The Undefeated space - planet Ellara
Commander Jim Harlowe read the message again, frowning and rubbing his forehead. His orders were clear, but he was not sure what to think about them. Sure, it looked like an important mission. But it was a
diplomatic mission. How the hell was he supposed to earn his superior’s respect and get on the shortlist for the next Guardian by doing diplomatic missions? If only he was lucky enough to get into the invasion fleet. Not aboard the Horizon, sure, that was horrible what happened there. But a warm spot on the aircraft carrier to watch the battle from a safe distance? He would kill for that. Well, not literally. He was ambitious, but he still had
some scruples. But orders were orders, so he grabbed his bag and headed to the docks.
The Pathfinder was not a ship designed for battle. Just like her sister Chimera, which was currently docked at the Meeting Place, it was a small vessel, sleek and elegant, designed for swift transfers and scouting, and equipped with the best sensors and various scanners available. It was definitely not the ship Jim dreamed of. He glanced at the other side of the docks, where a big cruiser was just being finished, and sighed. Off to do some diplomacy!
~~~~~~~~
The ECU space - planet New Hollywood
“Well, it certainly doesn’t look half as pretty as Ellara,” Harlowe noted, as they were approaching the designated landing spot on the planet of New Hollywood. The terraformation efforts were visible, but still, the extensive dead plains were depressing. The Pathfinder flew over miles and miles of farms that surrounded the city, patches of green and yellow fields, orchards the size of forests. It was hard to guess what they were growing from this distance, but from what he knew about the ECU, it was all original crops brought from Earth. Jim wondered if they had apples. Seeds from Earth didn’t fare well on Ellara, often catching various diseases and dying, a lot of them had to have been genetically modified and crossbred with their local versions. Apples died out completely. Even locked away in a greenhouse, in a clean controlled environment, the scientists just couldn’t keep them alive. Everybody knew what they looked like, but no one ever tasted them.
Jim snapped out of the weird thoughts. He needed to focus. The Pathfinder was already circling above the city, carefully following the path the ECU designated for them. As he looked out of the window, Jim’s jaw almost dropped. He was used to gray uniform cities the Undefeated had on Ellara. Everything back home was strictly practical, designed to serve its purpose in the most efficient way possible. New Moscow seemed to be quite the opposite. Everything was so bright and colorful as if you stuffed a kid with hallucinogens and had them draw a city using finger paints. Blinking neon signs, advertisements projected on building walls or even into thin air, powerful spotlights aimed into the sky for no apparent reason. And if all the visual stimuli weren’t enough to make your head hurt, there was the noise. Aside from the normal traffic noise, the air was filled with a plethora of voices and music blasting from every corner. One voice was proclaiming their detergent was the best to deal with pesky stains. Rock guitar solo was coming from a rooftop party, followed by an opera singer. The Pathfinder passed so close to a gigantic hologram promoting ‘the best club in town’ that Jim felt he could touch the hologram lady’s nipples if he stuck his hand out of the window.
How could anyone live here without going insane? Jim chuckled, remembering Guardian Blackwood’s report on the first contact with the ECU delegation. One of the words she used in the description was ‘clowns’ and it seemed more than fitting. The ship circled one of the skyscrapers and softly landed on a platform above the lower levels. Jim was nervous as he headed outside but, at least in his opinion, hid it well.
It took all his self-control to not start laughing when he saw his ECU counterpart who came to greet him. Oligarch Reins was dressed in the most ridiculous manner imaginable - a blue tailcoat with a red bowtie and tight leather pants. And on his head, believe it or not, was a feather headdress. “Commander Harlowe,” he approached Jim. “I am Oligarch Reins. Welcome to New Moscow!”
Jim grinned, Oligarch’s enthusiasm was contagious. “I am very glad to be here. So, you train your people right here, in the middle of the city?”
Reins nodded. “Pretty much all the training is done through holo-suites, so it doesn’t really matter where it takes place. And the recruitment office needs to be accessible so that everyone who wishes to join us can just walk in from the street and enroll. Please, follow me, I have a tour prepared for you to show you our best techniques!” The Oligarch seemed excited, he probably didn’t get to show his training methods off very often.
