Bloodbath
02 Nov 2023Eeka
This is the third episode of our series telling the history of our squadron, viewer discretion is advised. Make sure you didn't miss part 1 and part 2.Mr. Nikola is now in his adolescent age, studying, and interacting with his community in the best way possible. Despite the strong value given to physical and genetical beauty by this specific social group, he was able to make a friend.
Dark brown hair, pale white skin with dark green eyes and the third child from a noble imperial family, for some unknown reason Charise approached Nik during their school days, at even younger age, when their bounds were created. If it was her innate love for technology making Nik's limbs look "super cool" to an innocent child's eye, only she could tell.
She was the only reference Nik had of a sincere relationship with another human. Being the son of a successful, and now military, scientist added a second layer of distance from a social life. Every other relation had to follow security protocols, when it happened. Nik was used to this restriction since his tender days, you can't miss what you don't know, but showed promising intellectual and creative development regardless.
Few years prior, in an unexpected turn, Dr. Benitez' research was fully absorbed by the imperial military. Though it's safe to say only the stakeholders weren't expecting this. History shows that technology that can be weaponized is used as a weapon before it is used to improve public quality of life.
Nik became a key component of exosuit development by allowing the research to overcome one of its main setbacks. The close integration of human's nervous system and machine's hardware is not only challenging from the neurological point of view but accommodating a whole human body within a robotic suit has significant practical issues.
Two different types of HMI (human-machine-interface) could be developed, one in which the pilot would control the hardware via implants in its nervous system, requiring permanent life-changing body adaptations (brain-computer interfaces), while the second would replicate the human's body biomechanics into the hardware via mechanical controls installed all around the pilot's body. The second option, though simpler, was abandoned for the high production cost and enormous size of the suits, required to accommodate the pilot and the range of its motion in the torso region, that would also move very clumsily due to the delay of the lenghty bridge between the pilot's reaction, movement input, processing and hardware response, deeming it unreliable in a real combat scenario.
With such implants already in place, with plenty of room in his body for prototype limbs and with a nervous system used to control mechanical parts since birth the boy jumped the project a few important, maybe impracticable, phases ahead.
The main condition stablished by Dr. Benitez to allow his son to be part of the project was that it should not prevent Nik's academic development. Social development was not seen as a challenge by the military, given the traits of the kid, although it was the second. This was a clever bargain, since the desire for power could bring Nik in without any need for consent.
Thanks to this treat, Nik was not only able to continue studying along other adolescents but also to keep Charise's friendship. Although it was required that he remained in a military academic instituition, she joined him wanting to be a pilot like her two older brothers in the Imperial Navy. A settlement was stablished near the school, where parts of the research took place. It was a modest wooden house, had a big grassy garden with good view to the school, through a small pine tree forest.
It happened in a night that some studdents decided to do an open air party. They were both invited and the atmosphere was very friendly, "a good opportunity to get to know new people and let them know you", as Charise would call it.
Nik gazed to the beautiful black starlit sky, taking a deep breath in the cool nightly breeze, and thought "Man, barbecue at night feels great!". At this point they were joined by a colleague, offering some beverage. It was a small party for people to get along.
All of sudden a breaking glass sound followed by a scream. Sounds of gunfire. Quiet again.
Everyone stared at each other looking for a clue of what happened. Nik's reaction was immediate, getting up to his feet, grabbing Charise's hand and starting to run towards the settlement. This made others also disperse and run away.
No more alarming sounds were heard, but this wasn't a certainty since they were running through the grass and trees, cracking leaves and branches.
After reaching the second floor, Charise asked in a sad and concerned tone, "Do you think we are under attack? By who?". "Should we call for help?".
Nik stared at the window, turned to her and said "Stay here ok? I got an idea" then ran downstairs. Help could take too long and besides, the concept of relying on someone else to be protected was something he was absolutely unfamiliar with.
A soft robotic sound repeats downstairs as Nik presents himself into a prototype metallic exoskeleton. He's somewhat taller, about 2.3m height with long thin metallic arms and equally looking digitigrade legs. There's also a small blueish display into his right eye and a long tube behind his right shoulder, connected to a structural frame in his back.
He leans towards the window and the tube points forward, the gun is tracking. The suit sensors zoom in someone who just jumped out of the forest into the yard, about ~100m away. "Yep, it's hostile" and a blast is heard. Through his visor Nik feels a strange sensation when seeing the damage caused by a 20mm round into fleshy human body, he would not expect the head to fall off easily like that.
Though they had some basic military teaching about weapons, vehicles, discipline, they were not trained for combat. For this reason Charise remained gaping and speechless laying in her legs on the floor, frozen, in a mist of processing the danger they're in after loudly giving their position away to an unknown pursuer and the killing of another person.
"More incoming", followed by more blasts. The suit would shoot one round at time, at a target, in a rapid tracking motion, some of them still within the forest.
But it was not enough, the ammo was soon depleted. "GO DOWNSTAIRS, RUN!". She ran in a visceral reaction down the steps so fast she couldn't even notice she was jumping them through.
The mob started coming towards the house, forcing their way through the door. Nik met them as he was going downstairs. He stretches his right arm and a white electric blade shines from what was his hand a few seconds ago. He swiftly jumps towards three men, slicing them without feeling any material resistence.
By seeing this, other men outside start to shoot towards Nik through the window, he jumps heading back to the stairs. He feels cornered. "Warning - Low power supply!". He looks back, they are running towards him, he turns around and in a very fast succession of movements he slices a man that was about to jump on him, three times.
He feels a burning sensation in his chest as he tries to breath. The eye display is flashing red and his vision is turning black as both him and the suit collapses down, on his back.
Continues: Power Source