Chapter 5 - Human Resources
Alice found herself struggling to not be overwhelmed as she walked back from the training room; every sound was deafening, the clinical smell sickening, and the crowds of people going about their lives at the behest of their employer overwhelming…
They walked around as if nothing was wrong, as if they were fighting for a just cause, or as if the money was enough to ensure they felt comfortable in their lives, and for once, it truly, and without any sense of exaggeration, terrified her.
The training for Integrity Knights had always been unpleasant, she had known that much from her own experiences, and at first, she had truly believed she was doing right under General Resources.
She had grown up with seemingly never ending wars in far flung lands, and if the corporate monolith that was General Resources could ensure those pointless squabbles between countries no longer happened, then she was fighting for the right side.
Mito's rant had opened her eyes to the wrong that General Resources were willing to commit in order to make all of that happen, and even the Commander had reminded her that, in order to win, unsavoury actions were sometimes the only way forward.
She was reminded of a saying her father had told her as a child - "if you believe you're right, you can do anything, and that's why evil people convince others that they are in the right." - and for the first time, realised the path to hell that she had been set down.
Convinced by others that the ends justifies the means, she was sleepwalking down that path, unable to see the horrors she had already committed, and now, she was beyond terrified of the ones she would soon find herself committing if she carried on along it.
She saw images of Selka, of Kirito and Eugeo, of her mother and father, all there in the rubble that the path she found herself on would leave; bloodied, bruised and broken, and she wanted those images gone.
And the worst part was that the easiest way to be rid of those images… was to continue down the path of evil she was walking down. General Resources demanded complete loyalty of their Knights, and they didn't leave it to chance - they broke you, and reformed you in their image.
Not a knight, but a puppet; her strings pulled by the higher ups of the company.
Much like that boy she had seen in the hangar; stripped of his humanity, of his image of himself, and reduced to a corporate drone to be plugged into a product. No more of a human than any computer module that they installed into their planes, she thought to herself, and reminded herself that he was not even the first - he was the twenty-seventh of such "pilots", and she would likely be the thirtieth of them.
Eventually, she made her way back to her own room, and sat on the bed, thinking back to everything she had seen that day - not only the brainwashing of the Knights, but the absolutely monstrosity on display as they produced the next generation of Knights; a process that it seemed even Integrity Knights feared.
They had already lost their personality to General Resources, but now, they would be losing their humanity to them. Everything that made them, them, gone, and the shell repurposed into an asset for the company to use as they saw fit, objections such as decency, morality and humanity be damned in the process of profits!
As Alice stared at the ceiling, she felt sick to her core at the day's discoveries - of the development of the Knights from loyal employees to nothing more than mindless slaves, their humanity removed in the process of turning them into fleshy human-computer interfaces. Unlike Selka and her mother, she was not too religious, but even she found the actions of GR to be doing something inspired by the devil themselves.
No, that felt like an insult to the devil - they at least had ideology behind them. General Resources cared only for their bottom line, and for the first time, she found herself agreeing with Mito's little speech.
If she could overlook something this monstrous, what else had she been blind to?
"Yui, activate."
"Yes, Miss Alice?"
"Activate process Obsidian." Whilst she was no Kirito - her former friend having built a full on computer in his room at the age of nine, and managed to make it work better than the computer they had spent hundreds of euros on - she was still somewhat technologically literate, and had managed to program a deadlock mode on Yui - one that ensured only she would know what was said during that time.
"Process active." The young AI replied, and the screen in front of her fell to black. "What troubles you, Miss Alice?"
"I have discovered what General Resources do with the Integrity Knight candidates, and…"
"Took ya long enough, blondie." She felt a cold chill go down her spine as she realised that she wasn't alone in her own room.
"Va-Vassago…"
The hooded man stood against the door frame, a cruel grin on his face.
"Tell ya what, we can help each other here." The mercenary told her as he sat there calmly. "We both want out right?"
"Yo-you want out?" She asked, shocked by the change of their tune. They were mercenaries through and through, and yet they wanted to abandon their best source of income?
