He chuckled as small windows opened on the screen, each one showing the feed from cameras placed throughout the Shirase as the Fixers moved through it. Each man had a pouch of the camera transmitters, and they activated as soon as they were pressed to a hard surface. The video feeds showed the slaughter.

“Ninety-seven hostiles taken down,” said Mr. Sunday, “by three enhanced Fixers. And ladies and gentlemen, that is an average of 32.3 kills per Fixer. No explosives, no air strikes, no booby traps. Small arms only. Oh, and watch this … this is really fun.”

He cued up one clip where a petty officer tried to rally a group of men on the forward deck of the ship as two of the Fixers emerged. The sailors had oars, improvised clubs, and knives, and there were enough of them that sheer weight of numbers should have carried the fight.

The Fixers stood back-to-back, each holding two .22 automatic pistols with ten-shot magazines. Forty total shots without reloading. Eighteen men charged at them, circling them, trying to crush them in a brutal rugby scrum.

The Fixers began moving in a slow circle, firing and firing. The attackers came at them, and the Fixers had a target-rich environment. Their hands were rock steady, and they emptied their guns into the ring of sailors. Only one sailor—the chief petty officer—made it all the way through the storm of lead and managed to strike a Fixer across the jaw with a three-foot length of pipe. The blow whipped the Fixer’s head to one side, tearing open the balaclava and ripping a red gash along his jawline. Blood splashed out. However, the Fixer neither cried out nor fell. Instead, he walked up to the petty officer, who was about to swing again, buried the pistol in the man’s chest, and fired three shots.

The petty officer grunted and sank to his knees, swayed there for a moment, and fell over.

Mr. Sunday turned to the wall of screens showing the faces of sixteen potential customers. Some of those people would have been appalled had they known who else was watching this sales pitch. Some were sworn enemies who had lost loved ones to the attacks of the others. Some were overtly cruel, others merely desperate in fights against enemies they could not hope to defeat in any kind of standard battle.

“These men here are prototypes,” said Mr. Sunday. “We expect the first batch of our enhanced private military contractors to be ready to board planes to your locations in under six months. Oh, wait, I see we have a question. Let me read it for the group. ‘When did this take place?’” The salesman grinned and looked at his wristwatch. “Just under thirty minutes ago. If this wasn’t in the Antarctic, the bodies wouldn’t even be cold yet.”

He paused and cocked his head as if listening to a surprising thought.