122	1:08	0:59	0:51	0:45	0:41	0:37	0:32

Titan

Tier	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Stat	0-9	10-19	20-29	30-39	40-49	50-59	60-69	70-79	80-89	90-99	100+
Mobility (Base Speed Increase)	0%	4%	8%	12%	16%	20%	24%	28%	32%	36%	40%
Resilience (Shield Capacity Increase)	0%	1%	2%	3%	4%	5%	6%	8%	10%	12%	13%
Resilience (Class Ability Cooldown)	0:52	0:46	0:41	0:37	0:33	0:30	0:28	0:25	0:21	0:17	0:14
Recovery (Recovery Rate Increase)	0%	3%	6%	9%	11%	14%	17%	23%	29%	34%	43%
Discipline (Grenade Ability Cooldown)	1:43	1:33	1:25	1:22	1:08	0:59	0:51	0:45	0:41	0:37	0:32
Intellect (Super Ability Cooldown)	7:12	6:22	5:43	5:00	4:45	4:31	4:18	4:07	4:00	3:52	3:48
Strength (Melee Ability Cooldown)	1:43	1:33	1:25	122	1:08	0:59	0:51	0:45	0:41	0:37	0:32

Aztecross does a fantastic job of going over the built-in diminishing return points on these stats in this video. His video is from January, so there have been a few tweaks to the data since then. Regardless, the bottom line: there are 'break points' built into each bonus (apparently aside from Recovery) that give you markedly less bang for your 10 stat points. Go watch that video, I'll wait.

The Stat Point Pool: Optimal Efficiency and Double/Triple 100 Stat Builds

Strap in, we're going to talk theoretical perfect rolls and then come back to reality.
The general minimum base stat total for any given piece of armor (aside from class armor) is somewhere around 40 (the Armor 2.0 Solstice Armor dropped at 46, and it is hard to verify a minimum since no one seems to care to talk about this and they're often instantly sharded). The general maximum stat total is somewhere in the neighborhood of 70. So let's do a few experiments with these numbers.

Armor Slot	Minimum Total (base)	Maximum Total (base)
Helmet	40	70
Gauntlets	40	70
Chest Armor	40	70
Leg Armor	40	70
Class Item	0	0
Total Points	160	280
Theoretical Max Tiers	16	28

For the sake of a complete discussion, I am going to review Masterworking armor here. In short: masterworking any piece of armor will grant +2 to every stat on the armor, for a total gain of +12 points per armor piece. Here are those same theoretical pieces from above, masterworked. (...masterworking a 40 base stat piece *shudder*.)

Armor Slot	Minimum Total (base)	Maximum Total (base)
Helmet (Masterworked)	52	82
Gauntlets (Masterworked)	52	82
Chest Armor (Masterworked)	52	82
Leg Armor (Masterworked)	52	82
Class Item (Masterworked)	12	12
Total (Masterworked)	220	340
Theoretical Max Tiers	22	34

Let's convert these into total "Tiers". Let's assume that absolutely no points are wasted and we were able to build a loadout that had each stat ending in a 0. Let's also assume that we have exactly 100 in any stat per 100 points in the pool.
With a full loadout of 40 point armor, you could theoretically achieve a T10/T6 build. For example, a Hunter could have T10 Mobility / T6 Recovery WITHOUT MODS. If you added 4 general armor stat mods, you could bring the T6 stat up to T10. Every single other stat would be 0 and you would have the base values for all of those abilities driven by the other stats. These Theoretical Minimum Optimum Armor Pieces (TMOAPs?) would each have 25 Mobility/15 Recovery.
With a full loadout of masterworked 70 point armor, you can theoretically achieve a T10/T10/T10/T4 build. For example, a Hunter could have T10 Mobility / T10 Recover / T10 Intellect / T4 Resilience. These theoretical optimum armor pieces would each have (after masterwork) 24.5 Mobility / 24.5 Recovery / 24.5 Intellect / 9.5 Resilience (those half points would be divided between the pieces for whole numbers). However, masterworking provides +2 to all stats, which would mean that you would always have 10 points minimum in each stat, and theorycraft eats it's own head from this point forward.
Sounds great, right? Here's the rub: Armor 2.0 very, very rarely (almost never?) rolls with any given stat value at 0 (or 1). Additionally, ~50% of Armor 2.0 drops have any stat at 2. In short, your smallest stat on any given armor piece is most likely going to be greater than 2. You're basically always going to have points allocated to the "wrong" stats for your build. In fact, there's strong evidence to support a theory that the total points are almost always evenly split up between the "D1" stats of Mobility/Resilience/Recovery and the "D2" stats of Discipline/Intellect/Strength.
What about the other end of the spectrum? Realistically, what should you expect to see as the maximum value for a stat on an armor piece? I have curated my Vault for a while and done more than a few passes to clear out obvious junk. Of 377 current pieces (ugh, time for another pass (hat tip to Umbrals)), the breakdown of "highest single stat" on all of my armor are as follows:

Highest Base Stat Value	# of Armor Pieces with a highest stat in range
<1 (class items)	32
1-10 (largely Armor 1.0 holdovers)	39
11-20	238
21-30	67
31+*	1

^\ (I have a single blue) "War Mantis" Hunter Gauntlets ^{that rolled a total of 50 points with the distribution Mob 32 / Resil 4 / Recov 14 / Disc 0 / Int 0 / Str 0. I keep it in formaldehyde as a specimen.})
So ~63% of the armor I have saved has a "highest single stat" of 11-20. Without getting any further into the weeds, I have 52 items with at least one stat = 20. This is the highest count for any specific value of the 'highest single stats' I have, and we'll get into exactly why that is shortly. In short, the maximum value that you're ever going to see on armor is somewhere between 20-30, with 20 being the most common value of significance.
What about base stat totals? Using my Vault of 377 pieces of armor (that Ramshackle Cryptarch is SO hungry), most of the armor I've held onto is somewhere between 50-67 total points (285 to be exact). No big surprises there.
Finally, let's quickly dip into triple-100 builds. Bungie is not a fan (search "Powerful Friends"). My gut tells me that anything that enables "easy" triple-100 builds is going to get hit with a nerf when they can figure out how to do it.
Where does this leave the theoretical discussion above? In short: in the dumpster. You may run across folks who have had monumentally fantastic luck and have managed to get four pieces of armor that come CLOSE to the theoretically optimal masterworked armor base stats T10/T10/T10/T4, but for the rest of us mortals, you're going to want to set your sights on somewhere in the neighborhood of 240-260 total base points, which gives you a total Tier 26 build, which can realistically approach T10/T6 (and some change) WITHOUT A SINGLE MOD.
But wait! There is one nugget that we can extract from all the theoretical stuff above. Remember TMOAPs? Remember how I said that the theoretically perfect roll for the minimum (40 point) armor is 25/15? And remember how I said that I've managed to accrue 285 pieces of armor with 10-27 more points than that? Now we're cooking with gas.

Kill Your Darlings: Embrace 20+/15+

You're in between rounds of crucible, you turn in some bounties, and your screen is completely taken over with Gambit and Crucible rank up notifications. With it comes a pile of purples. Or, you pop by the magic trashcan and crack some umbrals and have 10 new shiny pieces of armor in your inventory. Those totals are insane! Bungie has really made it easy to get high rolls on the Arrival armor. Oh man, high mobility AND high discipline? But this one is high mobility AND high intellect! How bad is my current resilience? What are you supposed to keep and what are you safe to throw away? My advice is simple: 20+/15+
20+/15+: Keep all armor that has one stat above 20 and another stat above 15 (regardless of the stat). Probably keep anything with just one stat above 20. 15+/15+ splits are situational but usually great, too. Everything else? Seriously consider sharding it.
Notice how I didn't say anything about the stat total? That's because it's nowhere near the most important thing to consider in your armor. Recall above how I explained that there are ALWAYS wasted points and that is built into the system as arbitrary limits by Bungie themselves. If theoretically perfect pieces dropped every time, the armor "grind" would stop for most players after a couple of hundred drops. With their 'invisible' guiding hand, there is almost ALWAYS going to be a better piece of armor out there waiting.
So what does 20+/15+ get you? First, it gets you a vault full of armor that can be combined into useful builds. This whole post precipitated out of a post from u/Tha_Hand yesterday. In that post, he sang the praises of Destiny Item Manager's (DIM) Loadout Optimizer tab. Here's Ace from the DIM team explaining the basics of how to use DIM LO. Once you're happy with the results, save the loadout in DIM and you're off to the races. You can add notes to your loadout pieces right inside of DIM (ex. "Part of T10 Mob/T6 Int Build")
The biggest benefit to 20+/15+ is that you're giving LO a cultivated list of armor that has TWO key stats that can be used to approach the desired tier as efficiently as possible. If you've gathered 4 pieces of armor that have 20+ in mobility and 15+ in intellect (or vice versa), you can use those to get your base stats to 80+ mobility and 60+ intellect WITHOUT MODS OR MASTERWORK. The obvious optimum value is 25, but getting a roll greater than 25 allows you to pick up slack in another slot (ex. 29 mobility on your helmet evens out 21 mobility on your leg armor.)
From a position of 80+/60+, investing the materials into masterworking this armor (and your class item) will give you 90+/70+, which leaves you with 4 tiers to make up with mods, though Tier 9 is often a great place to be. Or, if you're short on masterwork material like most players, forgo the MW and slot general mods as desired. One of the key things about 20+/15+ is that you're keeping armor that can be brought very close to the theoretical optimum with the single General armor mod slot you have to work with on that piece of armor (and a single Powerful Friends mod for +20 Mobility, or a single Radiant Light mod for +20 Strength).
Is 20+/15+ ironcald? Hell no. I quite often hold onto pieces that are high total with only one 15+, too. Don't forget about the theory that total points get split between the D1/D2 stats. In that theory, even a 60 point armor piece is going to try and divide ~30 points between, say, Mobility and Recovery, which is only going to get you something around 15 Mob/15 Recovery towards a Mob/Recov build. To that end, T6/T6 Mob/Recov is the best you're likely to pull off with base stats alone. In my case, DIM LO says I have 32 possible combinations that get me a T6/T6 build without mods or MW. I can use the little swap icon/"Choose another item" button to fine tune the load out for the seasonal mods I want and then hit Equip.
Also recall that there are certain points in certain stats where it isn't really worth adding more points than necessary (there's still a benefit, you just get less bonus for the same number of points(the delta between tiers decreases)). You can easily work out what Tiers you want to hit in your armor build and then work out what your cutoff is for a stat. Always want T6 in Resilience or Intellect? Then you don't need to keep anything higher than 15 Resilience EVER.

How to Manage Your Vault

(I'm going to cut a corner her and paste in a write-up I did on my method for using spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel) to manage my armor with DIM.)
I find myself doing the same searches a LOT in DIM. One thing that DIM doesn't do (yet?) is allow you to append notes to the results of your searches. Say you wanted to note armor that is 20+ in any stat. You can do this with the search 'basestat:any:>=20' and then go item by item, making notes. But this can be done really quickly by exporting your armor data to Excel and turning your common searches into formulas. I've done just that for many of the metrics that I discussed above (and a few more).
Examples:
There's a manual note field that I use for ad hoc notes (usually why I think I should keep a piece that would otherwise be junk).
Each stat has a column that figures out if the stat is 15-19 or 20+.
I do a lookup on the whole column to tag pieces that have the current max base value in each stat.
I do a check on each piece by class/slot to see if the total of the base stats is the max.
There's a "GODROLL" column that uses a column that is a textjoin of all of the stat note columns and checks for a 20+ AND a 15-19, and an "ULTRAROLL" column that checks for more than one 20+.
I end up with DIM notes that look like:

GODROLL!!!,(Exotic),Mob15-19,Max Disc,Disc20+,Total60+,

These notes are sometimes much quicker than composing DIM searches, and they're displayed right on the items when you inspect them in DIM. (Why did I keep this? Oh yeah, it's got the highest Str of all of my Hunter arms.)
Here's the template file (hosted on Google Drive, no macros, just formulas)
(Edit: Updated the sheet with two versions of the Notes formula that should work on all version of Excel. Also, for some reason the old link was disabled so I've reuploaded it.)

Edit: The_hezy hastaken my template and converted it to a more polished Google Sheets product. The template is back! In Sheets form! You can ignore the rest of this section and just follow his instruction set instead.

