Shattered super-soldier

Matthew watched the burnt visage of the Willmir emperor for a few moments before he retracted his Mystic powers completely, his fury disappearing along with it, then came embarrassment

‘...Shit, I really said that out loud, didn’t I?’

Matthew awoke from his daze of embarrassment as a combat android doused the emperor in a regenerative foam. Matthew looked towards Adam at his side, the former Duke of the Willmir empire had made Matthew promise to spare his son, who Matthew had just turned at least well done

“Do you have anything to say, A1?”

“No Major, as far as I can tell, my idiot son still draws breath… Had I still been Duke, I would have beat him half to death by now… He used to be such a bright child, but now…”

As Adam trailed off, Klara walked over to her unconscious father, she reached out and carefully touched his forehead with the tip of his finger for a moment before she pulled her hand back and spoke

“Father is quite brilliant for an emperor of the Willmir empire, however this was a fight he would never win… And he failed to accept that”

After she finished talking, she turned to face Matthew and unexpectedly kneeled down towards Matthew as she spoke

“Thank you for showing mercy towards my father, Major”

As Matthew gazed at Klara, his concern about her mental state increased evermore, however before he could state anything about it the surrounding space distorted, and he found himself back at the Basecamp facing the person he had just passionately declare his care for

“...So about tha—”

Before he could speak he was half tackled by Alina that embraced him silently but firmly. The silence stretched for a bit before Alina finally spoke

“Say it again”

“Say what again?”

Alina tightened the grip of her hug around Matthew in silent protest at his poor attempt to deflect and save himself from embarrassment

“...Well, it is true I do care for you more than I’ve ever cared for anyone, no that’s not true… Well maybe”

“Who else? Ripper?”

Alina’s voice had suddenly grown cold, so Matthew quickly corrected her before she could continue to draw her own conclusions

“No, my mother… Even though I hardly remember her face by now, I remember my love for her”

At Matthew’s words Alina’s grip tightened even further, before Matthew could complain Alina spoke

“My love, I will stay with you for as long as you let me”

Matthew placed his hand on top of Alina’s head and spoke

‘...Well so much for my indifference… Guess I can’t run from it anymore…’

“And I will stay with you as long as you will keep me company”

Matthew and Alina embraced each other for a while longer before suddenly Aea broke the mood by delivering an urgent message

[Urgent message received from Doc: The 22nd hyper-computing core have been completed, in other news I’ve fast tracked the training of the deadweight you burdened me with since the hyper-computing cores have found a possible solution for the magic problem, I advise the immediate relocation of all available forces South as the objective appears time sensitive]

As Aea finished delivering Doc’s message, both Matthew and Alina froze for a few moments before Alina suddenly disappeared, having dislocated herself away, Matthew wondered what she was doing, only for a moment. Then Aea informed him

[The mistress have indicated she would like a few moments alone to recover her composure]

‘...Well I guess that was pretty embarrassing… Not in a bad way though…’

Matthew closed his eyes for a few moments as he mentally shifted gears

“Right, how long until we can be packed up and out of here, Aea?”

[Doc have sent 8 newly fabricated Cygnus’ heavy transport planes which were sent for immediate airlifts, I’ve gone ahead and ordered the construction for an airstrip compatible which will be ready in 4 hours. The transport planes should be here within 12 to 18 hours according to local time distortion]

“Well, that works for me… Be sure to leave a skeleton crew of logistics and combat androids in case any of our neighbors gets any funny ideas”

[Confirmed]

Matthew turned and looked South before he muttered

“...What the hell did you find, Doc”

-

Even as the Basecamp was stripped down to a skeleton crew and packed up, no further communications arrived from Doc, the last of the Cygnus’ transport planes had already touched down, and they were about to finish loading up on the fresh runway. While the Haliea was classified as a heavy transport, it still paled in comparison to the Cygnus models, which had been designed to solve any and all The Trerubic Empire’s in atmosphere logistics needs, specifically on newly colonized planets where there was a high need to ferry around large amount of modular prefabricated machinery

‘The sheer size still brings a tear to my eye…’

With a wingspan of a little over 80 meters, an internal transport compartment able to ship 8 standardized 15 meters by 3 meters by 3 meters intergalactic shipping containers at once. With a maximum takeoff weight of a little more than double of the Haliea model at 400.000 kilograms, the Cygnus fixed wing aircraft was ideal for this kind of rapid transport… However, with a fuel consumption somewhere around “Who cares? As long as it can ship prefabs around” it wasn’t exactly fuel efficient, with 2 of the 8 planes had been assigned entirely to haul fuel ready to refuel the other 6 planes in flight

‘Aea, I authorize you to make immediate and sustained lethal responses to any threat to our transport fleet, we can not afford to lose any of our planes, understood?’