"I ain't too keen on becomin' a cyborg either, ya know?" Vassago shrugged. "And right now, you're the only other person who knows what they're doing. Of course, I should just throw you to the wolves, and let them rip you apart whilst I get away scot-free…"
"Then why help?" She asked, dreading the answer…
"Ain't it obvious? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." Vassago grinned.
A deal with the devil, in other words.
Alice looked around, thinking about it, and noticed something… "Where's Selka?!"
"Eh, she's with my guys. Waiting on my word." The threat went unsaid in that sentence, that if she didn't help the murderous mercenaries, then Selka would be in danger… and if she did, then they would all be in danger.
"I help you, I will die. I refuse to help you, my sister dies, and then you let me take the fall. Do I have that right?" Alice asked, bitterly. As angry as she was, she could not help but consider how well planned it had been. She was left in a lose-lose situation, after all…
"Help us, and we won't kill ya. GR will, but then, which is better for ya? Dying, or whatever the hell they do to those poor bastards?" Vassago asked, and involuntarily, she felt a shudder down her spine as she thought of the images of Renly undergoing surgery… "Thought as much."
"And what will you have me do?"
A wicked grin came over the mercenary leader's face, one that filled her with dread… "Now that's where the plan gets good…"
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As a child, Lisbeth had always wondered where she fit into the grand plan of the world. She was a tinkerer, someone who enjoyed building little things; taking something old and building it into something new.
She'd always been good at practical subjects, and it wasn't like she had been bad at the more theoretical subjects either - you needed maths in order to actually build things, and science was the bedrock of all construction after all… and she supposed you needed languages in order to read the instructions that many things came with (not that she ever did, mind you) - but in this new world, one ruled by a corrupt and cruel corporatocracy, she found herself as one half of the 501st's research & development division now.
Seven was research; able to absorb a truly insane amount of information for someone so young, and draft up all kinds of ridiculous and wonderful machines and devices to make their lives easier, which left her as development.
The difficult part, in other words.
Ideas were child's play - she quietly apologised to Seven for calling her a child there, she was not a child… she was a teenager, and hadn't Seven made that one known to everyone! There was only a fine line between crazy and genius, and the teenaged Seven often straddled that fine line… - but developing those ideas into workable prototypes was something else entirely.
Still, she did her best with the technologies they had, and when the ex-GR pilots had arrived, their aircraft had been goldmines for them!
One of the aircraft in particular had been a game changer for them - an F-25A nicknamed the Tempest Dragon due to its… unusual looks that more closely resembled the GCAP demonstrator Tempest if its forward fuselage had been replaced with that of a J-20, and given oversized canards. The F-25 was a dedicated electronic attack aircraft, fitted with all kinds of systems that could tunnel into an enemy's systems, and gain control of them for brief periods, alongside a localised self defence field that fried all incoming electronics, and that had given her all the components needed to convince Seven to design a more… advanced version of that field.
One that no longer needed to be aircraft mounted, but rather could be ground based, and installed wherever needed protection from guided munitions. Dumb bombs and just ramming would still be a threat obviously, but the ability to disrupt guided munitions completely? That really would level the playing field out here!
And after some months, the device had been completed - it was the size of a locomotive, mind you, but it was finished, and today had been the day it was completed and installed at a data mining centre in the Bay of Alex, and Liz had been allowed to christen the new device:
Sentinel.
A guardian for their efforts to resist the oppression and subjugation of the corporate giant that was General Resources.
And thankfully, Seven was young enough to not know that she'd very much borrowed the name from an organisation in a mostly forgotten Call of Duty game, rather than coming up with it on her own. It wasn't like Activision were going to sue her here, was it…
"All staff, Sentinel is now active." Came the announcement from the ops room, and the small group sent over to activate the device began the preparations to depart for Artiglio. It was a relatively short flight by helicopter, but one that could always be a risk, she knew that much.
