Shadow Slave

While the intense and arduous training slowly taught the members of the cohort how to fight together, Sunny had several other time-sensitive tasks to complete. Keeping up with all these concurrent responsibilities really tested his mental capacity, but there was no other choice than to simply grit his teeth and do it.

Probably the most important of the tasks facing him was to allocate his contribution points and acquire various assets to strengthen the cohort. However, that was not a straightforward issue. After several days of studying how his subordinates fought and getting acquainted with their Memory arsenals, he was finally ready to make some decisions.

To do so, he chose a moment when the three members of the melee vanguard — Belle, Dorn, and Quentin — were busy in the Dreamscape pods, and called his other three subordinates over.

After all, all three of them were specialists in various support fields that had to do with the cohort's equipment. Kim was a technician, Samara was a capable spelltech engineer, while Luster…

Well, Luster was supposed to be an ace pilot. That wasn't really useful in this situation, but what was Sunny supposed to do, leave the poor guy to sulk all alone in a corner?

After consulting with Kim and Samara, he gained a lot of insight into what would be the best way to spend the contribution points.

The Rhino might have seemed like a simple transport vehicle, but it was really so much more. Sunny did not know a lot about war and strategy, but he knew that mobility was one of the most important factors when determining the impact a combat unit could make.

That was especially so for the cohorts of the First Irregular Company, which were supposed to be elite rapid-response units that had to constantly travel between various flashpoints to provide support to the ground troops.

So, upgrading their APC was of paramount importance.

The question was which aspects of the Rhino had to be upgraded the most.

In the end, Sunny settled on several major upgrades. They were not what he had expected to pick before consulting with the pair of tech specialists. Instead of adding more armor to the Rhino's hull or incorporating a powerful cannon to its forward section, most of the improvements ended up being hidden from sight.

The Rhino received a comprehensive overhaul that replaced its already formidable power reactor with a much more potent alternative, which in turn demanded the whole energy transmission system to be torn out and replaced with a more robust one.

Among other things, this upgrade vastly improved the logistics of the cohort, since the new spelltech reactor did not need mundane fuel and could be charged by Luster instead.

The guy turned out to be useful for something, after all!

The second major upgrade, unexpectedly, centered entirely around the command and communication suite situated in the rear of the vehicle. Sunny had not paid it much attention before, but after receiving input from Kim, he understood how important it was to get his hands on a better system.

With all the Gates opening in Antarctica, communicating with other units and the command HQ of the Evacuation Army was going to quickly turn into hell. Being able to maintain a stable connection was even more important for the Irregulars, since the cohorts were meant to act semi-independently while being coordinated by Master Jet from a distance.

Luckily, the upgraded reactor was capable of supplying a lot of juice to the communication suite, so Sunny could easily replace it with a much more advanced and powerful system that, hopefully, would have no problem punching through the mass of interference. The added external antennas, both the comically tall telescopic one and the more modest parabolic one, could be retracted and hidden beneath the armor at any moment.

The third upgrade was the most esoteric and abstruse. It involved extremely advanced spelltech applications which Sunny did not really understand, so he simply told Samara to choose the best option.

It had to do with shielding and insulating the core systems of the APC from the detrimental effects that the Nightmare Gates produced. Everyone knew that Gates messed with technology and electronics in weird ways, but very few people understood how and why.

Considering the nature of the Chain of Nightmares, Sunny had to make sure that the Rhino would not simply stall and die in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. So, even though it cost him a painful amount of contribution points, he chose to acquire the most expensive set of countermeasures available.

Sunny did not shed a tear only because his subordinates were watching.

Before letting the specialists go, he made another acquisition.

Knowing what Samara was capable of with the right armament, he decided to enhance her combat performance by getting his hand on the most powerful mundane weapon available to the members of the First Evacuation Army.

As the result, the cohort became entitled to receive an incredibly powerful — by the standards of mundane soldiers, of course — mechanized rifle.

The thing was made of incredibly tough alloy and included various dampening materials to make its internals more resistant to concussive damage. It was as tall as Samara herself, and possessed a long, fearsome barrel. Sunny initially thought that the rifle was a railgun, but was corrected and found out that it was actually a different type of a mass driver known as a coil gun, or Gauss rifle.

He had heard all those words before, but had no idea what the difference was. Not that it mattered. All he needed to know was that the rifle was incredibly powerful and capable of propelling solid slugs forward with stunning speed. It could also fire them in two modes — subsonic and supersonic — which could be useful if the cohort ever wanted to remain discreet.

Technically, the rifle was too heavy and powerful to be wielded by a human. It was meant to be utilized by a soldier encased in a full exoskeleton armor suit, or even serve as a light weapon for the smaller humanoid war platforms. But as an Awakened, Samara was just strong enough to manage.

After making this acquisition, Sunny let the three specialists go and rubbed his palms together.

Then, he went forward and spent his remaining contribution points on miscellaneous items… and, more importantly, better Memories for his soldiers.

As a mad grin appeared on Sunny's face, his eyes shone with greedy light.

Staring at his communicator, he couldn't help but laugh.

"Ungrateful brats… daddy brought you gifts, hehe!"