10 years ago, an unknown hacker broke into the computers of several of the largest countries in the world and launched over 2000 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles at Japan. However, as the missiles were closing in, a new weapon, the Infinite Stratos known only as the White Knight showed up and intercepted every one of them, saving japan and kicking off a race to capture the White Knight for study. The entire effort cost the world 207 fighter jets, 7 cruisers, 5 aircraft carriers and for some reason, 8 surveillance satellites.
Shortly afterward, Tabane Shinonono released the technology of the Infinite Stratos to the world at large and in the face of such awesome superweapons, the world's powers converged and created the Alaska Treaty. With this treaty, the 467 IS cores were evenly distributed among all the countries on the globe. This also brought about large societal changes as well since only women could pilot the damn things due to wonky formatting of the AI that only likes females. How do I know?
Well you see, Tabane Shinonono is smart, very smart, super extremely mind bogglingly smart, but she is also a complete ditz. She is constantly so coked up on whatever she's smoking that she would eventually run into some accident that would get her and everyone within a 40 kilometer radius killed horribly, painfully, and slowly. How is she not dead you may ask? Well, because I (Marcus ) was always around to fix whatever went wrong, which was a lot of the time. Did you know that during my formative years, I was forced to learn high energy physics and advanced engineering quickly so that Shinonono wouldn't be able to kill me by blowing something up? I had to learn quickly cause that happened 143 times during the time I worked with her. Eventually I just hardwired a self replicating safety protocol into every one of her devices so they wouldn't randomly blow up the instant she touched them.
I nearly had a heart attack when Chifuyu deployed in the White Knight without the safety protocol in place. When she landed, I gave that thing the mother of all shake downs and found to my relief that Chifuyu had installed it in flight from an advanced USB disk she had taken with her. Clever girl. Still, I gave them both a stern talking to later and I would imagine it was a pretty comical sight, watching a 6 year old boy berate two girls both several years his senior on the virtues of safety and proper procedure.
I participated in the creation of the Infinite Stratos, hell, even made plenty of breakthroughs doing so as well. Mainly what I did was help create the original trans-dimensional matter translation system with time dilation AKA Equalizer and build the energy reactor located in the IS core. We also worked on programming the template for the IS operating system which is also the reason why IS would only work for females and people like Chifuyu Orimura, me, and Ichika Orimura. This is because despite her age and sex, she has the mind of a dirty old man and the basic template, the thing that makes and IS and IS is based off her own brainstate. The only reason I and Ichika are able to pilot an IS is because she shares a platonic relationship with us. Anyway, I was going to release a patch later based on my own brain state to allow males to pilot it but then she decided to release the thing to the world, half baked, unpolished, with only a single field test. I said it needed more testing but she had much more confidence than me and said that it would be fine.
Then the Alaska Treaty locked me out. I couldn't do anymore work on the IS cores, do bug fixes, fix the template, just hope and pray that I did a good enough job to keep people from getting hurt. It turns out, the system worked exactly as designed, only one thing occurred that wasn't in line with the plans. The IS would only accept female pilots so society naturally shifted to the point where guys were on the bottom, girls were on the top, and people started abusing that. There were no laws in place, no social standards, and no code of honor that protected the guy from the girl and while the vast majority were still nice, there were always outliers and under the threat of a rogue IS, there was little the governments could do about it. I asked Tabane to withdraw the cores so I could initiate the bug-fix but she told me she wanted to move onto bigger and better things even though I wanted to fix the mess we created. So I released the safety protocol into every one of her systems as a self replicating advanced virus, one last favor to keep her safe from herself, and I packed up, and I left.
Quantum Physics allowed me to create the quantum nano-lathe, a device that I could simply pour mass into to construct anything I wanted. Using the nano-lathe, I created what I needed to begin creating my legacy. I took inspiration from a game, Supreme Commander, and the first thing I did was create a floating fortress, one equipped with its own T3 land factory, air factory, and three sea factories, a UEF, Cybran and Aeon as well as a Paragon from which I could sustainably harvest resources. I had my own city of steel, one where I could create whatever I chose to in peace, but I wasn't naive enough to think that people wouldn't attack me, so I made it stealthy and then I destroyed my nanolathe so that nobody could use it. The only nano-lathes in existence were inside the factories and those could only build specific units.
