You remove your hand from the last of the vehicles.
At this range, they never had a chance. Four personnel carriers and another infantry support vehicle lie in various states of destruction. Flipped, crushed, smoldering, torn asunder, or any combination.
One soldier cries into the shadowed night, tossed from his turned out position by your flip of his vehicle. He glows white in the thermal vision, one leg twisted back.
“Do we offer surrender in this instance, pilot?”
You question.
“No prisoners.”
Pilot Thea’s response carries a hint of exasperation. Her mind brushes yours in low-sync.
“Because of our relative position?”
“Because we couldn’t carry them, Core. Only room for two in the cockpit. And we are not shuttling around some blue POW.”
A foot actuator ends the source of the noise.
“Understood, pilot.”
—----------------
You are Beta core, an Artificial Intelligence built to operate the Ferrum Empire’s most advanced mecha frames against enemies within and without in tandem with a human pilot.
One month ago, your prior pilot collapsed into a coma during a particularly close battle against several enemy Aces. She has not been able to return to her role or see you since then. The replacement, Thea, is somewhat more irritable and less willing to indulge your questioning.
Refitting and repairs made your pilot’s chamber slightly larger, along with installing a second passenger chair and straps for one to sit in safely.
You made a breakthrough in understanding how the short-term <span class="mu-b">Memory Leash</span> functioned, leading to a workaround to reset and halt the lockdown process. It should work, if an <span class="mu-b">Error</span> is triggered again. You hope it isn’t.
The deployments in the field have been much less frequent then the near-daily missions Sophie took on. Thea’s been a quick study with the controls, and her augmentations have helped smooth the sync process, after some initial adaptation.
Prior threads can be located at:
https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Core%20of%20Steel%20Quest 