Chapter 602: No Time for Tears (1/2)
Her name was Roca del Yaung y. McDonald, born a female on the third planet of Vanderme-7, known in the local language as ”Land of Flowers” and settled for over 3,500 years. Like most Confederate citizens, she'd grown up in luxury and privilege. Nearly anything she could want was available in the public nanoforge template libraries. She had clean air, clean water, safety, she went to sleep with her belly full. Her DNA had been cleaned and tweaked, her parents had chosen her eye color and hair color, although that lasted till her teenage years. She was educated via eVR, in schooling till she was 22. At 25 she was proclaimed an adult and even though she could have left at any time, her parent's house had plenty of room.
She switched bodies often, just like her peers. Rarely going for longer than six months in the same body. Her fully mature body had long blonde hair, tan skin, green eyes, freckles on her face, was six foot two (the shorter side of normal for women), and well built and sculpted.
She'd been killed twice. Once when she'd choked on a piece of food because she'd been talking with her mouth full on the phone while walking along a trail outside of the nanite zones. The second time she had not been paying attention, immersed in an Enhanced Reality Game and walked into traffic, injured badly enough that the 'soup' couldn't save her. Therapy had eased the trauma of being killed, since both of them were 'lingering traumatic death events', and she had largely forgotten about them by the time she was 19.
Her life was one of parties, hanging out with friends, luxuries, and wanting for nothing. She had even traveled to other planets, and during Final Education Year Three she had even visited Earth and her ancestor's ancient homeland of Azatlan and The Wailing Loch. She'd even seen the immortal Bessie as the great beast surfaced to blow air at one of the Lochs.
It wasn't until she was almost thirty-five that she began to feel like something else was missing.
She had two children. Not like her mother, who she kind of looked down on as a 'breeder' and 'free birther', but normally, making sure the zygote was formed from donor sperm and a carefully selected egg, the DNA edited properly, then implanted in her womb for two months before being placed in an artificial womb.
To be honest, she'd felt some relief when her two children had reached 25 and left.
She was only sixty. Not even finished with her first century, largely considered a young adult.
Her friends and even her children invited her to events, exciting parties, and the like.
But there was still something missing.
She tried pair bonding, but after six years grew to resent her wife and deliberately reskinned as a man, causing her wife to divorce her.
The yelling, the screaming, during the divorce, made her feel... alive.
Something inside her made her reskin back to her original DNA template and show up for the divorce finalization, making sure she was well dressed and prettied up.
The hatred in her now ex-wife's eyes made her giggle and warmed her heart.
Roca tried a lotus planet, despite people's warnings.
Within eighteen months she was bored and left.
She tried the LARP worlds, but wasn't very good at it.
She drifted around after that. She even signed up on a slow-haul vessel for a twenty year hitch as a professional prostitute aboard the ship.
Roca didn't mention that.
Being a spacer wasn't bad. New sights, new planets, new people.
By the time she was a hundred, everything was blurring. Just one long effortless time period of lovers moving in and out, friends met and forgotten, new worlds seen and left.
Roca was in the HK-82732 System when the H'Vertrik Empire, not believing the reports of the true scope of the Confederacy, attacked eight planets.
By the time the fighting was over, eight years later, she was a different woman.
It was picking up a rifle from a dead Planetary Defense trooper, leveling it, and firing it, just like in the eVR games.
The shot hit the H'Vertrik soldier in the faceplate, shattered it, and filled his helmet with chunky salsa.
The felt something then.
She'd fought for three years as Civilian Auxiliary.
To be honest with herself, Roca had to admit that she would have fought, authorized or no.
She enjoyed it.
Even in the desperate fight hand to hand with five of the smaller H'Vertrik, down to a vibroknife and an empty SMG, she had enjoyed herself. Even when one had managed to blow apart her knee with a lucky shot, the pain was real to her.
Had enjoyed watching their eyes as she shoved the vibroknife through their plasteel armor and into their throats. Enjoyed the gush of blood. Enjoyed the way they beat on her chest.
It wasn't sadism. After the war, she found the H'Vertrik to be a fun people. It only took a decade or so for the violent impulses to fade into the background noise that had become, again, a life that each day blurred into the next.
Roca had found herself, drifting along, feeling as if she was wrapped in cotton and someone had grazed her with an anesthetic beam, through the outskirts of the Confederacy. She signed up as shipboard security, as space station security.
She qualified for her bounty hunter license. She qualified for Confederate Magistrate status.
The days still blurred.
She was two hundred years old and felt fatigue. Felt the Lazarus Fatigue already.
Roca had gone on a date with a polycule, dinner and then a Tri-Vee movie. They were kissing and groping by the opening credits.
Roca had just broke a kiss when she saw what was on.
