Villains

"I believe your people had a phrase for moments like this, convert or die." Rushard was the only Castithan in the group of men standing around the Erep soldier. There were ten of them now, up from the five he'd set off with post carrier crash. It had been a day since the event the group now numbered two Sensoths and seven humans, all male though that was just coincidence not out of any desire to prevent females from joining. Rushard liked being the only Castithan, it felt right, just like when he lead Votans during the war. He liked being in charge and he liked not having to deal with someone from another caste trying to establish dominance through some bullshit play, they were on Earth now and castes were like everything else from their doomed galaxy, lost to the cosmos.

Rushard was physically not really remarkable at all, his white hair was cut short, his muscle build was lean, and if anything he was under sized for even his own race (he stood just over five feet tall). What he lacked in physical stand outness he made up for with visciousness. In the war he tortured and massacred, his military unit was known for their uncompromising nastyness, even amongst the Votanis Collective. When the ceasefire ended the war, Rushard was disgusted with the VC, he disbanded his unit and refused to report to Brazil as ordered, and so he made his way, first as a bandit, and now an ark hunter.

"I don't know what you people want." The Erep soldier had been granted him by Captain Grant of the crashed carrier, he had also given them a couple of bikes and supplies.  Officially it was to find Von Bach, but to Rushard it was the start of his new empire. Now the Erep soldier had outlived his usefulessness as he didn't have an EGO device and thus was not as genetically superior as the other Ark Hunters. The others also were not aware of it, but Rushard had also hijacked their EGO signals, so any attempt of theirs to overthrow him would be met swiftly and horribly, another thing against the Erep, he could not be controlled.

"Convert or die." It seemed simple to Rushard, though he was toying with the young man, trying to find out what Captain Grant knew about the Ark Hunters Rushard was leading, it appeared nothing from his interrogation of the Erep.

"Co co co convert?" The Erep's voice cracked in such a way that showed more of his weakness. Rushard turned toward one of the Sensoth's a burly eight foot tall  orange haired baboon of a man named Sorn. He drew his thumb across his neck and the Sensoth nodded. The Erep's scream right before his neck was broken was music to Rushard's ears. Rushard turned around to face his group of 9 men, they didn't look put off by the murder, which was why Rushard had chosen them to be with him.

"Boys they call this place Paradise and it will be, starting today we are going to run this town. Drugs, prostitution, even the damned ark hunting will be all ours for the taking." They all cheered at that and Rushard turned around and smiled to himself. It was always easy leading brutes and bullies, and they would serve his purpose just fine for now, but if any of them got out of line Sorn would be snapping more necks. Rushard accessed his EGO device, different from the other ark hunters in that his did not come from Von Bach, but he had been granted his by the VC during the war.

"Now Ego," Rushard thought calling up the Casti construct in front of his eyes, "Where did you say that warship went down again?"

Conflict

"Adrenaline overdrive activated good luck Operator Roeyka." Xanthiana felt a surge of power, her muscles tensed and flexed and she surged forward her eyes singularly focussed on the pistol near the fire. Time seemed to slow down, every minute felt like ten, and still she felt too slow. Nearing the pistol she rolled and snagged it and came up shooting. The mutant EMC personel were caught unaware, between the darkness and the fire it was a basic shooting gallery. EGO made it even easier by outlining the mutants in red, Xanthiana quietly thanked whoever invented the device even if it was more than a little creepy to have some kind of onboard HUD in her brain.

There were four dead and her pistols slide had racked back indicating it was out of bullets. She thought it a bit strange she'd counted five but only saw four dead until the large arm wrapped itself around her throat. The last mutant was shorter than her, but he had lept onto her back and was using his weight and gravity to pull her to the ground. She went with his momentum and slammed him into the ground hoping to dislodge him, it did not.

"Operator Roeyka oxygen deprivation will start in less than a minute you'll lose your ability to function."

