The passage through Corsair space had not been an easy one. For one, the Nomads continued to hound my ship. They seemed to be drawn to me like moths to a light. Two, seemed the bounty hunters were having a field day with me passing through this part of space and continued to hound me with their attempts to take me down. My ships klaxons wailed as the engines protested at my continued strain. The alarms warned me that the engines internal sensors wern't able to withstand the torture that I had been dealing out. Eventually, I had made it out of the cloud, but was met by several dozen pissed off Corsair Titans. Seems they didn't like Outcast ships flying in their space.
I quickly hit the afterburners and jetted away as quickly as possible and hit the Omega Jumphole. I transcended across several systems before coming to a Cambridge jumphole and decided I should take it. I landed on Cambridge and exited the ship quickly. Cambridge, the home of the University of Cambridge and party capital of the world. It was spring break obviously around these parts because drinking and drunk college students stood on almost every corner screaming obsinities into the air. I sighed and walked to the Bretonia National Bank and checked on my savings once again. Still said the same amount, except four million less than before from the amount I had taken out for the Sabre, which I now traded in for a cheep and small Bretonian ship.
Around the time I left the bank I noticed the college campus on the horizon.
"*muffle*imple..."
I shook my head and realized there was something here I was supposed to discover. I started walking towards the campus when I felt that familar steady dizzyness as before...
----
"If you wanted the info Leo, all you had to do was ask." said the doctor, pinned against the desk with a gun pointed at her head.
"I can't take risks anymore, and I don't care if all I had to do was ask, this way is more fun." I said raising an eyebrow.
"Ugh, here is the info you wanted...the most efficent way to destroy Nomad Technology."
I winked at her and turned around, exiting the office.
"I'll be back soon...and the next time, I won't be so suttle..."
----
Nomad Technology hmm? I remember the situation very vaugely...her name was Doctor Jean. She was in her mid twenties if I recalled. That and she was very attractive and smart. Only in her mid 20's and already a doctor and a professor at the college, I was sure that all the students wanted a shot at her at one time or another.
"Well then, I suppose I know where I'm going" I said.
"You betcha!!" yelled a drunk college student next to me. I only smiled and walked off towards the campus as the drunkard fell to the ground in a heap.
I walked through the hallway of the college just as students were being released for the day. There were plenty of students leaving the classrooms and heading straight for their lockers, so the hallway was packed. I gently moved students aside as I passed through the hallway and was almost ran over by some idiot kid. He tripped over his own feet after he shoved into me and spilled onto the ground. He jumped back off, flustered and obviously pissed off.
"Watch where you're going tool!" he yelled at me. I turned to face him with an apparent smile on my face.
"Why don't you slow down junior?" I said.
"You getting lippy with me?"
I sighed.
"Ah, the typical hot shot college jock. Thinks he's all bad ass, but in reality he probably goes home and cries frequently, even to the point of smothering his tears into his pillow, all because he's never lived up to his fathers expectations. A textbook example of how the movies these days have forced modern college life into a dreamland."
Apparently, that hit the right switch and he roared at me, everyone was watching now. I grabbed his oncoming fist and twisted it around, slamming him into the lockers nearest us. I leaned my face down to his ear as he struggled to get loose.
"Violence isn't always the answer junior..."
With that I released him and he stumbled back, a smile on my face.
"Mr...Mr...Leo!" a woman yelled in my direction, I turned around to see the person I was looking for.
"Ah, Docto-"
"Don't 'Ah Doctor' me you brute!!" she screamed, her face turning red.
"Doctor...I appoligize. He swung at me in my defense."
"I did ma'am..." said the young man, obviously upset.
"Very well Chase, get to practice, I'm sure coach is wondering where you are."
"Yes Ma'am..." he said and ran off.
"Leo, I thought our meetings were through-"
"I have a situation Doctor...I lost my memory...they...captured me and beat me half to death.
"So, Leo, what brings you back to my school?" The doctor said sitting down at her desk and organizing papers.
"You're school?"
"Yes, my, school. I was promoted to Dean a few years ago."
That gave me a time line. At the apparent memory, her office was a classroom, thus indicating she was a teacher at the time of our last meeting. There is no telling how long after that, that she made Dean. It could have been a few months, or a few years, however, even when she said A few years ago, that gave me something to gauge the memories I was getting along with the other ones. She looked up and smiled at me, waiting for an answer.
