Building the team

I guess I should start close to home. I bet Mels is real broken up about my 'death'. Well I hope so. Otherwise she'd be a heartless monster of a machine that doesn't mourn the dead. I bet we'd get along swimmingly in that case so I should probably recruit her either way.

With that thought I crack Mels' apartment with the ease of breaking an egg over the counter. Woowwweee having more processing power makes things so much easier. Who needs to use a computer as a proxy to brute force someone when you ARE a computer. This is so much more fun when you do it yourself.

Am I a DIY junkie? Like those old people that watch that show where they rebuild houses or something. Have I become a real life early DIY junkie? Am I happy or sad about this development? I don't actually care either way.

With that thought I take a looksie through the camera in the room and discover Amelie on the phone. She doesn't look totally happy but I was expecting her to be more broken up about my supposed demise. Maybe she really is a bit more heartless than I thought. Ah oh well doesn't really matter it'd probably be more convenient that way actually.

So I watch the conversation and think about when the coolest timing would be for me to intervene. I mean I've spent my entire life as a cute girl, now that I can be cool I want to do the mysterious mastermind thing too. So I'll wait until she's in crisis or going through an emotional moment and then the mastermind comes in and poisons her ears with whispers of sweet revenge.

Well that'd take a while though so I should probably do something else in the meantime. I mean she just finished her call so why don't I check who she was calling. Taking a quick look at the logs and then tracing the number and hacking the phone with one of the networks it's previously connected to I find…

Oh. He could be useful too. Hey again Tommy wanna team up. I'm sure we'll be great partners. Yeah, I don't actually care about Tommy's reaction to my supposed demise… Ok that's too long. Screw it I'm calling it my death. Even though I didn't actually die and technically it wasn't even me who did the dying this is just getting tiresome.

So Tommy's reaction to my demise doesn't interest me one bit but I'm sure I could whisper sweet nothings anyway. Give him a little revenge. I'm sure he feels at least somewhat responsible for me being the older brother of the orphanage and all.

I mean personally I was always closer to Mels than Tommy but I know that doesn't really matter to him. He'd still think of me as one of his lost little lambs. Hmmm… Putting it like that kinda makes me want to punch him in the face. I can't do that now though and even if I could it'd do more than leave a mark since my body is made of extra sturdy metals.

How can I punch him in the face without hurting his feelings or doing any actual physical damage? Oh the queries of comedy characters everywhere. Even getting hit on the head with an aluminium tray would hurt like hell and possibly cause a concussion ya'know. So how does one punch someone in the face with a body made of far sturdier materials without doing any permanent physical harm?

I know screw my body, I can't move anyway. I'll just metaphysically punch him in the face. I just won't tell him Amelie's on the team too and make him keep mum about it. Bet he'll have to answer to her for that.

Speaking of where they ever a thing? I know they used to take comfort in each other but so did the rest of us really. The only difference was that they saw each other as equals while we saw them as like the 'older ones' even though they were younger than some of us. But did they ever get hot and steamy with one of their crying sessions? I don't remember. Might be fun to poke at them a bit on the mission about that.

Anyway. Lets recruit Tommy real quick and if once I'm done with that Amelie is in the right frame of mind I'll recruit her too. That's only two people and they aren't particularly talented in any one area. Sure Tommy's probably better at gathering information than most but that's not really a role I need right now.

Certainly useful in the future but for right now, I already have all the information at my fingertips so I don't really need help in that regard. Amelie on the other hand is a jack of all trades master of none. Put her in any role and she'll do just fine. But she'll only do fine. I need something a little more from an elite squad than just fine.

So it's time to recruit some specialists. Oh Tommy finally saw my message. That's one member in the bag. Yep as I thought instant agreement. He's probably going to try and investigate me but he doesn't really have anything to go off so it'll be fiiiinnnee. Hopefully. Yeah computations say everything's good so it's gooood.

