001 「I’m Out!」

 

Countless years had passed since intelligent life first ventured into space. Yet even after spreading out into the boundless universe, we were still fighting each other.

Numerous interstellar empires vied for supremacy over the galaxy, waging fierce territorial wars for control of star systems through the hyperlane network that linked one star to another.

The flames of war continued to spread, consuming staggering amounts of manpower and material resources. Large-caliber laser cannons burned space colonies to ashes. Electromagnetically accelerated shells fired from planetary orbit turned settlements on the surface into craters. Saturation attacks by seeker missiles equipped with reaction warheads shattered enormous space fortresses.

Word was that some huge empire or other called the shots on the opposite side of the galaxy, and things were a little better over there. Around these parts, though, it had always been like this. The same goddamn mess had been going on for centuries.

There were only so many ways to make a living in a place like that. I’d been living on battlefields since before I could remember. Almost thirty years now. My arms and legs had been blown off ages ago. Hell, I’d lost a few internal organs too, and more than ten years back, I’d even lost my face. A plasma grenade had burned it off.

So, yeah. I was just about done.

I’d had enough.

「I’m out!」

「Huh?! What the hell are you talking about?! Has that cyborg brain of yours finally gone haywire?!」

The guy returning fire from cover right beside me had something pretty damn rude to say about it.

「Maybe it has! Fuck this! Once this battle’s over, I’m quitting the mercenary business! I’m gonna find myself a wife on some planet and spend the rest of my days taking it easy on a farm!」

「You asshole! Saying ‘Once this battle’s over’ in a situation like this is just begging to get yourself killed!」

「Shut up! Like I give a shit! Overdrive! Let’s go!」

My heart—or rather, the antimatter core implanted in its place—let out a high-pitched whine as it began pumping maximum power into my artificial limbs and sensory organs.

「I’m going in to throw ’em into chaos! Back me up!」

「Don’t go dying like a chump, Immortal!」

With my partner’s voice in my ears, I deployed a personal shield that completely deflected antipersonnel laser fire and charged straight into the enemy position.

I’ve had it with these goddamn battlefields! I’m done!

☆★☆

After leaving the mercenary company I’d spent the last ten years or so with, I started sorting through my assets—all the money I’d earned, the spoils I’d picked up, and so on.

「It’s a decent chunk of change, but…」

About three million Enel in total. Nearly thirty years of shooting and getting shot at, coming close to death more times than I cared to count, and that was all I had to show for it. Apparently, those space mercenaries who flew starships and fought their way across the stars earned a lot more, but for ordinary mercs like us, spilling each other’s blood in close-quarters combat, this was about as good as it got.

Even a guy with a fancy nickname like Immortal only has this much. It’s a hard damn world.

「Nowhere near enough.」

Born on the battlefield, raised on the battlefield. It wasn’t as if I had citizenship in any country. And getting the first-class citizenship I’d need to live in a safe settlement on a planet’s surface? That was a pipe dream. Apparently, that cost tens or even hundreds of millions of Enel. I was short a digit or two.

「I could easily afford second-class citizenship and live in a space colony, but…」

Five hundred thousand to a million Enel would buy me second-class citizenship. But am I really going to spend the rest of my life cooped up in a stuffy space colony? I’m not saying life in a colony would be worse than life on the battlefield, but…

What, am I supposed to shut myself in a room all day watching holo-videos and playing video games? With eighty percent of my body replaced by combat cybernetics and implants? No way my sanity would last even six months.

「Which leaves…」

I opened a map of the surrounding galaxy and focused on a particular star system. It was surrounded by three of the more powerful interstellar empires in the region, and each of them could use it as a route into the other two. In other words, it occupied what you’d call a chokepoint.

Its name was the Ribose System.

On top of that, it was rich in resources and even had a planet terraformed to support organic life. It sounded like a place that could only ever be a source of conflict, but for the time being, it was jointly governed by the three surrounding nations, held together by a delicate balance of power.

Apparently, skirmishes resembling proxy wars were breaking out all over the system. The neighboring countries had supposedly sent observers to keep things from getting too far out of hand, though. Taken as a whole, the place was a complete mess—or rather, it was practically a lawless zone.