Jim followed him inside the building, thinking about how the hell can they train soldiers just by locking them in a room with some holograms. He had read all the information about the holo-suites the Undefeated had and could imagine incorporating them into training, but not completely replacing everything else. Where were the hundreds of miles they had to run through mountains with all their gear on their backs? All the trenches they had to dig, hours upon hours of crawling through the cold mud or hot sand, trying their best to avoid the sharp eyes of their supervisors? All the maneuvering practice, squads fighting each other in dozens of scenarios. You can't just skip all that, replace it with a hologram.
“Our Protectors are not the smartest of our people, but they are very dedicated,” Reins said as they walked through a long hallway with lots of doors on each side. Jim could hear various sounds from behind them, fighting, crying, screaming, even something that sounded like maniacal laughter. So far it seemed more like a visit to a mental hospital than to a soldier training facility. “Here,” Reins used a keycard on a big door at the end of the hallway, “is our control center for this floor. We can monitor the progress of each subject, adjusting the holo-suite programming as necessary.”
The room was dark, lit only with dozens of monitors grouped around several workstations. A person was sitting at each station, periodically checking the screens and inputting some commands into the computers in front of them, sometimes quietly talking into microphones. “Carry on, guys!” Oligarch cheered on the supervisors, who really paid no attention to him. “We have such a great collective here,” he smiled. “Come, look here. This one is a new addition.” Jim and Reins sat in front of a large screen with nothing but an empty white room on it. Jim still couldn’t shake the thought of a mental hospital.
Nothing happened for a few seconds, but then a young muscular man entered. “Hmm, look at his muscles. He is going to be a great Protector,” Reins whispered. Jim wanted to object that a great soldier needs to have more things than just big muscles, but the show was just starting. The recruit walked towards a big box with a question mark on it that appeared in the middle of the room. “I will lower the sound for now.” Reins clicked a few buttons. “It’s better with these starting programs, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to hear each other here.”
The man watched the box for a moment, looking around him and waiting for some instructions. When he wasn’t given any, he carefully opened the box and peeked in. A swarm of wasps flew out and started to chase him around the room. He kept running in circles, screaming in horror. Reins chuckled. “We have a wide variety of surprises prepared in the boxes. Spiders, snakes, wasps, scorpions. I like to shake things up a bit. Right now I am creating one that will slowly fill the room with blood.”
Jim didn’t know what to say. What kind of training was this? Was Reins actually an Oligarch, or just some psychopath torturing random people? How would this help to train a soldier in any way?
“I bet you are wondering how this helps us to train our Protectors. Well, observe.”
The man was now curled up in a corner, sobbing quietly. On Oligarch's command, the wasps disappeared and two new boxes appeared in the middle of the room, one with a question mark, the other with an exclamation mark, and a baton lying on the ground in front of them. The recruit got up, still sniffling a bit, looking around him to see where the wasps went. When he couldn’t find them, his gaze turned to the new boxes. He frowned and scratched his head for a good minute, but then grabbed the baton and smashed the question mark box. Fireworks appeared, confetti and some holographic bank notes raining down from the ceiling.
“So… you have taught him to hate question marks?” Jim still couldn’t understand the point of all this.
Reins laughed. “It is a bit more complicated than that.”
The confetti and money slowly descended to the floor, creating a colorful mess. Still, nothing else was happening. The recruit looked confused, Jim empathized with him heavily. What was all this about? He destroyed the right box, so he should be rewarded and the program should continue. Maybe the reward was in the exclamation mark box? The man apparently had the same thoughts as Jim, because he carefully approached the second box and opened it.
A snakehead popped out of the box, hissing violently, growing and growing, completely out of proportion, until it filled most of the room. The man was hysterical, desperately banging on the door, screaming to let him out. “He is afraid of snakes,” Reins said like it explained everything.
Jim shook his head. “I am afraid I do not understand. What was the right answer?” He wanted to say that it just seemed like plain torture without any deeper meaning but remembered that he was on a diplomatic mission. Such a thing would probably be considered highly offensive.
“My friend,” Reins patted Jim’s shoulder. “You are clearly too smart for this and you think too hard about it. Let’s see if our recruit understood it.”
Jim did his best not to flinch as the Oligarch touched him. His impression that Reins is just a creepy psychopath that enjoys cruel torture was getting stronger.
