u/ImpossibleHandle4

The war with the Trill had gone on for 17 years. Neither side was winning. The humans had sent the majority of their elderly to fight the war. The Trill economy finally collapsed.

The Trill went to the peace negotiations thoroughly exhausted and sick of war. The humans felt very much the same.

“So what are your terms of our surrender?” The Trill ambassador asked.

“No more bombing or skirmish runs, no bidding wars for freight lanes. We have to have cultural studies and sharing, and we have to trade knowledge.” The General said.

“Trade knowledge how?” The Trill general asked.

“We need info on your shields and on your FTL engines. We will trade you healthcare robotics, weapons design, and some industry mechanization. We know you don’t have nearly enough working age people, so we are willing to help out where we can.” The General huffed.

“Why did we fight for 17 years again?” The Trill ambassador asked.

“Mostly because neither side wanted to back down. “ the General said.

“How long realistically will it take to help us with our economy?” The Trill ambassador asked.

“Well, that depends on what you produce and how you produce it. From what we know, best case scenario, 18 Earth months. Worst case, two and a half years.” The General said.

“What do you get in exchange for it?” The Trill ambassador asked.

“We want rights to travel through your FTL lane ways, and a discount on the products you produce, we’ll offer 10% over the cost of the goods, and help you sell them to others for 25% over cost. So you make money, we make money and everything gets mostly back to normal.” The General stated.

“I’ll propose it to my people, with our economy destroyed, they most likely will take it, but we will need immediate aid to make sure we don’t starve.” The Trill ambassador said.

“We can make that happen.” The General said. “Give me 30 days and we will get you what you need. We are sending ships now to help te-build. “

DARPA had a problem, they had an aging group of Americans, and most of the younger ones couldn’t be soldiers.

On top of that, if they threw the working age folks into the meat grinder, especially with the lower birth rate, the economy might never recover.

General McClure sat at the table flanker by his g4 generals. Being a 4 star General was a pain in the ass, he thought to himself, solve people no longer fucking to make children, and the working age people all being depressed, and fat he didn’t have enough man power to do what he needed to do.

“What do we do men? The analysts have told us that we have to find a way to bolster our numbers in the near future with the birth rate going down, this shit is getting serious.”

“What about cloning?” 3 star General Jones asked.

“Too many issues with connective tissue and it still takes too long to train them.” He replied.

“I miss the good old days.” Said 3 star General Martin, “If only we could keep using the militarily trained people.”

“Say that again.” General McClure asked.

If only we could keep using the militarily trained people?” General Martin asked.

“That is fucking brilliant, you are a genius.” General McClure said.

The next morning General Mcclure put in a call to DARPA.

“So I heard you had a budget to utilize?” General McClure prodded.

“We can always find a way to use it, but if you have a pet project, it is a good time.” Said General Drake.

“What if we used the funds you have for brain computer interfaces and limb replacement and create a soldier that we can remote control?” General McClure asked.

“Now that sir is a great idea, are you looking at bringing back wounded soldiers to the field? General Drake asked.

“What if we could use people who aged out of the military?” General McClure asked?

“So you’re saying that we use augmentation to repair or deal with age and remote control them as robot soldiers?” General Drake asked.

“Is it possible?” General McClure asked.

“That is actually the best idea I’ve heard in a while, it wouldn’t effect the mostly working age people, we could get them as medical enhancements, and just install a takeover in the brain computer interface. I love it.” Said General Drake.

“Alright, can we get some seed money and some tech from the leading companies? What about that Tesla chip? Can we use that?” General McClure asked?

“I’ll make some phone calls and offer the ability to work with the military to make it happen.” General Drake said.

Within a week, the newspapers ran headlines about US military working on new brain computer interface to advance limb care for wounded soldiers. The article listed a bunch of billionaires in bio medical and other fields who were donating to make it happen. (In truth DARPA was funding most of it while taking the money to enhance their equipment.)

It took about 5 years for the first prototype legs to work with the brain computer interface to restore mobility to a paralyzed soldier. Quickly the work on spines and on muscles and on arms and hands moved quickly.

The elderly who had money signed up to pay for new hip/ leg combos. If they had messed up shoulders, they signed up to get them replaced.

DARPA kept a list of all of the people outfitted with their Brain computer interface, and what parts were robot parts.

Little did they know, but it would be about 5 years before they would need to activate some of those soldiers.

“War is an enterprise which we cannot afford to lose!” His voice boomed.

“So what?” She asked, “we involuntarily conscript grandparents to become warriors?”

“We do what we have to!” He shouted.

“None of them asked for this.” She replied

“Baloney!” He shouted, “quite a few of them were patriotic enough to want to die in the fields.”

“Patriotic?” She asked, “Are you sure they didn’t just want to die?”

“There is effectively no difference other than who pays for the headstone.” He said.

War with the aliens had begun in earnest. After the wins from the augmented elders who did not read the fine print on their replacement limbs, joints, etc. the real war began.

The aliens did not like that we had dealt with their first ship by having our aged pummel the crap out of them. I mean who would? Would you like to go home saying, “grandma beat Marcus to death with her bare hands.” No, no one wants to say that.

The problem now was that some of the elderly were conscientious objectors, though with the price for a funeral, a lot of families were fighting to get them to stay in the military, even involuntarily. The issue was the original rich 250 who didn’t want to die were now lobbying congress for ways to be excluded, which had effectively caused a different type of class war.

The military had the upper hand. They could, simply not activate the cybernetics of the rich 250, and then let them be annoying to the other old people in their facilities who would kill them off. Apparently no one has thought of that when the first death occurred.

The aliens kept sending working age soldiers to the earth to fight their war. They had a good strategy, and decent weapons, their reproductive rate was on par with the peak of humanity’s birth rate.

From an economic standpoint, the humans had the upper hand. They had an army of people who otherwise did not produce anything but need from the economy, the working age people could go and make products and man the supply lines, and continue to create.

The aliens in the other hand had two things going for them, 1) they were pissed, 2) their using working aged people made them more efficient, and more cautious.

As the war dragged on through its 17th year, the humans had been collecting alien tech, reverse engineering it and coming up with new inventions.

The aliens had finally cracked the tech to understand how the humans were getting their commands.

“So you’re saying that they are using their ages as meat puppets to kill us?” The alien general growled.

“Well, yes”, the Jr. scientist said, “It appears that the tech can be remotely mobilized and force them to fight us.”

“Well, and we shut it off?” The general yelled.

“Not yet sir, we are trying to understand the messages. We can block them, but the humans inside of the gear once it is activated can still fight.” The Analyst said.

“Do you think they will?” The general asked.

“That we don’t know, they seem to definitely have a warrior caste, and they seem to welcome death.” The analyst said.

“So how do we overcome a foe that uses its aged as weapons to destroy us and leaves its’ working aged people to continue production?” The general, obviously angry, yelled.

“We’re working on that sir. We have to do some field tests to see how cognitively Impaired their soldiers are, and see what drives them to want to die.” The Analyst said.