Name's Sophia Saber.
Designation: Combat equipment of Allward Cooperative, CEAC#5368.
Illegal cloning facilities, irradiated zones, "terrorist" dens...
I arrive, I open fire, destroy everything in sight, and extract.
Allward Coop. is the hand of the Communal Council and receives work bonds from it by dealing with shit the councillors want gone.
There was a time when I would have hated with passion working for these two entities.
Now I didn't care, I no longer had bits that made me hateful.
There's just 30% of me left after I took a close-range hit from a shotgun-type weapon.
Allward offered me to save my life for a price... I'd have to work for them until the debt is repaid.
The debt isn't even monetary, it's one of these 'gratitude bonds' with a value that was supposed to be decided by 'the community'.
Sixty years of power consolidation and the cooperatives were granted the status of 'the community'.
Twenty more years of consolidation and cooperatives became 'represented' by the people in the upper part of the previously
unofficial power hierarchy.
Hierarchy that according to the 'values of the community' shouldn't be there or not to that extent at least.
Look, I just want you to know exactly how much I'm fucked, some context is required.
So, like, I have to work for Allward Coop. until the up 'feels like' I've repaid them for saving my life.
So, like, a little less than forever, I guess?
Ah well.
There was a time I would be in sorrow and regret about this, but, y'know, bits gone.
Exactly the reason I 'chose' this.
Only about 30% of my brain was intact after the <...> and when I was given the offer, I could barely think.
No bits to scream in terror with mention of Allward's 'help', no memory to remember of their crimes against employees, against humanity and other species...
All that was left was some half-apathetic survival instinct.
A.k.a. "I guess it's better to live than not?"...
I woke up a year later in Allward's facility:
- Missing brain parts replaced with a tactical processor.
- Remaining flesh encased within a container and a bio-titanium mesh.
- With a 'heart' that resembles more like a miniature nuclear reactor than an actual organ. It might actually be a reactor of sorts.
- Brand new, scary limbs useful if you wanted to kill a whole bunch of overtuned combat clones or unwanted civilians alike.
- What's left of reproductive organs, removed.
- Etc., etc.
I resembled more of a machine with only half of my horribly scarred face not covered by armour mesh - but most of the time behind a mask.
A few weeks of software configuration and processor integration with the remnant biological brain and I was sent out.
My first mission was to aid a siege of a metallurgical facility that was the final stronghold of the Southern New Community movement.
I spent weeks hunting the hopeless mutineers in the tunnel complex under the facility, getting through mined passages, surviving grenades, lasers, good ol' bullet fire, once a fire extinguishing system rewired to spray acid instead of extinguishant...
The armour mesh made me pretty resilient, but it's not like I didn't need a month in the repair facility after.
I scored over a hundred kills.
I think my old self would have gone mad a hundred times there.
It was lunar...
The up liked my performance.
I was but one of many humans similarly transformed into killing machines, but due to 'luck' - if you can call it that - my biology achieved a staggering synchronization score with Allward's technology.
I think it has something to do with the precise amount of brain cells that survived.
And the type of the remaining cells.
My natural brain seamlessly communicated with the tactical processor and that made me pretty scary, apparently.
The up liked scary.
The up needed scary, to provide the ruthlessness, ahem, I mean "performance" that Allward Coop. boasted of.
So I've become the up's & the MC's - mission control's - *fave* and was sent to dozens of insane operations that would have been the end of 'lesser' cyborgs.
When I worked in team with them, sometimes I'd be only one to return from whatever lunar place we been sent to.
See, along with the expectation-exceeding synchronization, I still had that "I guess it's better to live than not?" in me, that let me prevail.
It's the reason why they even made abominations like me.
That 30% or whatever of humanity gave the killtech a non-insignificant boost in performance...
My emotionless brain remnant also observed a fraction of hope deep in itself somewhere, a tiniest hope that things through some miracle would turn for the 'better'.
I mean, I didn't care about the 'better', but I did find the existence of this vestigial hope mildly intriguing.
So yeah, scary cyborg, survives anything, a secret pet of the up - I was so messed up that the marketing block of the cooperative wanted as few people as possible to know of me.
Though, there were whispers of the so-called "Allward's Wraith", that might as well could have been me.
Anyway, the current mission...
"CEAC#5368, MC wants to drop you off a kilometre from the objective."
"We'll be there in approx. 15 minutes."
"OK. Equipment?"
I was in a helicopter, talking to a handler for the current mission. Some girl I never met before.
"Just one item this time... Hmm... The shit, it's just some numbers on the form."
"Model 8884. Does that mean anything to you?"
My processor got busy for a whole 0.5 seconds trying to retrieve data through the network adapter but returned nothing.
Odd, considering I had access to possibly the most complete equipment database on this planet.
Ah well.
"Must be custom-made for the mission."
"I think so, yes. It says here that it should be able to destroy 'the object'."
"There's no other equipment?"
"Well, it's in *this* box."
She pointed at a case in the cargo compartment.
