-------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: Warning! Very dark themes ahead!! Warning! Very disturbing elements ahead!
______________________________________________
"So, what should we do now?" Tellius asked as he sat beside Sarah inside the cockpit of her borrowed—and now rather cramped—spaceship.
"First, I need to drop off a certain skull at the nearest Cerberus Station..." Sarah replied, typing in some hyperdrive coordinates into the navigation system. "... There, we can also look for an affordable new ship and some easy missions. After all, you've been out of the game for twelve years."
"Hey, you make me sound like some relic!" Grumbled the reborn cyborg just as the hyperdrive engine roared to life, propelling them instantly to light speed, causing time to come to a sudden standstill for them.
"Hahaha... Aren't we all?" laughed the artificial succubus, now clad in a skintight, cobalt blue suit.
*FLUPBOOM!* The spaceship shuddered as it abruptly halted near a colossal space station roughly resembling an empty dodecahedron.
"That's it?" Tellius questioned, bewildered, as no freezing had been necessary.
"Yes, that's it!..." Sarah replied with a wink before explaining. "... During the war, Daedalus cracked the code for light speed travel, rendering the old freezers obsolete."
"No more freezers?!" Asked Tellius, still dazed and unaccustomed to the lengthy process of stasis sleep for near-light-speed travel.
"No more freezers..." Sarah confirmed with a knowing smile before contacting the station.
A moment later, she flew the ship to the docking bay. Thanks to the station's modular structure, with lengthy corridors connecting each section, the docking bay was located at the theoretical center of the entire station.
As the pressure seals engaged, Sarah tied her long, currently color-changing hair into a ponytail. "... There we are. And please, stay silent and menacing. You're supposed to be hired muscle, not the talkative type."
"Wow, that's new..." Said Tellius, impressed as he examined a strand of her hair. "... and they don't even feel artificial!"
"That's because of the high-touch-resistant sensors in your hands, not my artificial hair, but I admit it has some nice perks like free color, length, and hairstyle changes." Sarah told him proudly while attaching two gun holsters to her hips.
"Hey, do I also get some weapons?" The former commander complained upon seeing the nice blasters in her holsters.
Shaking her head, the now red-haired beauty replied dismissively as she walked out of the airlock, a skull-sized box under her arm. "I only have these two hot weapons, but there should be some dual-edged Blades in your wrists.
"Oh, really?!" Happily, Tellius consulted his systems.
[+Weapon Slots:]
[-Right Shoulder: -Empty-]
[-Left Shoulder: -Empty-]
[-Chest: -Empty-]
[-Right Forearm (External): -Empty-]
[-Left Forearm (External): -Empty-]
[-Right Forearm (Internal): Gladius Blade]
[-Left Forearm (Internal): Gladius Blade]
Having found his blades, he first tested the one on the left, then the right, and in both cases, a sharp blade approximately the length of his artificial forearms sprang out. Satisfied with the feel of both, Tellius retracted them both before following Sarah out of the ship.
Shockingly, the station itself turned out to be much larger and more luxurious than it had appeared from the outside. Three floors high, a wide-open space with what looked like marbled walls and flooring, it evoked the feeling of an ancient temple.
Yet instead of having some altar at the center, a modern reception desk made out of polished copper greeted them.
With Sarah already talking to the receptionist, Tellius could hear the robot ask her as he approved the two of them. "Okay, Miss Lawson, I can confirm that you have completed your commission. How much of your reward money would you like to have paid out?"
"A third. The rest goes to my buyout," ordered Sarah, the tuxedo-wearing robot, just as Tellius arrived beside her.
"Very well..." Confirmed the receptionist before he asked her. "... Will you be staying with us? Or do you only want access to the Emporium?"
"Just the Emporium, please." Said Sarah determined.
"Very well..." Confirmed the robot her answer, just as a wall slight open revealing an entrance before it gesturing for Sarah and Tellius to enter. "... Your welcome to the Emporium any time. Feel free to use the marketplace or the Commission Board."
As they enter the club beyond the entrance, Tellius asked Sarah baffled. "Aren't they going to check us for illegals or weapons?"
"Illegals and weapons are the smallest of their problems..." Sarah replied as she lead him through the crowed of raving s*x workers, s*x slaves and s*x bots. "... Here they are only concerned whether or no
your worth the debt you're accumulating. Free Market, Baby!"
"Who are all these people?" Asked Tellius more than once as he felt the hands of half a dozen people both male and female caress his internals.
"Debtor's, mercenaries that failed their commissions and merchndice..." Explained Sarah as they found their way to a much more quiet place. "... S*x sells even better than formally illegal substances!"
"Formally illegal?" Tellius asked an eyebrow raised.
