Transhuman Tales

The first sign of trouble was the lack of nutrient sludge coating my skin as I instinctively went to clean off post-sleeve. In 89 years of life, I've so rarely had the pleasure of a clean sleeve, given how often I’ve found myself on the edge  of combat zones. A clean sleeve meant we'd had time to prepare, and that never boded well for me. 

“What's the damage?” I remember asking Hansel. I didn't have time for sleeve-techs to fill me in, and they always missed the crucial intel.

[… It’s not good.]

“How not good, Hansel?”

[Nearly nine months and change. We’re back on Mars, Hildemar.] I remember those words echoing, the facts swirling around my head like nanobots in a hive. I swung my legs around and jumped off the slab, knees a little weaker than I'm used to. Probably a stiff sleeve, been awhile in the tank, but I felt… at home. 

“Uh, h-hello, Ms. Schultz! My name is Le-” 

“Show me a mirror.”

“But, Ms. Schultz, if I ma-”

“You may not. Mirror, now, and a sleeve read.” The chattering ceased and the sleeve-tech ran off to the next room, wheeling back a large mirror as he returned.

The body in the mirror was intensely familiar. It felt like home, even if it didn't smell of it yet. The scars all there, stab wound to the abdomen, long sword slash dividing my torso quite neatly in two, even those last gunshot wounds from Neue-Berlin remained. The tattoos looked faded, but nothing that couldn't be gone over. This is my body, I remember thinking. This is me. 

“Here’s your sleeve read, Ms. Schultz, and a message from-” I waved him off, knowing all too well who would be messaging me. My augs were still accounted for, if no longer the top of the line. My body was still my own, too - just as they'd promised, nobody had sleeved into it but me.

But nine months… my last billet was with the Eye, but my contract specifies a three-month sleeve window, not six. I was missing three months more than I should be. Worry crept up on me like nothing else could. I felt myself shake as I moved toward the door. Those concerns would have to wait - I had other problems for now.

“Right Hansel, lets see what Madam Zhou has to say for herself.”

“Forgive me, Konosuke-san, but I was hoping to discuss payment for an entirely different operation.”

“And what might that be, Mira?”

“A small matter, Mukai. That of your books, and how they may yet fall into the possession of the Consortium’s criminal investigators...”

The server room was dark as night, the neon glow of the outside kept at bay by the smartmat walls. The drink and drugs of Nytrondheim had no place here. Uptime LEDs threw a milky way pattern on the wall behind me, and as I walked between the racks I felt myself at home among the stars. This must be what it was like when we first set out from Earth. 

[You have two, maybe three minutes from the first alarm before responders get here] came tsuki’s calming whisper from behind me, that everpresent moderator of my thoughts. 

”That will more than suffice, dear friend.” 

I withdrew the ecto from my jacket, still moving slowly toward the terminal at the far end of the room. From two metres away I triggered my first program, a backdoored loop-and-resume of the security feeds. 

Withdrawing a datajack from the ecto I moved into position by the terminal ports, telling tsuki to run program number two. Two floors above me, another ecto whirred into life and began sucking as much data as it could from the sys-sec databank, triggering a number of automated alarms as it did so. It wouldn’t take long before the spyder AI found the source and alerted realsec, but by then I would be long gone. 

I flicked my ID broadcasts with a thought. On tsuki’s go, I jacked into the primary databanks for the Inagawa-kai as SHIKO, TAKAGAGI and started a download. The ecto had a VPN tunnelling from Nytrondheim to the Bund through at least a half-dozen other redundant nodes, and would be done with my targeted attack in ninety seconds.

I heard the telltale thundering of jackboots rushing around above me 45 seconds in. At sixty seconds I heard weapons discharging. tsuki chimed in at eighty-five seconds, letting me know that the other ecto had been taken offline. 

Withdrawing the datajack at ninety-one seconds, knowing what I was after now sat cloned on a server in the Bund, I spun around and walked out the door. I had tsuki run one last program for me as I pushed my way into the fire-escape and walked calmly down the stairs. 

The security sensors would have flicked back over to normalcy just as my backdoor would have erased itself, leaving the host AI with nothing to investigate but an ecto filled with one-use access codes and some particularly virulent pornography. 

[As always, Ms. Tsuritsu, you make your job look easy.]

“I know, tsuki. Now, shall we go and tell the Inagawa-kai how terrible their security is?”

The prisoner hood blocked my access to the mesh, but it couldn’t stop me from recognising all the usual spots as I was taken from my hideout in the Bund to the Inagawa-kai safehouse. The smell of freshly-printed dumplings from nearby street vendors mixed with the sounds of Sting kids playing ARball by the community centre to tell me we were deep within souks between Little Shanghai and Nytrondheim. 

As if that wasn’t enough, the clamour of drug-addicts and alcoholics lined up on their arses by the doors to the club, hoping to get let in today for just one more fix, confirmed it. I was even used to their ’disorienting’ little ring-around at the start by now. It was almost like they’re barely trying anymore…

Soon enough, I was dropped into a chair at a long table, across from a larger man in a custom Olympian, asiatic facial features accented by the tell-tale nanotat that identified him as a full-blooded member of the Inagawa-kai. Their mesh ID told me that it was Mukai Konosuke. Arms crossed, fingers drumming a nervous pattern on his forearm, it was hard to see him as the intimidating figure he had cut during my first visit here. 