"As I told you-"
"You've lost all your memories of who you were and are, is that correct?"
"Yes."
"How?" she asked.
"If you find out, I'd like to know. All I know is when I landed here from Malta-"
"You came in from bloody Malta?!" she exclaimed "Are you insane? You flew a Sabre here?"
"I ditched it to some small arms dealers in the backlog black-market here; don't get your panties in a bunch. As I was saying, I landed here and looked at the college and got a brief memory of me asking you for something to destroy Nomad Technology. What I need to know, is why I needed something that advanced."
Her face changed from dumbfounded to worry. She hurriedly got up and closed the blinds to her office and locked the windows. She passed by me in a hurry and closed and locked the door, pulling the shades on the window as well. She turned around and leaned against the door. She unbuttoned her top three buttons on her blouse and pulled down her shirt to expose her upper shoulder blade. There, on her shoulder, were the dragons fighting one another, but something was different. Near one of them was a bump and it looked to have been shoved under the skin.
"I was one of them." She said as she pulled her top back up and re-buttoned the shirt.
"One of whom?" I asked.
"The Tainted," she replied "the people who are after you, the people who forced you into this entire mess. Regardless, I bailed as soon as recovered certain memories of who I was." She sighed and looked at me, her eyes looking at me with tears forming. "I was a Corsair. One of the elite, I pirated and did my share of evil deeds true, but I had a dream to be a doctor....and I made it as you see....but then they took me with force and made me into-"
"Made you into what?" I asked, rising to my feet.
"Nothing, nothing....the technology you seek is buried."
"Buried?" I asked.
"Buried by a group only known as Black Company. No one knows who they are or what their plans are, but they keep to themselves mostly."
"You're keeping something from me." I said standing to my feet. She only stared back, steel determination in her eyes.
"...for your own protection." She said. "I have a meeting in a few minutes, I have to ask you to leave....and Leo..."
"Yes?"
"Never come back here again. Seeing you digs up too many bad memories..."
She opened her door and left it open, she walked down the hallway, towards another room. Black Company eh? Guess it's time to seek out some people. With that I turned down the opposite way heading for the exit. If I had noticed the Doctor turn to face me just as I left, and noticed her eyes, I would have thought twice about seeking out the people that called themselves "Tainted"...
...if only...
<Split Post Here>
"His bloodline is beautiful, amazing, breath taking, he's the evolution of mankind at its finest." I heard someone say. My eyes stirred, struggled to free themselves from my eyelids that so forcefully kept them closed. "His bloodline all-"
"All passengers please exit the transport if you are exiting onto Manhattan. All passengers please exit the transport if you are exiting onto Manhattan. This is your last warning before the trip continues on to New Tokyo." The announcer said.
I forced myself to my feet and exited the transport. The New York sun was high in the sky, and its heat was blistering. The first time I managed to get any kind of substantial sleep and because of that I had a strange dream of the Doctor, I was pretty sure that was her voice. If not it was her sister or something of that nature. Workers bustled into the building for their Lunch breaks as I walked past. To have a simple life, was that too much to ask? Obviously, I was stuck with the fact of not knowing who I was.
Black Company. A few credits later, I managed to coax the information out of someone on a distant Freeport just a system away from Cambridge. He told me that they ran their base out of Manhattan, right under everyone's noses so that they wouldn't think to look there. I was back in Liberty, not a place I liked too much from my recent experiences here. The only good thing here were the women...kind of like everyplace I went to, imagine that. But that's besides the point. The man told me to look for an old building in the Docks district with the sign "Harvey's" on the front and in neon lettering. Said there was an entrance under it that lead under the docks to an old sewage system long sense retired. That's where they ran their operations out of. The good Doctor wasn't kidding, they had literally buried the technology.
I flew to the Docks, and sure enough, there was the building, and the old door leading to the maintenance ducts. I wrote down the location for later use and decided it was time to relax. I went back to the hotel I had rented and nodded off in the recliner, thinking of ways of infiltrating their base of operations and stealing the technology, that for some reason, my mind continued to tell me to obtain...before something else happened...
