By David C. Daoust
Suzanne Otomo moved swiftly through the many corridors that led from Dakota’s lab, all the way to the central command center of the Red Faction ship. It was methodically designed, unlike any ship she had seen anywhere else in the Onion. It was well organized, and efficient, to a degree Suzanne had never experienced. Suzanne chalked it all up, to being designed by bots.
While she had come to appreciate the ship, Suzanne had actually taken to using the Red Faction’s ship over her own Cruiser, for the simple fact, that all of the Soldiers under her command, at least at the start, were bots.
Of course, As her operations progressed, they began to accumulate humans. And as they cleared more of the city, they set up headquarters throughout the city. These housed more and more of her forces. Few were sent back to her own ship. Which meant few would be there when that swarm of Wraiths made their appearance.
‘Clearing’ an area was more about clearing out droids than worrying about Wraiths. First capturing a section, then tracking their own within the many pods that filled the upper sections of the towers. Thanks to Dakota’s intel, early on, they had a method to disconnect the specific human from afar. This method involved convincing the pod that the occupant was dead. The occupant would then be purged, or ejected, from the ‘Uber Brain’. From there, Ivan would be able to track down and retrieve them.
For the most part, the Wraiths would only watch – The droids however, might beat them to the freed humans, all with the idea, that this purged ‘brain cell’ was dead, which might mean they would be swept up, buried within the bio-sphere; ‘returned to the earth’ a familiar term, even to those from the Onion. Whether or not the droids would know, or even check, if they actually were dead, was not a thing Suzanne ever wanted to risk, which would be why the droids were cleared out.
Wrapping her head around the idea that Dakota’s ‘intel’, early on, did not actually come from the Dakota of that time, but from the future Dakota that she’d actually used said intel to free, was something she was still struggling with. Suzanne had thought Dakota sent her the intel while still being trapped within her pod, apparently… not. Suzanne just hoped she never had to explain it.
Why wasn’t this revealed to her back then? Really, the information was passed to her through codes. Codes she had to decipher… it wasn’t like they were having conversations. Truly, Suzanne was working entirely on faith that these messages were actually coming from Dakota anyway… She had to assume that sharing such information would have just confused matters.
Her mind drifted back from that, back to what the hell the Wraiths were doing. They had stopped being a threat after the siege. Suzanne could not know what had changed- but soon after the siege had been broken, the Wraiths had lost all coordination. They no longer posed any threat. For the most part, only sent out small groups of scouting parties to stalk her people.
Suzanne rounded the entrance just as the door slid back to reveal the central command center of her entire operation. Officers were stationed throughout; each either sitting before a terminal, standing over one, or issuing orders over a headset. All were hard at work organizing the sprawled out offensive, throughout the barren city-station.
The leader of the Liberators, Suzanne Otomo, began barking orders as soon as she crossed the threshold- she needed troops, as many as she could get, all to fall back to the Cruiser… right then and there, not in’a few, not tomorrow, not next week… Now!
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