Which was why they'd been given an escort by two of the ex-GR pilots and Klein, who had agreed to keep watch on them. It wasn't as if they were expected to betray them, but it was still a risk that was always worth keeping a watchful eye on…
"Solitaire One to Blacksmith, we're ready to go when you are."
"Samurai One, ready to go too."
"Understood boys, we should be getting back now anyway. They'll miss us too much otherwise!" Liz joked from her seat in the back of an AW101, as the helicopter prepared for take off. She had to admit, she'd never been all that thrilled to be flying in helicopters - having described the rotorcraft as whirling blades of death, and in the case of attack helicopters, anger issues - but she supposed it was a better option than sticking three people into a single transport plane.
"All 501st aircraft, this is Commander Mickleover, we've got an aircraft passing overhead at extreme altitude. Looks like a GR reconnaissance aircraft poking around."
"Understood Commander. Boys, are you armed?"
"Short range only. We've got heat seekers and our defensive suite, but if that's what I think it is, we wouldn't put a dent in it."
"What is it then?"
"RF-12A Blackbird II. Mach 4 capable, cruises at 100,000 feet." Sierra admitted. "And not equipped with COFFIN either, so we can't hack it."
"So we have to let it go then." Klein answered, unimpressed by the news. She didn't blame him, she wished they could go and bring it down themselves, but…
"Hold on, it's got an escort too. Keeps popping up on radar at a much lower altitude - some kind of stealth fighter, but we're getting all kinds of weird signals from it."
"Understood sir, we're heading up to deal with it." Jet answered, and in the distance, she could see the F-25 rolling down the runway, with Klein's ASF-3 passing not far behind, the forward swept wing aircraft climbing out just behind the heavier electronic warfare fighter.
"Liz, if that thing is generating signals like that, maybe it's not an escort?" Rain questioned. The redhead was still undergoing her pilot's training, and as such, wasn't an official member of the 501st, but she had proven to be extremely perceptive, and this was no exception…
"Then what… oh." It dawned on Liz exactly what the stealth fighter was - it was the recon aircraft! The Blackbird was purely a decoy, or intended to gather photographic intelligence; the stealth fighter was an electronic intelligence aircraft! "Boys, that fighter is the recon bird!"
"Good job its stealth seems to be useless then." Sierra said. "The signals coming off it are giving away its position almost in real time."
"Why, GR aren't usually so slapdash about that sort of stuff…" She could hear Jet grumble from the front cockpit.
"How about we ask the bastard flying it when we bring it down to earth?" Klein said, as he readied his weaponry - the ASF-3 was an unusual aircraft in almost every way, she'd soon realised; the forward swept wings being the least unusual feature of the craft, whilst the pivoting wingtips and stabilators had proven to be an… interesting feature to have to maintain, alongside the lift fan mounted in the fuselage; all of which meant that the Shinden was forced to carry its weapons mostly externally, unlike other fifth-generation aircraft…
"Good plan, if they survive." Sierra commented back. "Datalink's ready. You're good to go, Klein."
The boys had developed a tactic known to them as sniper chicken; the ASF-3 being lacking in the stealth department, meant that it was forced to hold back in fights against other stealth aircraft, but it did possess the ability to carry up to six AIM-1000 Meteors, whereas the F-25 could carry BVR weaponry, but only at the cost of its jamming pod.
As a result, they'd realised that the advanced sensor suite on the F-25 made for a perfect spotter aircraft - it could see the targets well beyond they could see it, and then using the inbuilt datalink (that she had modified in order to link with the Shinden and the other Erusean types) send the data to the Shinden, and use it as a long range sniper.
It was hard to dodge six Meteors coming at you with constant guidance, after all, and even more so if you could only counter the aircraft firing them… not the one guiding them. Even if they did spot the F-25, then the guidance could be switched to the Shinden too, making for a game they called "air-to-air dodgeball"...
Only the balls were Mach 4 capable, ramjet powered air-to-air missiles with a range of over a hundred miles. Some game of dodgeball, she'd joked to them…
"Fox Three, Volley four." A cluster of four Meteors fell away from the Shinden, and streaked into the late afternoon sky, never to be seen again.