“I hear that you have concluded your pen-test efforts on our datacentres?” Mukai asked, a twitch of nerves pushing his voice just that little bit higher than his normal barotone. 

“You are reliably informed, as always, Konosuke-san.” Were deference and respect not already hard-coded into my life, I would still have made good use of them here. The Inagawa-kai had no reason to fuck around, especially not with external contractors. Examples always need to be made within the yakuza of Valles New-Shanghai, so it was best to ensure that they remained in short supply.

“Am I to take it then that you have compiled a report on any weaknesses you have discovered, and that you have recommendations on how to tighten our security?”

“Hai, this is true. I will be happy to send you my report and recommendations, but first there is a question of payment to be answered…” depsite my best efforts I felt the twitches of a grin at the corners of my mouth. I looked up into Mukai’s eyes, searching for a sign of the fury to come. 

“You will have payment wired to you upon receipt of your report, to the accou-” 

“Forgive me, Konosuke-san, but I was hoping to discuss payment for an entirely different operation.” 

“And what might that be, Mira?” 

“A small matter, Mukai. That of your books, and how they may yet fall into the possession of the Consortium’s criminal investigators.” 

The tension in the room was tangible.  Muscles tensing, Mukai was visibily concerned, despite his piercing glare. No, it was more than that. His was a look of pure dread, those darting eyes and twitching brow betraying a man coming to terms with an untenable situation. 

“The Taishu-kai are still powerful, and can never be trusted. Mira, my darling, be-”

These were the last known words of Uda Tsuritsu, my mother, whispered to me through the mesh late one night in Nytrondheim. All of nine years old, I remember clinging to those words, letting them sink deep into my mind, knowing that Master Kioko would never let me keep the waves themselves. 

For generations, the our family had lived a servile life at the foot of the Taishu-kai ladder, dutifully serving the yakuza on Mars as we had on Earth; we had always been obedient, hard-working, and docile, as Master Kioko told me one day. 

“Dormant, more like,” Uda had said. 

I was nine years old, newly motherless, when I found myself falling into line in the service of the Taishu-kai. Sutorītoratto, they called me. I had to run from safehouse to safehouse, delivering messages, packages, and offering my services to the different families, returning home late each night to Nytrondheim, and to the harsh tutilage of Master Kioko. 

When I was eleven, I was taught how to fight. I’ve never cared for violence, but my place was as hohei, born to serve, born to fight, born to die. I felt the wrath of my Masters too many times to count as I tried, and failed, to learn the ways of our wars. Don’t let me be mistaken, mistreated though I was, I was still keen to serve, but I was repeatedly beaten and starved for my failures as a warrior. 

At least I wasn’t the only one. 

Tadashi Umesaka, then the sum of twelve years of Taishu-kai violence, another poor soul orphaned by dishonour, became my constant companion in punishment. He lacked the physical capacity to win, given a sleeve wracked with respiratory problems and atrophy, and so try as he might he could never escape the lashings of failure. 

“We seem destined for scars over marks, Mira,” Tadashi choked out through tears one evening, blood flowing freely down both our backs as we starved in the cages for our failings. 

“These are the irezumi we have been given, Tadashi,” I said, holding back tsunamis crashing from my eyes. 

“Honourable or not, I will always wear them with pride.” 

When I turned thirteen, Master Kioko took me into her study. Torso wrapped tightly with make-shift bandages from the clothes I’d torn at training the night before, I steeled myself ahead of the fresh beating I was surely about to receive. While I struggled to recall what I had done between sleeping and waking that morning to justify such abuse, by now I had come to expect nothing but cruelty from Master Kioko. 

“From tomorrow, you will have two new sensei. Master Yamagata has taken a liking to your shrewdness, and wishes for you to learn his ways.” 

Master Yamagata was renowned for his skills within the mesh, taking advantage of god-given and morph-driven natural intelligence to tread the many fine lines that made up New Shanghai. To train under Hiroshi, as I came to call him, was a dream come true. And yet…

“And my other sensei, Kioko-san?” 

“Mistress Kyouka will take on the rest of your trianing,” she had said with a sneer across her face. Kyouka-san was similarly renowned for her skills, instead using natural charm and a selection of high-end morphs to take advantage of the weaknesses of the flesh. 

It made sense, after earning all the scars I’d gotten from Kyoko-san, that I would have the rest carved into my heart and soul instead. 

As I had come to learn distaste for violence I soon came to find disgust in the face of Mistress Kyuoka’s teachings. To take advantage of the appetittes of egotists, the powerful, and the perverted, had been pitched to me as ‘art’, but even the basics left me gagging at the thought of it. 

“You’re coming along, Mira. Soon you’ll be an Ātisuto like me,” I recall Kyuoka-san saying after one particularly soul-sucking session. Breathless and revulsed, I choked on my own words, swallowing them too as I gathered myself, bowed, and left the Mistress’ chambers. 

