Samael's eyes lazily opened, though he swiftly wished to fall asleep again as an unsightly stench assaulted his nose mercilessly. It was a suffocating mix of burning metal and stale cigarettes, sharp and clinging to his throat like a heavy vapor. Grimacing, he sighed and observed his shaking surroundings.
He was inside some kind of personnel hull. The cramped space was clearly designed for transporting soldiers; each side of the elongated chamber was lined with rows of cushioned seats, their aged leather cracked and scuffed from countless deployments, flanked by thick, reinforced iron safety struts bolted into the bulkhead.
The hum of the ship's aged slipspace engines rumbled through the floor, vibrating against the soles of his boots. Yet, curiously, the seats around him were empty - not a single soldier in sight.
Above, embedded into the ceiling panels, were dull green luminescent battery tiles, rectangular and softly flickering, casting a sickly light across the cabin's sterile, grayish metal walls. Faint, almost ghostly, stains marked the surfaces - old scuffs and grime from previous occupants.
"IMC personnel transport?" Samael recognized it instantly. Unlike the model his father had used within the city, this one was strictly military-issue, purpose-built for swiftly ferrying combat squads to remote or unstable key points across planets, where a bulky carrier would be too slow or conspicuous.
When he instinctively tried to move, a harsh metallic clink reminded him he was strapped into one of the thick iron safety struts. The cold, inflexible restraint bit into his chest and shoulders, holding him tight against the chair. His attempts to free himself were pointless.
"Oi, you're in there for a reason, rich kid."
A gruff, weathered voice rasped from beside him, flavored with an uncivilized accent roughened by years of violence and bad liquor. "Can't have you fuckin' around. It's your daddy's orders."
Samael's expression twisted into something resembling the judgmental scowl of an old, bitter man. He slowly turned his head to find a figure sprawled lazily in the chair adjacent, cigar smoke curling in lazy tendrils through the stagnant air, blatantly ignoring the numerous 'No Smoking' warnings plastered across the cabin walls.
The man lounged there with his arms casually splayed along the backrest, his posture unconcerned. Though they weren't in combat, he was clad in full IMC pilot gear - white heavy-duty body armor, marred with scratches and scorched pitting, concealing beneath it a carbon allotrope mesh that all pilots relied upon.
It was a marvel of modern warfare material engineering: absurdly strong, shrugging off most energy blasts and bullets short of an anti-materiel Kraber rifle, yet weighing barely five kilograms, preserving a pilot's speed and acrobatic agility.
It wasnt perfect though, as it still had limits. If you were shot too many times, you would die like any other regular soldier.
But this man didn't look like a standard pilot. He'd ditched the standard-issue helmet in favor of a more personal style: sleeveless underclothes, a red crystal earring glinting in his left ear, and short blonde hair spiked backwards with casual defiance.
His skin was weathered and lined from age and exposure, yet his frame remained powerful, sitting somewhere in his mid-thirties - hardened but unmistakably in his prime.
Samael recognized him instantly from memory, drawing from his knowledge of the game's history. Kuben Blisk - the future leader of the Apex Predators mercenary unit and founder of the Apex Games after the battle of Gridiron. A ruthless legend.
Yet, reputation meant little to Samael. He wasn't intimidated. If anything, he was curious. Could this man be manipulated?
"Uhm… S-sir? Have you seen my father? I… I'm scared…" he whimpered, crafting his voice into the perfect mimicry of a lost child - unsettlingly flawless, even letting small tears prick at the corners of his wide, frightened eyes.
"Heh…" Blisk let out a chuckle, shaking his head with a flicker of amusement before his gaze hardened. His eyes narrowed, staring deep into Samael's soul, and whatever warmth had existed vanished, replaced by cold familiarity.
"Samael Hammond. Cut the shit, kid. Your father showed me the footage of your little stunt. I know exactly what kind of snake you are."
"Fine." Samael's expression collapsed into flat apathy, his stare hollow. "Kuben Blisk. Mercenary born in South Africa, relocated to the Outlands, former Thunder Games combatant. You left, joined the Titan Wars, earned elite pilot status, then became a freelance mercanary. Tell me, Blisk - what contract did my father offer you?"