I awoke to the small Datapad I had stolen from that cripe way back when. It's alarm notifying me of an incoming message. I picked it up and looked at the message on the front of it.
"We saw you snooping around our compound, Leo. If you are that interested in us, why don't you pay us a visit? Of course, there will be tests to verify your identity, we can't take any risks, but you already know that, don't you?
The message scrambled and dissappeared. I grabbed my coat and took the first transport to the docks. When I got there, I walked over to the door underneath the building as I was asked to on the datapad. I checked my guns and the hidden blade up my sleve. I verified I had all my info that I needed and prepaired to engage any sort of enemy coming my way. I had a hunch what was coming next wasn't going to be any picnic, there has to be at least 30 to 40 men in there, and they know I was near their base of opperations.
I kicked in the door and was instantly attacked. Almost naturally, I dodged the would be kick to the head and grabbed who ever it was and wrenched their leg sideways and flung them into a wall. A whistling sound was coming right for me and immediately I recognized it as a fist heading my way, I dodged expertly to the oppisite side it was coming from, extended the attackers arm and broke the elbow with a loud pop, he screamed and fell to the ground just as the other was picking up a gun, I swung down and picked up the fallen guard and let the attacker shoot his own man several times. By the time he realized it, I had flung the guard aside, stole his gun from his hip and shot the other man a few times in the chest, he crumbled to the ground and I threw the gun aside.
I swung low and ran quickly to the next door, kicking it open from a few feet away. A mace flung through the opening and came down on the floor. I was face to face with a rather burly looking man...a huge man. He screamed in anger and flung the mace at me, I dropped down quickly and felt the mace slam into the wall next to me. He was almost raging now, screaming like a two year old who just had his toy taken away. In other words, he sounded like he was to the point of sounding insane. I jumped over the mace he just flung back at the ground and shouldered him back through the door, right into the trap they had sprung for me, it wasn't pretty. He fell through lazer sights and automated weapons fire tore the man apart with at least 50 caliber chainguns. I grimaced as the other door opened. I flung the door closed and slammed it shut.
"It's ok Leo, the tests are over..." someone said on the other side. The two guards vanished from before, and as I opened the door, so did the large man.
"Experemental Holographic System...pricy addition to this old building..." I said looking at the man walking up to me. He looked to be in his early twenties. He had a smile on his face and reached out to shake my hand.
"It's good to see you again Leo. I know you don't remember me, but...
"Without many credits, we didn't last long against them. They quickly took out our spies with in their major group of people and subdued us. The remaining few who escaped, we fled here and hid out. Slowly purchased parts for things we needed to train, now that you're here, our training will be put to use." he said walking beside me. He was one of the people who rescued me, the 'rebel' man onboard the transport. He wouldn't tell me everything, just as the others wouldn't, because of a fear of something.
"Why will they follow me here? Was I being watched?" I asked.
He paused and then replied. "Something like that..." he trailed off and walked down an ajoining hallway quickly passing several rooms where soldiers were testing their strength against moving targets such as the ones I battled on earlier on that night just trying to gain entry. Others were working on timer attempting to hack what looked like a sub-station for some kind of electronical computer. They succeded and the door swung open, they grabbed rifles and stormed the next room full of simulated enemies.
"You have quite the training operation here."
"It's all for the final battle that we're estimating to be coming up soon...we've lost a lot in the past few years since you dissappeared from the radar, but we're slowly regaining what we had before."
"Few Years? How long?"
He paused again and looked around.
"Three years, four months, twenty-three days, four hours, thirty-two seconds." he replied quickly.
"Wow, you keep an up to date record...must be genius."
"Something like that..." he said trailing off again.
"I get the feeling you're not telling me something."
"You're right, I'm not, and for good reason...listen, I wish I could tell you everything, I do, having you in command again would strengthen us beyond measure, but I can't tell you anything of who you are, doing so would risk dangerous conciquences-"
The building rocks followed by rapid shots of gunfire.
"I don't have much more time, they followed you here. Follow me, quickly!"
I followed him down the following hallways, dodging as he did, we eventually came to a room where there was a strange device in the middle. He looked back at me and faked a quick smile. He reached out to me and shoved me into a door that opened. I struggled but arms withstrained me inside.
"This won't hurt Leo...but you're going to experence some discomfort..."