The holo-suite changed again. The snake disappeared and the room was now filled with dozens of boxes. Some had question marks or exclamation marks, but most had various new symbols - circles, squares, arrows, and countless others. When the recruit noticed the snake was gone, he slowly turned around, squinting on all the boxes. Then he let out an angry roar, his grip around the holographic baton tightened, and he started smashing everything around him. For each box he destroyed a small firework appeared, and soon the room was filled with colorful explosions. When there were no boxes left, he just stood there in the middle of the room, grunting and panting heavily.
Reins leaned towards the microphone. “Well done, recruit, you have passed your initial test. You will now be assigned a room and your very own baton! Go rest, more tests are ahead.” The man on the screen grinned and left the room. Reins shut the monitor down. “See? He didn’t think about it and got the answer right.”
Jim shook his head. “When you don’t know what to do, use force?” He asked ironically, but Reins’ face lit up.
“Exactly! We teach them that anything unusual can be dangerous and force is the appropriate response.”
“You are programming them to be aggressive?” Jim couldn’t believe the
methods these people used. That is just not how you train a soldier. That is not how you treat a human being.
“Every human has aggression already programmed in their brain,” Oligarch shrugged. “We are just increasing the number of things that trigger it. And we have had great success with it, our Protectors are very fierce warriors.”
Fierce? Try emotionally unstable. The Undefeated knew of PTSD and had therapists that regularly talked to soldiers who have been in difficult situations. These talks were mandatory and so was eventual therapy. The ECU was taking normal people and literally implanting PTSD into their brains, thinking it would make them better soldiers? Jim shivered. These were their allies?
“There is one more program I wanted to show you if you are interested?” Reins was so excited that he was nearly jumping up and down on his chair. “This one is entirely by my design. It is relatively new, created specifically for our war versus the Zetans.”
“I would be honored to see it,” Jim responded, trying to keep his diplomatic appearance. What was it going to be? Clankers jumping out of question mark boxes?
“Actually, you would get a much stronger impression if you were
inside the holo-suite this time. Don’t worry, the holograms are programmed to ignore visitors, just stay on the side and don’t interfere.”
Jim smiled and got up. He didn’t want to do this, but it seemed like he didn’t have much of a choice unless he was willing to look like a coward. He wasn’t going to shame the Undefeated like this. Plus, he was a trained soldier, a veteran of countless battles, he was not afraid of a bit of solid light.
As he was entering the holo-suite, Reins’ voice came out of nowhere. “Harry, you will have a visitor for your next test, so do your best.” A small, dark-skinned man in the room nodded absentmindedly, his hand clutching a baton. He briefly looked at Jim, his eyes wide and blinking rapidly, making Jim wonder if he had taken some drugs or just hadn’t slept in days. Jim assumed a safe spot, leaning against the wall next to the door, hoping there would be no more wasps. He wasn’t too fond of insects.
“Our enemies can take many forms,” a soft female voice said. “We think they all look like this.” An image of a warform briefly appeared. “But often, they look like this.” The warform was replaced by a family. The man was heavily augmented, all his limbs replaced by sophisticated prosthetics, patches of metal shining even from his bald head. The woman looked mostly human, only parts of her neck and hands were replaced by dark metal. The girl didn’t seem augmented at all, just a hint of red color around her eyes suggested that she wasn’t completely normal.
“These are our enemies.” As the voice spoke, the Zetan moved towards Harry. It didn’t even look like an attack, but the Protector reacted swiftly, swinging his baton at the man, beating him violently. Blood spattered the walls and the holographic woman screamed out, hugging the child, shielding her with her own body. Harry continued until the Zetan’s body stopped moving, turned into a bloody pile of bones, meat, and metal. Harry grinned and panted heavily.
“These are our enemies.” The voice repeated. The woman didn’t even try to defend herself, as the Protector grabbed her by her wrist and dragged her away from the girl. Jim wished he could look away or at least close his eyes, but he couldn’t afford to look weak. He had killed a lot of Screechers, men as well as women, but always the ones that fought back. Beating a helpless woman to death was a bit too much even for his stomach.
Harry looked satisfied with himself, nodding to himself and swinging his baton there and back to shake the blood off. But the simulation didn’t end. ‘Please don’t. Please, just don’t,’ Jim prayed, struggling to maintain a calm face, but his prayers went unheard. “These are our enemies,” the voice repeated once again. Harry walked over to the child cowering in the corner of a room. The girl looked about four years old and had the cutest blond curls imaginable. Jim decided that no amount of pride would make him watch this. In fact, he was just about done with this whole
training program.