"So you know your stuff, huh?" Blisk casually tapped the side of his utility belt, fingers brushing against a transparent card embedded with barcodes and dense streams of identification numbers. Samael immediately recognized it as an IMC Interplanetary Bank account card, used for high-value mercenary contracts.
"Fifty million credits," Blisk continued, tone half-bored, half-proud, "plus preferential treatment, unrestricted access to experimental pilot and Titan tech. Not a bad gig, eh?"
"In exchange for what?" Samael's interest sharpened, a pleased note creeping into his tone. Either Blisk was another bodyguard like Albreck… or something more useful.
"You get trained by the best pilot in the Frontier," Blisk grinned, the cigar hanging between his teeth. "And I'll be showin' you how to use a Titan. Plus, I'll be testin' out whatever junk you cook up over on Gridiron. Your old man wants you in the Atlas-class research program."
"So your a baby sitter. Here i thought mercenaries were heatless."
"Call me a baby sitter all yoi want brat. I aint afraid to hit you like, unlike those employees at Hammonds labs thay treat you like royalty." Blisk replied cooly.
"I am royalty." Samael silently murmered. Infact, he wasnt neccaserily wrong. Though the Core systems were more of a corperate dystopia tham anything else, in that corperate dystopia, the Hammond family was undoubtedly ontop.
A small silence fell between them, save for the steady, rhythmic rocking of the ship's flight. Samael's gaze drifted out the small, square window beside him. Beyond the thick, scratched glass stretched the cold, endless void of space - a vast canvas of black ink, scattered with a million sharp points of starlight.
In one distant corner, a tiny blue marble of planet Earth was already beginning to fade from view. Soon, the ship's navigation AI would finish its jumpdrive calculations, and they would plunge into the pale shimmer of slipspace.
Truthfully, this program was the perfect place for him. After the Battle of Demeter in 2708, military technology between the IMC and Militia had undergone unprecedented acceleration.
New Titans like the energy-based Atlas-class Ion model had emerged, replacing earlier generations of basic, unspecialized behemoths.
Those early Titans were primitive in design - differentiated by armor thickness and weapon loadouts, little else. But with time came models like the Strider-class Ronin, capable of phasing into alternate phase dimensions for split seconds, rendering incoming fire harmless.
Samael's unique knowledge put him leagues ahead of everyone else. It was inevitable he would become a prodigy in this field.
"Hey mercenary," Samael asked absently, not looking away from the window's tapestry of stars, "what's the biggest problem Pilots face in battle?"
"Eh, that'd be anti-Titan weaponry," Blisk replied with a grunt. "The Militia, crafty bastards. Back in the day, they didn't have Titans, so they built weapons that could punch through 'em. Charge Rifles. Arc Traps. And those jumpkit troops - they'd rip batteries right outta our Titans and chuck grenades down the hatch."
"Mhm…" Samael mused. He already knew the solution. It was baffling how simple fixes evaded military minds. Install a separate compartment on the Titan's hull capable of discharging a blanket of electrified smoke - any enemy pilot clambering onto the chassis would be fried alive, organs and flesh liquefying under the voltage.
It was absurd how many early-war problems boiled down to the IMC's inability to think beyond brute force tactics. By the time they reacted, the Militia had already adapted -
their forces expanding rapidly, fueled by the abundant resources of their colony worlds.
In contrast, the IMC's sole advantage lay in its size and superior technology, but those alone wouldn't last forever.
What they needed was a new weapon. A Titan beyond current models capable of single-handedly turning the tide for as long as possible and buy time.
After a while, the militia would prabably steal one and start reproducing it, but by then, he would have abundant time to makw even more titan models, leaning more into their technological advantage.
Samael stroked his chin like a contemplative old sage, lost in thought. "Ion would be perfect for this. The most versatile frame by far. Its laser core could cut clean through every unshielded Titan model currently fielded. Even the Ogre-class would be reduced to slag. This'll be my first project."
Satisfied, he nodded to himself - only to be pulled from his thoughts by a sharp tone and blinking message on a small screen at the ship's rear bulkhead. An alert: Jumpdrive activation imminent.