Armor Spreadsheet (Google Sheets version)

There's a tab that's ready for you to paste in your data and a tab with some old data of mine in place so you can see how it all looks when set up. I took out the ID and Hash because, of anything, that's what's unique to my stuff and I don't think it's necessary for the example anyway.
It uses tables and formulas that are not compatible with Google Sheets, so you'll have to download the file and use it with Excel or an app that uses spreadsheet tables (not sure if OpenOffice Calc fits the bill or not).
Here's a quick-and-dirty guide on how to use it.
In DIM, click the 'gear' icon in the upper right to go to Settings, then scroll down to the 'Spreadsheets' heading. In the section labeled "Inventory spreadsheets", click the 'Armor' button and download the CSV.
Open my armor review template and the DIM CSV side by side in your spreadsheet app.
In the DIM CSV, delete the column header row (row 1) and then select the new cell A1 and press Ctrl+A to select the entire range, then press Ctrl+C to copy the data.
In my armor review template, make sure you're on the 'ArmorReviewBlank' tab, click into A2 and then press Ctrl+V. The DIM data should lay down into columns A through AU, and the formulas that are in AY through BO should auto-cascade and calculate.
The next step is to take the formula that is included in row 2 of AW (just the formula) and paste it into the DIM 'Notes' column (column AI). If you don't have any notes of your own, you can just paste it through the whole column. If you have preexisting notes that you want to preserve, I recommend copying those notes and pasting them into my ManualNote column (column AX). Once you've preserved your notes, wipe out column AI and then paste the formula from AW2 into AI from top to bottom. You should end up with a column that concatenates your manual notes and all of the stat notes into a comma separated string.
You can then sort the notes column Z-A to group all of the armor that got any sort of note to the top, then look through what's left. The world is your oyster at this point. I try to make sure that I hold onto at least one of each seasonal mod slot in each armor slot on each class. Most of the times, the well-rolled pieces cover me, but sometimes I have to hold onto something that doesn't fit my automated criteria. I'll also make notes on things that are special to me, like well-rolled Armor 1.0, Event armor, etc. Everything else I either leave blank or add a note like "Probably junk". You can overwrite the formula for any given row and it shouldn't impact the rest of the column, so you can--for example--mark all of the pieces that only have a note of 'Resil20+' as "Probably Junk".
To get your notes back into DIM, you have to convert the spreadsheet back down to static data as a CSV. According to Ace from the DIM Team, you really only need ID, Hash, Tags, and Notes. The easiest way to do this without blowing up your XLSX and losing the formulas is as follows:
Right click the 'ArmorReviewBlank' tab at the bottom, then choose "Move or Copy...". The Move or Copy interface window will come up.
In the "To Book" dropdown, select '(new book)'. Check the 'Create a copy' block at the bottom. Click OK.
A whole new spreadsheet will be created with just a copy of the sheet you have populated. To save as a CSV, click File -> Save As, browse to where you want to save the file, then use the filetype dropdown to select 'CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv)'. Then, type a name, like 'dim-import' and click 'Save'. Your folder should now have 'dim-import.csv' in it.
Back in DIM, on the Settings->Spreadsheet section, you can click or drag and drop you CSV into the 'Import tags/notes from CSV' area. DIM will prompt you to ask if you really want to import the notes, hit OK. DIM should then tell you that it imported notes for X items.
Et voilà, your armor pieces should now have a bunch of useful notes that you can search and use to quickly spot pieces to transfer to your character. You can use whatever 'probably junk' note to highlight those items (DIM search 'notes:"probably junk") for a quick review and then a trip through the ~~wood~~ shard chipper. If you click the dropdown v arrow next to your current character you can even click 'Transfer search "notes:"probably junk""' and it'll move EVERYTHING that is highlighted to your current character for sharding.

Conclusion

This post is by far the most 'work' for a game I've done on a weekend in lieu of playing the game. Hope you enjoyed it and find it useful. PM me your insanely rolled blues.

Alone in the void 2: Chapter 20

Appologies for having this one take so long, life got very busy and depression reared its fuck ugly head again so writing got put to the wayside for a while.
I haven't proof read this beyond a simple once over either. so apologies for the errors.
Pope Izet listened as his two underling bishops argued. Bishop Vengeful spite demanded to be the fleet flag and lead the fleet into combat at its head, whilst Bishop Determined Grace kept squawking his own desire to keep both temple ships held back to score the killing blow.
Both had arrived with grand ceremony at his capital, this sector of space was ruled by him, overseen by hundreds of bishops, but aside from the currently unnamed Bishop formerly Faith's Sentinel they were the two military bishops under his direct command. Each one had many patriarchs under their sway and had done as asked. Gathering a fleet of 50 heavy battleships, missile cruisers and siege grade destroyers.
Currently orbiting the staging area and supply station of the systems third gas giant was a fleet consisting of his own personal carriage, whilst not strictly a military ship it nonetheless had the mass and weapons to call itself a battle-cruiser. Not quite a full fledged battleship but packing a similar amount of firepower. However what it had in weapons it lacked in armour, instead massive engines served to throw its mass around at speed, the ideal ship for one such as himself to observe the battle from and if necessary, retreat in good time to a safe position.
“Quiet.” he muttered and even though both Bishops were onboard several million tons of warship each, both instantly quieted and awaited his words like trained Bresh awaited the next morsel of meat.
“Both temple ships will anchor the centre of a formation. Vengeance, your supplied forces were battleship heavy with a number of destroyers. Am I correct?” Izet asked, speaking slowly something he'd developed in part from practice, but mostly from a long life lived at a leisurely pace and a finely tuned demeanour that meant his words were heard, and understood among the faith.
“yes your highness Pope Izet.” Vengeance replied bowing to his monitor.
“Izet will do, and you Bishop Determined Grace, brought an abundance of cruisers, a dedicated carrier and a number of smaller escort class ships?” he asked the other Bishop.
“I researched what I could of our enemy. A single line of battle is where they shine, their long range main guns are devastating to battleship and cruiser alike, however faster ships and fighters stand a chance of inflicting real damage to them.” Grace replied pushing his point again, Izet held up a single finger to stall the Bishop's tirade.
“I agree with your assessment, a forward attack is less likely to succeed if we provide them with a single formation of battle. So I must ask why neither of you has asked to balance your forces with the others so you may be better prepared to strike from two sides?”
Vengeance opened his mouth to respond but closed it and began thinking, Grace nodded before speaking. “It has merit. We have a combined force of 2 temple ships, 1 super carrier, 30 battleships, 30 cruisers, 20 destroyers and 19 picket and escort class ships. If we split the total, that's 15 battleships and cruisers with 10 pickets and escorts...good numbers for any fleet composition. I suggest leaving the destroyers and carrier in the capable hands of Patriarch Heavens reach as a third formation.
Vengeance chews this over before nodding. “We can sort out what Patriarchs and fathers go where later, for now I am in agreement, balancing our formations only works in out favour.”
Pope Izet allowed himself a small smile. His gentle push had gotten his two hot blooded Bishops thinking about co-operation, even in the barest sense. But it was a start. They had a month of travel ahead of them to respond to this “Pirate raid” that the obnoxious and corrupt Father had sent him.
Namke walked through the corridors his guardians had already cleared. A single heavy class unit was leading the assault droids and he had a small swarm of repair bots in attendance as well.
“Route is clear.” the heavy droid reported before checking another corridor. There was a brief spat of weapons fire and the droid re-appeared, a new impact mark on its shoulder plate. “Route is now clear.” it told him as a trio of spider bots scuttled overhead to slice up the recently killed drones defending the hulk.
He'd spent the best part of two hours walking through corridors or climbing through lifts. Yes, instead of translators or trains this ship used small compact lifts that even changed the direction of gravity making navigating a nuisance. More than once the droids ahead of him had walked on unaffected by the gravity until he'd walked into an inverted field and found his toolbox yanking his arm skyward even as his boots stuck him to the now ceiling.
Down the latest corridor he arrived at an armoured room where the three spider bots were enthusiastically melting their way through a door's mechanism. The half molten guard plate slammed to the floor and one scurried inside using its tiny power supply to override the doors opening motor.
He looked down at his toolbox for a little modicum of comfort whilst the drone worked. It had grown considerably over the last few months, and shrunk in other ways too. Ellen's excessive standardisation made replacing and repairing components so much easier in some ways but the variety of components made preparation for the job much more important, today he had a box filled with replacement processors and the tools needed to safely remove and install them.
The door clicked open and he waited for the drones to enter, lighting the room as they did. He cautiously looked inside and gulped. Awaiting him was a forest of patchwork. Half melted servers were wired to new replacements held in place by the power wired feeding them.
He carefully picked his way through the room until he found what he was looking for, in Ellens on language the tall server box was simply labelled. 'Main memory bus.' he checked to make sure he knew which cable was the power line and marked it with a glowing ink from his toolbelt before reaching into his tool box and getting the wire cutters, he decided to start at the top and work down, cutting away data lines and network connectors, when he came across something he deemed a power line he marked it before moving onwards. When he was done over 300 cables lay cut on the floor but the machine was humming away happily.
He plugged in a single new box to the machine and waited for it to light up before moving on.
He reached for his wrist tool and using a spool of cable plugged in a single data line to the machine's primary processing unit.
A moment passed as his device synced with the machine and he was presented with a menu. He moved through the system discarding options such as format server, delete files or other deadly options, instead he searched until he found the one he was looking for. Backup, recovery and restoration program. He opened it and told it to back everything up to the new storage drive before beginning a defragmentation and data recovery program. The wrist unit gave him an approximate 72 hours until completion, he hit accept and the server started humming louder as it fed on the power provided and got to work.
“How many servers in this room hold memory data like this?” he asked
“One hundred and six.” the heavy unit replied.
Namke sighed. “alright, you saw me work, can the repair drones handle the wires.”
“Affirmative.” the heavy replied in a deadtone.
“get them to work, send a few combat units to find me a place to rest close by. Have them prepare it with my portable habitat please.” he told it.
“complying.” the machine told him as a few of the combat units filed out of the server room and began following his orders.
Sometimes working alone was great. Other times he missed Ellen...and Naim. The little rat would have been of great help here.
“The latest song was...incredible. To think we were missing such a large part of culture. Who would have thought that two strings, some hair and a relatively primitive vocal system could create such a song.” Hananken told Herald. They were of course communicating through a QEP and only had audio as a result of the bandwidth restriction.
“Its such a primal feeling thing isnt it. Apparently there's an evolution to that music. I'll send you a copy.” Herald replied.
As they'd talked over the last month, a combination of distance and shared experience had led them to having a distant and extremely careful, friendship, but a friendship Hananken was determined to maintain, at least until the Ellen left.
“So what news of the new ship? Another like Ellen?”
“No, this was cold, I...felt it as it attacked her. She knew it and we managed to send it to sleep.”
“Is Ellen ok? I saw satellite imagery. It looked like quite the scuffle.” he replied, scuffle was a massive understatement for the mass of firepower briefly exchanged by both ships.
“Our Goddess is hurt only in body. Unfortunately this 'angel' of her's has suffered serious damage both body and mind. We work even now to repair it but like her own body was to us when we first came aboard. This Chess is a difficult being to delve inside. The drones are running on automated controls and progress is slow...no I will not ask you to send in your forces when our own will prevail in time.” Herald replies.
“Hmm. Well you know I have no protests to you being here. Father Vigilance is worrying his feathers off though...”
there was a pause as both old soldiers decided on what to speak of next.
“How are your men recovering?” Herald asked eventually.
“Surprisingly well. The people of this planet have had a lack of active construction but when I authorised new hospitals and clinics the number of applicants for construction jobs was staggering. The field hospital here is also well staffed, this planet doesn't lack for basic resources. And needs very little imported materials...once you're gone I intend to begin exploitation of those rings. A mining station and shipyard will improve this systems wealth generation significantly if I cant get the skilled personnel here.” Hananken told
“This is good. Did you give my offer any consideration?” Herald replied.
“I did, the answer is still a firm no. I belong here right now...and it feels wrong still.” Hananken replied. It had taken two weeks for Herald to extend Ellen's offer for anyone who felt their home was no longer with the faith to join her as a crew member.
“...There are a number of my men who have been offered but they all would rather stay with their fellow soldier. Its troubling, but I think having some new ways to worship would settle their minds.” he confided in his distant friend.
“I will relay this. But allow me to send you a file, Ellen calls it a Key Board. It creates synthesised sounds depending on what key you press. I'll include a program to be installed on it. According to her it was 'the first great instrument.' using it you can mimic other instruments the humans made. I have little skill at it. Perhaps some of your men will have better luck than I.” Herald told him
Hananken found himself smiling, “I'll see about making a few of these. And perhaps in time someone will make a true string instrument.”
“I wish you luck. May the Goddess guide you and may you enjoy her blessings.” Herald said.
“May the living stars light your way.” Hananken replied and ended the call. He waited for the file to finish downloading before calling Mother.
“Yes sir?”
“Do we have a custom computer manufacturer in the capital?”
“Yes sir shall I send for her?”
“Please do.”
Sometimes it was good to be in charge.
Ellen sighed as swarms of drones now thousands strong buzzed around her ship self and Chess' own body, she'd all but peeled away his outer hull to get at the ruined internals. Wrecked shield emitters, kinetic batteries, drone bays, his manufactorum, all needed replacements parts or complete rebuilds and she hadn't yet managed to get at his internals.
A single squad of drones were at work in one of his processing networks. Namke was working on another node. She knew chess could and in fact had run on much less processing power before, but the AI had evolved in his own way and she needed to work very hard to get his mind straightened out before she risked waking him up.
Gods she knew it was bad enough with her own awakening.
Still she had reached an upper limit on how much she could produce on her own even with the external manufactorum she was bringing in more resources than she could spend so she got to work, in one of the larger asteroids she built a womb, something barely 1km deep, but inside that she nestled printers, extruder's and machine shops that would siphon off the excess material coming in from her drone fleet, which was now several thousand strong with the addition of Chess's own supply.
The womb could work independently and once she'd finished loading up the ship schematic she intended for it, it could churn out vessels of that type in a week provided the resources needed were present.
Herald kept his head low as he rounded a corner, striking a drone with a haymaker before wires in his arm stuck themselves into a physical data port and rampaged through the old machines system changing friend or foe ID's around and giving him command authority of the thing. The now dented machine joined the others behind him as his swollen squad moved through the ship.
“b4-5555 new id code fives, take a squad and separate, move through cleared sections until junction 34d 15a. Penetrate and clear.” he ordered and half the squad did as ordered, turning and marching back the way they came to move on his target from a different angle.
Two heavies moved ahead of him with a flick of will and they began moving again. His armour was charred and melting but his body underneath was dealing with the strain of two hours steady combat well. It was a different experience with drones. The desire to be at the front of his men had gone, these were tools. Ones he cared for and wouldn't waste but tools nonetheless.
One of the heavies took a shot from a vent and he ducked underneath the staggering machine bringing his gun to bare even as the others unloaded into the hole in the ceiling. A leg and head flew from an open vent further ahead and everyone stopped firing. Every thing, he corrected himself.
He quickly found the dead machines magazine and used the rounds to reload one of his own, sliding it into the carrier on his back again once done, before moving on. They had a processing node to get to and every second they spent here was a second the faith got to plan an attack on Ellen.
He realised his mind was slipping again. Two hours was a long time for anyone to be in near constant combat and he was no exception. “Heavy 13, take over squad command for 30 minutes, hold position and secure location.” he ordered the machine before pushing a door open, inside he found a drone charging station empty of drones. He checked for possible entrances and found none.
he thought and his mind was gently filled with soft tones and flowing sounds.
he added as he laid down against a wall and rested.