I have only ever felt like a baishunpu in bed since.

On the other hand, Hiroshi was a charming sensei, full of wisdom, grace, and patience as I worked my way through his challenges. Whereas teaching under Kyuoka-san was intense, forced, and soul-sucking, listening to Hiroshi talk about the mesh was a pleasure. 

“Before the networks of Earth-that-was became the mesh we know today, all connections were sacred,” he told me. “You could trace each line between each mote, each host, each server, and with tender fingertips unravel their secrets.” 

“And now?”

“You could never hope to trace all those lines today, but you must learn to try. To know the soft touches and keystrokes to unlock the universe, you must learn.” 

From then onwards, day after day, I would push myself through Kyuoka-san’s teachings, pass her tests, fuck her whores, learn to influence men, charm women, just so I could leave that godforsaken room and march myself to Hiroshi’s study for class. 

I learned to use the tools at my disposal, sniffers, spoofers, to find data, to take it, to make it mine. Each week, Hiroshi would set up a new test server for me to crack, changing the security each time, making it more and more difficult to crack. It wasn’t long before I had owned them all.

Then, I was taught to master brute-force cracking, how to tweak & deploy exploit hunters to get the data I needed. 

“Is this the tenderness you speak of, sensei?” I asked one day, finally realising that the soft touches and keystrokes Yamagata-san had spoken of were absent in these lessons. 

“No, Mira. These are the monsters we show to all to keep our deftness hidden.” 

For once, Mistress Kyuoka’s teachings seemed to ring true. While the mesh was a battlefield far removed from the bedroom, it held that we must keep our enemies focused on our fronts, so that they will not see the daggers which we hold behind our backs. 

It was not the only time that Kyuoka-san’s teachings would merge with Hiroshi’s. When I had learned to crack every test server Yamagata-san could throw at me, he gave me one last hurdle to surpass. 

“This server is not connected to the mesh,” he told me, pulling up a map in AR. “You will need to go to this room, at the end of the corridor, and crack it manually.”

“Hai, sensei. I will be back within the hour,” my overconfidence bringing a wry smile to Hiroshi’s face. With my head held high, an easy target in my crosshairs, I marched along the corridors of the safehouse, thinking of all the different ways in which I could pull data from the server through my DNI, so caught up in my inevitable success that I nearly ran head-first into my true challenge.

“I’m sorry, Tsuritsu-san, but you cannot go in there.”

Standing before me was a burly Olympian, irezumi rippling across the surface of muscles I could scarcely fit into my gaze. 

“Of course not. My apologies,” I said, giving a low bow as I backed away, and ran back down the corridor. 

“Where is your data, Tsuritsu-san?” came Hiroshi’s voice as I slunk back into his study, my heartbeat all but deafening me to his words. 

“I could not get into the room, sensei. Forgive me, but I am not allowed, nor am I strong enough to fight the guard who-”

Whack, Hiroshi’s gentle veneer faded as his open palm struck hard against the table. “Nonsense! You do not need to fight your way past someone to get through a door! You don’t need permission!” 

“Yamagata-san, I don’t see how I can get past somebody I cannot fight! If I could just-” 

“I am disappointed, Tsuritsu-san. I thought perhaps you had learned something from your time with Mistress Kyuoka.

My heart sunk. It had been weeks since I had heard her name, recalled her classes, so accustomed now to dissociation in her presence I had become. 

That night I cried myself to sleep, for the first time in a long while, and the next day I dressed up and made my way back to that corridor, and walked up to that gentle guard…

The rest of that night is blanked for me now, but I’ve kept a copy elsewhere, and I still remember sending off the data to Hiroshi along with a two-word message:

“Never again.”

His one word response? “Okay.”

One day, shortly after I had turned fifteen, Yamagata-san said that he had a gift for me; he was going to pair me up with another student of his. He politely hummed his way through all of my questions, my nerves boiling over all morning, until the door finally opened and I nearly fell out of my chair. 

“Umesaka-san!” I exclaimed, running into the arms of Tadashi, bearing a familiar face and battered body. 

“Tsuritsu-san! It has been awhile, hasn’t it Mira?” When I play it back I can still hear the smile in his voice, and see that tiny glimmer of hope in the corner of his eye. 

I turned to Hiroshi, and thanked him with a low bow, before asking him that simple question, the one I wish I’d never uttered, for fear that it may have brought my fate down upon me. 

“Why are we being paired, Master Yamagata?” 

“Because it’s time for you to finally begin your service to the Taishu-kai.” 

Whereas I had found myself learning at the mercy of Mistress Kyuoka, it transpired that Tadashi had not been cast out, as I had once feared, for his weaknesses. Instead, Master Tetsuyuki had taken up his brusied and bleeding body one day and claimed him for his own. Ida-san helped Tadashi to become fluent in shinjun, to become one with the shadows, to disappear in daylight. 

It was a skill set that Tadashi was all too happy to show off. I quickly lost count of the number of times he would appear behind me, in locked rooms, in the dead of night, even on the few occasions that I found myself leaving the safehouse for my own purposes, something I had finally been afforded the privilege of doing. Somehow, amidst a coming of age marred by terror, I ceased to be sutorītoratto. Somehow I had become honmono no hito - somehow I had become real. 

