Characters:

Bishop Keilor- leader of the anti-augmented human faction

Sebastian Beck- Former Alliance Marine Colonel, Keilor's 2nd.

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Free Trader Argus

Parking Orbit above Parliament

Sebastian Beck was having that same old nightmare again. It always took him back to the war: his war. When a cabal of rouge corporations rebelled against Alliance authority, he was a twenty year old Marine platoon leader. What the history books called the Corporate Wars had been a little slice of hell.

The Corporate Wars were a bloody, hard fought affair that lasted three years but his dream always took him back to the final assault on MilTech’s headquarters on Pelenor. The Pelenor system was littered by the debris of the largest naval battle in Alliance history to date. The fleet had slugged it out with the rebels for over a week before they had cleared the space above the planet enough to begin the assault.

The transport carrying the 22^nd Battalion was the old Normandy. She and her four of her sisters brought the 3^rd Regiment into orbit and began a 2 hour bombardment from orbit to smash as much of the planetary defenses as they could find. When the bombardment ended, the assault shuttles immediately began the drop. Even with an escort of fighters and fire support from the ships, four assault shuttles were destroyed and another eight were so badly damaged that once they were down, they would never take off again.

Beck’s platoon was lucky. He got down with all five of his squads, a headquarters detachment and a heavy weapons section. That was the last thing that went right all day. Due to heavy fire on the drop, they were 20 kilometers off target. Enemy jamming snarled communications and they couldn’t reach Battalion HQ. To top it all off, they had landed less than a klick from an enemy artillery battery under heavy concealment and were forced to assault it almost as soon as they were dirt side.

What they did not know at the time was that Beck’s Bobcats had landed inside the enemy perimeter. Their quick assault and destruction of the artillery battery actually punched a hole in the rebel lines. The enemy counter attack came in battalion strength and was supported by a heavy artillery concentration.

The rebels were savage. They were cyborgs: genetically modified humans that were extensively modified with implants, armor and other enhancement. They had no fear and you had to blow them to pieces to keep them down. Even with state of the art Marine body armor and with the best firepower available, it was a horror show.

What kept coming back to Beck in his worst nightmares was one of the last assaults on their position. One of the cyborgs was shot up but it wasn’t dead. He turned it over and he could see the humanity in its face. Something was broken inside it. With tears in its eyes it said, “Please, please God, kill me.”

Beck and his men fought from the captured enemy fortifications for three days. At the end of the third day, Beck had lost almost half of his men and they were low on everything when they were finally relieved by Captain Keilor and the rest of the company.

After the battle, Beck had received an Alliance Cross: the second highest decoration a marine can win. Over drinks Beck, Keilor and many others swore an oath: they would never again allow insane, amoral men to create such monsters. They had worked for years to create a network as a means to accomplish that end.

When Beck awoke, drenched in sweat, he saw that he had a message pending.

He got out of bed, got a drink of cold water and sat down at his terminal.

RESET WARNING: at time 14:22 local Implant #2234 was reset. Fault 22: overload.

Beck issued a command: “Computer, establish an encrypted link to the Bishop.”

There was a short pause and Bishop Keilor’s face appeared on his screen, “What’s up Seb?”

“Maybe trouble, maybe nothing but I thought you needed to know. Marion’s implant reset itself. It looks like she took a good shock when she was putting together the gear to hack the wireless network.”

The Bishop frowned and said, “Marion may be trying to be entirely too clever for her own good. What is their status?”

Beck replied, “The Mason kid went out and bought a new power cell, some clothes and a few other items. Marion has her system up and is reading the security network and the rest of the teams are in place and ready to go.”

The Bishop sighed. “Things are so close now Seb. I think Marion has served her purpose. When this is over she joins her family.”

Beck said, “I’ll set it up. See you in orbit.”