Construction like that which comprised Aura’s body was something Gaz had simply never encountered before. From the outside she looked unique, certainly. But no more so than any other anthro-chassis cyborg. But inside… she’d been cobbled together from a vast array of disparate parts, many of which had never been designed to work with each other. Nathaniel made delighted cooing sounds as he pulled open Aura’s body and set to work on the anthrocyborg.
Gaz contemplated the term “anthrocyborg” technically, it was malapropism. The roots, when considered separately, meant almost the exact opposite of how the term was used. Properly, an “anthrocyborg” should have been a human-shaped cyborg. But linguistics and usage did care one bit for what some people considered proper. Butterflies where neither made from butter, nor particularly fly-like.
Contemplating language made for the most useful contribution possible from Gaz. With the vast tangle of parts, mismatched and diverse, she would not be much help to Nathaniel. And he did not ask for her direct assistance in this upgrade.
However, she still maintained a careful record of his actions. Once again, he relied on his innate power only as a tool, clearly wanting to make sure Gaz could replicate even these esoteric upgrades. Why, she couldn’t say, and wouldn’t ask while Nathaniel was so deep in contemplation.
Aura’s cyberbrain represented the most stock part of her body, other than a few weapon systems all obtained from the same vendors. And like the rest of Felina’s ship and systems, Aura’s cyberbrain was extremely advanced for the cluster, built within the last fifty years using some of the most advanced techniques and materials available. She was an object lesson in how to craft an exquisite chassis using one excellent part: a brain, along with the cobbled together remnants of other cyborgs.
“You think they’ll help us after this?” Gaz spoke her question aloud as Nathaniel sealed up Aura’s body. What he’d done for her would have cost millions of credits back on Mars. Even more on Earth or one of the Loop stations.
“Most residents of the cluster know better than to break a deal with a Technomancer.”
“Except the Root clerics.”
“Actually, they haven’t crossed me personally.” He wagged his finger back and forth. “Even the Order of the Root knows better than to try something like that.”
“Can you tell me why exactly?” It was a question Gaz had been wondering. From what she’d seen, Nathaniel’s hard power came from The Pillar of Man, it’s what enforced his terms, and protected him from depredations by opportunists. His identity, his powers, gave him soft power. Once again, it was almost the opposite of Evan.
“Without going into detail, or I suppose too much detail, I will say this: Technomancers do not automatically form alliance with other Technomancers. We may face each other across opposite ends of a fight. And if that happens, we might even kill each other. But no one fucks with us as Technomancers unless they want all of us as enemies.”
“You mean the threat of your larger group holds them off?”
“Indeed. Humanity would be fine without us, the Cluster would not suffer much if I took my ship and services elsewhere. A good cyberdoc with decent training can do most of what I could. But imagine trying to protect your ship, your supply lines from dozens of us. All of them pissed off because you made the mistake of killing or torturing one of us for no reason. Or cheating us out of our due.”
“Wow.”
“Indeed.” He snorted. “One of my aunts is a void ship engineer. She’s… scarier than anyone I have ever met in my life, anyone I’ve ever heard of. And despite her area of specialization, she’s still a better cyberdoc than I am.”
Gaz set a processor to contemplate such a force, certainly more dangerous than a unstable fusion reactor, that. “I see.”
“It doesn’t hurt that most of us are related in some way. So cheating one is like cheating our cousins.” Nathaniel left the operating theater and motioned for Gaz to follow with his head. “Let’s let her systems activate in private while we go plan our attack.”
Now in sim, Nathaniel brought The Pillar of Man close enough to deliver a full battery of missiles and weaponry against the Root system. He fired every single one of those weapons into the Root station. Even in the context of the simulation, Gaz stiffened when the leaves burned away and a few chunks of scorched wood floated into the void. But the Root herself remained largely unscathed.
“That should be impossible.”
Nathaniel shook his head. “Magic suffuses the Root, makes the structure next to impossible to destroy with conventional weapons. Besides, our purpose isn’t to damage the Root, but to distract the defenders long enough for your transport to reach the surface.”
