Shattered super-soldier

As he raised the served head of the traitor towards the sky, the young man proclaimed

“We have followed the imperial decree, Marie Eirmal, the final member of the Eirmal bloodline of traitors has been slain, oh Samual Junathan Trerubic, open the sky and free Eirmal 4 from its penance!”

Such is the end of the Eirmal bloodline recorded in the imperial records, finally brought to justice 27 years after the 34th emperor of the Trerubic empire closed off the planet by laying it under blockade and tasked its citizens with purging the noble house of Eirmal the entire planetary governor bloodline had been purged by the loyal citizens to make penance and prove their innocence.

-

‘What…. Where is this..?’

[E***ge*** reas****me** of a*l na**te pat****s in *****t, pr***ry ***y r*gene**tion fi***hed i* *** se*****]

Pain flooded his mind along with a cold female voice devoid of emotion, he didn’t understand, it, yet somewhere deeply within his mind, a few parts of the words registered and were understood, moving proved impossible, he found his body frozen in a strange paralysis

[L**s ** cons******ess esti****d at 56 h**rs, 19% of to**l ne*** tis*** regener**ed]

‘I get it, I get it! Shut up for now!’

A few moments had passed and the voice with the migraine like pain that it accompanied didn’t sound out again, it appeared that it understood his mental commands

‘...Who am I even… And why can’t I move… Don’t tell me I’m permanently paralyzed… At least the sky is pretty…’

That was indeed the case, endless blue spread out within his view dotted with fleeting clouds… At least it wasn’t raining… As time passed, he counted the clouds that lazily drifted by, when he grew bored with that he looked at them and the shapes they took

‘Knife… Balloon… High velocity blood splatter… happy face… duck… dog… firearm…’

As he looked at the cloud's sensation slowly returned to his body, then before long he had regained his mobility and sat himself up, the first thing he noticed was his lack of clothes, the second thing he noticed was the overall state of his body, he had no skin, all of his bare flesh was bruised and beaten, deep cuts down to and into his bones, his body looked more dead than alive, yet he didn’t feel any pain nor any other sensation from his body

“No… Something is moving in there…”

He looked at a deep cut on his forearm, down at the bone something moved, it looked like fine metal sand, as he stared at the metal sand it rapidly mended the deep cut into his bone, turning his forearm around he noticed his left pinky was missing a joint, the surface of it was covered in the same metal sand and slowly grew back his finger, little by little

“...That’s funky… Whatever it is…”

Finding it more than a little unsettling to look at his own body being regrown, he decided to look at something else and gazed around at his surroundings, the first thing he noticed was the crumbled brick walls around him, along with ruined and half rotten wooden floors and furniture he concluded

“A ruined house…”

As he continued looking around, he found more ruins around it appeared he was within a ruined city, after briefly considering whether it would hurt his skinless feet to walk around he stood up and made it out of the ruined building and into the street, a dirt path in reality, he looked left then right down the street before he turned around and looked back into the house he had just exited and saw the person shaped imprint he had left behind

“...What’s that?”

The outline of the imprint he had made in the stone foundation of the house looked like it had some sort of metal imprint, which was a few sizes larger than his own body, he didn’t know why, but he knew what it was, but more importantly he saw the path he had taken to get there in the first place

‘... I guess nothing’s wrong with following the trail of broken walls’

Having decided so, he did just that and followed the trail of destruction of what he assumed was his own making, along the way he discovered an increasing amount of corpses, or more precisely carcasses, looking at the wasp carcass the size of a large dog he only had one comment to make

“...I don’t believe that’s supposed to be that size”

Still, he felt no fear from seeing the wasp carcass the fact that he could stumble upon a living large dog sized wasp didn’t cross his mind at all, he somehow knew that wouldn’t happen, as he continued following the path of the broken ruins and walls he wondered why that was, why was he so certain about this when he couldn’t recall his own name? He continued to thinking about this for a while, but still he found no answer to this, and soon something else demanded his attention

“What the… Actual…”

His words stopped as he continued trying to make sense of the ‘thing’ that was hovering in the middle of the plaza, his mind churned for a few moments before he decided that it wasn’t worth it to poke the cosmic anomaly and turned around to find the exact same cosmic anomaly, it looked like a mass of blue liquid light that swirled around itself, faced with this thing that seared his reasoning by looking at it… He decided to greet it

“Hi, how are you?”

The ting continued swirling around for a few moments before it vibrated its surface, sending out waves of sound that turned into a voice that sounded like the voice of multiple people layered on top of each other

“Major Matthew Rockwell, you are alive, alive, alive”

‘Matthew Rockwell huh… And a Major on top of that…’

Keeping his internal monolog to himself, Matthew asked

“...Why wouldn’t I be alive?”

The mass of pale blue light like fluid continued twirling around itself as it vibrated to speak

“I punched you, really, really, really hard hard hard… I am glad you aren’t as fragile, fragile, fragile as other people, have you reconsidered my, my, my request?”

Matthew quickly took in the words of the anomaly which contained two important pieces of information, the first of which he had rejected an offer and the second being that he had been half killed by an attack of the same cosmic anomaly

“...I’m sorry my memory is more than a little foggy, could you repeat your request?”