"Thanks for that really it's helping." It was weird being smarmy to a robot in your head telling you your dying, but that was Xanthiana's new reality and she just had to roll with it. EGO wasn't wrong though, she could feel light headed just from the short period of time the mutant had started strangling her. She cast the empty pistol aside and stuck her thumb out like she was going to go hitchhiking before shoving it backwards into what she assumed was the mutants eye. Her thumb hit something gooey and the mutant howled in pain and released her. She got to her feet and the creature still rolled in pain on the ground. She brought her soggy boot up and brought the heel of down forcefully on the mutants chest and heard a crack the creature stopped moving, but she could still hear breathing. She retrieved the empty pistol from where she'd cast it aside.

"Subject is critically injured, but not dead Operator."

"I'm aware of that EGO." Xanthiana moved from her position by the fire to the makeshift camp the mutants had been using. Their weapons were older and looked in disrepair, but their bullets were still in working order, she managed to locate some in the pistols caliber and removed the magazine to load some fresh ones in. EGO helped out by highlighting any useful equipment its limited scans could pick up in white. Xanthiana managed to recover a couple more magazines for the pistol, three magazines worth of ammunition for it, and various other bullets for others calibers of weaponry. She made sure to take them as in her experience ammunition was worth more than any paper money in the badlands.  Ammunition was the one universal currency in the new earth economy. She snagged a beat up backpack from one of the dead ark hunters to store her ill gotten gains and made her way over to the dying mutant.

"Operator Roeyka I'd recommend a tactical retreat there may be more of mutants in the area, I'm also getting reports of an erep position not far from here, it would be a safe location to regroup with other ark hunters and start the search for Mr. Von Bach."

"Agreed." She put a bullet between the mutants eyes, there was no reason for the creature to suffer anymore than it already had. She wasn't sold on searching for Von Bach while there seemed to be a new war starting in Paradise, but she had taken his money and signed on to be a bodyguard, and a deal is a deal even if Von Bach was a piece of shtako best left for whatever scavengers could find him.

Arrival

The first thing that was apparent to Xanthiana was that she had not hit the ground but instead had landed in water. The second thing was now the very real threat she'd drown in a metal coffin. She told herself not to panic as she frantically slammed the release button. It wasn't opening of course and despite all of her attempt at remaining calm the prospect of drowning was not one she relished. She didn't even have a weapon commit suicide with to prevent that horrible death from happening, though she theorized if she had a weapon she'd be more likely to just blow the doors open with it than take her own life. The pod hit the bottom of whatever water source it landed in and fell backwards disorienting Xanthiana briefly before the doors triggered open and dark water flooded in.

At least because of the drop pods position she could accurately judge which way was up (and she thanked whatever luck she lived by that it rolled over backwards and not forwards). She emerged from the water into more darkness.  The op as she remembered it was planned to be an evening drop because Paradise was an independent state. Though technically it was VBI industries who arranged the operation, they were on an Erep ship and the few independent areas in North America weren't exactly receptive to the Ereps. None of that helped Xanthiana see any better in the dark. From the shore she could make out a small fire and what appeared to be some men at it, something about the way they were positioned had her cautious though, too relaxed to have just been pod dropped into a hot zone, and the camp looked a little to built in for recent construction.

Xanthiana made her way to the shore quietly. Her initial suspicions seemed to ring true when she could make out EMC uniforms on the men around the campfire and what appeared to be a couple dead ark hunters on the fire. The EMC soldiers didn't look fully human as well, their features were twisted and mutated clearly not friendlies. Xanthiana was wondering what to do about the situation when her vision blurred, her ears popped and her head felt like a radio signal suddenly exploded inside of it. At first she was worried it was some new enemy weapon she'd never heard of, but then she recalled the EGO unit they'd installed in the base of her neck and what Von Bach was talking about prior to the ship exploding and crashing into the wilderness. As if summoned by the thought the EGO appeared in front of her, it looked like a young woman, though its appearance shifted and adjusted while she watched it.