Gaz had never seen the Root station’s active defenses engage before. Leaves parted and massive branches as large as a cruiser pointed at The Pillar of Man.
“Brace for impact.”
Had anyone else given such a warning, Gaz would have laughed. The non-relativist munitions from The Pillar of Man had taken minutes to reach the Root. Whatever those branches were about to hurl, they wouldn’t be here quickly, right?
Gaz discovered she was very wrong.
Several of the large branches glowed with an inner green light before they burst and hundreds of needles the size of a scout ship flared toward The Pillar of Man, enshrouded by green fire, or perhaps plasma as they crossed the void treating the light-speed energy barrier like a quaint suggestion.
Fragments of wood exploded against The Pillar of Man’s hull, shaking the void ship and giving Gaz a reason to activate balance-assist.
Impact alarms blared once and went silent under Nathaniel’s commands. Lights around the ship dimmed and for a moment, Gaz forgot this was a simulation. “What’s the damage?” She activated the ship’s external optics and sensors. Several massive holes in the side of ship leaked gases and debris into space as adjoining airlocks sealed themselves. Before she flicked away to a second set of optical sensors, Gaz paused and zoomed into the edge of this particular breach. Bits of brown and green matter had begun to spring up form the impact point as she looked on. “What is that?”
Everything around Gaz stopped mid-motion and Nathaniel’s image floated into view. He crooked his finger around and Gaz floated out around the hole in the ship. “This is a theoretical weapon the Root station possesses, an organic infestation intended to drain our ship of air and other resources.”
“Do you have a way to stop it?”
“Only theoretically.” Nathaniel shook his head. “No, I would say I do not.” With those words the simulation ended. “Aside from the problem of initiating hostilities in the Cluster, I do not know how The Pillar of Man will approach close enough to support or lead the assault.”
“Then we have to rely on The Void Sharks.” Gaz had hoped to bring The Pillar of Man to bear against this problem, to have Nathaniel with her during the assault. He was more important than the ship. But he wasn’t leaving his ship. Gaz knew that without Nathaniel mentioning it explicitly.
“Indeed. I will contact Felina and let her know the full details.”
The swaggering mercenary captain met them when they dropped Aura off. She’d woken while Gaz and Nathaniel were leaving the simulation and only a few minutes before they rendezvoused with The Megalodon. “How’d you do Aura?”
Rather than answer out loud, the bird-cyborg approached her boss and held her hand out. Felina laid a few fingers on the back of Aura’s hand and they silently communicated. After a few seconds, Aura rose to stand behind Felina.
“To no one’s surprise, you do good work, Technomancer.” Felina flashed a mouthful of fangs as she grinned. “Our part of the bargain is to retrieve your missing friend, right?” She addressed her question to Gaz.
“Infiltrate the Root, save Alaya and anyone else from her crew who might be alive, and retrieve the starseed.” Even Gaz found it amusing that her priorities and those of the legitimate Root clerics aligned by way of afterthought.
“Sounds like a fucking blast to me.” Felina nodded, hissing at herself. “Let’s get you aboard my ship and we’ll set up to get murderin’.” She waggled her eyebrows at Gaz, who turned back to Nathaniel with a question as a mask across her features.
“Good luck, though I somehow doubt you will need it.” With those words, he bowed to Gaz and Felina and stood by as they left through the airlock.
Sentimentality had always been a bugaboo in the back of Gaz’s conciseness. From the face she’d worn from the day Alaya had commented on how pretty that engineer had been to the secret Gaz had clung to since the day she got her name and saved Alaya’s life, sentiment had trailed her like an errant comet. Thus, as she stepped off of The Pillar of Man, Gaz could not help the thought this would be the last time she’d ever set foot aboard the Technomancer’s marble-white halls, that it would be the last time she’d see Nathaniel.
Foolish, sentimental thoughts indeed.
“You’re some kind of high-end battle borg, ain’tcha?” Felina slowed until she walked next to Gaz. “That Technomancer your sugar-daddy? Set you up with that chassis?”
