A New Purpose

"Eli." It was the Operators new name, but it felt old. Trezlan had settled on it after hours of him just asking inane questions and ignoring the obvious ones. The AI of the operator's ship liked it, Eli felt the AI had contributed in someway and Eli was it's former name. Still better than the Operator as in previous operations it was hard to understand orders as everyone in the group was named Operator. They used to have numbers to go along with the Operators, Eli once went by Operator 5 on most operations, which felt even more dehumanizing than being an a conscience in a machine.

"I find it a wonderful name Eli." The ship had no name, it wanted no name, Eli felt it was best to never personalize the craft for fear of its destruction, which almost happened prior to being discovered by Trezlan on his ghost run.

"Focus on the task at hand." The task at hand was infiltration. Trezlan not one to trust had given Eli a task. He wanted some information from Morlatech to confirm what Eli had told him, so without much more than some minor covenience repairs on Eli's ship and person, Eli was back in the thick of things, hacking in to the Morlatech database. It wasn't difficult, even with decades gone by the protection Morley used on his data was old, because he didn't expect someone to access it within the actual Relay like Eli had. It was a thrill to break into something again, even if it was an unguarded relay station in the middle of nowhere. It was nice to feel useful to someone.

"Information retrieved give me a minute to verify." Eli didn't have a minute, something tripped upon retrieval and the room which it was in started to fill with gas. Not an issue for Eli because of no respiratory system, but the gas would be one phase of a lot of different traps from what Eli could recall of Morlatech security. Getting out was simple enough, even in haphazard state, Eli had more control and abilities than normal people did. As an Operator that was the bonus, you weren't as tough as a warbot, but you could do things no regular person. It was freedom while being a slave, a dichotomy that didn't bother Eli until the isolation had let madness in. Still with relatively little effort, Eli emerged at the docking port, boarded it's ship and disembarked. Morlatech none the wiser hopefully, the security problem to be written off as a glitch in a long abandoned relay.

"What did we get anyway?"

"Technical schematics on the operator program, Trezlan is well informed to know to even look for this data."

"Trust but verify is apparently his motto, we too should be leery of him, he puts on an almost amusing lack of tact or diplomacy, but he is a murderer and worse, and he's lived a long time, and unlike Morley is not wasting away, caution with our interactions."

"Yes Op, Eli, though I do like his Ai companions they are so polite."

"Set a course for Trezlan, inform him we have his information, but we do seek payment."

"Yes Eli."