“What the hell are you doing?” One’s voice came from somewhere in front of Freya.

“What does it look like?” She snapped at her friend and boss then instantly regretted it. “Sorry, I’m pretty sure it’s because I put too many wetware mods in.” She told her, as she used her arms to push herself to her feet.

“Just how many mod points did you put in? I’ve never seen anyone fall on their face before.” One asked, grabbing her arm and helping her stand up. She held her a few more seconds as Freya got dizzy and nearly fell again.

“Forty-one hundred and some change.” She told her as the dizziness passed. She pulled up her status screen and looked it over.

Status Screen

Name: Freya O’Malley

Rank: Private First class Level: 4

Template: 2nd Scout

Enlisted points: 1,020,989

Credits: 50,948

Skill points: 0

Mod points: 0

Weapons:

Desus MOA Magnetic heavy rifle

Mega Colax purified battery Six heat sinks NG rod ammo

Armor:

Wrath EC Tier 5 (modded to tier 3)

Massimio Friction assistance Cloudforge Sensor alert Seven drones Memory Expansion Module Ove Standard Battery AIT (removable) Stealth boost

Side weapons:

GMZ 127 energy rifle

Colax purified battery

Hayes 2020 pistol

Two Mrock pistol ammo rods

Asy Minor short barrel energy rifle

Colax purified battery

Basic combat knife

Ship:

Goozden 127 light armored Respawn Dropship

Causnix Mac 127 Recurve Engine Active camouflage Six respawn pods Vehicle dock Mech reloading printer Shand’s Auto Cannon

Wetware mods

Health

Level: 85

Health Regen

Level: 85

Strength

Level: 76

Perception

Level: 450

Agility

Level: 450

Dexterity:

Level: 450

Memory

Level: 250

Processing speed

Level: 260

Personal AI

Level: 38

Skills cont:

Zero G Maneuvering

Level 5

Advanced Shipboard Tactics

N/A

Spaceborn Vessel

Systems

List

Martial Arts:

Líng Zhònglì Zhàndòu

Level 5

Master

Awareness Skills

List

Dropship Deployment Tactics

(Single ship)

Level 15

Skills:

Enhanced sensing

Level: 2

Tracking

Level: 5

Acrobatics

Level: 5

One time infantry Drop ship

Level: 1

Special Warfare

N/A

FTL Communication

Phd.

Engineer

Master

Advanced Drone Operator

Level: 12

Piloting

Level: 18

Silent Walking

Level: 5

Silent Combat Running

Level: 5

Advanced Targeting

N/A

Hacking

Level: 5

Zero G. Combat

N/A

Bomb Making

*Non template skill*

Level 2

Driving Skills

List

Shooting skills

List

General Rifle skills

List

Hardware mods: Suicide mod

Medals: Gold E Sharpshooter Badges: Cyber warfare

She looked over her mods and smiled. She had decided to advance the three main skills needed for scout sniper to four-fifty. They were perception, agility, and dexterity. Then she had added the rest to her secondary pilot skills, which were memory and processing speed. She advanced both to two-hundred and fifty mods. She’d had a few mod points left over and had debated dropping them somewhere else, but in the end she dumped them into processing speed because it was a main stat that she needed for piloting. The gap between processing speed and the other piloting skills was getting pretty big. She thought about splitting the mods between memory and processing speed, but in the end processing speed was a bigger help to piloting than memory was.

“Well, okay. That’s some impressive awards you must have gotten from the tournament.” One told her, sounding amused. “It wasn’t until I was a mid level corporal running my own squad that I started getting those numbers. I’d be jealous if it wasn’t for the huge bounty this tournament awarded me.”

“Why aren’t you on the ground as well?” Freya asked as she gently pulled herself away from One. She wasn’t mad, just curious.

“I paid for training time to get used to my mods.” One said with a lopsided grin. “Don’t feel bad for not knowing about that. Most people don’t get that high of an award ever and, well, let’s just say I never suspected that you got that many mod points at once. Still, I never fell on my face. Congratulations on that.”

Freya punched One in the shoulder as the other woman smiled. “Jackhole.” She muttered to One.

“Come on.” One said threading her arm through Freya’s and pulling her forward. “Let’s go shopping.”

One pulled Freya towards the mall entrance by the barracks. Freya shook her head as she realized that she had forgotten that they had access to the Navy and Marine shopping center. Inside the mall, Freya split up from One, heading towards a small vehicle shop, while One headed across the wide hall towards a shop that was selling, among other things, command post vehicles.

