Free Con-Red: Recourse by Max Feinstein

hands across his armored chest, resting them on top of the fully retracted rifle that hung there in its own compartment, which was actually more like an indentation inside the armor plate.  As the wind picked up once more, Duntan was glad he was fully enclosed inside the confines of his combat armor.  The armor, which was actually more like a uniform because of its custom tight fit, was impenetrable to all elements and featured an internal environmental control system.  The wearer could set any temperature and humidity they wanted and the suit would keep it as such.  The combat armor itself could even manufacture its own air and water as long as the proper molecules were present in the surrounding atmosphere.
    Not only was it immune to extreme environments, its nanofiber weave construction allowed it act as an exoskeleton for the wearer, enhancing all their physical attributes many times over.  The previous generation armors of this class were rather bulky units and had certain movement restrictions, but these new units were made from an improved material that gave similar protection in a more comfortable package.  Stag Combat Armor, or SCA, was in a class by itself and was currently only issued to special operations units, whose work required all the advantages they could get in order to survive and complete their missions.
    His moment of satisfaction passed as quickly as it began, however, when a voice resounded within his helmet.  “Colonel Slaige, Avenger One.  ADS just detected incoming bandits.  ETA three minutes.  We’ll try to buy you as much time as possible, but you better hurry.”
    The Atmospheric Disturbance Scanner was actually a much older technology that had been revived and updated in the past thirty years, when military spending had been immensely increased to deal with alien threats beyond the United Planets Federations borders .  It was designed to detect any object or craft travelling through a planetary atmosphere solely on the principle that anything moving through a medium, such as air, would create certain turbulences in its wake.  These turbulences could in turn be monitored and tracked, allowing the system to determine a very accurate location and flight path of the object.  The ADS could therefore detect any object within the atmosphere, whether it be stealth or not, but said object had to be traveling at speed.  A slow moving entity or one designed to specifically to slice through the atmosphere would not register because its wake would be minimal.  For this reason, the system was a single part of a layered planetary sensor network in which feeds from different sensors could form a complete picture.
    An icon on the Colonel’s heads up display flashed quickly and drew his attention, notifying him that one of the ACAVs, autonomous combat air vehicles , had moved into a position to receive and transmit laser datalink signals from the area.  He was sure that more were being converted and flown out as they became available, but for the moment, this was the only one around, a precious commodity that could not be squandered.  Duntan decided he needed to get the most intel he possibly could while he still had access to it.
    One of the perks to being in any of the special operations branches was almost unlimited access to military networks.  Special operations commanders could login to these n etworks personally and gather any information they needed.  Usually these networks contained tremendous amounts of data, from military and civilian communications to the tracking of all craft in space and planetary atmosphere.  This time, however, most of the sensor feeds were empty.  Some were down and not communicating, while other simply saw no signs of enemy activity.  There were still a few civilian ships flying around, most moving towards ports throughout the continent, as well as an increasing number of military craft taking up defensive positions.  He saved all the data he felt