The next morning, Lin Ming called an emergency meeting for Task Force Chimera. The mood in the barracks living room was a mixture of curiosity and post-battle laziness.
Quynh Nhu was attempting to build a house of cards using milk tea coasters, Pham Tuan was methodically polishing his section of the floor, and Minerva's smiley-face icon was blinking placidly on the main screen.
"Alright, team," Lin Ming started, dropping a data chip on the central table with a dramatic flourish. "Forget everything you thought we were doing for the next month. Our training schedules have been revised."
Quynh Nhu looked up, her coaster-house immediately collapsing. "Don't tell me. More 'rock-hugging' meditation? I'm starting to worry you're going to legally marry a pebble."
"Worse," Lin Ming said, a wicked grin spreading across his face. "We're going on a field trip."
Minerva: Destination query? Nearest 'field' is City Park 3, currently undergoing reconstruction from the Berserker attack.
"The field," Lin Ming announced, "is the entire planet Mars."
The room went silent. You could have heard a pin drop. Quynh Nhu stared at him, her mouth agape. Pham Tuan stopped polishing and looked up, his expression one of complete bewilderment.
Even Minerva's icon seemed to blink a little slower.
Minerva: That... is a statistically improbable statement. Please clarify.
"No clarification needed," Lin Ming said, tapping the data chip. "This is Project: White Rabbit. Top-secret, pre-invasion relic. An experimental deep-space reconnaissance shuttle with a prototype stealth drive and a 'slightly unpredictable' warp engine."
He paced around the room like a professor unveiling his grand, insane thesis. "Lord Maka-Jed is sitting on Mars, planning his next move.
The standard military doctrine is to wait, build up our defenses, and brace for impact. That's a loser's game. We'd be letting him call all the shots."
"So," he continued, stopping and looking at each of them, "we're going to do something monumentally stupid. We're going to steal the White Rabbit, fly to Mars, sneak into their command outpost, and steal every scrap of data we can find.
We're going to learn their entire battle plan, their numbers, their weaknesses. We are going to punch the hornet's nest, then run away before they even know what hit them."
Quynh Nhu was the first to speak, her voice a mix of disbelief and dawning excitement. "Let me get this straight. You want the four of us... a rock-man, a loli-sniper, a glorified tech-support bot, and a geomancer who just recently graduated from talking to dirt... to steal a secret spaceship and fly to another planet to poke the baddest alien in the solar system with a very large stick?"
"That sums it up nicely, yes," Lin Ming confirmed.
"Okay," she said, leaning back and crossing her arms with a manic grin. "I'm in. This is the stupidest, most gloriously insane plan I have ever heard in my life. It's beautiful."
Pham Tuan looked pale. "But... space? None of us are astronauts. And the ship is 'unpredictable'?"
Minerva: Director Tran's file indicates the warp engine has a 73.4% chance of successful navigation to the designated coordinates. However, there is also a 15% chance of arriving inside a star, a 10% chance of being flung into the void between galaxies, and a 1.6% chance of experiencing a 'non-linear temporal event'.
"See?" Pham Tuan said weakly. "Non-linear temporal event! We could end up fighting dinosaurs!"
"Or we could arrive before we left and give ourselves the winning lottery numbers," Quynh Nhu countered. "Think positive, Juggernaut!"
Lin Ming looked at the comms screen. "Minerva, what's your assessment?"
Minerva: The mission parameters are outside of all established safety protocols. The risk of catastrophic failure is unacceptably high.
There was a pause.
Minerva: However... the potential intelligence yield from a successful operation could shorten the war by years, saving millions of lives. The logic, while reckless, is sound. My programming dictates that I must protest. My personal curiosity, however, is... significant. I will begin preparations immediately.
Lin Ming turned to Pham Tuan. "Tuan. You don't have to do this. This is a volunteer mission."
Pham Tuan looked at his hands. He thought about the helpless feeling he'd had facing the Nascent Soul cultivators. He thought about Lin Ming standing as a living shield, unleashing a power that defied comprehension to save them.
He thought about his city, his home, living under the constant threat of annihilation. He squared his shoulders, the fear in his eyes replaced by a solid, unbreakable resolve.
"My ability comes from the earth," he said, his voice steady. "Mars is just... another piece of earth. Redder, dustier. I'm with you, Leader."
Lin Ming grinned. "Excellent. Then the mission is a go. But we're not going as we are."
He laid out the next phase of their plan. "Minerva, I need you to create pilot simulations for the White Rabbit. We have one week to become proficient enough not to crash it on takeoff. Quynh Nhu, I need you to requisition weapons suitable for zero-gravity and low-atmosphere combat. Think magnetic-grapple rounds, energy-based weaponry that doesn't rely on propellant. Get creative."
"A shopping spree, sponsored by the military?" Quynh Nhu's eyes lit up. "My favorite kind of mission."
"Pham Tuan, you and I are going back to the training hall. Your stone armor is strong, but it's too heavy for low-G environments. We need to evolve your ability. Make it lighter, more versatile. We're going to work on making you a 'Diamond' Juggernaut, not just a stone one."
"And what about you?" Pham Tuan asked.
Lin Ming's expression turned serious. "I have a library to visit. Before we go, I need to have a little chat with the concepts of Water and Fire."
He needed more elemental abilities. A trip through space and a fight on an alien planet would require more than just shields and stone spikes. He needed to be more versatile, more powerful.
He still needed 8390 Battle Will Points to reach the next stage. A mission to Mars, if they survived, was guaranteed to be a gold mine.
Task Force Chimera, humanity's greatest secret weapon, was about to become the solar system's most audacious pirates. The plan was terrible. The odds were worse. It was perfect.