Marco
I returned to the ship after my campaign of slaughter. Hundreds of scientists, thousands of defense mechanisms. All left on Kuroe, unmoving. These scientists should have no right to live anymore, they practically shut themselves away from the rest of the universe to conduct whatever experiments they wanted, and enslaved other humans to experiment on. They’ve been doing this for at least a thousand years, generations of scientists doing this together.
I see it as unforgivable, but the order to eliminate them, while I don’t particularly agree with it, it’s my duty, so I do it anyway.
There are so many people to evacuate from these massive facilities, it takes multiple cargo transports to ferry them out. Looking out at all of the innocent civilians we rescued, they look incredibly tired and confused. They are made to believe that they are in the far distant future, where there are no more stars left, and the only source of energy are black holes. While that is the eventual endpoint for the universe, if all theories turn out to be true, but that is far from the state of the present universe.
Humanity is thriving right now. We have been for nearly 2000 years. It's a pretty great place to live now, on average there is very little suffering in each world. But there will always be suffering, like with the Kuroe installations. That’s why we raid them, rescue the people living here, and destroy the whole thing, so they don’t have to live through that anymore and can join the rest of humanity.
These people may be scared and confused right now, but once we show them what the universe is truly like, they will be ecstatic about it.
I made my way through the cargo hold, and walked into the makeshift medical bay, which is just a series of rooms built into the hold to take care of the injured, which there seems to be quite a lot of when we take on liberation missions. I noticed one of the girls I escorted here, I think her name was Akasha, lying down on a bed. I thought I remembered her losing a limb or two in the explosion we were in on our way here, but I guess I was mistaken. She probably only suffered internal injuries, which might be even worse depending on how bad they are.
She seemed to be doing great though, from what little I know of medical equipment, the charts and values looked good. I guess she didn’t sustain many injuries at all, Gaia and I must have taken the brunt of the damages.
Walking a bit further down the medical bay, I found Gaia suspended in a small chamber. I wished I didn’t look inside it. She was almost unrecognizable, most of her body was completely burnt black, missing multiple limbs, and half of her torso completely gone. These were completely fatal injuries, 0% chance of survival.
Luckily, we have countermeasures for situations like these. Normally, we would have a few different options, like taking her brain and putting it into a mechanical body or a new body grown from her flesh, but those methods were currently unavailable. The money required for any kind of fatal-defying operation was extremely high, and since these people have no money, very few organizations are willing to pay for operations like these. Fortunately, one group of people, the Android Collective Community, are very philanthropic and are willing to shoulder any cost of operation for the Android method.
The only option we have to save her would be to download her consciousness and upload it into a completely machine body. I have no idea why they do that or where they get all the money for it, but it definitely helps the people who need it, otherwise they would die. It also helps that the Android method is the cheapest option of the bunch.
As I looked at Gaia in thought, a doctor approached me.
“Marco,” the middle-aged woman named Coffu. “Do you know her?” Coffu asked me.
“Yes, I rescued her and another girl. They were sneaking around the labs where the scientists were, I… almost killed them.” I thought about beating around the bush about the scientists, but Coffu knows about it, as well as everyone else in the galaxy. “But I noticed the way they wore the coats was wrong, and their names didn’t match the nametags. On my way back here, we were caught in an explosion from Kuroe’s defense systems. The other girl and I came out okay, at the cost of her though.”
Me and Coffu glanced at Gaia. If I had known there would be an explosion, I would give my life for them. But there was no way to predict it, nothing I could've done, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept.
“I’m sure you know, but the only way to save her life is the Android treatment.” Coffu said, still looking at her. “Technically, we need some form of permission to start the operation, but in her condition..” she sighed and shook her head. “She obviously can’t. As you know, we can do it with no permission, but that puts us at risk of legal troubles, but those normally get smoothed out later. A human’s life is most important, so any attempt to save one’s life when one cannot give a form of permission is permitted.”
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“You can get permission from people related to her, right?” I said. I pointed down the medical bay in the direction of Akasha. “She has a friend or family member over there, long white hair and blue eyes. She seemed to be in good condition, and will probably wake up soon. You can ask permission from her. Unless Gaia’s condition is too bad, and you need to operate on her immediately.”
“No,” Coffu said, shaking her head. “Gaia is okay for now, I estimate 3 hours give or take until it’s necessary to start, but we have some time to spare. This device she’s in does an incredible job at nearly halting all bodily functions, it’s almost like freezing her in time.” she said, patting the machine holding Gaia.
As we looked at Gaia, the radio on my hip buzzed. I picked it up and looked at the screen; a message saying that all civilians have been escorted to the ships, and we are about to take off in a few minutes.
