MagTech Suit Up

  The Promotion

  TOC

  Larkin Kim looked up into the hole in the ceiling that let light into the dark room, it also let the rancid water drop down on him from above, he positioned his mouth so he could capture some of the water, it was all he got to drink while in this room. Agent Kim had a Korean sir-name but like most of humanity was a mix of many different races, though his features were primarily Asian, with black hair and dark brown eyes. His eyes were almost completely swollen shut right now, he was battered and bruised. His arms were held out to the sides by the chains around his wrists. He had been left like this for two days now, he knew that on the third day the Master would come to talk to him. He remembered the day he stepped off his ship, after being summoned back to base. He was brought before the Master and told he had been promoted. At first he was happy, but then the Master told him with his promotion came the responsibility for the failure of the Saturn Region. He was dragged from the room and beaten then imprisoned. The next day the questioning started, they dragged him from his cell, they chained him up in the room and whipped him severally, he passed out from the pain. When he came to, he was hanging from the chains in the dark. They left him there for three days and finally the Master came with the man to torture him. He asked him how he could lose all the troops and ships given to him to take over the space station. He said he didn’t know, they electrocuted him and pulled out some of his finger nails, then asked again. The torture went on for an hour, until he passed out. They splashed cold water on him, and started over. Finally after, four hours he admitted it was all his fault. So you admit it was all your fault, but you still cannot tell me how they managed to destroy all of the troops, the Master asked. Yes, Master, he begged, I don’t know please have mercy on me. The Master left the room and he was left there for another day, before they took him down and threw him back in his cell.

  Two days later they started over again, this time he was asked how they managed to kill all the Agents in the safe houses in the Saturn Region. The Master was convinced that he had leaked the information to Delta Faction, or somehow let them get a hold of it through his stupidity. He was also told that even though he was not involved with the operation on Titan, he was responsible for it, since he had been promoted. The cycle continued as the weeks passed by, always the same questions how could he fail and how were they finding their operatives. He didn’t have the answers but that never mattered.

  Toreg the torturer, had served the Master for years, he was not gifted, his father had been one of the original members of Gamma Faction, his mother was one of the concubines they had serving them, she was killed shortly after he was born. As a child he watched his father torture prisoners for the Master and when his father died he took over as the torturer. As part of his job he had to ignore the foul smell of the Master as all those that were in his inner circle did. He also knew that most of the prisoners did not have information to impart to the Master it was just a punishment for failing him in some way. He did not dare question his Masters intentions, else he be the one receiving the torture. Instead he happily inflicted pain on those the Master decided needed it. Even the guards knew not to question what was asked of them, they did as they were told and just tried not to make eye contact with the Master or the torturer. Like so many that severed the Gamma Faction they did what they were told without question. Toreg had grown to enjoy it almost as much as his Master, but no one could ever enjoy it that much. Still it was why the guards feared him, they knew the slightest perceived insult or failure to perform their duty would put them in Toreg’s hands and that was a place that no one wanted to be.

  His Master encouraged him to come up with new and innovative ways to create pain that would drag the torture out for months. Each session would get progressively worse and inflict more and more pain, at a certain point the person being tortured would start losing body parts starting with the extremities. That was a long way away for Agent Kim though, he still had so much more to endure before they got to that point.

  Agent Kim realized that during the last several weeks the questions seemed to be about their ships, what kind and how many they had. Of course he didn’t know the answers, it didn’t matter he was being punished for the failures anyway. So now he stood in the dark room again waiting to be questioned, and knowing he didn’t have the answers, he just wanted an end to the suffering. He knew that the end was far away for him, they would keep him barely alive for months and continue torturing him. At this point he excepted blame for everything, if they accused him of breathing too much he would except blame for it, and beg for forgiveness. Mordeck, knew that Agent Kim had no useful intel to impart to him, he was just enjoying torturing him. It helped the time pass in this disgusting place they called a plain of existence. He was trapped here, having taken over the vessel of Jonas he could not return to his realm. The only way he could go back was to be killed and he could not kill the vessel by his own word or deed. If he tried to kill himself or ordered someone to do it, he would be stuck with the damage done to its body, but would still be stuck here.

  He was trapped in the rotting flesh of his host, it was a measure put in place by the powers that be in the universe, to detour the taking of lesser beings by higher beings. One he was willing to endure when he thought he would be ruling over their species. Now with the loss of his arm from the fight of the Masters and his forced exile, he was not enjoying it at all. So he took pleasure from the little things in his life, like making someone suffer. Right now that person was Agent Kim, soon it would be the person or persons responsible for ruining his plans of revenge and conquest.

  What he could not understand was how they continually seemed to be one step ahead of him, they were pathetic humans, they should not be able to even grasp the most basic inklings of his mind. His servants certainly did not have the capability to outwit him, otherwise they would have killed him years ago rather than be put through the abuse that he enjoyed so much. He also could not understand how Saturn Region could be bouncing back so fast. They had killed so many yet even now they were starting to get back to normal. The military was still present, but even they would be leaving soon, thinking the threat was over. They were right of course, it was over for now. All the signs pointed to Earth being the threat now, so it was the focus of his attention. Saturn had been a play to eliminate a threat, with that threat no longer coming from that Region it didn’t matter to him anymore. Oh, he might destroy it later just for having the audacity of surviving his first attack. Now however, he had other matters to attend to, matters that were disrupting his plans yet again. The tides were shifting again and it was not good for him.