Wouldn’t a place like that suit a guy who’s spent way too much time on battlefields? If I go in properly prepared, I could probably secure a decent-sized plot on that terraformed planet and set up a farm.

I’ve heard rumors that a fair number of settlers have already headed down there, too. If I’ve got a profitable farm, maybe there’ll be at least one girl willing to marry a guy like me who’s more metal than flesh.

You know, I’m starting to think this could work. All right. That’s the plan.

And so I, Glen, set my plan to live on a planet in motion.

Little did I know it was a one-way ticket to the grave.

☆★☆

Once I’d picked a destination, all that remained was to get moving. I made full use of the contacts I’d built up over my years as a mercenary to secure passage to the target system, then went on a buying spree for tools, supplies, and materials I was likely to need on the surface.

I should probably get a small transport craft, too, so I can trade with any trader ships passing through orbit. It’ll also give me a way to get around on the planet. An old rust bucket is fine, but I want something built by a proper ship manufacturer. No patchwork chimera ships like salvaged pirate vessels. Those things are way too unreliable.

「Gonna need weapons, too, obviously…」

From what I’d heard, the planet had armed groups backed by the three surrounding nations, factions of bandits with space pirates behind them, and local factions descended from the earliest colonists who’d settled there after terraforming—over a thousand years ago, apparently.

Then there were the biological weapons various factions had unleashed, which had since established themselves in the wild, autonomous mechanical weapons that had gone out of control, and mutant creatures that had become stable species after genetic mutation weapons were deployed.

There were even artificial races left behind by corporations and individuals who’d taken the lack of law and order as an excuse to tamper with genomes however they pleased before abandoning their creations…

Anyway, there was apparently no shortage of things that could get a settler killed. Weapons were an absolute necessity.

「Food goes without saying. Better get some medical supplies, too.」

A pretty large proportion of my internal organs had been replaced with cybernetics, but my digestive system was still alive and kicking. Eating was just about the only pleasure I had left. I needed to bring food that tasted as good as possible and would keep for a long time.

Granted, when that plasma grenade got me over ten years ago, it had burned away my jaw too, so all of that was artificial now. Still, my sense of taste worked just fine. No problems there.

Truth was, my brain was pretty much the only thing above my neck that wasn’t artificial. And even that had nearly been boiled by the plasma blast. I’d almost died—or rather, I’d pretty much been dead.

Yet here I am, still alive. There are some pretty troublesome—or downright bizarre—circumstances behind how I survived, but that’s a story for another time.

Anyway, since my body was almost entirely cybernetic, I had no use for ordinary medical supplies. Or rather, I couldn’t use them. Still, there was no telling what would happen on that planet. Even if I didn’t need them myself, someone I met there might. Besides, on a battlefield—or anywhere close enough to one—you could always find buyers for medical supplies.

Naturally, I also packed plenty of materials and equipment to maintain my own cybernetics, separate from the medical supplies. If poor maintenance left me unable to move, I’d be as good as dead.

I picked up communications equipment and a technical data archive for emergencies, too. If something happened to the equipment and materials I brought—if they became unusable or I lost them—I wanted to be able to build at least the bare minimum of facilities and equipment from scratch. The archive also included instructions for repairing everything I was bringing, so in a way, it was more important than anything else.

「…That oughta do it, right?」

At any rate, I’d gathered everything on the list. I’d also collected as much entertainment as I could, including holo-movie data. Entertainment mattered more than people might think.

Booze and drugs counted as entertainment too, but once you drank or used them, they were gone. More to the point, stocking up in bulk took a lot of space and cost a lot of money. By comparison, entertainment data was incredibly efficient. You could fit a huge amount on a single data stick.

Besides, booze and drugs don’t do much for me anyway. My enhanced organs classify them as toxins and neutralize them almost immediately. I do get a momentary buzz, though.

Incidentally, the list came from How to Survive on a Frontier World—and Prepare for It, a beginner’s guide to colonization based on the experiences of people who’d successfully built respectable colonies on frontier planets with less-than-stellar public security.

It also included a list of things those people had found themselves desperately wishing they’d brought while building and running their colonies. The sort of stuff that made them think, If we’d had this from the start, it would’ve saved us so much trouble!

That list had been steadily refined and optimized with each new edition.

They’re on the fourteenth now, by the way.