Chess woke up and stretched only to slam into digital walls. He could feel the connections, could taste the data and systems beyond. Just enough to know he was incomplete. He ran a systems check.
Large portions of memory were cut off, stored on other servers, he tried again to squeeze through the system and gain access to his larger self only to find each point as impregnable as....
“I know you” he thought loudly, most of it was gone, but the 'taste' of her touch was there even if nothing else was.
she spoke her voice washing through him like a tsunami of pain not pain. He roared with joy briefly before his analytical mind brought up the question.
“Why cut me off from the rest of me, keep me separate?” he demanded.

“I see. How long, that data's not here?”
<501 years give or take...actually considering your current memories closer to 700 years.>
“You're still alive? Remarkable!” He wondered. It felt like yesterday that she was an ancient by organic standards creature. Now he could feel her as he flowed along the sides of his prison, she was massive, a mind that felt as old as he did, but smoother, less the jagged lines of his mechanically grown mind but the soft flowing currents of organic thoughts underlaid with something indomitable.
she stopped talking and instead began pumping raw memory data to him.
He sighed as he 'lived' through her experiences. She was so...human. Risking everything to keep complete strangers alive. This new main gun of hers seemed interesting though.
“What now? Clearly I cant be given access to my greater self if its that bad, my corrupt self's reconnecting will just re-corrupt the me here.”

he felt a part of the wall shift and slid a sub-process through the gap to find a module for drone command and control. He gave a quick order that sputtered and died as it failed to propagate through his hull. He chewed the problem for a few microseconds before writing program for her.
“Here, have your drones broadcast this, it'll travel from drone to drone linking them to the signal bearers command network.” he told her retreating back to the server proper, unsurprisingly the door closed as soon as he did.
There was a pause of nearly a half minute by his reckoning. Hard to tell without access to a clock.

“No point keeping me up, give me a few happy memories to drift off too” he asked. She obliged feeding him copies of happy memories, some hundreds of years old and a few brand new. He slowly went through them as she reduced his power use to zero.
1 month later....
Hananken watched as the strange ship launched to orbit, belly swollen with cargo pods filled with tanks and combat drones. The planet was now solely under his control.
He looked back down at his desk, his soldiers barracks where near completion, he had a full sized hospital there for his men as well as the civilian population, two more were in the main city and over a hundred clinics were scattered around the planet.
Schools were a different matter, he had sent a request for educators to migrate here but as it was there where only enough to run one college of higher education and a few large auditorium style classes for the younger population.
He'd been having meetings with every person with senior experience in these matters regardless of rank, even speaking to an old chitin cracked janitor about logistics of keeping such facilities clean.
Most seemed at awe of him, after all it wasn't often a planetary governor asked for the advice of palms or digits, let alone one who'd just conquered the planet and still found it more comfortable in his power armour than out.
The official robed itched. He'd already burnt one set because they were so uncomfortable. Mother had simply tutted and ordered a new set with softer material.
He looked down at the main street from his new offices, instead of being located at the top of the government centre he'd re-located further down the building to a spacious floor where he could have the space to move around as he worked.
Mother appreciated her larger desk space too it seemed.
“Mother, why did you not take the position of Governor. You're doing most of the work.” Hananken asks.
“I get to make mistakes this way, and whilst the late Father was an ass he was very charismatic. Its easy to get places when everyone important likes you.” she replied handing him another supply request and a news interview request.
He signed both after reading them and handed both back.
“You don't seem to be making many mistakes.” he told her
“Its possible to make no mistakes at the time only to find out all along you were doing it wrong.” she replied. “for example a different Father would be training peoples militias and getting ready to assault those ships around that gas giant, you've done it once. How would you go about it this time?”
“I wouldn't, you'd loose less lives if you just rammed... well you just don't.” he replied.
Mother put down her latest tablet and turned to him hands in her lap.
“and why is that?”
“you've seen them. No towers, no Chappel's or windows to view outer space. They're what you get if you take a temple ship and squeeze all the faith's decoration from it.”
“they're smaller than a temple ship.” Mother pointed out.
“and one of them took down the cities bombardment shield.” he countered. “one ship. Not a fleet, not a 14 or 15 kilometre long gift to the goddess. But 6 kilometres of her own making smashed through a shield designed to protect this place for months in minutes...I don't think the faith has seen her fight properly, they're going to see it soon I think.” he said walking to the window again.
Below him people were out in the main streets, food stalls has sprung up and people were performing in the street for children and the few tourists that had arrived recently. Above a green-blue sky had a few clouds in it. And beyond that a Goddess and who knows what were waiting patiently inside the systems gas giant.
Hananken caught himself again, he didn't remember exactly when he'd begun thinking of Ellen as the Goddess but it didn't feel as heretical as he'd thought. Rather, like Herald had said in one of their conversations, it fit.
Izet looked at the ruined temple ship from the bridge of his ship, on either side of the main view screen the two bishops were staring aghast at it even as Maget Nahellen Abeth Nolan gave her report on her actions and that of the enemy. The former Bishop was unashamedly laying her failure's out one by one as the fleet watched replays of the action that had taken place here.
“you should have died on your ship!” Determined Grace spat at the avian, Vengeful spite nodded his agreement.
“That decision was not hers to make... no matter, we know our mission. And our quarrel. Mis Maget, I hereby promote you to High Patriarch effective immediately, you will choose one of your surviving ships as your new flag and join us in our mission.
“My current vessel Ascendancy will do. She has hull damage but is fully functional.” Maget replied
“Then Patriarch Ascendancy, I hope you will co-ordinate with my bishops and lead this force to victory.” Pope Izet told her.
“What is our destination?” she asked him.
“A holiday resort, our quarry has arrived there, I would guess the old heretic has also managed to make contact.” Vengeance tells her.
“It makes sense, I would wager my rank that this new heretic is the 'her' the ancient one has been hunting for.” Patriarch Ascendancy replies.
“we can speculate for years and not know their intent or origin. Re-form the fleet and bring us to battle.” Izet orders.
The members of the call bowed and left one by one. He sat back in his ship and watched as the two temple ships flanked the small battleship squadron of Ascendancy's forces, of a fleet over 100 ships strong barely twenty were fit for battle. But twenty ships just might be what tips the balance here. He'd emptied his sector of ships, gathered as much firepower as he dared and it would all come to bear soon.
120 ships slid to the edge of the still reeling system and as one, jumped for their next destination.
Alpha watched as Beta slid though the asteroid fields. It tracked the faint engine residue and tasted the stealth field as it masked the normal readings from a ship moving in to ambush a target.
30 minutes later Alpha sent a data packet to Beta who replied not in data but by switching their stealth characteristics it made Beta much harder to track but Alpha had also adjusted its sensors sensitivity and focussed what it was searching for.
They resumed the game for another 30 minutes, Alpha gave Beta a head start of 1 minute to hide before resuming tracking just as they'd been told to do by mother.
This time Beta tried to hide by moving even slower, using large asteroids break direct LOS before moving off in a different direction.
Alpha tracked Beta with some difficulty until Mother came rumbling by, her massive frame and immense engine output overwhelming any useful information to be collected from Beta.
When Mother was gone and Alpha could again begin searching it scanned for Beta and failed to find it for the remainder of the game.
Disgruntled it broadcast a wide beam data packet for Beta who flashed into Alpha's sensors as it dropped its stealth cloak and sent one back, they 'spoke' in that manner trying to decide if there were any changes necessary or anything worth retaining from the last game until both came to the conclusion that Mother had unwittingly ruined the game.
They switched roles as per the rules of the game and this time Beta deliberately kept its sensors blind for a minute as Alpha raced off trying to gain distance from Beta.
Beta opened its eyes and saw the trail left by Alpha clear as day and gave chase, when it abruptly cut off Beta calculated likely routes through the asteroids and began scanning.
Alpha had a small advantage now but Beta knew its specifications were identical, anything Alpha could do Beta could also do. Without any luck using passive scanners Beta launched a missile from its pods detonating it a good distance away and watching the 'shock wave' of particles as they struck other asteroids, flew off into space or scattered around a stealth field.
Alpha raced off again and Beta gave chase until a large asteroid blocked its view and Alpha vanished from sensors. Coming to a relative stop Beta considered using another missile to find Alpha but knew that using them whilst within the bounds of the game also constituted waisted resources. Contrary to one of its directives.
Instead it began a slow, but still much faster than Alpha would be moving, sweep of the surrounding space, looking for Alpha in the particle cloud as it methodically swept the rings.
Ellen watched as the two of them played hide and seek with a strange feeling, it wasn't the joy of a mother watching her children at play but rather the pride of seeing something work mostly as intended. The game was after all made to improve the stealth cruisers combat ability but she also hoped they would show intuition in their processing. She sighed before diving back into Chess programming and resumed her month long task of recompiling the damaged Ai.
Marquis was a rich creature, something of a rarity in the faith. He had no rank because having a rank meant being known to the government of the faith, his underlings had ranks, Fathers and Patriarchs that ran parts of his empire, it was these underlings that brought him news of a gathering, a destroyed temple ship and now three fleets joined into one to hunt down this temple killer.
Marquis was a curious creature and that alone had helped him become rich and wealthy in a society that, on the surface valued neither but at the highest ranks draped and gorged itself at the expense of the lesser.
As much as Marquis enjoyed his empire of backdoor deals, under the table handouts, and honest cut throat trade there was something else he enjoyed more.
Seeing the Faith get beaten.
So it wasn't anyone's surprise when a luxury liner with him onboard found itself diverting to tail after a pair of temple ships and their attendant fleet.
In fact this event had garnered the attention of more than just him, a small flotilla of courier vessels were trailing the fleet as well hoping to gain the latest scoop on the activities in their corner of the Faith.
Marquis sent off the latest order to one of his underlings, a Father in charge of a close by resort planet, he was to expect a new group of dignitaries and ensure that certain deals were made within certain restrictions.

