***
The five members of the squad were sitting on the bench in the sterilization room of their ship, naked while a battery of electromagnetic waves, chemicals, and machines poured over their toned bodies. Since the nanites within their systems protected them from any likely xeno-disease of the planet, this was for the exact opposite reason: so their own bacteria would not wipe out the entire planet’s ecosystem. That kind of xenocide tended to be bad for business.
“What the hell!? We are taking another recovery mission without getting any of the details?” Ziko’s fist slammed into the bulkhead.
“Do you want to bitch your whole life?” Raist pointedly asked him.
“Come on Raist, we need to start getting way more info before we get into these things!”
“Leave him alone Ziko, it’s not like you are smart enough to ever care about details anyway,” Leio’s voice stated calmly as she lay back against the wall of the room, arching her back with her hands locked behind her head. Her perfect breasts and thinner, toned waist would distract even the hardiest of males, but it was only a matter of course: she was Aelisha Genetically Engineered that way.
“How nice,” he replied as he gave her a sideways glance. “Your girl is playing secretary for you as well. What do I have to do to talk to the man in charge? Kill her?” he joked.
“She could kick your ass. If you can make it past her then you can talk to me,” Raist responded quickly, his brain coming up with a retort more out of habit than anything.
“Jeez, team effort here.” He wore a huge smile, closing his eyes and flexing his huge arms he had behind his own head. “Sorry for trying to show caution when our Leader is failing to do so.”
Leio giggled for a bit, opening her eyes and winking at Ziko while giving him a slight smile.
“So she is your battle-secretary? Damn that sounds hot,” Agrest, the fourth member of their team, suggested. Raist and Leio laughed at his typical joking demeanor, belying the fact he was the group’s Sniper capable of blowing any creature’s head off at amazing distances, or surviving alone for long periods of time “What type of other ‘uniforms’ do you get her to wear when we aren’t rolling out? Old school maid perhaps?”
“Why would her uniform be different?” Philira, the second girl of the group, naively asked. Through her hair was a bright pink when it wasn’t nano-camouflaged, her eyes left a cold sensation, amplified by her obvious young age compared to the older soldiers. She was a girl AGEd to be the best soldier you could have on point, with extremely heightened visual and aural acuity, rapid peripheral vision processing, and, above all, reflexes to keep her alive in the extremely dangerous position of Scout.
Agrest frowned exaggeratedly, “Uh, never mind…”
“Yeah, stow that shit Agrest, what is your problem?” Ziko’s joking demeanor changed to one that was stern. Though Agrest and Ziko were both the group’s source of laughs, Ziko had a sensitive spot in that he couldn’t stand jokes about Philira, or anything sexual that might ‘taint’ her mind. Ziko considered himself the father figure, or more like the big brother, of the younger Philira, unsurprising given the general close proximity of the two with his role as Assault and hers as Scout. It was probably a mistake for Ziko to ever have made an issue about it at all. Even cool-headed Raist got in on the jokes just to make him mad.
The five of them were a close family, but there were still a lot of secrets between them such as where they came from, action they’d be in before getting into super deep groups like this, and what horrors they had lived through; all somewhat natural given their line of work. Very rarely would someone get rotated out to a new team, such as Raist’s few other friends. Mostly people died in the team they start in or get maimed too bad to continue or they make it through a deadly grinder and live an all-expense retirement after a short but brutal tour.
Even so Ziko still felt a duty to protect the girl, even though she was just as good of a killer as him and her young eyes had that dark coldness to them. This was despite her naivety of some aspects of the world, namely those that didn’t involve killing such as relationships, love, or sex. None of them knew the past all of them came with, and a girl like Philira likely didn’t have much since Scouts tended to get grinded worse than most other Classes. At this point of their lives they still trusted each other deeply, as it took tremendous service and sacrifice to the Solarian or Aelisha empires to get here.
“Anyway, Leio’s sexy maid costume and Philira’s overall hotness aside,” Agrest began, grinning boyishly, “anything else about this mission you haven’t brought up yet?” he ended seriously.
“I told you guys everything that was said to me,” Raist answered. “This has the feel of something way beyond what we normally take on. Most of the time the impact is on the ultimately small scale, but just the way the courier was talking, and the price it paid for equipment had the feeling that this was very serious.” Raist opened his eyes and looked right at Ziko then Agrest, hoping to calm his old friend’s worries. He felt kind of bad leaving out some of the things, like that he was sure the courier was actually a girl, maybe a Scout given the hair color.
“What the hell is an AKRA anyway?” Ziko stood up, turning with the commands of the machine to change its neutralization pattern.
“Has to be either a robot or comp unit,” Leio guessed as she pulled her arms down and ran her hands through her bright orange hair, shaking it gracefully as it waved down her shoulders. “‘Data recovery?’ Come on, what else could it be?”
“I’m with you, but those were my words I had said to it,” Raist making sure that distinction was there. “It was never explicitly stated other than when it said ‘data processing unit’. The only thing we know for sure is that it has a recovery chip implanted in its system that we will be able to track it down with.” He pointed over to where his clothes were, and a handheld scanner configured to the tracking chip slowly pulsed, showing that AKRA lay down on the hostile planet below.
Ziko’s question repeated itself in Raist’s mind: what was AKRA, and why was this feeling only getting worse?