  Even if he continued to fail, it mattered not, soon enough he would have his revenge on Earth and the Delta Faction. When his great fortress was attacking their precious planet, they all would be at his mercy, and he would have none to offer. But, now he was losing ships and bases, he would have to get more troops to act as cannon fodder to destroy the grid, so he could get close enough to the Planet. That meant he would have to hire more mercenaries and create more clones, it would take months to rebuild his forces. The cost was not important, he had spent years working his way into the financial sectors of commerce in the solar system and he had amassed a fortune, that he had recently increased substantially by going short on Saturn Region goods and services. So he had plenty to spend on ships and troops it was just the delay that was going to be a problem.

  He didn’t care, time was nothing to him, so he waited in his base and pulled all of his forces back, or had them go dark until he could rebuild the troops he had lost. Since the bases in the solar system were lost to him, he had to use his fortress to make clones, and he would have to find more mercenaries. They would have to go through a different hiring agent, since the agents didn’t like sending the mercenaries to their death and the hiring agents he had been using must know by now that the mercenaries were all dead. One of his trusted Lie
utenants, or more to the point one of the Lieutenants he had left, was sent to the fortress to oversee the cloning process, at least that could get underway. The other members of his command team, were going to join Agent Kim in the dungeon. They were now held responsible for the loss of the ships and the bases. It didn’t mean that Agent Kim would be any less responsible it just meant they would have to schedule the torture sessions a little more carefully since they would have more of them to perform.

  Who was chosen to be punished was fairly random since the ones directly responsible were presumed dead, he went up the chain of command and pulled out people at random. It was the price you paid to be a leader in the Gamma Faction. There was no real reward for a job well done, that was expected, but there was always a punishment for you or one of your subordinates doing something that was considered a problem for the Faction. The good news was, it was fairly easy to get promoted, the bad news was the reason you were getting promoted was usually because the guys above you were being tortured and or killed. The other bad news was the recruiting process was basically join or die. Left with such an option the unfortunate ones joined, only to realize later what they had gotten themselves into. The other motivating factor was if you tried to leave they would kill you and your whole family. To disobey was to suffer and so they were loyal to the end, it was better to die in service, rather than be tortured or have your family killed.

  Since they had a shortage of ships they could only spare five to accompany the Lieutenant to the fortress, they were not going near the bases that the enemy forces obviously had staked out, so they should be fine. There must be a huge fleet of ships watching for plasma trails around the bases that they had found, was the explanation his experts had determined. Those same experts were now hanging from chains in the dungeon, so they were pretty motivated to come up with an answer that made it not their fault. Of course that did them no good, since he just said, they should have anticipated that and come up with a solution to the problem beforehand.

  Just in case they were right he had his forces send out plasma disrupters so that the ships trails could not be followed back to their base. Never mind that it disrupted their communications and made it difficult to navigate in that region for a few weeks afterwards and would continue to cause problems for as long as they were in place, he needed to protect the location of his base. That was what was important at the moment, he would worry about those issues later. If that fleet attacked his base now with the reduced amount of ships, they may succeed in destroying it. That he did not want, if he had to wait years to rebuild his forces, he could do that in this base. However, if they destroyed it he would be forces to flee, and then he may be vulnerable, and it would be far more difficult to coordinate the rebuilding of forces.

  They also had to find a way to travel cloaked without leaving a plasma trail. It would be a top priority when they started rebuilding their fleet. For now the clones were the priority, they could always buy more ships, but clones took a while to bring to maturity. Plus he had to find some new researchers since the ones he had were now being punished for their failures. He would send out a team to collect some more when he felt it was safe to proceed. Having an inlet into the corporate infrastructure of the Alliance allowed him to know what research was being done and he could steal it or the researchers to make sure it became his.

  He would have to wait for months or even years before the new clones would be ready. So there was time for new ships and technology research labs to be brought back online. In the meantime he could go have some more fun with Agent Kim and his other guests in the dungeons. It was not easy being an ancient being of evil, trapped in the body of a less than remarkable mortal that was only being kept alive by his power. The shell was not much more than a corpse being animated by his astral force. The smell from within was unbearable at times, and the constant need to eat, was made harder by not being able to taste anything beyond the smell of rot. The only joy he could experience was the suffering of others. Even that became boring sometimes, so he had to amuse himself with plots of revenge and the ultimate humiliation of those he considered responsible for his current fate.

  The list had grown over the years since he first entered this plain, it was not just Delta Faction, but also the government and humanity in general. This plain of existence would be so much more enjoyable if he didn’t have to deal with the humans in it. Of course they did provide him with entertainment at times, so he would keep some as pets.

  Still they would all pay and he would rule over the insignificant humans and make them his slaves. It was his destiny and he would have it fulfilled. Then when he grew bored with them he would kill them all. Give some other life form a chance to evolve, to be at the top of the food chain, so he could dominate it too. Humans were insignificant, it was the limitation of their species that had made him fail for so many years. If he had more to work with he would have succeeded many years ago. It was clearly the failings of his human underlings that made all his plans fall short. If he could rely on them to do his bidding none of this would be happening and he would be ruling them all. It wasn’t his fault, he was a much more superior being, how could he be out witted by the lessor humans. Obviously, it was his underlings that were being outwitted and failing to fallow his orders. They were fairly simple orders he didn’t understand the problem. All they had to do was take control of a space station or planet settlement what was so difficult?