Shattered super-soldier

“Come out Ripper, I only want to talk”

Matthew watched his surroundings carefully, even if the tiny island was only around 1200 square meters his target was deadly within 100 meters, thus he had taken all the precautions he could, the Mk. 46 High-voltage Coil rifle in his hands hummed with power, it was amped ready to deliver lead iron alloy slugs at 70 grams of pressure squeezed against the trigger

‘...We have gotten more than a little stir-crazy, that’s for sure’

The sound of a twig snapping echoed out to his left, so Matthew immediately secured his right and rear before he checked the direction of the sound, that was when he caught a flash of color in the reflection of his scope, without any hesitation he instantly unsecured the latch of the folding stock and collapsed it inwards as he swung the barrel under his armpit before closing his arm and squeezing it in place as he fired a 3 round burst, silence followed, and he wasn’t wacked over the head with the blunt side of steel training sword so he asked

“...Are you good, Ripper?”

A few moments passed before Ripper squeezed out a small voice

“Yep… just fine… Major”

Matthew turned around and faced Ripper, the 3 shots he had fired had impacted the center of her stomach, with the first hitting below her navel and the other two impacting further up

“You don’t sound good, did I hit one of your lungs?”

Ripper shook her head before she sucked another bout of air down into her lungs as she learned on her sword

“Nope… Just… You strafed… My… Diaphragm though…”

Matthew let out a sigh, they might just be ‘playing’ however the high velocity blood and minced organ splatter on the ground behind Ripper were very real, even though Aea maintained the ability to instantly suspend the ‘training excise’ and take control over their bodies if an accident were about to take place… Still Matthew finally decided enough was enough

“Alright, I think it's about time we wrap this round of training up”

Ripper looked a little disappointed, despite the 3 holes in her body and the partially compromised ability to breathe she still looked like she wanted to continue, which earned her a follow-up line from Matthew

“I said knock it off, I understand your need to return to your peak form”

“Then let's go another—”

Matthew instantly cut her off again

“No, you are way ahead of your recovery schedule already, have some patience… You know any other person would still be wheelchair bound at your stage of active spine surgery”

Ripper finally relented and let go of her sword before she wordlessly wandered back to Haliea-001 where she crawled into her sleeping bag, a few moments later Matthew retrieved a message over the local net

[I’ll nap for few hours then, wake me in 4 hours Aea]

Matthew blinked a few times before he cracked his neck and stretched his shoulders, now without anything to do Matthew took a shower inside the outpost before he did some basic maintenance on the Mk. 46 he had used to protected himself from Ripper, Their stay at the outpost had extended to a total of 8 days

“What’s the ETA on Haliea-002 and Haliea-003?”

[5 to 12 hours, considering the local time distortion]

Matthew clicked his tongue, most of the military hardware (Which Matthew included himself under) required high precision, of course under this precision time was a pretty big part, Matthew could name more of his equipment that was going to screw up because of this than would work perfectly with this amount of time distortion

‘No long range weapon deployment, no precision guided weaponry or defense, no time synchronous operations, not even being able to count on the chemical heater in the fucking MRE… Well that’s perhaps a bit of exaggeration, still the underlying anxiety is having an effect…’

Matthew stopped moving and sat down on the grass, he looked at the 4 walls of the outpost around him for a while before he made his decision

“Aea, send a command home to triple the amount of hyper-computing cores”

[Current inventory is insufficient to complete this order]

“Have Doc source the needed inventory… Tell her to use the new calculation power for figuring out our pure magic situation and develop a patch for our equipment as soon as possible, we don’t want to be spirited away”

[Understood, orders have been relayed]

Having given the Matthew laid back on the grass and gazed into the sky, despite being nothing but 4 defensive walls and an underground storage facility that were still being expanded this was most likely the most sophisticated structure that had been on this small island for a long, long time, as he gazed at the clouds he only had one worry on his mind

‘Those fucking goats…’

That was his only worry, the only semi-intelligent inhabitants were 23 goats, genetic samples collected via drones showed that they were all descendants of the 6 oldest goats, furthermore besides the 6 oldest all other goats seemed to be younger than 3 years, thus both Aea and Matthew had concluded that they were a future investment of rations… Placed here on this small shitty island for the explorers that made the investment to collect later

“...How does the scope look, Aea?”

[The fleet of 3 ships are still approaching, they have entered a range of 32 kilometers, by currency heading and speed they will arrive in 9 to 10 hours]

“...I should have asked Ripper if she wanted to play pirate before she went to sleep”

[Should we intercept?]

