Neural Fragment — 5

Death to Neterun

A thick skin, hard to scratch.

Eyes that would follow me anywhere.

I activated the gatlings with all the anger and fear I felt. NewDay tried to warn me that they were overheating, but I didn’t give a shit. All I wanted was to give the horrors before me what they deserved. I could feel the tension rising as I imagined the bullets digging into their deformed tissue, burning their perverted bodies. Something that leaked from them stained the outside of my cockpit. I considered it my first real raider trophy.

I was even more energized by the pain I could inflict on the living of the Galaxy of Neterun. This was what it meant to be a raider. Death did not touch us, it was our companion, and indeed we could spread it with the speed of our machine guns.

I had to be Death to the Galaxy of Neteun.

With the danger passed, I cautiously followed the radar in search of the raider Sun Lori had pointed out to me. I arrived near one of the four main stations of the Core, the Precious Four. Their shapes manifested the mad fantasies of thinking machines, created directly in space by the raiders.

“So you managed to get past Mugai Down. Well done. That’s what I wanted. Sorry, but I had to understand what you are capable of,” Sun Lori’s voice croaked in the internal communicator. She told me that she had made me take the detour to Mugai Down, an unnecessary detour to prepare me for what I would find next.

I felt my anger rise. The Judge could have told me what I was going up against, the horrors I would see, but instead, she had been silent. “Ah, no use getting angry with me. You have also learned another lesson: in this galaxy, never trust anyone. Not even those who pay you.”

The Precious Four Stations seemed to be looking at me.

The Judge had just taught me the most important lesson. In Neterun, one can never trust anyone. Horror and madness can only be fought with more horror and more madness. And more hate. Death to Neterun, that’s what it meant to be a raider.

When I caught a glimpse of the target I was hunting on the radar, I thought of exactly that.

I was Death to the Galaxy of Neterun.

And I liked it.