Nodding, Sarah confirmed while checkimg a terminal on the wall. "Yes, formally illegal the Peace Accord back then not only entailed our lovely government selling our corpses to the highest bidder but also the total liberation of the market. No more taxes for interplanetary conglomerates. And no more restrictions on trade."
"Sounds distopian..." Tellius commented while looking around the Emporium.
While keeping with the marble theme,dimm lighting, glass and mirrors had been added to the mix to make feel more cozy and yet forbidden.
Having checked the terminal, Sarah agreed. "And that it is as since then over 50% of all citizens have become property of the rich for one reason or another. You need a heart but don't want a cloned one? Go buy yourself a property with your blood type!"
"F**k! Why isn't the UCG doing anything against that?" The former commander asked disturbed by Sarah's revelations as they once more crossed the dancefloor.
"Hahaha... Why would they? Properties can't vote for them..." Laughed Sarah loudly while twirling to the beat of the music. "... and most politicians are also board members of most corporations and conglomerates."
"Dammed! That's not what we fought for!" Exclaimed Tellius angrily in the middle of the dancefloor.
"Maybe you should have won then!" Shouted a burley drunk with tattoos and piercings from the second floor as the throat a beerbottle at Tellius.
*Smash!* The bottle exploded at Tellius's head into thousands of shards, which landed on the floor, upon which the mindless continued dancing barefoot. Soon, blood stained the floor, much to the amusement of the second-floor drunkard.
"What the f**k?" Cursed Tellius, shocked as no one seemed to appear to stop the mindless from dancing or take care of their feet.
"Let it be, or they might add them to my debt..." Said Sarah, pulling him off the now crimson dance floor before explaining. "... Even though the Emporium looks like a dance club of old, it is nothing but a shop where everything is billed to you. Luckily for us, we don't necessarily need to breathe, eat, drink or defecate, or we would be in serious debt already."
"But those people..." Tried the cyborg to argue, but she cut him off immediately.
"Are property with no human rights but have the value they represent to the Emporium..." Said Sarah, and just as if on cue, a tuxedo-wearing service robot approached the burly drunk. "... See that idiot? They're checking his account and billing him for the damage he caused to their property..."
That said, Tellius watched, confused, as the drunk suddenly went deathly pale before he was surrounded and apprehended by a group of tuxedo-wearing robots.
Looking at Sarah in confusion, she continued to explain. "That's what happens when your account isn't full enough to cover to cover the damage you cause. Depending on the weight of your debt, they either liquidate some of your organs or all of them... In his case, I'm guessing they're going to take his kidneys."
Once again, as if to underscore Sarah's explanation, the previously drunk man suddenly stumbled onto the dance floor with two cauterized cuts on either side of his belly.
"See? They did take his kidneys! Now, I'm guessing he has less than 24 hours to either reclaim his kidneys or he will die very painfully." Sarah stated casually while grabbing a drink from a waiter, as if a man's impending death didn't even faze her.
Shocked by Sarah's disregard for human life, Tellius asked, "How?"
"I don't know..." The former captain shrugged while pretending to sip the secondhand drink. "... Maybe I got used to it since the Peace Accord. After all, almost everyone belongs to someone."
"So, we're all just corporate property?" Tellius questioned, sad and defeated.
"Yes, I am..." Sarah confirmed, deadly serious as she returned her drink to another waiter. "... But not you. Technically, you don't even exist. Captain Tellius Warfield died on Thermopoly-6. In honor of his achievements, his corpse was sold separately. Which makes you just his brain in a Juggernaut X-86 frame. You're welcome, by the way."
"Yes, thank you very much..." Tellius replied sarcastically, not even mad about Sarah calling him just a brain since the same was said about her. "... Didn't we want to look for a new ship and some easy money through commissions?"
"Now, I am not in the mood for any commissions, not even the easy ones any more..." Snorted Sarah before leading them to a set of stairs to one floor below their current. "... But I am always in the mood for some light shopping!"
"We're looking for a spaceship! That can hardly be called light shopping..." Corrected Tellius her statement before noticing her sly smirk. "... What?"
"Nothing... it's just that I've missed your stupid comments..." Stated Sarah and happily jumped Tellius's iron frame to cuddle him despite it looking ridiculous. "... Also, you are dead wrong. Luxury has become affordable like spaceships and what were previously affordable have become a luxury like apples."
"WTF?! Pfff... Please, explain that to me!" Tellius snorted as they reached the end of the staircase.
"Ah, welcome back! My beautiful Mistress Lawson! What a pleasure to see you alive and well once again..." Loudly greeted the supposed spaceship seller that looked more like a flamboyant pirate on wheels than a serious business man with his unkempt hair & beard. "... Oh, and who's that?"