Alaya might have snapped at Felina in a show of solidarity. Or maybe she would have jousted back. But Gaz didn’t mind the ribbing one way or the other. “I had this chassis long before I met Nathaniel.”
“Oh gotcha. Seen a lot of combat then?”
“You might say that, but not as much as most mercenaries.” Most mercenaries refused to do assassination work, not that they had some code or were morally above it. No, most mercenaries understood the complexities of their political situations better than most military grunts. Pulling hits for cash was a full astronomical unit away from hiring to one side of a war. In the latter case, capture meant a credit penalty and a black mark with the group you’d attacked. In the former… people tended to be a bit more sensitive about assassins. Best thing a failed hitter could hope for was the cold embrace of the void or a full plasma blast to the brain. Worst might be jarring and centuries long torture. Hard to earn enough credits or reputation to justify either of those.
“You’re just not gonna volunteer anything, are you?”
“Do most of your clients chat about their lives?”
“Gets boring out here.” Felina opened her arms and spun around as they walked into a very different section of The Megalodon from last time. Music hit Gaz like an airlock venting itself. Then came the nuance of sound crawling under the thrumming, irregular beats. Moans, cries of pleasure, and a few cries of pain which… no, that wasn’t really pain. Next her chem sensors demanded a spare processor just to sift through the volume of adulterants in the air. Sweat, other fluids, smoke, and almost every narcotic substance humanity had discovered in her two-hundred thousand years history. Finally, she crested the raised walkway which surrounded the pit.
Down below crushed red and purple velvet cushioning covered the walls from the floor all the way up to the gangway where they stood. Pillows, a mass of blankets, and small swarms of suspensor-enabled drones covered the ground where writhing bodies made gaps. It was a sybaritic gathering lewd enough to color Alaya’s cheeks. With just a second’s glance, Gaz had identified nearly every form of pairing possible. “Ah.”
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“We fight hard and fuck hard here.” Felina snorted and swatted at Gaz gently. “You decide to join, let me know.” With those words, she grabbed the rail and somersaulted over into the crowd below.
“Everyone parties a little differently.” Aura gave Gaz a once-over and added. “If you’d like to just sit down, I can take you to an alcove.”
“I would prefer that, yes.” An encyclopedic knowledge of human sexuality paired poorly with Gaz’s lack of actual experience. The whole situation was made even more awkward by her devotion to Alaya. From the perspective of desiring experience, Gaz was tempted to join in the wriggling glee below. But too much force held her back, some of it, sentimentality.
“Did you hear me?” Aura raised her voice as she addressed Gaz a second time.
A shuddering wave resonated through Gaz. It had been a while since whatever neural defect in her nano-systems had given her trouble. But just then she’d missed everything Aura had said, her active threads having ejected those memories during a brief crash. “I did not.”
“I said you look even more uncomfortable than I am.” Aura leaned over the table in the corner of the large room. Sound dampeners held back the moans and cries while welcoming in the music.
“This is… yes. I am uncomfortable.” The last thing Gaz wanted here was to admit her inexperience, especially to mercenaries and relative strangers.
“Would you like to hit the canteen or the mess? Or I could show you to your quarters?”
“Actually, do you know who will be joining us on our assault on the Root station?”
‘Uh,” Aura blinked with her chin pulled into the top of her chest. After her surprise registers, she waved to the open room. “Everyone.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I said everyone.” Aura snickered and stood up, her feathers twitching as she did. “Captain’s not gonna attack a Root cleric ship without the whole crew. Everyone wants the best chance of success or we don’t earn our rep.”
But… Gaz silenced herself and considered what Aura had said. “How are you getting through the Root’s defenses?”
“Do you want to see?” Quirking her beak to the left, Aura said, “captain’s not gonna let you off till go time anyway. And you’re part of the breaching group right?”
“Sure.”
“Then let’s get you to your quarters and I’ll sim you through our plan.” Aura stood up and offered her feathered claw to Gaz, who accepted.
