A New Frontier

Chapter One

The thud of every footstep was like a hammer striking the ground, the sensors of her sleek black battlesuit gave her a wide variety of data about the dark, damp and cold forest around her and the drones flew above her head silently. The four enormous dark drones blended perfectly into the darkness around her but Violet could see them with the suit's night vision. She also had a heavy rifle, it's weight a comfort so far away from civilisation.

The artificial intelligence controlling the drones was reporting nothing dangerous around her. No signs of the local population. The drones went in different directions, flying away from Violet.

"Nothing to report so far." Violet said. "Haven't found any signs of the targets. It has been six hours since I landed on Titan. Resuming recon."

Maybe Titan had been abandoned. Not that Violet was about to offer such speculation. She knew what the response would be.

"Report received." The mechanical voice of the AI in her suit said.

Branches broke under her feet. The local wildlife ran away from her. It was eerily quiet. Maybe someone else would have gotten bored by now. Some of Violet's comrades among the ranks of The Rising Phoenix were certainly adrenaline junkies. Missions like this one were not entrusted to that kind of soldiers. Not that she imagined that she was better than them. As Commander Caden Venator always said, every cog in the machine served a purpose. Every part had a function. Every type of soldier was needed for the cause. No one uses one tool for everything.

Violet Walker was a hunter and a good one.

Eventually one of her drones reported having located one of the targets. Its facial recognition software never failed. The insurgents had not left Titan then. They would have if they were smart. The level of technology that they had was best described as primitive. Violet could hear the drone launch a missile.

"Target eliminated." The AI said.

Violet headed in the direction she had heard the explosion from. One of the drones was telling her that it had found a village. All the drones started heading in that direction and Violet followed. Soon more missiles were fired. Then the signals from the drones vanished.

"Drones offline." The AI said.

The insurgents were resisting and they weren't completely incompetent. Violet pushed a button on her rifle that activated it. She wasn't concerned, her battlesuit was more durable than the drones. The Rising Phoenix had the best technology in the galaxy and their best resources went into the battlesuits.

The village was as primitive as she had expected, with wooden houses that looked like they might collapse at any moment, and Violet was greeted by men, women and even children clad in battle gear that looked like it had come from the time before the Fall and holding weapons equally archaic.

They used torches for light.

Her drones lay on the ground without any visible damage. The insurgents were pointing their guns at her. They looked at the red phoenix on her suit with pure hatred. Then suddenly the functions of her battlesuit shut down. And Violet understood what had happened. They had an EMP somewhere.

"Do you really think that this is enough?" Violet asked. "The suit is still indestructible against your pathetic weapons. All you've done is disable its AI."

"That was the point." One of the men said. "Now we can talk without your superiors listening and there won't be a record of this conversation."

"Why bother?" Violet asked. "I have no interest in listening to you and I have nothing to say to you. I'm just here to put you down."

"I told you this was pointless." Another man said. "You can't talk to them. They're like machines blindly following orders. She'll kill us and then forget us by tomorrow."

"Correct." Violet said.

"You could just leave." The first man said. "Tell them that you killed us. They won't know that you're lying and we can continue living here in peace. We just want to be left alone and be free. How is that so awful?"

Violet's response was to start shooting. The insurgents fired back but she felt none of it. The bullets fired by her gun shredded flesh and shattered bones. What was left was not easily recognisable as human. It was typical for insurgents to spout such nonsense. As if their crimes could be forgiven if they said all the right pretty words. As if the blood on their hands could be washed away so easily.

The AI was still down so Violet couldn't make a report. And the AI couldn't tell her if she'd eliminated all of her targets. Maybe it would come back online soon. Violet sighed. How had they gotten an EMP? That would need to be investigated. She heard the sound of movement from nearby followed by a click and then Violet was lying on the ground with her ears ringing and a painful headache. Blood was flowing down from her head somewhere and getting into her eyes. A wave of nausea hit her like a tsunami and Violet lost consciousness.

"Wakey, wakey sleepyhead." A singsong mocking female voice said and a foot struck Violet in the stomach.

Then water splashed onto her face. Slowly awareness and with it pain returned to her and Violet realised several things at once. Her hands and feet were tied up with rope, she was lying on the floor of what had to be one of the houses in the village, her battlesuit had been removed and she was surrounded by armed insurgents. Bound, wearing only the thin layer of clothes that she had on beneath her suit and unarmed. Fear unlike any she had felt before seized her.

A jumbled mix of fear, humiliation and rage paralysed her.

"Not so brave without your fancy high tech suit." The woman with the singsong voice said. Her cold blue eyes looked at her with contempt. Her blonde hair was short. "You think you're so tough. Without your gadgets you lot are nothing. Everything that you have you stole from others. You're parasites."

The woman then kicked her again.