(Rewritten) Ch. 21 – Featherlight

"Unconditioned, there are generally two kinds of soldiers who can shoot to kill.

The psychopaths or similar; those who weren't born with—or lost—the instincts that serve to stop us from using excessive violence against each other without cause.

The second type are those who do it out of love. Usually they're the ones who had to raise and protect younger siblings at home, with parents absent, and they kill the enemy because they adopted their squadmates as their family. So they kill to protect. Out of love.

Everybody else tends to shoot high, to scare the enemy into ducking and hiding so they won't shoot back, instead of trying to kill them.

Army conditioning turns everyone into killers, psychology be damned. Or bombs, with their triggers far above the battlefield, where you cannot see the face of whatever bastard you're about to murder."

– Excerpt from an amateur discussion on military history in the twentieth century, forum AmmoNation, 2027

***

The girl in the guise of a woman wouldn't stop crying. It was like she couldn't, not with the way her missing voice didn't allow her the release of a proper cry.

It hurt, that…broken, crippled keening. I kept hugging and petting her, as I stood there, in front of her bed, but it just wasn't enough.

I'd grown up already numbed to the injuries inflicted on the males, but…girls, they were different. My childhood saw me conditioned to view them as…inviolate. Sacred, to an absurd degree. Even with two decades' time to shuck off that conditioning, I still wasn't sure how to cope.

Eventually I decided to cut open the front of my shift and lay her directly against my skin, head resting atop my chest. Then I wove straps around her in such a way that I'd be able to support her easily without using arms, and followed that by closing the shift around her again. I added a sort of cowl for her head until she was cocooned against my front, and I could still pet her and stroke her hair.

Then I fought to compartmentalize the horror of her condition away, where it wouldn't distract me. I did manage, after a few minutes. All the hurt, the deep, nagging wrongness of it all shoved as deep into a box as it would go. It didn't feel like that box would last very long.

We'd have to move soon, find a safe place to hole up in and for her to recover. Her torso was larger than mine and her low position made walking a bit awkward, but I did have the strength for it. That, and she was so much lighter than a grown woman should be.

"Tynea, I need a weapon I can use with one hand. Something that won't scare this poor girl. As cheap as possible, too. I have a feeling I'm going to need every point I can get for her."

I was still thinking with Aden's voice. I'd have to hear my new voice and get used to it before it would naturally become mine, wouldn't I?

The Hummingbird Mark I-D comes from your Class I Kinetic Handguns catalog and costs ten points. It shoots bursts of micro-missiles and locks onto targets, just like your Sentinel. It isn't quiet, but it doesn't sound like a gun going off, either.

"Nothing cheaper?"

Only weapons like the Foxteeth. None that are both reliable and use no explosives.

"Then I'll try a Hummingbird."

Purchased:

Total cost: 10Remaining points: 82

A box appeared on the bed, and I opened it with one hand.

The Hummingbird was a boxy cheap plastic gun, with dozens of needles poking out the front. When I grabbed it, I felt a sort of ping against my mind as it asked for mental space within the aug's tab. Once I granted it, a new circle popped up in my vision, moving wherever I pointed the weapon. It had no replaceable magazine.

"How often can I shoot this thing?"

Twelve times, at four missiles per burst. No reloading.

A little less than one point per trigger-pull. Expensive. But it was self-guided and suited my purposes.

I brushed the girl's head and gently tipped her face up. She was utterly exhausted, I thought, but it was surprisingly difficult to tell the minute emotions on a face without eyes. She was still crying, but she'd calmed down a little.

Good enough. I was a little drained myself, from all the heavy sorrow and muted anger swirling through me. Keep moving. I shoved my own emotions away, again. There would be time to rest and recover. Later.

She'd stopped reacting much to the many little touches of my antennae. I had no idea what she thought they were, but I thought she figured that they probably were samurai stuff doing samurai stuff, and well, she wouldn't be wrong, would she?

"Hey. We're going to be moving. I'll find us a safe place to hide away. We'll see what to do from there, okay?" I whispered quietly.

She nodded and placed a few tiny kisses against my collar bones. I squeezed her and murmured, "You're welcome. I'm glad to be here. Really." And she cuddled deeper into me, as deep as she could. I think she tried to hug me with her stumps, but…yeah.

Hummingbird held up front, I scouted the corridor in both directions and it was still empty. Nobody was coming after us, or for us. I generally couldn't hear anything, not even with the fine senses of my antennae, except for the humming and zap of electric wires in the walls.

Were we alone?

Keep going left, or go right past my room? I checked around me, and noticed that the doors were numbered. To the left they got smaller. Left it was.

Cupping the back of the girl's head, I quietly started moving through the long corridor. It was probably only because of the acuity improvements to my eyes that I could see the end of it so clearly. Just another door, but more sturdy than those of these…cells?

