ShipCore

USD: 1 Day after arrival to Fort Glisson

Location: Van Biesbroeck’s star, Meltisar, Fort Glisson, Company S, 1st Cadre

A klaxon blared, the loud piercing shriek punching through Alex’s exhausted mind and forcing her to roll out of her bunk. As she gained her feet, she accidentally punched a mental request to Nameless to inquire about what emergency was happening on the ship before she realized what she was doing.

Silver-hair was looking at her strangely as they both had responded almost immediately to the alarm. Rachel and the blonde struggled to pull themselves out of bed.

Instructor Riley slammed open the door to their room.

“WAKE UP RECRUITS! IT IS 4AM. TIME FOR MORNING PT! GET UP NOW!”

The woman disappeared to repeat the shouting in the other three rooms in the dorm. Somehow the shouting got louder. Alex was glad she didn’t have trouble waking up.

Somehow, she had changed out of her PT gear before going to sleep, and the cool air caused goose bumps against her skin. She pulled open her locker and quickly put on her exercise gear.

As Instructor Riley herded them into a line and out into the morning air, it was even colder. A lot of other recruits were barely moving, but Alex felt oddly awake even after such a short sleep. Despite the attempt to exhaust and run her body out of energy, she didn’t feel sore at all.

The DIs only had them run one circuit, but the exhaustion in a lot of the other recruits was readily apparent as they fell to the back of the pack. Alex remained near the front, but with a lot less enthusiasm than she had the night prior. It was the same group she’d been with before.

They’d not been given any time to talk or get to know each other, but she’d already taken to giving them names in her head.

They had to wait in lines while the rest of the cadre caught up. Alex felt a pang of worry for Rachel. The other girl was obviously not as fit as the main group, and whatever genome editing she had received obviously wasn’t meant for endurance.

Alex wondered for a bit at why they would have lumped her in the S group.

Once everyone had been accounted for, the DIs marched them back into the wonderful embrace of the heated barracks. Her nose was chilled, and she rubbed it to warm it up as they moved through the corridor and into a classroom.

“You will all now receive your training rucksack. It contains various items, but most importantly, it is heavy. You will not open it until instructed to do so. We will call out names to visit the med personnel, so everyone receives their check-up and vaccines as needed.”

Alex’s name was the first called. An assistant instructor led her to the medical bay that was located inside the building. A nurse was waiting to take her vitals.

“Stand here.” She indicated to a scale with a stick for measuring height.

“167cm. And… uhh.” The nurse looked at the weight and then had Alex step off of it. Confused, the nurse weighed herself, then had Alex step back on.

“Is 141kg your normal weight?”

Alex shrugged. “I’m not sure. I might have gained a bit of weight, but it doesn’t seem too off?”

“Okay. Strip down and the doctor will be in to examine you in a minute.”

Alex hesitated. Strip down? She’d been too dazed the day before to think much of changing in front of Rachel, but the doctor was going to examine her? Naked?

The nurse realized she was hesitating and barked an order. “Recruit! Strip down now!”

Alex complied by pulling off her top and pants. When she stopped with her underwear still on, the nurse shook her head. “Everything, recruit.”

Alex felt embarrassed, but pulled that off as well as the nurse left the exam room. She crossed her arms in front of her to hide things.

The door opened a minute later, and a woman in a doctor’s coat entered. After a short introduction, the doctor examined every inch of her while asking some very pointed questions.

She did not need contraceptives. No, she did not have to worry about a monthly menstruation. No, she did not have any problems down there and she was not sexually active.

Alex felt her cheeks burning as questions continued in that vein.

“What… What are you looking for?” Alex asked.

“Any type of contagious skin infection or the like. If you’ve ever seen how fast Cephei Worm or Librae Rash can spread, you’d understand.”

The doctor even checked her scalp. Finally finished, she waved at Alex’s clothes. “You can put that back on. I’ve some more questions to ask, though.”

Alex complied in a hurry, happy to redress.

“It says here in your folio that you’re listed no vaccine/no immunization/no bloodwork. I can’t find any medical history or workups in your file, though, and it was manually entered. Can you explain?”

Alex nodded. “Uhh. That’s right. I’m immune to everything.”

The doctor raised her eyebrow. “Everything? You realize there’s a huge array of things to be susceptible to?”

“I don’t think any virus or bacteria would affect me. Unless it was a specific weaponized thing just for me.” Alex offered.

“Fine. It’s not my ass if you get sick and this isn’t accurate, understand? God knows this is the company that sees all of the top-secret bodywork though, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Dismissed, Alex was directed to the next room that was even more terrifying as the sound of hair clippers buzzed. There was a short line, and she moved to the back of hit, but her stomach was falling out.

The recruit already sitting in a chair was having her long hair cut down to shoulder length. Alex took her hair in hand, realizing they were going to cut her hair. A large poster showed three different acceptable hair lengths and styles.

The memory of Elis cutting her hair hit her hard, and she was a nervous wreck when it was her turn to sit down.

“Preferred length, recruit?” The female hair stylist asked.