"That should've…" Sierra answered with confidence, before his tone faded to one of confusion, "...got them? Uhh, they're still alive guys."
"Missiles didn't track. Whatever it is, my sensors are going haywire!" Considering that the weather radar on the helicopter now showed that they were in the middle of a snowstorm, despite it being sunny… she'd have agreed with that assessment, yes.
"Yeah, it looks like…"
"Missed me!" A strange and playful voice called out over their frequency. In fact, it had come over every frequency in the area…
"I know it's usually Cap saying this, but… what the fuck?"
"Oh great, they've got ECCM." Jet sighed.
"Sorry, but I can't play with you this time. Next time maybe!" The voice said, as it turned towards the data centre…
"Liz, looks like they're coming for-"
What happened next could only be described as something straight out of a religious text - forks of lightning filled the sky, as the clouds shone black, and the mystery aircraft, far from attacking, plunged from the apocalyptic sky and smashed into a hillside nearby…
"What…just happened?" Asked Klein, clearly slightly dazed.
"I think we discovered what happens when two electromagnetic defence systems meet." Seven answered as the sky returned to normal around them. "That was… intense. More than any calculations predicted it might be!"
"Uhh, Seven, did you actually predict that, or just forget to tell us that was a possibility?" Liz asked with the disappointed tone of a mother telling her child off.
"It was a 10% chance something like that might happen!" Seven defended herself.
"Could be worse." Rain smiled from her seat. "Wasn't there, like, a 5% chance that the device would reverse the electromagnetic field of the area too?" A smile that it became apparent was because she had dropped her little sister well and truly into the dung.
"Wait, what?!" Came the calls from everyone listening in.
"Young lady, we are going to have a talk about the possibility of creating doomsday weapons with Erusean resources…" Liz pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. "Still, I'm curious to see what that wreck holds now. Pilot, if you can take us in that direction?" She pointed roughly to the site of a black cloud of smoke rising from a hillside…
/-/
It had taken around twenty minutes, but the helicopter had landed on the hillside nearest to the wreck, and the three girls had walked the short distance to the crash site of the mystery aircraft.
From the shape of the wings found in the wreckage, it had become apparent that it was a massively improved CFA-44 variant - originally an Estovakian stealth fighter, unflatteringly named "Nosferatu", after its effects on the Estovakian economy being similar to that of a vampire sucking blood - but the most interesting thing she could see was around its forward section.
A far more advanced COFFIN system than she had ever seen before, almost as if it was an extension of the pilot themselves, rather than the usual module it seemed to be on other aircraft. Advanced enough that she wasn't even sure if it was that, or some kind of super-drone using an old CFA-44 as its basis, as she began to look for a release latch of some kind…
"Got it!" Seven exclaimed, as she was able to access the stricken aircraft digitally, and release the module.
"Let's see what…" Liz said excitedly as she popped open the module; an emotion that rapidly faded to horror as they saw the pilot inside. "Oh my god."
"What is… it, bozhe moi!" Rain exclaimed in horror, and pulled Seven away instinctively.
The pilot inside the aircraft was around Seven's age, with long purple hair, and completely unconscious, if not already dead. She was completely wired into the aircraft, with wires and cables coming from her limbs into all kinds of systems…
This wasn't just morally wrong, it was an affront to humanity as a whole!
"Liz, what is it?"
"General Resources, they've got to be stopped." Liz said grimly as she opened up a visual channel to the three pilots.
"Yeah, we all agree on that, but what are they-" Jet asked, before the channel stabilised.
"Cap, wasn't she one of the IK candidates? What's her name, Yui?"
"Yuuki." He corrected his backseater quietly. "What did they do to her?"
"She's wired in completely, I think it's some kind of life support system. Remove her, and she dies." Liz explained what she could see to them. It was hard to tell exactly what she was even looking at, the wires looking almost like some kind of invasive species in the cockpit…
Sierra answered. "Nope, it's not. It's an advanced battle computer, Liz. They required a human to be plugged into it, meaning their limbs had to have all kinds of sockets and ports installed just to be compatible, but even GR baulked at the idea of turning someone into a cyborg."