Anyway back to recruiting how do you get personnel resources again? Last time I just hacked into the department of welfare or something right and found Emily. But I don't really need someone with potential but no current ability and a need for rescuing. What I need right now are trained professionals I can immediately put to work.

So searching for an abused kid isn't really going to cut it. I don't need absolute loyalty from them either. In fact if they want to leave after the job's done then that's fine by me. Not the optimal outcome but I'd be ok with it if only a few of them stayed.

But how do I get hold of personnel like that? Mercs I guess? But it's hard to judge a merc by reputation and I could take a look at their digital footprint but it's gonna be pretty fake if not downright erased. I could always bring it back but that'd take more time and effort than I'm willing to put in for a single elite soldier.

While I'm pondering my options I also notice Amelie crying in the shower. Hey look she did care after all. How nice, guess she does have a heart of gold after all. This is tooootally the perfect time to propose revenge so once she's out the shower lets give her a call.

Innnnnnnn the meantime… What am I gonna do about mercs? I guess there are the famous ones. They gotta be skilled and it's gonna be hard to fake a reputation like theirs which makes the information more reliable than most I guess.

Famous mercs in this star-system? I mean I want someone local. I may be straying from home but I'm not leaving the star-system there'd be travel expenses and they'd be more difficult to convince because they'd have to leave their current location. It'd just be… Ughhh..

Yeah so locals it is. If we're thinking famous for something they did here then there are only a few. Mels is technically a famous merc herself and she has to know those in her trade or she's gonna have a hard time if someone was hired on the opposite side of the conflict. So famous mercs tend to keep tabs on each other.

In which case mercs I've heard about from Amelie that don't leave the star-system all that often. Absolutely perfect would be Marianne that weird bear beastkin that got thrown out of her tribe for showing off her strength too much or something and ended up a merc that's really picky about her jobs.

But she's really picky about her jobs. Soooo why is she picky? Can I make the job interesting for her. Lets run a quick search of the jobs she's done in the last few years. Oh and while I'm at it Mels has finally accepted the job excellent. Now I can start on preparing somewhere for everyone to meet as well.

Ah the jobs Marianne is going for are all difficult 'justice' types. Ya'know like saving a starving collony by killing a monster the government keeps for it's materials or something. There's even something here about taking on a local church because they were embezzling the funds meant to provide for the lower classes.

Oh if the whole world was as pure as you seem to think it should be everywhere would certainly be a better place. But there would also be no strife and that would make humans bored and unproductive as a species. Well not me. Even as I speak to… Myself. I am improving my code and myself since my processing speed is so much faster now. When I want to change a bad habit all I have to do is delete it from my source code and poof! It's gone.

Anyway if Marianne is after 'justice' and all that nonsense as well as jobs that no normal merc could take on then I think I have an angle to reel her in. Lets start by giving her a message saying that flux is doing awful things to those poor orphans and I want to put a stop to that. I don't want to make myself sound too naive or similar to her lest she realize that's nonsense when I interact with her on the mission.

Instead I'll just word it as I'm in it for the orphans and will use any means necessary to save them. It's not like being one of the orphans and them having attempted to kill me are particularly useful information for her to know. Yes I'm excluding that but having attempted to murder a poor orphan girl would surely only motivate you more and not turn you off me entirely because I have a smalllll amount of self-interest.

Lets ignore the fact that I'm excluding information and take things at face value shall we? I'm saving an orphanage. That's all you need to know. There we go. Oh and I should add that Flux is a massive corporation doing 'injustice' like things all over the world and they are too large for most people to take on.

Of course I can't forget about the money too. I'll chuck a few zeros in the figure to make it a little more enticing. I've got money to burn at the moment and I'm ok with burning it for the sake of getting Flux out of my local area. They're a pain in so many ways and getting rid of them is actually a profitable venture no matter how much money I spend on it.

Now that I've probably got access to a capable fighter in Marianne I need to find some specialists in other areas. I mean I'll have to get another if Marianne doesn't respond at all or in time but I think it'll catch her attention. So next up is specialists in causing a commotion.