The room assigned to Gaz was simple and small, about half again the size of an average grunt’s bunk aboard a MilCAS fleet ship. Easy to see with those accommodations how Felina attracted talent. Spartan decor meant steel walls, a standard synth cotton bed and little else. But it was still far better than what most enlisted soldiers would have enjoyed for the first ten years of their contracts.
“You’re sure you want to be alone?” Aura’s plumage puffed up behind her and she widened her eyes as she leaned toward Gaz.
“I am, let’s just examine the sim?”
“Okay, sounds good hon.” Aura turned and walked down the hall with a deliberate and wide sway to her hips, each swing seeming to tease Gaz with what she’d refused.
Trusting simulations made for a good way to get surprised and executed for a botched mission. But in this particular case, the simulation Aura showed her and the actual infiltration set out in the same manner and hardly deviated before Gaz hit the physical Root systems.
Yira Crain was the first non-anthroborg Gaz encountered aboard The Megalodon. In fact, she was the closest thing to baseline Gaz had seen off of the Root station. Both in simulation and on live launch Yira accompanied Felina, Aura, Gaz, and Mako.
Felina’s method for avoiding reprisal attacks from the rest of Riggon’s Cluster brought a smile to Gaz’s lips. She’d sent out distress signals asking for berth even before she launched her breaching pods. Not one actual missile or munition launched with them, but every single pod contained a sextet of artificial parts intended to foil the scanners of nearby ships. From a distance it looked like the whole crew of The Megalodon was evacuating the ship while she listed into the Root station.
When the Root defenses armed, no one launched weapons into her to maintain the Cluster’s tenuous cease fire. In fact no one but the Root station herself fired upon The Megalodon. And once that happened, The Megalodon opened fire herself.
The first time Alaya witnessed it from within the simulation, she’d been shocked. The fiftieth time lost its luster. Yira’s hands glowed and a blueish grey field rose up between the Root station and The Megalodon.
Every wooden spike and branch which struck that field exploded into a mass of roots and organic matter, just as if it had impacted the hull of the ship. With nothing to hold onto and no new sources of CO2 or food, the living missiles writhed for a few minutes and then quickly withered into dried husks.
Before they reached it, Yira dropped the large screen with a motion of her hands and panted for a few minutes. The barrage of wooden missiles did not resume after the initial batteries. Still, once their pod clearedit, Yira raised the curtain behind them.
Pods crashed into the side of the Root station, exploding into balls of flame as they did. Incendiary munitions had fallen out of favor in void combat aeons ago. Most void ships could handle a little fire as easily — or badly depending on the perspective — as they could a hull breach. Those flares burst out into larger and larger fires along the surface of the Root station. Nathaniel’s ship didn’t have an incendiary load out, which was why his sims had never shown this.
The parallel between the simulations Gaz had practiced with Aura and the rest of The Megalodon’s crew ended before they hit the surface of the Root station. Proximity and tachyon alarms, features The Megalodon would have needed to take out the Nelissan Arms flagship, went berserk.
A small scout ship, almost too small for a skip drive, translated into the void right next to Gaz’s own ship. Felina and Yira both reacted, the captain veering their ship hard a-port and Yira raising a blue-green field which resembled a shark’s maw, set to snap the newcomer in half.
“What the fuck?” Felina spoke aloud as the ship edged by the magical shark construct Yira had summoned and almost side-swiped their pod.
Docking locks connected as Gaz examined the vessel from her scanners. This was something else. Built with similar nano-systems to Gaz, this silver arrow-head shaped skip vessel, morphed to join with the hull of their pod.
More shocking than the morphic capabilities of the void ship was its lack of void-registration. No one, not MilCAS, not Loop Nations, no one flew un-regged vessels through open space. It was the void equivalent of daring a passerby to attack because no one would retaliate over it. In fact anyone with sense would attack because they would assume an un-regged vessel was about to attack them. All spaceships were missiles, after all.