Remembering Sarah's words, Tellius remained silent jet menacing and left the talking to his lovely companion.
"That's Killzone... I hired him to be my bodyguard..." Introduced Sarah Tellius by using his call sign from their base training days before she introduced the seller to him. "... Killzone, that's Jack Searcher, one of the best secondhand spaceship sellers... Jack, why don't you give Killzone here a history lesson about why luxury is now affordable?"
"My pleasure. But Mistress Lawson, please feel free to browse my catalog. I just got this simply marvelous white pegasus in..." Jack told Sarah before leading Tellius into his shop while explaining the Price Crash to him. "... In the first few months of the Peace Accord, around 78% of all citizens received more than one low-interest loan from the Big Five."
"Aren't there regulations?" Tellius asked, confused, as he remembered his father once talking about a similar case.
"There had been, but the Accord gutted them..." Answered the dapper Jack as they walked past spaceships from luxury brands such as Chimera, Hydra, Sphinx, or Pegasus. "... At that time, the demand for luxury goods skyrocketed, and people stopped buying low-end consumables. As such, the companies stopped producing low-end products to focus their resources on luxury goods."
"Classic supply and demand." Tellius commented, already able to foresee how most citizens could end up corporately owned.
"Yes, exactly!..." Confirmed the fancy salesman as he led the cyborg ever deeper into his shop. "... Then as 87% defaulted on their first loan payment, the production of luxury items overshot their plummeting demand. Debtors became property, and luxury goods became affordable."
"That explains why luxury became cheap. Why did cheap then become expensive?" Tellius asked as he followed Jack into the man's workshop.
"That's because cheap is only cheap when produced in high enough quantities..." A strangely familiar voice suddenly explained to Tellius instead of Jack, just as the door of the workshop locked behind him. "... Once 67.86% essentially became the property of others, the demand to mass-produce cheap products simply wasn't there anymore, making them expensive."
That said, the owner of said voice revealed himself as he jumped down from a metal shelf, and to Tellius's surprise, it turned out to be himself or a human clone of himself. Furthermore, from the corner of his eyes, he could see Fancy Jack escaping the workshop through another door.
"Who the f**k are you?" Tellius snorted, unsettled by the handsome appearance of Tellius Warfield.
"Me? I am Tellius Warfield!" The man with his own appearance replied while posing handsomely for a nonexistent camera.
"No, you're not..." Tellius retorted dismissively, his virtual finger on the trigger release for his Gladius Blades. "... Now, I am once again asking nicely... Who the f**k are you? And what do you want?"
"Who I am doesn't matter..." Fake human Tellius replied with a confident smirk, just as numerous parts of a black Command Mech came flying toward him and quickly assembled themselves around him. "... But what I want is your lovely companion!"
That said, the Command Mech instantly opened fire upon the cyborg, but with a simple sideways jump to his right, Tellius escaped the worst.
'What an amatur...' Thought Tellius by now behind the cover of a sleek acid green Hydra spaceship. -... You don't fire where you enemy is but where it will be. That's basic knowledge!'
"Buh yeah! This is fun!..." Echoed Fake Tellius voice out of the speakers of his mech. "... I can't wait to get my s*x bot back!"
'Wait, what?' Thought Tellius before stating the obvious. "... My companion isn't a s*x bot but a Cerberus mercenary named Sarah Lawson!"
"Oh, I know what she is..." Shouted Fake Tellius pissed off as he jumped over the acid green Hydra spaceship. Firing two bursts from his two wrist-mounted ion melters, one for each arm. "... She's a bloody thief and I'll f**k her into submission before blowing her brains out to replace it with the latest ai-companion matrix."
"Not going to happen!..." Tellius calmly replied as he sped behind the mech, his artificial eye sensors a scarlet red. "... But did you know..."
The cyborg jumped onto the Command Mech and gripped the left jetpack.
"... that there were two types of Command Mechs produced by Ares?..." He asked as he ripped the jet pack out of its connection joint. *KRANK!*
"... The cheap military variant..." He gripped the other jetpack before the mech could throw him off, "... and the inexperienced civilian one..."
He ripped the second jetpack off the mech, just like the first one, but threw it behind him before jumping over and off the now-stumbling mech. *KRANK!*CRASH!*
"... I don't know why they cheapened out on the military variant, but those have one very dangerous weakness..." Tellius revealed as he landed right in front of the now-kneeling Command Mech before he slammed his left fist into an especially badly welded panel piece. "... and it is bad craftsmanship!"
That said, Tellius triggered the Gladius Blade of his left forearm, and it instantly shot out, piercing the already-weakened welding before penetrating even deeper. Twisting it before he pulled it out, red blood now stained the blade.
[ENEMY VANQUISHED!]