The Evolved
Chapter 2:
One of the New
10 BTD - By The Dark One
Who am I? The words echo through me as they have countless times before. Inside my mind I feel a blank, a dark spot of nothingness where memories of my past should be. I attempt to recall images, or even feelings that I had had in the distant past, and my mind seems to close up, and barrier holds me away from what I wish to remember. A near-infinite number of times I have tried to bring up even a glimpse of my life before I began training to become a soldier, and each time I have failed miserably.
Again, last night I tried to bring up memories of my past, but, to my dismay, though not surprise, I had failed. Now because of my attempt, I was unable to get sufficient rest, and I’m dead tired. I sluggishly roll out of bed, trudging towards my dresser to find something to wear. I’m so stupid. GhostAgent 2095 tells me to get enough sleep, because today I’m going to the Hostile Environment Suit Virtual Reality Simulator. What do I do? I stay up till 0400! Maybe Lieutenant Jackson is right, maybe I am hopeless.
I sigh. Lieutenant Jackson is one of my secondary instructors, the instructor for all my academics: Math, Science, History, and English. He is a short, bald, chubby man, and a long scar going along the top of his scalp, earning him the nickname "butthead" (but no one calls him that to his face). He hates me more than any of the other trainees, and I don’t know why, except that I had given him that nickname. Besides, a far more likely reason is because he simply needs someone less with less power than him to hate, and chose me. Being a simple academics teacher, he does not have a lot of respect, as those who are important are the people who actually train the ghost trainees.
On many occasions he calls me to the front of the class simply to tell me that I am a complete waste of time and effort, and that I would better serve the Terran Dominion as a test subject for toxic weaponry, not a ghost, or other such insults. I am not the only one he picks on in such a way, it just happens to me the most frequently (By far). Often he watches me while I train with another of my instructors, finds every mistake I make, and catalogues them. Then the next day he usually relays the list in loud, scolding voice to the instructors while passing me in the halls.
Someday I’ll dance on his grave, but today he is my superior. I thrust him out of my mind, thinking of Lieutenant Jackson frustrates me, and I don’t need that as a cap to my exhaustion. I open the top drawer of my dresser, and inside it are apparel ranging from school clothes to Dakiri Fiber dueling armor. I choose a newly cleaned brawling uniform and put it on. It is colored crimson to mask any blood and is highly resistant to wear and tear, but, it allows the person underneath the uniform to get pretty beat up, the reason being to teach the trainees to endure pain. With the workouts I usually get with GhostAgent 2095 I should probably wear Dakiri Fiber, but it would make me appear weak and, especially with Lieutenant Jackson eager for my blood and dignity, that is something I do not want.
I walk quickly through the halls, not wanting to be late. I pass by a number of students, but we do not acknowledge each other, as being social here is not only discouraged, it is considered weak.
Up in the ceiling bright lights beam down, illuminating the under-crowded halls. The walls open to doors in many places, beyond which are various types of rooms vital to keeping a training base like this self-sufficient. I turn left and in front of me stands the door to the simulator room.
I punch a button flashing red next to the glimmering titanium door. It opens annoyingly slowly, elevating my impatience. Finally, it opens sufficiently for me to walk through into the room beyond. Once I am inside, I punch another button, and the door clanks closed behind me. Around the room are twenty-five pod shaped objects arranged in a circular pattern in the center of the room. They look like jagged, metallic egg with flashing, multicolored lights and metal protrusions scattered all over the pod. On one side is a large holo-screen, used by instructors and personnel to see what the trainees see in the simulations.
Behind me I hear a voice say my name, and I turn, coming face-to-chest with GhostAgent 2095. I take a step back, noticing that he is not in uniform but in more casual apparel. I look at him, gazing into his piercing eyes-or what I think to be eyes. Almost perfectly like a normal human eyeball, the few differences in his and a number of the other ghost instructors’ eyes are very strange and unsettling. His eyes have no blood vessels at all, giving them a disturbing translucency, almost visible being what appears to be circuitry. The irises of his eyes are a mechanical silver, and seem somehow to not be irises at all, just a cosmetic touch to make the eyes look near to normal.
He is young and has a slightly bulky build, appearing neither particularly fast nor strong-but actually being both. His hair, a dark brown, shows no sign of coloring or artificial dying and is cut to a standard military thin. Being dark skinned, he looked strangely out of place in the light silver room, even though he is not the only dark skinned person there. He is fairly tall, and towers over most others in the ghost training facility, however some are significantly taller than him.