Using those factories, I created a fleet to protect me and keep my work from the world. Sixteen T1 tigersharks to form the first defensive barrier and function as my first line of defense against those who would wish me harm or use my creations for malicious schemes. Four T2 Coupers kept the Tigersharks safe from those who would approach from beneath the waves. Fourteen T1 Thunderhead frigates were stationed behind the Tigersharks and in front of the Coupers to confront or greet those who approach. Twelve T2 Valiant class destroyers kept behind the Coupers to deal with any threats that the frigates could not handle. Nine T2 Governor class cruisers were on station to deal with any threats that the destroyers could not handle, there were many powerful organizations out there, perhaps even those with a fully fledged navy or maybe even an Infinite Stratos, I don't know but a healthy dose of paranoia never hurt. Behind the Governers came the big boys, two T3 Summit class battleships and three T3 Neptune class battlecruisers as my ultimate Fuck-off weapons. Woe be to whomever would have to face those monsters on the open sea. The lone stealthy T3 Ace strategic missile submarine trailing behind the whole thing was . . . insurance.
So with that unhappy business out of the way, I plopped myself down and started my lonely work. I missed Tabane sometimes, she would always be making trouble and even if it was sometimes frustrating to fix things that went wrong it was always fun, but I stuck to my guns and kept working. It was slow going at times and at one point, Tabane revealed that I was one of the only people other than her who was able to create an actual, genuine IS core so in addition to some of my brain-block. I also had a coalition of powerful organizations after me including several black ops agencies and many very powerful weapons manufacturing and industrial organizations. One of the best things that happened in that time was my accidentally sailing my fleet into the german economic exclusive zone and even though I apologized to the authorities, german black ops sent an IS out to put down my fleet and bring me in.
I must admit, I was actually a bit scared which was why I had actually created a few Aeon Illuminate T1 Shard attack boats in order to ward off any IS's they would throw at me. It also proved my own weapons systems' effectiveness at keeping aerial threats away from me though the IS pilot herself was no slacker either. She managed to push past my defenses, sinking no less than two of my Thunderhead frigates, four Shards and one sub hunter and damaging one of my Valiant class destroyers before she came into range of my T2 cruisers. The SAMs turned out to be a bit much for her and in all honesty, I think it may have been overkill and I probably felt a bit sorry for the poor girl cause I fished her out of the ocean a while later.
[UEF T3 Ace-class strategic missile submarine IOS Outstanding]
"Ugh. Where . . . am I?" Asked Laura Bodewig as she was lying on what seemed to be a bed. She was tempted to stay in bed briefly before she realized that this was not actually a military style bunk but instead it was instead almost a queen sized bed that was actually quite fluffy.
The entire incident rushed back to her instantly, causing her to spring out of bed with her fists raised to confront anyone who would attempt to attack. The blood rushing to her head after lying down for an extended period of time made her feel dizzy though and she stumbled slightly which shocked her out of her combat mindset and then she realized that she was standing in the middle of an empty though rather luxurious room with a standard set of drawers, a mirror, and a bed as well as two doors, one which obviously lead to the outside and the other one to what would presumably be a restroom given the room. There were no windows however and that did not bode well.
She scanned the room a bit and realized that there was actually nobody and then scanned her own form. She was wearing some sort of silver bracer on her wrist made of what seemed to be a single continuous band of metal without even a weld point, like it had been forged around her wrist. Also she realized that she was in a rather comfortable pair of white shorts and a t-shirt. This was bad, that meant that the enemy had actually gotten their hands on not only her IS but also on her body which she wouldn't really care about if not for the extensive genetic modifications made to her body and those top secret nano-machines embedded in her eye.
"Hello?" She tried calling out. She was met only by silence and she was about to try again when a holographic screen popped up in front of one of the doors showing only a silhouette.
"Ah. It appears that you are awake. That is very good, oh yes. I was quite worried that the concussion you received had caused lasting damage but it seems that you are made of much sterner stuff than I had anticipated. Oh yes." The voice sounded almost exactly like Doctor Brackman. Kodai had actually been working on it for a while in case he would actually need to meet accent and speech pattern would probably drive any politicians to the brink of insanity before two or three hours.
"Who are you?" Demanded Laura as she backed herself up against a wall. "Where am I? Why am I here? What did you do to me?"