Harry lifted his baton above the child’s head but hesitated. “These are our enemies.” He gritted his teeth and swung it again, stopping just a few inches from the girl. “These are our enemies,” the voice kept repeating.
“But…,” Harry shook his head, unsure what to do. “This is just a kid!”
“These are our enemies.”
Harry took a step forward, step back, step forward, before finally deciding to turn around, away from the child. Jim sighed in relief. But the program wasn’t going to let them off so easily.
“While they may seem innocent, they ARE our enemies.” The atmosphere in the room changed, the light went dimmer and it even felt like it got colder. Jim watched in horror as the child grew, its body slowly transforming into a warform, while the head remained human. The result was perfect fuel for nightmares - a huge murdering robot with a head of a beautiful blonde girl. Harry turned around, staring at the abomination. Suddenly, metallic bars slid from the ceiling, trapping him in a cage.
“You think you spared an innocent life while in fact, you caused the death of dozens.”
Human bodies started to appear on the floor, twisted and mangled. To Jim, their faces seemed random, but Harry apparently knew them. “Karen? Audrey?!” He screamed out. “DAD?!”
His screams were interrupted by the child's chuckle. Jim had never heard anything creepier in his life and suspected that sound would stay engraved in his brain forever, haunting every single one of his nightmares. “Mum?” Harry’s hands grabbed the bars of his cage, trying to shake them, but they wouldn’t move. Jim forced himself to look at the warform. It was holding a frightened dark-haired woman, its metallic fingers clutching her arms.
“Harry?” She sniffled, looking confused and terrified. Even though Jim knew this was all a hologram, it still felt so incredibly real he kept reaching to a spot where his sidearm would normally be.
The child giggled and pressed harder, making the woman scream out and squirm. “NO! MUM!” Harry shouted desperately, tears running down his face. “LET HER GO!”
The girl laughed. “No.” Jim quickly closed his eyes. He didn’t care who watched him or how he would look. If it didn’t feel too childish, he would put hands over his ears to at least muffle the horrible sounds of Harry and his mum screaming, the Zetan child laughing, and especially of all the
ripping,
cracking, and
tearing.
When the screams died out, Jim forced himself to open his eyes. There were unidentifiable body parts scattered all over the place and the warform was covered in blood from mechanical toes to blonde curls. Harry was kneeling in his cage, sobbing inconsolably.
“These are our enemies. Be sure to remember that,” the voice repeated and the hologram slowly dwindled away. Harry didn’t move at all, but Jim grabbed the door handle and darted out of the room.
“So, did you like it?” Reins was waiting for him in the hallway with a wide grin.
“Mhm,” Jim nodded, afraid that if he opened his mouth to say something, he would throw up.
“I knew it! I took care of every detail to make it as realistic and as efficient as possible. Did you notice the details on the dead bodies? It took me hours to interconnect the program with our database to automatically put the right faces on. I will tell you, adding them manually was such incredible labor.”
Reins started walking and Jim followed him, dazed and disoriented. He swore to himself that if they try to put him into another one of these rooms, he will kill every single person in this place with his bare hands. Hmm, maybe the aggressive programming was already taking its toll on him? How ironic. He was not far from bursting into maniacal laughter.
Fortunately, Reins led him to a nice apartment, where everything was
real. “You can get some rest and refreshments if you want to. I thought that maybe we could go celebrate our new friendship and visit some bars and holo-suites downtown later?”
Jim shivered from the idea of entering some other holographic hell, let alone accompanied by this psychopath. “Maybe later,” he managed to say before he closed the door and was finally left alone. As much as he considered himself a ‘tough guy’, hardened by countless bloody battles back on Ellara, the things he has seen and experienced here shook him deeply. He knew he should report everything to the high command, but right now even thinking about what happened here seemed too traumatizing.
The room was truly luxurious, there was even a table filled with various foods. Jim looked over it and noticed a miracle - an actual apple. Beautifully red, just asking him to grab it and take a bite. Red, just like all the blood in that terrible holographic hell. He decided he wasn’t actually hungry and reached for his tablet instead. “I need to call my mom.”
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