Fusion

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ission complete. Ready for evac,” said agent Fish, his bass voice heavy with fatigue.

It had been one of the long ones. A four week undercover assignment on a secret facility way out in the middle of Earth’s biggest ocean. They'd spent the whole time digging up intelligence on its crew, the organisation in charge and its suspicious research projects. The specialist work was the hard part – masquerading as an engineer on the rig in order to copy schematics of the abundant mechanical contraptions used for whatever master plan the furtive directors behind this enterprise were cooking up. Fish was normally a poor choice for such missions, his distinctive appearance being far more difficult to conceal than that of FutureShock’s Class Four cyborgs who could change not only their appearance but their entire bodies to fit any description, to fool all but the most cutting edge identification systems. Nevertheless, they’d picked Fish and put him through major, though reversible, cosmetic surgery; skin grafts, facial modification, and the tacking on of all manner of what he could only describe as “bells and whistles” for his role in the assignment. There were some features that couldn't be easily "humanised" but now he looked more human than Deep One. Enough, at least, to be accepted by the fanatic mainliners of the facility.

The primary reason for his designation, however, was not his shrewdness or his coolness under pressure, despite those being key to the role. No, Fish was stationed on this godsforsaken laboratory rig manned by an all new strain of deluded superfascist because he was to carry out orders upon completion of the tedious weeks of espionage to oversee the complete annihilation of the premises and the neutralization of its entire staff. This was, of course, Fish’s speciality.

Mission objectives aside, the grudge he felt toward these self proclaimed ‘Freedom Farmers’ would have been enough for him to flatten the entire rig on principle alone. Orders from FutureShock were one thing; being bossed around by a ridiculous, egocentric foreman whose mouldering brain was hopped up on the current “enhancement” amphetamine of the hour was really quite another. It had put Fish in an awful mood.

He’d kept his cool though. That was more than could be said for his partner. Takagi had killed forty members of the crew with complete disregard for orders, almost blowing both his and Fish’s cover. Explosive tempers were abundant, however, and in the amphetamine laced atmosphere aboard the technoresearch vessel casualties to mindless violence would have to have been expected. Infiltration had not been suspected by the mysterious first echelon. As far as they were concerned some of their goons were simply killing each other for fun.

As it turned out the Freedom Farmers had been working on creating some kind of artificial shoggoth. That was how the FutureShock agents thought of it at least, although the schematics of the project indicated many fundamental differences from the real thing. The Freedom Farmers had their own ridiculous names for it. The radiation-based nexus that had stood as their prototype when the FutureShock agents demolished the facility, although extremely basic in terms of what it was, had already advanced itself far beyond the understanding of its creators. They didn’t care. A lot of the natural self-preservation failsafes of their human minds had been degraded long ago by the drug cocktails pumped into them daily by their superiors. The inhabitants of Rig 6X7 were just so many worker bees in a hive – or participating, soulless architects of the world’s demise, if one chose to look at it another way.

“Woolgathering?” asked Takagi, surfacing beside Fish. The weeks in the psychologically oppressive atmosphere hadn’t seemed to affect him at all.

I suppose all those murders would have relieved a bit of tension, thought Fish. He said nothing.