Until It Works

My name is Jace. One morning I woke up and found that I was the only human being left on the planet. This is my story. I am unit 34-B. I am part of the most fearsome one-man fighting force ever made. We were created to stop the invasion. By the year 2050 it was clear that the Confederacy of Nations was losing. The enemy? The Mechs.

No one knows where they are from, or why they came to Earth bearing weapons of mass destruction. We do know that the Mech are a purely mechanical race, resembling humanoids. There are many theories about them, but that does not matter now. With no need to breath, drink, or eat, the Mech could use massive chemical warfare and other one sided tactics. Although traditional weaponry affected their army to a degree, their advanced technology eclipsed anything the Army could equip a simple foot soldier with.
With an exo-skeleton suit of bullet proof armor, and an almost unending array of deadly arsenal, I am no mere foot soldier. Genetically made and trained to specifically combat the overwhelming power of the Mech army, I am the ultimate soldier. With a computer interface in my helmet, and the ability to cloak myself from both human and Mech sight while not shooting, I could go almost anywhere undetected.

But I have failed, or more realistically, my creators. I did not exit my cryogenic assembly pod until it was too late. It takes many years to genetically alter a human. When I emerged, all life signs were absent. I was left with simple instructions by a doomed scientist. Kill all Mech. To make things easier, I do have one advantage, a virus the Confederacy finally developed. Designed to convert the Mech’s group mind into a weak point, it would potentially cripple them to the point of extinction. They got us first, but not point in not trying to deliver justice.

The Lab was about the size of a dark-age football field. Separated by waist high fences, I could see no one else, Mech or otherwise. The computer chip on the table next to me was plainly the weapon; I stored it within my armor. Accessing the maps within my display, it calculated the path of least resistance to a known Mech base. All Mech bases contained a CID, central intelligence depot, which acted like a Hive Queen and directed their armies. It would be a simple matter of breaking in, putting down resistance I encountered, and insert the weapon. Part of my training included thousands of semi-conscious simulations of known information about the Mech, including schematics retrieved by hacking their system. We got in once, and never again.

Putting on my cloak, I exited out the back entrance and into the City. Huge skyscrapers surrounded me, hundreds of stories tall. It was only 4 miles to the nearest CID, and I had my full energy from awakening. The streets were eerily quiet, with no biological or Mech life around. Taking a steady jogging pace, I moved towards my target

“He doesn’t waste time.”
“No. How will that work for him. The rest started smaller. 65% didn’t even try to penetrate a CID”
“Depends on his will.”
“We will see.”
And once more, they melded invisibly into Jace’s mind

By nighttime I had reached the outskirts of the base. Unlike regular humans, neither the Mech nor I needed sunlight. Easily compared to a historical airport, it was a plain building surrounded by about a half-mile of open ground. Patrolling the perimeter were pairs of drones. Using unknown anti-gravitational technology, they floated 2 meters above the surface with their one, restless eye-sensor. Equipped only with quick reflexes, communication, and a short range electro-shock they were what I considered the last thing to worry about.

After the pairs of drones were the foot soldiers. Each equipped with two hands, they were deceptively deadly. Within each arm contained a full 6’ blade that extended on a second’s notice. For long range combat each soldier was equipped with a Lesser Energy Projectile (LEP) weapon. A LEP concentrated light unto a focal point, and directed it with an alien crystal, finally combining with a superheated gas to create a fast projectile that could simply burn though whatever it came in contact with. Those were the real problem, I had melee weapons of my own that could combat their simple sword attacks.

Lastly, I accessed all records of the inside of a CID the Confederacy received. With a twinge of disappointment, there was nothing. I would have to go in blind.

“This is bordering on foolishness!”
“We wanted to test this gene twist. If it fails we lose nothing but time.”
“We don’t have infinite time. The Mech are going to come to Earth sooner or later. We need this soldier now.”
“Let him try. It might be the surprisingly right combination.”

The Mech were pleased. The conquer of this world was almost complete. There only lay pockets of resistance, and losses had been minimal. Of course, any loss was a tragedy, the Mech had long since lost the secret to creating more of themselves. Oh, they could create drones and other, but consciousness was minimal, and could never be improved upon. As the Mech went through the history, culture, and science records of this planet, they archived anything of interest to be digested later into their hive mind. A interesting fact they didn’t know here, a innovative design of the former race there, a potentially deadly virus made specifically for wiping them out here, a…the Mech mind paused. Instantly it brought up the design and history of the weapon. There was no way it could stop it once it entered the system, but it could stop any intruders.

I looked onto the campus through my night vision, avoiding any drones and soldiers as I made my slow and steady path into the CID. The soldiers were lined in orderly rows, with my cloak it was not hard to avoid their machine efficiency. I was only 100 meters to the base when a flurry of motion erupted. The drones suddenly sped up, and the soldiers stood up. Half the soldiers combined with the drones and started a seemingly random search pattern, the other 500 turned towards me and the CID and started to march. Not good.

I ran to the CID. The Mech had now reason for doors, especially after the supposed extinction of mankind. I entered the premises, turned around, and prepared for the worst. As they reached a circumscribed circle around the CID, with only three inches between each soldier, they turned around and faced the outside. I breathed a little more. I was not scared of death, but of not completing my mission. Luckily, I came before they suspected anything. I can dodge and avoid LEP to a certain extent, but 500 LEP pointed at me would be considerably hard to survive. Convinced they would come no closer, I started to explore the building. The corridor was smaller than a standard human hallway.

Within 4 minutes I encountered the first soldier that was guarding within the CID. However, this one had some modifications. It lacked the LEP the regular soldiers possessed, but had thicker arms. As it came around the corner, it paused. I too paused, relying on my cloak to keep me hidden. For some reason the Guardian still noticed me. It ran at me, extending its swords out of the front of its arms. The Guardian pointed both blades of death directly at me and charged.

I have no choice but to uncloak and fight. As I drew my standard machine gun and automatically uncloaked, I raised and shot it at the incoming Guardian, but the bullets merely created sparks and bounced off its armor. Quickly I dropped the weapon and took out what could best be described as two hooked short swords. Only 2 feet in length, they curved slightly more than 90°. I fell back into a defensive position, unsure of the expertise or strength of the Guardian. As it came down upon me, it jumped, raised its twin swords, and swung down. I raised my jeuts in a cross to absorb the blow. Right before impact, the Guardian grew another pair of Katana out of the other side of its arm. There was nothing I could do, it swinged its arms upward, moving the front katana away from me, but slicing the back pair underneath my defense, cutting through my armo…

“I’d consider it a fatal flaw.”
“Yet the confidence allowed it to penetrate the ICD, before the alert. No other has done that.”
“The others still got in after.”
“They also died.”
“It is quite a dilemma.”
“Let’s try it one more time, but splice on the paranoia gene.”
“That does not seem to be compatible with the last test.”
“Try it anyway, if the solution was obvious we wouldn’t be here”
“Agreed. Loading genes and simulation into subject”
“Hopefully this time will do better.”

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My name is Jace. One morning I woke up and found that I was the only human being left on the planet. This is my story.