The armed response

The operatives of Containment runs were technicians, projected to calibrate Nodes and climb out. The armed response is the first time Liminal sent personnel trained to fight in the lattice. The order that sends them reads: SEC-7 // RIFT-01 PERIMETER. Liminal has authorised armed response.

The records do not date it beyond placing it after 14:22. They count projections, operations and directives.

The first projection

The first armed projection went in alone, under five orders from Operations, and climbed from the ring to the hatch. See the perimeter orders.

The perimeter

Operatives insert in the ring, calibrate its Node and climb the ladder into the plant. Rifts open in every hall. Three Transmit Nodes are calibrated in a projection, one in the ring and two in the plant, and each calls a guardian at half calibration. With the last Node calibrated the hatch opens in the hall farthest from it, and the Warden steps through.

The breach hardens

After the first minute of a projection, what steps out of the rifts is harder to put down and wounds harder, and blood restores less. It keeps hardening until extraction. Liminal has not logged why. Liminal's own scale, BREACH 1 to 5, records how far RIFT-01 stands open when a projection goes in, and an operative is cleared for each level only after coming back from the one before.

The last operation

Liminal's directives name a last operation at the sampling point. The directive FULL CLEARANCE, met when every doctrine has extracted at BREACH 5, clears it for projection.

Records cited

LP-MAN-1993-S7, as amended for combat projection (the Critical Response field manual)
Directive FULL CLEARANCE