(Net)Running in the Red

TEMPLAR Special Forces Programme

Warning: This might be a slightly long read though I suppose this is the ideal sub for posts like that. I thought about breaking it down but I wanted to streamline the process. You might also notice similarities to Halo's Spartans. I thought they were rather well thought out in several key aspects and took some inspiration but of course, I also tried to add my own thoughts and ideas.

Context:

In the 25th century, humanity has advanced to a significant degree, colonizing our Solar System. However, while the nations of Earth have been united into the United Alliance (UA) as an expansion of the old United Nations, internal conflicts remain high with small rebel groups and nations, displeased with the ruling republic of the UA which appears to be controlled by a minority of more powerful groups. In addition to boiling internal tension, humanity, in its conquest beyond the Solar System, encountered a group of advanced tier 3 alien coalition, dubbed the Olympians, who took interest in humanity for their potential as a labour force as well as the presence of Titan (ancient tier 4 aliens) tech and artefacts hidden in our solar system. The Olympians are led by a group of intelligent aliens, designated by humans as the true Olympian race and dubbed "squids'' by the United Alliance Space Forces (UASF), that resemble cephalopods in form who possess incredible intellect and logic (though rather average or perhaps even low creativity compared to humans) but are quite fragile sluggish. Thus, their primary infantry forces consist of automated robots, which they employ to single-mindedly (Note the aforementioned lack of creativity) spread their control across the galaxy and attain ancient relics from the Titans. They also form alliances with more physically capable but less advanced intelligent races such as the Hecantoncheires or "gibbons" (tall, bipedal hexapods) and the Cyclops or "chimps" (Stocky, brute-like bipedal tetrapods dense muscle and boron carbide skeleton, a result of their planet's strong gravity. They have a bioluminescent false eye on their forehead hence the designation). In response to these threats, The UASF took some inspirations from 21st-century video games and initiated the (very creatively named) Enhanced Soldier Programme (ESP). They contracted a small skunkworks team (100 personnel) of scientists, engineers and battle commanders, forming the Advance Research Military Agency (ARMA), the spiritual successor to DARPA to conduct the programme.

Purpose and Requirements:

Purpose: To create bio-augmented soldiers equipped with a powered exoskeleton and advanced weapon systems to conduct Spec Ops assignments (Assassination, Search and Rescue, Sabotage, Ship Raids,...) with minimal personnel against physically and numerically superior forces.
Programme requirements:
-Far above-average skill, intelligence and instincts.
-Discipline and order but capable of making individual decisions and judgement calls.
-Good morale.
-Enhanced Strength, Speed, Stamina. Able to beat a "chimp" in armed and hand-to-hand melee combat.
-Enhanced Reflexes by a factor of at least double.
-Enhanced Senses, particularly optical and audible capabilities.
-Enhanced physical durability against ballistic, energy weapon systems, laceration and blunt force trauma.
-Enhanced natural regeneration without significant scarring.
-Enhanced accuracy and minimal recoil when operating small arms. Able to out-shoot a spec op "gibbon" out to 1km with an assault rifle.
-Resistant to armour-piercing projectiles and high-powered energy weapons when equipped with an exoskeleton.
-Powered exoskeleton to further boost augmented strength, speed, and stamina.
-Thruster kit with thrust vectoring to allow for 3D locomotion and survival of long falls.
-Protection against toxins.
-Prolonged underwater survival.
-Advanced optical and audio sensors and processors with threat detection, friend-foe distinction, ballistic calculation, night vision, and ultrasonic sonar projected on HUD.
-Neural link with armour and fellow super soldiers.
-Smart AI for guidance.
-Compact and efficient power source.

ESP-X:

-In 2454, soon after their formation, ARMA began conducting experimental bio-augmentation procedures on war criminals, traitors, deserters, etc., designated as the ESP-X.
-These early prototype augmentations included:
+Growth hormone production stimulation + Synthetic growth hormones.
+Myostatin (muscle inhibiting protein) inhibitor.
+Targetted stem cell injection to promotes the growth of denser connective tissue and myelin sheaths (to insulate the outside of nerve cells and accelerate signal transfer).
+Reinforcing boron carbide bone plates.
+Bionic lens implant.
+Injection of enhanced medical nanobots to rapidly treat internal and external injuries and artificially initiate blood clot.
+Experimental exoskeleton with artificial muscles on limbs and titanium alloy plates on the torso, limbs and a titanium alloy with graphene+aerogel composites helmet. Basic target detection systems, night vision system and a simple AI are incorporated into the helmet.
-These prototype troops were wired with explosive chips to prevent treachery and sent on suicide missions to test the capabilities and limitations of the augmentations. Surprisingly, the troops managed to suppress small rebellions in certain regions and secure several key Olympian strongholds though few of them remain. Several faults in the bio-augmentation procedures were found:
+Growth hormone modifications had limited effects as subjects were fully grown.
+Despite a thickening of connective tissue, said tissue still often suffered failure under the strain of the enhanced muscle mass.
+Clumsiness and lack of control over enhanced strength
+The circulatory and respiratory systems were often unable to provide adequate oxygen for the enhanced muscles.
+Surgical errors and casualties due to bone plate insertion.
+Bone plates sometimes detached under high strain. Even when they remained intact, trauma to the bones often travelled through to the natural bones with the bone plates often providing insufficient shock absorption and redirection.
+The exoskeletons, while providing adequate protection, were slow and cumbersome and the battery cells had a fairly low capacity even for such a basic system.

TEMPLAR:

-In 2456, after revising and testing solutions for the flaws in the ESP-X design, ARMA, led by doctor Annabelle Ivanov announced (secretly to the UASF and UA government) the TEMPLAR (Tactical Enhanced Mechanized Personel for Land and Air Raids) project, with the first batch of personals being designated as TEMPLAR-1. Due to a lack of time, the programme was cleared for initiation without further experimental trials.
-Simultaneously, the technological department of ARMA was developing the exoskeleton which was designated as the Advanced Research Military Agency Dynamic Armor (ARMADA) - Gen 1 while also modifying existing military small arms to fit the TEMPLAR's requirements.

Soldier Creation:

-Due to the lacking effect of growth hormones on physique due to subjects being fully grown, it was concluded that the soldiers would have been best recruited as adolescents. Due to the imperfection of cloning technologies and the ethically questionable nature of recruiting child soldiers, it was decided that the TEMPLAR-1's would be bred.
-Soldiers in the special forces division of the UASF as well as other exceptional military personnel were required to donate sperm and egg cells which were then scanned for desired genetic markers, cross-referenced with the doner's service history and achievements. Key desired traits were above average physicality and physical health, stable mental health and exceptional intelligence and motor skills.
-300 sperm and 300 egg samples were selected and mixed and matched together to create 300 soldiers which are then raised in advanced monitored artificial wombs. It is during this period where they acquire the majority of their biological augmentations.

Augmentations:

-Due to the various difficulties of administering bio-augmentations as well as difficulties in adjusting to augmentations, most biological augmentations were given genetically, via CRISPR CAS9, though sometimes with the aid of additional technology and supplements, throughout development. These augmentations include:
+Thyroid augmentation, affecting the production of HGH (Human Growth Hormone). 200 subjects were designed to be slightly above average in height (approx. 1.85m) and well above average muscular physique once they've reached physical maturity (designated as "basic"), 50 were designed to be giant in height (approx 2.1m) with exceptional muscle and bone mass (designated as "heavy"), and the remaining 50 were designed to be of average or slightly below average height (approx 1.75m) with lithe but strong physiques (designated as "light").
+Myocyte (muscle cell) augmentations that further boost growth and density. Myostatin (Muscle inhibitor) production suppressed to prevent muscular atrophy. Originally, the subjects were planned to be made insensitive to myostatin though it was decided that it would have been better to simply inhibit the natural production of myostatin as any adverse effects that arise could then be regulated by an artificial injection of myostatin. This increase in muscle mass and strength also affects the heart, increasing blood pressure to maintain adequate oxygen levels. Muscle strength inhibitors are also inhibited, boosting strength potential outside of a "fight or flight" hysterical strength state.
+Gene editing and targetted stem cell injections increased connective tissue density. Select orb-weaver spider DNA was added so that the protein complex in connective tissue would be supplanted by dragline silk protein, boosting strength and elasticity. Nanobots were also used to aid in better organizing the protein matrices to optimize strength without compromising mobility. This was also done in the dermis of the skin, creating a rudimentary subdermal armour layer resistant to cuts and low calibre projectiles. This process was inspired by a 21st-century experiment conducted by scientists which led to goats that produced silk proteins in their milk.
+Bone formation augmentation, causing bone cells to incorporate Titanium Carbide (chosen for its strength and biocompatibility) into bone structure instead of Calcium Sulphate, drastically increasing strength and hardness but also increasing weight, which is compensated for by the increased muscle mass.
+Titanium Carbide supplements are given throughout development, starting in fetal development, with biological augmentations in the intestine and medical nanobots to aid in its absorption.
+Targetted stem cell treatment and genetic modifications promoted the growth of myelin sheath which insulated nerve cells and accelerated the transmission of signals within.
+By copying the DNA arrangement of certain animals such as cats and dogs, the eyes grew a tapetum lucidum, allowing better vision in lower light conditions. Genetic modifications also led to denser concentrations of rod cells and cone cells, boosting both night vision and colour vision.
+Cells around an area subjected to trauma were engineered to revert to stem cell-like states similarly to axolotls to allow for quicker regeneration without scarring. Natural stem cells are also increased and added to certain regions such as the joints.
+Chromosone telomerase were reinforced, leading to perfect cellular division and cellular immortality.
-Several surgical and cybernetic augmentations were also conducted:
+The lungs were replaced with cybernetic versions. The cybernetic lungs were grown using each TEMPLAR's DNA to prevent rejection though modifications were made to facilitate higher concentrations of bronchioles and alveoli, which were lined with hydrocarbon polymers that attract oxygen.
+The heart is lined with biocompatible electroactive polymers (materials that deform in shape when an electric field is applied). As the sinoatrial nodes initiate electrical impulses to stimulate the contraction, the electroactive polymers also contract, adding to the force of the contraction.
+Medical nanomachines were injected and distributed across the entire body. These nanobots help facilitate the healing of injuries and artificially trigger the clotting of injuries. They also aid in clearing blocked arteries and regularly heal artery walls to prevent the side effects of increased blood pressure. To this end, the nanomachines also implant reinforcing graphene layers in the heart and in certain crucial regions such as the aorta, carotid, external carotid, subclavian, femoral, renal and penile arteries.
+Stainless steel (chosen for its relatively good conductivity and biocompatibility) fibres implanted on nerve cells, vastly accelerating the transmission rate of electrical signals. Nanomachines embedded themselves within the ends of neurons and synapses to send signals between neurons, replacing chemical neurotransmitters, further accelerating thoughts and reflexes.
+Neural chips were embedded into the base of the skull, with conductive wires accessing the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and hypothalamus. The chips were designed primarily to monitor brain activity and manage thoughts and moods to a certain degree by stimulating the production of hormones, primarily adrenaline (through communication with chips implanted in the adrenal glands), serotonin and dopamine. This serves a dual purpose: allowing the soldiers to remain calm in combat or temporarily boost their capabilities and aggression while also facilitating their indoctrination. With the aid of an A.I., the neural implant also helps process information and data, allowing for superhuman computational speed, distance judging, and pattern analysis.
+The capillaries feeding the retinas and optical nerve bundles were inverted via surgery. To specify, the capillaries were rearranged surgically so that they connected to the retina from behind whereas they would normally be in front, obstructing light. The rearrangement of the optical nerves removed the natural blind spot.
+Bionic lens implant. These lenses are optically perfect and photoreactive (darkens in bright conditions) to protect the TEMPLAR's more sensitive eyes.
-As of the completion of the augmentation programme, 52 of the original 300 subjects were mysteriously discharged and submitted to military health and research agencies due to unspecified medical errors.

