…..Activation Failure…
…..Defensive Barriers Destroyed..
….Protocol C Engaged…
….All Ove…Over…Ove1444..
Warning: Virus Detected…All Database Erasure in effect…
…Entering Emergency Shut..shut…shut…shutshutshutshu-
The small screen on the computer interface exploded as a kinetic shell ripped through it as flames broke out and the metal framework began to melt. The sound of the machine died down to to pure silence as the computer system broke.
‘You do not look at the tech. You do not touch the tech, you do not listen to it. Those are not humans inside those frames. You are humans, they are machines. Destroy them, break them with calm minds. Destroy them all. Ignore the screams, they are machines. You are humans.’ said a voice as a woman in military fatigues with a re-breather mask on her face raised a pistol with two hands and holding it steady pulled on the trigger several times as more kinetic shells destroyed what was left of the screen.
Her grey hair was closely cropped and her face showed enough lines showing her age. On her shoulders were stars and lines indicating her high rank. She unclipped a small packet from a shoulder harness and threw it inside the remains of the metal frame averting her eyes as phosphorus flame melted the remaining metal.
A metal headphone was plugged into both ears, one gave her instant communication for direct instructions to the soldiers around her and gave her access to their own implants and the other pumped an ever-changing low-volume static noise into her hearing.
Around her were figures in their own military fatigues who were wielding plasma torch cutters or powered sledge hammers bringing them down on any functional machinery or bipedal drones half destroyed with twitching metal limbs.
None of them were armed with conventional kinetic, laser or plasma weapons. She was the only one fully trusted with a sidearm due to her heavier conditioning than the others.
The mission was relatively straightforward given by Operational Command. All traces of any technology, regardless of value were to be destroyed on site before a final orbital bombardment would destroy any existing elements of the rogue company program.
The woman in military fatigues stood taller than the others around her as her own mechanical eyes glinted as she repeated specific code words will have been drilled into the soldiers around her when they had been deep within their hibernation chambers on the trip here.
Far above her were a small fleet of spaceships, all restricted access to her own communications. When she had fulfilled her orders she would immediately activate kill switches for the soldiers around her and deactivate her own heart implant. She had her own specific orders to follow regarding this small Mining Outpost which was located in a further region of space.
Her voice was boosted and her words carried further as she gestured with one hand and kept the other freely holding her sidearm prepared to fire at a seconds notice.
She had been doing her job long enough with enough containment teams that she was sick of it, sick of the same voices enclosed in metal frames or humans converted into half-dead cyborg forms which called out to her.
They had tried orbital bombardment but found that any traces of the Mining Corporation technology remained in such high demand back on Tellus for experimental study or even for adaptation for further purposes that the risk of leaving it for discovery was too high.
She had returned to previously scoured containment areas where scavengers, corporate opportunists and researchers had met their fate, minds and souls stolen they remained standing in place waiting for half-baked orders as decaying flesh fell from their bodies.
There had been magic in the history of Tellus but she was aware that the promise of immortality was a lie, this was an abomination of technology and the insane dreams of a so-called visionary who lived on within echoes and shadows.
‘You are human. Humans obey orders. Humans protect. Destroy them. Do not listen. No. Solder, do not touch that screen. Do not activate it. They are dead. We do not long for the dead. You are human. Humans obey orders. Humans protect. Destroy them.’ Said the woman as she saw that one of the figures in military fatigues had removed a re-breather and was close to a small screen face plate of a broken Mining Drone.
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Despite her warnings, she was continually fed new recruits for the cause. Those who were experienced and had access to classified information were necessary to keep further away, either up in one of the orbiting ships or based on an operational station.
She was stuck in a cycle of a fast and rapid education and indoctrination program as each new batch was shipped out to her, despite the transit time of six months in cryo-chambers the programming simply failed.
The command prompts she used would partially reinforce their own conditioning unless she had to take direct action. The blood of too many was on her hands and she had been off planet longer than she could remember, hunting down traces and failing to finally eliminate the threat entirely.
‘Humans obey. Destroy the machines. Do not listen. Destroy all traces. This is duty. Humans obey.’ said the woman as she kept a close eye on the dozen of so individuals of her present team dressed in matching military fatigues.
Part of it was the refusal of those above her in positions of authority to use the tools of their enemy. Near-instantaneous conversion of the mind and soul would have been a miracle for the manufacture of soldiers and workers alike but for the fact that they were stuck in the fixed belief that they worked for a living program calling itself CAMPIN.
