[Unitopia, Southern Archipelago]
Many worlds had been travelled to by Bane, son of Geos. His career was long, long enough that even among the ranks of his brothers his name echoed loudly. Of the places he had travelled, he had seen many things. Met many peoples.
Some treated him with suspicion and hostility, as alien forces whose intentions could never truly be understood. Others still with praise and worship, as though his arrival alone was enough to be their saviour.
Yet, of all people, those who looked upon his form in cold indifference had stuck with him the most. Not just their look, but what they said.
"There is no Soul in the Machine"
He whispered in the darkness of his dead suit. It was an out of place thought, one that he brushed away. But it nagged at him in the back of his mind. For one such as he, his suit was more than just armour.
It was a second skin.
Emerging for the first time after a deployment felt like parting with his own heart and lungs. Sometimes he could have sworn he felt something back, some kind of instinctual understanding arising from the cold precision of circuitry and code.
In those heated moments where he felt a hand guiding his, a presence alongside him. A familiar presence. Many soldiers spoke of it in hushed tones.
The Soul of the Machine.
Commanders, mechanics, those who had never tasted the metallic ash flavour of nutripaste after days of deployment, who had never felt the sting of irradiation deep in their core, dismissed it as mere superstition. They never forbade it outright. They would never do something to harm morale when it is far more valuable than its weight in ammunition. But we could see it in their eyes.
That pity.
It never affected us, never affected me.
Not until that deployment. Not until those people. And those eyes.
They were eyes of comprehension. We thought we had met those who understood, but they too turned away from us in cold indifference.
And they spoke.
There is no Soul in the Machine.
Bane shook himself free of the memory, a cold shiver running down his spine involuntarily. This was neither the time nor the place for introspection.
As if to punctuate his thought, his ears pricked at the sound of approaching footsteps and characteristic whirr of armour servos.
Five...no. Four soldiers and a drone. Footsteps are soft and weak. Servos too smooth to be used often.
A clean-up crew, then. Just my godforsaken luck.
The hollow-eyed girl still stood motionless to one side of his crashed form.
Bane grit his teeth, a warring expression on his face that eventually settled into grim acceptance.
If it's come to this, then there is no choice. Mercy, compassion and honour demand it.
***
Several hundred metres down the road from the crater, the so-called clean-up crew were making their way down almost leisurely. The four members wore black plasteel armour, light and flexible enough for their augments yet still strong enough to shrug off regular ordinance. Their faceless visors were matte and non-reflective, looking into them was as though staring into the abyss.
Their steps were leisurely, but precise and robotic. Their Gauss rifles were held out at all times, scanning the encroaching shadows for any movement whatsoever.
Meanwhile, their drone hummed softly, hovering in the air directly above them, its rotating cannon locked and loaded.
"Eversteel City?"
An acerbic voice crackled over the comms.
"And this is all that remains."
"Don't act like you weren't as excited as the rest of us to see it, Two", another responded mockingly.
"Shut up Four. I was excited to see Eversteel City, not Eversteel goddamn Crater."
He kicked a loose piece of rubble.
"There ain't a damn thing left standing."
The towering ruins of those indestructible, ancient artefacts loomed ominously in the twilight and the soldier flinched despite himself.
"Apart from those things of course. Always gave me the goddamn creeps."
"Anything that doesn't give you the creeps?", Four asked lightly. "Or are you fully committed to being a coward?"
Abruptly, the lead figure of the diamond formation stopped, raising a fist in the air. Both Four and Two fell instantly silent as though their previous banter was just a mask over cold rationality.
Her chilling voice sounded out, cutting through the silence like a steel blade devoid of emotion.
"Life form detected. Up ahead, approximately fifty metres. In the crater."
A flash of numbers ran across the her HUD.
"Bio-signs stable, likely a small child. Protocol Two is in action as of this moment. Containment is priority."
"And if containment is impossible?", Two interjected with strange excitement.
"Then elimination is acceptable along with proof of termination."
"Well", Two replied with a shrug of his armoured shoulders. "Either way we reach the quota. Guess we're making our bonuses this quarter after all".
The lead figure responded with silence, lowering her fist and continuing forward. Tapping at her wrist, the drone lowered to fly just above head height several metres ahead of them.
"Gauss-rifles unlocked", she continued in a flat tone. "Ammunition live. Clear the comms. As of now we are entering active duty."
"It's just a kid, Squad Leader, what's it gonna do", Two scoffed. "Throw a tantrum?"
"Do you want your bonuses or not, Two?", she said, tone clipped and edged with shards of glass. "Then I suggest you shut up and follow orders."
"Yes, sir", Two replied robotically.
"We wait for the drone's scout in person then we move in. Once we've secured the asset, we immediately move for extraction. No loitering about any longer than necessary, is that clear?"
"" Yes, sir ""
"Good."
By now the lip of the crater was barely twenty odd metres away. Not much more than a small hop. The Squad Leader raised a fist again and the crew came to a pause.
Focusing on a hidden display on her HUD, she navigated the drone forwards. The other three were silent but alert, the dim red light of their activated weapons the warm reassurance of overwhelming firepower to ward off the tension of the scarred battlefield.
The drone hovered silently, its gun barrel at the ready, barely more than a moving shadow against the ever-dimming backdrop. Soon, the view of the crater appeared on the drone's feed, broadcast to the HUD of the entire clean-up crew.
The pitiful figure of the empty-eyed girl was highlighted.
"Juvenile confirmed. Vital status: alive"
The camera then focused and the rest of the crater came into view. A colossal, lying structure. A familiar shape. A terrifying shape.
All four of the clean-up crew tensed up visibly, fear overriding training for a moment. Their grips tightened on their rifles yet the tremble in their fingers belied their false courage.
"That's a goddamn Crucible Frame", Four hissed in a mix of awe and terror. "What the hell is that doing all the way out here?!"
"No way we're going there", Two took a step backwards instinctively.
"Switching to thermal feed", the Squad Leader ignored their outburst, unfazed. "The Crucible is cold. The Frame is dead. We salvage what we can carry and leave the rest"
The others studied the display on their own HUD, seeing the hunk of metal indistinguishable from the rubble all around, and they noticeably relaxed. Their previous fear being washed away by relief, revealing the greed hidden beneath.
"Scan complete. Crater clear for entry."
With those words, the Squad Leader issued a final command to the drone, sending it back into overwatch position in the sky above their heads.
They advanced forwards like an oiled, soulless machine. All the while, Bane son of Geos remained unmoving as though truly dead. The girl similarly unmoving, clutching that torn piece of fabric in trembling hands.