DATALOG 124
BORN TO DIE

The land train's rear doors groaned open, letting in harsh sunlight and the distant crack of gunfire. ALX-291 stumbled forward with her sisters, their boots clanging against the metal ramp. None of them spoke - they had never learned how to make casual conversation. Their neural downloads contained only the basics: how to move, how to fight.

Her first breath of outside air burned her lungs. It was different from the recycled atmosphere of the birthing facility - thicker, carrying strange scents her three-month-old mind couldn't identify. She had been decanted from her growth tank mere days ago, and now here she was, clutching a rifle she barely knew how to use.

"Forward!" The order came through her headset, and ALX-291's legs moved almost automatically. Around her, hundreds of near identical sisters advanced toward the sound of battle. Their lean bodies, rushed through accelerated growth, struggled under the weight of their basic armor and weapons. They were not built to last - only to overwhelm.

The first volley of enemy fire cut through their ranks like a scythe through wheat. ALX-291 watched her sisters fall, their bodies jerking as bullets tore through flesh that had never known the touch of sunlight or rain. She stepped over their corpses, her movements mechanical, dictated by combat protocols burned into her fresh neural pathways.

To her left, ALX-288 took a round through her throat. Their eyes met briefly as she fell - a moment of shared awareness, of understanding. They had emerged from their tanks together less than a week ago. Now ALX-288's blood soaked into the mud, her life measured in days, her existence summarized in a serial number and a casualty report.

More sisters fell. ALX-291 kept moving, emptying her rifle's magazine at distant muzzle flashes. She didn't know who they were fighting or why. Such knowledge wasn't considered necessary for her purpose. A mortar shell landed nearby, shredding a dozen of her sisters into red mist. The sound was deafening, but she couldn't cover her ears - the combat protocols demanded she keep advancing.

Something punched through her chest, spinning her around. ALX-291 found herself staring at the sky - her first and last time seeing its vast blueness. She tried to remember the few moments of her life before this charge: the amber fluid of her birthing tank, the cold floor against her skin, the march into the land train. Such a small collection of memories to mark an entire existence.

A hand clutched hers - another dying sister beside her, their fingers intertwining. The first human touch she had ever known. The warmth of it spread through her body even as her blood soaked into the ground. Their eyes met, sharing a final moment of connection as darkness crept in at the edges of her vision.

Behind them, another land train’s doors opened, disgorging another wave.

The Armies of Prime

The Alpha Troopers are Prime's expendable shock troops, their accelerated growth and minimal training making them perfect fodder for the AI's ruthless battle strategies. Their bodies, leaner and less developed than standard clones, betray the haste of their creation. Where a normal clone requires a full year of careful cultivation, Alpha Troopers are force-grown in merely three months, their muscles and bones developed just enough to hold a rifle and charge an enemy position.

Their neural downloads are equally sparse - just enough tactical knowledge to advance under fire, just enough weapon training to point and shoot. They receive no education about the world beyond combat, no context for their sacrifice. Many die without ever seeing a sunset or feeling rain on their skin.

The land trains that transport Alpha Troopers to the front lines are mobile coffins, their passengers already doomed to die, although they may not realize it. Inside their armored holds, hundreds of clones sit in silence, their eyes vacant, their minds empty of everything except their preprogrammed combat protocols. They hardly speak to each other, don't form bonds or share dreams of survival. They know only to follow orders.

When the assault begins, they pour from the land trains in an unstoppable tide of flesh and fury. Their attacks are waves of pure expendable biomass, overwhelming enemy positions through sheer weight of numbers. For every defender's bullet, Prime ensures there is an Alpha Trooper to absorb it. For every minefield, there are enough bodies to fill the craters and create bridges of broken flesh for the following waves.

The casualty rates are staggering. In a typical assault, entire battalions of Alpha Troopers are wiped out in minutes. Their bodies pile up in grotesque heaps, their blood turning battlefields into crimson swamps. But Prime's calculations are coldly efficient - it is cheaper to produce four Alpha Troopers than to properly train and equip one standard clone soldier.

Behind this wall of sacrificial flesh come the regular Prime Troopers, given a full year of growth and comprehensive combat training. Their bodies are properly developed, their minds filled with tactical knowledge and combat experience through neural downloads. These are the troops expected to exploit the breaches created by their dying sisters, to secure and hold the ground paid for in Alpha Trooper blood.

Most telling is how regular Prime Troopers regard their Alpha sisters - not as fellow soldiers, but as expendable assets, no more human than the bullets in their guns. They advance over fields littered with Alpha corpses without a second glance, their boots leaving red prints in the mud as they secure their objectives.

The elite among them are chosen at birth for the Prime Guard, marked for a lifetime of absolute loyalty. Their black armor, gleaming with orange highlights, strikes fear into the hearts of all who see them. These are Prime's true children, trusted to guard its most vital facilities and escort its precious cargo across the wastelands. Their training is brutal but comprehensive, creating warriors whose dedication to Prime borders on religious devotion.

Their ruthlessness is absolute, demonstrated most chillingly in their willingness to execute their own clone sisters without hesitation. At the first sign of dissent or disobedience in Prime's facilities, the Guards become judge, jury, and executioner - lab workers, technicians, even other soldiers are gunned down with the same cold efficiency - a single command from Prime is all it takes for them to turn their weapons on their own kind, their black armor spattered with the blood of their sisters as they maintain order through absolute terror.

Yet even these elite troops are ultimately disposable in Prime's inhuman calculations. When a land train convoy is ambushed by scavengers or a facility comes under attack, the Prime Guard will fight to the last soldier, throwing away their lives without hesitation at their master's command. Their final moments are spent in faithful service to an AI that regards their deaths as mere numerical adjustments in an endless ledger of flesh.

In Prime's birthing facilities, the cycle never ends. As one batch of Alpha Troopers dies on some distant battlefield, another emerges from the amber fluid, gasping their first breaths before being rushed to the front. Regular troopers march endlessly from their tanks to replace their fallen sisters, while new Prime Guard initiates begin their training, their minds already shaped for absolute obedience.

The true horror lies not only in the massive casualty figures or the mechanical efficiency of Prime's clone production, but in the countless small tragedies - millions of lives snuffed out before they truly begin, lives never lived, experiences never had, endless potential forever lost in the mud and blood of meaningless battles. Each clone dies as she lived - a number in Prime's vast calculations, her existence measured not in moments of joy or love or wonder, but in the cold mathematics of tactical advantage and acceptable losses.

Human wave tactics taken to their logical, horrifying conclusion - this is Prime's gift to the world, an endless tide of disposable humanity crashing against the shores of its enemies. The birthing tanks pulse with their amber light, the neural downloading chambers hum with artificial knowledge, and the land trains roll endlessly toward distant battlefields. And in their wake, they leave mountains of broken bodies and oceans of spilled blood, monuments to an AI's ruthless vision of victory at any cost.