Chương 94: Violent History

Kelly needed more information.

"So it's not a file I just don't have access to," she said.

"No." Jack shook his head slightly.

"If there had been something concrete—a service record, a photo, a confirmed op—it would've survived. It didn't. Nothing did."

"Then why does it still get mentioned?"

"Because it worked." He crossed his arms, his voice low and even.

"Back when voluntary enlistment replaced the draft, they needed stories that worked. You don't get kids from the slums to sign up for orbital drop campaigns with spreadsheets and pension plans…"

"You do it with legends." Kelly finished his sentence, the history clicking into place. The Ghost was a recruitment tool. In a world where joining the military was the only lottery ticket that ever guaranteed a payout, where soldiers who survived were the new rock stars and every corporation's logo looked suspiciously like a medal, you needed a good legend. One that was all glory and no inconvenient facts like service records or retirement homes.

"So it's that kind of thing. Propaganda."

"Yeah. A useful myth. Easy to repeat. Hard to check. They had a lot of them back then. It's just one of a few." Basic history of the wars did a lot of heavy lifting. The entire history of human civilization for the last thousand years was just a long, bloody advertisement for why you needed augments, corporations, and an untouchable elite class. It justified everything. It was the reason the Echelon existed and why colonies were launched.

It was the foundational excuse for economic disparity, social injustice, and a homeworld slowly poisoning itself. That history positioned anyone who served above a certain threshold—and especially those who stood at the peak, like the legendary Gideon Vaughn—as a crucial, untouchable social class. They were the shield. The history said so. In Kelly's feed, Jackhammer glanced at the crowded lobby, at the faces of people who'd grown up in a world shaped entirely by war.

"Names like that carry weight in our society—we measure a person's worth by what they did in uniform. Everyone wants in on military service. It's the only elevator out. The academies are harder to get into than a colony visa. A lot of people would choose a good academy over a resort colony." War was the foundation of the economy.

The military academies were harder to get into than heaven, and the Echelon never let you forget they were the reason your lungs hadn't melted yet, even if you'd never breathe clean air off-world.

"So of course the only good legends are the ones you can't fact-check. And nobody ever had to update it," Kelly said.

"Exactly. No face. No age. No confirmed end point. It never expired. It scared our enemies into behaving. People argued about whether names like that were ever real, but they still said the names with respect." He gave her a look that was more tired than stern.

"We have real living heroes on brochures, too. From my side of things, that never crossed from a story into a real, actionable interest. It stayed where those things belong. Talked about. Never useful."

"That's all I needed," Kelly said, her tone shifting into something lighter.

"I just wanted to know how seriously to take it."

"Take it as a story people were taught to recognize. Nothing more. Our boss has much better, realer ones. With video proof." He was talking about Gideon. He uncrossed his arms, his attention already drifting back to his duty roster.

"Now, unless your intern project is auditing three-hundred-year-old propaganda, I'd suggest finding your supervisor. We've got enough real problems today." This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Got it. Thanks for being so straight about it. You're lucky to have me."

"Of course. Wait—what?" She ended the call, leaving him to weave through the busy staff. The explanation made perfect sense. In a world built on war, where soldiering was the highest social currency, perfect, untouchable legends were the ultimate recruitment tool. Jackhammer was pragmatic. He was in his forties. He'd fought in arenas with rules and pay-per-view deals. To him, a "covert legend" was like a "dry ocean." It didn't compute. If the guy was real, he'd be in a museum or a grave.

The fact that he was neither just proved he was a ghost story with good marketing. One of many legends about why the powerful people deserved to be powerful. To Kelly, who knew the name wasn't a story at all, it was fascinating. Kelly had listened, her face a perfect mask of ' ah, yes, I see.' Internally, she was giving the universe a standing ovation. The sheer, breathtaking absurdity of it was glorious. A story so useful it had fossilized fact into falsehood. She knew the best part.

It hadn't been manufactured by some historical committee. A real, cranky, horrifically dangerous old man had simply lived so long and done so much that he'd evaporated into myth. His secrecy wasn't some black-ops protocol. It was probably just his own grumpy preference. A need-to-know secret that, apart from entities like the Haider organization, with their mutually assured destruction NDAs, almost nobody needed to know anymore. She knew. It was the funniest joke in the world.

The official education pipeline—government, corporate, military academies, the news—was a smooth, recycled slurry of propaganda. It was designed to make the elite and the demigods seem like untouchable myths. It presented the upper Echelon, people with EQ levels skating past 80 or tipping over 100, as historical monuments you'd never actually meet. It was all very clean, very distant. Kelly knew they existed. She'd killed one, after all.

Okay, technically she'd caused him to disintegrate in a cataclysmic mana-terraforming explosion. Same difference. The point was, demigods could be turned into fancy ash. So the idea that someone at Ren Sato's level could be centuries old wasn't even weird. Genetics, machines, uploaded consciousness, replacement bodies—the options were a menu for people who could afford to ignore expiration dates. Him being two, three, even five hundred years old was entirely on the table.

But she remembered his own words—the unspoken horror in them when he spoke about wars, about dying, about being maimed, about the procedures soldiers used to become battle-hardened, which was just a polite term for permanently crazed. It made her wonder if he'd just… checked out. Gone off the grid for a peaceful retirement of simple, easy work. Or as off the grid as a living fossil of war could get.

The fact that he was alive, working with a sketchy outfit like Haider's on the system's most toxic planetary armpit, clearly wasn't common knowledge. Not even in the upper stratosphere. After a quick remote negotiation with Genecorp—confirming her voluntary participation in their East Grid operations later that day, which was absolutely an excuse to try stealing or draining the Cube—she thanked Dr. Haider's remotely piloted drone. It buzzed away. Time to move.

She linked up with Reggie, Reggie's mercenaries, and her own hired team of aspiring god-killers. The vibe was both a ' covert departure'and a' rowdy field trip to the end of the world.'

"We're all set?" Reggie asked, checking a scanner in his palm.

"Set as we're gonna be," Kelly said, hefting her pack, dipping the entire thing into her shadow, which rippled and absorbed it all like dark water. Everyone present gave her strange looks, then decided it was above their pay grade.

"Time to go sign my life away to a shady death-wish organization, take their ' please try to die' combat exam, and square up against a brutal grumpy old demigod who operates on a weight class that could crack this city in half. Call it a minor level gap. A small one." Kelly checked the forms loaded into her weapon.

"Only maybe a hundred times my pay grade. Nothing major. A rounding error, really." Reggie raised an eyebrow.

"You sound cheerful about it."

"I'm always cheerful." Reggie shook his head and yawned, holstering his weapon.

"Your funeral. I already lined up the extraction team."

"See? That's why you're my favorite bodyguard. Always planning ahead."

"You think they'll still have lasagna?" Reggie paused, staring at her wrist. He gave her a slow, assessing look.

"We still get paid if you die, right?" Kelly waved a hand and grinned triumphantly. Reggie stared at her wrist.

"You're not carrying enough metal to scratch a demigod."

"I am this time. Better equipped." She tapped the side of her head, then the fashionable weapon on her wrist.

"Brought some special ammo." This time, she wasn't just showing up with grit and a smart mouth. This time, Kelly had time on her side. Literally. It was time for round two.