This is a story inspired by the new and awesome Video game Dust 514 where soldiers with the famed immortal technology, once exclusive to the Empyreans of New Eden wage a war that no mortal could ever fathom. If you have no idea what I'm rambling about, look up either EVE or Dust 514. If you don't get any of these references, sorry. Just try to follow along as best you can. I own nothing.
This story is about a newly created Immortal soldier named Alpha and his first mission where he discovers his identity as an Immortal and how the immortals will change New Eden forever.
Chapter 1
Everyshore Region - Osnis Constellation
Bereye III - Location Undisclosed
Sovereignty of the Gallente Federation
Alpha looked up at the sky, feeling the warmth of the tropical sun as it continued its descent towards the western horizon as he stood on the terrace of the small building that he called his home. He noticed an single eagle flying in the sky, wings spread in a beautiful posture of grace and majesty. He saw the fine details of the dark feathers extending from its wings.
Alpha had never seen such beauty. He could tell the eagle's species, planet of origin, and the exact wingspan, down to each centimeter. He also could the animals heading, the current windage, and range. He also knew that he could blast it from the sky, using any of the weapons that lay on the table before him, should he choose.
In lieu of that, he continued examining it, and committed it to his memory. He watched as it flew into the distance. He was amazed at how no matter how far the eagle flew, he still felt as if he could reach out and touch.
Reflecting on his past, Alpha marveled at his new physical powers, like the lift huge weights with startling ease, run great distances without ever tiring, and react to every threat with a preternatural quickness. He had more than just physical powers. His mind equalled that of a Jovian scientist. He absorbed all information that he came into contact with. Whenever he focused on an object he knew everything about it - distance, weight, length, breadth, material. He knew every working part of each weapon before him, though he had only seen and operated a third of them.
His body was a marvel of bioengineering, with his blood, plasma replaced with a nanite filled electrolyte balance that supplied five times as much oxygen to his cells as before when he had a simple human biosystem. His muscles were stronger, most of them replaced by a nanocarbon weave of muscles. Those that weren't replaced were given full chemical augmentations. His bones were also augmented. Most of the bones in his body were replaced with a titanium-steel composite, and those that weren't were laced with a thin layer of titanium that made them almost unbreakable.
Alpha senses were amplified tenfold. He was almost overwhelmed with the new details that came to him. He could smell the chemical compounds that make up a block of plastic explosives from a meter away, he could taste an almost undetectable poison in a glass of wine, he could hear a hushed conversation from a kilometer away. Alpha found himself comparing himself to a god. Correcting himself he thought, gods and deities were for those death-worshipping cults and those fanatic Amarrians
He sensed a presence behind him. He could tell it was Instructor Feah from her constant scent of rose petals and her light dancer steps. With her presence came recent memories of physical and mental exercises to make him used to his new bodies and to give him as much knowledge as possible.
"Good evening, Instructor," he said.
"Good evening, Alpha," she replied coming up behind him, taking a place beside him, and examining the view.
"Very beautiful," he commented, sucking a breath through his nostrils.
"A rarity in this volatile time. Now let's begin with the exercise. Pick up the plasma rifle."
Alpha turned to the table and picked up the heavy rifle that should have been too heavy to carry, but it was light as feather. He had never seen a plasma rifle, let alone use one. During his time in the Gallente Navy special forces he had come into contact with all kinds of weapons but he had never seen anything that lay on the table. Still he knew every inner working of the complex weapon.
"Fire at the targets on the firing range," She said, pointing to Alpha's left.
He paced over to the side of the roof facing the range. As if reacting to Alpha's presence, hardlight targets appeared on the constructed range. He pressed the rifle to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger without aiming. The bright pulse of plasma ripped apart the target. He switched targets and blasted apart another one. Alpha kept on firing till the rifle begin to overheat and kept on firing, only stopping to reload. The heat should have left his arms blistered and charred but there was hardly any sign of burns.
He stopped to examine his arms and the rifle. The skin was hard to the touch and ripples of heat radiated from the barrel, like radiation from a breached reactor.
"Dermal armor, it protects you against heat and most ballistics, and nanites in your brain shut off your pain receptors... but you can still be damaged." She took a compact single shot gauss pistol. Alpha turned towards her just in time for her to fire it into his abdomen. The round ripped through the dermal armor but the nanofiber abdominal stopped the shot. He hunched over with the shot, a look of bewilderment and betrayal in his eyes.
"Why?" Alpha asked through clenched teeth.
"To prove a point." She said, placing the gun on the table. "Now look."
Alpha looked down at his wounded stomach. The bullet hole was already healing and there was hardly any blood on his Gallente navy shirt. He reached into the wound and grasped the small bullet. The project bent and warped, blood dripping off it. But the blood wasn't red. It was an iridescent blue, shimmering in the light. Alpha could faintly see small smudges that were clusters of nanites in the synthetic blood.
"You see them, don't you?" Feah asked. "Your body can withstand only so much damage and the nanites already present in your bloodstream can wear out."
She took a silver cylinder from the table and tossed it at Alpha. Inside were billions of nanites mixed in with a cocktail of adrenaline and painkillers. "Use it."
Alpha twisted off the cap, revealing three heavy gauged needles arrayed in a triangular pattern. He jabbed the injector into his arm and felt a rush as the adrenaline came into contact with his brain and a tingling feeling in his abdomen as the new nanites began to stitch the bullet hole together. "Though you are mortal no longer, you must act as if this body were your last - fight as no mortal could before. As the Amarrians say, 'you were born from dust,' now you can never return to it."
Rage coursed through him at the mere mention of those murdering zealots that call themselves a race. The Amarrians were the reason he was an Immortal. Three years ago, Amarr had attacked the planet of Pike's Landing, murdering all of it's inhabitants. His Minmatar mother was one of the settlers on the planet, looking for a new life. Then the Valklears, the main force on the planet had almost everyone evacuated. Almost everyone. His mother was a trauma surgeon - a good one. They made her stay along with his sister and his son who stayed with Alpha's mother a lot of the time being that Alpha was in the Navy.
As soon as he had heard that Pike's Landing had been invaded by the Amarrians, Alpha had always carried a burning desire to tear apart every Amarrian he met. After a year of seething hatred, the Navy came forward with a proposal, "become an Immortal Soldier, fight for the Gallente people."
"Only if I get to make the Amarrians pay for Pike's Landing," He had said. And so Captain Korvin Dusk had become Shadow Alpha, part of the Night Hunters, a task force of Immortal Soldiers given the purpose of killing the Federation's enemies.
"Now I want you to run across the range to the target and hit it before you are killed," Feah said, breaking him from his reverie. He focused on the other end of the range. It was over a hundred meters of open ground. He found himself wondering why she had given him a task. Then a Corinthian Dropship appeared in the sky, coming over the horizon. Even at this distance, he could see the gatling lasers and the point-defense cannons on the vehicles wings.
"This is to show you that you can accomplish so much war without the fear of mortality. Now go."
Alpha leapt off the building and made a mad dash for the other side of the other side of the range. He was barely twenty meters down when the weapon system on the distant Corinthian. He felt spikes of pain all over his body that should have incapacitated a normal man but still he kept on pushing on. He made it another ten meters before the killing blow was dealt.
Alpha opened his eyes to the smell of the CRU fluids and the bottom floor of the training building. He was naked as the day he was born but it was the same body yet he could see the bloodied and dead form of himself through the window on the range. He grabbed a towel from the rack beside the clone vat when Fear came down the stairs. "You see you may live again but those bodies cost fortunes to make so use them wisely."