"Hello operator Roeyka I'm your EGO device." Xanthiana was about to tell it to get down before realizing only she could possibly see it since it didn't have a display device on its own, "Scanning equipment," The EGO's body pulsed for a second and then the it returned to how it looked before "I see the personal defense shield, did not make it, you also appear to be completely unarmed and we are not near other ark hunters, one moment." Xanthiana was grateful and entirely weirded out by a robotic voice talking to her in her own head, but if it meant she had a higher chance of survival she'd get over the weirded out feeling. "Hostile subjects near by, they appear to be using EMC communication frequencies, I'm also getting a signal from south of us of an Erep crashed vessel and other live ark hunter EGO devices, no word from Mr. Von Bach or his staff at this time." The Ego clicked off after stating the situation and then stared at Xanthiana, she didn't know if it wanted her to talk back or what. "If you'd like to respond please do so by thinking of the response I can read the brain activity and respond accordingly you do not have to vocalize."

"So I just think and you can read it?" Xanthiana was completely taken back by the idea of having to talk in her own head to something else, if not for technology she'd swear she'd gone crazy.

"Correct Operator Roeyka."

"Ok EGO suggestions?"

"Acquire weaponry, personal defense shielding, and then sync up with Erep personnel south."

"Sure that sounds easy enough considering there are at least five targets in front of us and we currently have no weaponry, no personal defense shielding, and no transportation." The five EMC mutants at least did not appear to have noticed Xanthiana's pod crash landing, nor did they seem to be at any state of alert, which was good, they did appear to be armed though, which was bad.

"Scan's indicate a pistol near the fire that is unattended, unknown amount of ammunition in the magazine."

"So you want me to run toward a pistol near a fire, with an unknown amount of ammunition in it, and hope that it has enough to kill five men before they return fire?" The EGO shimmered twice and then returned, Xanthiana took that to mean it had just thought something.

"The EGO is hooked into your adrenal system, for a short time I can boost your adrenaline response to increase speed and reflexes, it should give you enough time to get to the pistol prior to the EMC mutants becoming aware of you, from there its up to you."

"And then the pistol will be out of bullets, ok I like this plan this is a great plan not at all a complete failure that will immediately cost me my life." Xanthiana readied herself, she thought for a moment that she could have just swam to the opposite side of whatever water source she was in and hope no mutants were over there, but that would take time and she didn't know how long until the sun came up and she became an even easier target.

"Lets do this." Xanthiana said it out loud if only to have said something before the end.

Recruitment

“GET TO YOUR PODS!” The order came loud and screechy some lieutenant on a bridge deck above was worried. The worry extended to the Ark Hunters who had assembled to hear Von Bach give a speech about an ego device and what that meant to them. An Irathient, Xanthiana Roeyka, worried more about the drop pod, she hated enclosed spaces they reminded her too much of the sleep pod she had arrived to earth in. She was so worried about it she had missed most of what Von Bach had set about the ego device, and then everyone was rushing to the pods.  She settled in between a Sensoth and a human amongst the row of pods. The Sensoth she didn’t know, the human male was an engineer named Rico who had taken an unnatural interest in her personally to the point of her having to almost crush his testicles to dissuade him of his affection.

“Don’t worry babe I’ll protect you.” She shot a look his way and snarled he just smiled back, she thought she heard the Sensoth laugh, but couldn’t confirm it because her pod shut suddenly and she was ejected from the ship to the land below.  While she plummeted to what she hoped was the bay area below she recalled how she wound up on an Erep vessel in the first place.

*********

“Roeyka, Xanthiana!” The named was barked out of a small temp tent that had most likely been a field hospital in the war. It was a month prior to her ill-fated trip on the Erep ship, Xanthiana was amongst a lot of assorted humans and Votans waiting to see if they would be picked for a job Von Bach industries had recruited them for.  They were outside of the capital Erep city of New York, in one of the dirty run down suburbs. All Xanthiana could see was poverty, everyone was in tattered dirty clothing, wielding rusting or damaged weaponry and grumbling about having to wait around too long. It was especially sad in comparison to the bright lights of New York. Xanthiana hadn’t been there personally, but she had been told it was quite the city before the war and remained that way despite the Ark fall. She made her way to the front of the dirty throng and was welcomed into the tent. Inside was a Von Bach employee with a name tag that identified him as Rickard, there was a plastic table, two chairs and a filing cabinet. Rickard took his place on the side of the table with cabinet and motioned her to sit down.

“You Roeyka?” He was chewing on a cigar she hoped he wouldn’t light it.

