One Last System

The caravan was moving through the desert at a pace other world powers could only dream of.

Daniel didn't hold back in the slightest when it came to forming his expedition. As such, while other powers had to scramble everything they could just to procure a few prototypes of the early versions of the hovers, three generations of development of more modern hovers served as the baseline for the logistic of the caravan.

The main limiting factor to the caravan's speed wasn't the speed the vehicles could safely and consistently make on the roadless dunes of the greatest desert on the planet.

No, it was the structural integrity of the massive excavator the caravan was transporting. It was split into over two hundred different parts, each carried by a separate hover. And yet, just to keep those parts from breaking apart, Daniel had no other choice but to accept a pace he could only call a crawl.

"This is so annoying," Daniel muttered while looking out through the huge panel of glass that covered the front of his vehicle.

He was inside the fifth-generation hover, a vehicle that could very well be called a moving house. It had three different floors usable for the crew and then two more floors filled with equipment, sensors, and then weapons on the outside.

In military terms, Daniel's hover was closer in definition to a mobile fortress rather than a vehicle, given how it could hold on an assault of a heavy brigade of the world's finest equipment all on its own.

Surprisingly, though, when it came to comparing Daniel's mobile headquarters to any other piece of military technology developed by the world, the only term close enough would be limited to the navy.

The only other piece of equipment that other powers had access to that had the same qualities as Daniel's vehicle… was an aircraft carrier.

A massive menace all on its own with the capability of launching long-distance raids from its deck. Yet, despite how massive and powerful it was all on its own, only a madman would send an air carried all alone to the dangerous waters.

Daniel's hover couldn't launch the old type of aircraft. It was huge, but not THAT huge.

Yet, just like the analogy would suggest, Daniel had something quite similar but far more efficient stored on the second technical deck.

"If you can't do anything about it, you shouldn't worry about it," Alice advised, hanging out in the back of the hover's main deck, busy playing some stupid games on her tablet.

"That's the easiest way to miss all the signs of whatever the enemy is planning," Daniel replied, not sparing the girl even a single look.

Even though there was hardly anything to do in the middle of the damn nowhere, the prevailing heat raining down from the sky and reflecting off the sand made any sort of indecent thoughts evaporate from everyone's mind.

This was the only reason why a sane man like Daniel could ignore the extremely revealing Alice wore within the vehicle, refusing to properly equip herself in military garb.

She had her long legs nearly fully exposed, with only a short part of her skirt sticking to the upper part of her thighs. Outside of that, she only wore the tiniest of shirts that humans could create, giving up on decency in favor of the proper flow of air through her clothes.

She simply sat down on the cushioned seat of the third drone operator with her legs stretched out and rested upon the currently turned-off control screen for the drone operator.

There was nothing special in her pose or in her bored expression. And yet, with her clothing, natural beauty, and all the other small details combined, Alice turned herself into a piece of art that no man would be able to pass by without feeling a tug on his soul.

'If only not for this damn heat…' Daniel cursed in his thoughts while sending a glance over to the vent of the overused ventilation of the vehicle.

For how insanely advanced all the technology within the hover was, the AC unit was surprisingly ordinary. After all, some things could only be improved so far, especially if one was unwilling to invest a literal ocean-worth of resources and manpower to develop a slightly better alternative.

And so, while surrounded by nothing but the technology that other civilizations could only dream about, Daniel had no other choice but to keep on cursing at the overworked AC unit that pathetically failed at its task of keeping the insides of the vehicle relatively chill.

"What you said would make sense if we didn't have an absolute advantage when it comes to information," Alice didn't yeld her point. She closed her game and put her tablet aside, clearly more interested in a small discussion over some mindless clickers.

"We didn't detect their use of hovers back when the shit hit the fan," Daniel pointed out, seemingly out of nowhere. "Don't disrespect the potential of the human mind. All of those things," Daniel spread his arms open as if to point at the technology within the vehicle, "was created by their ancestors at some point in an extremely distant past."

"By their ancestors that weren't tainted by the post-war decadence," Alice said while putting a small smile on her face.

"You are still on that?" Daniel shook his head in disappointment.

He already had a long and actually interesting discussion with the girl where Alice claimed the period of a hundred years since the second world war ended up bringing most of human growth to a halt.

It was an interesting discussion where the two of them went back and forth, throwing sensible arguments at the other. But it wasn't a topic Daniel felt in power to raise again.

"Your refusal to pick the topic back up only proves I'm right," Alice grinned as she spoke, revealing the perfect whites of her teeth through her lips opened up in a smile.

"That's now how I see…" Daniel started, only for his eyes to be drawn to a small alert that flashed up on one of the screens before him.

Soon, the same alert started to appear on more and more of the different screens before all of those alerts converged and appeared on the main screen displayed right on the front window of the hover.

"Well, speak about seeing stuff," Daniel sighed before turning his head around his shoulder and giving the girl a quick glance. "You better dress up if you don't want half of the crew to see you like that."

Alice raised her eyes and took a second to look at the alert. She then stood up and released a long sigh.

"Those damn bastards…" she muttered as she grabbed her official military uniform before begrudgingly starting to put it on, "because they just can't hold themselves back, now I will be sweating buckets again!"