Perseus Battlesuit

**Key Features** | »» Perseus Combat Micro-Soft Mk.4»» Beretta MB-3 Gyrojet Bullpup»» Enclosed helmet w/ sensor pods»» Metal plates welded on skin»» Mostly dead victim

*"From out of the grave, to your bottom line!"*

- Perseus Advertising Jingle
## Tactical Analysis

* **Cyberzombie**: The Perseus Battlesuit is a quickly made "instant" soldier made from the still-warm corpse on the battlefield. It is modified for combat, given a chip in the head, and is ready for combat quite quickly.

* **Dead Aim**: Armed with a mid-ranged rifle. The Perseus can lay down a decent suppressive fire while ensuring the main forces are protected.

* **Corpse Handlers**: Due to the need for warm bodies, Perseus cannot simply be bought or recruited. Instead, they must be summoned by the Human Resources protocol. There is still a cost, however, for the machinery used.

* **Still have miles to go**: Perseus who have survived their supposed duration are often upgraded to further extend their use. The first is a rocket launcher mounted on the shoulder to give it some way of fighting against vehicles and aircraft. But the most notable one is the "Lazarus" protocol, which would flood the body with a cocktail of drugs that revives and repairs the Perseus when they die again, but it takes two minutes for the drugs to refill afterward, during which their next death will stick, unless another Human Resource is used.

## Background

The Micro-Soft, one of the Syndicate's more ingenious inventions, allows a person to learn from the recorded experiences of a person. The possibilities are endless; languages can be learned instantly, entire professions mastered in a day of mere motor practice, and literary works understood and annotated by the best minds Syndicate money can bother. It wasn't long, however, that the Syndicate soon turned to making the "ultimate" warrior be copied to every mercenary. Unfortunately, this did not work as well as hoped. The first attempt with Minerva failed, as the test subjects snuck out of the laboratory to chase younger men and have plastic surgery done. Experiments with a more professional and focused Centurion were disappointing; while basics were learned, the true killer instinct was simply muddled up by the person's previous experiences.

Another experiment, however, would be joined with this and solve the problem. An engineer on the Micro-Soft program realised there was no reason that a Micro-Soft couldn't function as a brain itself. However, there was, and is, no chip with enough memory to contain more than the contents of the Medulla Oblongata, the bare minimum to keeping a person alive (any loss of such information would result in the person dying). While this dashed the hopes of literally downloading a person onto a chip, with additional Micro-Softs a brain-dead person could theoretically be brought back to life, though Micro-Softs allow no further development and it's debatable if a brain made up of the fragmented thoughts of several people could be considered alive. There were limited options that were profitable with both of these breakthroughs, but one for sure was the Perseus Programme, which married the two for combat applications.

Simply put, recently dead bodies that have suffered a minimum of damage could be patched up, and have microchips implanted at the base and the cerebral cortex, which control the life signs and memory respectively. The subject is brought back to life, and given the personality and knowledge of specially combined combat memories, making a passable soldier, if an unresponsive and distant person. Further armour and cybernetics is added (as the body no longer feels pain) to make them a cut above the normal soldier, and for a fairly cheap cost as well. Since the senses no longer function, a helmet is put on with sensor pods that connect directly to the microchips; this also completely covers the face to prevent identification.

In battle the **Perseus Battlesuit** (so named for no particular reason) is usually sent in waves to soak up losses even better than Auxillaries. They are not dumb brutes, and know to take cover, keep low, use suppression fire, and other battlefield basics, and due to their immunity to pain and armour they're surprisingly resilient. Most of them are still killed, however, but with no loss, since the parts can often be salvaged. The rare Perseus Battlesuit that does survive is actually fairly valued, and is almost always ensured a job in telecommuncations.

Those that do survived are also equipped, whether they want it or not, with the Lazarus Micro-Soft, which will supercharge the bodies repair and reconstruct vital organs in mere seconds upon taking fatal damage though it has a long cooldown between use, and a shoulder mounted flechette missile launcher, letting them now handle aircrafts and vehicles to some extant.

## Behind the Scenes

The basic description of the Perseus Battlesuit for the current lore was inspired by the Light Guard of Quake 2.