Freya was stunned to find just how many scout vehicles there were. She quickly found the standard quads that she had been asked to get, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. The quads came in all sorts of configurations. There was the standard, stripped-down, single seat, open-to-air quad. Then there was the armored version in either single, double or quad seating arrangements. Some of the more advanced models had either a single turret mount or two to three smaller weapons mounts. Some had some pretty advanced passive camo that Freya fell in love with. She really loved the ability to set the passive camo to change according to a programmable setting. It didn’t stop any active scanner, but against the non-modded vision of a standard soldier it was pretty amazing. She even found several that could be equipped with cloud forges.

The problem was that it had to be able to be printed from the Mech ammo pod on her ship. That cut almost all of the models out of the running. The android behind the counter offered to let her customize her own vehicle. He set up the console with the maximum amount of printer fluid that she could use that took into account that a second one had to be printed as well as both Mech’s rearming once. Freya felt it was depressing how that limited her options even further.

She first dropped the standard open-to-air model into the customization box. She winced as half the printing fluid that she allotted herself disappeared. She had planned on a two seater quad with armor to cover both riders, but after dropping in an active camo mod she didn’t have enough fluid. She tried to drop a cloud forge into the box, but the screen blinked red telling her she was over her allotted amount of fluid. Cursing, she removed it and looked at the other options.

“I could upgrade the engine. I would have to upgrade the active camo mod to keep up with it.” She thought to herself as she looked at her options. “I wanna go fast.” She quoted to herself in a child-like voice, as she adjusted the quad to see what it looked like with a bigger engine.

She didn’t like how loud the vehicle got over rough terrain, so she added mods to reduce the noise it made. She still didn’t like how much noise it could make on rough terrain, so she took out the suspension and added a more robust version. She found the cost was less than trying to add more mods to quiet the vehicle down, which, to Freya, didn’t make sense. “Greedy money-grubbing copyrights.” She thought to herself. Shrugging, she moved on.

She dropped a few sensor packages into the box and watched the printing fluid get depressingly low. She picked a mid-range sensor to add to her quad. She could have picked a better one, but she wanted to add one more mod to her quad. She picked out a IFF security mod to prevent theft.

“No one is going to steal my ride.” She thought with a smile, as the last of her printing fluid disappeared. “You like to blow things up? I like to blow things up too!” She quoted in a child-like voice in her head. The android looked at her oddly and she realized that she was laughing out loud. Feeling embarrassed, she bought the permission to print the vehicle and nearly ran out of the store.

Outside the store she watched as a few Navy guys walked by talking about a space station they were coming up on. She didn’t hear all that much except it was something rare, and they sounded excited. Done with shopping, she went across to the shop One was at. She was talking with the android that ran the shop. Freya wandered around looking at all the large vehicles that the shop had out on their display floor. She was interrupted by another android who asked if she needed help. After waving the android off, she went over to see how long One was going to be. Seeing that she was still looking at the basic frames, Freya told her that she was going to wander around the mall. Distractedly, One told her she understood before she went back to talking with the android who was showing her different models.

She was walking down the wide corridor in the mall when she spotted the suit she had been testing in the tournament hanging on display in an armor shop. Curious, Freya walked in. An android met her as soon as she stepped into the shop. It was a female-looking model with real-looking, black, curly hair.

“Good morning PFC O’Malley. I see you have the prototype model of the Wrath EC version. Would you like to look at a more up-to-date version?” It asked. Curious, Freya agreed.

“You have a Personal AI at Level 38. That is quite a high level for having it less than a year. It must come in handy.” The android commented, as it brought up four different versions of the armor.

“Now, you have the mock 1. This version has the older version of the active camo engine. There are now three different versions of the engine. We even have an engine that is small enough that you can mount a smaller version of your cloud forge. It uses more energy, unfortunately, and that means less time you can use the engine before you need to recharge the batteries. Still, the energy drain is only fifteen percent more than the engine you are using now.” It told her. “We do have two bigger engines that will allow you to use it longer, but you will not be able to mount any cloud forges on it.”

“Can I buy the engine and mod it to my current suit?” She asked excitedly. “The smaller one I mean.”

“I’m sorry, but no. The engines are built into the armor and cannot be used as mod.” It told her, sounding sad. “You will have to buy a whole new suit.”

Freya bit her lip then sighed. “Ok, how much will yet another armor suit cost?”