“I came when I was called didn’t I?” He smiled and went to light his cigar.

“I’d prefer if you didn’t.”

“Mess up your sense of smell?” Rickard was some kind of former military, most employees of Von Bach were, his flat top haircut and crisp dress were big signs.

“No contrary to your people’s belief that Irathients are a humanoid version of cats I don’t have increased ability to smell anything; I just don’t like the smell of smoke, cigar smoke especially.” Xanthiana herself was former military though her dress was considerably less crisp, poverty and a stint in the internment camps post armistice had considerably diminished her clothing. She was down to a pair of camo pants that were too baggy, a bra that was too tight, and a shirt that was too small about the only thing she liked amongst her belongings were her shoes and she already had to kill a man to keep those.

“Fair enough I can respect that.” He took the cigar out of his mouth and left it on the table.  He took up a pen and his clip board, “Ok Ms. Roeyka, is that your real name?”

“No I made it up, my actual name is difficult for anyone outside of Irathients to pronounce.” He wrote something on his form and then moved down to the next box.

“Experience?”

“Are you asking me what experience I have for the job you are offering?”

“Yes.”

“War.”

“Is that to say you were a soldier?”

“Yes.”

“Which side?” The room smelled funny, not just cigar smoke, it was the stench of sweat of several different races. Lots of people had been in that tent asked these questions and not all of them responded nicely.

“Seen a lot of Irathients fighting for the ERC? I was in the Votanis Collective, my squad disbanded in Denver.” Denver, lot of unpleasant memories of that place for Roeyka, the memory caused her to shudder.

“You were interred post armistice?”

“Yes.” They all were, some made it, some didn’t, that was the reality of the world post armistice. He marked down some other things wrote something else and then skipped to the bottom of his form.

“You inoculated?”

“Against the plague or whatever they want to call it? Yes got the shot in some town in the Midwest part of a mandatory program.”

“You remember the name of that town?”

“Nope.” There had been some resistance to the inoculation, she wasn’t one of the people who fought back but she left all the same after getting her shot. She’d been interred she knew that forced inoculation was the start of bad times and decided it best to leave before anything worse happened.

“Do you have any kind of implants?”

“These are all real.” Her chest had gotten her unfortunate attention in the internment camp, and had also been a pain in the ass in the war; body armor isn’t kind on breasts no matter the species who made it.

He frowned, “Not what I meant, I mean body augmentation.”

“No.” She did have piercings in her nose lip and ears, but she figured he didn’t mean those either.

“Are you averse to getting augmentations?”

“You mean some kind of cybernetic enhancement? Yeah that’s not going to happen.” She’s seen people with cybernetics it made her skin crawl.

“What about an Ego device?

“A what?”

"Enviromental Guardian Online, its an implant injected into the base of your skull to enhance your combat and communications abilities, basically an onboard computer in your head, I believe it was developed by Indogene doc's during the war surprising you hadn't heard of the tech." Xanthiana had heard of the device but never what it actually did, it was above her pay grade.

"Can't say I was privy to that in my service, I wasn't exactly a high rank when the war ended." That was putting it politely. Xanthiana was more slave than respected soldier, the property of a particularly cruel Casti officer who took sport in demeaning her.

"Well would you be adverse to getting one implanted?"

"Is it a requirement of the job?"

"Yes."

"Then no."

"Ok we're done here, see the Seargent on the way out for your gear and get your implant appointment set up." He stood up and pointed to the exit.

"That's it? Not being very selective are you."

"Frankly we need bodies for this op, besides the EGO implant has a potential failure chance of at least 50/50 don't worry if it doesn't take you'll only be mentally retarded for life."

"At least I'll finally fit in with the rest of the Earth Republic." He smiled at her comeback and then called out to the next applicant. She had heard that they were basically accepting warm bodies into the program and that suited her just fine, it was better than dying in starvation anyway.

 

**********



"Guidance Failure please input new coordinates." The drop pod's onboard computer woke her from her memory and reminded her she was plumeting to earth in an iron coffin that she now apparently could not control.

"Shtako." Was all she got out before impact.