I received a few short lessons in more general social manipulation from Amari, a friend of Mistress Kyuoka’s, and practiced them at length. Social engineering was far prettier and more useful than the skills of sultry sluts, and got me far further in my training than I could have hoped for. Besides, it was far easier to pretend to be a disinterested payroll AI than to pretend to enjoy sex. 

After a week or two it became clear that Tadashi and I worked well together; I’d engage with the target, confusing and disorienting them, sniffing data where I could, while Tadashi snooped around the data centres, jacking in and taking the motherlode. Occasionally we’d even change roles - we’d learned a thing or two from each other, and it’s remarkably easy to snoop around when you’ve already enginnered a decent scrap of access for yourself. An honest-to-god ecto and high-vis AR displays can get you further than you’d think…

After a few small-fish jobs, scraping small businesses to see what kind of payment plans Taishu-kai should consider for protection, Hiroshi called us into his study for a meeting. Walking in together, we were both surprised to see Nakama Kome herself sitting behind Yagamata-san’s desk.

Nakama-san, leader of the Taishu-kai in Valles-New Shanghai, in the flesh, elegance and grace and an almost grandmotherly face hiding what Tsuritsu’s like me knew to be decades of violence, torture, ruthlessness, and tyranny. How odd to think that somebody so vicious could look so innocent. 

“Tsuritsu-san, Umesaka-san, a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance,” she’d said in barely more than a whisper. 

“Hai, Nakama-san, the pleasure is ours,” I said, hoping a nose-scraping bow would hide my own disgust. Beside me, Tadashi followed suit, his face betraying none of what I assumed was a seething anger burning through his chest. 

“Yagamata-san tells me that you two are his best and brightest, and that is what I have come for today. You see, we have a problem which needs solving…” 

The job which Nakama-san went on to describe was multi-faceted, dangerous, and above all, highly unlikely to succeed. Our rivals in the Matsuba-kai had grown reckless in recent weeks, drawing the attention of the Rangers in a way that threatened not only their own businesses, but ours also. 

Our dear leaders in their infinite wisdom had decided amongst themselves that even the most power-hungry and determined of our enemies would not act so boldly without just cause. Tadashi and I were to be just one part of a wider plan to discover what had emboldened the Matsuba-kai.

Like many of the yakuza on Mars, we outsourced our data security. We made more than enough money to invest in server space in the corporate data centres, and enough on top of that to keep the spiders out. Between us both it took nearly three days of careful probing and social engineering to find our window. 

I was going to get access as a prospective client, looking for server space for rent, and Tadashi would follow up with a more clandestine intrusion in the evening. With any luck, I’d get close enough to the Matsuba-kai server to tag it for Tadashi, and meanwhile leave a little gift for the AA-corp. 

Walking through the server clusters I felt something I’ve yet to come close to recapturing - a sense of absolute awe and wonder. The darkness of the racks, interspersed with the twinkling of uptime LEDs and status displays, painted a beautiful picture. Afterwards, my muse tsuki would tell me that my heart rate lowered a solid 10 BPM while I was wandering through the clusters… This must have been what it was like for the first of us to reach out towards the stars.

I left my ‘gift’ in a server rack on the other side of the centre from the Matsuba-kai cluster, and signed a contract under a fake ID for just enough server space to avoid arousing suspicion. Now it was up to Tadashi…

I sat in an all-night cafe around the corner from the centre, just opposite where Tadashi would be coming out. A couple of Taishu-kai enforcers had come along for the ride, and once they’d given us the all-clear I had tsuki start counting. From the plans we’d gotten yesterday, Tadashi had 30 seconds to the server floor, 15 seconds to the Matsuba-kai cluster, and another 45 seconds from the first alarm to get out. We’d spent hours in simulspace crafting a few specialist programs, perfecting them for the job at hand…

45 seconds after the all-clear, I remotely opened my present. Konton.ali unfurled from lines of compressed code and began to brute-force any and every server it could find, while triggering every alarm it could worm its exploits into. 30 seconds later, the tac-net came alive. 5 seconds after that, everything went black…

I came to strapped to a chair, arms behind my back, blood trickling down the side of my face. A figure stood over me, shock baton in hand, the electricity arcing as they inched it closer to my face. I tried to look into their eyes, and saw a face I still can’t remember. 

Drugged, clearly, dazed and disoriented, I was asked who I was. I declined to answer. I was asked who I was working for. I declined to answer. I was asked if I was alone. I declined to answer. 

My next memory, left untainted by the psychosurgeon at my request, was of coming to, clothes torn, legs sore, thighs bruised, the taste of blood mixing with something unfamiliar in my mouth... 

The memory after that was two weeks later, sitting down to tea with Nakama-san. Tadashi was there, staring into nothing while we were thanked for what we’d done. What we’d endured. To my left, a young woman I now know as Kirigaya Maru, kept glancing from side to side, eyes never resting on a single spot for long. 