”Have the Copperhead batteries been connected to the main power source?”

[Yes, 4 batteries of 28 ballistic missiles each are ready for launch]

As Matthew thought of sinking wooden wind-powered sailing ships with ICBM’s he felt his heart ache until he chanted

“Missile fuel expires, they are made to be used… Missile fuel expires, they are made to be used…”

At this he felt his heart ache lessen, he decided to not ponder on how Doc would feel about this particular use of her precious ICBM’s

‘How does the fleet look?’

[Patching in drone footage]

Matthew’s vision blurred for a moment as a live video footage from a surveillance drone appeared in his view, in between sparse clouds he looked down on the open sea for a few moments before he focused on the 3 dots in the center, a moment later a feeling of dizziness took over as the drone camera zoomed in on the 3 dots, it was the fleet of 3 wooden sailing ships, Matthew looked at the ships for a few moments before he spoke

‘What do you got, Aea?’

[Limited weaponry observed on 2 of the vessels, only one ship equipped with a limited amount of large bore chemical powered cannons, the composition appears to suggest they are on a high endurance, long range exploration expedition, a total of 138 unique crew have been observed and logged so far]

As Aea explained, data glyphs appeared on different parts of the 3 ships, having lived as a citizen of the Trerubic Empire Matthew didn’t feel confused about this, he simply focused on a data glyph that appeared over one of the cannons stored on the deck of the 3rd ship and immediately every single aspect of these cannons Aea had gathered from observation and calculation flowed into his mind, from the likely material competition of the metal barrel, to the maximum time between needing a full maintenance cycle, everything

‘...Seems standard enough, limited elevation and traverse, though, so outmaneuvering wouldn’t be hard’

Matthew continued to take in knowledge about the ships, their equipment as well as the crew when his eyes caught something interesting

‘...That guy, where have I seen him before, Aea?’

[Please hold, starting data collection of the subject…]

The guy in question was a lower ranking sailor, if one really could call him that, from the thick metal collar around his neck, his general state of malnourishment, the obvious physical trauma and the weird short steps he took which indicated a large amount of muscles in his legs had been forcibly removed to keep him from escaping there was really only one thing he could be.

A slave

[Data gathered, running comparison in internal data banks…]

However, before Aea finished the calculations Matthew had already remembered

‘...He was with Iaka, one of the mountain folk we ran into when we left the Turman kingdom’

[Confirmed, server physical mutilation have occurred since last observed, along with the physical trauma and clear lack of mental awareness it is clear to assume the local power structure around the Turman kingdom have undergone significant changes]

“...Yeah, no shit”

Matthew fell silent as he crewed through this revelation, now that he had spotted the first beast man slave the rest of the slaves on the 3 ships stood out clear as day, the only reason he hadn’t identified their race earlier was the mutilation, their beast like ears and tails had been cut off, ruthlessly masking their race

‘No matter how I look at it, we have too little information…’

With the beast men being enslaved in these large numbers Matthew feared an even bigger threat had taken their place, which were geographically close to the objective of this expedition, the old Basecamp

‘Doing a lightning offensive and blindly smashing apart anything that looks like a threat isn’t really an option with the limited amount of weaponry… Besides there’s no guarantee Alina is still at the Basecamp…’

Matthew let out a deep sigh, he was lucky to discover this before he and Ripper showed up at the old Basecamp

“...Still it feels like it's going to be a pain… Formulate an assault plan Aea”

[There is still the possibility of negotiations]

Matthew looked at the deck of the 3rd ship where a sailor were lashing a beast man slave with a barbed whip to the amusement of the other sailors around him, Matthew remembered his own past and with that his anger rose as he answered Aea in a cold collected tone of voice

“No, there’s no such thing… We’ll butcher the sailors and extract the information we need from the slaves”

[Understood, starting formulation of assault plan…]

The drone view disappeared from Matthew’s vision, leaving the tranquil clear blue sky as all he saw, he laid there for a bit before he spoke

“Feel like cutting apart some slavers, Ripper?”

A few moments passed before Ripper’s voice sounded out behind Matthew, she had likely snuck up on him to pull some sort of prank, however she had revealed herself by the same silent killing intent Matthew emitted at the moment

Their intense hate towards slavers stemmed from their shared identity as former penance marines and indentured servants of a mega corporation

“It would be my absolute pleasure, Major”