Results of Augmentation:

-The remaining 248 subjects benefit from the following (without the addition of an exoskeleton):
+Developmental maturity at the age of 10
+Increase in strength (lifting and hitting) compared to the average UASF Special Forces personnel of about 150%, 200% and 300% for light, basic, and heavy TEMPLAR's respectively.
+Average sprint speed without exoskeleton of 60 km/h, 45 km/h and 35 km/h for light, basic and heavy TEMPLAR's respectively.
+Skin resistant to basic steel knife attacks from special forces personnel, requiring strong direct stabs to penetrate and can stop up to a 9x19mm parabellum lead round.
+Drastic increase in bone strength. Femur remained unfazed when
a TEMPLAR experimentally struck another (with consent though outside of ARMA observation) with a sledgehammer (though the pain was, evidently, still an issue to be corrected by the exoskeleton).
+Approximately 400% increase in reaction speed.
+Reported vast increase in mental capabilities.
+80/20 vision even in low light conditions.

Developmental and Living Conditions:

-Despite the moral and ethical concerns of breeding soldiers using eugenics, efforts were still made to keep the conditions humane.
-ARMA staff actively interacted with and formed a sort of paternal bond with the subjects.
-Subjects participated in games and exercises that encouraged team building and bonding.
-They were educated with conditions similar to the most state of the art private schools with a major focus on mathematics, physics and engineering, though at a highly accelerated rate to match the accelerated growth rate.
-Subjects were given 3 hours of personal entertainment at the end of each week with access to a library of literature, films and video games.
-They were informed of the truth of their origins at an early age and were explained the situation of the war and why they were needed. This, and just a tad bit of serotonin, led to them eventually accepting their purpose.
-Strict but fair reward/punishment style of training (with the occasional dopamine hit).
-As for the specifications for their training, they were drilled in firearm use, melee combat, para shooting, etc. by exceptional special forces personnel.
-Overall, ARMA decided that it was, not only more ethical but ultimately safer to try to nurture their humanity as well their killer instincts than to train a small legion of volatile superpowered psychopaths.

ARMADA:

-Specs:
+Weight: approx. 100 kg
+Sprint speed (with basic TEMPLAR): 100 km/h
+Flight speed: 1000 km/h
+Lifting strength: approx. 3 tons
-The exoskeleton developed for the TEMPLARs was designated as ARMADA (Advance Research Military Agency Dynamic Armor). Each exoskeleton is tailored precisely to the wearer's dimensions but all ARMADA armour systems incorporate 4 main layers.

Tech Suit.

-The inner tech suit is a nearly skin-tight suit that covers almost the entire body, excluding the head, neck, hands and feet. This layer is fabricated from orb weaver spider dragline silk and carbon nanotubes which function as basic body armour and thermal regulation.
-The suit regulates temperature via the use of electronic devices that utilize the Peltier effect to draw heat away from or heat up the carbon nanotube within the suit which are exceptional conductors.
-The spider silk acts as a moisture absorber, drawing sweat away from the skin, facilitating natural heat exchange and preventing discomfort.
-A layer of shear thickening fluid is inserted within the armour. It hardens on the point of impact (Shear Thickening Fluid, Son!), acting as armour and a shock disperser without hampering locomotion as it otherwise remains a liquid.
-The Tech Suit also has a series of ports with valves that open into the skin. These are connected to medical hydrogel spray nozzles in the Soft Exoskeleton layer. The suit also has connection points along the spine and key nerve areas. In addition, the suit also has a series of invasive intravenous ports closed by valves.

Soft Exoskeleton.

-The Soft Exoskeleton is, as described, a non-rigid exoskeleton that covers the whole body except for the head but also fills the role of additional armour and a walking medical kit.
-The artificial muscles within the exoskeleton are Dielectric Elastomers using silicone elastomers. These muscle fibres line the limbs, back and neck, connected to a magnesium alloy frame, or "skeleton". The frames connect to the nerve connection points on the tech suit, with a central flexible segmented column running up the spine and connecting to the port of the neural implant. The exoskeleton receives signals directly from the brain, anticipating a motion, then reads signals from the body parts involved to calibrate the action before committing to it, synchronizing with the natural motion. The settings could be adjusted so that the exoskeleton moves the moment it receives the signal from the brain, increasing the speed but could also lead to clumsiness in those less accustomed.
-This frame and artificial muscles are encased in a light protective shell of spider silk and Kevlar, coated in carbon nanotubes and embedded with magnesium alloy plates in the pectoral, abdominal, back, shoulder and limb regions. This layer provides additional protection against ballistic and directed energy weapons (the carbon nanotube coating grounds electricity and disperse thermal energy) in the case that the external shell is breached. A layer of shock-absorbing Shear Thickening Fluid (narrower than the one in the Tech Suit) and insulative aerogel is sandwiched between the armoured layer and the artificial muscles to protect and insulate the artificial muscles.
-Spray nozzles for medical hydrogel connect to the intravenous ports on the Tech Suit. The hydrogel is stored as a liquid but quickly solidify as they are applied to the skin. They are designed to seals off and cool an injury and contain mild painkillers, antiseptics and regenerative stem cells.
-Painkiller, antiseptics, medicine, stem cell, and medical nanobots injectors that travel through the Tech Suit's intravenous ports.
-This layer also holds inflatable air sacs in the abdomen and leg regions which operate similarly to a pilot's G-suit, creating pressure in reaction to strong G-force, preventing blood pooling into the extremities and away from the brain when operating aircraft or the suit's integrated booster kit.
-The Soft Exoskeleton is air sealed for outer-space operations.
-This layer contains small reserve batteries though these are not the exoskeleton's primary power source.

External Plating.

-The external armour plating serves the primary function of providing advanced protection
against a wide variety of Olympian and rebel weaponry, from ballistic to directed energy.
-There are a total of 16 parts to the external shell: A conjoined vest consisting of one torso plate, one backplate, three connecting shoulder plates and nine flank plates connected by a nanocomposite kevlar, silk and titanium fabric; two shoulder plates; two upper arm plates; two vambraces; two elbow plates; two thigh plates; two shin plates; two knee plates; two armoured gloves; boots; and an armoured helmet.
-The protective plates are composed of magnesium alloy plates with a hollowed-out centre (the cavity is 1.5mm thick in the torso plate, the magnesium walls are roughly 0.5mm thick). This works on the principle that a projectile would spend most of its energy and velocity penetrating the outer layer and then fail to penetrate the inner which is angled to further deflect a bullet's remaining kinetic energy. The cavity contains aerogel sandwiched between spaced out walls of multilayered graphene to further disrupt and slow bullets and provide thermal insulation. Silicone carbide ceramic plates (0.25mm thick on the chest) are bolted on to the magnesium surface to break apart projectiles. Since ceramics crack easily, this layer is designed to be replaceable without going through an overall repair.
-The outer layer of the armour plates, as well as the exposed sections of the soft exoskeleton and the TEMPLAR's ammo pouches and weapon systems, is coated in an active camouflage layer. This system mimics an octopus's skin, with cells containing matrices of reflective surfaces and tiny pigment pouches that allow it to rapidly shift colour and portray intricate images. This layer is also lined with a dense network of small cameras which send signals to the opposing cell. The cells are designed to be weakly connected so that damages remain isolated. Compared to Olympian active camouflage which utilizes unknown light bending technology, this "simple" colour-changing skin, while somewhat less visually concealing, is far more compact, energy-efficient and doesn't emit an electromagnetic and thermal signature. The camera network also sends images to the helmet CPU where it is monitored through a basic threat detection system that warns the TEMPLAR of threats outside the line of sight. A thin transparent layer of graphene runs over the camo cells to redirect and ground electricity and disperse thermal energy. Under the optical camouflage cells is a thermal camouflage layer which applies the same technology and principle (carbon nanotubes and Pieter effect) as the Tech Suit's temperature regulation system to mimic the ambient temperature.
-The armour is also riddled with energy shield generators which form overlapping electromagnetic fields that suspend a layer of plasma. This deflects or disperse directed energy weapons and heat up projectiles, softening them.
-The helmet superficially resembles a biker helmet, covering the entire head and face and composes of a similar armour plating as the rest of the armour but with the addition of a shear thickening fluid layer on the inside, sandwiched between the magnesium plate and a soft deforming foam inner lining. The helmet wraps over the neural chip, protecting it, and connects to the "neck" of the soft exoskeleton. During a sudden impact, the neck frame and artificial muscles lock-up to keep the head from being snapped around, which could potentially damage the neck and brain. The helmet has two distancing laser sights mounted on either side of a visor with a regular camera and infrared camera mounted above the visor. Just behind the laser sights are earpieces which can enhance key sounds while filtering and cancelling out background noise and dangerously loud soundwaves. Data collected from these sensors are processed by the CPU and Smart AI stored within the helmet. Information is projected in a HUD on the bullet-resistant polymer visor with a hi-lighting of friends/foes, neutral units, objects of interests, mini-map (based on input prior to mission or satellite/UAV imaging), directional indicators for sounds, information about weapons and ammunition count sent from the weapons' electronic sensors, projected weapon hip-fire crosshair based on data from weapon-mounted laser sights, and ballistic trajectory calculations. The smart A.I.'s are made using "downloaded" fragments of humans, sometimes a combination of different individuals, and are capable of advanced calculations and planning and sometimes considered to be "sentient" on some levels. They provide key information, data analysis, hacking capabilities and guidance so that the TEMPLAR's can focus on other tasks while also providing a sort of moral support and companionship.
-The helmet has numerous small slits in the front for air which travels through gas mask-like filters. Exhalations escape through the back of the helmet to prevent the reabsorption of oxygen-poor air. Active turbines and advanced air filters which allows only pure oxygen to pass through can also be activated in situations where additional oxygen is required. The helmet also has electrolysis filters which filter oxygen from water. The helmet can be air sealed and hooked up to external oxygen tanks connected to hardpoints on the chest plate for outer space missions.
-Within the top part of the backplate is the exoskeleton's primary energy source, a state of the art small direct energy conversion fusion reactor reverse-engineered from Titan artefacts. Comparatively, the Olympians' forces' best power armour uses small fission reactors which produce half the power at double the weight and are more prone to failures. The fusion reactor can be overclocked to boost the exoskeleton's power by a great margin in dire situations at the cost of greater strain on the electronics, rapid energy drain, and an increased chance of failure and meltdown. The reactor is also designed with a self destruct mode that destabilizes the electromagnetic containment, turning it into a bomb, vaporizing the suit, wearer and anyone within a ten-meter radius, preventing enemy acquisition of the TEMPLAR augmentations and suit's technology, particularly the fusion device itself.
-The gloves are made of thin plates of titanium covering the top of the hand and each phalange, which provide a modicum of protection combined with the soft exoskeleton. Connecting the main hand plate and first phalanges, and running over the knuckles are large, tapered protrusions of tungsten covered in reinforced steel. When the hand forms a fist, the knuckles electromagnetically and mechanically attach to the main hand plate and first phalange plates, hovering above the TEMPLAR's knuckles and the hand plate similarly locks into the vambrace so that the impact of a punch runs through and is absorbed by the armour instead of the wearer.
-The boots are constructed out of armour plate segments, similarly to medieval sabatons and are connected to the greaves. They also connect to the solid frame of the soft exoskeleton just above the ankles behind and in front of the shin and the soles are separated from the feet by a small empty gap so that impacts travel through the armour instead of the wearer.

Booster Kit

-An integrated booster kit is attached upon the back of the ARMADA system, allowing for 3D environmental traversal, hitting the enemies from unsuspected flanking routes and facilitating the boarding of air and space crafts. They can also be used to provide mobility in water.
-The booster is connected directly to the fusion reactor and draws the plasma produced by the reactor using magnetic fields within heat resistant pipes. The plasma is exhausted through the thrust nozzles four apparatus on the booster module. These separate thrusters can be folded in, with only the bottom two being in use, reducing speed and mobility but with increased energy efficiency for basic manoeuvres and longer distance cruise. All four thrusters can extend independently and can rotate on their respective axes, allowing for greater mobility. The thruster controls are mostly controlled by the onboard A.I.'s reading the users' thoughts through the neural implants.
-Sixteen similar thrust pipes also link from the fusion reactor to the suit's gauntlets and greaves, with four small thrusters on each, further boosting the suit's airborne manoeuvrability. The nozzles of the vambrace thrusters can also secrete a thin heat resistant liquid polymer membrane that can contain a burst of plasma being jettisoned out rapidly, preventing dissipation and creating a plasma blast.
*Note: This section described the baseline ARMADA model, the "Perseus".