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There were numbers displayed on the screen and his eyes flared up as information and a trapped mind within began to plead for help. Binary code was directly transferred to his brain through his visual senses despite the protection on offer with the re-breather mask and mixture of chemicals designed within to dull his senses.
‘NO! HUMANS OBEY ORDERS! YOU WILL NOT LOOK! YOU WILL NOT LISTEN! HUMANS OBEY ORDE-’
Despite her commands, and the audible triggers she kept on using the deep built intelligence known as CAMPIN began to override control of the nervous systems of the man. His body began to twitch as the chemicals he was breathing in inside his mask tried to shut down portions of his consciousness in response.
In a way he was being turned into a worker but if they survived this and given sufficient time the damage could be entirely reversed. If not he would become another necessary sacrifice for the good of Tellus. There was no visible face on the screen, no element of humanity except in words which flared in visible neon light.
A young man man with close cropped hair dropped his powered sledgehammer as tears filled his eyes and a kinetic round exploded into his skull exploding it into fragments. His body tumbled forward as the other figures still standing paused in their actions of destroying the machinery and electronics of the ruined Mining base.
The body despite its head having been destroyed twitched for a moment as the woman unclipped another phosphorous grenade and keeping her distance threw it lightly on both the screen and the corpse. Holding her breath and releasing it, she tapped the metal headphone on one of her ears and repeated the same words over and over to make sure that the conditioning was in place.
She had experienced worse before, even seen her entire troop turn on her when they had heard imitation voices and the rogue existence had taken control of their implants and effectively hijacked their nervous systems and brains.
They had learnt from the experience and issued all with automatic kill chemicals inside the masks. Even trying to remove them withourean access code meant automatic activation.
‘You are human. Humans obey orders. Humans protect. Destroy them. Do not listen. No. Solder, do not touch that screen. Do not activate it. They are dead. We do not long for the dead. You are human. Humans obey orders. Humans protect. Destroy them.’ she spoke aloud.
The words would reinforce them for long enough and she knew that despite her entire lack of communication with those in the upper atmosphere above, her actions were being directly monitored. There would be a signal, a form of one-way communication until she could personally be inspected and verified.
All forms of machine contamination were to be limited strictly according to protocol. Even for one such as her who had survived for decades on containment sites like this there were rules that needed to be followed.
‘Humans Obey. Destroy all technology not held in your hands or by those of your comrades. Do not look. Do not listen. Humans obey.’
She was tired of her duty, grown gray, wrinkled and old and seen her own children grow older than her and pass on as she traveled from Mining site to site where all traces of the rogue corporate artificial intelligence were to be eliminated.
She had turned off the long-distance video communications and simply set them to be automatically deleted when she had received new ones. As far as her family back on Tellus knew, she worked for NISRO which was true in a way.
In reality, she was part of an assigned branch of the military which had been tasked to shut down rogue corporate operations which verged on the illegal and immoral. At her higher level, she had never been fully briefed on exactly how CAMPIN had been created but she knew that it had existed hundreds of years ago and been allowed to spread like a virus.
After they had arrived on this small moon, all traces had been deemed to be far too dangerous to be contained, especially when remote signals for several remote Mining colonies had simply gone dark.
They had destroyed as many relays as they could but there was worse, far worse out there in the darkness of space, in the reaches of the universe where beings lived who could destroy entire worlds for entertainment.
This was simply her duty, her call to arms and she was tired. So tired of fighting. Part of the reason that she had chosen to take the one-way shuttle down to the moon before she ordered all communications in the spaceships above was due to the fact that she wasn’t expecting to make her way back this time.
If needed she would settle here, in the ruins of the Mining Outpost and live out her last few years if a Survival Shelter was dropped from near-orbit. She could grow hydroponics in the remains of her life’s work, killing an insane plan to create an entirely self-sustaining Mining Company which had been the lifetime work of a centuries dead genius back on Tellus.
‘Control. Mission compromised. Activate kill switches on all. Humans protect. Do not fear. You are humans. Humans die. All will die. Do not fear!’ the woman reloaded her kinetic weapon as she unloaded a dozen rounds into the twitching Mining Drone destroying it.
Shards flew off the broken robotic form as those around her fell to their knees in similar actions as sharp pain at the back of her neck was her last conscious thought as the chemicals inside her own rebreather activated. She had done her best and hoped it was enough for the orbital team to drop irradiated kinetic rods on this last site.
Her heart stopped beating.
[Personality Scanning Completed...Restart Memory Sequence? Y/N? Proceed with uploading of brain patterns.]