To her surprise, it was pretty cheap. Granted, it still cost over a thousand credits, but it was a lot less than what she expected. The android even let her transfer most of her mods from the old suit to the new on. She did have to buy another cloud forge. It was a smaller version than the one she had, and it didn’t allow her to build two clouds at once. Once she fired off her cloud, she would have to wait until the cloud had been destroyed before she could build another one.

The good news was that, instead of five minute build time, the new cloud forge could build all of her drones as fast as two minutes. She didn’t like that she would be effectively blind for two minutes as she built a new drone, but the memory of being detected by a drone in her last mission was still fresh in her mind. In the end she left the store with yet another version of the Wrath armor. Still, she felt good. She had over forty-five thousand credits left in her account.

That made her freeze in the middle of the mall. “I have forty-five thousand credits in my account.” She told herself and checked her status page just to make sure. Less than a second later she was reassured as the number popped up. Thoughts of the huge fishing vessels and mansions that she saw on the feeds popped in her head.

On Earth, all those things were now possible because of how poor her people were. It didn’t mean that much outside of Earth. Sure she could buy a nice house on some nice, safe planet somewhere in the solar system, but on Earth that could buy her a very nice mansion or a huge fishing vessel. Maybe one of the biggest ships. The idea of buying it and having someone captain it to make her money popped into her head again.

“I could live like a queen back on Earth with this much money.” She told herself. That made her giggle. “Less than a year in and I’m already rich. Just how much more can I make before the end of my tour?”

One found her in a weapons shop which sold high-end rifles. Freya was looking at a medium to long-range rifle that could replace her GMZ. It was a slight upgrade in power, but, even flush with more credits than she knew what to do with, she couldn’t see herself buying it. It was a beautiful weapon, but to Freya the slight upgrade in stopping power was just not worth the money they were asking for it. One of the biggest upgrades was an auto-scope, but Freya couldn’t care less about that. She shot just fine without a scope that had some fancy auto-targeting.

“Hey, I got to go. Torres wants to see me.” One said as she walked up.

“Ok, I’ll walk you back.” Freya said. putting the mockup of the weapon back on the counter top. “You get a command post?”

“Oh, yeah.” One said with a grin. “Magic, it is awesome. I went all out. I outfitted it with Heavy armor, an artillery ten incher, two SR anti-ship beamers, and a ten-missile pod with a reloading munitions printer. It’s not a Mech, but it’s as close as I can get.”

“Whoa, that must have cost an arm and a leg.” Freya said, shaking her head as they headed towards the camp.

“Yeah, but it was worth it.” One said, looking off into the distance with a small smile. “So, you get a new weapon?” One asked, seemily coming back to herself.

“Nah. I got another version of my armor. It will allow me to avoid spy satellites and still pump out a drone. It didn’t even cost that much.” Freya said proudly.

One laughed. “I bet. You are probably one of the only people who can buy that version. Just how many people have a Personal AI like you do?”

Freya opened her mouth in surprise then closed it again with a frown. “You, my little scout, got ripped off.” One said, putting her arm around Freya’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, now that you know, I bet you can use it to get a big discount on your next upgraded armor. Find out who owns the company and then threaten them with doing a commercial for their competitor. I bet they would fall all over themselves to give you a discount. Hell, if you play it right, you could get a new suit for free.” One told her, giving her a one armed hug.

“Just like I got my pistol.” Freya said with a small smile.

“Yeah, just like that.” One told her. Freya looked up to see her friend rolling her eyes.

“Hey!” Freya said, punching One again. Making her friend laugh.

“You really have barely any mods in strength?” One said, not seeming bothered that Freya had hit her.

“I’m a scout. Don’t need strength.” Freya said defensively.

“Didn’t say you needed it.” One said, not looking at Freya. “Just, I wouldn’t go around punching people if I was you. Marines tend to put a lot of mods into strength. It’s a Marine thing.” One said with an amused smile. “Don’t worry, most good Mech pilots don’t either.”

“I can already punch through a metal wall. Why would I need more strength?” Freya said, shaking her head. “Granted, it has to be a thin wall, but I can do it.”

One laughed, making two Navy guys who were walking by them jump. “I never said it was smart. Just, Marines are Marines.”

Freya didn’t say anything else until they got to the mall exit. She opened her mouth to ask One another question, but she spoke before Freya could say anything.

“This is where I leave you. Do me a favor, let everyone know that the picnic will be at four-ish. Not sure what Torres has in mind, but plan on meeting up at our normal place.” One told her. “I’ll send out a message once I get more information.”

“Okay, no problems. Good luck.” Freya said as One opened the door and walked into the light. Freya followed.