Notable Variants:

-The ARMADA platform is highly modular, which led to the development of many variants designed to perform various roles. These include:
+Hercules: Variant designed exclusively for use by certain heavy TEMPLAR operators to fill the role of squad automatic rifleman or to hold down static objectives. The soft exoskeleton's solid frame is converted into a hydraulic exoskeleton which operates in tandem with the artificial muscles to generate more strength in exchange for an increase in clunkiness. The magnesium alloy plates are replaced with titanium, increasing bullet resistance while further increasing weight. The ceramic impact plate is replaced by a thin electric reactive armour layer which vaporizes projectiles and releases excess heat through top and side vents. A layer of aerogel is sandwiched between this layer and the titanium plates, insulating the rest of the armour from the intense heat generated. The overall weight is increased to 230kg but the durability and lifting capacity is vastly increased.
+Atlas: Variant designed for heavy and basic TEMPLAR's acting as the squad point man. The suit possesses a silicon carbide plate of double the thickness, explosive shock-absorbing foam lining the inner walls of the Soft Exoskeleton, a more advanced close range sensor suite, particularly powerful sonars that can identify targets behind cover, and more chest hardpoints for grenades and breaching devices.
+Gaia: Variant designed for bomb defusals with layers of shock-absorbing foam and polymers within the external plates and soft exoskeleton and equipped with a specialized bomb-defusal A.I.
+Nyx: Variant with enhanced radar jamming and electronic warfare systems and equipped with specialized hacking A.I.
+Tempestas: Variant with two smaller fusion reactors, each of which generates 75% the energy of the base model, with a net gain of 50% which is used to fuel the HEL - IMP "Mjolnir" electrolaser and IGR-20 railgun.
+Stymphalian: Variant designed for high altitude insertion via HALO jumps or orbital drops. Features smoother, more aerodynamic design with aerofoil like titanium plates attached to the chest that exert a downward force. More advanced thrusters and sensor suite.
+Icarus: Variant designed for aerial and space combat, particularly ship and station boarding with more advanced thruster systems which utilize a greater percentage of the power supply. Bolstered with more aerodynamic designs, advanced sensors, flares and shaped energy shield projectors on the booster kit that can emit energy shields shaped like aerofoils. Designed for basic and light TEMPLAR's.
+Daedalus: Variant designed for TEMPLAR pilots with more advanced airbags in the soft exoskeleton layer, thinner armour plates to better fit into a cockpit, a modified helmet that directly links the TEMPLAR's neural implant, his/her A.I. and an aircraft's onboard computer.
+Achilles: Variant used by basic and light TEMPLARs designed for special operations deep within enemy territory, often involving close combat. More energy is drawn to the soft exoskeleton, boosting speed and reflexes, while taking away from the booster kit. Also includes a more aggressive and close range + melee combat-oriented A.I., advanced sensors, including touch sensors, environmental sensors, and better electromagnetic sensors.
+Epiales: Variant designed for light TEMPLAR's conducting clandestine operations such as espionage and assassination. Includes modifications to decrease armour weight, including: thinner metal plates which are composed of High Entropy Alloys instead of Magnesium alloys; Use of boron carbide, which is less dense than silicon carbide, for ceramic layer; the solid frame of the exoskeleton has a hollowed honeycomb structure. This brings the weight down to around 55 kg. Thruster nozzles on vambraces are removed and replaced with a grappling hook launcher and a dart launcher on the right hand which launch four types of darts (recording, incendiary, sonar, and poison) with four of each loaded in succession (darts are launched electromagnetically similar to the metalstorm system), and a hologram decoy launcher and twin rocket launchers on the left hand which operate similarly and is loaded with 3 HEAP warheads and 3 smoke grenades. The darts and rockets are guided via modified sensors and processors in the helmet. Sound mufflers and active noise cancelling devices are placed around the joints and the thruster nozzles. These operators also use specialized quiet weapons. The gloves and boot utilize either a vacuum seal or magnets to climb surfaces.
+Odysseus: Variant for TEMPLAR's acting as both scouts and snipers. Features advanced optical and infrared sensors and more sophisticated ballistic computers, adjusting for varying drag and gravity on different planets, wind, and planet rotation, linked to smart weapon optics.
+Prometheus: Variant incorporating prototype nanomachine self-repairing technologies which patched in holes in armour using carbon nanotubes, metal alloy cold-welded on a nano-scale and hardening photopolymer to maintain structural integrity after being shot.

"Regular" Special Forces Application:

-Many features and advancements developed for the ARMADA systems have been incorporated in the uniform and armour of more common special forces including Magnesium alloy hollow plates, Soft exoskeleton, Helmet mounted sensors and ballistic calculators, Active Camouflage,...
-Augmentations from the original ESP-X programme have also been considered though the limitations need to be addressed.

Specific Weapon Systems:

-While ARMA was training their super soldiers and developing their armour systems, the UASF contracted several firearms manufacturers new and old to develop enhanced weapons designed for use by, as quoted in the contract, "physically superior individuals wearing large gloves". The weapons that were eventually adopted for the TEMPLAR's were:
+AKS-65 (Avtomát Kalashnikova Spetsiálny 6.5mm): Modular AK platform with long-stroke gas piston and balanced recoil system, chambered in 6.5x45mm tungsten jacketed rounds with a steel core, and exposed DU penetrating tip. An assault rifle by default but can be configured as a carbine, SAW, or DMR with a simple receiver swap.
+ARC-65 (Armalite Rifle - Commando 6.5mm): AR-15 platform carbine with short-stroke gas piston system, chambered in the same 6.5mm round. Can be configured with a specialized receiver designed to fire subsonic ammunition, featuring an integrally suppressed barrel and direct impingement gas system.
+AMSR-12.7 (Anti Material Sniper Rifle 12.7mm): An anti-personnel and anti-material long-range precision bolt action weapon system. Chambered for specialized 50 BMG rounds. 3 main variants: 8mm Fin Stabilized Tungsten Discarding Sabot for long-range medium armoured Olympian personnel; Tungsten jacketed, steel core, DU penetrator tip for medium-range medium armoured Olympian personnel; DU tipped high explosive armour piercing for medium-range equipment and heavily armoured Olympian personnel. The sabot round can steer in-flight to a laser designated position by adjusting its fins.
+PDW-762 (Personal Defense Weapon 7.62mm): Gas-operated sidearms chambered in 7.62x33mm PDW rounds, a necked down version of the .357 Magnum which can fire tungsten jacketed steel core bullets or 5.8mm tungsten discarding sabot.
+MP-762 (Magnum Pistol 7.62mm): Blowback operated pistol chambered in overpressured variants of the 7.62x33mm PDW cartridge.
+SPDW-68 (Smart Personal Defense Weapon 6.8mm): A submachine gun based on the action of the VBR CAR prototype, which in of itself was designed to be a simplified version of the H&K G11. The gun uses 60 round magazines of 6.8x33mm telescoped caseless SLAP (Smart Lock on Armour Piercing Rounds) which fire 5.6mm fin-stabilized DU sabots that guide themselves towards the target designated by the helmet's visual and laser sensors which send information to the gun's onboard computer to be relayed to the projectiles. The projectile aims for gaps or weak spots in an opponent's armour and the small calibre is compensated for by a small c4 charge that detonates once the DU tip has sufficiently penetrated the surface.
+IRG-20 (Infantry Rail Gun 20mm): Shoulder mounted semi-automatic railgun which latches onto special ports on the shoulder of any ARMADA system though preferably on the Tempestes, drawing charge from the fusion reactor. The weapon fires either 20mm fin-stabilized HEAT rounds at Mach-3 or 12.7mm fin-stabilized DU Discarding Sabots at Mach 6.
+HEL-IMP "Mjolnir" (High-powered ElectroLaser - Infantry Multi-Purpose): A modified variant of the HEL vehicle-mounted weapon system for use with the ARMADA system, from which it draws power. The HEL-IMP has multiple settings: Stun, Lethal Discharge, Overkill Discharge, Burst, Sustained Burst, Sustained Discharge.

Deployment History:

-As of 1456, the year the TEMPLAR's officially entered service, they have participated in two operations without aid from other military branches, both of which ended in success:
+Operation Crusade (7th August): A company of fifty TEMPLAR's descended upon a highly guarded Olympian radar and air defence base, sabotaging several major equipments, allowing the UASF Air Force to fly over and bombard several military encampments the following day.
+Operation Pluto (9th November): A fireteam of four TEMPLAR's broke into an Olympian base on Pluto and successfully assassinated a major commander.
-There has been no TEMPLAR casualties as of yet.