"My child! Have patience. And please try to relax, you were badly injured when you attempted to attack my fleet earlier and was shot down. I am simply the commander of the fleet you engaged. Do not worry. I am not angry with you for all the ships you damaged and destroyed were unmanned so there is no bad blood between us." Kodai admonished.
Laura was baffled. She had sunk seven ships and heavily damaged yet another and yet the man talking to her had said they were all unmanned?
"That's still not answering my question!"
"Please calm down child."
"I'm not a child! I'm a soldier in the German army!"
"You will begin to understand child that despite your occupation there are always those who are more experienced and more learned than you are. To them you shall be a child until you are as learned as they are.
Now. You know me as Marcus L. Kodai or your target for you last mission. However, you may also call me Doctor Brackman. That is after all, the name I registered with the German Government. At the moment you are on a submarine. To be exact, you are on a UEF T3 Ace class strategic missile submarine named IOS Outstanding. In case you wish to do anything rash like retrieve your IS, submarines are not designed to stand up to very much abuse. Indeed, it would be very unwise to do so, oh yes." The enigmatic Kodai, or Brackman, said in an attempt to placate Laura which didn't exactly work.
"I fished you out of the Ocean because I was not about to leave a person only doing their job to drown. It is such a dreadful way to die, oh no, I could never allow that. I simply fished your body out of the Atlantic and gave you fresh clothes after securing that bracelet around your wrist and fixing all those anomalies detected on the medical scan."
"What anomaly!" Demanded Laura. She was getting a bad feeling.
"Why that artificial left eye and the nanites my girl." Laura recoiled in shock. "Such a dreadfully designed contraption, genetically rejected and incompatible, I fixed it for you so you may turn it off when not needed." Laura was relieved but also shocked. The person she had been assigned to beat the crap out of an haul back to germany in manacles had actually done something like that for her. It was just a little short of unbelievable.
She started blinking, one eye at a time and moving about. Her vision actually matched up. She could see clearly. It felt good. And now there was one last question burning in the back of her mind.
"Wh-what happens to me now?" She asked shakily.
Brackman seemed to pause for a moment before he shook his head and continued.
"After I mined your records from the german database, I deserve a little bit of revenge after all, I realized that you are, at least partially, quite like me in some ways, oh yes. You have no mother or father, many of the people you ever looked up to seemed to patronize you simply because of who you are. In the end, you are truly alone, just like me.
I negotiated with your superiors. In exchange for my research and development notes on the IS cores, you were released into my care."
"Released?" Laura gulped.
"My girl. Do not worry. I shall allow you to call your superiors in due time and receive your instructions, but for now, I am your caretaker. Now. I believe you must be dreadfully cold. The drawer contains your old clothes and a set of nicer ones for you to wear. Either way, please put one of them on and come to the bridge. I will speak with you there." The screen winked out of existence.
Laura attempted to ponder the new information but it took a while. In the meantime, she went over to the drawers and saw what was inside, her pilot suit, a pair of BDUs and a set of civilian clothes, a white blouse with jeans and a belt. After a little bit of mulling, she selected the BDUs. She wouldn't feel comfortable in civilian clothes and the pilot suit was really just too skimpy for anything really. She pulled on the desert digi-cam clothes and approached the door that the screen had appeared in front of and it slid open to reveal a hallway with different arrows pointing down both ends but there was a large blue one painted on the wall that simply said "Bridge" so that's the way she went.
Despite "being a submarine" the interior was actually not very cramped like on a normal sub. Also there was a lack of crew and Laura suspected that the submarine was also unmanned with the exception of the two of them. That is, assuming Brackman was actually on the bridge like he said. After climbing a few flights of stairs and passing several rooms, she got to a set of double doors that had the word "bridge" plastered over them and slid open when she approached.
She gasped. On the far wall as a large window or view screen of some sort and it showed that indeed she was on a submarine and the sub itself was resting on the ocean floor of a tropical reef. It also showed that the sub was resting alongside 15 other submarines as well and she suspected all of them were unmanned. The scene was amazing. The coral seemed to be alive as schools of fish swam in and out, seemingly uncaring of the large structures that jutted imperiously from the sea bed.