The cosmic anomaly floated around for a few moments before a part of it shot out and around Matthew before it inserted itself into the back of his lower skull, Matthew found himself instantly paralyzed for a few moments before the anomaly vibrated again sending out its voice

“You are still imprisoned, imprisoned, imprisoned, imprisoned I see… Don’t worry Matthew, I don’t intent to hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt you again…”

Time passed as it always did, whether you were having a fun time or having a cosmic horror paralyze your body while doing… Something to your spine, after a few minutes the anomaly vibrated again as it produced sound

“You are free, free, free, free of its control now”

Just like that feeling returned to Matthew’s body as he regained his ability to move as the anomaly retracted itself from him as it spoke again

“My request, request, request to you is simple, I want you to create a body, body for me, long have I wanted to become a person, person once again”

Matthew was about to open his mouth to say he didn’t know how to make a body for the anomaly, that’s when something jolted his memory, he might not know how, but there was ‘someone’ that he could ask about this

“How about it, Aea?”

[Please stand by, startup process completed in 10 seconds… New master profile registered, welcome master, and congratulations of acquiring the newest BlueArrow ‘Code Arrow 09’ bionic spine, emergency reassignment of all nanite patterns in effect for body regeneration]

“... Do you know how to make a body, Aea?”

[Searching internal data schematics… 52 potential blueprints found]

‘So it looks like it’s no problem…’

Matthew glanced at the cosmic anomaly in front of him, it might have half killed him, but he didn’t remember this, he didn’t care about it, plus it seemed like what it had done to the AI core ‘Aea’ had benefited him greatly so he found no reason not to

“Sure, I don’t have anything else to do… I’ll make a body for you”

‘...Besides its speech tick is slightly endearing’

As Matthew agreed to help the cosmic anomaly, the sens of unease and fear he felt from it completely disappeared as it vibrated for a few moments before its voice sounded out

“Thank you, you, you Matthew”

Matthew showed a small smile and responded

“No need to thank me, let’s get to work at once”

“A, A, A, A, A new body! Body! Body! Body!”

Seeing the palpable excitement that was radiating off the cosmic anomaly, Matthew quickly got to work and as an incompetent middle-aged business manager did best, he allocated all the work to another person

“Let’s make a body, what do you need, Aea?”

[Emergency reassignment of all nanite patterns in effect until master's body has been healed and regenerated]

“... And what does that mean?”

[All 9 types of specialized bio-nanite are currently keeping master alive, including the Forge pattern nanites used to fabricate schematics from the internal data banks]

“So I need to heal my body first? How do I go about doing that?”

[Please acquire more biomass, 583 targets painted]

Matthew looked around and saw countless white icons in his vision, somehow it reminded him about something, but he couldn’t really place it so he put it to the back of his mind as he walked over to one of the giant wasp carcasses and picked it up

[For future reference, please use the command word ‘Harvest’ to gather bio-matter]

Matthew felt a little confused about this, but he trusted Aea’s instructions, so he spoke the command word

“Harvest”

At his command, nanites swarmed out of his hand and quickly covered the wasp carcass, which rapidly shrunk in size as the matter that made up the carcass was cut into pieces and used to fuel the regeneration of Matthew’s body

“What about my body, body, body, body?”

Matthew picked up another wasp carcass as he explained

“The small machines that I need to make your new body is currently busy keeping me alive, so I need to heal myself first”

“How are you going to heal, heal, heal, heal, heal yourself, Matthew?”

“Using these carcasses seems to be a great start”

The cosmic anomaly vibrated for a few moments before it changed form and sent out a strong glow, then a group of giant wasp carcass fell from the ground in the middle of the plaza, as the cosmic anomaly glowed again with a soft light another group of giant wasp carcasses fell from the sky

“Neat, saves me from running all around the city to find them”

Matthew quickly walked over and began harvesting the giant wasp carcasses, this continued long into the night.

-

Matthew’s body was wrecked by malnutrition, scars and other old injuries, to say he was exhausted was an understatement, in front of him was the body of a young child, 8 years old she had been born into the Eirmal bloodline though no fault of her own, Matthew didn’t hate her, he hated the Trerubic Empire who had turned his planet into a blood sport under a false charge of treason

‘Fuck those royal wraiths and their sickening hobbies…’

Matthew lowered his coil rifle and drew the dagger he had sheathed on his hip, he felt no joy in mutilating the body of a child he had just killed, but the conditions to raise the blockade which had starved his entire home world for 27 year was to ‘present the served heads of all the traitors’ so cut he did, he was for a moment surprised by how easily he cut the head off the corpse for a moment

‘Right, a child’s spine is easier to cut since it is undeveloped compared to an adult…’

For better or worse Matthew wasn’t used to severing the heads of corpses in general, but this was the first and hopefully last time he would need to do so on a child's corpse, he raised the served head towards the sky so the satellites could pick it up and yelled

“IS THIS WHAT GETS YOU SADISTIC FUCKS OFF!?”

This was the real ending of the Eirmal 4 penance as the blockade of the planet was lifted an hour later, a week later the official tally showed that the original population of 160 billion had been reduced to a mere 1.2 billion