"Yeah, it's beyond sick, that's why." Klein said angrily at the affront to humanity that the idea represented.
"Nope, it cost too much money. Or so we thought anyway."
Liz rolled her eyes in disgust. Naturally, the company hadn't baulked at the inhumanity of the idea, but rather the financial cost of the process… "Why am I not surprised?"
"Guess there really is no red line for them." Klein sounded morose at the thought, and she didn't blame him there - the idea that a company would physically mutilate someone just so they could use them as another part of a computer was absolutely inhuman.
The fact they had done so was unforgivable though…
Changing the frequency, she'd decided that they needed to get Yuuki back to Artiglio, and to understand what GR had actually done to the young girl… "Diavel, it's Liz. We need CSAR here now, we've got something here that the world needs to see…"
/-/
It was several hours before they had managed to get the girl - someone that some of them recognised as a pilot called Yuuki - into a stable condition, having worked out not only how to transport her, but also the crucial parts of the module that they had found with her in the crashed CFA-44, as well as how to keep her alive without many of those modules.
Asuna had never particularly been one who could handle blood, guts and gore - that really was more Mito's speed - but she was absolutely appalled when she had seen the state of the young girl: both of her arms had been replaced with cybernetics (though one had not survived the crash in any kind of useable state, being reduced to a stump by the impact), as had her legs, and various chips had been implanted into her, causing enough concerns that they had decided it wasn't safe to try and MRI her…
They ran the risk of blowing them all sky high if they did, given that they had no idea exactly how extensive the implants were…
Even with safety aside, what they had done to the girl was nothing short of heinous! She couldn't have been older than fifteen, and yet, they had amputated all of her limbs to replace them with prosthetics of their own making… just so they could create a super pilot.
If they were willing to go to such lengths for just that… then how far were the company willing to go in the event they wished to take over a country, or any similar ambitions…
That had led to the squadron gathering in the war room, as Diavel had christened it, to discuss what they would do next… a discussion that was not proving particularly fruitful currently.
"I've got it! We need to break this to the public, show everyone what they're really like!" Seven exclaimed optimistically.
"Even if we did, it'd be a sticking plaster, not a solution." Diavel sighed. "General Resources control the media, and those that aren't GR owned? They're owned by Neucom instead, and I don't think anyone here is too keen on trading one corporate master for another…"
The room fell silent as they contemplated what happened next, and Asuna realised something in that moment - this was what true hopelessness felt like.
Not just fighting a losing battle, but fighting one where there was no victory condition. The deck was well and truly stacked against them, and even the most intelligent players would be hard pressed to win in this twisted game for long…
"I hate to admit it, but there's a plan in plain sight." Mito said calmly - too calmly, considering what they were discussing, Asuna thought to herself.
"And what's that?"
"You want to put out an oil fire, then you start a bigger one next to it. Takes all the oxygen and puts out the oil fire; basic science." Mito explained something she already knew - they were both at the top of their class, so it wasn't something new to her… though exactly what it had to do with their current situation, Asuna really didn't know.
"No." Diavel answered bluntly. "Not least because you know how that would end, Mito."
"I don't think we have a choice here." Mito shrugged.
Jet sighed, looking around the room, and evidently fed up with the speech of omissions that was currently going on between Mito and Diavel, spoke up. "Anyone want to fill us mere mortals in on the discussion?"
"We give that research to Neucom. Watch them leak it to the world, and paint GR as an evil that needs to be purged." Mito explained to them, and there was an understandable look of complete shock across the room.
"We'd start a world war." Eugeo pointed out the obvious flaw in that plan. General Resources and Neucom were both giants, many times bigger than most nations in almost every metric, and an all out war between the two?
He was right - it would be a world war.
"But it'd get GR off our asses." Mito rebuked.