"Breathtaking isn't it? Sometimes all it takes is a crazy situation to really appreciate how strange and wonderful the world truly is. Oh yes." Said the familiar voice from a swivel chair behind a desk on the far side of the room.
"I'm here." Laura said. "You said that we'd talk."
"Ah, yes. I did didn't I? Yes, I suppose I should greet you properly now." Said the voice and the chair swiveled around.
Laura gasped. In front of her sat a boy almost no older than she was though there was also signs of weariness, like someone after a long day at work. There was also a sort of experience in the chocolaty brown eyes that bored into her. She raised her finger a bit as she tried to process everything.
"Hello child. Is something the matter?"
"Y-you're . . . you're my age? But how? All this?"
"My girl. I worked with Tabane of all people. I had to work quite fast and learn much faster still or the entire fabric of spacetime itself would have been at grave risk from one of her crazy schemes." Brackman admonished. "Also. Please call me Brackman now, my girl. There is little need for formality here. Oh no. No formality here. It makes me feel old."
"S-stop calling me your girl." Laura demanded, slightly red faced. "And you're my age. I'm not your child or something."
"Ah. You do not like that then? Very well then, Miss Laura. Now we have many things to discuss. Many things. Oh yes." Brackman said simply and slid a folder over to the other side of the desk he was sitting at.
Laura walked up to the desk and picked up the file. She read through the contents and gasped a little. According to the folder, the german government had essentially traded her for the notes on the IS cores which were actually more valuable than a core itself and in addition to releasing her from most of her duties, they had made Brackman her legal Guardian. In all technicality, he was her dad and she was his "child" so there was almost nothing she could do about it.
"Because you're likely wondering, no, I did not apply for your guardianship. I suppose that a very overworked bureaucrat needed to fill in a caretaker for you. Oh yes. Now, miss Laura. I have made arrangements for you while you are on your stay here. It gets very, dreadfully lonely on my perpetual voyage and not even science can cure a human being's fear of Isolation. Isolation. Such a lonely fate, even if it is self imposed. If there is anything that you do not like, please tell me, and I shall attempt to rectify that for you as best I can."
Well, after clearing up all the misconceptions, she contacted her superiors who told her that she was to be assigned as my attache to make sure there wasn't anything directly against German interests. I told her about how the bracelet attached to her arm was a mix between a transponder and a nervous system uplink since I expected her to be able to control some of my equipment. I gave her a thorough psychological scan and found that she would be trustworthy enough for me to let her off the leash for a while.
Using the Cybran naval factory, I constructed a Cybran T3 Command class aircraft carrier for her though I restricted its build queue to only T1 units. This is mainly because, well, I was bored and wanted to see what she would do with it, and so that I would have a place to put her in case something happened. Why an aircraft carrier? Because while T1 aircraft are essentially harmless to me, I also wanted her to be able to defend herself from other people and have some place to store her IS. The black and purple color scheme of the Schwarzer Regen actually goes quite nicely with the black and red of Cybran engineering.
Over the years, she kept me company and I tried to act like a responsible adult. Almost like a father. I never dropped the accent around her though and though she knew what my real accent was like, it was actually pretty fun. I even started calling her 'child' and 'girl' again just to rile her up. Almost a year later passed and she was recalled for something classified. The goodbye was short but it was sincere.
After she left I suddenly had a burst of inspiration. An answer to the IS that only men would be able to use. The IS was a weapon, the ultimate weapon, but I would make a shield, not just a weapon to be wielded by the powerful but by those who would wish to protect something, fight for their dreams, and achieve something great. And I would need to find a way to allow the technology to be used for non-violent means as well. Medical, construction, aerospace exploration, so many possibilities.