A dramatization of the H'Vertrik Hiccup that mixed the actors with real footage.
She was on the screen, laughing maniacally, beating a dozen H'Vertrik with a plasma machinegun belt while the blood sprayed.
Roca felt it again.
That flicker.
She'd watched the movie with one eye even while the polycule got more and more involved.
Roca knew there was something narcassistic and wrong about how intensely she got off while being pleasured on all fours and watching an actor laughing and firing a heavy plasma machinegun into the tops of tanks, yelling ”RUN, YOU WRINKLY BASTARDS, RUN!” and giving a McDonald banshee scream.
An actor playing her.
Roca had felt it again.
Drunk and high, Roca had staggered into a Confederate Recruiting Office, slapped her open tri-fold badge wallet down on the desk of the recruiter, yelled ”SLAM MY GASH INTO THE MOST DANGEROUS SHIT YOU GOT!” then promptly vomited on the floor and passed out.
When she sobered up, she went back and was much more polite.
Roca didn't even vomit on the floor.
They showed her a few vids to let her see what kind of life it was. They encouraged her to go to Officer's Candidate School. She had an impressive bounty record and they'd found her H'Vertrik Hiccup record, she was highly educated with excellent test scores.
She turned it down.
”What part of 'I want Death to ride my ass like a midget in a cheap plas bobsled' do you not understand?” she finally asked. ”If it doesn't hurt, I don't want it.”
They tried to convince her to go into one of the many vital support jobs. Electronic Warfare, missile targeting systems, hyperdrive engineer.
Finally, Roca had gotten frustrated and told them that they could find something 'really really shitty and dangerous' or she'd just go back to hunting bounties again.
One recruiter had shown her.
Heavy Assault Polyphasic Infantry.
”Gimme that,” she said.
The recruiter tried to talk her out of it.
Roca asked if he wanted sexual favors, citing that she was highly skilled at that.
She got a new recruiter, the old one seemed to avoid her.
The next one started the whole ”Your scores say you'd be an excellent officer” routine again.
”Gimme that poly-prazik thingy.”
The recruiter signed Roca up just to get her out of his office.
She signed up for the Confederate Army. Most Confederate Marines she'd met always had an I-beam stuck up their ass.
Plus, the ex-Army guys were always the funnest to hunt on bounties. Half the time the Marines came along quietly, unaware that they'd done something wrong. Or killed a couple of people they shouldn't have.
The Army guys had usually blown up a shitload of stuff, caused massive havoc, and done something like make off with a planet's strategic ice cream reserve to hold it for ransom.
Plus, the Marine's polyphasic ranks were largely phased out.
The Army seemed to keep them around like some people kept around old hubcaps.
The first thing the Army did was take her down to base DNA, removing her mods and upgrades. Standard practice.
Basic Training was with everyone else. It wasn't boring, she enjoyed it.
Close Quarters Combat was the best. Nothing felt better than getting socked in the mouth, feeling her lips crush against her teeth, tasting blood and feeling minuscule tooth chips on her tongue, smiling at them, and punching back. She loved standing toe to toe with an opponent and trading blows. Loved the feeling of a sore eye socket and tingling lip the next day.
Her instructors had made quiet notes. The quiet, almost shy girl that had arrived at Basic was an act, the woman who laughed maniacally and traded punch for punch, kick for kick, strike for strike was the real Trainee McDonald.
Then came the next phase.
DNA/RNA manipulation, cybernetic implants.
If your body couldn't take it, and you died, you washed out and went to some other job.
Roca gritted her teeth and stared at the ceiling, feeling her muscles clench, quiver, shake, and tear, all the while ordering herself not to die.
At the end, it was more training. To learn to activate the system. To learn to use the system properly. How to handle the heavy guns. How to use the armor.
How to fight.
How to win.
Her first posting was at a backwater planet that had a few problems with pirates.
She had been on patrol when the pirates had hit her patrol, killing her squad leader and three squad mates instantly. The heavy magac rounds had hit her, shattering armor.
Bouncing away when they hit her skin.
Her eyes bright red, Roca was laughing when she tore her way into the cockpit, grabbed the pilot, and tore him in half before beating the copilot to death with the torso of the pilot.
The only thing that had prevented her from undergoing total psych eval was the fact she had been in the middle of throwing a punch when the pirate's hands had gone up.
Her punch stopped three point six inches from his nose.
The concussive force from the air had knocked him down and goofy.
She enjoyed being 'full form' on duty hours. She enjoyed close quarters combat drills in full form. Trading punch for punch with her fellow polyphasic infantry.
Punches that could shatter sixteen inches of warsteel.
Roca moved from duty station to duty station, half the time redirected in transit to a just occurring war-zone. She had the ability to easily 'turn it off' when the fighting was over, something that others had problems with.