Oh.
Not use to carrying much else if I'll have to lug around something of this size.
Still, no 'nades, no 'party dust' - a.k.a. what we in 'the industry' call standard kit of chemical weaponry - not even a knife?
Mildly intriguing.
Ah well.
Soon the helicopter landed in a prepared area in the clearing of the forest.
The clearing seemed to be recently created.
It was comfortable, I've gotten used to being dropped off with a "projectile-resistant" parachute in the middle of a swamp or a ruin full of irradiated glass, or someplace comparably fucked.
Just your classic commercial genetically modified evergreen forest here.
Easy.
Well, the tactical processor wasn't very happy with forest combat, but when was it happy with the terrain?
There was maybe one time when I was hunting unarmed "terrorists" in a glassed field with no cover in sight.
Oh, the processor *liked* that one.
But anyway... I think uncontrollably slipping into the memories of previous missions is a symptom of my brain remnant degrading...
Sorry about that.
Yes, so, the current mission.
I threw the case out of the helicopter and jumped out after it.
The handler followed and I waited until she set up a communication antenna for a secure link with the MC.
"Baby, I'm sad to send you on this one, truly."
I said I was a 'fave'. I was nicknamed 'baby' by the head of MC, who I was talking with right now.
He was... An awful person. Even among others of this abhorrent cooperative.
"OK. What's the objective and what is Model 8884?"
"Have you looked at it? Honestly, I know about as much as you."
The handler gave me the code and I unlocked the case.
Woah.
It was a rifle, I assumed.
And it screamed 'experimental'.
Zero ergonomic details, just an oblong black, angled thing, no sights, just a rudimentary handle and trigger.
Nothing resembling safety measures either.
I picked it up.
Processor warned me about my artificial muscles being almost at a capacity.
"Lab rats say all you need to do is hit the object once. Sending visual of the object..."
It looked like... Well, not much. Neglected electrical transformer... Thing? Accumulator stack? Substation? Something like that.
I've tried my best to understand what I saw.
Considering height of trees in the visual it was like a four story building, it had antennae, rough sides, gray and stained paint job.
There appeared to be a number painted on it, but it was censored out.
Odd.
Something was off about the visual, but I couldn't understand what, so dedicated 99% of processing power to analyzing-
"Hey, hey, you'll see it live soon."
The visual was cut off.
"The up's asses are on a hedgehog about this mission and giving you any data."
"Really freaked out about you trying to analyze it just now."
"Just approach the object at about 300-metre distance, fire the umm, model whatever at it."
"See the trigger? Aim the long part at the object and fire. That's what lab rats are telling."
"Can't send you a manual or anything, really, but it's designed to be stupid simple."
"Baby, this thing's insane, I'm looking at the schematics..."
"But yeah, otherwise it's just a big rifle despite what it rocks inside."
"300 metre range? Any blowback I should keep in mind or is this MIA mission?"
"Baby, no, no, no, me and the boys 'n girls at MC love you, you know?"
"I don't have to tell you sweet lies, that's why I like you so much, baby."
"If it was MIA mission, I'd tell you, really, you're big girl, you'd understand."
"But yeah we'd like you to come back in one piece, you know us."
"Repairs ain't free and losing you, oh, that'd break my heart."
"I must say though, uh, lab rats and the up are shifty about this. No info to you, just here's one creepy gun, aim 'n fire at the object."
*DISABLING ANALYSIS TOOLS*
*DISABLING MEMORY ENHANCEMENTS*
"Huh?"
I grimaced as I felt half-blind without the processor's analytic capabilities. They've turned it off, remotely.
Okay?
"Sorry, baby, the up ordered it. You only got basic visuals of the object and bio memory for this mission."
"The less you know and remember about the object, the better."
"The data that you might get back with is more dangerous to my and baby's asses than the mission itself, eya?"
"So we're limiting how much you can carry so-to-speak."
"Honestly the up wanted go MIA on you, but I got your back, I convinced them to let you come back."
"OK."
That's one odd mission.
"Thing is, I don't know if you'll return. I don't know shit, honest."
"Expect anything. That's what's good about no data, no expectations either, that should help."
"But yeah, if you do come back, I won't let them scrap you. You're a good girl and made me very happy many times."
"Don't want to have to work with the usual cloneshits, you my baby, heh."
"But enough chatting, repeat the objective."
"Approach the object until the range is 300 metres. Aim at the object. Pull Model 8884's trigger. Return to the start point?"
"Yeah, that's right, baby."
"Lab rats say 'if it won't work' decrease range in decrements of... 33 metres and trying firing again. Huh."
"That until the object is destroyed. You should see 'something' happening if 'it works'... If you don't, it didn't work."
"OK. Does it have a critical point I need to target? Will the rifle-"
"No details, baby. Aim n' fire, that should do it."
"OK."
Odd, odd, odd.
*RECEIVING POSITIONING DATA*
*UPDATING POSITIONING TOOLS*
"That's the coordinates."
