"Being a hero is not as glamorous as I thought." Venerable Tusa thought.
Originally, he did not think much of what he would do once he ventured back to settled space.
He heard plenty of stories about people abusing their biochs for their own ends during his preparation. While these incidents were none of his business, he resolved not to stand by if he had an opportunity to make everything better.
So he did.
He no longer counted how many rampaging biochs he demolished. Every district seed to have their own collection of self-centered thugs. Why had the LRA never cracked down on these barbarians? Why did the authorities not go further in controlling the proliferation of chs if they were already so strict?
"For all their fears about foreigners, the true danger lurked within their own hearts all along."
Every foreigner on the planet just wanted to escape the flas of the revolution and get away as soon as possible. This was not their struggle and they had little to no stake in its outco.
Venerable Tusa should have minded his own business as well. The plunderers and murderers he t along the way rarely went out of their way to pick a fight against him. Rather than wage a costly battle against another ch and risk losing the source of their power, the criminals would rather direct their attention towards bullying the weak!
Each ti the expert pilot encountered this reaction, his contempt and disgust led him to take action.
"You are a disgrace to our profession! At least have the courage to fight against a worthy opponent!"
As a forr military ch pilot and expert pilot, Venerable Tusa spent the majority of his career surrounded by honorable n and won. Even before that, the old Larkinson Family along with the academies he attended in his youth constantly instilled him with the responsibilities and privilege of a ch pilot.
Potentates had access to an incredible amount of destructive potential. As long as they interfaced with any ch, they could use the power at their disposal to destroy enemies and innocent civilians alike!
Although Tusa admittedly did not pay too much attention to these classes, through passive osmosis, the values of an honorable ch pilot was ingrained into his bones.
Therefore, seeing these second-class ch pilots exercise little to no restraint broke sothing inside Tusa. He used to look up to these individuals who were lucky enough to be born in a better state.
He used to think that ch pilots that grew up in second-rate and first-rate states were better than him in every way!
Even when he advanced to expert pilot, it was still difficult for Tusa to shed his ingrained respect towards those who underwent much more rigorous training.
The Battle of Reckoning only reinforced this impression. Although the Fridayn and enemy Garleners had hostile intentions in mind, he still respected their skill, valor, honor and sacrifice.
No ch pilot was free to do as he or she wished.
"Pfff. How naive I was back then."
To be honest, he chafed at the restrictions. As a light ch specialist, he always d.e.s.i.r.ed to make his own choices. Obeying the orders of soone who did not fully understand what he was capable of did not sit well with him. It was also difficult for ch officers to know how to best make use of light chs.
A disproportionate number of ch pilots turned officers initially piloted dium chs. Their fighting instincts and war knowledge always centered around the use of the most popular weight class.
Light ch specialists frequently suffered the consequences of suboptimal orders!
This was why light ch pilots such as Tusa developed a reputation for being mavericks. They were more prone to stretch their orders and act on their own accord.
This stereotype persisted only because situations kept happening where commanders improperly utilized light chs!
His current situation was a typical example of that. With a ch as strong as the Piranha Pri, it was by far the strongest scout ch in this region on the planet. It possessed the strength to defeat everything weaker and the speed to outrun anything that was stronger.
Shackling such a powerful light ch to a stationary base was a gross misuse of its capabilities!
"These sc.u.m are disgusting."
He witnessed so of the worst that humanity could do to each other. While he wouldn’t have been surprised if he witnessed this behavior from Nyxian pirates, this was not the case this ti!
Every thug he killed along the way each showed enough proficiency to recognize they were academy trained. Sure, they probably scored at the bottom of their class, but they should have still been exposed to all of the duties and responsibilities that their profession conveyed!
Instead of making their instructors proud, the wayward graduates decided to pursue more selfish ends.
In a way, the criminals who let go of all restraint and revelled in the chaos were much more free than anyone else!
In a ti where disorder had taken over, too many the thugs and murderers had given up on conforming. They shed the expectations and the compulsions that society imposed on them and acted without any disregard for others!
While Venerable Tusa acknowledged that these ch pilots liberated themselves, they embraced the wrong kind of freedom!
"Freedom doesn’t give you the license to embrace anarchy!"
Bioch after bioch collapsed from his Unending alloy daggers. Even though the enemy chs he faced were weird, they still worked like normal chs for the most part. Their c.o.c.kpits were all situated in the sa location, and puncturing it always caused biochs to shut down!
Prior to his exposure to these sc.u.m, he could maintain the belief that pursuing absolute freedom was the right course of action for him. He wanted to maintain control over his own fate and did not wish to let anyone have the final say in what he could do. Not even the Larkinson Clan held his unquestioning obedience!
