Who are you [insert name]?
In 1935, test pilot, Captain [insert name] volunteered for a three year secondment to the supersonic test program, run jointly by Kendrick Turbine, and RCAF. Four years later, near the end of the war Kendrick had something a little quicker to try out, the first person they called was Lieutenant Colonel [insert name]. The K-14 Falchion dropped from the bomb bay of the Mk 3 Albatross, at 48000 feet doing 600 knots over the plains of Saskatchewan. Two minutes later the prototype aircraft was 80 miles away, 30000 feet higher, and accelerating smoothly towards Mach 7. The scramjet had nothing more to give at Mach 8.2, the final push for Mach 10 would be rocket assisted, but before [insert name] got there, airframe melting became a terminal problem, at least for the Falchion.
When a Russian oligarch’s entire family fell victim to the tragedy in the Indian Ocean, she decided the world needed a cometary defence system. After taking over a former military moon base, the call went out for space miners. Strelok was looking for people willing to spend several years away from Earth, with experience in heavy engineering, and preferably with hours in a national space program. [insert name] had spent 13 years building space stations and hotels, until the market collapsed. Six years of bridge building in the desert later, and they was ready to go back to the black. The first month was spent on the surface, setting up machines to lay the enormous solar arrays needed to power the facility. Once the TBM parts arrived the mining could truly begin. Six hours a day sounded pretty damn good, especially for what was being paid. At least until you realised, all that time was spent doing hard labour, in a heavy spacesuit, in high temperatures, and poor lighting, and that a company day is only 18 hours long.
Training as a Death Angel had been fun until the news came through that parachuting would be useless against the East Russian flechette batteries. Being something of an adrenaline junkie [insert name] had immediately volunteered to test new quick insertion systems. And now here they were dropping out of the back of the V-34 [insert name] trusting their life to the fourth novel form of deceleration in as many months. The altimeter pinged twice, a tiny pneumatic cylinder thunked, and the loose rack of tubes rattled off their back forming into a pole some fifty feet long. The flat base of the pole hit the ground, and the braking arms started to shriek as they endeavoured to save [insert name]’s life. [insert name] hit the ground about as hard as they would have below a canopy, they slapped the harness release, turned around and pushed the pole over. Around them another 59 men and women were dealing with their own prototype landing systems, while a similar number of medics had rushed the landing zone to deal with injuries. [insert name] trotted over to help another soldier out of a slimy, green, sludge that had failed to dissipate properly.
The owner of Phish had approached [insert name]’s gang regarding deliveries, because they were the only ones who would risk travelling at speed through the zone. After a couple of weeks, they wanted to know if they’d be willing to be guides in the zone, leading his clientele to the restaurant. [insert name] negotiated 20000 Yen for two hours work twice a day plus a 100000 yen to upgrade their armour. [insert name] used their armour allowance to kit themself out in industrial looking, padded composite, tailored to look like an 18th century samurai. As the rich gastronomes got dressed in their encounter suits, in the small parking lot next to a family mart on the edge of the zone. [insert name] and the gang checked the batteries in the customer’s wand packs. Every member of the party carried a small ‘Unicorn’ wand, while the four guides each carried a much longer, and more powerful ‘Narwhal’ to deal with larger spheres.
The Sidley-T4 and the much larger T6 were commonly known as Saddles by the pilots who flew them. Shaped a little like their namesakes, if you were far away and squinted a lot, the Saddles were modified supply haulers with more engines and fuel tanks. [insert name] and the other Rock Jockeys used the vessels to shepherd the asteroids brought into the moons orbit by the auto boosters. [insert name] felt that their 15 years as a logging pilot, flying trees out of forests all over the world set them up almost perfectly when this job opportunity came up; but nothing could have prepared them for the scale of things out in the black. They had on more than one occasion, found themselves grabbing for handholds out of sudden fear as they guided a rock the size of a city block, into a furnace the size of Central Park.
[insert name] was stimmed off their face on Antisom, cruising the highway on a stripped down 2WD. They and their gang had been looking for Charon's Oarsmen for two hours. The only place left was the truck stop by junction three. Coming round the cloverleaf [insert name] spotted the bone coloured bikes of the Oarsmen, two pledges were left on watch outside the Chop Shop bar and grill. [insert name] signalled their gang to cut their engines. Two minutes later the twelve strong gang rolled dark and quiet onto the forecourt. Starting their engines and flooding the lot with eye burning spotlights. One of the pledges was smart, they immediately ran into the eatery for back-up. The other was less so, trying to hold his ground by waving a length of rebar at the approaching group. A wrench flew out of darkness beyond the light, making a sickening crack, like a coconut being broken, as it bounced off the Oarsman's skull.
When Re-Form hit the market, [insert name] was one of the first in the queue. They didn’t have the cash for a full body treatment but they’d scraped together enough for the half body/no extremities option. The programmable genome-gel could alter the user in a multitude of exotic ways. While deciding exactly what they wanted to do with the gel, rumours and videos started to circulate of people who had been reckless in their use. Giant balloon hands from a lack of gloves, extraneous appendages from improper programming, and uneven application causing grotesque chimera. So [insert name] was very careful, watching tutorials, talking on forums, even going to a professional body modder for assistance. 6 months after their first visit to Splice to See You [insert name]’s arms and back were now well on the way to being the size of a gorilla’s, with their back covered in skin like an albino alligator, from neck to buttocks. When AL took over a couple of years later, he started offering cybernetic replacement body parts to the general public, [insert name] went for some extra speed to go with their, already augmented, strength. The legs had to come from an athletics range, with suped up motors and suspension at the knees and hips, to counter the mass of [insert name]’s sizeable upper body.
It was still hard for [insert name] to believe that it was only a couple of years ago when they had been sitting outside St. Joe’s. That night AL, in his usual PA droid guise, had come to [insert name] offering to change their life for the better. With nothing to lose [insert name] had taken the offer, and now here they were, figurehead of a ten trillion dollar multinational company. [insert name] knew that after AL took over, they would probably be seen as a traitor by a fair percentage of the world's population, but they knew being out from under their addiction was worth it. Also being in on the ground floor of an actual conspiracy was amazing fun.
jacobvanloon
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