In the de-briefing, they had learned that the Objective was a cyborg, but one vastly different than the alpha cyborgs. It had brain waves, albeit somewhat alien ones, and once the shock of its capture had subdued it, the stasis cage it had been placed in by the Tasca operatives kept it so.
Jada knew little and cared less about the technical specifics of the cage, or even the Objective itself, so long as it was being taken away. According to the trade agreement between House Indron and Augur Corporation, the Objective was being covertly transported to an undisclosed facility in Augur space by the Tasca operatives. They were taking the long way around, across the frontier, as many slave ships did in order to avoid any adverse contact with corporate elements.
For her, and the rest of the Dire Swords, the mission was over. Whatever outcome resulted from their capture of the Objective was of no concern to them.
They arrive. They fight. They leave.
The mercenaries were disconnected from the tapestry of corporate intrigue, having little awareness or interest in the big picture or the grand scheme. That was for others, for them, there was only the next mission, onwards until the last.
She and Womack both been shaken by their experience. Womack had stepped down as captain, allowing Berg to take his place while he focused on repairing his own damaged psyche and returning to the fundamentals of basic soldiering.
Jada had the same arrangement as Poe did when it came to the eventuality of her death, though she had one thing left to do before her time in this life came to an end, the reason that had brought her across the void to this forgotten planet and the corpse of its capital city. The moment she’d placed Poe’s skull-faced helmet upon the altar shelves, she’d known what she had to do.
Jada watched in silence as a strong wind swept across the bitter surface of a place that had once been known as Vorhold.
The city was all but a skeleton now, after everything of value had been stripped away from it, including the people. It was here that she had seen the true face of horror, where she had known her fiercest combat and the site of her greatest loss.
Deepspire had left its mark on all the marines who had gone down into that pit, and though many of them returned, every single one of them left a piece of themselves down there.
It wasn’t so much that the furious chaos of combat had been any different for the marines who fought that long and bitter campaign. They had faced tough enemies before that, and after Vorhold, they had met the Gedra. No, it was something else, thought Jada as she exited the landing craft and stepped into the heavy gale, more that Vorhold had served as a model of what corporate tyranny could look like if left unchecked by the people who lived under its rule.
Jada had stood on the picket line alongside the other marines during the now famous, or infamous, depending on one’s perspective, Reaper Strike. She had joined the labor movement because she did care about Grotto Corporation, despite its many faults.
After her time in necrospace, she had come to believe that there needed to be order of some kind in the galaxy and commerce was a natural human activity and a universal rallying point for civilization. The Grotto regime was a hard one, but there was a kind of dignity possible for those who had the will and the yellow-eyed daughter of Hama Sek had an awareness of that more nuanced than most.
Life and prospects for the average citizens of Grotto had been incrementally improved after the Anointed Actuaries had bargained with the Reapers and other labor movements. There was compromise, and a mutual understanding that they were all in it together, regardless of where on the corporate ladder any individual happened to perch. The arrangement was functional, an implicit understanding of give and take between the powers and the people.
Vorhold had been a system out of balance. The city itself was a model for that failed corporation, from the glittering towers of the elites to the horrific subterranean dwellings of its lowest human scum. The center could not hold, because the core of Vorhold was rotten, and it was in that fetid dark place that the Stalker emerged.
She and the other marines had gone into that hole and battled the monsters the sins of tyranny and neglect made manifest, and yet, they were not there to rescue the people, only to eliminate obstacles for the efficient scrapping of an entire civilization. A once great predator had fallen, and the scavengers had come to feast. It was nothing more, and nothing less. The elites of Vorhold had irresponsibly gambled with the future of the corporation, and the people ultimately paid the price.
Jada walked down the exit ramp of the small craft as she marveled at how thorough the liquidation of this civilization had been. She had done her part, with both rifle and blowtorch, to see this place torn apart and had been well paid for her trouble. Her boots made the gravel crunch as she consulted her nav-unit, having done her best to use the shoddy long-range scanners to create a rough map of the forgotten city.
Much like the other wasteland worlds that comprised necrospace, this planet proved difficult for long-range scanners because of all the environmental devastation, and in this case, industrial pollution.
When Grotto had been liquidating Vorhold, very little care was taken to manage the waste materials throughout the planet. Factories were stripped and toxic runoff was allowed to seep into the raw earth. Entire sections of Downspire were simply buried under rubble, only to have the various pollutants fester in the dark and worm their way into the environment at large.
She had been a scavenger when last she had set foot on this planet. Jada Sek had since transformed herself into a predator and she stalked the ruins with a new perspective.
Jada picked her way through the remnants of the city, which were little more than concrete shells, everything else had been stripped away. In her hands, Jada carried one of the large assault rifles that the Dire Swords used before they were supplied with the modified Gedra weapons. Given her meta-human stature, she towered over unenhanced human beings, and with the weapon and billowing cloak, she knew she cut an impressive figure. The red hazard goggles and menacing armored re-breather certainly gave her a monstrous appearance.
She was unarmored, not having bothered to request the use of mag-armor for this personal journey. Womack had understood that this was something she needed to do. Neither he nor Marcus, who had given her the rifle, were going to allow her to wander the galaxy unarmed considering how much of an investment the mercenary company had made in her physique. Not while she was still in possession of a functioning body.
She saw on her nav-unit that she was close and Jada could tell that the ground was sloping downwards. When the craft was landing, the pilot had seen signs of several groups of people in the area, likely small bands of hardened survivors.
There was nothing of value left on Vorhold. Those few people who had elected to stay planetside had been placed on the Red List, so they were completely on their own. Slavers would never come here. Jada checked her rad levels and saw that there was certainly enough in the area that prolonged exposure would be damaging. The people who managed to survive here would be spoiled in the eyes of a slaver, as they would be too feral to make for reliable chattel and likely too medically hazardous to be worth scooping up in the first place.
Little to nothing could grow here, so anyone who remained would have to build greenhouses, fungus farms, scavenge the limited bits of stored goods, or resort to cannibalism. Likely, everyone engaged in some mix of everything, mused Jada as she climbed the stairs of a severely leaning concrete building which overlooked her destination.
She was obviously hard meat and even here, in this blasted place, nobody seemed desperate or crazy enough to raise their hand against her. In fact, thought Jada as she saw a few humanoid shadows fleeing in the other direction through the labyrinth of ruined buildings, her size and appearance just might remind her observers enough of the Stalkers that they didn’t even want to be in the same area. The thought of the Stalkers shifted Jada’s attentions back to her destination, and she looked out across the ruined ground.