[Confirmed, the secure flight corridor have been expanded by a factor of 2, zero tolerance zone will be enforced]

That was the one problem, the Cygnus’ planes were large, fragile targets, with no more than a single engine failure needed to bring down a fully loaded plane due to lack of lift, never mind its safety features that had been designed to handle rough weather, not anti-aircraft flak

“I’ve never flown before, I am getting a little excited…”

Matthew looked over at Alina to his side, she did indeed seem a little excited, not that anyone other than Matthew would be able to tell

[Loading is nearing completion, please board Cygnus-0004]

Matthew checked around, Ruki and his people had already boarded, so had the former Willmir knights, it was only him and Alina left on the tarmac so he walked up the ramp and took a seat, a moment later Alina sat down next to him

“Alright, let's get going Aea”

[Confirmed, notice to all personal Cygnus sky convoy departing in 15 seconds, please take your assigned seats]

As Matthew waited for the show to get rolling, Ripper sat down on his left and strapped herself in

“Hi Major, Mistress~”

Matthew blinked twice before he responded to Ripper’s greeting

“No, you don’t get to do that, where the fuck have you been?”

The last mission Matthew had sent Ripper on had been to keep security around his false death to kill and catch his would be assassin, since then she had been suspiciously absent. At Matthew pointing this out Ripper’s smile stiffened slightly before she deflected his question by raising one of her own

“Did the two of you enjoy your honeymoon~?”

Matthew let out a sigh and leaned back in his seat, seeing that Ripper wasn’t going to answer his question he figured that wasn’t important, Alina leaned forwards and answered Ripper’s question with a light, happy sounding tone

“Yes, thank you for giving us some space, Eilane”

“You’re welcome, Alina, so what did the two of you do~?”

“Oh, just more of the usual, but I really felt—”

As the two continued chatting like the best of friends, Matthew felt a headache come on, so he closed his eyes and shut his surroundings out as he entered a digital world, beyond him the world around the Basecamp spread out

“I will take command Aea, patch me in”

[Confirmed, patching in all information sources…]

As Aea crunched the data and fed them through Matthew’s 09, the virtual world around Matthew expanded, not only outwards and upwards, but also in the smaller detail. Thermal, radar and inferred all overlaid perfectly in not only Matthew’s vision, but also fed into all his other senses, along with this other data from the remote drone network

“...Speed up the loading, borrow half the skeleton crew from the Basecamp”

[Confirmed, androids have been reassigned]

Matthew continued overseeing the final loading of the Cygnus’ planes and noticed a large container being loaded onto his plane which was prioritized for high value personal and cargo, upon accessing the data glyph he immediately noticed what the container was

“Right, I had almost forgotten to check in with Lea, dial her up Aea”’

[Confirmed, opening connection to bio-interfaced pod]

A few moments passed before Lea’s voice echoed out in the virtual world

“...Yes? Do you need something Major? I am kind of in the middle of something”

Matthew let out a sigh and responded

“Yes, I wanted to remind you that we’re heading South today”

After this Lea would likely never return to her homeland, she had bargained her Mystic foresight to save her home country from a horrible future out of a sense of loyalty. However, by now she had been interred in a bio-interfaced pod hooked up with a bionic neural interface where she spent all her time in virtual reality games

“Oh, that was today? What about it?”

Matthew let out a sigh, he didn’t feel great about what they had done to Lea. However by now it was too late for regret, as Lea had firmly stated on the multiple occasions Matthew brought it up that she never wanted to leave her pod again

“I just wanted to remind you… You might get some biological interference from the movement of your pod, so turn down your physical sentitvity if you get nauseous”

“Got it, was there anything else?”

“No that’s all”

“Alright, call me if you need anything else Major”