“… The Matsuba-kai are no longer a concern. Your hard work, and great sacrifices, have ensured the Taishu-kai’s survival, and we owe you greatly,” Nakama-san intoned. “From dishonourable beginnings you’ve both come, and look at you now…”

We were the spitting image of survivors, complete with the mental pain and emotional anguish. If I had a soul, it had been lost long ago, and now even the memory of it was gone. 

“Ephemira, Tadashi, Maru, I would like to offer you three an opportunity… to strike out on your own. We are looking to expand our operations beyond Valles-New Shanghai, and we think you three would make excellent so-honbucho. So, what do you say?” 

“Hai, Namaka-san,” our voices an echoing harmony. We finished our tea and left, awaiting news of where we’d get to go, and what we’d get to do. 

Tadashi held my hand and led me back to his room, where he and I broke down, our heaving sobs like earthquakes causing tsunamis in the oceans of our eyes. 

“W-When we see the psychosurgeons in the morning, we should remove this too, right Mira? We must be professional,” Tadashi said, wiping the last of his tears from his face. 

“Hai.” We gripped each other tight. He kissed me on the forehead, and then my lips, and then, and then… despite my best intentions, and a complete dissociation, Mistress Kyuoka’s lessons came to life under the tender touches of Tadashi’s mesh-trained fingertips. 

When we both emerged from the psychosurgeons, we met for tea, and celebrated our newfound success and station like true professionals. Tadashi will never remember the closest thing to love I’ve felt, but I quietly made sure that I will never forget. 

Hildemar Schultz - Ultimate Exemplar TITAN Quarantine Zone, Mars, AF 4.

Hildemar blinked back memories of the Fall as the world went to hell around her. Firing wildly into the sky, she fell backwards and scurried ’til her back was against something solid, the screeching of old circular saws ahead just barely drowning out the drone of friendly rotocopters and the pop-pop-pop of small arms. 

“Didn’t think we’d encounter shit like this so close to the edge!” came Ny-Loq’s cry over the TacNet. “How many?”

The TacNet continued highlighting threats left and right, tallying tangos in the corner of Hildemar’s display. The irregular red hazes continued to dart around the skies above the canyon, the sound of the buzzsaws coming closer. This was the first time since the fall that Hildemar had seen the Headhunters, and this was a full squadron… The tango tally in her HUD finally settled on a number; [12] threats detected.

“These are Mark II, right Val?” Hildemar shot back, slipping a fresh mag into her railgun AR. Valerie helpfully nodded over the TacNet as a missile flew over her head, detonating somewhere behind her. The shockwave rippled through her, but thankfully couldn’t throw her any further against her cover.

This was Hildemar’s first time into the Zone, something she had resisted for awhile after the Fall. Mars’ efforts to become Earth II seemed to be just cheap tricks and gimmicks, and the TITAN Quarantine Zone just one big reminder of the devil which had taken away her home. Now, after two days into her first perimeter patrol, it seemed the TITANs wanted to take her away, too.

Picking herself up, her muse Hansel telling her just how successfully she was ignoring a couple of broken ribs, Hildemar vaulted over one cover and sprinted toward the next. A group of TITAN Headhunters flew about in formation ahead of her, their seam-covered hulls a patchwork of unintuitive design blurring as they rushed towards a crouching figure, highlighted green.

She could almost see Valerie’s smirk as she whipped her rifle around and fired overhead, a full-auto burst directly into the bellies of the beasts. Their buzzsaws whirred and clattered as they bounced off each other, and then fell from the sky amidst the supersonic KRACKS of Valerie’s railgun rounds; [9] threats detected.

“That wasn’t bad, eh, Frau Tilde?”

[Flirting back won’t kill them any faster], Hansel quipped as Hildemar reached for her belt with both hands, still sprinting toward cover.

“No, but these might.”

The faintest clatter of metal spoons on martian rock was drowned out by another group of Headhunters, and Hildemar leaped and twisted through the air, throwing her arms to the red-tinted sky as she let two grenades slip out of her hands.

The shockwave from the high-explosives helped guide her into cover, followed closely by the fizzling sound of an electromagnetic pulse. Reaching for her rifle, she heard Ny-Loq and Valerie both let loose another railgun barrage, and the sound of fallen metal against the rocks; [5] threats detected.  

[That was... effective]. Hansel’s distaste for violence was deliberate, but Hildemar knew that they would still play on her ego when it helped. Valerie shot her a thumbs up over TacNet. She failed to hold back a smile as she pulled up her rifle, searching for the nearest targets. 

Scanning the horizons she saw just the one large group of red marks; they’d flown past them all and were swinging around for another approach, enhanced hearing easily picking up their thruster hums and buzzsaw whirs.

Two green figures stood out from behind their cover before her, Valerie & Ny each pushing fresh magazines into their rifles. Two more figures lay motionless on the floor behind them, a pulsing blue aura indicating signs of life, though those were fading fast. Their CO, Kenshi-1, had already resigned himself to death, asking only that the team brought back his stack so he could brief himself on his death. Their Zone guide, on the other hand, wouldn’t make it back no matter how badly they may have wanted to.

