Beta descended to the utility deck and found the airlock elevator lowered and the airlock filled with water just as Prime had instructed Alpha. She sat and put on her swim fins and reviewed her equipment. "Breath mask and goggle combination? Check. Wrist "watch" energy field projector? Check. Diver's edged weapon stun gun? Check. I should confirm neural net function." Beta concentrated in the unique way that would activate her neural network implants and projected to Prime and Alpha: ARE YOU RECEIVING ME? She waited a second and was quickly rewarded with a reply. THE NET IS FUNCTIONING WELL, BETA. REMEMBER, YOUR RANGE IS LIMITED AS OUR CRAFT IS SUBMERGED AND THIS WORLD HAS NO NEURAL NET SO WE MUST DEPEND ON THE RANGE OF OUR IMPLANTS IN DIRECT MODE AMPLIFIED SLIGHTLY BY OUR DISPLANE'S NETWORK. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? Beta smiled. Even through the strangely impersonal communication of the neural implant she could sense Prime's concern for her. AFFIRMATIVE, PRIME. YOU WANT ME TO BE CAREFUL TO STAY WITHIN THE LIMITED RANGE OUR OUR CURRENT EQUIPMENT. CORRECT, BETA. CHECK IN OFTEN AND WE WILL BE MONITORING YOUR NET'S FUNCTION AND VITAL SIGN TELEMETRY. GOOD LUCK! Beta smiled. She was prepared for an adventure. THANKS! I'M OFF NOW! Molly's art notes: A little retro sci fi for a change! Set up and rendered in Poser 12.0.619 using the Superfly Cycles 2 rendering engine and then tweaked a bit in Photoshop (mainly to add a subtle vignette). The ship is Cybertenko's discplane with a few material tweaks (I didn't like the glass in the dome). The discplane's location is in a Lake by 2nd World. The characters are all DAZ generation 3 dollies: V3 improved by Blackhearted's GND 2 morphs and textures, SP improved by Blackhearted's Irina 2 morphs and textures and Aiko 3 improved with some stuff from DAZ. All of the character textures were optimized for Superfly with Snarlygribbly's EZSkin 3 (there is a new version, " 'beta', use with caution" for Poser 12). The uniforms come from an unknown source and are called male comic overlays. There's a lot in the Poser library from more than 15 years ago that my husband got from I don't know where.