When Alex didn’t respond immediately, the woman prompted her again, “If you don’t specify a length, I’m cutting it short. We don’t have all day.”

“S...Shoulder length.” Alex managed.

“You have beautiful hair, Hun, but it’s too long. I’ll trim it nicely for you.”

The trimmer was put down and scissors came out. Alex bit her lip as strands got cut down to size. When the stylist was done, she handed Alex a mirror.

It wasn’t… the end of the world.

Mostly.

She could grow her hair back with a bit of effort, later.

Calming herself, Alex thanked the woman. “Thank you.”

“NEXT!”

USD: 3 Days after arrival to Fort Glisson

Location: 63 Hydrae, CS Government Courier 33X

Corporate wasted no time in repurposing her battle station completely and had in less than a day taken out all her access commands and rendered her computronics modules inert and offline. Nevermind that Thea had paid for most of those herself over a decade of service. Worst of all, she’d been replaced by a twit of a Tau who had no business running customs or a battle station.

The uppity bitch had even got up in Thea’s face and gloated about the role swap.

The twat was probably already suffering from the virus induced migraines Thea had dropped after that encounter, using a decade of experience and Phi level access to lay a veritable minefield in the battle station’s network that would harass and torture the NAI until another Phi, or Rea fixed it for her.

That was the least she could do. If Rea had expected her to behave after seizing three quarters of her accounts, she needed her computronics circuits checked.

Acidic thoughts made it hard for her to nap on the observation deck even though she’d propped herself in a corner, looking out the fragile composite window port. As the ship cruised toward its destination, there was nothing but the faint shimmer of the D-field painting the starscape a faint blue.

Losing her computronics had left her with very little power to do anything other than maintain her ANUF systems. She had even been forced to point out that not bringing any along for her would render her useless for their purposes.

The fact that they hadn’t realized that just pissed Thea off even more and made her involvement in the entire operation feel like a joke. Why even bother bringing an NAI along if you were going to cripple and hobble her?

Aggravated and annoyed, Thea kicked the bulkhead as she looked out the lonely observation window on the courier ship’s top deck. The government vessel was reserved for diplomats and embassy use, and they were already en route to Meltisar.

The security spook hadn’t left any time to waste on ushering them out of the system.

As if thinking about him had been a summons, Agent Fallon appeared through the open corridor.

“Phi Thea.”

She glanced at him and then turned back to the window to look out at the little blinking lights of stars. “Agent Fallon.”

“You didn’t show up for the briefing. It’s imperative that you listen to directives. We’ll be going into a hotbed of…”

Thea snapped, standing up suddenly and closing the distance between them in less than a second, grabbing the lieutenant by the throat and lifting him up in the air to slam him into the metal bulkhead.

She held him pinned there, his fingers trying uselessly to dig into the skin of her hand and pry away her grip. When that failed, he continued by flailing his legs against her.

“Give me one good reason that I don’t just crush your throat here and now?” She let him fall down far enough to regain his feet on the ground and loosened her grip, but she did not release him.

A panicked expression on his face, Fallon coughed out a reply. “You’ll be reprimanded.”

“And you’ll be dead. Mother has already taken eight years of effort from me. Why do I care? This mission isn’t fit for a Phi.”

“If you’d come to the briefing, it would have been explained!”

“What would? Why did you need to fucking up-end my life a minute before I was free of her clutches? Why?”

“The Empress’s daughter! One is operating on Meltisar and she’s a downgraded Chi! We needed a Phi!”

“So, you picked me?”

“You were available!”

Thea back handed him, her nails digging into the man’s cheek deep enough to leave deep wells of blood painting the floor as he spun through the air and landed halfway across the room with a thud.

There was a second delay before pained, panicked screaming filled the air.

“Oh? That didn’t break your spine? Do you have some skeletal reinforcement?”

Fallon rolled onto his back and then scoot backwards rapidly as she approached. When his back met the bulkhead, she raised a hand. “Stop! Rea won’t allow this! You were ordered on this mission; you can’t disobey her!”

Thea stepped forward, a foot coming down on the metal floor between her legs before she knelt to look the man in the eyes.

“Wrong. She ordered me to bring back the rogue NAI. She said nothing about not killing you.” Thea smiled.

“P...Please.”

“You still haven’t given me a reason not to kill you. Don’t think you might get a signal out for help, either. We passed the point where one would reach us before we entered the jump point an hour ago.”

Thea lifted the toes of her boot and leaned back on a heel to pivot her foot over the man’s ankle before clamping down on it. The screaming picked up in intensity as she ground the bones underneath into powder.

“Ouch. You know I’m pretty sure the doc can replace your face and foot, although the price is high for reconstructive surgery, last I checked. How does it feel to have someone crush your credit account arbitrarily?”

Fallon’s face was beaded with sweat. “I’ll help you! The rogue NAI! Worth a lot to Moneta! There’s a bounty on the princess!”

“Oh? Please keep talking. It’ll determine whether I put a tourniquet around your leg on the way to the medbay… or the morgue.”

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