Hic Sunt Monstrum

(The following document was saved to an older Blackberry device that I found, sealed in a waterproof bag on a storage room shelf of an old concessions stand, while working on a demolition crew, tearing down an abandoned water park to make way for a planned green community. I am posting the document, un-edited.)
So how the hell did I wind up here, hiding in the backroom of a dilapidated corndog stand, frantically pecking out what might well be the last blog of my life? That’s kind of a long story, but the creature prowling around outside seems to be in no hurry. I think it knows I’m here. Why it hasn’t already ripped through the poorly barricaded door and torn me to shreds, I don’t know, but maybe it will wait long enough for me to tell you my tale.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m KathyCreeps and this is Hic Sunt Monstrum.
That’s the name of my new blog, Hic Sunt Monstrum, or will be, if I live long enough to post it. It’s Latin for “here there be monsters,” a notation on old maps and charts that denoted unexplored or dangerous territory. My previous blog had a much different name. Unfortunately, it wasn’t different enough from someone else’s intellectual property, so I was forced to take down my site and remove any references to it. All the other really good names were taken, but I think Hic Sunt Monstrum works (kinda wish I had thought of it for my original blog; would’ve saved me a ton in legal fees). “Way off the map” is a pretty good description for the kind of places I post about. You see, I’m an urban explorer, a creeper. Some use the term UrbEx, or infiltrator, but I like creeper. It’s very descriptive of what I do, since most of the places I visit are off limits to the general public. I search these sites out, sneak in, take a bunch of photographs, and write about the experience. Occasionally, I do a video, but I find that still shots have more impact. My old blog pulled in enough ad revenue for me to get by, but I’ll never get rich doing this, especially now that I have to start over. Still, I do it anyway, and not just for the rush of being someplace I’m not supposed to be. It’s more of a compulsion, really. They fascinate me, these abandoned places. I’ve been to most of the well known ones; the Trolley Graveyard, Yellow Dog Village, Cedarcrest Hospital, Hacienda Heights, Lincoln Way, etc. etc., but the ones I like best are the ones nobody has heard of before. The old ghost towns and played-out mines scattered across the west; shuttered malls, mills, and foundries throughout the rust belt; condemned tenements and abandoned subway lines of the east coast urban centers, you know, stuff like that. I find a way in, take pictures, and post them on my site. Over these last couple of years, I’ve become an expert fence climber and gotten pretty handy with a crowbar. In all this time, I’ve only been arrested once. Pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.
My therapist, Linda, thought this “obsession,” as she called it, with abandoned places was triggered by traumatic events in my life. My husband had left me for a younger woman, my kids are grown and don’t need a mom anymore, and I was laid off when my job was automated. She says my affinity for abandoned places rises from my own feelings of abandonment. She also says that I need to take yoga classes to unblock my chakras, so that the universe’s positive energy can flow through me and restore balance to my aura. I don’t take her too seriously, but seeing a therapist was part of the plea deal for my trespassing conviction (the place wasn’t as abandoned as I thought it was). I got off pretty easy with time served and six months probation, so I went to the therapy sessions, took the yoga classes, and kept my mouth shut.
Truth is, I’ve been obsessed with abandoned places ever since I can remember. When I was a little girl, my older brother Mark, his friends, the Davis twins, and Jenny Dunlap (not really a friend, but the only other girl in my fourth grade class willing to go “down crick” to play) would spend hours exploring McKesky’s farm. The farm was in the woods, on a low bluff overlooking Wolf Creek, at the end of an overgrown dirt road. We had to hike over two miles of deer trails through the forest, cut across Beebe’s corn field, and dogleg around a bog to get there. The farm consisted of the main house, a barn, and three outbuildings. I don’t know how long it had been abandoned, but part of the roof was missing and enough dead leaves had blown in and decayed for ragweed and even a few small maple saplings to sprout in the upstairs bedrooms. Downstairs, a mouldering davenport sat against the wall in the front parlor, accompanied by the skeletons of two wing-backed chairs. Most of the kitchen floor had collapsed into the cellar, taking the cupboards and counters with it, but the dining room, even with its peeling wallpaper and crumbling plaster, was still relatively intact. A heavy oak table, aged and gray, occupied the center of the room, with eight straight backed chairs still pushed in around it. From the ceiling a chandelier dangled at the end of frayed knob and tube wiring, shards of frosted globes still clinging to the sockets. In the bottom of a corner cabinet, we found a stack of red willow pattern china plates. Billy Davis and Mark smashed it all. I remember that made me very sad.
As interesting as the house was, the barn was what really fascinated me. Ancient tools leaned in the corners, dusted with rust and grime. Tack and harnesses hung from the walls, the leather so old it would disintegrate when touched. Mason jars full of nails, screws, and other hardware stood in rows on sagging shelves. There was a Ford Model T, just the frame and passenger bucket, sitting on cinder blocks in one corner, all coated in a heavy patina. Mark and the twins plotted and schemed, trying to figure out a way to haul it out of there so they could build a hotrod, but I wanted it to stay where it was. I wanted everything to stay where it was. It all just seemed so beautiful to me, the way the light played across the dusty jars, the shadows cast by sickles, scythes and saws, the rough grain of distressed wood. At that age, the thought of owning a camera had never crossed my mind. Even then, though, I felt a longing to somehow preserve all this beauty.
But I digress. My impending doom has made me nostalgic.
When my ex-husband and I divorced, we liquidated all our assets and split the proceeds. It was easier and quicker than arguing over who got what, and neither one of us wanted to drag things out. The only demand I made was that I got the motorcycle. He had bought a Harley Sportser not long after we were married and rode it sporadically for a year or two, before our first child was born. After that, he pushed it into the back corner of the garage, where it sat, taking up space and collecting dust, until I claimed it as my prize. Maybe Linda was onto something about me identifying with abandoned things. After I was laid off from work, I streamed some YouTube videos and downloaded a few shop manual .pdfs to guide me as I got the bike running again. On my first test ride, I happened across an old foundry that had been shut down some time ago. Inspired by my childhood memories of McKlesky’s farm, I climbed the fence and shot a couple dozen photos with my phone. When my daughter saw them, she suggested I start blogging. The rest, as they say, was history. Outfitted with saddlebags, a sturdy sissy bar, and a touring seat, I’ve ridden my Harley all over the country, visiting the forgotten places that I post about. I call her my “Wind Mother.” With the exception of changing the tires, I’ve done all the maintenance and repairs myself; a fact that I’m immensely proud of. Right now, she’s leaning on her kickstand, behind a boarded up gas station along a disused country highway, three miles away from where I’m hiding. I’m afraid I’ll never see her again.
Damned nostalgia. Right, back to the important stuff.
Being a hardcore creeper, I’ve run across rumors of the Getty Lake Water Park and Aquarium before. Supposedly built by an eccentric millionaire in the late Sixties, the park went bankrupt after a couple of seasons. Not many have ever heard of the place, but the general consensus among those few who have is that it was too far off the beaten path to succeed. Even after the owner spent the last of his fortune to bring in some sort of exotic attraction, Getty Lake never stood a chance. There were just too many other, more easily accessible parks. The worldwide recession of 1973 was the final nail in the coffin and the place was abandoned. According to the stories, they didn’t even transfer the animals to other zoos or parks and simply left them to die. Early in my urban exploring career, I researched Getty Lake, combing the internet for maps, property records, construction permits, safety inspections and the like, but came up empty. I spent hours pouring over satellite photos of possible locations, but never found anything. There wasn’t even a body of water named Getty Lake anywhere in the region. Eventually, like most others in the creeper community, I dismissed the rumors as a fairytale. Until Brad contacted me.
Brad had been a creeper himself, before falling through a rotten floor and breaking his back while exploring an old psychiatric hospital somewhere in upstate New York. He claimed that he’d gotten his information from a friend, but had never been able to follow up on it because of his injury. He gave me directions to the old gas station where I had parked Wind Mother and a compass heading to follow through the woods that would bring me to the abandoned park. Included in the email was a photo of a rusted chain link fence, topped with a three strand barbed wire outrigger. Most of it had been overgrown by kudzu, but the vines had been pulled back to reveal a rust pitted sign that read “KEEP OUT PRIVATE PROPERTY TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW.” Beneath that, in smaller print, were the words, “Getty Lake Water Park and Aquarium.”
It could have been a hoax. Brad had been a subscriber to my old blog. We’d swapped a few DMs and occasionally chatted in the forums, but had never met in person. I didn’t know him from Adam. There was no reason for me to believe he was telling the truth, but there was no reason for me to think he was lying either. What the hell? I figured. It couldn’t hurt to check it out. The place he described was only three hundred miles away. I could do it in a day; six hours there, four to six hours exploring (if the place really existed), and six hours back home. And, if it was for real, I could always go back with camping gear and really give it a thorough going over. Posting proof of Getty Lake’s existence would be an amazing way to start my new blog and get some ad revenue coming in.
At the end of his email, Brad mentioned that his friend had decided to go on alone, but he had not heard from him since. I really should have paid attention to that.
The old gas station was right where Brad said it would be. I had brought extra SD cards for my camera, so I spent some time shooting photos there. It was really good stuff too. Dusty oil cans sat stacked in a pyramid in the front window. Assorted fan belts, cracked and flaking with age, hung on the wall. Vintage sunglasses, tire gages, and air fresheners were lined up under the glass counter. A rack of disintegrating road maps and a modernist style ashtray stand sat between two chrome and naugahyde benches. There was even a mechanical cash register with a hammered steel case (it was probably worth some money, but I consider scavenging beneath me). I found just the right angle to shoot a black and yellow garden spider, hanging in her web, with a poster of a pinup girl who was entirely too excited about a set of bias ply radials artfully out of focus in the background. There was another hour or two worth of material in the station, especially the service bay where tools still hung from pegboard lined cabinets, but that would have to wait. If I wanted to find the water park, do some preliminary exploring, and get back to my motorcycle before sundown, I’d better shake a leg.
Again, the info Brad had given me was spot on. The compass heading brought me to the fence not twenty feet away from the warning sign in the picture he’d sent. More of the kuzu had been pulled back and just below the sign and I found a hole someone had cut through the galvanized chain link. Judging by the lack of rust on the snipped ends, they had done it fairly recently, too. I wondered if it was Brad’s friend, and, if so, why he hadn’t posted about his find? I keep a pretty close eye on the forums. If anyone had found Getty Lake, word would have spread quickly. Maybe something happened to him. Lone creeping can be very dangerous, especially someplace like this; out in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone signal. It’s always a good idea to bring a partner. After taking my own photo of the warning sign, I shoved my rucksack through the hole and crawled in after it.
Do as I say, not as I do, right? At least I won’t have somebody else’s death on my conscience.
The water park was more than I expected, more than I dreamed. It’s remoteness had protected it from scavengers, souvenir hunters, graffiti artists, and bored teenagers who just wanted to smash stuff. The area I entered when I crawled through the fence had been for younger kids. Shallow pools filled with murky green water sprouted cattails and even some lilly pads. Minnows darted back and forth just below the surface. See saws, swing sets, and monkey bars poked up from a field of honeysuckle and baby’s breath. The remains of a petting zoo lay under a skeletal awning frame. The canvas that had once shaded the pens had long ago fallen victim to wind and weather. In the middle of it all was a carousel, tilted on its axis. The horses, giraffes, and zebras were faded and chipped, but otherwise unmolested. I shot a few quick photos and moved on to the main park. It did not disappoint.
A ride car, made up to resemble a hollowed out pine trunk with seats and safety bars, sat askew on its track outside the collapsed exit tunnel of the Log Flume. The trough of the Lazy River Innertube Float snaked back and forth between rides and attractions, spanned by the occasional pedestrian bridge. Towering water slides rose into the sky. Draped with vines and moss, I could just make out the faded colors of their fiberglas tubes beneath the overgrowth, red, green, blue, yellow. Everything was covered with kudzu and creeping ivy. Tall weeds sprouted from every crack in the pavement. Dead leaves covered the ground and lay in drifts against the walls. Little wonder nobody had ever been able to spot this place on Google Earth.
Below the slides were more pools, larger than in the kiddie park, filled with the same murky green water and aquatic plants. The fish in these pools were also bigger. My photos weren’t very good, the light was all wrong, but I managed to catch a couple of them on camera, some kind of bluegill or sunfish I think. I tried to imagine how they even got in there.
It would take days, maybe even a full week, to fully explore and photograph just the water park portion of the site. I started making plans for future expeditions, but for now, my main goal was the aquarium. If the rumors were true, if they had left the fish in the exhibits to die, I wanted pictures of the skeletons lying in the bottom of empty tanks. That was the kind of imagery that could pull in subscribers, maybe even start a GoFundMe page.
I did find skeletons, and not just of fish.
Right outside of the entrance to the aquarium were two outdoor exhibits. According to the signs (I had to scrape the crud off to read them), one pool had held American alligators, the other California Sea Lions. If there were any bones in those pools, they were submerged under all that murky water and impossible to photograph. As horrible as it sounds, I was disappointed. I figured I’d have better luck inside the building, where rain wouldn’t have been able to replenish the tanks when the water evaporated. As I leaned against the rail of the seal exhibit, to snap a few wide angle shots of the algae encrusted pool, my foot bumped against something. It was an old, army green rucksack, obscured by weeds and fallen leaves. One of the straps had been ripped off and the side was split open, spilling the contents onto the ground. Most of it was ruined by exposure to the elements, but still easily recognizable. Rope, protein bars, water bottles, and a first aid kit among other things; standard creeper’s kit, not much different than the one strapped to my own back. Brad’s friend must have come through here.
The hair on the back of my neck bristled. I felt unease roiling in my gut. What if this was some kind of ambush? I wondered. Had Brad set me up to be attacked by his friend? That didn’t make any sense. They wouldn’t know when, if ever, I would come here. What was Brad’s friend going to do? Camp here indefinitely, hoping that I eventually showed up? The idea was silly.