“Get ready for them!” cautioned Ny-Loq as the Headhunters came in, slower this time than before. The familiar twinge of her neurachem set Hildemar running before she fully grasped why, her TacNet registering almost too late the incoming missiles. Hildemar was thrown several metres, select-hearing filters failing to counteract the ringing in her ears, enhancements barely registering the volley of supersonic KRACKS coming from her rear.

[You won’t sustain another hit like that] Hansel cautioned, throwing her medichine readouts up on her AR feed. 

She turned around and saw Ny-Loq still firing at the Headhunter formation, dropping three of them almost on his own. Valerie’s rifle had been blown from her hands, but she was still firing away with a heavy pistol, a Fall relic she wouldn’t let go of. She sat with her back against the martian rock, bleeding badly from a leg wound. Her green mark became tinged with a hint of blue; [2] threats remaining.

“WE HAVE TO GO!” Ny-Loq screamed across the TacNet, dropping his rifle as he failed to find a final fresh mag strapped to his chest. “RIGHT NOW!”

[Valerie will not make it in her current state], Hansel warned, pre-empting Hildemar’s mad dash towards her. 



“It’s not that bad Tilde, I can walk, I can- agh!” Valerie’s protests were cut off by her own cry of pain, as she tripped and landed on her blown-out knee. Hildemar grabbed her by the arm, wrapping it across her shoulders as she helped Valerie forward.

“She won’t make it, Tilde!” Ny-Loq had his shard pistol drawn, truly a weapon of last resort, as he fumbled Kenshi-1’s stack into a vest pocket. “They’re coming back around!” 



The last two Headhunters were moving fast, saw blades glinting in the martian sun, the whirring competing with the ringing in Hildemar’s ears as she half-dragged Valerie behind her. 



“We can’t take her with us-“ [She’s not going to make it, Hilde-]
 “Come on, LEAVE HER!” 
[She’ll be better off forgetting all of thi-] 
“DROP HER, TILDE!”  [If you don’t let her go, you’ll all die]



The mess of voices in her head blended together with the whirring of the TITAN blades coming up behind her, but then she heard an altogether different whining as Ny-Loq hosed flechettes into Valerie’s other leg.

She cried out, her body twisting through the air as she fell, her helmet coming loose and falling beside her. 

Hildemar felt something grab her hand as she looked back at Valerie, her face contorted into panic and pain. For just a moment, she could have sworn it was Hans that she was looking at, all these decades later, the martian sun reflecting in eyes that still caught the memories of dear Luna’s light. 

Even as she was dragged along, her legs unthinkingly carrying her forward, Hildemar could not look away as the Headhunters converged upon Valerie, her green mark glowing blue before fading quickly to black.

It wasn’t until hours later that Ny-Loq broke the uneasy silence between he and Hildemar, the Headhunters and their friends a more comfortable distance behind them.

“She’s backed up, Tilde, we all are. You remember that, right?”

“But she is dead now, Ny. She will never live again,” she spat the words out as though she would choke on them otherwise.

“Yeah, but Valerie will still live. Sometimes, you’ve got to think less about these things, Tilde. You’ve seen too much death to forget about the life that will go on.” 

Hildemar Schultz - Private Citizen The Desert, [NATION REDACTED], BF 45

Tilde pressed the mouth of the bottle between her cracked and bleeding lips and drank the last of her water. For two weeks she had rationed harshly, giving just enough to fuel her augmented body and push herself onwards, and it had served her well. Long after the rest of her squad had left her, either shot or starved to death, she persevered , holding one shitty patch of sand in a desert full of it.

The encampment had strategic value to Direct Action, even if they wouldn’t even admit to operating on the continent. A lieutenant in their newly minted, freshly augmented Black Operations Forces, Hildemar could only guess as to why. It was a badly kept secret that DA were fighting a proxy war against another corp, with each managing to find a nation-state willing to fight on the public front lines. They could be atop an underground water reservoir, although the scanners weren’t picking anything up. They could have be holding fast for worker drones to construct some vast military installation.

All that Tilde knew was that for two weeks she had fought the nameless, badgeless, flagless forces that had come her way, keeping them away however she could, and that it was going to come to an end sooner or later. She would surely starve to death, or die of exposure, or if the whirring sound of helicopter blades had anything to do with it, perhaps she would be spared the pain by being driven mad first…

New-New Delhi, BF 42-39

Two years and countless surgeries, and still Tilde was not whole. Her body torn apart by her last stand in the desert, she had been shipped back to New Germany to undergo emergency procedures to save her life. For six months Direct Action agreed to foot the bill, as she went from doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital, in an attempt to regain what she had lost - herself.

After that, she was left to fend alone. She dipped into her savings to fund her recovery. She agreed to experimental procedures, accepting that to become whole again she may need to be a guinea pig. She had spent her entire life not only trying to make herself better, but believing that she was better, and knowing that being better was all that mattered. Survival of the fittest, and until that godforsaken desert that’s what she was.

Now she was nothing.

The procedures had left her body scarred, and in constant agony. Though now she could walk, each step had her feeling daggers twisting into her thighs. Though now she could stand, awaking each morning was a fight between her desire to rise and her body’s demands that she fall.

Even then, she persisted.