Oh.

I returned to the room and searched the bodies. Two print-locked handguns that I couldn't use, what with their owners' hearts no longer beating. And some sort of electronic fobs. They'd probably unlock some doors.

I tried them on every cell down the corridor, even if that took me nearly a quarter hour. They were all empty, laden with dust and dirt, zero furniture. Nobody else here.

Should I maybe not have just killed those two agents? They had no identifying items on them. I couldn't see any markings on their clothes or their skin. They didn't even have aug-gear to plunder for information.

Could I have interrogated them? Maybe…but probably for nothing. They were dressed like nondescript orderlies, not managers. The woman was giving orders, though…hmm. No. She was just gonna cut off a head and run with it, the way it sounded. Decisive, but not at all resourceful or prepared for emergencies. She wouldn't have been important enough to be given useful intelligence.

Between the lack of suits, ties, wireless signals, and aug-gear, I was starting to believe that somebody had been very careful that any, let's say, escaping samurai, would not be able to get back at them.

I might yet get lucky, though, in other parts of this facility.

Eventually I arrived at the larger door at the end and studied it carefully. It was basically the same as all the others, but had thicker bars locking it at the top and bottom, plus additional bars near the hinges.

"Got another one of those grenades for me?"

Certainly. Catch.

Purchased:

Total cost: 3Remaining points: 79

I saw, I caught, I laid it down right by the door. And then I dashed away, jostling the girl in my arms a little.

In cover around another door frame several meters away, I held the Hummingbird ready to acquire targets beyond.

I saw a deformed highly wobbly ball of utterly silent pseudo-something expand and eat into everything around it. It looked really unstable and not very safe, especially when a random tentacle of glassy black snapped out of it and disintegrated a three meter long bit of wall next to it.

"Why is it so…random?"

The Mark I is the first version of its kind of esoteric explosives. The Mark II solves the volatility, but this early model remains the cheapest variant for its effect area. It's safe enough if you are certain you can gain at least five meters' distance.

Well, I wasn't gonna argue safety distances.

Still no additional personnel. Was this a really isolated facility or something? That might actually make sense. They probably wouldn't want any samurai getting free in the middle of expensive equipment. It might not survive their irritation.

"Tynea, can you detect any accessible servers or terminals? I want to find out who kidnapped us."

Nothing wireless. Those cameras have to be connected to something, though.

Yeah. And guess what? I could sniff out electricity.

I was going hunting.

Once more, I turned around and moved down the corridor as I checked each room for cameras. Turns out, mine and this girl's were the only ones that had them, but now I was able to differentiate between the wires leading from the cameras, and those feeding the lamps.

I traced them up the corridor, past the demolished door, and up some stairs into what seemed to be a guard room. Again, nobody here, just two screens, each overseeing the two cells we'd been in.

I moved up to the desk and found one of those really old keyboard and mouse affairs. No ports, no way to actually plug anything in. No way to connect wirelessly.

"Tynea, I'm going to need some help with this archaic stuff. Do you happen to know how to access menus and such with these buttons?"

I do. We'll try to 'tab out' first. If you look at the bottom left of the keyboard, there's a button signed with 'Alt'. Then, a little further up and left, the slightly longer button with the double left-right arrows. Yes those. Press and hold the first button, then hit the arrows-button once.

I had a new banner pop up across the screen, but my action seemed to just change the focus between the camera screens every time I clicked the arrows-button.

The result shows no other apps are active. Bottom left corner, next to the 'Alt' button, press and hold the button with the flag. Then single-press the D character.

After some momentary searching, I landed on what seemed to be an old version of a homescreen.

This is called the Desktop. Hence the letter D. There's a taskbar at the bottom. We see no icons anywhere, so there is no obvious application to run. We'll want to enable WiFi, so that your aug can directly access the machine.

A series of commands and instructions on how to use a mouse later, Tynea and I could finally root through the drives of this old machine. We found, once again, nothing.

It appears this computer's sole use is to serve as a low-tech surveillance system. The only value it has is what a museum would spend for it. From what we have seen so far, that probably makes it the most valuable item here.

Well, I wasn't gonna lug it around, not even for some extra cash. I had rather more important things to worry about. Like the fact that I still had no map to any exit.

But it couldn't be too far; it would make sense for the guard room to be positioned between the cells and an exit.

And indeed, not long after, I climbed another stairwell and finally found freedom, the night, and GPS!

We appear to be located in an old meteor crater roughly seven hundred kilometers north-east of New Montreal.

Uh, what? "Fuck, okay. What do we do? I don't have the points to move us."

Once again, I was stuck by my own new voice. A pretty sound, quite high, but with a mild rasp that I didn't have as a man. It was a strange experience, hearing a stranger's voice from my own mouth.

***