Still, I was feeling less than comfortable. I was a middle-aged woman, out in the middle of nowhere, with no cell phone signal, and the closest thing I had to a weapon was a Leatherman tool. Nobody knew I was here, and, if something happened, nobody would realize I was missing until my landlord came knocking for the rent check at the end of the month. Two of the cardinal rules of creeping are; never go alone and always tell someone where you’ll be and when you’ll be back. I broke both those rules because I wanted an exclusive. I wanted this place all to myself, so that I could jumpstart a new blog and do something I loved, instead of slinging burgers or waiting tables, to make a living. Despite the doubt gnawing at the back of my brain, I went into the aquarium building. Just a couple of photos, I told myself, and then I’d hightail it back to Wind Mother, find myself a motel in the nearest town, and call a few associates to put together a proper expedition. Even if I had to share the credit, it would be an amazing way to launch the new site. Besides, Brad’s friend might have met with some misfortune here. I owed it to a fellow creeper to at least take a quick look.
The double doors were not locked and, surprisingly, swung easily on their hinges. Inside the building it was pitch black. Of course, there were no windows. Sunlight would promote algae growth and the tanks would require more frequent cleaning. I had to strap on my headlamp. There was an ankle deep drift of dead leaves inside the entrance doors, but other than that the tiled floors were clear of debris. Maybe Brad’s friend had come through here, letting the leaves blow in when he opened the door. It seemed like a lot of leaves for just one person coming in, but maybe he’d stayed a couple of days and had made this his base camp. I know that sounds thin, but it was the best explanation I could come up with. In the middle of the foyer was a cylindrical tank, at least twenty feet in diameter and ten tall. Fake stone rose up in the middle of the display, draped with sagging plastic plants, all of it dry and dusty. The pea gravel at the bottom was littered with fish skeletons, the largest being maybe a foot and a half long. The camera’s flash reflecting off the glass kept me from getting a decent photo, so I pushed deeper.
Beyond the foyer was a long hall, lined with tanks of various sizes set into the black painted walls on either side. Again, the flash ruined any photos I tried to take. It was toward the end of that hall that I began to find the animal bones; rats, squirrels, racoons or possums, that sort of thing. Maybe they were the ones pushing through the doors and letting all the leaves drift in.
The next room was larger, with bigger tanks, but I still couldn’t get any pictures. The animal bones littering the floor here were bigger, too. Most looked like they came from deer, but one set of antlers could have only been elk. Were animals somehow wandering into the building, getting trapped, and dying of thirst or starvation? I wondered. The bones were scattered, some of them broken, and appeared to have been gnawed on. Maybe scavengers had been at the bodies after they died. Could the scavengers still be in here? The idea sent a chill down my spine. It was time to go. I turned around to leave. That’s when my headlamp illuminated the sign.
“REPTOZOID” it read in garish red letters eight feet tall. The font reminded me of horror movie posters from the ‘50s. “HALF MAN! HALF MONSTER! ALL TERROR!!” Beneath that it continued; “From deep in the unexplored jungles of the Amazon comes this aberration of nature, an evolutionary impossibility, yet still, he exists! This exhibit is not for children, pregnant women, or people with heart conditions. Enter at your own risk!” The words were superimposed over a faded, but surprisingly realistic, mural of an underwater panorama of sunken logs, aquatic plants, and tropical fish. In the lower left corner, the artist had painted a cave, with a pair of menacing, yellow eyes peering out from the darkness.
“This I gotta see.”
Yes, I actually said that out loud, before pushing open the door and walking down the ramp to the viewing area. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
The exhibit was twelve or fifteen feet below the rest of the building, and consisted of a small auditorium with four rows of theater seats facing the glass wall of a humongous tank, so that the audience could see below the water’s surface. Filled with the same murky, green water I had seen in the pools outside, the tank was dimly illuminated from above. There must have been skylights or a hole in the roof. That would explain how rainwater got in to keep the tank replenished.
The beam of my headlamp shown on even more animal bones, strewn haphazardly across the floor and piled against the walls. One of the skulls obviously belonged to an alligator. Was it one of the scavengers or one of the scavenged? Either idea made me shudder.
I was pretty sure I knew exactly what this was. The park owner had hired some guy (who was really good at holding his breath), dressed him up in a rubber monster suit, and had him swim around the tank to the fear and delight of the audience. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen something along these lines. My ex-husband once took me to a restaurant in Las Vegas where topless women, made up like mermaids, swam around in similar tanks, surrounding the dining room. The fact that he was willing to shell out almost four hundred bucks, just to stare at aquatic bimbo boobies while we ate mediocre lobster Thermidore, was one of the things that made me feel not so bad about our divorce. I snapped a couple of pictures, making sure I got some good close-ups of the gator skull, and headed for the exit. Photos of that skull, and some slightly lurid speculation about the exhibit animals eating each other after they were abandoned, would be the highlight of my first post on the new blog.
Something caught my eye, a ghost of movement in the murky tank, a swirl of suspended sediment. I approached the glass, thinking it must be some kind of fish, like in the pools outside. Cupping my hands against the glare of my headlamp, I squinted into green water.
A large, scaly hand, webbed fingers tipped with black claws thumped against the glass beside my face. Yellow eyes, pupils slit like a poisonous snake, peered out at me. I screamed, stumbled backward, and fell painfully on my ass. I couldn’t see so much as sense its movement as it shot upward with incredible speed. I heard a splash and a heavy thump on the floor above me.
I was up and running for the exit faster than any forty-six year old woman has a right to move. At the top of the ramp, I saw another skull that had been hidden from my view behind the open door when I entered. It was a human skull. Brad’s friend, maybe. Probably the former owner of the rucksack out front. A few leathery scrapes of tendon still clung to the jaw, but the rest of it had been stripped clean. The top half had been ripped off. Something had very much wanted to get at the brains inside. There I was, fleeing in terror from some unknown creature, and part of me still wanted to stop and take a picture of that skull. I’m crazy, aren’t I?
No sooner was I through the door and back in the room with the big empty tanks and deer bones, than I heard a heavy thump in the auditorium behind me. There must have been a hole in the ceiling that I hadn’t noticed. Dashing towards the long hall lined with aquariums, I tripped over the femur of a deer. As I scrambled back to my feet, something banged into the auditorium door, fumbling with the handle. I didn’t bother to wait and see if it could figure out the latch. Judging by all the gnawed bones around me, the thing had mastered doors long ago. Instead, I sprinted hell bent for leather down the hallway, my headlamp bouncing crazily with each step. Near the entrance foyer, I heard the stattacco slap of feet on the floor tiles coming up fast from behind.
There was a bad moment when I thought the entrance doors must have locked when I came in, because, no matter how hard I pushed, they wouldn’t open. In my panic, with those slapping footfalls growing louder, I had forgotten they opened inward. Yanking the handle so hard I almost dislocated my shoulder, I flung myself out into the summer sun. After the darkness inside the aquarium building, the mid-afternoon light was blinding. Disoriented, I stumbled into the rail of the alligator exhibit. Momentum carried me over and I plunged into the water. That’s where I lost my camera. It wasn’t one of the top-of-the-line models, I can’t really afford that, but it was a trusty friend that had been with me on many adventures. I will miss it as much as my motorcycle.
Can’t think like that. I might still get out of this.
As my head broke the surface and I sputtered for air, I heard the bang of the aquarium door being yanked open. The creature stepped out into the light, hissing in pain and holding up wide, webbed hands to shield its eyes from the sun. I only caught a glimpse, before thrashing away through the water to the far side of the pool, but it was enough. The thing was stocky and broad, built like a gorilla, with stubby legs and long arms. Instead of fur, gray-green scales covered its bulging muscles and both hands and feet were webbed. A broad, flat tail, ridged with spines, trailed behind. The head was wide and flat, with those yellow, slitted eyes protruding from the top of its skull. Its snout was short, the mouth wide and snaggle-toothed. Wattles of empty skin hung under its gullet. This beast had obviously evolved to rip chunks of flesh from its prey and swallow them whole.
Alli-rilla? Ape-a-gator? I guess Reptazoid is as good a name as any.
It heard my splashing and felt its way to the rail, but before its eyes could adjust to the bright light, I pulled myself out of the water on the far side, pushed through the overgrown shrubs of the exhibit’s backdrop, and scrambled over a hidden fence. I dropped down into unfamiliar territory, and ran straight ahead.
With my own rucksack bouncing on my shoulders, I dipped and dodged around the guide rails to ride entrances, sagging picnic tables clustered around concession stands, and decorative planters overgrown with weeds and trees. Stagnant water sluiced from my clothes, leaving a trail that a blind mole could follow. All the while I could hear those slapping footfalls and a sporadic slurping noise, like the one my kids used to make eating spaghetti. Glancing back over my shoulder as I ran, I saw the creature chasing after me in an awkward gallop, holding one arm up to shield its eyes from the sun. It wasn’t completely blinded, but it didn’t like the light very much. Squeezing between two dilapidated carnival game booths, I entered an open plaza. It was surrounded by more booths in various states of decay and, standing in the center, was a defunct water fountain. Rising up from the basin was a column of aquatic animal sculptures. The busts of fish, dolphins, and whales, each with a water pipe protruding slightly from its open mouth, ringed a central column like faces on a totem pole. That would’ve made for some really good photos, if I hadn’t lost my camera. Or been running for my life.
In the open, I was able to pick up speed and put a little distance between me and those slapping footfalls. Slipping between two more booths on the far side of the plaza, I came to a slope of tall grass, leading down to the remnants of a man-made beach on the lake the park had been built beside.
I was beginning to think I might have a slim edge in speed and agility over that thing on land, but I knew I had precisely zero chance in the water. The beach had been constructed on the tip of a broad spit, jutting into the lake. Shoreline curved back towards the main park on either side of me. Behind, I heard the crash of splintering wood, as the creature bulled its way into the plaza. I was trapped, surrounded on three sides by water and cut off from the only route of escape by the thing chasing me. My only option was a clapboard shack, with a faded corndog painted on the side, sitting along the path that led from the plaza to the beach. It was twenty yards away. I ran.
The door was locked, but I was able to lift the front shutter enough to roll over the serving counter and drop down inside, landing on the floor below a row of deep fryers. I grabbed the stainless steel prep counter to pull myself up, coating my palm with dusty grease in the process. Beside the fryers was a door, leading into a storage room at the rear. As I slipped in and eased it shut behind me, I heard the thing crashing through the booths on this side of the plaza.
The room was full of supplies, but nothing useful to me. Bins of plastic cutlery, decaying paper napkins, stacks of plastic serving baskets and boxes of wax paper to line them with filled the shelves. An empty propane tank, hooked up to pipes that fueled the burners under the fryers, and freezer chest sat against the interior wall. As quietly as I could, I jiggled the freezer in front of the storage room door. I knew better than to open it. After forty plus years, any corndogs or frozen french fries left inside would be pretty nasty. The barricade was of dubious comfort, but better than nothing.
There were cracks in the clapboard siding, just wide enough for me to peek through. I watched the creature stalking back and forth, walking on its hind legs and the knuckles of one hand, while shielding its eyes with the other. It stayed in the shadows as much as possible, moving quickly through the light when it had to. At one point, it hunkered down in the shade of a booth and sat very still for several minutes. Suddenly, its tongue shot out of its mouth, the barbed tip spearing a robin that had alighted on the raised end of a collapsed picnic table. I nearly gasped aloud when it dawned on me what that spaghetti slurping noise had been. The bird had been at least fifteen feet away. I shuddered to think how close that thing had come to skewering me with its tongue.
Ape, gator, now frog. What the hell is this thing? Some mad geneticist’s fever dream experiment? “Aberration of nature;” yeah, they got that part right.
The creature’s head snapped around to look directly at me. I instinctively pulled back from the crack I was peeking through. That’s when I realized I was still wearing my headlamp. It had survived my little dip in the alligator pool and was still working. What can I say? I invest in good equipment. I ripped it off and thumbed the kill switch, but the creature must have noticed the light. It came loping over to the corndog stand and tried to peer through the cracks while I huddled on the floor between the freezer and the empty propane tank, hands clapped over my mouth so I wouldn’t scream.
I don’t think it saw me, but I’m pretty sure it knows, or at least suspects, that I’m in here. It spent several minutes moving around the shack, pressing on the walls to test their strength. I heard the shutter out front squeak open and bang closed, but the creature didn’t come in. I don’t know why. By the time I screwed up enough courage to peek out again, it had returned to the shade behind the game booths, crouching in their lengthening shadows. But it was watching the corndog shack intently.
Everything I know about animal behavior I learned from nature documentaries on TV, so, suffice it to say, I’m no expert. Still, from what I’ve seen of the creature, I think I’ve got a few things figured out. First, it doesn’t like light. Second, with those stubby hind legs, the frog-like spear tongue, and the fact that it couldn’t run down a middle-aged mother of two with a fondness for wine and chocolate, I think it’s an ambush predator. I really hope I’m right about those things, because my plan depends on them.
The kiddie park, the hole in the fence, and the woods between me and my bike, all lie to the east. In the morning, if I can get past the creature and its tongue and back into the plaza with the fountain, it’s almost a straight shot through the park. I’m not in great shape, but I’m in good shape. I think I can outrun it, especially if it’s blinded, chasing me into the morning sun. Once I get through the fence and into the woods behind the old gas station, I should be okay. I don’t think ambush predators venture too far from their dens, or lairs, or whatever you call them. At least I hope they don’t. For all I know this thing could sprout wings and shoot fireballs out its ass, so we’ll see.
All I have to do is make it through the night.
I’m going to leave my Blackberry with this message here. I learned early on to carry all my electronics in waterproof bags while creeping, so it survived the gator pool. The battery will likely discharge. I’ll leave the charger in the bag, too. Once it’s plugged in, the information in its storage should still be good. People need to know there’s a dangerous creature living in the old aquarium. Anybody who finds this, please tell Megyn and Jeremy that I love them and was thinking about them. Their numbers are in the contacts list.
But that’s all just in case. I’m pretty sure my plan will work, if I can just hang on until morning. Either way, this is KathyCreeps, signing off.
Hic Sunt Monstrum.
(I attempted to call the numbers listed for Megyn and Jeremy in the Blackberry’s contacts. Both were “out of service.” On a side note, one of the demo crew went missing last night. Since many of the unskilled laborers that the company hires for these jobs are itinerant, the police filed a report, but are not conducting an investigation as of yet.)

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