Each procedure, no matter how painful, brought her one step closer to fitness. With Europe just barely clinging to the ethics of a toothless union, she flew to India, gritting her teeth as her body silently screamed its way through hours of turbulence. She rushed herself to a private hospital when she landed, screaming a doctor’s name she’d heard on the net while thrusting her credit card into the first pair of hands that tried to push her away.

In New-New Delhi she continued seeking help, and in private clinics marred by the city’s dust and dirty ethics, she received it. Before long it was the smog, not her legs, that kept her from running. After awhile, not even the smog could stop her.

Though to the outside world she was still damaged goods, her mind lost to her recovery, her body scarred beyond belief, she regained her strength. She retrained her mind to know her body, to use it, to use all of it. She persisted, even though part of her knew that DA would never take her back, that New Germany wouldn’t want her back, that nobody else knew who she was…

Which made it all the sweeter when one December day, a nurse brought her a phone and said that somebody was offering her a job…

[LOCATIONS REDACTED], BF 38

Manu Bhattacharya was far calmer in person than she was expecting. Being the founder of a PMC, and the man who called it “Ultimate Security”, Hildemar expected a towering figure, perhaps chewing a cigar as he went over his expectations for her service. Instead, Manu seemed remarkably average.

Someone had noticed Hildemar’s dedication to rebuilding and refining her body, and had passed along her information to Manu. His company, and his entire life, were built around two things: the idea that to improve is to survive, and that to improve often is to live. Hildemar couldn’t agree more.

Despite her years of service and expertise, she had started at the bottom, running drills with a dozen other new recruits. For most of them, their slower P.E times and constant infraction notices came from a newness to the trade. For Hildemar, it was the six year absence of her military regimen, and the twinges of pain which still wracked her body from time to time.

Only two other recruits passed boot the first time around - an uppity younger man called Ny Loq, and the smooth-talking Valerie Sunti. They were rolled into an eight-strong unit led by Kenshi Osho, a man who preferred cultivating respect over commanding it, and were pushed straight out into the field. They provided security, they recovered items, they rescued hostages, they did whatever Ultimate Security were contracted to do, wherever on earth and whenever needed.

Hildemar after the Fall

In the months after the Fall, life seemed on the up and up for the Ultimates at large. With the scorched Earth’s orbit around the Sun functioning as an ever-present reminder of transhumanity’s failings, there was both a rapid increase in Aspirants making their way to Ultimate habitats to join up and a rise in demand for Ultimate mercenary teams.

Children of Oligarchs looking for protection on a Rimward soul-searching trip, corporations hiring deniable assets for black operations, the odd “interested party” willing to pay for a private group to keep people out of the TQZ, and even the odd gatecrashing team wary of stepping into a world rife with hostile xenos - anyone and everyone looking for the best of the best were turning to the Ultimates.

It was hard not to feel a little proud when hearing all the stories being told about us… but for every story told of a refugee saved there were dozens more stories, dead on the lips of those we left behind. Their looks of fear, and their screams… they still haunt me now, as they did back then. Hansel and I kept that amongst ourselves, even the nightmares - I owed the fallen too much to have their memory scraped from me by any psychosurgeon, consequences be damned.

I feared demotion, rejection, exile. At the beginning of the end I was still just an initiate, a veteran FNG but as society began to spread even further toward the stars I found myself prompted to Exemplar, along with almost everyone in my unit. Before long some of us, Ny Loq included, made Ducti - but operations never was my strong suit.

For five years I stayed on Aspis, teaching aspirants, training initiates, and pulling gigs with Ny Loq and his crew. We were there well before the habitat was officially given to the Ultimates by Go-Nin, who -although hesitant at first- gave us access to space for an FOB as an initial investment in our protection of the Discord gate.

For five years, I was outwardly calm, and inwardly numb, in the face of all comers. Every doubt I had about the Ultimates, every pang of self-hatred, was buried deep down, deep enough that I feel even Hansel feared to mention it. Deep enough that I had convinced myself that I no longer cared for transhumanity, that I thought I was becoming a real Ultimate.

The stress of a job would sometimes crack my shell. I lashed out. At aspirants, against the ducti in front of aspirants, at other transhumans… The words I’d learned through years of service would come out of my mouth unprompted, unfiltered, ‘filth’, ‘unwashed’, ‘genetrash’… Ny once said I was starting to earn by boots. Until that day I hadn’t thought him capable of truly hurting me. 

For five years, my hatred simmered, then shifted, until I finally realised the truth - there was no space among the Ultimates for someone who cared for transhhumanity, and there was no space in my heart for the corrosive brutality of the technofacsists who had taken me in and raised me as a killer.

Hildemar Schultz - Private, Neue Deutsche Militär New Germany, BF 58

Hildemar tossed and turned in her bunk as she grappled with her new beginnings - four years she’d tossed sheets and bricks with Kaspar before she was taken in by the Neue Deutsche Polizei (New German Police), turning Der National Widerstand (The National Resistance) into the pointy stick of New Germany’s far-right resistance to corporate oppression. Now, she was a private among the military wing of the nation which had hunted her for years. 


