Ur City: IDC Operations Base

I was in an office space, again.

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Mentally I selected, No, and went back to being annoyed about my current situation.

I hated being called to the office, to anyone’s office. It made me feel like I was some kid about to have the vice principal tell me off for skipping art class, while trying not to get caught staring at my boobs.

This time, however, it was just me, Colonel Garshack, Rooker, and a Russian Doctor named Yuri Gagarin. Oh, and that gremlin, er Yōkai-girl.

Both new men were looking at me like a piece of motor pool equipment that they might have to deadline. While Rooker stood behind them, leaning against a medical cabinet. Meanwhile, the Yōkai- girl got into everything like she was a little kid.

“How is no one seeing this?” I thought, as the little gremlin in my head raced around, pulling open cabinets and drawers.

She’d been acting unusual since she popped back up. Rather than the cold, robotic affectation, she was acting more like your best friend’s overly smart younger sister.

They had pulled me out of the War Frame, though I was still wrapped in Rooker’s green poncho liner. It was the only thing between me and sitting there in my skivvies, and I wasn’t too happy about it. Colonel Garshack insisted on an immediate medical assessment, so there I was, my naked thighs pressed against a cold examination table while three men gawked at me.

Well, mostly Yuri gawked, and seemed to have an excuse to move the liner as often as he could so he could “examine” me. The guy gave me the creeps and part of me wondered if he used to work for USA Women’s gymnastics.

“It’s called dissociative amnesia, though you might have heard it called psychogenic amnesia,” The doctor behind me stated absently as he prodded the module at my neck. He was way more interested in my Yōkai -Tech nanites and Ballistic shield than my questions.

“So, you have the complete use of your legs, Captain Emerson, but what about your internal organs? Do you have total bowel and bladder control? Do you menstruate?” He gave me an enthusiastic, wide-eyed look as he came around to face me.

“When did you become a captain anyway, Bro?” Rooker popped off.

I ignored Rooker and tried to focus on not punching Yuri in the face. I didn’t like how Yuri touched the steel blue inlaid conductors on my skin. It felt intrusive, but I couldn’t tell you why.

While I could feel the skin around the conductors, I couldn’t feel his touch on them. Still, it was like I’d become an object, and I had enough of that in my life.

“Well, I’ve been here for two hours and haven’t pissed on the exam table,” I said sarcastically and Rooker barked out a short laugh.

“Colonel Garshack, she really should return to home station. We could learn so much from her with the right equipment. I really want to know how she powered her ballistic shield without an external power source,” He muttered, with no doubt that his advice would be rejected.

I think he just wants to if he can examine your whohaa,” Yōkai-girl said suddenly and turned around with an exaggerated wink.

“Is that unusual? I didn’t exactly get an owner’s manual,” I remarked, ignoring the lewd comment from the annoying gremlin, but neither man looked at my face as much as my tech. “At least I don’t remember one.”

“Colonel Garshack, perhaps I should run some more tests. Her short-term memory seems fine, but she is clearly missing aspects she should have learned.” Yuri said, but his eyes were fixed on my head, more specifically the metal attached to it.

“I can’t afford to have her locked up in here while you experiment with theories. She is a squad leader, and we need more right now,” Garshack responded. “Otherwise I have to keep using knuckle heads like Rooker to get things done.”

“You think I lost some memories? Was it in the crash?” I asked, but again the two men were engrossed, and neither was answering me. I was getting annoyed.

Rooker scoffed and walked toward the cabinet that lined the rear of the building where he started milling about and exposing that curious streak again.

“She won’t be any good to anyone if she is dead, Colonel,” Yuri Implored.

Behind them, Rooker turned and quietly opened a door, peering inside quickly before regaining his former position and looking innocent.

SSG Rooker’s up to no good! Alert the Colonel,” Yōkai-girl said as she waved her hands to get my attention then pointed at Rooker.

“So, you’re saying something significant happened that I should remember?” I was growing hotter, but neither of them seemed to notice my irritation. I’d kept it all together pretty well. Waking up in a nightmare and being shipped to the middle of nowhere with no idea what the hell was going on was about to make me explode.

Do something! He’s stealing Vision Dynamics property,” she again implored.

“She isn’t going anywhere. There are no transports back for months, and we need her here. What can you do about the Psychotic Amnesia?” Garshack asked.

“What is it I don’t remember? Why won’t anyone tell me?” I asked again.

“It’s Psychogenic, rather dissociative amnesia. Basically, what she went through was hard enough on her psyche to-”

Rooker was opening another cabinet. His hand slipped inside just as Garshack started to turn in his direction. Suddenly, I felt the man’s fingers tracing the inlays on my thigh.