“It was nice talking to you Coffu, but I am needed in the ship captain's room. We’ll be taking off in a few minutes, and the higher-ups need a detailed report of the mission.” I clipped the radio back onto my belt.
“Well, that’s just part of being a Captain now.” Coffu said, giving me a sly look. I’ve known and worked with Coffu for quite a long time, so she knows my entire history with the military, and how badly I wanted to become a Captain throughout my service.
I just rolled my eyes at her and started walking away. After a few steps, I turned around. “I hope the operation with Gaia goes well.”
“Oh don’t worry, you know I’m one of the best doctors in the galaxy.” She said back. And she’s correct, Out of the hundreds, maybe even thousands of operations she’s performed, less than 0.1% of them have been failures, probably only around 25 failed operations total. I have no doubt that she will succeed.
I exited the medical bay and started walking toward the elevator that would take me up toward where the crew of this vessel would normally be, where the cockpit, sleeping quarters, and recreational facilities were.
As I cut my way through the crowd of civilians, all sitting on the ground exhausted, one caught my eye. He looked really familiar to me, so I approached him casually, slightly veering off my course. When I finally got right next to him, he turned his head up toward me, and we locked eyes. The two of us immediately recognized each other.
He was the scientist that I met in the airlock when I first arrived, and who escorted me into the administrative district of Kuroe. He had somehow made his way on the transport ship despite being a scientist.
Before he could scrabble away, I grabbed him by the back of his shirt and lifted him clean off the ground. He dangled there pathetically, knowing someone as weak as him could do nothing against someone like me.
I stared at him for a moment, judging by the look on his face, my face must have been one of the scariest things he had seen in his life. I took a quick glance to the side, aware that we were attracting the attention of most people in the cargo hold.
“You are coming with me.” I said in a flat tone. “I have many questions for you.”
“ok” He said in a voice so small you could mistake it for a mouse.
Still lifting him with one arm from the shirt collar, I carried him over the still sitting crowd, all the way to the elevator, my original destination. I walked into the elevator, pressed one of the buttons, and the elevator started moving downwards, the opposite way to the Captain’s office. We were headed to a sub-area of the storage section of the ship; the cargo hold was the main storage area, but any smaller areas existed to hold more valuable items or living creatures.
I grabbed the radio on my belt and pushed a button to talk into it. “Captain, I encountered a complication. A scientist has snuck aboard the ship. I have him detained right now, and am transporting him to storage floor -4, room 1.”
“Are you fucking kidding me.” the Captain replied, pissed out of his mind just like I was. “I’m heading down there right now. Jernam, come with me.” he said to his aid and advisor.
“Right away, Palex.” Jernam confirmed.
“Marco, make sure he’s safe, or something, I don’t fucking know. You can’t kill him anymore.” The Captain, whose name I now know is Palex, said.
“Yes, I am aware.” I said, turning the radio off before Palex went into another rant. The elevator arrived at transport floor -4, and I threw the scientist into the nearest cell, room 1. “You sure are lucky, aren’t you.” I said with my arms crossed, shaking my head.
The scientist, I believe his name was Creed, if I read his nametag correctly earlier, collapsed on the floor after being thrown in, and looked up at me with moist eyes on the brink of tears. “W-what do you m-mean?” he managed to squeak out.
“Us soldiers are permitted to exterminate you during the time of the raid. The government sees you as too large of a threat to release you into a prison of any kind, so they more or less want us to kill you. But a lot of people within the government saw killing as an inherently bad thing, and pushed back on it. That group eventually lost, but they at least put a limit on the timeframe where we are allowed to kill. Only between the first boarding and until the last civilian is evacuated. The rule seems a bit silly, but it’s sole purpose is to protect people like you, and you’re not the first, the rule has come into effect a handful of times. If it were up to me, for reparations for what you did to the enslaved people of Kuroe,” I reached into the cell and grabbed him not by the collar, but by his neck, “YOU WOULD BE DEAD BY NOW.”
I dropped him back to the ground, exited the cell, and slammed the door, hearing Creed cough after being lifted by his throat. I heard the elevator door open again, and out walked Palex and Jernam.
“Marco, I… is he coughing? What the hell did you do???” Palex asked rather violently.
“I just talked with him. About how dead he would be right now if I were allowed to kill him.” I replied, trying to sound nonchalant about it, but the outburst of anger I gave Creed lingered.
“Well, you didn’t kill him, so that’s fine I guess.” Palex said, opening the cell to talk to Creed.
I was done with Creed, and had no obligation to speak with Palex or Jernam about this matter, so I left, heading for the elevator where I would wait for them in the Captain’s office until their questioning was over.