I worked, and tested and worked some more until I had a decent prototype and then I finally managed to get a working product. My creation, the infantry frame, a self contained combat system capable of combat in the sky, on the ground, and in the orbitals. It's a more complete product than the Infinite Stratos, partially because of its nature as a full suit holding more computers, armor, weapons, devices, and all sorts of other things. But above all that, it's not simply a weapon like the IS but a tool, a direct neural interface device to network and interact with other devices, weapons, everything. The infinite Stratos was supposed to have a chestplate, helmet, and other devices to make the user safe but she released it with only the kinetic buffer, shield and absolute barrier. The Infantry Frame is different. Even if its core is an ejector seat, it is a more complete system. Carbon-weave skin suit, nanite infused ceramic plating, reactive armor plates, ablative coating, Absolute Barrier system, kinetic buffer, IS shield and finally, the Mono-permeable anti-kinetic battlescreen. Before any attack can strike that walking fortress, it must get through radar jamming, passive stealth, lock on denial, decoys, flares and all sorts of other defenses. It is the perfect system. Combat is a tertiary priority, Interfacing is secondary, keeping the pilot safe is the top priority. I pick and choose the weapons systems very carefully. An inertia and kinetic buffer keeps the pilot from feeling too much strain from firing large weapons or impacts with the ground. Lithobreaking is not fun, no matter what kind of vehicle you're in. Mainly I simply take what's available and rescale it such as an assault rifle upscaled and reconfigured to .50 caliber Beowulf. The shotgun shell resembles a canister more than a shotgun shell and the shotgun itself is essentially a cannon. A reconfigured M242 25mm chaingun makes for a suitable sniper rifle and allows the system to pierce armor. I am not unmindful of the Equalizer system however, how could I? I hold the patent. That gives me a lot more options.
The reactor on the Infantry Frame is more complete than on the IS. Instead of simply the space offered by the IS core, I have the entire backpack of the IF to work with an with extra power allows me to work with a lot more equalizers. Why would I require so many equalizers? Because of the Siege mode. External shield generators, more armor plating, a repair module and the mother of all guns, all powered through a quantum link by the Paragon on my ship. Even though it is immobile when in use, the sheer firepower and the defensive boost are well worth it.
Well, that's how far I got before I ran out of food. The coding for the MKII still needed to finish compiling and I didn't even field test it yet so I went with my MKI. It's got a Barret .50 cal reconfigured for DMR work, a 20mm Oerlikon customized for sniper work, a .600 caliber nitro express as a sidearm, the basic shielding package and the interface so I'm all set even if it's a glorified ejector seat, it's still good enough for what I intend to do. I set off in a UEF T1 Cyclone interceptor since it looks the closest to regular planes and I can always register it with people in flight. So here I am, behind the controls of my plane going shopping. You know, it's not so bad whewait What? Radar contacts appear on my screen and I turn the external camera to look at them. Missiles. Dozens of them.
I frantically begin evasive maneuvers. I just don't have the health to tank all of them, one yeah, two in a pinch, but a scan shows these things were designed to take down IS's and I don't have an absolute barrier. This is bad. Without an absolute barrier to protect me, there's nothing keeping me safe in case the interceptor decides to explode in the air with me in it. I stomp on the air brake and yank the plane hard upward and then hard breaking into a sort of cross between a stall turn and cobra which allows me to evade some of the missiles, a few of which lose track of me and explode as per their safety protocols. The rest turn towards me and I launch flares and chaff in attempt to confuse the missile's guidance systems and then make a hard dive to try and escape my pursuers. Several fireballs erupt as the flares and Chaff do their work but not enough, there's still a dozen bearing down on me. A wingover and a hard pitchback allows me to ditch some of them but the others are angry now.
I'm out of countermeasures(the blaring red box that says "countermeasures depleted" makes that abundantly clear), out of options, bingo fuel, and with nowhere to run. Time for one last move. I slam down on the air breaks and fire the ventral maneuvering thrusters, pulling the nose around until it is pointing at the missiles and the reticle indicating the aim of the gunpod flashes an angry and hateful red and the processing suite all but chomps at the bit to unleash pinpoint hell on my enemy. I pull the trigger and the linked railgun begins spitting out bullets in a desperate bid to possibly shoot down enough for me to survive.
I can't target all of them in time though. They are simply too fast, too small, and too many. Two slip by the hail of ferro-tungsten alloy bullets and slam into the nose of the plane. One hits. Hull breach, decompression in all chambers, fatal systems failure in all sectors, structure failing, inertial compensator failing, the second one hits and I black out as my face slams into the dashboard.
That my friends, is how I ended up waking up on the monorail making its merry way to the illustrious IS academy even without an IS. Shot down, dragged out of the ocean, and enrolled into a school I didn't want to go to by Shinonono Tabane so I can keep an eye on her sister and then tossed onto the floor of the monorail as it left the station. I'm not even getting paid for this.