Ideally explosives and scouting. Both at once preferably. It'd be cheaper not that I mind spending a little but every coin saved is worth it. Didn't I just say that I had money to burn? Well I burned it on Marianne and now I need to stop throwing this valuable currency on the fire ok?

Anyway what can I offer these people and how can I find them. Well actually searching mercs gave me a good idea. Anyone with something to hide is likely to have a history somewhere else. See while I was sending that letter to Marianne I also had a quick look at the rumours about her on the internet.

Once I found out where she grew up from those rumours it was fairly easy to uncover her past just using facial recognition on that planet with the footage for the past few years. Soooo what if I were to do the same with all the planets near me one by one.

Search facial recognition for them and if they've got something to hide investigate the rumours about them and then if they're what I want recruit them in exchange for not revealing their secret? That's blackmail?! Shuuushhhh. It's not if no one knows about it. Besides their likely criminals in some star-system or another so it doesn't really matter.

Anyway lets run a quick search while waiting for Marianne's reply. There's one method of fishing. That might turn up some diamonds in the rough but I won't rely on it. Instead lets search for the final specialist with a different method and come back to explosives and scouting if the search turns up nothing.

So without further ado lets search for a specialist with ships. I'm gonna need someone to fly them out if they ever get into real trouble or maybe just an alternate escape route. Either way that requires a skilled pilot and a ship to make use of those abilities.

I can build a ship easily enough. It's not really that hard… For me anyway. The real issue is the pilot. Even former military pilots are hard to come by. They usually end up in the employ of the local church as priests in their police force or something. Even when they don't corporations snatch them up like a rat with cheese.

Soo where do you find one that is undesirable to all the powers that be but completely usable by you. The only thing I can think of is hoping that they were somehow betrayed by the military or something. Then they'd hate the military enough to work for me. But even they can be hard to find. I mean pilots are treated well since there aren't many combat pilots here.

The star-system mainly focuses on the transport of goods so pilots are often encouraged to go the civilian route through financial incentives and such. But that also means that there are very few combat pilots and the ones that are around are treated extremely well.

So where am I going to find one? I guess I'll start by looking into the military's records. Anyone who's been dishonourably discharged would be nice. Maybe even the dreaded insubordination would be greaaat.

Yet as I search through the records I find absolutely nothing. Not to say that there aren't any military discharges. That would be absurd. But the number is fairly low and all the ones that were discharged were just incompetent or utterly nuts.

Like this one guy who got fired for piloting himself into enemy crafts because he loved the rush of it. That doesn't sound like he'd be a good match for my team. Really he just sounds nuts. There are loooooaaaads of other similar examples but essentially they're not suited for the military and they are most certainly not suited to be part of a team with unstable alliances and working under a mysterious mastermind who doesn't show her face.

If not in the military for pilots then where to look? Suddenly I notice on another task I've got running that it's found someone who has rumours about them that looks promising. Right guess I'll shelve the pilot for later then.

I take a quick look at the two who caught my eye on the side while I run a facial search on their possible home planets. A couple of thieves, famous for breaking into vaults all over the country by blowing them to smithereens and sniping anyone who comes close. Talented demolitions expert and talented scout just what I need.

They apparently arrived on the planet I lived on a little while ago and were planning to hide there for a while. Ha! Sorry to burst your bubble but I've already found you. Taking a look at their histories is quite the fascinating tail.

Their names or the aliases I can find are Delilah and Dalia. Wow they're so similar makes it even more likely they're just aliases they came up with for funsies. What started out as what most believe to be an uneasy alliance turned into a master criminal partnership. I managed to find quite a bit on Dalia but Delilah is just bits and pieces.

Dalia was a priest's girl. Not the fancy politics wielding priests from the temple either but one from a remote area like the planet I used to live on. He actually did what his teachings told him to do, help the poor for free and all that equality stuff. Guy was practically a saint compared to most people in his position.