Blue lights began flashing and it felt like my head was going to explode. Symbols flashed in front of my eyes at a quick rate of speed. I could not understand what they meant, all I knew was that the symbols meant something to me. Slowly I felt more clear and memories began flashing infront of my eyes. Some would flash before me and quickly vanish, while others would play for a while and then dissappear. So far the ones I remembered would appear, but obviously the ones my brain could not process would only appear as a blue haze, but each memory would have one of two symbols. Eventually it ended and he grabbed me and brought me out.
"You should be fine now."
"What did you just do?" I asked.
"They planted false memories in all of us, and a tracking beacon, they followed you here, we knew this, which is why we were ready when you came, they won't make it past the first room, they will retreat and attempt to regroup, by which point we will be far away. We will track you down again, let your aim be true and may you bathe in righteousness..."
With that my eyes widened as the floor dropped out from under me, and I began to fall.
I fell for a few seconds before coming to a crash at the bottom. I stood up quickly and felt like I'd gotten hit with a ton of bricks. Nothing was broken, but I would be sore if I didn't start moving quickly. He was certain they wouldn't get past the first room, but something told me he was attempting to make me feel better. The whole situation with talking to him seemed strange, almost false. But I felt more clear, less confused as I was before. The situation was now, was to check out the list labeled "Keyhole". However another confirmation by myself was that the list was completely done...with the exception of who they were hunting.
The first on the list was me. The second was Takashi Katacuchi, but I deemed him an enemy now, led me right into a trap. The next was a man named "Sayne Jadyn" and next to it was "Came out of Nowhere." Under that were a hodge podge of other names that made no sense. Upon further examination of the list I noticed that there was something under the initial "Keyhole" name at the top, underneath in small print was "Targeted for Capture". So they were trying to capture me, not kill me. An interesting twist indeed.
I looked around and noticed a small tunnel and began walking down it. Until a few hours later I came out the end of a tunnel near an island. I looked behind me and noticed that I was a few miles away from the city that now stood on the horizon. The sun was sitting and it was starting to drop in tempature because of the cold breeze coming off the ocean that I now stood on the brink of. Over the treeline on the island I could make out a large house with several ships parked on the pad. I with drew my handgun and walked through the forest as quietly as I could. I came to the treeline and looked up at the house. There wasn't much movement inside with the exception of a female walking around in her PJ's. She sighed and looked out the window, investigating the grounds. She looked straight at me and turned her head sideways. She quickly left the window, drawing the shades.
I spun around the other end of the tree just as weapons fire scared up the back of the tree I was at. I ducked and rolled away a little bit and came up in a prone position. I aimed my handgun as best as I could and fired a few shots through the window. The shooting stopped...they must have noticed I had a gun. Two men, heavily armed were walking through the brush towards the tree I was at before. I drew up the brush around me as quietly as I could and aimed my gun at the first one's throat. I fired a quick shot and watched as he flung away from the shot, blood beginning to squirt out of his artery on his neck. The other man began to scream and fire wildly, several shots coming close to my location. I quickly rolled behind a tree he stopped firing and calmed down again and checked his pulse and them made a sound as if he was anguished. I quietly brought up my handgun to my elbow and positioned myself correctly and fired a quick shot to his helmet. He grunted and fell down, he got back up but I was already on him, a point blank shot to his groin brought him down to hold it, I returned it with placing the gun under his chin and firing, watching as brain matter and blood shot out from on top of his head. He fell down with a thud and I regained my hiding position, waiting for more to show themselves.
A few minutes passed and sure enough, three guys came out from around the corner of the house, this time sporting high grade rifles. They kept them aimed at the tree line where I was hiding at. These guys weren’t a joke, they were smart, and from the looks of it knew what they were doing, they meant business. I got another look at their weapons, high grade for sure, battle scopes and a Detroit Munitions stock. That was what worried me, Detroit weapons were known far and wide as some of the most expensive weapons to purchase, mainly because of their precision. These guys were wielding two of what looked liked the most expensive non released weapons that I had seen from Detroit. The guns measured what looked like almost three feet in length, small for small spaces. The stock had a high resolution battle scope which linked to their helmets on a HUD (heads up display) Underneath the initial flash suppressor, was what looked like a grenade launcher attached to the underside. I swore at my own foolishness. These guys were serious, and they were coming this way.