Kate, I know you can hear me, do something. You have to-“

“What. The Fuck. Is going on here,” I shouted and pushed off the table, ready to kick his scrawny ass for ignoring my questions and giving Rooker time to pocket whatever he’d snagged.

The Coronal was moving in a blur and in an instant, he had his hands on my shoulders, holding me back.

“Easy, Kate, I know you’re confused and upset,” Garshack said in a low but pleasing tone that washed over me like a soothing bath. But it was an ice cube on a forest fire that was my emotional overload.

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“Someone better start explaining, right fucking now! And if that fucker touches me without asking again, I am going to break his fingers,” I yelled, and the doctor backed up, his hands held in front of him like it might hold me back.

“I said take it easy, Captain Emerson,” Garshack said, his tone firmer and commanding.

Something in my head clicked, and I shut down the rage, but my body was trembling with the effort.

“We are going to sort this out. I swear it to you. But right now, neither myself nor the doctor knows all the details,” he rumbled.

“What do you know?” My jaw clenched, and hands squeezed into tight fists. But his words weren’t wasted. Instead of wanting to kill the doctor in particular, I just felt like a cannon who was ready to burst.

“You are in the city of Ur. This is the place that we hired you to come and serve as part of the Incorporated Defense Corps,” he explained.

Didn’t your HUD give you a mission set?” He asked.

“Yeah, the IDC, I remember that, but when was the surgery done, when did I get shipped here?” I snapped.

The two men exchanged a look, and the doctor suddenly looked down as his mind processed it all. “We thought you could tell us more about some of that,” the doctor said, but Garshack just gave him a flat look, then returned his serious look to me.

“The Vision Dynamics subsidiary was destroyed when an explosion ripped through the facility on June 23rd 2070. Does that day mean anything to you?”

The date was significant. I just didn’t immediately know how. Slowly, I shook my head when a memory popped into my mind.

The words, “The Future is only a day away!” floated above the pristine industrial facility in vibrant blue as the attendant positioned my wheelchair on the hydraulic lift. With a loud clump, the wheels to my chair locked in place.

“Seems like a cheery place,” I remembered saying, and glanced up at the Colonel.

“The day of my surgery.” I mumbled.

“That’s right, Kate, you were post-op and recovering when the first explosion rocked the building. Many people died, and we have no idea why the terrorists attacked us, but somehow you lived,” he explained.

I found myself back at the exam table, and once more I was sitting down. Garshack had his hands on my shoulders and was looking deep into my eyes. “You were supposed to get treated for minor injuries and then join us here. But you never arrived,” he said.

I zeroed in on him. “What do you mean I never arrived?” I growled.

“Kate, it’s been eighteen months. The last we heard was not to expect you anytime soon. They reported some medical issues, and the need for further treatment. After six months, we stopped getting updates on you. All of our inquiries were stonewalled,” Garshack stood up straight, his arms dropped as his words sunk in.

“And now here you are. Somehow you were ejected from your operations pod, and now you are running around like it is a sunny day on the beach. Even though your CMCE element is less than twelve hours from failure mode,” Garshack said with a troubled expression.

Yuri stepped in suddenly. “I’m truly sorry if I offended you, LT Emerson. I am fascinated by the upgrades I am seeing on you, but that is no excuse for being rude,” he said contritely. “But I need to get you into a medical bay and get repairs going.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” A wave of white-hot fire lanced through my head, causing me to waiver and clutch my skull.

Yuri had me at once, and once I was steady, he grabbed an injectable. “You shouldn’t even be able to walk with that level of damage. Your Yōkai -Tech isn’t getting any coordinating instructions from your brain. Your Sync Rate is abysmal, at Six Percent.”

Congrats, that’s a 1% improvement,” Yōkai-girl beamed.

“Hey? What you going to inject her with?” Rooker’s demand made the doctor flinch away for a second.

Another lance of pain shot through my head, but this time something seemed to ride it in. A ghost like thread of text was in my vision just long enough to read it, then gone.

“Don’t let them inject those!” The Yōkai-girl shook her head and sucked in a lower lip as she appeared to back slowly away from Yuri.

“My status screen says I need to return to my operational pod for repairs,” I grunted, pushing away the doctor’s hand, and once more both men looked at each in confusion.

“Your pod was lost when your transport chamber was ejected,” Garshack said, but he was looking pensive. “Maybe we can track its trajectory, but there’s not much chance of it being in one piece.”