I look at his face and shudder, realizing that he is nearly as terrifying without his armor as he is with it.
"Enter the pod," he commands, his voice deep and powerful, but still possessing the disturbing snake-like sound that the armor augments.
"But I…" I begin.
As if he has read my mind, which he probably has, he finishes my sentence for me, "You will be briefed on the simulation inside the pod. Now, go."
He puts such strength behind his words that I comply almost without conscious thought, walking into the pod, and slipping a visor onto my face. I hear the door hiss close and wires slink out of the pod seat and connect to my body, feeding information both to my brain and to the simulator program. Then my visor comes to life; Dark, red-brown ridges appear off to my left and a clear, blue river loops around and into one of those ridges, falling down into a dark crevice in the rock. Patches of grass are scattered under my feet and on the tops of the smaller ridges, while mud and dirt appear next to the river. Ten squads of marines advance across the landscape, supported by four squads of firebats, one squad of medics, two squadrons of wraiths, a science vessel, twelve siege tanks, sixteen goliaths and me. Altogether really a small force, text scrolls at the bottom of my visor indicating that it should be more than sufficient to destroy the newly established rebel base in the distance.
I look down at my simulated belt and armor finding what are supposed to be the special lockdown shells and a pad on my left breastplate, which will allow me to activate the cloaking mechanism. The information at the bottom of my visor registers that I have one nuclear missile available for use in this mission. And holding down a button at the side of my visor will allow me to present a target for it. The ground troops march in a perfect row formation while the air units fly recon. I slink along the shadows, my dark armor blending in with the environment. Suddenly, the explosion of missiles in the sky indicates that the battle has begun.
The ground troops speed up the formation when four shock cannon blasts converge on a marine, instantly vaporizing him and the six soldiers surrounding him. Other soldiers are thrown back by the concussion, but get up to return fire upon the rebels. The return fire is fast and mostly on target, but repeated fire from siege tanks takes a heavy toll on our forces. We have lost roughly five squads of mixed infantry by the time the siege tanks finally get in range and convert to siege mode, the sound provided by the sim proving more annoying than realistic.
Trillions of credits and they can’t even make decent training simulation sounds… I gripe silently to myself, even though knowing that with all the new rebellions springing up that the Confederacy needs to spend its money on troops and vehicles who can directly power the military. I watch as the wraiths on our side let loose bursts of laser fire upon the siege tanks from above, melting through most of their outer armor to leave the tanks ripe for the blasting.
The enemy tanks are able to get off three shots more before being vaporized in giant fireballs from concentrated gauss rifle fire. As we close in on the base camouflaged bunkers open fire, soldiers and vehicles being torn apart by enemy marines. Soldiers who gets too close to the bunker are scorched by the firebats, dying quickly and easily. The goliaths’ autocannons slowly punch through the bunker shell, whereupon our firebats go inside and eliminate the enemy infantry.
Our siege tanks wreak havoc upon enemy defenses from afar, letting loose explosive shells of destruction on the rebels. I notice that a small group of enemy marines has gotten past the line of infantry and goliaths, seeking to attack the tanks from close range. Cloaking quickly, I run towards them and open fire, concussive bullets flying from my C-10 rifle into the faceplates and blowing their heads into a mass of blood and gore. The marines do not even seem to acknowledge that they are dying as long as I’m cloaked, so even as I kill them one by one, they fire their gauss rifles into the hulls of our siege tanks. They die quickly, the damage the dealt was minimal.
Eight enemy wraiths launch from the rebel base and go for a run on our siege tanks, our remaining goliaths firing upon them with a barrage of hellfire missiles and turning three of the wraiths into expanding clouds of fire and shrapnel. However, five get through, damaged but alive. I load my gun with charged lockdown shells, firing at the wraiths. They move quickly, and most of my shots miss, as the lockdown shells main purpose is to stop only moderately slow-moving mechanical ground units. Two of the lockdown shells get close enough that they explode, forming an electro-magnetic field around two wraiths, and shutting down all of their systems. They plummet to the ground, unable to stay in the air without functioning engines. A number of marines now protecting the tanks blast at the low-flying wraiths with their rifles, but cannot destroy them before they strafe the tanks with burst lasers and gemini missiles, killing off four of our remaining nine tanks, leaving only five functional.
The wraiths fly off and I glance at my energy indicator, seeing that the prolonged cloak and firing all those lockdown rounds had drained my suit to only sixteen percent, much lower than I had hoped.