I allowed my breathing to shallow to almost silence and laid perfectly still. The two walked along the tree line slowly, as they passed me, I got a closer look at their gear. The armor was state of the line, almost no place to fire any kind of suitable shot, the best bet was at the groin, where the leg connected to the pelvis. Such a shot would almost cripple them both, and it was the most unarmored area. But a shot like that with a handgun was damn near impossible and would require a lot of time to get the aim right, one miss would reveal my location. If the shot succeeded, the other guard would look to his fallen comrade to ensure he was ok and able to still fire, unless he was dead which he would drag his corpse off the field of battle so that he would get a proper burial. These were hardcore military contractors; they followed the Rules of Engagement. I knew that this shot was one in a million with a handgun, until I looked to the left where I had covered up the two bodies and noticed the rifle butt sticking out of the leaves…that rifle had a battle scope too, a much older version, one which could be converted to a sniper scope…
As the two walked on down the tree line I quickly reached over and grabbed the gun, setting up the scope for sniper mode in which I got down and focused it as quickly as I could. I kept as much covering me as possible and began analyzing what I needed to know to make this shot a success. The average human’s head side is 22 inches in circumference, the average human shoulder span from one to the other is approximately 24 inches from shoulder to shoulder, at this range wind would not be a factor, he was around a distance of 28 feet from my location now and walking at a rate of 3mph. I quietly brought the bolt back and allowed it to slam forward. They both stopped and tried turning around after they heard the bolt slam the first round into place…too late.
With a deafening sound, the first bullet flew to it’s target dead on, right inbetween the armor plating at the man’s groin. He screamed in agony and fell to the ground holding his leg. The second one noticed my location from the heat from the muzzle fire and I quickly brought my gun underneath me and rolled to my left as he fired a shot where I was at before. I held the gun to my chest as he ran in my direction and checked to make sure my gun hand not double loaded any rounds or had any malfunctions as the guard came around the other end of the tree. I quickly bashed him in the head as he came around the other side of the tree and kicked him into a branch and ducked as he swung at me. He was trained to perfection, firing a rifle such as his at close range would wind up burning the hell out of him with the plasma bounce back from his gun. One blow contacted me in the jaw and I fell to the ground. Within a few seconds I got back to my feet and swung low and aimed to hit him in the shoulder, just under his collar bone where a major nerve was that would temporarly incapacitate him long enough for me to kill him, my hand was met with armor however and I cursed at my own stupidity. These were military men for hire, they were the best of the best, and they knew where the major pressure points were.
My best bet now was to simply get a shot off like I did on the last guy who was laying on the ground almost dead now, must have hit an artery. The guard I was fighting was able to deflect most of my punches with the help of his HUD which monitored my breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate. He knew every hit before I did, but some still slipped by. A few minutes into the struggle, I heard whispers in my head.
“Shouldn’t have…”
I felt a surge of power…like nothing I had ever felt before and with one final punch, I destroyed the guys helmet visor. He threw the helmet off with disgust and a little bit of shock on his face. Within seconds I was on him with an elbow to the throat, he grabbed his throat and started to choke as his windpipe was collapsed for a few seconds and brought the gun to his face, firing off three quick rounds. He fell to the ground in a bloody heap as I turned around and looked at the other soldier now crawling back towards the house. I walked over to him quickly, revealing myself to whoever was inside. I threw off his helmet back into the tree line and grabbed the mans hair and lifted up his head and showed him to whoever was watching inside.
“Bleed.” I said and fired right into his temple. I watched as the life fled from his eyes and he fell to the ground dead, I walked back into the tree line and ripped the armor off the other guard and equipped it on myself. I then took the helmet and sat it on my head, plugging it into the armor at the back of my neck. The HUD came to life and I looked at the map with the house as the name “Temple” and my location as “Raven”. I must have been Raven then, I smiled as I brought the boom microphone to my lips and spoke the following words.
I stalked quietly through the hallways of the house, holding the rifle I had obtained from the dead guard close. The building was quiet, not a sound was heard all through out the house. It was far too quiet for the amount of guards guarding it. There was no reason for the house to be this quiet...I approached the corner to the window that the woman was standing at and saw her looking out through that very same window. She turned and looked straight at me and sighed.
