By David C. Daoust
Mayday moved quickly, rushing through the crumbling structures that surrounded him. Bombs could be heard, exploding around him, shaking the very ground, kicking up dust and gravel from the previously mentioned crumbling structures. His heavily armored legs propelled him through the battle zone, the thick carapace that covered his torso was bullet ridden, though the bot himself, was yet unharmed.
The steady flow of data, superimposed over his vision, targeted the discarded gun on the other side of the crumbling wall. The machine gun was highlighted red, with a small circular icon denoting its make and model number.
As he closed the distance, he could hear the familiar scraping of prehensile tails approaching.
Despite his long stride, the serpentine assault bots threatened to overtake him. Rather than risk scaling the wall itself, the massive bot lowered his shoulder, and broke directly through the obstruction.
In one smooth movement, Mayday fluidly grabbed the gun, and before the dust could even clear, fired a series of bursts at the highlighted forms superimposed on his vision. Each burst precisely aimed at the incoming squad of Assault bots– each met its mark.
On contact the bullets pulsed with an electrical charge that coursed over the snake-like bots, which comically shook in place, before toppling over, their sentience forcibly removed from the assault bot-form.
One by one, Mayday knew they would find themselves back within their class room, to be berated by the instructor within. None of these most recent initiates, ever to know, that they had just been taken out by the Commandant himself.
The training area had been cleared. Mayday, now known as the Commandant of the Red Faction, let the newly acquired gun slip from his grip.
The bot-forms the trainees were equipped with, were especially weak verses the bullets Mayday just pumped into them. The point of the exercise was to stop him before he got the gun. Ultimately they failed, though they had routed him for far longer than any previous group.
The new squad proved as powerful as had been reported. With each new class, the assault bots seemed to become that much more effective. With each new class, they seemed more inclined to the training; inclined to surpass the classes that came before.
Mayday’s consciousness jumped from the training bot form. The Monolith, that housed his Data-sphere, allowed him to jump from bot-form to bot-form throughout the Onion.
He found himself sitting within a central chair on his Battle Cruiser’s Bridge.
No sooner had his sentience arrived within the new bot-form, than officers began their reports.
This Battle Cruiser was leading the majority of the Red Faction Fleet, to try and get their grip back on the Belt. As convenient as the Monolith was, the forms had to actually be there to jump to. All bot-Forms had been removed from their holdings in the Neo Vir’ees System.
This threatened the Red Faction’s hold on their first moon, the Commissar’s prize moon, Twin Crown.
Threats on the Red Faction’s holding were handled by the Commandant.
The Fleets progress was steady, if tediously slow.
Mayday jumped again, found himself within a wide darkened room at the head of a long table, a single stark white light shown from above, leaving all else in dense shadow. The woman in the maroon uniform suddenly looked up from the holo-stage she was standing within.
“Oh don’t even…” Natalya Rose warned, with a single hand held up to halt him.
With a brief nod to the harried super-spy, he jumped again– landed back ‘home’, in the bot District of Pinnacle, the underbelly of the enemy, where a secret militia of bots was stationed. The Red Threat was real, and this militia spread the word under the Consortium’s very nose. Recruiters were hard at work here, filling their ranks. Filling the citizens minds with thoughts of revolution.
Reports, reports– the Commandant was restless, worse yet, many reports listed unrest among the Red Faction. The ‘Commissars’ were missing- people noticed. This absence sprouted rumors of a change in leadership. Talk of the Commandant forcibly removing the Commissars from relevance, were now rampant throughout the Red Faction.
While all members of the Red Faction were enlisted in the people’s army, the leadership was balanced by the political officers, plural to many, though those in the know– knew, it was Ivan. Everywhere was Ivan, keeping the people happy and working.
Ivan was missing, MIA, which meant no Commissar’s were anywhere among the people.
That being said, there proved factions among them, which hoped this upheaval of the Commissars be true. The ‘Commandant’ was singular to the people, despite how many ‘Commander bot-Forms’ he actively functioned as. Some wanted that single leader to look to. The Commandant was not pleased to hear, just how many people hoped for a more aggressive approach to the Red Faction. Especially among his Elite Soldiers.
Doubts in his own methods weighed on him as he planned his next jumps; from Astrid Point within the asteroid belt known as ‘Jagger’s Rift’, to Farhull… then all the way to the old Crucible, Halfhull, for a quick check-in with their operations there…
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