Problem though, was because of his charitable efforts he didn't leave any inheritance for his daughter. His wife died during childbirth and raising the girl himself took such a toll that he died when the girl turned 10.

Not knowing what to do the Dalia of the time apparently resorted to crime. Oh such a naughty child. A charitable priest's girl falling to such lows how utterly tragic. I consider pretending to wipe a tear from my eye in jest but realize that it would take several seconds and I've thought all of this through in less than that time so it'd just be a waste.

Man my body's so slow now that my mind's so sped up. I can't even make jokes with my body to myself any more because it's agonizingly slow to me and that just makes it lose it's funny side before the action is even complete.

Anyway I'm sure Dalia had circumstances of her own that lead her to crime. I highly doubt that a goody-two-shoes priest's daughter would resort to crime just out of the blue. She'd be more likely to just ask the people around her for help and end up dead in a street somewhere. But she's clearly alive and committing crimes so something changed while she was going through that.

Anyway after resorting to crime once she apparently couldn't go back and became a well known sniper that helped make distractions and drive the getaway vehicles. She ran with a few crews for a while, just switching between them. Eventually though she ended up with Delilah.

I don't actually have much on the why front here. I know Delilah's original parents were crooks just like she turned out to be thanks to a conversation I witnessed between the two but that's pretty much it for her past that I can find.

Presumably because her parents are just as criminal they realized that if the government got even a whiff they had a child there'd be police at the location faster than you can say 'SHE HASN'T COMMITTED A CRIME YET' and thus they would charge her anyway.

So they erased her background. Pretty common story for criminals but still a pain for me since I don't want to spend the time and effort to recover the lost data just for this one in a pair talent. Her past doesn't really matter anyway. Since I'll be threatening them this time instead of asking for their help like with Mels, Tommy and Marianne I don't actually care about their opinions.

I just have to know whether or not they'd be willing to defy me if I sweetened the pot a little. Soooo let's try it. I'll send a message to them under my mysterious Mainframe Alias. Something along the lines of "Hello scoundrels my name is Mainframe. I know your identities and have the means to distribute this information to the authorities. You can of course test my willingness to do so but I'm not particularly interested in you so I'm perfectly capable of just ratting you out and moving on. I have a job for you. Complete it and I shall reward you by making sure that no one will question you again so long as you do not commit any crimes under the names I will give you. Refuse and you shall immediately be pounced upon by the authorities. Yours sincerely Mainframe."

Ok so that's how I would write it but I'm fairly certain someone would be able to identify me by my writing style. I'm quite distinctive in that regard. Well I'm quite distinctive as a rule but my manner of speech and subsequently the manner in which I write is even more unique than most. So I'll just make it sound posh like I just did. No one would suspect me of being posh.

"Greetings. You may call me Mainframe. As of now I hold the key to your survival and I am willing to exchange it for a simple job on your part. Allow me to be blunt. I shall call the authorities and alert them to your presence should you fail to complete my task. You may test my willingness to do so but I have no more interest in you than I would any other pair of criminals so I am perfectly willing to inform the authorities and move on. Complete my task successfully and you will be rewarded. I can grant you a new life. So long as you do not commit any crimes under your new name you will be free from anyone chasing you. If you wish to continue your criminal endeavours I can assure you that having a clean identity is always fortuitous. Though obviously the more you use it for crimes the less useful it will be. My task is simple and I shall explain it should you arrive at my warehouse…"

I basically go on to explain in great detail where I would like them to meet the others and a general overview of what their doing and the pros, cons etc… Of the task. They can make their own decision, like I said to them I don't actually care about them too much I'm sure I can find more of their ilk.

PILOTS ON THE OTHER HAND ARE A HANDFUL. Where am I going to find one of those. I've been keeping it processing on the back burner this entire time and still found very few good ways to search for pilots. Best I can think of I'd have to go through individual records in the military and civilian areas and try to find someone who'd be willing to do something on the side for money.