"I was wondering when you would turn up." she said.
I pulled the gun to my shoulder pocket and held the weapon steady, pointed directly at her.
"Why did you send your guards on me?" I asked, holding the rifle steady.
"A man as dangerous as yourself walking right up to my front door? What else would any self-righteous woman do? Espically a woman in my position. You know they want you pretty badly, you're a liability to them."
"Liability? They made me this way, it's their own fault."
"It is our fault."
I heard those four words and I turned off the safty, the click echoed in the large room.
"Going to shoot me now Leo? Because of the mistake of man? It's in our blood to become stronger...faster...better...It's apart of the human genome, don't kill me for that."
"You ruined my life...turned me into a weapon, a monster. You expect me to go easy on you? Who the hell are you anyway?"
"You know what they say about big burly men don't you?" She said to me, staring into my eyes.
"I don't know, what do they say?" I replied with a kiss to her forehead. We were on our honeymoon in Stuttgart. The ocean breeze blew in our hair as we laid one one of the few beaches on the planet.
"They say that they're all teddy bears at heart...but what does that make you? My skinny husband?"
"I guess I'm just a stuffed kitty cat."
A memory...a real memory. I reached out and pointed at her. The words were planned out in my head, I knew they were, but for some reason my body refused to say them.
"Yes, we were married...are married."
"But you're with...them."
"I married you with out knowing your bloodline, until I found out late into our marriage, you never asked what I did, and I valued that above all things, but when I found out, there was no arguing the fact that I wanted you more than anything else. Your bloodline is so rare..."
"What the hell are you talking about? Bloodline?"
"You're one of the legendary adaptable bloodlines...there were three in your family that were infected by Nomads during the Nomad war, but rejected the side effects of Nomad infestation. Namely the Nomad's ability to control them."
"Yes, they were cured shortly after Edison Trent saved Humanity, what is your point?"
"Hidden deep in that blood of yours, is a key...a key to what we've been looking for...we limited it when we discovered what...you could truely do."
"What do you mean?"
"Good bye Leo...while you are my lover...my husband...you cannot remember it, so it is null and void. We are enemies Leo...my love."
The image faded out...a hologram...a fake, a fraud. I cursed as I hear noises behind me and swung the rifle around aiming towards the hallway as I saw guards rushing me...2...4...8 guards total...I knew that I had to switch off. I shouldered the rifle and began spraying the hallway, taking out the first two guards in one sweep, they knew my presence and huddled down in the hall behind objects and began firing. I swung the rifle around and ducked behind the wall.
"...we limited it when we discovered what...you could truely do..."
A flicker of something flashed across my vision, a digital readout. Did I have the same implants that Takashi had then? Was it possible? I swung across to the other hall after the weapon fire stopped and crouched behind another piece of decoration. They came into the room and looked around. Investigating every piece. I heard one of them hollar something to the other across the room and point at the projector. The other nodded and said something about that she must have contacted me but it wouldn't matter, she would still pay the credits for my capture. So, she was out to capture me hmm?
I reloaded the weapon and closed my eyes, I swung the rifle out and used my shoulder as a brace and fired more shots, using the helmet as my guide with the scope. Three of them went down and I swung back quickly, only three remained. I checked the weapon as I ducked into another room and closed it behind me, locking the deadbolt. What I saw in front of me both shocked me and angered me. On the screen in front of me was a list of names...the one at the top...
"Shan-Katacuchi - Captured"
I took off my helmet and laid it on the counter and allowed the bolt on the plasma rifle slam forward and as the guards kicked in the door, I laid down such supression fire that the remaining guard cursed his luck but as I ran out of ammo he came around the corner and threw his gun to the floor and stared me down. The name on his chest red "Commander Jadyn". He stared me in the eyes and smiled. He pulled out his handgun quickly and tried to fire, but found it empty as well, he stared at the gun in anger for a few moments and smiled.
"Better luck next time eh?" he said.
I returned the smile.
"Better luck next time." I replied. "You may want to get out of here hunter...you've got some running to do."
I turned and dove through the other doorway, sprinting to the window and diving through it landing on the lawn and sprinting back into the forest, A ship took off from the building, just as it detonated in a fury of fire and debris. Something about me changed that day now that I look back on it. I became...