Yet now that he saw what absolute freedom did to other ch pilot, Venerable Tusa began to doubt his purpose.
This was very dangerous. As an expert pilot, he knew that his conviction was the basis of his strength. When he attended an introductory lecture at the MTA, he learned the perils of questioning his own principles.
Once this happened, it was hard to stop it. The MTA instructor explicitly warned him that expert pilots must always confront their problems upfront.
Cowards didn’t exist among expert pilots!
No matter how much an existential question threatened his personal cause, Tusa never thought about dodging it. Tests like these happened several tis throughout an expert pilot’s career.
Those who passed them would continue to grow stronger while those who shirked them lost the right to advance any further.
His ch wavered a bit as he started to go over his reasons to fight. The more he beca swept by doubt, the more the Piranha Pri began to lose its l.u.s.ter.
When the ch’s energy reserves started getting low, Tusa turned around and piloted it back to Gentle Lotus Base.
Biochs depended heavily on feeder stock to stay in shape. Even if they did not do anything, their cells constantly remained active. Just like how normal organisms needed to eat and drink on a regular basis, biochs also needed a way to replenish the nutrients they spent.
Although bioch designers had gotten quite good at increasing the efficiency of their products, they could not eliminate this annoying requirent entirely.
A starving bioch always turned weak and brittle after months of neglect! This was one of the more troubleso aspects about organic machines that prevented the rest of the galaxy from embracing them. While tallic chs also deteriorated under the sa conditions, the difference wasn’t nearly as drastic.
"Normal chs are much more trustworthy than these freaky biochs. They’re no different from monsters."
Venerable Tusa even developed a theory that biochs sohow infected the ntalities of their own ch pilots. There was no other way for him to explain why so many deviants popped up all at once.
Every bioch looked nacing in his eyes. Their raw strength, imposing stature and grotesque appearances all made it clear that their designers did not envision anything cuddly and cute!
Venerable Tusa spent enough ti in the LRA to know that much of the special cells and tissue that made up biochs were derived from all manner of exobeasts.
Even the most humanoid-looking biochs were actually stuffed with beast DNA!
Although Tusa was not versed in biology, he still suspected that so of the bestial traits of biochs were contagious. That, or the Life Research Association did a really poor job of educating their ch pilots!
Everything he had seen so far pointed out the perils of freedom. In a way, for all of its strictness, the LRA granted too much freedom to its ch pilots.
Now that the Supre Revolution broke the traditional hierarchy and granted every single serving ch pilot to choose which order to obey, far too many of them decided to fight for less-than-noble causes!
Though he hadn’t clashed against them yet, Tusa held an even worse regard for the ch pilots who served in the Planetary Guard or other governnt institutions.
Millions of citizens in the outskirts needed their help. Yet instead of doing the right thing, the protectors of people instead chose to abandon their responsibilities in order to fight for a nebulous political cause!
When granted the choice to do what they wished, too many ch pilots from all walks of life chose to abandon their duties.
Instead, they beca consud with plundering wealth, eliminating rivals, pursuing their grudges and more! They also beca more prone to getting bewitched by ambitious leaders who did not care for the harm they caused in order to fulfill their personal ambitions.
"People can’t be trusted with power." He concluded.
It was a damaging admission and one that Venerable Tusa did not want to settle upon. However, the truth was there for him to see. Even though he knew that his fellow Larkinsons were vastly different, that did not alter the fact that there were plenty more people who abused any asure of freedom they could grasp!
The Piranha Pri grew more turbulent. While its presence hadn’t collapsed entirely, Venerable Tusa did not feel so good about himself anymore.
Reality had dealt a harsh blow to his illusions.
"What is freedom?"
"What makes worthy to make my own choices?"
"How much do other people deserve to be free?"
"Does absolute freedom even exist?"
All of these questions and more began to swirl in his mind. His will beca clouded and his confidence began to falter.
A small alarm sounded from his ch. Venerable Tusa temporarily pulled himself out of his conundrum. He realized that he was approaching the storage depot.
The site was just as large as the female worker described. Thousands of containers and other goods were stacked indoors and outdoors.
What Tusa found notable about the site was that another group had already overrun the defenses. Nurous security chs lay broken and fallen on the ground as the unknown assailants were in the process of loading up their transports with looted feeder stock!
The expert pilot frowned. Normally, he would barge in and eliminate the looters, but he could not deny the fact that he and his clan were thinking about doing the sa!
"There’s also too many chs."
The Ferocious Piranha’s passive sensors weren’t able to provide him with a complete picture, but his ch estimated that there were upwards of 200 chs at the site!
"What the hell are so many chs doing here? Who is fielding them and why are they after so much feeding stock?"
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