High overhead, a Drakilian Demon-Class Bomber flies high over our forces, far out of range of our marines and goliaths. Twelve objects drop out of it, even before they are easily visible I realize that they are air-to-ground Satan-Class rockets, bombs equipped with engines to quickly reach the ground. Knowing that anything within their blast radius will be destroyed, I run as fast as I can away from where they will hit. I leap over bushes and stones, the ground passing by me in a blur before I hear the explosions. Explosions sound around me, the concussion lifts me and propels me forward, sending me crashing into a hillside.
I glance at my suit’s damage monitor, and it shows most of the integrity of the suit in shades of orange and red, while parts of the armor are completely blacked out, the situation wasn’t good.
Looking back towards my allies, I see that nearly all of our troops were destroyed by the bombs, and the few survivors are being massacred by wraith strafing runs. I move towards them, but the damage to my suit has decreased my top speed to less than one fourth of what it had been, I could barely manage a trot.
An advancing line of enemy marines comes towards the survivors, the spikes from their gauss rifles ripping through armor and flesh. As they kill more and more of the last troops alive, the last surviving goliath lets loose a spray of bullets from its autocannons, tearing apart the line of enemy troops. Many rebels fall before the onslaught, but it is not enough. The armor piercing spikes of the gauss rifles finally destroy the goliath’s primary drive stabilizer, then blow the cockpit into a cloud of sparks and burning shrapnel.
The rebels rush forward, mowing down the last of the survivors. They then turn around, going back to protect their base. Not very smart, I’m a lone ghost who can’t cloak and they don’t even bother to come and kill me, they go protect their base from imaginary soldiers.
Slowly moving forward, I cautiously advance, careful to avoid any sign of defenses or units patrolling the base. Suddenly the ground in front of me rustles and something begins shaking the ground, pulling itself out of the dirt. Oh shit, spider mine. I turn to run away, but the sound of an explosion then blackness signifies that the simulation is now over.
Well, I lost. Now I get to face GhostAgent 2095 and then I get to hear about it from Captain Butthead. Damn, damn, damn.
Text Slowly Scrolls across the bottom of the visor, the words "Simulation Complete" moving slowly across my vision.
I sigh as the wires disconnect from my body and the pod hisses open, pulling the visor off my face. I walk out, covering my eyes as the bright lights burn overwhelm my vision. Slowly my eyes adjust, and I look up to see GhostAgent 2095.
"You did well," he says quietly, emotionless as usual.
I hesitate, not believing what I hear, "…What?"
"You did well. You were not perfect of course, and in the field the mistakes you made would not be tolerated, so you are not exceptional, but you did well." He answers a bit harshly, but less so than I would have thought.
"But I did not do any good for the confederacy… if it had been real, not a simulation, the confederacy still would have lost," I say questioningly, not understanding what he is saying."
"True, which is why you merely did well. But since you are merely a trainee without any exceptional promise, you were expected to die."
No exceptional talent? Are you kidding me! I do better than nearly all of the children, excelling in tests of psionic and physical ability and I have no exceptional talent? However, I dared not say my speak my thoughts
Unfortunately, he didn’t need here them. "You are no better a student then any other, and your thoughts and over-confidence are only small example of why."
"Oh come on, out of every child in my group, who does better than me-" I start.
He grabs me and throws me onto the floor, then bends down and looks at me with his horrible eyes.
"You are not exceptional. Do not think you know better than me." Most people would say such phrases with emotion, not him, just cold logic. "You are to complete your training at a covert operations academy on Tarsonis. Today we will prepare you, we leave tomorrow."
"What do you mean prepare? What is there to prepare for? I step into the shuttle and ride to Tarsonis, what do I even have to bring?"
GhostAgent 2095 unsettling gaze focuses completely on my eyes, "Did I say you are to bring anything? You are to be prepared. Follow me."
I follow him down a hallway, entering a classified area I had not gone into previously. A vague, unsettling feeling of dread hits me, and I stop.
"Come now," he commands.
"But where are we-"
He reaches out and grabs me, dragging me to a huge titanium door. His fingers fly across the keypad, the many locks on the door slowly opening one by one.
GhostAgent 2095 pulls me into a large room, filled with wicked looking machinery and equipment. I am thrown onto a chair in the middle of the room and although I cry out and attempt to break free, he holds me down and metal restraints spring up. Escape is no option.
A man walks out from a corner of the room and GhostAgent 2095 says, apparently to him, "Doctor Renton. The patient is ready."
"Are you sure?" The doctor says slowly with sadistic pleasure, "You said that about the others, and not all of them survived."