More alarms blared through the cabin where they intended to launch their breach. In less time than it took Felina to silence those alarms, a circular pattern of flame appeared right next to Gaz, someone was cutting through their hull.
All battle systems on high alert, Gaz turned to face the oncoming attacker as Mako put his massive shoulders next to hers. She barely reached the base of his chest. Yira chanted behind them and Felina shouted in surprise. Still monitoring their trajectories and sensory systems as the gap in their hull collapsed inward, Gaz was as surprised as anyone else by the fact their attacker had corrected their course back in line with their original trajectory.
Weapon’s fire spread out across the breach, making tiny holes in the area or burning into the darkness where their attacker had made a tunnel. A familiar voice intruded into their comms, “this is Technomancer Evan Parker, I hope this is Gaz’s pod.”
All eyes suddenly turned on Gaz. “Evan?” She responded with a typical handshake crypto challenge and the Technomancer responded with the correct bonafides. “Evan!”
“Are they gonna shoot me if I poke my head out?”
Gaz searched the room and spoke over comms to the team and to Evan. “He’s… I thought he was dead. But he’s… you’re here to help us, right?”
“That is correct. Alaya’s alive aboard that Root station, but she won’t stay that way if you don’t have me along.” Evan passed a moment. “So can I come out? If yall kill me I won’t be able to help.” His accent shifted, sounding like he was earnestly unnerved by the situation.
“Please let him board. He’s a friend.” That wasn’t exactly true. Gaz suspected Evan or his handlers would toss all six of them into the Sun if they thought doing so would keep Alaya alive.
Felina snarled. “If this fucks up our mission, you still owe us.”
“Done.” That was an easy decision.
“Then welcome aboard you crazy asshole.” Felina holstered her pistol and the others followed suit. She rested her paw on her thigh, leaned toward the breach, and added, ”will you give me your ship?”
Evan’s hand appeared first, as if he weren’t quite sure he was safe. A wise move as Gaz saw it, but no one opened fire when he showed up. After a second, he crawled out of the blackness and stood up.
Unlike the last time she’d seen him, Evan did not have a base-line appearance. His chassis was clearly a MilCAS black ops variant. Thin, spindly arms pulled him upright and he stood on four additional limbs, all of which articulated on ball sockets and gave him a spider-like appearance.
“Holy fuck, Gaz. How do you know this guy?” Felina shot Gaz a shocked expression before she returned to guiding their pod into the side of the Root station.
A cranial protrusion at the top of Evan’s chassis revealed a face, one made from composites and clearly intended to terrify anyone the MilCAS operative — or in this case, Evan — needed to murder. “The Void Sharks! These are the mercs I would have recommended.”
“What happened? I thought you died.”
“Oh they smoked the fuck out of me!” Evan’s head bobbed. “But I’m no idiot. I was cast in.”
“Bullshit.” That was Yira, one of the few times she’d spoken outside of casting. “You can’t use magic over IDcasting.”
The little line of brown plastic standing in for his left eyebrow rose at that and Evan said, “oh really? I suppose you’ve spoken about this at length with your friendly neighborhood Technomancers?” Yira didn’t have an answer to that, but rather than leave her wondering, Evan added, “which, if we live, is something you should totally try. Speaking at length with a friendly Technomancer that is.” His intimidating mask winked at Yira as he sidled up next to Gaz. He was the same approximate size as her, but with an additional two limbs. It still didn’t feel crowded in the little pod.
“Two minutes till impact.” With the excitement of Evan’s arrival over, Felina switched back to mission control smoothly. She shut off the alarms and let The Megalodon know they were fine. It was a credit to her crew that the people she’d left aboard accepted her explanation at face value.
Mako eyed Evan angrily, splitting his attention between Gaz and their newcomer.
Evan leaned in toward Gaz and said, “about that little Root-related nanite problem you had…” His nodded toward the Root station. “I have something that should slow down the Root station’s attempts to negate your nano-evolution.” He spoke to her directly, respectful of Gaz’s little secrets. “Interested?”
“Sure,” this had been one of her main concerns., but not the main one. “Do you know if anyone else survived?”