"Yeah, kinda glossing over the whole world war thing there, though. We'd be fine, but damn the world? Aren't we trying to fight that attitude?" Klein argued back far more intensely than anyone else.
"Are we? I just want GR to pay for what they've done. And if Neucom won't do it themselves…" Mito told them, the implication in her words evident.
She wasn't fighting for some grand moral victory - she just wanted to see General Resources burn - and for the first time, Asuna found herself genuinely scared of the path her friend and mentor was going down.
The path to hell was paved with good intentions, they said, and she wasn't even sure how good Mito's intentions were anymore…
"This is ridiculous!" Diavel smacked his hands down on the table, desperately trying to regain some semblance of sanity in the room. "Look, we are not starting a world war to punish GR, not least because we do not have the resources! Am I crystal clear on that one?!"
"Which leaves us back where we started."
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Yuuki wasn't even sure how long she'd been out for, but when she came to, she realised something - this wasn't General Resources anymore.
The room she found herself in was no longer a sterile and featureless white void, but instead one that looked somewhat more lived in. She was still plugged into various computers, but given what had happened to her, she was surprised how little she found herself hurting.
Maybe that had to do with no longer having any extremities, she guessed - but the phantom pains were still there.
Wait, she could remember those now? Hadn't she always been like that? That was what the doctors told her, and… why did none of this make any sense anymore? It was like her mind was full of a haze that was starting to lift, but only just…
"Everyone, she's awake!" A young girl, probably about her own age, with long silver hair and pink eyes sat beside her bed, tinkering with a tablet of some kind. Was she adjusting her mind, was that why she was remembering things now?
"Who… are you? Where am I?" She asked, trying to put the fog in her mind to one side for now. Had they kidnapped her, or what? She didn't remember being abducted, but she couldn't be sure anymore…
"Artiligo." The girl answered, looking up from her tablet. "And I'm Seven. Privyet."
Yuuki looked at her in confusion, how had she ended up in an Erusean hospital? All she remembered was the reconnaissance mission, dodging the missiles from the Erusean fighters, and then-
Explosions of light and sounds as her plane fell to earth, every system dead. She had passed out not long after that, she guessed, and they'd found her…
"You… saved me?"
"You remember that?" Seven asked, putting the tablet away. "Do you remember anything else about-"
"Uhh, I'm Yuuki, I remember that much." She said, going to tap the side of her head before realising that her arm was missing below the elbow. "Aww, my robot arm's gone…"
"Wait, you understood what they did to you?" Seven asked in shock.
"Well, yeah." She answered. "They told me I was born with a congenital disease and that my limbs were deformed when I was born…" The more she thought about it though, the more she didn't believe it anymore. The fog in her mind was lifting, and she could see images in her mind - another girl who was there in every memory, but who'd been almost censored in her mind… "I'm not sure I believe them anymore though…"
Seven looked at her sadly. "I don't think I would either." She told her. "Anything else you can remember though?"
"I was sent to gather intelligence on an Erusean installation, and white I was dodging some fighters, my plane exploded. I passed out and then… I guess that's when you found me?"
"Matches up with what we saw too, so that's good." Seven nodded. "Do you know what they did to you - umm, from a mechanical point, not…"
"You mean how my prosthetics worked, yeah?"
"Yep."
"Not really, I'm not too good with the tech-y side of things - I just knew how to use them." She wiggled one of her hands, and the damaged arm gave a small judder as it attempted to match the movement.
"Yuuki, can you remember how much system access you had?"
"Umm, I'm not too good with that sort of stuff either, but it was -umm, oh what was it- Kernel Access, I think."
Seven's face lit up at that. "You weren't plugged in, you were controlling that thing!"
"Well, duh, how else was I flying the plane?" She asked.
"No, I mean the computer system. You had almost unlimited access… and we've got the module here too! Diavel! I have a plan that doesn't involve starting a World War!" Seven shouted as she rushed out of the room.
"Yay!" Yuuki exclaimed from her bed. "Wait, what did you say about the whole World War thing?"
"Eh, it's not important." She told her, popping her head back in through the door frame…