She felt worn down, a shadow of her former self, the result of state-sponsored corporate torture. New German justice, brought to you by Kaptain Kapital. Her nightmares were still filled with blood and bullets, with Hans and handgranate (hand grenades), but the night now never seemed to end. 

It was with too much dread and too little sleep that she faced her drill sergeant the next day.

——

A few months later, PFC Schultz emerged a newly-minted weapon for the Neue Deutsche Militär (New German Military), and was put straight onto the front lines. A never-ending conflict which had arisen between New Germany and NeoPrussia to the west, required fresh blood, and in an urban guerellia war an ex-extremist’s knowledge came in handy.

Schultz bore the slings and arrows of her squadmates with ease, knowing she would prove herself in time. With each tripwire bypassed, each hand-grenade disarmed, PFC Schultz felt the mood shift from hostility to neutrality, but still she wore the words Verdammt neue Typ (Fucking New Guy).

It was on her twelfth patrol as the FNG that she earned her place. A night watch along the lower rooftops of a suburban slum, she was joined by Staff Sergeant, Emilia Müller, a kinder woman than most. While discussing the squad’s likely new orders, Hildemar caught the soft glint of a scope across the way, and shoved her Staff into a slumborn family’s dinner to save her from the shot.

Returning fire with her sidearm, her rifle caught beneath her in the scuffle, she felt the combat stims start to flood her system as memories of Hans returned to her, still waltzing in the moonlight even as her own muzzle flash cast harsh shadows over her recollections. Moving up from cover, Hildemar grabbed at her rifle and swung it before her, loosing a volley of shots at the flashes across the way.

Even as slugs burst through the pig iron walls around her, Hildemar persisted, determined not to waver in the face of death as she had done on Kaspar’s rooftop all those years ago. She emptied mag after mag across the way, protecting her Staff while their squad came up the rear, and only when she finally ran dry did she retreat under the covering fire of the team.

A recon patrol the next day confirmed 12 combatants KIA. A hacked surveillance sat feed determined that of those 12, Hildemar killed nine. When her Staff Sergeant told her the news, she was being promoted, she was being commended, Hildemar merely shrugged and continued on.

“You know what? I think it’s time you got a nickname more befitting of your rank,” mused Emilia. 

“How about Tilde?” 



Hildemar Schultz - DNW New Recruit New Germany, BF 62

The emergency klaxons blared somewhere behind Hildemar’s head, the rapid succession of footsteps and gunfire between the tones forming a soundscape so horrifying as to wake her up completely. Eyes wide open, hand grasping for her Walther, a relic stolen from dear vater’s study, she rolled clumsily out of bed and ran into the hallway, tripping over a fallen weapons rack on her way. They were under attack.

It was her fifth day with Der National Widerstand (The National Resistance). Hans, her very own Bad Boy of Babenhausen, had introduced her to the DNW and their less-than-charismatic leader Kaspar the day after their first rebellious roll in the hay. Hildemar’s father Ferdinand, a holy man and an accepting man, had warned her of the DNW. “They are too radical,” he would say, “they wouldn’t know a traitor if one stared back at them from the mirror.”

Still she did not listen. She had heard enough from Hans, Kaspar, and the neue nationale Medien, to know that both the governments and corporations were to blame for it all. Unchecked immigration and corporate expansionism led to a wealth divide that left families like her’s and Hans’ poorer, while the Außenseiter (outsider) corporate executives pocketed more than half of Germany’s wealth, or so she’d heard.

All she heard now was the sound of the rotordrones overhead and of jackboots at the door. Hildemar was new enough that she hadn’t been told much about what the DNW were up to, but she wasn’t quite naive enough not to assume the worst. “Domestic terrorists” was a label applied equally by both sides in this fight, and this is what she was about to face - the full force of the Neue Deutsche Polizei (New German Police).

Hildemar fumbled with the safety as she came nearer to the doors, the gunshots now much louder than the footsteps. Coming round a corner and up a flight of stairs, she burst through a door onto the balcony just as Hans had taught her, sweeping left-to-right with her vater’s shitty Walther.

Hans was crouched behind a crate, occasionally firing a submachine gun over the wall at the forces amassing below. A girl she knew, Mia, lay with her back against the wall, a pool of blood growing beneath her. Kaspar stood defiant to her right, casings from an assault rifle flying through the air, his hair swept back by the oncoming buzz of the rotordrones.

Hildemar ducked down beside Hans, firing a few shots at one of the smaller drones as it flew down to greet her. The first shot missed, the second glancing off the armoured shell. Her third shot, though, crashed right through the forward-left rotor, only to be swallowed whole by the bulletstream that now came tearing through the air at Hans. 



His body jerked, vibrating with the kinetic force of each and every slug that pierced his armoured jacket and ripped through his torso. As he fell, and his face turned towards her, he seemed almost at peace - his movements were those of a dancer out to waltz with the moon. His body hit the ground, and Hilde pulled him up against the wall, begging him for life. She received no answers. 

Turning around, Hildemar looked for help, but saw only Kaspar looking down at her and Hans. 

“Verdammt neue Leute,” he sighed. “Komm mit mir. Es ist Zeit zu gehen.”

“Fucking new people. Come with me. It's time to leave.”