“Sorry Gaz. I do not. I know Alaya’s alive and I am reasonably certain The Mousehome’s intact. As to Kirk, Isham, or Marcus, I simply cannot say.” One of the articulating limbs held up a small sphere of silver mercurial fluid. “This is a suppression swarm. I tailored it to counter the Root station’s automated systems, but if you get directly attacked, it won’t absorb more than one or two blows. If that.”
Gaz accepted the sphere and it lost its silver color and turned almost perfectly transparent, with an index of refraction so close to local air, Gaz needed alternate sensors to detect it. It flowed over her and covered her like a modern void suit for baselines, not that she needed such a suit. “Thanks Evan.”
He nodded toward the Root station. “There’s no other way to save Alaya. The oracles are clear.”
Yira’s eyes glowed with a blue grey light and she nodded at Evan, as if she could hear him. Then she spoke. “The oracles are even more in our favor now. But do not grow complacent. The Root clerics have their own divinations and magics. And when such things interact, oracles fail.”
Evan gave a little finger-point in Yira’s direction and said, “the freaky little atavist priestess is dead on. Keep in mind the Root station is sacred to the clergy; we’re attacking their temple.”
“Ten seconds until impact. Prep for breach and grab your balls kids.” Poles shot from the floor to the ceiling next to everyone in the cabin, and everyone grabbed on in one way or another. Felina waited until the last second before she lazily locked in.
In a standard breach, a ship or pod only pierced a layer or three of the defending vessel. Few pods used outside of MilCAS could withstand more force than that. But flying into the branches of a living tree-ship was far beyond standard.
Evan’s void ship had moved across the prow of the pod and sensors showed it ablating away as their pod tore through more and more layers of the tree ship. When it finally came to rest, Gaz had counted almost 19 separate impacts. Most of the silver nano-structure of Evan’s ship was gone. And a green energy field covered it.
Once again, Gaz and Mako stood at the airlock with Yira behind them. When she lifted her hands, Evan put one of his armatures on her shoulder and said, “hold off for now. Let them think they’ve been attacked by a nano-swarm mass. They won’t send an interdiction force right away.”
Yira opened her mouth to protest, but Evan’s eyes glowed with a silver light, which was mirrored by his ship. It peeled away from the hull of their breaching pod and began to move through the limbs of the Root station, all the while pursued by the same green flame which had so diminished Gaz.
It crawled like some kind of amoeba, sending out silver tentacles, sticking to the branches of the Root station, and then pulling itself along. Where it enveloped the branches of the station, it left the wood and leaves unscathed. Not so with the silver mass, that green light continued to diminish it as the silver plowed on.
“Which way do we go?” Felina’s team used a thin-wire connection spread between them in place of short band. More secure than any other option, the line would snap if they strayed too far apart.
Yira opened her palm and a little round-mouthed sucker fish rose up. Its body was made of blue light, like a hologram. Spinning for a moment like an old magnetic compass, it eventually came to rest in a direction off to the right and down relative to their current position. “There.” A beam of blue light followed Yira’s finger.
Mako and Evan took off first. Massive, ground-shaking strides from the huge cyborg-shark knocked distant leaves from their branches. Evan on the other hand skittered forward, keeping pace with the bruiser is if they were jaunting along on a wilderness hike.
Felina and the rest of the team followed close with Gaz in the second position, barely able to keep pace with the two cyborgs in the lead.
Where the Root station had been laid out more or less like a standard ship interior last time, this time it resembled a tangled mass of kudzu with limbs and leaves as large as transport ships occasionally blocking their view.
The silver amoeba ship Evan brought faded out of optics, but not aural range. A concussion large enough that it scattered fragments of branch and leaf all over the stations interior made Gaz stop and catch her balance, Yira slipped and both Felina and Gaz grabbed her. Nanites automatically bit into the branch from Gaz’s feet and red-alerts kicked off throughout her internal systems. A green glow spread over Gaz.
“They know we’re here. And they probably know who we are.”