Yuri shook his head adamantly. “That’s impossible. She doesn’t have enough time to be wandering through the forest,” he insisted as his cheeks turning red. “We should start her procedure immediately. I can give her a dose of our stock Yōkai-Tech nanites, ” Yuri said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Colonel Garshack growled. “Like you said, she has some new upgrades. We don’t know how the old Yōkai -Tech will interact,” he argued.

“Sorry, I really don’t trust this creeper, Kate. He is like a back-alley doctor who sales used organs. If we go to our pod, it can do what we need. Besides, we need our pod!” Yōkai-girl pleaded, standing there looking like a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl begging for concert tickets,

“I have its location designated in my HUD. We can go in and recover it. Besides, it might have some useful equipment or information,” I said and realized I was no longer shaking.

“You can share your screen with them. I will lock them out of any systems I don’t want them to see,” the Yōkai-girl said in focused tones.

I brought up my HUD displayed and shared the red and white 3D topographical map with the unit the Doctor had been using to check the status of my system. Oddly, my pod was no longer where it had been. Instead, it was over two kilometers further north.

“That’s weird. That’s not where it first reported from,” I said, and a second dot appear showing its original location, which was over several hills and streets. Where before it had lain in the remains of a motor pool, now it was up a significant hill in a building complex that reminded me of a graveyard for giants.

“Do you think Abaddon has it?” Garshack asked, looking at Rooker.

“Tunnelers are large enough to move a pod, and because it is near the old fuel bunkers, I say that’s what happened, If Abaddon has corrupted enough of them it could be a real problem,” Rooker shook his head.

Garshack’ s frown deepened. “That’s where we housed the miners.” He turned to give Rooker a knowing look, “we had a report that they missed a deadline for shipping out the Vermillion, but that’s not totally uncommon, so I thought little of it. But if there are corrupted somehow, we could have a serious problem,” he rasped.

“What about commo? Have you heard from them at all?” I asked.

Yuri ran a hand through his hair and blew out a big breath. “The fog makes radio communication worthless. We’ve tried setting up and land line, but the Scavengers just take it down, or tap it,” Yuri explained, though I had the feeling he was just repeating what Garshack had told him a hundred times.

Striding closer to the Colonel, Rooker reached up and placed a hand on the back of the man’s arm. “Colonel, reassign my team to escort Captain Emerson out to the Bunkers. We can clear out any of the corrupted Tunnelers, recover her pod and get your miners back on track,” Rooker said.

Wait, who in the hell is Abaddon?” I asked.

“Sir, I don’t know if sending her out into combat is such a good idea. Her Sync Rate-” Yuri tried to cut in, but Garshack’s cold gray eyes landing on him and Yuri shut up.

For a moment he just held Yuri’s eyes in a glare, then slowly those cold grey orbs landed on me. “Abaddon is the Scavenger leader. He has some top-notch hackers, real pros, he lured away from Vision Dynamics. We believe he is Chinese, but that’s about all we know about him other than he’s the one who brought in the tech that’s been corrupting the Yōkai tech,” he said.

“We’ve been dealing with them for over a year now, guerrilla tactics mostly, mostly raids for resources and tech, but the corruption, well Bro, that just shut down our high end armor and tech, well until now,” Rooker shrugged.

“I won’t slow them down, Sir, I need that pod, and we need for Abaddon to keep his hands off it, ” I stated with enthusiasm I didn’t feel.

Garshack measured me from under his thick gray eyebrows. From the first moment I met him, I knew he was a shrewd and confident leader, and I desperately wished I had that demeanor.

“Sir, I will be there to help back her up. My team is more than capable,” Interjected Rooker.

Garshack stood and rubbed his hands on his pants once, and nodded his head. “I don’t really see much of a choice. We have most of our people tied up doing patrols and compound security. Your team is our recon and exterior reaction force.

Then it’s settled. You deploy at first light,” the Colonel commanded.

Yuri shook his head. “What makes you think you can get it approved that fast? I will have to object, it goes against my best medical judgment, and like it or not that will require more time,” Yuri admonished, finding his balls for a moment.

“They’ll agree so fast your head will spin, Yuri, because this is about money.” Garshack said with a cunning smile. “Even that pencil necked admin puke Nyesom won’t object with the mine not producing.”

Good, we need to be as far away from this guy as possible. I bet his nickname is the Either Bunny. I don’t trust him,” Yōkai-girl said and jumped up and down before looking at Rooker.

I’m not sure I trust the thief either, though he is roguishly handsome,” she said and part of me wished Rooker could see her just so I could torment him about the Gremlin’s gushing.